White Dwarf is a Fan Sequel total conversion for Escape Velocity Nova created by DrFive.
Set just over a century after Nova (and the creator's earlier expansion mod Brave New Void), the mod sees the player emerge as a pilot into a galaxy slowly recovering from a mysterious Calamity that seventy years prior warped and ravaged the galaxy — but dangerous forces may be stirring beyond the hyperlanes of known space...
White Dwarf provides examples of the following tropes:
- After the End: The Calamity left Sol, the systems around Sol, and every system with an active hypergate as irradiated "Dead Worlds", and disrupted the known hyperlane network forcing explorers to rediscover connections. What governments survived were left as rump remnants of their former height, and even seven decades thence, elements of Scavenger World persist.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: PERICLES, Federation Intelligence's super-computer, plays around with this trope. They look like this to people who notice it seems to have a lot more influence than the de-facto head of Federation Intel should have, but for people fully in the know there's two things veering away from this trope: Firstly, they're doing exactly what they were created to do, and secondly, PERICLES is actually the psionically preserved personality of Frandall, former head of Federation Intel — the computer elements of PERICLES really only seems to serve as housing and a way for Frandall to communicate.
- Apocalypse Cult: The Deluge originated as a small splinter sect whose leader predicted the end of civilisation and with the help of his followers set up a "refuge for the faithful" deep into space on a former pirate station. They probably would have become a minor nuisance… if not for that they did this shortly before the Calamity, which left them nearly untouched. They now launch aggressive campaigns against sinners, eg. basically everyone else, and they are planning to use acquired doomsday weapons to devastate worlds in reach.
- Bounty Hunter: The Hunters have some lingering elements of this trope as a relic of having been formed as a union of the survivors of the Guild of Bounty Hunters, White Geese mercenaries and Association of Free Traders privateers in the wake of the Calamity, though in practice the Hunters act closer to a militia protecting a region of space roughly in the centre of known space.
- The Empire: The Rimertan Empire is a more centralised post-Calamity successor state to the Auroran Empire established by the then-leader of the Dechtakar (an elite military force from the planet Rimerta sworn to the Empire as a whole), Lo Wang. While technically their aggression is mainly aimed at reconquering the rest of the former Auroran Empire — the former Vella region has joined the Federation Remnant and old Tekel space has become a loose association of independent worlds — those regions very much do not want to fall under Rimertan rule and resist violently.
- Military Coup: This is one possible outcome of the Federation Remnant storyline. It only goes off if the player backs it, and it is ultimately portrayed negatively — while the coup was partly motivated by genuine concerns about PERICLES' influence and actions, despite the promises by the admirals involved democracy is not fully restored by the epilogues. In the Federation Intel path, there is some coup planning, but Intel pre-empts it with a purge of high-ranking admirals.
- The Missing Faction: Just before the Calamity, all hyperlane connections to Polaris space were cut, and no-one knows if the Calamity hit them or passed them by, or what has become of them. The closest thing to the Polaris left in known space is Memory, a militia group in the galactic north-east formed from stranded Federation scientists, Polaris cut off from their home and the Wraith.
- Rogue Protagonist: Ory'hara has gone completely genocidal in their time in isolation leading the Polaris, and the endgame is them leading the Polaris in a crusade against the rest of humanity.
