Roleplay / Troperia Galactica

And so to expand our knowledge and wisdom, with the hope that peace, understanding, love, and tolerance would blossom throughout the galaxy, Babel's Cradle was born.

Troperia Galactica is a science fiction online roleplay on the TV Tropes Forum centered around the relations between several vast interstellar nations in the known part of the galaxy. In a vast universe filled with wonders and terrors the magic of it all is tempered with the mundane. People of all species are still dealing with jealously guarded borders, trade disputes and war. Some are friendly, some are aggressive. Some are rich, some are poor. Some are simple to understand, some are alien in ways other aliens find alien. In an effort to promote peace and understanding, a new space station, Babel's Cradle was created for each nation to sent a representative to. There they would have public discussions among each other to address problems and come of with solutions.

Those were its intentions anyway. Right off the bat the Cradle finds itself dealing with xenophobic ambassadors, border disputes, possible sabotage, and general lack of direction. After over a century of peace, sudden shifts in the balance of power threatens to bring cataclysmic consequences on the galaxy. It is up to the ambassadors to come up with solutions to as many of these problems as they can if they want this noble effort to succeed.

Troperia Galactica Contains Examples Of:

• Alien Blood: Molo'Qraaat bleed green.

• "Ass" in Ambassador: Tyrir sees no reason to be diplomatic at a diplomatic conference.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The SAD's preferred method of war, combined with We Have Reserves.

• The Beastmaster: Molo'Qraaat and the Kin are very into using biologically-engineered animals as weapons.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Applies to both the Kin castes and the Molo'Qraaat'in, two of the civilized species with ambassadors in the Cradle. Kin drones also qualify, with some of them being very big indeed.
• Binary Suns: The Verandi capital system has two suns.

• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Earth suffered this during an invasion that sent humanity racing for safety to a completetly different galaxy. Its implied that other worlds have suffered this as well.
• The Emperor: Dis Baba, Imperator of the Ark Reach Overcolony. Whether or not he is benevolent remains to be seen.

• Eternal English: All the human nations speak English as their default language.
• Fantastic Caste System: How Kin society works. Despite being eusocial arthropods which live in hives, however, this does not overlap with Hive Caste System.

• Fantastic Racism: The Systems' Alliance of Doturi despise the Molo'Qraaat even 150 years after they went to war. The lobsters hate them in turn, but hate the Kin just as much...a hatred which is mutual, given how badly the Kin suffered at Molo'Qraaat hands during said war.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Nova Aurora Humanitas is the Holy Roman Empire IN SPACE!.
• First Contact: The Euralians have only just encountered other species. Not off to a good start after they accidentally destroyed the population of two human planets.

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Both the Overcolony ambassador and the euralian ambassador, Rul, assume bipedal forms to better relate to other species.

• Great Offscreen War: Several have occurred in the backstory, most prominently the Silent Crusade, a conflict which basically boiled down to the Molo'Qraaat—then newcomers to the galactic scene—against everyone else. It only lasted for five years, but had a massive impact on galactic politics, including the destruction or near-destruction of several civilizations; needless to say, many species greatly resent the Molo'Qraaat for how badly they suffered during this war.
• Hive Mind:
  • Euralian, in an odd way. It is essentially one individual, since all the planets are connected mentally.
  • To a lesser extent, the Kin also have a form of this; though every Kin is an individual, a Kin's mind is dispersed across the hundreds or thousands of 'clades' (i.e., the arthropods) which make up its personal swarm.
• Honor Before Reason: Kuan'rii Piistraar would rather fight with the Verandi Space Force over a criminal out of her jurisdiction despite the international troubles it would cause.

• Humongous Mecha: NAH has giant walkers while Verandi employs the much smaller and unpiloted war dragons.

• Intangible Man: The Kin use this as their main form of defensive technology, as opposed to more conventional deflector shields.

• Kill It with Fire: Verandi war dragons are equipped with flamethrowers. Incendiary bombs from space screwed over several world during their war.

• Lightning Gun: Not exactly but the verandi utilize electrolasers for their armored forces.
• Lost Colony: Bizarrely, and despite no concrete evidence they ever existed, urban legend states the Verandi lost four whole planets that just disappeared.
• Numbered Homeworld: Molo'Qraaat stars are all numbered, "X From Home". The Verandi have the Ojeda Moons, which actually have non-numbered names but people refer to them by number out of habit.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Molo'Qraaat is constantly reminded of how much they are disliked by the other nations.
• One-Product Planet: SAD worlds are set up this way, Verandi worlds used to be until their Civil War made them spread out production so that the loss of one planet wouldn't cause a drastic shortage.
• Organic Technology: Drones, vat-grown organisms created by the Kin to serve a wide variety of purposes; some are musical instruments, some act as personal conveyances, and some are used as living siege weapons. Like their masters, all of them are insectoid to some degree.

• Protocol Peril: James Stuart, the Verandi ambassador, refers to the Kin representative by only one of his names at one point; the ommited name, that of the representative's homeworld, is very important in Kin society, and leaving it out when addressing someone is considered a serious insult in the Ark Reach Overcolony. Though said representative chooses to let this go, chalking it up as ignorance on Stuart's part, the consequences of his unintended insult could have been deadly.

• Psychic Link: Euralian. Although it's not actually psychic, but a complicated piece of biological communications equipment.
• Rebellious Princess: The Lancel Empress. So rebellious as to actually rebel against her father and depose him in a coup.
• Retired Badass: James Stuart was a soldier who fought in the Verandi Civil War. Which was 15 years ago. He's happy to do no more fighting and stick with his diplomatic job.
• Shout-Out: Euralian is Pandora taken to the logical conclusion.

• Space Base: Space Fortress Techno-Forcatta protects the Verandi capital.

• Spell My Name with a "The": Inverted with Euralian, which would prefer if you refer to it as one singular being, instead of 'the Euralians'.
• Starfish Aliens: In various flavors. Most take on humanoid forms for the Cradle.
  • Euralian is a macroorganism- Their first encounter with normal, individual sentients ended with them slaughtering two planets' worth of humans because they didn't grasp the concept that individual organisms could think.
  • The Kin are similar, in a way—colonies of arthropods that inhabit artificial bodies called shells.
  • The Molo'Qraaat are octoped-limbed, sand-burrowing lobsters who go berserk in high-oxygen conditions.

• Super-Soldier: Several nations employ genetically or technologically enhanced soldiers.
• Sweet Home Alabama: Stuart's homeworld is considered the Verandi South/Midwest.
• Tomboyish Name: Reporter Elliot Khanh. Deliberate as she was actually named after her father.
• Taxonomic Term Confusion: In-Universe with Euralian. Is it a tree? An animal? All of the above?

• Universal Translator: Such devices seem to be in use, but they are by no means perfect; the Kin, in particular, have some difficulty with these due to their unconventional biology.
• Universal Universe Time: While most planets use their own calendar for dealing with local affairs, there is a standard calender used to keep everyone in the galaxy roughly on the same page
• Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Euralian's ambassador is essentially a human from the waist up, but with ten spidery legs.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Kin can do this to a limited extent with their shells, mostly to morph its extremities into a variety of different weapons and implements.

• We Have Reserves: Both the Doturi and Euralian. For Euralian, it also applies to their ambassador, who isn't even given a complete digestive system- They only need one present for the brief period where they have to talk, and can just grow a new one if it dies.