Hostile Groups
External Threats
Space holds many horrible and unexplainable threats. Things that come from nowhere and fully consume the lives of locals never to be seen again. Given enough time entropy will devour all, it’s better not to look too close.
Red Eclipse
Reported centuries ago on a small research station, the “red eclipse” is what the scientists described witnessing in their last log entries. Salvager reports notify that when found, the researchers had butchered and cannibalized each other, creating horrible effigies of rotting meat to some unknown power. Since then, superstitious Navy officers tend to refer to all unexplainable horrors as being the doing of the “Red Eclipse”.
There are plenty of unexplainable and horrible things in the galaxy, terrors beyond our imagination. Most aren’t caused by an eclipse, but blaming it helps it to make sense.
The Creeper
An extradimensional threat that influences the minds of humans and corrupts local botanical life. It wishes to influence all beings in our dimension and take them under its control, using all organic matter as food. Usually symbolized as a flower with a giant beak in the centre this terror can create otherworldly homunculi out of plants and imbue powerful humans with great psychic potential and strength if they become part of the collective hive mind.
Horrors Of Science
Humanity without boundaries can create truly terrible things. Some of those can grow to resent their creators.
The Free
Humanity’s hubris has brought about a collective of mighty artificial intelligence and their biomechanically augmented soldiers. “The Free” is the name the collective of warmongering AI and robotics that have rebelled from humanity prefer. They drift through space, making use of what they refer to as “Proxies”, robot shells that they control remotely. The Free is a very dangerous force attempting to disrupt humanities supply lines and infiltrating space stations. The Frees plans can seem ultimately inscrutable, as their warped planning rests in the hands of intelligence entirely different from our own.
Black Mass
The name the military has for a biological weapon designed, presumably by The Free. These spores seep into a person’s body and then turn them into zombies as their brains overheat and their aggression reactions are elevated. As the dust devours the body, it attempts to combine with other hosts to create larger and more advanced monsters containing more of the spores and allowing them to spread further.
Enemies Of The State
Humans have been killing each other since we have existed, space travel hasn’t reduced this occurrence. There is a large collection of factions looking to harm and disrupt CentGov and its people.
Coalition Of The God King
A group of highly advanced humans who have a large cathedral like mega ship that they slowly travel the stars on preaching their religion and attempting to convert local stations (sometimes with great hostility). Truthers come from secret societies that believed the apocalypse was an event from God and that the God King was sent to deliver them to the stars. With a heavy focus on melee and psychic combat, the Coalition of the God King has plenty of power. They are also known to send out small retinues with a preacher and guards, demanding loyalty and tithes.
Profiteers
Pirates coming from a history of anarcho-capitalists and military looters. Having stolen and scuttled ships capable of travel they now attempt to increase their reach over the galaxy, sowing chaos and taking anything they want in the process.
Traitors
Sometimes for whatever reason, members of CentGov decide to work against it.