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Well, I might guess that their similarities to Jindarian ships might have some impact, but as was established with the (conjectural) WYN/Jindarian Light Cruiser, non-Jindarians operating Jindarian type ships don't have the advantages of special Hidden deployment (R16.1C1, in my `94 edition of Jindarian rules) or Asteroid Disengagement (R16.1D in the same source).

On the other hand, if the Shipyard commander hasn't engaged his/her/its Warp Engines, they'll still have the advantages of standard rules (D20.0) Hidden Deployment, which means they won't be detected as anything other than asteroids until and unless an enemy ship gets within three hexes.

How to convert that into F&E is beyond me

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Wednesday, July 03, 2019 - 07:49 pm: Edit

I think we don't need to until such time as Magellanic stuff is upcoming for F&E.

I doubt that day will ever come.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Thursday, July 04, 2019 - 10:05 pm: Edit

The Magellanic F&E rules are there (strategic map, special rules to handle the LMC, consturction costs and production, and several scenarios), they just haven't been published officially....

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Thursday, July 04, 2019 - 11:02 pm: Edit

I've seen an F&E map for it a long time ago, didn't know any rules existed.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - 12:31 am: Edit

Nick can you provide the link to find that.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - 09:39 am: Edit

That was almost 20 years ago; long gone now.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - 01:43 pm: Edit

Is there anyone who might have it, even if it is a draft.

By Charles Gray (Cgray34) on Monday, September 16, 2019 - 04:44 am: Edit

Gotta question--were there ever any conjectural size class 2 units, either official or fan, for campaigns where the Magellanics were fielding larger fleets?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, September 16, 2019 - 11:55 am: Edit

Charles Gray:

Not so far.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - 11:43 pm: Edit

I've taken a crack at a Chomak background. I've read through what other people have said about the Chomak in this topic, as well as what's in C5. I've tried to incorporate elements that I thought were interesting from other posters, and stayed strictly within the territory of what C5 defines. I think that the only way to square the circle of a 7,000 year old empire that didn't conquer everybody is to make them inscrutable with alien motives detached from material concerns, somewhat like the Vulcans, and to wrap their distant history in mystery. Feel free to shred it to pieces, I'm not precious about it.

Actual reliable Chomak records begin in Y-7240, but remain fragmentary until Y-24 where they take on a more literal and complete character. Records from the period between Y-7240 and Y-24 are rife with metaphor and koan making them somewhat difficult to interpret at times. References to events that occurred prior Y-7240 may be nothing more than the creation myth of the Chomak. The period before Y-7240 is known to the Chomak as the Golden Age, and the period between Y-7240 and Y-24 is known as the Silver Age.

According to the Chomak their civilisation began 49,000 years prior to the establishment of the Chomak Community, placing it at Y-56,240 if the story is to be taken literally (and the Chomak obsession with the number seven suggests that it should not be taken literally). Prior to the establishment of Chomak, the Chuma species (for whom the Chomak Community is named) lived as gods according to their legends. Claims about the power of the Chuma species in this period seem to be heavily exaggerated, but it is claimed that the Chuma could control time and space, travelled to every galaxy, spoke with every god, and possessed an empire that stretched its dominion across all reality, both forward and backwards through time, and across all matter, energy, and space. No Chuma Empire artifacts have ever been found outside of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and so the pre-Y-7240 period (the Golden Age) is generally taken as some form of metaphor, but it is still important to the Chomak understanding of themselves.

The Chuma, according to the Chomak, having conquered all that could be conquered and colonised all that could be colonised grew lonely in the universe, and so they sought out from amongst their subjects the six races of perfection. Each of the six races possessed a trait that made them a superlative of one sort or another along an axis that the Chuma cared about. The Kankari possessed “perfection of mind,” the El possessed “perfection of sense,” the Carnegy possessed “perfection of temperament,” the Bachallia possessed “perfection of form,” the Frazan possessed “perfection of integrity,” the Draenni possessed “perfection of will,” and the Chuma themselves possessed what they declared to be “perfection of spirit.” The Chomak community was established in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud as an Eden for the Chuma and their six "children" who were uplifted from primitive forms and granted worlds terraformed to suit their every need and desire. Although claims of a reality-spanning empire are unsupported, the Chomak of this period must have possessed a technological and industrial base that would rival the greatest of empires since. Chomak itself was constructed to orbit a star directly in the centre of the seven "rings" of the community, and is a planet-sized habitat structure and art project of such beauty and complexity that it can only be understood through analogy. It has been described as a "fractal spiral of spirit and glass," a "helix of light and awe," and a "gossamer cage of purity and brilliance." It produces its own gravity, atmosphere, and apparently energy, and is a habitat for the Chuma species, whose seven allotted planets were in this period treated as nature preserves, parks, and gardens.

Molecular genetic analysis can provide no clear-cut answer as to the origins of the six "children" of the Chomak. Either the original homeworlds of the children were located within the region of space now occupied by the Chomak Community, but have become uninhabitable and forgotten since the time of their uplifting, or they really do have unexplained extragalactic origins.

The political structure of the Chomak Community was established as seven species, each possessing seven worlds, each ruled by an elected Syphograntus, each of which sit on a council of seven Syphograntii, and who in turn elect a Traniborus, the seven of which each in turn advise a body of seven Phylarchs, composed of Chuma who manage the Chomak community. There appear to be four other levels of government as well, although they are dedicated to cultural pursuits and philosophy.

Y-7240 appears to be the pinnacle of Chuma power, and represents the start of an inward turn for the civilisation. The Chomak records from prior to Y-24 contain only a few events, and are mostly a chronicle of the development of Chomak transcendental philosophy, which appears to be their primary concern. To guard the Chomak Community the Chuma built seven guardians, seven great autonomous warships that patrolled the six hectants of space beyond the Chomak Community, and one to guard Chomak itself. For thousands of years these warships, which followed their original unchangeable programming, were the only armed vessels that the Chomak possessed. Although the Chomak Community had inherited the fruits of the once powerful and technologically sophisticated Chuma Empire, they neither understood how to build new wonders of their like, nor did they even understand fully how they operated.


Beginning sometime between the completion of Chomak in Y-7240 and the year Y-400 there were six invasions of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Nothing is recorded in Chomak history as to the nature of these invasions, nor as to their purpose or effect. What is known is that the guardians successfully defended the Chomak Community from the aggressors, and that every other star-faring civilisation that existed in each era within The Cloud was destroyed while the Chomak enjoyed splendid isolation. Chomakologists are divided as to the veracity of the claims made about these invasions. They seem plausible, and the records are from a time when Chomak history seems to be on the whole more reliable (if sparse), but the supporting evidence for such events is lacking. Whatever the case, in this period, four of the seven guardians were destroyed by hostile action against one or more foreign aggressor.

The inward turn of Chomak civilisation following the completion of Chomak in Y-7240 resulted in a complex multiethnic society built around contemplation and philosophy. Less focused on logic than their Vulcan analogues in the Milky Way, the Chomak were primarily concerned with "perfection." The Chomak notion of perfection seems to be built around their concept of "conservation" which holds repetition, emulation of past forms, and stability in high regard, and "transcendence" by which the Chomak mean a sort of self-ablative asceticism, and a placid, unperturbed acceptance of all things. This inward turn towards perfection allowed for a profound stability during the technological decline of the past seven millennia.

In Y-24 there appears to have been a dramatic shift in Chomak society. Their life-giving machines could no longer be maintained by the ignorant cargo cult of technicians that worshipped the instructions of past engineers. Serious technical problems with their infrastructure had accrued such a maintenance debt that much of it could no longer function. Chomak itself, the floating wonder created by the ancient Chuma, had been so degraded that its population capacity had shrunk from 400 billion in its peak at the start of the Silver Age to a few tens of millions, necessitating the re-colonisation of the Chuma's allotted seven worlds.

As a belated response to this gradual decay, the Chomak Community entered into its Modern Age, and with the Modern Age came politics, war, and a struggle to survive that had been unknown to the Chomak community for over seven thousand years. Although far from a representative democracy, the Syphograntii were responsive enough to public pressure for an emergent party politics to emerge in the form of two factions that competed for power. The first faction, the “Perfectionists,” sought to continue the path that the Chomak Community had followed up until this point, focusing their society towards spiritual immaterial goals of conservation and transcendence. To the Perfectionists the eventual end of the Chomak Community, and to their civilisation was to be borne with a sort of existential dignity. The Chomak had watched The Cloud go through cycles of civilisational boom and bust with empires rising and falling around them, and they had endured. To the Perfectionists the next seven thousand years should look like the previous seven thousand, and if their turn towards inwardness would eventually lead to their death, well, so too will the universe one day die, acceptance and placidity in the face of the inevitable was the only achievable answer to the problem. The Chuma Empire had once ruled all things, and had chosen to withdraw to Chomak and become mortal, so when the time comes the Perfectionists too will accept the end. The Perfectionist faction found some minority support amongst all of the children of the Chuma, but it was mainly amongst the Frazan and the Chuma themselves that this faction found its base of power, and since the Chuma held most of the seats of real authority within The Community, that was often enough to assure the ascendancy of the Perfectionists.

Opposing the Perfectionists were the “Awakeners.” The Awakeners saw the world as a dead material thing, and saw the traditional philosophy of the Chomak Community to be a wonderful guide for life, understanding one’s self, and the cultivation of the generations, but a terrible guide for public policy and geopolitics. The Awakeners sought to “awaken the sleeper” and to drive the Chomak Community to rediscover its lost technological and industrial capabilities, and to become unchallenged hegemons of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud before the younger empires grew too powerful. Where the Perfectionists were idealistic, the Awakeners were fully pragmatic. The Awakeners enjoyed slim pluralities of support amongst all of the children of the Chuma, with the notable exception of the Frazan, and virtually no support amongst the Chuma. The Draenni were the main powerbase of the Awakeners, and the leadership of the Awakeners were nearly always Draenni.

Starting in Y-24 the first government of the Chomak Community formed that followed the philosophy of the Awakeners, although the nomenclature of Awakener and Perfectionist would not become standard until decades later. It created the first ships that were intended to leave the star cluster of the Chomak Community, and struggled to fuel them. The warp technology that allowed the guardians to move at superluminal speeds exceeding that of normal strategic warp movement and seemingly never refuel had been lost forever, and the warp technology not lost to the Chomak came in two varieties. Short warp, which used fuel easily refined in most star systems, but had extremely limited range and could not be used for long-distance exploration, and long warp, which allowed the Chomak to traverse distances at warp speeds comparable to the Andromedan RTN, but which required an anti-meson fuel that was extremely difficult to synthesise for the modern Chomak. The survey of the Chomak’s neighbourhood was abandoned in Y-13 with the insolvency of the government driven by a fiscal crisis that resulted from the economic drain of producing anti-meson fuel for this short and ineffective survey mission. The following government, a Perfectionist administration, cancelled the survey project and repurposed the anti-meson fuel production facilities into art galleries and gardens.

The Perfectionist government fell out of favour in Y21, and the Awakeners once again began a survey mission of the surrounding neighbourhood. Unwilling to risk another economic crisis producing the anti-meson fuel for long warp, this mission was to be conducted with the use of short warp engines and a series of outposts constructed at key points. Fearing that the Perfectionists would dismantle the outposts, the Awakeners decentralised the project, transferring the authority to build these survey craft to the seven individual Traniboriates, and allowing them to commit as much or as little to the project as they wished. In this way the Draenni were able to build their own fleet of survey ships that could survive a change in government (although all seven species would build at least a few of their own). In Y29 the Perfectionists again took power, and found it politically impossible to cancel the project as it was now composed.

In Y36 The Eneen encountered one of the remaining three guardians, and after establishing communications with it and a nearby Draenni-crewed survey ship, the Eneen decide against expansion towards the Chomak. This contact is the first with another non-Jindarian empire and sparks a general mood of excitement amongst the Chomak community. The Awakeners are swept back to power, and the first real war fleet of the Chomak is built soon after, although logistics remain too much of a problem for near-term imperial ambitions to be realised.

Between the years Y36 and Y67 the Chomak continue to build outposts and move into open space. In Y50 one of the three guardians, set to guard a region north of the Chomak Community, suddenly and inexplicably disappears. This causes a political crisis at home, and the Draenni use the search for the missing guardian as a pretence to establish secret colonies in the region of space that the guardian once patrolled. Though the guardian is never found, in Y61 Frazan explorers discover the secret Draenni colonies and alert the rest of the Chomak community. From Y61-Y67 a civil war rages between a faction headed by the Draenni and supported by the Awakeners, and a faction headed by the Frazan and Chuma, and supported by the Perfectionists. The war concludes with the defeat of the Draenni, and a return of the Perfectionists to power. No reprisals are ever levied against the Draenni, since their rebellion is seen as an aspect of their “perfection of will” and the Draenni receive praise and adoration from the Chomak Community for their virtue. The main consequence of this war was the full withdrawal of the Chomak back to Chomak home space, and an abandonment of all Draenni colonies beyond their original seven worlds.

What followed the civil war was nearly fifty years of Perfectionist rule. In Y115 Chomak became fully uninhabitable, and images of the last Chuma family leaving the structure caused a precipitous decline in Perfectionist support, even amongst the Chuma. The Awakeners regain power in the wake of end of Chomak as more than an orbiting monument with their strongest mandate in the history of the Chomak Community. What follows is a major reform of the entire structure of government, and a complete realignment of the Chomak state. The Chomak begin colonising unclaimed space around them, establish major anti-meson refineries for their survey missions, and build a modern war fleet based on newly discovered dilithium engines (rather than short warp or expensive long-warp). Gone are the Syphograntii, Traniborii, and Phylarchs, to be replaced by a federated political structure of representative democracy. The Chomak return to a stance of expansion and exploration is noted by the Eneen. The Chomak make contact with the Jumokian Resistance in this era, but are unimpressed with what they find.

In Y122 the Chomak make contact with the Baduvai.

Neutrals in all wars between the Magellanic powers, the Chomak fight skirmishes against all of them, but still suffer too seriously from the hangover of their long inward focus to actually dominate their neighbours militarily. The Chomak maintain two types of fleets in this era, the survey fleet, which runs on expensive anti-meson long warp engines, and can traverse the cloud with relative ease compared to other Magellanic empires, and the war fleet, which uses standard dilithium engines.

The period between Y115-Y157 is known as the Awakened Age in the Chomak history. This is the period that the Chomak most closely resemble a regular interstellar power. The Perfectionists and Awakeners still take turns ruling the Chomak Community, but are both much more moderate in the period following the Awakening, choosing to cooperate rather than reverse each side’s previous policies in an endless tit-for-tat. Many ancient Chomak technologies are recovered in this period, and Chomak itself becomes habitable again in Y155, although with a life support capacity of only a few thousand.

The Chomak Community did not respond to the Andromedans effectively when they were first observed. The Awakeners saw them as a force that could disrupt the empires of The Cloud, and pave the way for a coming Chomak hegemony. The Perfectionists saw them as a seventh invasion of the cloud, and due to the special significance of that number imbued them with spiritual significance, and sought a stance of placid observation while The Cloud fell. By the time the Chomak would eventually take the Andromedans seriously, it will have been too late.

In Y157 the Andromedans, with shockingly few losses, destroy the remaining patrolling guardian. This alarms the Chomak Community so much that they assemble a task force with the intention of penetrating the core and combining forces with the Magellanic empires. In Y163 the task force makes its way through Andromedan territory, and wins two battles against the invaders. The third battle of the task force in Y165 is a pyrrhic victory that leaves it so crippled that without the assistance of the Jumokians, it would never have been able to return to the Chomak Community, and would have represented a complete disaster.

The Chomak Community adopts a posture of total defence in the following years. Serving as a bastion for beleaguered guerrillas, it provides all the material assistance it can to the Magellanic forces outside of the core. The Chomak do not attempt any major incursions into Andromedan-controlled space until Y182.

In Y172 the Andromedans locate and begin serious efforts to destroy the Chomak. For a decade the Chomak are able to hold their own against the Andromedans.

Working independently, the Chomak and a Maghadim Task Force in Exile manage to locate and destroy two Satellite Bases in Y182. This is the last Chomak incursion into Andromedan territory.

The period of Y182-Y185 represents the final stand of the Chomak Community. They gallantly resist the Andromedans for three full years while the invaders pick apart the Chomak defences and logistics networks piece by piece. In Y185 the Chomak fleet makes a last stand at Chomak, hoping that the last guardian will make the final Andromedan assault costly. The guardian barely makes a difference in the fight, and the Chomak fleet production infrastructure is obliterated. Relatively few Chomak warships survive to join the guerrilla resistance compared to the other Magellanic empires, the most likely reason being that unlike the Baduvai, Eneen, and Maghadim, many of the Chomak commanders and captains in the end found comfort in placidly accepting their fate.

So, that’s my vision for the Chomak.

How I envision Chomak ships is as a peculiar blend of different eras. Since they’ve forgotten their own technology, had to start from scratch in some areas, and were able to rediscover what was lost in others you could have ships unlike anything else in Star Fleet Battles. An early warship could have X (or better) phaser-equivalents, Middle Years sensors, and W-era engines (or any other mish-mash that people find more interesting than that).

I see the guardians as basically space monsters. Something like a Juggernaut or Death Probe could serve as a starting point for one. They would not be deployable by the Chomak, and instead just protect the specific area of space that they were initially designated to protect.

By Norman Dizon (Ichaborn) on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - 03:28 am: Edit

Very Creative and Well Thought Out!

By Stephen E Parrish (Steveparrish) on Friday, August 28, 2020 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Very interesting. Do you have any idea what the Chomak or Chuma look like? What their biology is?

I can go along with most of what you wrote, but have a few thoughts. Perhaps to make things easier, the different groups of Chomak could be subspecies rather than entirely separate races. It would be more plausible for them to work together and have the same values then.

I would prefer the last Guardian going out in a blaze of glory, perhaps taking a Dominator with it. This would make a more interesting story.

The Chomak are alien and strange to us, but they are not idiots. They must have known at least a year or two before the end that they were going to lose. I would think that they would start moving assets to hidden areas to continue their race after Chomak fell. Since they were conquered last, and were far away from the other races, they might have suffered less, and bounce back more quickly.

These are just some thoughts. I hope the conversation can keep going.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Friday, August 28, 2020 - 02:47 pm: Edit

Re: Stephen

I don't have any more answers as to what the Chuma are than what I put in the story. To me I think that the question of what the Chuma actually are as a species is important, but not one I was overly invested in answering. For a species like the Uthiki their biology is important to how they interact with the universe, largely because they are incapable of comfortably inhabiting terrestrial planets, and so they can make the sort of codominion arrangements that the Uthiki made with the Baduvai. For the Chuma the weight behind what makes them themselves is not behind a peculiar biology, but a peculiar set of ideas. I think they should be the most alien that they can be, but still have a gracile beauty to the human eye. Maybe they're aquatic, and appear as ornate bioluminescent echinoderms? Maybe they are iridescent birds? Maybe they are ponderous many-armed giraffes? The more alien they are, the more their adoption of strange ideas become believable. I'm very open to suggestions, but in my mind they would need to be as inhuman as possible in order to have resonance with the rest of the fiction.

The non-Chuma Chomak could certainly be subspecies. Given the nature of the Chomak community they could even be synthetic self-altered Chuma each optimising for a single trait that they found appealing. It would work with the larger story, but let me present a counterpoint: The Awakeners found their support amongst the children of the Chuma, and so their rejection of Chuma values could be a result of their innate biological and cultural differences. Right now I think leaving it a mystery does more narrative good than answering the question however.

As for the Guardian, blazes of glory are cool. I'm just worried that ADB has an idea of how many Andromedan ships it took to squash The Cloud, and I think that requiring a Dominator added to the order of battle is a bigger ask then having the guardians simply be ineffective. Making them ineffective also casts doubts on the reliability of the claims of other past invaders to the cloud, and allows a deniability if it would contradict future fiction. If ADB had no objections though, I'd write a second draft where the guardians took out a whole fleet of Dominators. Something tells me that would be too much of an ask though.

As for the Chomak not being idiots, no they aren't. They also aren't mentioned in C5's fiction as greatly contributing to the post-conquest resistance. I could add it in that it was actually the Chomak that made all the difference, but I'd prefer not to change that. They also have a complicated relationship with mortality, and having many of their ships simply accept their fate after Chomak is destroyed seems right to me. Like everything else it's open to alteration though.

I'm happy that people find my take interesting!

By Norman Dizon (Ichaborn) on Friday, August 28, 2020 - 02:58 pm: Edit

Shot down in a blaze of glory
Take me now but know the truth
I'm going out in a blaze of glory
Lord, I never drew first
But I drew first blood
And I'm no one's son
Call me young gun
I'm a young gun
Young gun, yeah, yeah, yeah
Young gun

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, August 28, 2020 - 06:35 pm: Edit

On the Guardian vs. Dominator fight.
Perhaps a Guardian in its prime could have trashed a Dominator, but the one they had left simply was to worn out to even try.

By Stephen E Parrish (Steveparrish) on Friday, August 28, 2020 - 06:47 pm: Edit

Ok. A mystery is fine. I was thinking of something along the lines of Jack Vance's Tschai novels, and the Chasch. IIRC, there were old Chasch, Blue Chasch, and Green Chasch. They had greater differences than mere races.

As for the Andromedan conquest and the after the Andromedan defeat, I simply would like for the Chomak to survive, and be a power after operation unity. Their long history should not come to an end.

By Stephen E Parrish (Steveparrish) on Friday, September 04, 2020 - 12:32 pm: Edit

The Andros threw 2 dominators each at the FRA and LDR. It would seem logical that they would do at least as much in destroying the last impediment before launching an all out invasion against the Milky Way Galaxy (Our Galaxy).

Given the history that Shawn has given, it seems that the Guardians would have quite different weapon systems than the contemporary Chomak, who can use these weapons though they cannot build them anymore. If the Andros had never met the Guradian's weapon systems, they might be unprepared and lose a Dominator.

At least that seems plausible if we want the Guardian to go out in a "Blaze of Glory," which might be interesting.

By Stephen E Parrish (Steveparrish) on Friday, September 04, 2020 - 12:45 pm: Edit

After the fall of Chomak, it would seem that the Chomak who accepted their fate and died would be mainly ones with Perfectionist leanings. The ones who survived to fight on would be ones with Awakener leanings. Though they might be few, they would be determined to survive, and reconquer if they could. One can imagine them creating a hideout and rebuilding there, waiting for a chance to come out in strength. The would make for opportunities for scenarios after the Alpha powers reach the LMC.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Friday, September 04, 2020 - 09:08 pm: Edit

The proposed background is really interesting. I like the idea that Chomak ships have a mix of technology from different eras.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Saturday, September 05, 2020 - 01:22 pm: Edit

If the FRA and the LDR had 2 dominators each, then I think the Chomak deserve a couple of their own as well!

The destruction of the second last guardian is what startled the Chomak Community enough to send out the task force for the core, and so that should probably stay as-is (and future writers may have fun with explaining the circumstances as to why the penultimate guardian died so easily), but the final guardian taking down two dominators before giving up the ghost seems like a fantastic end to things. There could be a Last Stand at Chomak scenario at the same scale as SH11.0 Cavalry Charge where the Andros have a combined two fleets, with two dominators, vs the guardian, the remnants of the Chomak fleet, and a perimeter of orbital defenses around Chomak.

My idea of what a guardian looks like, and how it operates is only vague, and I encourage others to put something together for it. I envisioned them as giant mechanical things that look kind of like blue whales, and who have some sort of super version of whatever weapons the Chomak use. If the Chomak were Feds, the guardians would use super-photon-torpedoes that do 40 damage a pop, if they were Klingons they'd have super-disruptors that do 25 at close range with a range of 100, etc. Since I don't have a proposal for how Chomak weapons work, I don't really have a concrete idea of what they would be, but the guardians as I imagined them would have a 5x (at least) powerful version of whatever weapon system they use. Having the guardian fighting alongside a modern Chomak fleet would be like having a 1450's Byzantine conscript army fighting alongside one of Caesar's legions against the Ottomans at the doomed siege of Constantinople. A decayed shadow fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with a glimmer of what it once was, and if it could only just linger a little longer, what it hoped against hope it could one day be again. The best of what the Chomak ever were could not save what the Chomak had become, but it would have one last chance to try.

And yes, the fall of Chomak would be a sort of creative destruction. The dead wood of the Perfectionists would be burned away preferentially over the Awakeners. The Chomak Community post-Unity would be very different than the Chomak Community before the fall. Not only would most of the Perfectionists be dead, their philosophy would have been absolutely repudiated by the outcome of the Andromedan invasion. What rebuilds in Chomak space post-Unity would be a regular empire.

There isn't anything post-Unity in the canonical fiction of the SFU, but here's how I imagine it playing out:

The post-Unity period sees Alpha connected with the LMC and Omega. The empires of Alpha are the largest and least devastated (relatively speaking) of all of the space-faring nations across the three regions. What follows Unity is something akin to the Age of Exploration, but with the politics of the Congress of Vienna. The Fed is the strongest empire, followed by the Klingons, and the ISC. Those are the three great powers, but the rest of Alpha are secondary powers with no great rivals in Omega or the LMC. The distances involved between Alpha, the LMC, and Omega (considering the untraversable void) are too long for supply lines to cover for real war fleets, but not for expeditionary forces and colonial police missions. Every state in the LMC and Omega by the conventions and treaties to follow Unity are placed within the sphere of influence of one of the Alpha powers. The Fed see themselves as sponsors for a Marshall-plan style recovery of the rest of the galaxy. The Klingons see themselves as colonial masters, but with insufficient ability to project power to truly dominate their colonial puppets. The ISC see themselves in the way the nineteenth century Europeans saw their colonial missions within their home countries ("A mission to civilise" and "the White man's burden" sort of paternalistic ideas), and meddle in a domineering and hostile way (but with stated good intentions) in the development, civilisation, and culture of their subject nations. The wars of the Y200s are proxy wars with one or two Alpha X2 ships supporting operations of non-Alpha fleets against each other. When the Feds and the Klingons clash, they do it outside of Alpha, without a formal declaration or even recognition of war, as a way of furthering the distant political interests of their spheres of influence.

Where does this leave the Chomak Community? The Chomak have 49 planets. Seven for the Chuma and each of their subjects. Even with Chomak itself destroyed, the Chomak are in a good position. Even if the Andromedan slavery killed off 75% of their population, 49 planets without the spoiling effect of Perfectionism means they have tremendous potential, even if they start off weak in the post-Unity universe. I see them as being in a position like China in the late nineteenth century. They aren't a powerful Western European global empire, but they are too strong to dominate. They come under the sway of the various colonisers, but remain undivided, independent, and indomitable. Maybe in the early recovery period they are administered by a government that is 'advised' by a council of post-Unity powers until they have a Boxer Rebellion-style shaking off of the foreigners. Within the cloud the nexuses of power would end up being the Federation-sponsored Baduvai, the ISC-'enlightened' Maghadim, the Klingon-dominated Eneen, and the independent and prickly Chomak, who, although being weaker than any Alpha-octant power, get to influence the politics of The Cloud due to the fact that they have the most proximal power. They would be a formidable local power without the ability to influence a more global politics, like a Qing dynasty China, or a Solomonid Ethiopia.

All of that is contingent upon ADB's vision for a post-Unity world however.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, September 05, 2020 - 03:21 pm: Edit

ADB has no vision of the Chomak and will consider whatever comes along. The elaborate vision presented above is .... interesting. In a good way. The problem is the same one as always.

1. I do not have time to do everything. The last thing good for anyone is for me to get distracted by every new project/idea that shows up because I won't finish anything before some new shiny object comes along.

2. People who do things without "the two Steves" checking as they go along sometimes go "off on a tangent into a dead end" and this causes a lot of hard feelings and wasted time when we have to say "everything after point X needs to be done over".

3. People tell me to delegate but I while I can delegate work and even authority I cannot delegrate responsibility. If something goes really bad and causes the company to be destroyed, we all lose.

4. It would be tempting and easy for me to say "go with that last one; when you're done I'll print it" but I haven't read the entire topic (and won't have time before CL54 goes to press and I do the week of after press work and by then I will forget. What I can do, for now, is this....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, September 05, 2020 - 03:39 pm: Edit

GARY CARNEY and STEVE PETRICK; Go read everything in this topic and each email me a BRIEF report on whether this:
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By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - 11:43 pm
I've taken a crack at a Chomak background.
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Is the best way to move forward on doing the lost Chomak. (I presume but do not know that the Chomak are some labeled but otherwise empty spot in the Magellanic history/nap.) If it is, I'll figure out a way you can help Shawn get it into some kind of publishable state.

By Stephen E Parrish (Steveparrish) on Friday, October 09, 2020 - 01:50 pm: Edit

Have any decisions been made about the Chomak?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 09, 2020 - 03:28 pm: Edit

No decision at this time. We have plenty of other things to do.