Certificate of Irrefutability

As voted on by the discord community, the Certificate of Irrefutability is a set of immutable truths established about the setting. These are meant to be the foundation upon which the rest of the setting is built upon. As truths are resolved through community voted lore, links will be added to the relevant lore articles for more detailed answers.

Aliens

Forms

• Sentient alien life exists.
• Aliens can be the product/subject of genetic engineering.
• Spaceborne Fauna exist.
• Hostile Space fauna exist that can/will attack stray spacecraft that stray too close.

Physiology

• There is sophisticated silicon based life.
• Aliens are mostly strange and non-humanoid in physiology.
• The needs and wants of aliens do not linearly match to their human counterparts.
• Humans and aliens are unable to reproduce together.
• Sexual reproduction with humans is an "alien" concept to Aliens, due to differing biologies and psychologies.
• Alien methods of interfacing with space magic vary wildly due to sociological and biological differences.

“Human Aliens”

• Human biology and culture have significantly diverged in response to different environments
• There are species that have a shared human ancestor that have diverged so far they can no longer have viable offspring.

Misc

• Technologically advanced Aliens, those beyond the default technology level of humanity, are rare.
• Sentient species (aliens and humans) are known to live in shared communities.

Exploration

Earth

• Earth is unimaginably far away.
• Earth is known to be the home of humanity.
• Earth’s location and fate are long forgotten
• The setting takes place in another galaxy.
• Humanity once had archives of their past, but the data was lost or corrupted.

Planets

• Planets naturally habitable to human life are rare and precious.
• Planets are complex, and do not consist of a single biome. (Arrakis, Dagobah, Hoth, ect.)

Resources

• Harvesting resources in space is difficult and dangerous work.
• Celestial phenomena are a source of exotic resources.

Ruins

• Ruins around the sector are the remains of a former civilization clearly more advanced than our own.
• The sector lies on the frontier of a former civilization, exploration equal parts rediscovery and exploring truly unknown space.
• It is unclear if the ancient ruins belong to our ancestors or something that predated them.
• A lost civilization has left defunct great feats of stellar engineering in its passing.
• The civilizations that came before sealed away many mighty gifts, and many terrible horrors.
• Sector-wide Archaeology is a relatively new field that often misinterprets/misrepresents new discoveries.
• The sector is in the midst of an archeological gold rush.
• Archaeology is a dangerous profession. Archaeologists often kill each other for the privilege of being the first to say they found and explored a ruin.
• The ruins of multiple civilizations can be found in the sector, not all the ruins come from one previous entity.

Misc

• Star charts are old, inaccurate, and outdated.
• There is still much to be discovered about celestial phenomena (Black Holes, Nebulae, etc.)
• Spaceships often organize into convoys to traverse the dangerous and unknown regions of space.
• Asteroid fields are dangerous, lawless territories.

Space Magic

Origins

• The source of magic does not originate from this dimension.
• Space Magic has no direct bearing or relation to FTL

Cost

• Space Magic requires esoteric rituals, strange incantations, and materials
• Space Magic requires intensive training
• Space Magic is exhaustive to the user
• Repeated minor uses of Space Magic are just as dangerous for the user as a single major use.
• Use of Space Magic is addictive.
• Space Magic is confusing and inherently mysterious even to its users, requiring experimentation to figure out how to produce a consistent result.
• Those who overuse Space Magic run the risk of attracting improbable and sometimes dangerous events.

Misc

• Matter transmutation is a sign of an area where the ambient magic is concentrated enough to be dangerous for organic life.
• Space Magic cannot heal you beyond what a triage center could do.

Technology

Artificial Intelligence

• True AI is allowed but is limited by effective hard blocks on their behaviors
• True AI-controlled shells (or ancillaries) have personalities of their own, as extensions of the AI
• True AI Exists with restrictions in the sector core, but these grow lax towards the frontier.
• Some artificial life are recognized as sentient, not subservient to other species.
• AI are capable of choosing their own physical form.
• Legal AIs are virtual recreations of organic minds.

Cybernetics

• Cybernetics are available and allowed
• The body can only take a limited amount of augmentation before there are serious consequences.
• Cyborgs with completely mechanical bodies, only biological brains, can be created at great cost to the individual.

FTL Communications

• Interstellar communications are slow by default, constrained by lightspeed and the use of the gates to transmit information between systems. High priority information is delivered by FTL capable ships.
• Instant interstellar communications exist but are not cheap.
• If instantaneous communication exists, then high strength data encryption is not compatible with that form of transmission.

FTL Drives

• FTL Fuel is currently scarce in the sector.
• FTL Fuel is unstable until it is refined, a process which requires remote refineries.
• Interstellar travel takes time. Space is big
• Starships are capable of interstellar travel by their own means
• FTL drives are expensive to maintain.
• Personal use spacecraft are small and expensive.
• Space travel is dangerous, ships can be worn down over time and become rickety old things

FTL Gates

• Interstellar gates exist that allow travel between planetary systems (hexes)
• Each FTL Gate is limited to connecting to one other FTL Gate.
• FTL Gate travel is limited by a ship's size.
• Ferry ships exist that carry smaller ships through the FTL Gates.
• FTL Gates require no external power or fuel source to function.
• FTL Gates are overcrowded.
• FTL Gate travel is quick and cheap once you clear the line.
• There are unstable but valuable materials that cannot be transported via the FTL Gates.
• FTL Gates can only operate in space, at a distance from significant gravity wells.
• The materials needed to construct new FTL gates are rare, chiefly scavenged from existing defunct gates.
• FTL Gates are ancient relics and the few we have are connecting the "core".
• Control of the FTL Gates is highly contested due to control of the trade routes and tolls.
• No one entity currently controls all of the FTL Gates.
• Passengers must be safely enclosed within a vessel in order to travel through an FTL Gate.

Genetics

• Human life can be extended but only to a finite limit
• Genetic engineering is available and allowed
• Animals can be genetically uplifted.

Robots & Mecha

• Robots and Automation are not human in form
• Drones and/or Robots are prevalent in military and industrial roles
• Mecha are used in both military and non-military roles.

Teleportation

• Teleportation is possible but is a very advanced technology.
• Teleportation is possible but only on the same planet.

Terraforming

• Terraforming is possible but takes decades to complete
• The cost and benefits of finding new worlds and interstellar travel often come into conflict with the prospect of terraforming, due to costs and shared material requirements.

Warfare

• Missiles are viable weapons in stellar warfare (there is no perfect counter)
• Fighter and Bomber craft are used in space combat
• Ground to Space and Space to Ground weapons exist
• Railguns are limited to large installations (vehicles, spaceships, ect.)
• Mecha exist and are a staple of armed conflict
• Handheld weaponry is more often physical projectiles over energy projectiles however Hyper-Advanced weaponry are rare and bulky at the personal scale.
• There is no single weapons manufacturer, and as a result weapons and ammo requirements are diverse and sometimes confusing.

Misc

• Artificial Gravity Exists but is powered by Exotic Energy
• Energy generation is limited, by resources or by cost
• Society is incapable of celestial manipulation
• Nanites exist but they can not self-replicate endlessly
• Hacking is possible, but there's no one single 'catch all' solution
• The difficulties of interstellar travel mandate that most systems be self-sufficient

General

• "Space Truckers" are an essential part of interstellar trade
• There is no single unified currency
• Space nomads exist that were driven from their homeworld and/or prevented from settling upon a new one.
• Human groups have migrated to the sector at various points throughout history.
• There is no single universal time zone standard for the sector.
• Friction due to culture, faction and nationality is more common than due to looks, species and sexuality.