Judicial Order

[AeternusDoleo]

Right, after a helpful Judges member pointed me to their lore reference page, here's some observations.

From a player standpoint:
- Your goal of "Reuniting the colonies" is novel. A sort-of UN charter to lay some ground rules to allow humanity in Sirius to operate as a whole in times of need coincides a lot with the Order's mission statement. However, some of the factions that would agree with you (Blood Dragons, Bundshuh) are caught as your enemies under the "Bring order to a chaotic universe / stem the tide of piracy" statements. Those goals are in conflict with eachother since the House goverments themselves are not in favor of unification. So those two goals can't be combined in the Discovery GC setting.

- Your faction will need to make a choice. Be an universal lawful mercenary group focused on counter-piracy - which would put you in the same role as the Bounty Hunters Guild, but with a moral high ground claim which could lead you into problems when corporations are proven to be without morals. The Reapers of Sirius are going on a similar tour, so that idea isn't new. OR be a politically oriented group which tries to use it's influence to unification. This would have you become allies only with political idealists. House megacorporations have no interest in unification, and neither do their governments which would see their power wane in favor of a pan-Sirian government. This would end up pushing the Judges in an unlawful direction for most houses.

- Consider changing the title of your faction lore pace to "The Judicial Order (The Judges)" so that the forum search will pick up on it when players search for "Judges". I did that, and was unable to find your lore page until one of your members pointed it out to me.



From a dev standpoint:
Your faction history has some SERIOUS issues that are not unifyable with the DiscoGC and vanilla lore.
- The early years of Liberty did not see any notable piracy, and the Liberty Navy oversaw safety for it's colonies. Unless the Judges were historically a branch of the Liberty Navy (or Order of Cincinnatus and later LSF) they would not have been involved with orbital safety in those times.

- They would also not have been able to oversee Valhalla unless they would fall directly under the highest ranks of the Liberty Navy. If they wanted to break away and go rogue at any point after being involved with Valhalla, the Liberty Navy would have forcefully brought them back into their fold. The stakes were simply too high at the time to let people involved with Valhalla walk away, possibly to sell the secrets to other houses.

- The Jump Gate projects from Valhalla started around 125 A.S., planned by the Order of Cincinnatus. The first successful test was in 130 A.S., the first functional gate (Texas/Alaska) was finished in 180 A.S., and security of these gates was still a MILITARY affair, not some civilian space militia. If your faction was no longer under the Liberty Navy control, they would not have been involved with jumpgate security AT ALL. At most, they'd be an organisation similar to the Liberty Police Inc., tasked with planetary safety and crime surpression. Given that the LPI eventually became the main police contractor in Liberty, that would suggest the Judges got edged out of that market.

- There was no market for any space militia/PMC until crime began to increase around 380 A.S. - Your faction could not have seen "widespread growth" as claimed in your lore before that time, and even after that it is unlikely since again, the LPI became the chief police force in Liberty. (Note: Your writeup, with a few tweaks, would make a good LPI backstory).

- The "Library" base you mention would be virtually impossible to maintain within any house. It is plausible for it to have been set up in one of the vanilla Independent Worlds - or even on Planet Curacao. The Boormann Treaty would have guaranteed it's independence from any house. Keeping it's location secret, given the amount of resources needed to build up a base in a time where there weren't even any lanes, is very implausible.

- This war in Bretonia in 317 A.S. I can't find any historical references to. Is that a fabrication? If so, your faction lore attempts to set the back story for several Bretonian factions, which is basically the lore version of powergaming. Official vanilla lore has Liberty bailing Bretonia out of a financial collapse around 271 A.S., which should have stabilised the house.

- You set your faction history as being allies of the Blood Dragons. This conflicts with your anti-piracy mission statement.

- The post-80 year war mission statement of the group simply being focused around the protection of a single library is rather implausible to me: Only academics would seek to use such a library, and FTL communication had been made possible since the Liberty Communication Corps established FTL buoy commlines between the houses as early as 118 A.S., so any publically available knowledge would have been accessible on any planet or base already. If the Judges were hoarding classified intel (especially if it was stolen from Valhalla) the Liberty Navy would have sought out and destroyed them utterly as Liberty's existance depended largely on the Valhalla monopolies at the time.

- Hiring the "smartest scientists" and "best pilots" is ambiguous. A quantum physicist wouldn't be helpful in xenoarcheological studies for instance. Clarify what fields of research you were following. "All research" is not acceptable. Doing weapons research or any research that could potentially threaten the security of the houses would draw the attention of said houses.

- Please tell me that this "Project Leviathan" reference is not a cheesy attempt to get an SRP superdread, or claim to be the constructing party of the Zoner Supercarrier.

- Being "attacked by an unknown military force" in 720 A.S. that destroyed their base? There are only a few organisations at the time who had the capabilities for such an attack. The only unknown ones would be the Order and the Nomads. Nomad infestation and subsequent annihilation of a large portion of the Judges by the Order is plausible.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.