Tabletop Game / Fading Suns

It is the dawn of the sixth millennium and the skies are darkening, for the suns themselves are fading. Humans reached the stars long ago, building a Republic of high technology and universal emancipation — and then squandered it, fought over it, and finally lost it. A new Dark Age has descended on humanity, for the greatest of civilizations has fallen and even the stars die. Now, feudal lords rule the Known Worlds, vying for power with fanatic priests and scheming guilds.

Fading Suns is a role-playing game by Holistic Design, Inc., designed by Bill Bridges and Andrew Greenberg, also known for their work on The World of Darkness games. It's a soft science-fiction, space operatic game notable for its unusual, well-developed setting that is as teeming with action as it is with politics and courtly antics.

A great strength of the game is its versatility - do you like court intrigues? It's here. War stories? At least three fronts at the moment. Hard SF or space opera? We've got the ships, we've got the weapons. Guilds and fleets await. Soft SF, fantasy elements? Psionic powers, Ur ruins, Church demonology in the countryside. Lovecraftian horror? Daemons and Void Krakens. Cyberpunk? Guild affairs at the lowest levels of megacities. Dungeon crawl? Ur ruins and forgotten Republican complexes still here. Even D&D-style heroic fantasy, if you try.

The creators' idea for a game is Passion Play, that is, to view the adventures of the Player Characters as a saga of Mankind's redemption.

As of 2020, a new edition is in the works, moving the plotline by some fifteen years (about the amount of time in Real Life since the last edition) and significantly overhauling the game mechanics.

The backstory

In the near future, Earth unified politically under the aegis of international megacorporations. Corporate rule quickly turned oppressive, yet the First Republic also saw exploration and economic development in the Solar System. Then, in the 24th Century, humans discovered the Stargate, the first proof (excluding several dubious findings on Mars) of extraterrestrial civilization. What's more important, the huge artifact opened the door to the Jumpweb left by the ancient race, dubbed Ur or Anunnaki.

The corporations seized the opportunity; quickly, though, they discovered their inability to exert control over the colonists, who, one community after another, declared themselves independent from Earth. Thus the Diaspora was born. Many of these communities were led by charismatic people, often forming ruling clans. These clans, for added splendor, often traced their lineages to royalty and aristocracy of pre-Space Earth, becoming noble houses.

The discovery of alien civilisations was a blow to already weak organised religions, and various sects, Anunnaki cults and others sprang up. Among them, the most notorious (and most hunted, due to its dangerousness to corporate and social order) was the Sathra cult, popular among starship pilots. In the 28th Century, a Christian priest called Zebulon took to the stars, hoping for some kind of sign. The illumination he found was beyond his dreams. He became the Prophet of a new, ultimate faith, preaching to humans and aliens of the Diaspora, performing miracles and gathering Apostles and followers, who after his death wrote the Omega Gospels and started the Church of Celestial Sun.

In the early to mid-fourth millennium, inspired by the Church and ideas of free trade and philosophies of human rights, the people of the Diaspora united again, forming the mighty Second Republic. It was a period of unparallelled progress; people settled countless worlds, scientists were on track to prove anything was possible, illnesses and hunger belonged to legends, and medical care made even the most suicidal of extreme sports safe. But all things come to an end.

Closing to the turn of millenium, cheap robotic and alien labour left many jobless, scientific experiments began to turn Frankensteinian, and the man-on-the-street linked the Republic with heavy taxes and political squabbles. And above all, stars began to fade. While one by one, border worlds were leaving the republic, at its heart people turned to noble houses preaching the ideals of noblesse oblige. The ten most powerful of these took up arms to fight the separatists, but to save the Republic was not their intention. Finally, the Ten conquered the capital world and the Second Republic came to an end.

The first half of the fifth millenium became known as the New Dark Ages. Most people became simple peasants, the Church prohibited advanced technology, nobles ruled from their castles, and remnants of Republican know-how formed Guilds. When barbarians of former separatist worlds invaded, one man - Vladimir of House Alecto - stood to fight them. He managed to unite the forces of the Known Worlds (as the core worlds of human space were now called) behind him and drove off the invaders, but was assassinated during his crowning by an unknown assailant (though gossip says he was killed by daemons).

Vladimir, however, did leave an apparatus of administration - and a precedent. In the 50th Century, one Imperial claim unleashed an avalanche, plunging the Known Worlds into a five-way (as five of the original Ten perished or lost their influence in the meantime) war, with the Church and Merchant League eyeing the situation in case of a possibility to establish a theocracy or another republic. Ultimately it was Alexius of House Hawkwood who managed to gather the support of the Church and League, forged an alliance with Houses al-Malik and Li Halan, defeated his opponents, and crowned himself as Emperor Alexius the First.

The new Emperor took swiftly to rebuilding the Known Worlds after the war. Instead of imposing his rule by force of his army, Alexius opted for a more charismatic and peaceful lead, by inspiring others to join him and stirring the old power structures to release the eager young. Thus he started a period of opportunity and hope - a perfect time for those who want to forge their own destiny.

... And this is when the Player Characters appear.

Spin-offs

The original RPG also spawned a few spin-off games and other media:

• Noble Armada, a tactical starship combat miniatures game.
• Emperor of the Fading Suns, a turn-based computer strategy game that takes place during the Emperor wars that ended with Alexius's coronation. Perhaps less well-known that it deserved due to rushed production, it gathered a small if friendly fan community that patched up the bugs and issues. Initially a mainstay of invoked Abandonware sites, it eventually got a GOG release in 2020.
• The Sinful Stars: Tales of the Fading Suns, a collection of short stories by Bill Bridges set in the Fading Suns universe.
• There was an attempted video game that involved outfitting and flying a starship. It reached the demo stage, but apparently didn't go much further.

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A character sheet, listing the major factions of the Known Worlds, can be found here.

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This RPG provides examples of:

• Amazon Brigade: The Minor House Xanthippe, a matriarchal house known for their mercenaries, and wine.
• Anti-Intellectualism: The Avestites are stereotypically illiterate, and they reject academic theology in favor of a very plain approach to burning the witch. They even have a Rite for temporarily wiping out someone's learned knowledge.
• Apocalypse How: The stars themselves are getting dim (hence the title) for reasons unknown. Also, a taste of After the End since the fall of Second Republic.
• Aristocrat Team: The tabletop game is a Feudal Future setting where player characters are generally assumed to be nobility, clergy (who know space magic), or part of the mercantile guilds. Even the lowest of these are higher in status than common folk, though the nobility still towers over the other two. And, yes, there ain't no rule saying you can't play an all-aristocrat party.
• Balking Summoned Spirit: A handful of nobles still participate in an underground ancestor worship with attached magical practice. A high-level practitioner may get to the point where they can summon a ghost of a great ancestral hero. The catch? For a Li Halan, it can mean Cardano, who is revered as basically a founder figure of the current house for saving it from itself before it was consumed by its own debauchery, and is directly responsible for the house's current reputation... of a pious pillar of the Universal Church. In other words, he was the one who turned the house away from practices like these. Sure, he'll grudgingly lend you a hand, since family is family, but you can expect a thorough scolding for taking part in this pagan nonsense.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The Vau have always been technologically ahead of humanity, yet are non-expansionistic, value stability over all things, and are (yes) typically politely aloof when they must deal with humans. Despite the latter half of that, every attempt to screw with the Vau has always ended painfully for humanity.
• Betty and Veronica: In older editions, the Emperor Alexius is torn between Sister Theafana al-Malik, an idealistic true believer and war hero, and Duchess Salandra Decados, who is not only a typical member of her house but actually a suggested Big Bad.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: With emphasis on the gray; black morality is pretty much limited to the Antinomists, and others who are completely inimical to humanity. The Church, nobility and guilds are all gray, being both the pillars of society and full of corruption and wickedness. That said, the overall mood of the game offers a hope for improvement.
• Blue Blood: Both nice and nasty.
• Bug War: The Symbionts. Though they're as much plants and Mix-and-Match Critters as they are bugs. The actual bug race, while alien and hostile, isn't really interested in waging an all-out war (not to mention they're a tribal society confined to a single planet).
  • Subverted come Lifeweb, where it's revealed that Symbionts are Transhuman Aliens who actually have a complex and full society of their own, and don't get why humans reject being reshaped.
• Burn the Witch!: We've got the Church, we've got feudalism, so don't say you didn't see the Inquisition coming... and this time they come with their own flamethrowers.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: In the form of the Stargates. Though still too expensive for the planet-bound serfs who make up 80% of the Empire's population.
• The Church: Fading Suns is the kind of Feudal Future which comes with Medieval-style religiosity, so a multitude of Church tropes is quite welcome. The Church divides into several sects:
  • Urth Orthodoxy is your typical Christianity is Catholic IN SPACE!, forming most of the Church hierarchy in both forms and supplying Sinister Ministers and Good Shepherds to the masses internally and abroad;
  • The Brothers Battle are Warrior Monk future incarnate of The Knights Templar, down to the banking and rumours of heresy;
  • Eskatonics are an eccentric bunch of mystics and wizards, known among the common folk as weird doomsayers, and in Church circles, as having an irritating tendency to delve into heterodox views;
  • The Avestites are a rather fanatical sect which treats the concept of "burning away sins" quite literally. And liberally, too;
  • The Amaltheans are Martial Pacifists and Good Shepherds to the last one, bringing free healthcare to the masses. Well, as long as you don't mind the preaching and occasional penances.
  • When something still doesn't fit, you may be looking at one of the minor monastic communities, heretics, or various pagan faiths.
  • In keeping with the late-Medieval setting, there is also a schismatic sect of Space Protestants, the Incarnates, who encourage "heretical" views such as the idea that everyone shares a spark of the Pancreator's Holy Flame (rather than merely reflecting its light) and that laity should engage in personal study of the Omega Gospels, rather than merely being taught by the priests.
• Church Militant: The Church has its own army, plus the Inquisition, plus the ability to quickly whip up a Torches and Pitchforks-wielding angry mob.
• Clarke's Third Law: Invoked in a description of Really High Tech. The difference between science and supernaturalism goes completely out the window when dealing with jumpgates, Philosopher's Stones and other Ur-tech.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: A bad image is more common with the freemen than with the two other classes; the Guildsmen are perceived as motivated by greed, while the others have their fig leaves of piety or honor.
• The Corruption: Subverted with the Sathra effect, the epiphany-like experience that unshielded minds exposed to hyperspace feel — it's addictive, it provokes the development of psionics, and it tends to turn people into peaceable folks who just want the best for the universe, though you really shouldn't push them. Really, a Sathraist that's a danger is just a bad person, not corrupted by exposure to infinity. They will try and trick people they like into being exposed as a form of Easy Evangelism however.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Church of the Celestial Sun, though it is better described as an evolved and amalgamated form of organised religions of today... It even has Jesus as a saint.
• Culture Chop Suey: The original intention was to create noble families that might have once been Russian (Decados) or Hispanic (Hazat) etc, but four of the five Royal Houses are at least 2,500 years old. The youngest are The Hazat (never House Hazat), who have a mere 1,000 years under their belt. This results in the Li Halan being about as 'Chinese & Japanese' as British people are Roman. Since around the 26th Century the number of noble Houses declined from over 70 to around 15, usually due to their absorption by larger Houses (or their conquest, then absorption). The Royal Houses in the 51st Century are a patchwork of ethnicities, usually only linked by the House name. Even the name 'Li Halan' suggests a fusion of separate ethnicities (Oriental with Caucasian) over two and a half millennia prior. Much of the same principle works for non-nobles, too.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: This is the official stance of the Church. It isn't generally accurate, but cyberpsychosis does indeed occasionally occur.
• Cyberpunk: Visit Leagueheim, the capital world of the Merchant League, and the genre you're playing suddenly shifts into this.
• The Cycle of Empires: Two corporatocratic Republics have fallen, a feudal empire is rising from the long night.
• The Dark Side: Psis and theurges who don't adhere to proper codes of conduct suffer from The Corruption; Urge for psis and Hubris for theurges. This is played with, however, as both Urge and Hubris are judged by relativistic standards rather than absolute morality. Urge is caused by violating the norms of your society, and Hubris is caused by violating the beliefs of your religious sect, irrespective of whether a factual sin (which do exist, and can be measured) was committed.
  • Also Antinomy, the dark magic of demonic magic and pacting. There's a lot of really, really powerful crap they're capable of, but it also comes with Fealty, a measure of how much you owe to your demonic patrons. Taking it down requires acting against the Universal Church, Kick the Dog acts or exposure to Ur-tech, and the more you have, you become more obvious and slowly lose your ability to control your own actions as you become an avatar of the Qlippoth.
• Decadent Court: In particular, House Decados has scheming as favorite pastime, also obviously the Imperial Court.
• Deflector Shields: Somewhat Dune-like. You can slip your blade "under" the activating force threshold (as in Dune), or try to overwhelm it with raw strength. One notable difference from Dune is that energy weapons won't cause any mutually destructive reactions with shields, though plasma and fire damage has a small chance of leaking through a shield.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Void Krakens, natch. They dwell in the darkness between stars, making hyperspace the less scary (and lethal) alternative to interstellar travel in the setting.
• The Empire: Of the rather benevolent kind. Resembles something not unlike the Holy Roman Empire, if the latter ever achieved a well-bearing for the future degree of unification.
  • The Emperor is (or, at worst, is very convincing as) a noble, square-jawed guy who does a lot pretty much to restore hope, ensure peace and stability et cetera.
• Fantastic Drug:
  • Selchakah is described as basically opium squared which grows (conveniently enough) in Decados space. Needless to say, they just love to help potential assets get their hands on it so that they may kindly become their suppliers in the soon-to-be future. (And just love it in general, too.)
  • Zhrii-ka'a lotus is a hallucinogen used in Obun vision quest rituals. Apparently among the things it causes are hallucinations mixed with uninhibited actions and memory loss, which your handler can then interpret to reveal truths you might have not realized on your own.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Although it's more nuanced than it might seem at first glance (see under Culture Chop Suey for a more verbose explanation), each of the noble houses is generally patterned after a recognizable pre-Diasporan culture, and has a certain feel:
  • House Hawkwood are Anglo-Germanic/Scandinavian/Celtic, with an upbeat, anything-you-do-a-Hawkwood-can-do-better, noblesse oblige attitude (in short, Atreides Expy);
  • Hazat are Hispanic with roots in our Latin America with appropriate machoistic, honour-obsessed culture;
  • Decados are Russians with a backstabby mentality quite out of Renaissance Italy, and they like it (the House Harkonnen Expy);
  • Li Halan is a mix of Chinese and Japanese with an added twist of being fervently religious after a great reformer turned them from their sorcerous and pagan ways;
  • Al-Malik are sophisticated Arabic/Semitic types with occasional dashes of Hindu, who are fond of philosophy and trade and speaking in Ice Cream Koans (also limousine liberal Space Jews);
  • Apart from the minor houses (of whom some have a distinct cultural feel, while others are too insignificant) there are also Vuldroks (the Space Vikings), Kurgans (the Space Caliphate, another kind of Space Arabs mixed with Mongol elements), and Zuranists (a kind of Space Gypsies and Space Jews mix). Alien races are usually Space Elves and/or Noble Savages, with the stagnant and bureaucratic but highly advanced Vau resembling Imperial China to an extent.
• The Federation: The Second Republic, a great nation of expansion, prosperity and freedom. Also a nation of extreme decadence and science gone mad.
• Feudal Future: That's a big draw of the setting. For sure there's enough place for a typical dungeoncrawling adventurer, but a huge part of splatbooks and other setting descriptions is devoted to descriptions of how does the feudal society of the Known Worlds work.
• Fox Folk: Vulpanthropes, a species created as shock troops by a noble with Mad Scientist leanings from human and fox DNA. They proved more prolific than expected and have come to plague isolated human settlements on many planets.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In Emperor of the Fading Suns the Vau don't get a turn because they are non-expansionist, which makes their worlds easy to conquer. First contact was the annihilation of a human colony that had just started to encroach on one of the Vau's client races.
  • Interestingly, it's implied in War in the Heavens: Hegemony that the worlds in question did "change hands" a few times, but Humanity remained in its designated areas out of fear for provoking a war with the Vau. The Vau, for their part, see no reason to raise a fuss if it doesn't bother the Hegemony's citizens and patron races.
• Grim Up North: Well, is there any other reason for the Vuldrok planets to be placed "above" the Empire on the star chart? Funnily enough, Vuldrok culture was engineered during the fall of the Second Republic, so it might have even been invoked.
• Hive Mind: Symbionts have one. As well as their own individual minds, unless the Symbiont in question is a drone.
• Hive Queen: Shapers, Symbionts who have mastered their race's ability to resculpt other lifeforms, often into new Symbionts. They are also needed for reproduction, as the child of a Symbiont is a normal human who isn't a part of the Hive Mind.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: There are many alien races, and most of them live on reserves after having been conquered by humanity. On the other hand, at least one alien race, the Ukar, could have been just as awful if they won.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: An inversion: hyperspace (or what it is that's between the Stargates) actually is the safe way. It's the interstellar space (the so-called Dark Between The Stars) which is filled with shapeless Cthulhoid monstrosities going by the lovely name of Void Kraken. Still, spaceships jumping through hyperspace need to be protected by special shields, because otherwise people experience a strongly addictive quasi-religious epiphany, known as the Sathra effect.
  • Unfortunately played very literally by most, including characters within the setting - going all the way down to: 'This is the lovely, Pancreator-blessed space all the way up to the Jumpgate, and that is the nasty, demon filled space starting just behind it.' Some systems have Pluto-style planets with orbits that oscillate beyond that of the Jumpgate, which is apparently enough to make them demon-haunted places that people seldom return from.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: The Jumpgates, not to mention how a lot of crucial technologies (anti-gravity, for example) are reverse-engineered versions of Vau tech.
• Insane Troll Logic: At one trial for an accused murderer, the prosecutor managed to take every piece of evidence that the accused was in fact innocent and explain it as proof of the defendant's infernal powers. The murder victim was shot with a six-shot revolver that the accused had never seen before, the seven shots that had been fired into the victim were of different types shot from different directions, and the accused's family had sworn that he was eating dinner with them when the murder happened. Clearly, therefore, demons had given him the power to be in two places at once, multiply and teleport bullets, and use a firearm, only to withdraw all that power once the deed had been done.
• Interfaith Smoothie: The Church has a general Christianity is Catholic feel on the surface, but was set up by a prophet, the biggest sect is called the Orthodoxy, the main philosophical factions are called the Hinayana and the Mahayana, and there are plenty of minor sects and factions that are all over the place. The most popular alternative religion, Gjarti, was engineered from a mix of neopagan, New Age and Buddhist beliefs spliced with psychological science, Gaia theory and theurgy.
• Living Lie Detector: Verigrims, a variety of mastiff that was probably genetically engineered to sniff out biochemical indicators of lying, though the Church has an alternate story to justify their use by Inquisitors.
• Lost Technology: Plenty of this, due to the fall of the Republic. There is a major guild making quite a profit by digging it up. The Ur artifacts may also count (particularly to Oro'ym who appear to have been once a star-faring species), but given how they work, it's probably closer to Lost Magical Artifacts than to Lost Technology.
• Magic or Psychic?: Fading Suns has both Psychics and Theurgists. Theurgists are priests of the Urth Orthodox Church who believe that they're channeling the divine power of the Pancreator, while Psychics are considered witches by the Church and forced to serve "penance" if not burned at the stake. Though it's not clear where either gets their power. It's also notable that a number of other faiths such as Gjarti, an animistic religion common to "barbarians", also grant access to theurgic abilities for their faithful, so whatever is the source it's not unique to the faithful in the Church. And mechanically speaking, Psi and Theurgy are opposed to each other and a character can't be simultaneously good with both unless under very unusual circumstances.
• MegaCorp: The Guilds (at least the biggest ones) are descendants of such and may share some traits, though they also subvert the trope in that they are explicitly a re-organization of a corporate model rather than a continuation of it. See, you can't protect yourself against nobles and the Church if they can just pull off a hostile takeover.
• Neo-Medieval Stasis: Justified by the Church declaring tech evil for everyone except the rich, the noble and the ordained, and everyone else being in a state of shock after the fall of the Republic. The game is set in a period when the stasis is ending.
• Nice to the Waiter: Most of the Noble Houses hold some form of this as an ideal, but what that means varies between Houses and individuals within the House.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: Played in many ways. In general, played straight. Subverted by the not so uncommon use of cybernetics. Enforced by the Church. Defied by the cyberevolutionary movement.
  • The Second Republic performed several experiments with genetic engineering, and their descendants are generally considered abominations by the Church (except the Amaltheans).
• The Order: By the time of the Pax Alexius, there are many knightly orders in the Known Worlds, varying from glorified social clubs to militant organizations who drill hard, take chivalry seriously, and actively serve the Church or a specific Noble House. Of course, the most famous order are the Company of the Phoenix, nobles of all factions who have answered the Emperor's call to explore the galaxy outside the Known Worlds.
• Order Reborn: The Favyana are a tradition descended from the Phavian Institute of the Second Republic and dedicated to much the same ideals, but the original Institute had disintegrated centuries before the modern group was established. Most people in the know think that the link between the modern group and the Institute is tenuous at best, and the Favyana are just claiming a model and a legacy.
• Our Demons Are Different: They're inspired by the Kabbalah Qlippoth, for one, and they need to possess people in order to remain in this universe.
• Our Elves Are Different: Ur-Obun and ur-Ukar are pretty much space elves and space dark elves. Or if you prefer, it's actually far closer to the Vulcan/Romulan relationship than simply something in space, but elf comparisons aren't rare in the fandom.
• Pacifist: The vast majority of Amaltheans follow the old rule of pacifism, despite one Dark Ages Archbishop who abolished it as a rule. What form this pacifism takes depends on the Amalthean; some are Actual Pacifists who would never raise a weapon in their own defense, while others are as willing to defend the weak as to heal them. With a similar catch, the other group reputed for being peaceful and diplomatic are the Obun, who are often employed as advisors to the nobles.
• Planetary Romance: More often than not, stories set in the Known Worlds will involve going out to places, meeting nobles and local lords, having adventures and sword fights, and possibly exploring dungeons, on a single vaguely medieval planet of adventure. All the while, it is set in an explicitly interstellar society, but apart from big spaceport cities or a precious few planets that don't conform to this pattern, that doesn't really concern the day-to-day life.
• Point Build System: The original Victory Point System. Yay for making your character miss a leg to get that lovely monofilament sword. A d20 version also exists, but the players tend to be... more enthusiastic for the original VPS system, despite all its faults.
• Pooping Food: An alien creature called the "Scrup monkey" produces feces that are edible to humans. House Decados often bakes it into "fudge" as one of their least harmful practical jokes.
• Portal Network: Stargates again. Discovery (or more commonly re-discovery) of a new route is always big news and potentially hugely impactful on Empire-wide politics.
• Posthumous Character: As you'd expect, the setting's backstory contains many named characters still important to its "current day". Still, there's a few that stand out, as various game materials preferentially drop certain names in an implication that an epic-level campaign will probably sooner or later revolve around them and their legacy. These usually are Vladimir Alecto, the predecessor to Alexius and a potential source of all manner of shenanigans concerning political legitimacy of the Emperor (for political campaigns), Doramos of Tyre, a Second Republic-era master terraformer who is implied to have partially cracked Ur-tech (for those more mystic-themed sagas), and sometimes, also one or the other of the founding figures of the Church (for either kind).
• Precursors: And occasional Ancient Astronauts. The Ur are responsible for the Jumpgate network, as well as a bunch of artifacts of less immediate importance and the shape of Obun and Ukar societies.
• Psychic Powers: There are two kinds of it: one is ritualistic religious magic, the other is your common choking people Vader-style or reading minds.
  • It is heavily hinted that Theurgy (religious 'magic') and Psychic powers are simply two different applications of the same thing. Both are invoked using the same 'inner battery' and have incremental level-based powers. Even the Vuldrok and Kurgan versions are simply applications of awoken human abilities applied in different ways.
  • Psychoactive Powers: In terms of game mechanics, activating psychic powers needs a test of an appropriate Spirit characteristic plus appropriate skill. In-game, it means an introvert, calm person won't go Shock and Awe unless he can make up for the lack of spirit with proper training, while a passionate extrovert will have it come naturally.
• Saintly Church: While most sects of the Church are much less black-and-white, Sanctuary Aeon is consistently portrayed as a beacon of pacifism, healing, and innovation founded by an All-Loving Heroine, and generally represents the best of the Church.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Vau. Guys who could smash humanity with marginally more effort than is needed to swat a fly, but don't feel like it, because their dogmatism is all about strict isolationism and rigid social order. So, pretty much Inscrutable Oriental In Space. Their ruling caste is even nicknamed the Mandarins.
  • Lifeweb reveals that Symbionts were once Scary Dogmatic Humans, though they've transformed a lot of the flora and fauna of their worlds into sapient Symbionts too.
• Scavenger World: Engineers who can build new Republican technology are extremely rare, and nobody can make new Ur-tech. The Scravers and wandering adventurers alike make a business of salvaging Lost Technology from ancient ruins.
• Schizo Tech: Nobles fight sword duels on spaceships and rule over medieval serfs from their air-conditioned, fusion-powered manors. Technology Levels vary from character to character; a really good Engineer might be able to work with, repair and even fabricate the highest technology of the Second Republic, but mass manufacturing is about twentieth century, and the average serf lives in a world of hand tools and horse-drawn carts - though when he was a kid, he might have received an advanced nano-medical treatment from a wandering Amalthean.
• Science Fantasy: In general, the vast majority of the game is theoretically sci-fi, but it's portrayed with fantasy trappings. Psis aren't just trained minds, they're sorcerers; the family's ancestral sword is a wireblade; cyborgs have replaced part of their body with occult magic, and the sacred jumpgates represent the light of the Pancreator. Then you get into theurgy, Antinomy and other occult factors that are straight-up magic... but even then, there's some hints that they're just another expression of humanity's potential. In short, Fading Suns is as fantasy as you want it to be.
• Science Is Bad: A part of the Church's teachings. Of course, important people exercise "extreme penance" and can thus operate high technology so that the lesser folk "don't have" to "endanger" their souls. It's also largely an understandable mistake on the Church's part.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • The most blatant example is the concept of "extreme penance." Clergy, nobles, and guildsmen are exempt from the Church's rules forbidding technology; it's just the serfs who need to live in the Middle Ages, because the elite take on the damnation caused by technology so they don't have to.
  • The Church tries to ban psychic powers from everyone except Penitents, but the nobility's response to that rule has been a giant middle finger. Each House has a sect of Dervishes, or psychic warriors, in their services; the Hazat Dervishes are the most famous and numerous, and the ones who give the name to the entire concept. The Church wisely doesn't press the issue.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: In the Gjarti religion, one becomes a shaman through a dream where the Goddess initiates the new shaman "through loving congress."
• Single-Biome Planet: The splatbooks devoted to descriptions of specific planets generally try to avert it by pointing out they too have their climate zones, but still, most of these worlds have a theme to them — and in-universe Church teachings paint Earth as exceptionally diverse as a sort of Pancreator's Paradise Garden for humans. (Whether they're also planets of hats is actually more nuanced.) A few notable examples:
  • Pyre, the Avestian planet, is unsurprisingly a Desert World.
  • A few planets such as the Decados-owned Severus and the Vorox homeworld Ungavorox are Jungle Worlds.
  • Madoc, the Oro'ym homeworld, is an Ocean World. Human inhabitants live on a handful of islands and leave the sea to the locals.
  • And, oddly enough, one Hawkwood world is specifically entirely in the mild, pleasant temperate zone, as a result of some very intricate work by Second Republic-era terraformers.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The book's section on Passion Play Roleplaying provides rules for setting the tone wherever the GM likes, including games where the Triumph of Good or the Triumph of Evil is the foreordained theme of the game. In general, the work itself leans toward A World Half Full.
• Soulsaving Crusader: Played straight sometimes, subverted at other times. The "extreme penance" required of psychics does work and is helpful to reduce Urge, and some psychics and theurges can literally see people's sins and know the means to correct them. On the other hand, the Church doesn't always get it right; for example, the Pancreator does not agree that Invention is a sin, and Cybernetics Eat Your Soul is more or less incorrect.
  • That is of course assuming the Pancreator is as humans believe 'him' to be. The religious angle is a very subtle dig at how mythologies erupt around people.
  • The Church's reasoning is beginning to fall apart because they preached that the Fading Suns (which began a thousand years earlier, but had happened in earlier times) were being caused by humanity's technological hubris (that science and technology were the source of the sin that was letting the demons fade the suns). Unfortunately a thousand years of penance has resulted in exactly nothing changing.
• Space Is an Ocean: The starships are very expensive to produce and repair so it's in nobody's interest to blow them to smithereens during battle: this means that after a few shots to disable the enemy's main weapons, the ship is boarded by marines who, using bladed weapons, make their way to the bridge (get the Charioteer) and the drive section (get the Engineer) and generally try to take over the ship with as minimal damage to the ship as possible. Also, the weapons are very short range (for distances in space) and thus any exchange of fire happens at distances of kilometers or less. According to Word of God, Fading Suns spacefaring is supposed to emulate the age of sail.
• Space Opera: Although the game is also drawing a lot from Planetary Romance/Sword And Planet and Dying Earth genres of sci-fi on the low end of hardness scale, there's a lot of place for flying around the Known Worlds and visiting various different planets of adventure like in any proper space opera story.
• Spiritual Successor: The developers named Dune and The Book of the New Sun as inspirations for the setting.
• The Stars Are Going Out: As in the title, for reasons unknown. According to one legend that may or may not be true, inverted. A star supposedly blazed to new life at the moment Alexius Hawkwood took the throne.
• Sword Fight: The nobility likes to solve their issues by duelling, thus sword fights abound.
  • Most of the nobility does that with rapiers. House Hazat prefers larger, heavier swords, which could be read as anything from a longsword to a two-handed claymore. The more rustic among Hawkwood can sometimes be seen with swords and shields.
  • Vibro Weapons penetrate energy shields more easily than normal blades.
  • Razor Floss: swords of monofilament (wireblades) are often prized Ancestral Weapons.
  • Laser Blade: Flux Swords and Mist Swords.
• Used Future: The areas with higher tech levels tend to be full of slums, Back Alley Doctors offering used cybernetics, rust and dirt, while the high-tech stuff itself (like starships) tends to be centuries old and dilapidated.
• Vow of Celibacy: The Church's rules on celibacy depend on sect and discipline. The Urth Orthodoxy, for example, has one discipline (red priests) who are celibate and ascetic, and another (white priests) who aren't; most parish priests, for example, are married. Avestites are strictly celibate and expected to flagellate themselves over the slightest sexual feeling. The Eskatonic Order, by contrast, mandates celibacy but says nothing about chastity, and many Eskatonics really get around.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: All over the place, but the prize goes to the entire Symbiont species, who were originally a group of radical environmentalists reshaped by a bizarre species of bug that lives in Annunaki ruins. Their ideology has not changed much at all, and in fact they consider themselves the best hope for humanity surviving in any form.
• Weird Trade Union: The Guilds, formed by skilled labor and remnants of Mega Corps during and after the fall of the Republic for protection both personal and of their interests. The great five are:
  • The Charioteers are a coalition of space pilots and interstellar traders with a jealously guarded monopoly on the production of jumpkeys, a device necessary to open a jumpgate;
  • The Engineers are (obviously) The Engineers and Science Inc., but rather than your typical Scotty, they're an eccentric and secretive bunch probably closer to a Masonic lodge than anything;
  • The Muster are officially a job intermediary agency (arguably closest to an actual trade union), offering skilled and unskilled workforce in general but known foremostly as Private Military Contractors and slavers;
  • The Reeves are attorneys and bankers, as respected for their skills and coffers as they are derided for duplicity and greed (although they prefer to wring favours out of their debtors rather than going all-out Loan Shark on them);
  • The Scravers are The Syndicate IN SPACE!!!, with their hands in about anything they can get into without stepping on other factions' toes, a knack for digging up lost tech being among their more legal enterprises.
  • And it gets even better with the minor guilds. Some of them are tied to a single location, while others offer highly specialized and unusual skills, ranging from Asteroid Miners to professional ghost writers.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Played straight in the New Dark Ages, notably averted (unfortunately, for millions of jobless people) in the Second Republic era.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Everyone is a racist, which is particularly seen given the difference between al-Malik talk about freedom and equality and their treatment of their vassal alien races.
  • This is almost entirely the fault of the Church and something called the Doctrine of the Unethical Alien. Despite the fact that there is a minor sect of the Church that was founded by the Prophet's one alien disciple, the Pancreator apparently values human souls that bit more.
• World Half Full: It's full of exploitation, prejudice, dirt and decay and yet on the other hand firmly on the idealist side of Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

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