Warfactory Lore

Warfactory Lore is currently being made up by Cory, The Rabbi, and The Blon. What is agreed upon is that it is set sometime in the far future, at least a couple centuries from now. Space travel is semi-commonplace, and FTL travel also exists. The state of the Earth is unknown, but it is confirmed to still be functional and inhabited. The player is a human raised for the task of colonizing another world. To that end, they have been given an innate understanding of engineering, design and chemistry, some basic tools, and a pat on the back.

The Setting

Cory's headcanon for the Colony Ships: spindly cheap things barely able to do what they're designed for.

All [major] Warfactory playthroughs have some canonicity to them. Each Warfactory playthrough is set on a planet which was seeded by Earth life hundreds of years ago. The player was dropped onto the planet by a Colony Ship; its last task before shutting down for good.

The player is given only a simple technical guide and some tools. They are given no instructions for cooperating with others nor building a functional society. The nations of these new worlds are shaped not by the principles laid out by our sociologists and philosophers, but by the groups of playmates these colonists had before they were shipped out.

Even prior to their launch into space, the players can only recall being raised as tools. They grew up in stark, ultra-modern care facilities. Instead of parental love, they knew only the cold stares of the men in white suits. They have no understanding of Earth beyond that. They were shipped out the instant they were old enough.

What we know about the Ships

• They are capable of faster-than-light travel.
• Interstellar travel is still extremely challenging, and is limited in scope.
• They possess fission/fusion-based propulsion.
• They each include passengers of a couple hundred.
  • Said passengers are stored in suspended animation.
  • The passengers are sent on one-way trips to their assigned planet.
• Some limited FTL networking exists between ships.
• They possess limited stores of resources which are given to colonists in exchange for reaching certain milestones.
  • This system shuts down early into the ship's life.
• They are cheaply mass produced with little regard for the outcome nor crew survival.
• Ships are built with the bare minimum supplies and efficacy needed to reach their destination and deposit their payload.
• Colony/Terraforming ships are the only vessels dispatched beyond the solar system.
  • Interstellar logistics/passenger transport is nonexistent.
• Most ships do not succeed in their mission.

What we know about Each World

• Each world was deliberately seeded by an earlier wave of colonization.
• These precursor ships acted as "arcs" for both flora and fauna.
• These precursor ships were remarkably effective at their role, managing to terraform entire planets in the span of centuries.
• These precursor ships may or may not have carried people.
• These ships are nowhere to be found. As colony ships are left to rot once their mission is complete, it is safe to assume that precursors are too.
• Failed worlds are unceremoniously recolonized.

What we know about Earth

• Interstellar colonization efforts are clearly colossal, but rely on a quantity-over-quality approach.
• The "acceptable" limit for Colonist mortality is at or near 100%.
• The unreliable nature of Earth's colonization methods implies desperation, blatant disregard for life, or both.
• Earth has the infrastructure to build massive amounts of interstellar vehicles.
• Earth has the knowledge to break the light barrier.
• Earth has some semblance of its natural biosphere intact, and has some respect for it.

What we know about the player

• They are definitely human.
• They definitely did not sign up for it.
• They received limited training.
• They were likely born/raised exclusively for the task of colonizing.
• They may be cloned.
• They are likely 15-19 in age as of time of launch.
• They have an innate understanding of technology and basic adult literacy, but no notable skills/backgrounds beyond that.
• In terms of technology and engineering, the players seems more competent/advanced than the people who sent them.
• The player is implanted with an intuitive understanding of technology, but not the maturity and experience necessary to use it safely.
• They do not tend to get along with each other.

Conclusions

Earth is pouring massive efforts into colonizing the stars. Although they are mass-producing ships, they seem to have little regard for individual missions' success rates, indicating some lack of urgency. Very little effort is taken to guide colonists toward creating societies of their own, with the exception of basic technical guides and rations. They seem to accept that most missions will fail, and instead bank on sending out enough for a narrow portion to succeed.

They appear to be highly protective, even nurturing, towards natural biospheres. Infinitely more care is given to cultivating Earthlike life than cultivating human societies. This could just be a technological asymmetry, however.