Voor Technocracy
The Voor evolved during an extended interglacial period on their home planet Hiverion, which eventually began its cyclical transformation back to a lifeless globe of ice.
The rapidly changing environment forced the Voor to adapt using technology and science. United under the draconian rule of a chief scientific officer, they sacrificed their individual freedoms and enhanced their bodies with rudimentary cybernetics to survive.
Having conquered the planet that once threatened to freeze them out of existence the Voor now have their sights set on the stars.
Voor Technocracy - Civilization In Brief
Pre Space-flight History
The History of the Voor is one of despair and survival, of a people who united and sacrificed everything in the face of complete annihilation. Evolving on a homeworld with a very long glaciation cycle the Voor discovered that their world was cooling fast when they had just entered their industrial age. With the ice caps advancing year on year the Voor nations had to unite into an emergency government, putting their brightest minds in charge of their continued survival. The decisions that had to be made in those years were brutal - with millions who would not move abandoned to the cold and with the entire species relocated to an ever-narrowing temperate zone on Hiverion's equator. It was at this time that the Voor learned at once the importance of conserving their environment, with new techniques for permaculture and soil replenishment , and of altering their bodies - with crude implants and body modifications - to better survive the frozen wastes while scavenging for resources. The Voor civilization advanced in leaps and bounds - leading them from the steam engine to nuclear fusion in a little more than a century. However what the Voor gained in technology they lost in civilization and empathy - with a century of living cramped, cold and hungry under strict rationing and authoritarian rule turning the Voor into uncaring survivalists.
However, with he advent of nuclear fusion and advanced composites the Voor were no longer confined to their freezing ice-world and could use the resources of their entire system to halt the slow death of their world. With resources from the mines of Vi Tillik, the Voor erected a ring of giant solar collectors around Hiverion, shining light upon the equator. Fusion forges were used to melt back the glaciers and to re-establish outposts over long-frozen cities. Consumer goods were abundant once more. The Voor had won the long attrition war with their planet, but they were not the same people they had been a century and a half before.
With their homeworld safe for now, the Voor turned their gaze to space. The theoretical underpinnings of the hyperlane network had been discovered for nearly a century, when astronomers had identified areas of "weak gravity" on the outskirts of their system. With the time and resources for exploration the Voor now spread across the Perseus Arm with a mandate for exploration and finding new worlds for their long suffering people to inhabit. One of the first discoveries were the Tiyanki, massive space-dwelling organisms that bridged the gabs between stars, in search of nourishment and mates. The Tiyanki are to this day a rare soft spot for the Voor, proof that organisms could live, survive, thrive in hostile conditions, conditions not even the Voor scientists thought possible. The galactic neighborhood around the Voor was decidedly sparse so the Technocracy was quick to spread out undeterred.
First Contact and Expansion
Although they had previously discovered artifacts of past civilizations, tomb worlds and the massive L-Gate, the Voor first made contact with another intelligent civilization when they discovered the sedentary Glebsig, a strange, gelatinous race that had evolved from the bottom grazers of sprawling Alpine Lakes into a religious caste based society. The Technocracy decided pretty quickly that the Glebsig presented an intriguing opportunity, that of an entire world's worth of industrial development and of exciting new forms of technology to be reverse engineered. Invasion was an almost foregone conclusion. Still in the infancy of their space faring, having just discovered the Hyperlane network, the Glebsig were easy pickings for the Voor. The Voor of course did not see their conquest as a matter of dominance, just as one of integration, with the Glebsig offered terms of surrender and integration as long as they accepted the supremacy of science and submitted to the Voor. What followed were twenty painful years on the Glebsig homeworld of Ladnah. Voor re-education techniques were ruthless and invasive, designed for quickly and forcefully re-integrating convicts as productive members of society on a world headed for an icy apocalypse not for persuading an alien race of the folly of their religious ways. Many millions of Glebsig perished in re-education camps, many millions more were broken beyond recovery before the Voor established full dominion over the world.
After establishing dominion over the Glebsig sector the Voor discovered a primitive, stone age civilization of rat-analogues (unimaginatively dubbed "rats" by their discoverer) living among the ruins of a tomb world. The technocracy, recognizing the value of such a hardy race set upon the business of elevating the natives to some degree of sapience, enough for menial labor at least. It was around this time that two new discoveries happened almost simultaneously - the discovery of the Lokken Mechanists further up the Perseus arm and the discovery of the "Eliminators" as the Voor refer to them, the rogue machine intelligence that calls itself XT-489.
Due to the similarity of the mindset of the Lokks and their compatibility of approaches to seeing the world the Voor were overjoyed at their interaction with the reptilian robot masters so a series of diplomatic proposals were put forth for bringing the Lok closer to the Voor and eventually integrating the two civilizations, under one common technocratic, science and evidence driven regime. The Lokks, bafflingly delayed any answer, engaging the Voor in pointless debate over "identity", "individual freedom", "politics" and other antiquated concepts that the Voor had parted with for centuries. The Voor redoubled their efforts, especially as they were in need of allies due to the events on the other flank but the Lok staunchly debated their way around any commitment, while fortifying their borders. Soon after, in perhaps the biggest cultural skock in Voor history the Lokken Mechanists chose to ally themselves with a superstition-driven civilization of oceanic mammals, submitting themselves to their co-rule instead of allying themselves with the Voor. A third empire joined their alliance, the United Nations of Earth, perched right in the Voor's flank, giving the Lok enough leverage to resist any military attempts by the Voor. The Voor, however had bigger problems.
Since their discovery a few decades before the Eliminators had been a subject of bafflement for the Voor, a machine intelligence race that hated life with no logical reasoning. The Voor had tried to send probes and reason with the XT-489 intelligence but to no avail. Academic theories and field studies of the rogue robots had to be abandoned when the XT-489 sent a massive armada to Voor space and began bombarding the Rats that the Voor had been breeding into sapience. Even a hardy race who had survived on a tomb world could not withstand orbital nuclear annihilation and the Voor found themselves at war with a genocidal machine race. The Voor were however adept at battle themselves so the war started to grind to a bitter stalemate quite quickly. The Technocracy pushed back, driving the Eliminators out of Voor space, while trying to court the Lok for their almost preternatural knowledge of machines. And when the Lokks decided to throw their lot with the Humans and Scyldari it became clear to the Voor that they were alone. Any war with the Eliminators would have to be fought by them and them alone.
Recent Developments
There is Only War
The upper Perseus slice of the Voor Technocracy space is a band of five hundred light years of ravaged worlds and ruined facilities. This is where the war between the Voor and the Eliminators is still fought on a daily basis, with the Voor making little if any headway. Countless resources have been spent on this war against the genocidal machines and the Voor are looking for a silver bullet solution to drive them back, a solution that doesn't seem to be manifesting.
L-Gate
Deep within Voor space, an otherwise unremarkable system has at its fringes a massive precursor gateway, dubbed the L-gate, a gate that seems to point and connect to somewhere outside the galaxy. is it a gateway to another galaxy? A portal to another dimension? Nobody knows as the mystery of the L-gates is one that not even the Curator Order has cracked, though they are uncharacteristically wary to discuss it, even in exchange for payment. The Voor scientists have made headway into the L-Gate phenomenon, gathering several so-called "L-gate insights". Whether or not the gate will ever be opened, however, is anybody's guess.
Machine Interface
A decade or so ago, the Voor Technocracy scientists discovered an ancient, dormant cruiser in orbit around a Gas Giant, a remnant from some long dead precursor race. The scientist that made the discovery, a Voor so heavily modified that he is barely biological anymore attempted and succeeded to activate the Cruiser, recovering it from its errant orbit and claiming it for the Technocracy. Now that same scientist wants to interface with the ship directly, commanding it through mental commands rather than through a crew. If he is allowed to do it he hopes to achieve a stable enough interface protocol that will allow the Voor to have single individuals in command of capital ships, a technology that can afterwards be ported to Voor ships. However, the wisdom of giving a capital ship's worth of firepower to a single, already unstable individual is up for debate.
Voor Technocracy - Civilization In Brief
| Homeworld | Hiverion, Exedor |
| Government | Technocratic Dictatorship |
| Ethics | Fanatic Materialist, Authoritarian |
| Biotype | Monotreme Biped |
| Variance | Base + 5 Subspecies or more |
| Ascension | Technological |
| No. of Planets | 28 |
| No. of Systems | 115 |
| No. of Advanced Facilities | 20 |
| Population | 294.000.000.000 |
| Alien Status | Tolerated |
| Synthetic Status | Servitude |
| Borders | Closed |
| Alliance | None |
Pre Space-flight History
The History of the Voor is one of despair and survival, of a people who united and sacrificed everything in the face of complete annihilation. Evolving on a homeworld with a very long glaciation cycle the Voor discovered that their world was cooling fast when they had just entered their industrial age. With the ice caps advancing year on year the Voor nations had to unite into an emergency government, putting their brightest minds in charge of their continued survival. The decisions that had to be made in those years were brutal - with millions who would not move abandoned to the cold and with the entire species relocated to an ever-narrowing temperate zone on Hiverion's equator. It was at this time that the Voor learned at once the importance of conserving their environment, with new techniques for permaculture and soil replenishment , and of altering their bodies - with crude implants and body modifications - to better survive the frozen wastes while scavenging for resources. The Voor civilization advanced in leaps and bounds - leading them from the steam engine to nuclear fusion in a little more than a century. However what the Voor gained in technology they lost in civilization and empathy - with a century of living cramped, cold and hungry under strict rationing and authoritarian rule turning the Voor into uncaring survivalists.
However, with he advent of nuclear fusion and advanced composites the Voor were no longer confined to their freezing ice-world and could use the resources of their entire system to halt the slow death of their world. With resources from the mines of Vi Tillik, the Voor erected a ring of giant solar collectors around Hiverion, shining light upon the equator. Fusion forges were used to melt back the glaciers and to re-establish outposts over long-frozen cities. Consumer goods were abundant once more. The Voor had won the long attrition war with their planet, but they were not the same people they had been a century and a half before.
With their homeworld safe for now, the Voor turned their gaze to space. The theoretical underpinnings of the hyperlane network had been discovered for nearly a century, when astronomers had identified areas of "weak gravity" on the outskirts of their system. With the time and resources for exploration the Voor now spread across the Perseus Arm with a mandate for exploration and finding new worlds for their long suffering people to inhabit. One of the first discoveries were the Tiyanki, massive space-dwelling organisms that bridged the gabs between stars, in search of nourishment and mates. The Tiyanki are to this day a rare soft spot for the Voor, proof that organisms could live, survive, thrive in hostile conditions, conditions not even the Voor scientists thought possible. The galactic neighborhood around the Voor was decidedly sparse so the Technocracy was quick to spread out undeterred.
First Contact and Expansion
Although they had previously discovered artifacts of past civilizations, tomb worlds and the massive L-Gate, the Voor first made contact with another intelligent civilization when they discovered the sedentary Glebsig, a strange, gelatinous race that had evolved from the bottom grazers of sprawling Alpine Lakes into a religious caste based society. The Technocracy decided pretty quickly that the Glebsig presented an intriguing opportunity, that of an entire world's worth of industrial development and of exciting new forms of technology to be reverse engineered. Invasion was an almost foregone conclusion. Still in the infancy of their space faring, having just discovered the Hyperlane network, the Glebsig were easy pickings for the Voor. The Voor of course did not see their conquest as a matter of dominance, just as one of integration, with the Glebsig offered terms of surrender and integration as long as they accepted the supremacy of science and submitted to the Voor. What followed were twenty painful years on the Glebsig homeworld of Ladnah. Voor re-education techniques were ruthless and invasive, designed for quickly and forcefully re-integrating convicts as productive members of society on a world headed for an icy apocalypse not for persuading an alien race of the folly of their religious ways. Many millions of Glebsig perished in re-education camps, many millions more were broken beyond recovery before the Voor established full dominion over the world.
After establishing dominion over the Glebsig sector the Voor discovered a primitive, stone age civilization of rat-analogues (unimaginatively dubbed "rats" by their discoverer) living among the ruins of a tomb world. The technocracy, recognizing the value of such a hardy race set upon the business of elevating the natives to some degree of sapience, enough for menial labor at least. It was around this time that two new discoveries happened almost simultaneously - the discovery of the Lokken Mechanists further up the Perseus arm and the discovery of the "Eliminators" as the Voor refer to them, the rogue machine intelligence that calls itself XT-489.
Due to the similarity of the mindset of the Lokks and their compatibility of approaches to seeing the world the Voor were overjoyed at their interaction with the reptilian robot masters so a series of diplomatic proposals were put forth for bringing the Lok closer to the Voor and eventually integrating the two civilizations, under one common technocratic, science and evidence driven regime. The Lokks, bafflingly delayed any answer, engaging the Voor in pointless debate over "identity", "individual freedom", "politics" and other antiquated concepts that the Voor had parted with for centuries. The Voor redoubled their efforts, especially as they were in need of allies due to the events on the other flank but the Lok staunchly debated their way around any commitment, while fortifying their borders. Soon after, in perhaps the biggest cultural skock in Voor history the Lokken Mechanists chose to ally themselves with a superstition-driven civilization of oceanic mammals, submitting themselves to their co-rule instead of allying themselves with the Voor. A third empire joined their alliance, the United Nations of Earth, perched right in the Voor's flank, giving the Lok enough leverage to resist any military attempts by the Voor. The Voor, however had bigger problems.
Since their discovery a few decades before the Eliminators had been a subject of bafflement for the Voor, a machine intelligence race that hated life with no logical reasoning. The Voor had tried to send probes and reason with the XT-489 intelligence but to no avail. Academic theories and field studies of the rogue robots had to be abandoned when the XT-489 sent a massive armada to Voor space and began bombarding the Rats that the Voor had been breeding into sapience. Even a hardy race who had survived on a tomb world could not withstand orbital nuclear annihilation and the Voor found themselves at war with a genocidal machine race. The Voor were however adept at battle themselves so the war started to grind to a bitter stalemate quite quickly. The Technocracy pushed back, driving the Eliminators out of Voor space, while trying to court the Lok for their almost preternatural knowledge of machines. And when the Lokks decided to throw their lot with the Humans and Scyldari it became clear to the Voor that they were alone. Any war with the Eliminators would have to be fought by them and them alone.
Recent Developments
There is Only War
The upper Perseus slice of the Voor Technocracy space is a band of five hundred light years of ravaged worlds and ruined facilities. This is where the war between the Voor and the Eliminators is still fought on a daily basis, with the Voor making little if any headway. Countless resources have been spent on this war against the genocidal machines and the Voor are looking for a silver bullet solution to drive them back, a solution that doesn't seem to be manifesting.
L-Gate
Deep within Voor space, an otherwise unremarkable system has at its fringes a massive precursor gateway, dubbed the L-gate, a gate that seems to point and connect to somewhere outside the galaxy. is it a gateway to another galaxy? A portal to another dimension? Nobody knows as the mystery of the L-gates is one that not even the Curator Order has cracked, though they are uncharacteristically wary to discuss it, even in exchange for payment. The Voor scientists have made headway into the L-Gate phenomenon, gathering several so-called "L-gate insights". Whether or not the gate will ever be opened, however, is anybody's guess.
Machine Interface
A decade or so ago, the Voor Technocracy scientists discovered an ancient, dormant cruiser in orbit around a Gas Giant, a remnant from some long dead precursor race. The scientist that made the discovery, a Voor so heavily modified that he is barely biological anymore attempted and succeeded to activate the Cruiser, recovering it from its errant orbit and claiming it for the Technocracy. Now that same scientist wants to interface with the ship directly, commanding it through mental commands rather than through a crew. If he is allowed to do it he hopes to achieve a stable enough interface protocol that will allow the Voor to have single individuals in command of capital ships, a technology that can afterwards be ported to Voor ships. However, the wisdom of giving a capital ship's worth of firepower to a single, already unstable individual is up for debate.
Type
Geopolitical, Technocracy
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