Sands of Karkan

## Karkan

**Sands of Karkan** is set on The Desert planet of Karkan.One of the first places to be targeted by UNITY for colonisation. It is home to a civilisation known as the Karkan Trade Baronies and the Kalaidan Terminus Colony.

## Premise

**Sands of Karkan** is set on The Desert planet of Karkan in the year SS-950, years after the emergence of the people of Sans Sundor from their subterranean home. The campaign follows a team of 5 Lancers who arrive on the planet for a recon mission to gather intel on the loss of comms between UNITY and Warden Maxwell.

## Background Lore

In the closing days of the second millennium, the secrets held within the city of sans Sundor, for the first time ever, saw the light. The corporations that ruled in the city now had a whole world to play with . And play they did. The existing tribal kingdoms that once dominated the planets surface were soon left with a desperate situation. Either assimilate into the newly forming corpro-states or perish. Some chose to join while others were reduced from mighty empires to impoverished diaspora, wandering the wastelands between the corporate governance zones.
As the corpro-states grew larger over the decades so did their need to power their high tech societies. When the energy demands could no longer be met, advancements into Ley fusion technology provided and answer. By supercharging the rare quantum element Leynium found where ancient ley lines once crossed the landscape, huge volumes of power could be generated. This worked for a while but soon enough, the Ley mines began to run dry. The Corpro-states began to turn on one another in a resource war for the last of the Leynium, what had once been an era of peace turned into a century of bloodshed. It was out of these corpo wars that mobile combat chassis were first developed, With advanced 3D printing technology they developed Leynium powered war machines that devastated traditional combined arms warfare in the field, the very best of these being the mechanized cavalry; Lancers.
The brutal war lasted a long time and ended with no clear victor. This is when the damaged states did something wholly unexpected. A peace deal was signed, a merger of sorts. The corporations would unite under one banner in a last ditch attempt at survival. The conciliation of unity was born. A council with representatives from each corporation. While the corporations maintained their sovereignty they would agree to operate in a democratised federation with one new purpose. Interstellar colonisation.

The first astral body targeted for colonisation was also the closest, the arid desert moon of Karkan. After scans revealed trace elements of Leynium located under the moons surface, a mission was launched. Preliminary scouting groups were shocked to find that Karkan itself was not as devoid of life as once believed. In fact these early explorers would soon make contact with a civilisation that had existed on the moon for thousands of years. The Karkan Trade Baronies as they would come to be known were a collection of peoples who were descended from an ancient space exploration effort by a precursor society from Kalaidus. Their oral tradition told of a Mind-flayer apocalypse which cut them off from their mother planet, an event referred to as the darkness.

The Baronies, realising the demand for their Leynium refused to hand over control of their territory to Unity. Instead offering to sell it to them at an insulting mark-up. A short war was ensued where Unity where victorious but only by small margin thanks to the superiority of the Mechanized Cavalry Lancer Units. Unity was allowed to claim a small section of the planet where high amounts of Leynium was detected, while the trade Baronies could continue to have autonomy in their own internal affairs.

# Technological advancements of the 10th century

A Warden was selected from the Unity elites as the custodian of this new colony. And arrangements were made to begin the work that would secure the future of Kalaidus. Unity maintained an uneasy peace with the Trade Baronies from then on, and much knowledge was shared between the two. While Unities Mech designs were gifted to the Noble houses of the Baronies, new methods of improving the already advanced AI systems were taught to the Kalaidans. Shackling, a practice whereby sentient intelligences from another dimension are captured and tuned to operate within the AI system improved operational efficiencies by orders of magnitude. These Non-Physical People would become the labour force upon which space faring society would be built, controlling everything from space freighter auto pilot systems to medical surgery drones and even in some cases autonomous Mech pilots. Some decried it as a new form of slavery while most simply looked the other way, knowing full well the benefits it bought to civilisation.

Unity experiments with the NPP’s and their multidimensional nature would at some point lead to the emergence of paracausal technology. Paracausal technology can best be described as technology so advanced that to the untrained eye it is indistinguishable from magic. Paracausality is difficult if near impossible to truly control. Officially, paracausal studies are only a field of study within the walls of certain high-tier USB campuses; however, in practice, certain corpro-states - Colter Carbon and Kiburi in particular - are making inroads into this field without Unities approval.

Paracausal encounters, weapons, and technologies - other than the omninet and blinkspace travel - are rare. Only the wealthiest, most advanced, or most prestigious have access to paracausal equipment. Most people have probably never encoutnered a paracausal phenomenon, though they may have heard rumours.

A new decentralized layer of the net was created using paracausal tech to facilitate FTL internet communications between worlds, the omni-net would allow instant access to the galactic public forum, although it can only be accessed through specialised terminals.

These new developments would not be all good however. Black market Mech printing files would begin to crop up. Beginning as what seemed like corruptions in the MP code in backstreet print shops, strange chassis wielding experimental weapon systems began to be produced. Whatever entity was supplying these strange frames would become know as Kiburi. Kiburi is unlike any other galactic supplier. Neither a state nor a corporation, Kiburi is best described as a decentralized agglomeration of omninet personalities, memes, codices, cell, and entities working as a horizontally-organized publisher of schematics and software. When attempting to discuss Kiburi’s motivations or institutional ideology, it is safest only to assume that Kiburi has little motivating ideology other than an insistence on open access to the omninet.

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These technological marvels would serve to usher in a new age of post-scarcity. In some places this would create utopia, but others who found themselves at odds with the ever encroaching forces of Unity find themselves suffocating under the influences of these unrestrained corporations.

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### Month Names

1. Jeston - The Month of Lambs
2. Falmal - The Month of Seeds
3. Morenghar - The Month of Embers
4. Aresphrin - The Month of Flames
5. Mahmed - The Month of Harvests
6. Jal - The Month of Droughts
7. Jarpos - The Month of Storms
8. Arilin - The Month of Ice
9. Sargrom - The Month of Fate
10. Orysla - The Month of Dreams

* In SS-500 UNITY signed in the Kalaidus time keeping standard dropping the months of Dreams, Tears and the Dawn from the calendar, with the goal of helping the integration and assimilation of the bronze age tribal diaspora into society and easing global trade. In fact the act only helped to further marginalise these groups who refused to part with three months of time leading to even more confusion than there already was.

## Factions

* KTB - Karkan Trade Baronies
* HCPA - Hope Colony Port Authority
* KLF - Karkan Liberation Front
* Magenta Syndicate
* NPPAPT - NPP's Are People Too! (NPP Rights activists)
* Wrought Iron

Corporations

* Kiburi
* Colter Carbon
* IGS - InterGalactic Shipping
* FSBS - Fallen Star Building Society

Notable people

* Warden Maxwell
* Mayor Billis
* Rouge Magenta
* Taelor Soren
* Camryn of Cloth
* The\_Sands\_In\_Line\_With\_The\_Moon
* Lizana
* Niko Janis
* Raze
* Officer Milton
* Amrid Kashar

Trivia* This campaign has not been played yet.
* The first Kalaidus campaign to Use Lancer