Colony Ship Osman

**Art inspiration:** The Osmani are cyborgs. Their cybernetics might look more like jewellery, or sculpture - beautiful and elegant. If we can get some Ottoman Empire influences in there too, beautiful. Circuits as calligraphy, maybe.

Hundreds of colony ships fled the dying Earth. Of that vast exodus, most failed to find an inhabitable world to settle, or else were unable to survive on their new home. The great powers of the Mandate - the Romanovs, Arkwrights, Europans and Black Eagles - managed to prosper and even settle other systems after the discovery of jump gate technology, but those four were very much the exception. Most colony ships failed.

The Osmani civilisation arose out of such a failure. Their vessel crash-landed on a hostile world, a cold desert that resembled Mars. To survive, they merged with their servant machines. They went far beyond the previous limits of cybernetics, fusing human and machine to endure the rigours of their new world. On Earth - and even today, in the Mandate - cybernetics are mainly used as part of medical treatment, replacing maimed limbs or failing organs with artificial substitutes. Mere replacement was not enough for the Osmani - they had to augment and adapt themselves, becoming something other than human.

Centuries later, after Mandate explorers discovered the Osmani worlds, the Osmani Sultanate was integrated into the Mandate. Unlike most of the other rediscovered colonies that had joined the Mandate after its founding, the Osmani had a thriving civilisation with a strong technological and industrial base. They were the equal of any of the great powers. Indeed, the combination of their ability to settle on worlds considered uninhabitable by 'normal' humans together with the vast number of star systems now accessible to them through the Gate network meant the Osmani had the potential to eclipse the other human civilisations and become the dominant force in the Mandate.

The other powers responded to this threat by blocking the Osmani at every turn. To this day, there are no Osmani captains in the Grand Fleet or Osmani officials in the Mandate bureaucracy. Osmani corporations face punishing trade tariffs and sanctions; Osmani civilians are treated as second-class citizens. The Osmani are too dangerous to be allowed remain independent of the Mandate, but that doesn't mean they are welcome. The Osmani Sultana may smile at her 'beloved cousin', the Empress of the Mandate, but that smile is a precisely engineered, mathematically perfect mask to conceal her true feelings.

Denied access to the heart of the Mandate, the Osmani turned to the fringes. Pirate ships carry advanced Osmani weaponry, and smugglers use Osmani-built Gates. The Osmani could even be blamed for the whole rebellion - if the cyborgs had not threatened the other powers of the Mandate, there would have been no need for a second hasty wave of new colonies, and hence there would be no fringe worlds to rebel against the Mandate. Indeed, the rebel ships often use Osmani weapons, too.

The Osmani survive by adapting with the cold efficiency of machines. For them, the mistrust of the other powers is one more hostile environment that they must overcome.

The Osmani vessels and star bases tend towards technological designs often with a central blue sphere or ring whose purpose is unknown.

##### Character Creation

As no Osmani has been made a Captain in the Grand Fleet it is believed that the player character cannot choose an Osmani background.