Chorobid Lone System (CLS)

[Ducky]

Formal Name: Chorobid (Core-oh-bid) Lone System
Informal Names: Core Planet
Abbreviation: CLS
Population: 1,322,014,732

Technology Tags

Point Defense Doctrine
Missile Doctrine

Primitive FTL
Light Armor
Light Shields
Light Bulkheads
Primitive Heatsinks
Primitive Kinetic Defense
Primitive Energy Defense

Powerful Engines
Advanced Sensors
Advanced Point Defense
Sturdy Hull Design
Spacious Bays
Sturdy System Design
Heavy Planetary Defense
Advanced Missile Weapons
Advanced Fighter Replenishment

Species

Choroba (Core-oh-bah)

The Choroba are a humanoid race that closely resemble the humans themselves to the point they nearly mirror them. They have two arms and stand on two legs, and are on average about six feet tall. It is also a very social race with intricate psychology and cultures that vary all across the Chorobid planet. However, unlike the human homeworld Earth, there were never very many major threats to their health even in their early development, and so most of their culture revolves around discovering nature as most of it isn't understood on the planet, with about half of the known surface going completely uncharted, and the sea, which covers a majority of the planet, has rarely been explored. Chorobid is the homeworld of the race and they are the dominant species there, where most creatures provide food for them. Although the Choroba are typically omnivorous, cannibalism is accepted when consensual.

The only striking differences are the Choroba's shorter lifespans and how they go about ending their lives. Though they die about twenty years (as humans measure it, Choroba do the same) earlier than a human at the age of sixty, their aging process is much slower, and after the age of twenty five they do not undergo much visible aging process up until the age of fifty. After the age of fifty five, however, Choroba are required to retire from any careers they have should they still be involved in some line of work. This is because a three to five year process starts sometime after this age where a Choroba's life is expected to cease on the drop of a dime. In this process, Choroba will lose all of their hair, their eyes, nose, and mouth will seal themselves shut, and the skin of their digits will grow to create a webbed appearance, eventually ending in the bones merging into each other after the ability to pose fingers and toes is completely lost halfway through this long and grueling process.

After the first half of the Choroba's waning phase ends, they will one day awaken from slumber to find that they have had their limbs disabled and from there they will join with the rest of the body- the arms with the sides of their torso, the hands with the hips, the legs and feet with each other. Oftentimes it leaves them a perfectly symmetrical vegetable. Through this they retain the ability to carry expressions on their faces and speak, often reflecting great pain, but at the end of the second half they will suddenly cease all semblance motion and this will mark their death. Even if they were not a victim of age, they will not rot, instead, their bodies will turn to stone after becoming very red in appearance and hot enough to the touch that they would cause third degree burns on contact.

Choroba civilization is at war with itself. They have divided themselves into nations and built defenses from each other as well as from possible enemies in space that may arise because they have not united against them. It is rare for worldwide peace to last longer than five years, as some civil conflict is always prevalent, and it almost always sparks a greater one involving more than just a few nations. Wars often spark over the development of superweapons. Some are mass-produced with the intention of giving the nation's deployments an overall edge in fighting wars, others are grandeur superstructures purposed solely for mass destruction after a lengthy construction in secret.

Mopytacer (Mo-pi-tak-her)

The origin of the Mopytacer is not known to Choroba. All that is known is that they have the ability to shapeshift to mimic the appearances of the Choroba and that they are originally humanoids with grayish blue skin and no distinctive facial features. Their skills often deal in the dexterous rather than the brutish, but some have been known to be strong. Some of the Choroba societies disallow Mopytacer to be within their borders, others hospitalize them. Certain nations which are surrounded by nations that shun them usually require them to not reveal their true race, which can lead to espionage and undercover witch hunting. Sometimes wars spark over the Mopytacer as some nations have an extravagant priority placed upon eradicating them from Chorobid or protecting them, but it is usually the former.

They are born looking like any regular Choroba, which looks like any old human, but at some point in their life they will stand in front of the mirror in their bathroom and realize their face has become virtually featureless, a blank canvas to be added onto with the power of will. To some this happens at a younger age, to others they may never realize it. An untrained Mopytacer will take a little longer to pick up on how to do all of these things, but it has been observed in the past that a seemingly very normal subject was changing between hair colors and length, skin colors and facial structure, eye color and iris size, even body composition without becoming stronger or weaker, in a matter of seconds before each one. Their disguises were so convincing that certain companies exploit their abilities for profit in espionage, film, and other industries where it pays to be able to look like someone you are not.

Humans

They are an uncommon race on the Core Planet, but some exist and have integrated with Choroba society. Some cultures shun them or brand them as enemies of state, believing them to be like the Mopytacer in that they look exactly like Choroba and are thus accused of being intentional doppelgangers with hopes of infiltrating the roles of the population and taking power for themselves. They own only four nations of the substantial amount more located on the planet which are close enough to each other that territory wars are almost constant since their political views differ greatly, as do their cultures. This has halted the progress of technology, which is to this day being used for little more than creating efficient killing machines in most areas of the human world.

Homeworld Name: Chorobid
Homeworld Location: 15I
Homeworld Description: Chorobid is very comparable to the human homeworld of the nineteenth century and it has been this way ever since anyone can remember. One very noticeable, differing factor is the wars that maim its lushest forests and meadows, transforming them over the course of long, bloody conflicts that stretch for many years into blackened barrows for the young and patriotic. Despite all that strife, many of the territories on Chorobid remain unpopulated. The smell of death has grown into the grassroots and the fossils of Choroba fighters and innocents who died of complications at war have literally been crushed down to pave neutral roads between civilized states.

There is a north pole and a south pole and an arctic circle surrounding the both of them. There are jungles, deserts, grasslands, swamps, tundras, and many other features arranged on the planet's surface which is mostly dominated by water and its implicit, unexplored trenches far under the ocean. Wildlife runs rampant and greatly outnumbers the weaker Chorobid and humankind which have been long considered to be a dying race, even if their populations are slowly rising and a negative trend has never existed except for when the explanation was isolation or population control- in most cases, legalized genocide in certain societies experiencing a grand and moving factor of people bloom.

On the planet, there are 84 different countries. Less than ten are considered as currently developing but not all of them are free of poverty. It is so that certain nations have such quality of life that helps them completely escape the clutches of poverty, but in others more than half of the population lives in fear of the government and has no tools with which to make themselves known, dangerous minds carefully separated into other portions of the dystopian state. Some are rather large but others are small, simple territories, while some have smaller populations and others are bursting and unable to house their many people.

Political System: Varying from nation to nation, neither the territories of Chorobid nor the humans are dictated by the voice of any single government or nation. Some are fascist, some are democratic republics, some are anarchistic, and others are totalitarian. They are, some argue, united by a fragile alliance which is known as the Chorobid Lone System (abbreviated as CLS). The alliance does not have any actual control over the progression of politics but its logos are sometimes spotted on older facilities which have been abandoned in territories now manned by nature. The few satellites orbiting the planet are controlled by individual nations and in some cases their allies and the same goes for the world's limited spacecraft- it is all treated as parts of each nation's arsenal.

Space travel is not prioritized by any government on the planet and it is prohibited for private groups to enter space by most nations. While it is rare for Chorobid's populace to be xenophobic, the most of the world did not actually accept humans with open arms and some still do not recognize them as legal inhabitants of their nations let alone the entire planet, while others did them every favor they could, seeing them as a species to be pitied, ever since they huddled onto the planet after their space colony ran out of resources so long ago and drifted by so haplessly to crash land deep under the ocean.

Philip Glass - Pruit Igoe

History: Choroba know Chorobid for no more than its use by the nations that fight over it as a staging grounds for their armies. It is unknown to most how long this planet has been drifting around while its inhabitants slaughtered each other over strips of land. Humans and most other races of intelligent life have never even heard of it, as when it has received the rare distress signal from open space, nations continued to fight, but those still standing at the defense as militia in the homefront became wary of the reports that the government made about aliens attempting to contact their homeworld. Most never had any of it, as there was no solid proof that they would ever meet them.

Almost two decades from present time, however, an asteroid slipped through the planet's defenses. It was not very large and its path was calculated a few months in advance; the rock would land safely in the ocean. A stubborn satellite fired one of its missiles at it to no avail, which sped it up beyond the terminal velocity for a safe sea surface break. Instead of reporting that, they rang ground control and informed them that it was no ordinary asteroid since it passed very close by and the detail of its hull as a colonization ship became very clear to those on the observation deck of the satellite. Panic ensued as the world's news erupted with the speculations of an alien takeover of Choroba. Few saw the majority of the ship burning up in the atmosphere as it dove with the deep sea as a natural stopping point.

As a result, a powerful wave struck an archipelago nation and obliterated half of its coastline defenses, sending them into turmoil and anarchy. Relief forces docked a week later from their coalition of allies, but when they noticed the situation was dire and the nation's people were not accepting of help- more liable to attack the soldiers on the boats for food- they left, counting their losses as minimal. A message of peace was sent to the governmental leader but no response was given and it was assumed that in the chaos, he either fled or was killed by any number of people from his personal guard to a bottom-feeding looter.

Politics quickly shifted from the glory of war and the tsunami disaster to the crashed ship in the ocean, however. A sizeable chunk of the most powerful nations' resources were devoted to defending their relevant coastlines. When a week passed, nothing came out from the bottom of the ocean. Becoming impatient, the nations founded a temporary peace treaty that would last one week and two days with no possibility for extension in case of complications, and formed a fleet with their best deep sea travel technology, mostly unused for years, to penetrate the abyss and search for the supposed invaders.

A day of careful descent to the deepest recesses of the ocean led them to find no sign of their target, and five more days of submarines drawing powerful searchlights over the seabed yielded no results. On the sixth day of searching they were about to pack up and leave when suddenly there was a critical failure in one of the nation's submarines; its systems went offline and it sunk into a colossal trench, its moss-green and gold color scheme fading into the deep sea darkness. A sudden explosion clouded the path of its pursuer only slightly. A submarine of another nation rushed down into the trench in an effort to make a rescue attempt, speeding after it and eventually losing it in the dark of the abyssal zone, but continuing on the same path they eventually found it crashed next to a greatly advanced, metallic body.

It resembled very closely the photograph they were given of the colonization ship that pierced the planet's atmosphere. They immediately called for their own nation's backup and that portion of the fleet began to work together to find a docking space. They managed to locate one and bruteforced their way into the airlocks, contacting whoever was on the other side from there. Five minutes of patiently waiting for a response rewarded them, in exchange for all of that wasted air, with a response from the other side. Miraculously, they could understand the language of the people on the other side well enough to get them to open the airlock.

They were shocked at what they saw. At first they believed that their own kind, that other Choroba were standing there, guns in hand, watching the door with tense looks on their faces. They stood at the same height, wore similar clothing, even their weapons appeared to be of comparable make. However, the way the ship was constructed, both interior and exterior, was a completely alien concept to them. These people had been waiting for days with flickering lights and a partially slanted floor, with water steadily leaking in at a thankfully very slow rate from the lower decks which were too dangerous to be entered. It was the Choroba who stepped closer first in curiosity, removing their masks when they realized there was still a survivable oxygen supply inside of the ship.

After a short enough exchange, they all made for the exit. Their apparent leader, who was allowed to embark on one of the submarines, claimed that they believed themselves to be the last of their kind in the entire universe as their many distress calls for help were never heard after alien pirates destroyed their escape pod power circuits as well as their weapon systems. Their main power also had run out when they spent an extensive period of time trying to navigate through a void, and they were on their last legs in regards to backup power which was being drained quickly due to many severed circuits inside the ship.

A total of approximately three hundred forty thousand humans managed to escape from the ship, which was left empty after the Choroba helped them break into the escape pod bay and restore the power. As the pods were fittingly advanced, they managed to use reserve fuel to follow the submarines' lead, their light gray exteriors and blue insignias hard to miss when flashing searchlights over them. As they began to depart, cheering erupted over the local radio frequency. A solid five minutes of singing amongst the crew was cut short as an explosion was heard not long after they exited the trench. From inside the cloud of white water, another submarine began to sink into the trench. When the spray and shrapnel cleared, they saw a wall of torpedoes entering visual range.

The submarines' interior lights blinked red as they took evasive maneuvers. Not all of the ships made it away from the bombardment. Those that survived still had to deal with a radar clouded with spoofs, showing blips scattered everywhere with no pattern. Their communications, too, was jammed completely, and they could not fire any weapons nor deploy countermeasures despite the fact that there was a constant incoming ordnance warning; three separate alarms blared in alternating cacophony, one of infrared-guided lock-on, another of radar-guided lock-on, the last of dumbfire shells closing in. Powerless, a hefty portion of the would-be rescuing fleet was downed very quickly. With every sub sank, a significant value of hope was lost with it.

Then the communications crackled on. Their enemy- the ones in the moss-green and gold subs, still beyond visual range- began to accuse them of sinking their sub that fell into the trench initially, alerting them that if they ran, they would die, if they fought, they would die, and if they surrendered, they would die. Nevertheless, they directed their navigation away, trying to count their losses. This was the second time that their intentions were read incorrectly and they had to pay for it in full. Torpedo after torpedo zoomed by the subs, some smaller missiles whipping in a different direction into open waters after a near miss due to their guidance failing to beat the helmsmen's evasive maneuvers.

Forced to listen to a demoralizing speech that almost sounded like as if it were prepared for this very moment, like all of this was a plan that they had played into, some of the crew abandoned their stations and panicked, further inhibiting the safe return of the vessels. Reinforcements were hundreds if not thousands of miles away and would never have known that these men died today until a mission was conducted to search out the resting place of the submarines at the seabed, which was in enemy territory.

Having finally broken away from the battle zone, the limited force of submarines began to ascend when their radar came back. They deployed the last of their spoofed signature beacons to make it seem as if, at least from radar readings, there were more of them that had survived and with reinforcements to back them up. With no time to judge whether or not the enemy was still pursuing, they broke surface to find enemy aircraft of all manners passing by in large formations at the heading associated with the path they needed to take to return to their nation.

Now only they would know their side of the story. They began a headcount and found that forty percent of the submarines were still with them, but luckily they had taken the brunt of the attacks for the escape pods filled with the helpless, stranded humans. Two hundred and eighty thousand of them had survived in the escape pods. Among the dead was the leader who was on the first submarine to be destroyed. A friendly airborne early warning and control unit hailed them over the radio not long after they accounted for the last of the attack's survivors and claimed that war was just declared. All they had to say was that they already knew.

Sixteen years later is the present. The war is long over, but the tension remains, painting a grueling picture. The humans have expanded their numbers to about twelve million bodies and have in the meantime occupied territories on the planet. A war stretching four years between two of the human nations now blurs the borders of two human nations caught in the middle of a dispute regarding governmental views and territory. There are three generations of them now: those who were born before the ship took flight from Earth, those who were born on the ship during its brief flight, and most of all, those who were born on Chorobid. All of them owe their lives to their saviors who not only delivered them from doom, but honorably accepted an order of exile from their homelands for having started a war in doing so.