If this is the Soviet Union In Space, nobody's going to be hearing shit. No, not even from the returning soldiers, because they'll all be reeducated first.

It comes to them, through visions by intoxication.

>>14901553
Rough analogue, rough. But even if they can't really say anything, watching reporters fumble might go just as far.

How many people actually died? If not in clear numbers, then in like... Percentage of the population. If like 20% of the country just bit the dust at once, it'll be completely impossible to fake the casualties, because everyone will probably notice that a FIFTH of the population is fucking dead. They can't even realistically say that they like, settled the soldiers on the conquered planet or something, because this is the future and people will be expecting Emails and shit.

Suddenly, streets aren't as crowded as they used to be. Now Hiring signs everywhere. Massive military recruitment drives. Perhaps a government crackdown on birth control, nominally because "we've got a whole new planet to populate."

Prices rise drastically, as merchants who formerly sold their goods to teh military need to find new markets and keep up profits.

"Comrades, victory is upon us! At the cost of 350,000,000,000 lives, and no more than 17 Quadrillion rupees worth of equipment lost, we have defeated the vile green menace, and planted the flag of our socialist republics upon their oppressed soil! Workers of the Great Union, rejoice!"

--This is a service announcement from the People's Party, we would like to inform you that the previous news announcement was misread, the casualties were no more than 3500 lives lost, and 5 billion rupees worth of equipment damaged, much of it repairable. The seditious dogs responsible for this conveyance of misinformation have been disciplined. Please enjoy your day, and exult in your victory!--

(The newscast then continues with a new Anchor, and someone behind him cleaning the wall of something red.)

Government releases mega fertility drugs into the water supply. They offer no explanation, or else something hamfisted about needing to fill up a new planet, or worse still, have them ominously talk about "Spreading the wings of the eagle" more.

They just lost enough people that they actually have a manpower deficit, and they're planning on doing it again... Soon.

>>14901585
About 500 million are actually dead. This is about 5% of the population. But as many 1.5 Billion have been wounded, crippled or left psychologically impaired, which takes time to undo with cybernetics and therapy. Many will still die or remain invalid.

So I guess the total "lost", even if temporarily in most cases, is about 20% of the total population.

Look up France after WW1--2 in 5 men were killed or wounded.

>>14901658
So did this Soviet Union in Space have a whole planet to itself before this, or a part of one?


You could have your crew stumble upon a literal mountain of skulls. As in, maybe half a mile high and miles long.

>>14901687
And the ratio of men to women was so screwed it managed to affect the ratios till only recently.

>>14901658
You have officially been fucked harder than the Turks OR Serbs were in WWI, relative to population. If the military is entirely male, you're looking at a little less than half of all of the men gone. That's pretty noticeable in and of itself.

>>14901658
That's absolutely monstrous. Take that about half of your population are children and old people who wouldn't have been in the war. That means you double you numbers. Four out of ten men in that country got shafted by the invasion, and one in ten died. That means workforce issues, massive spending on social programs (assuming that the country has social programs) to deal with invalids and orphans. After rocketing upwards because of military purchases, economy takes a sudden dive. Whole branches might crash because the invasion exhausted their resources and now they don't have funding to recover. And let's not forget all the bitter people in the streets, clenching their teeth behind fake smiles and waving the tiny flags while the propaganda blares about glorious victories.

>>14901687
Good lord, that's awful. Nobody ever gives the French enough credit for their work in the great war.

>>14901700
It had two planets, and a whole lot of colonized moons, asteroids and the like. Most of the lost population was strewn out throughout the system, essentially filling the same role as agrarian folk in Russia.
And I can dig corpse mountains, though that might be a bit obvious. A good way to hammer the point home finally, when their suspicions are already raised but their not quite certain if it's all that bad.

>>14901712
Serbia was recovering from the two Balkan wars when WWI struck; they lost two thirds of their male population in those two decades, approximately.

From a respected European kingdom to a Stalkeresque wasteland populated by cowards and cripples, in one generation. Must have been hilarious.

>>14901658
Hospitals are jammed full. The government cannot afford to stipend all the wounde soldiers and their families - or if they can, they do so by instituting draconian taxes on the populace.

Even basic medical supplies become prohibitively espensive. Deaths from mundane infection and curable illness skyrocket. Non-conquesty nations refuse to trade with the country.

>>14901754
(I just seriously spent six minutes trying to make this one post. What the hell's going on with my internet here?)

>>14901727
There we go. Now let's be fair, these guys do send women to war. They also militarized the Boy Scouts a few years ago, so they're sending kids in too. Which is less Soviet Union more... Those other guys, but it came up in-game. So maybe less totally lopsided deaths for working age men.

But... Yeah, the way you put it it's very clear. Everyone will know how hard they just took the knot, but nobody wants to be the one to question the Glorious Leader.

Is this that campaign where spess soviet union is being led by some kind of messiah figure who fell into a bunch of goop on their homeworld, and subsequently directed everyone to become the helghast essentially?

>>14901782
Upside, at least they get to know that by hook or crook, they are theoretically responsible for the deaths of untold millions of Turks and Austrians.

>>14901658
>>14901727
There is simply no way to hide losses like those.

You can vomit propaganda over it all day and all night, but the sheer number of people who are not longer there. . they all were somebody's friend, mother, son, wife, father, daughter.

You can maybe keep it in check for a while, but completely hiding it will not work.

>>14901821
Apparently we have a leak. Yes.

>>14901821
I'm gonna need you to rat out the man responsible so that I can torture him with it later. You know. The price of gushing on 4chan.

>They also militarized the Boy Scouts a few years ago
WHY.jpg

>>14901821
This sounds different, if I recall correctly that campaign was a planetary governor trying to figure out what to do with the tiny remaining indigenous population. Lotsa great stuff about 24/7 executions of POWs and a literal lake of blood, but it was about cleaning up the mess from an administrative standpoint, not a "boots on the ground" one.

I've got nothing to do with it btw, it just sounds different to me.

>>14901891
Shit, guess I was wrong >_>

>>14901848
Well basically, I always seem to run into any thread made about this game, even rare as they are. Even the one you made before the campaign even started. I sort of connected the dots. I have become exceedingly efficient at detecting more threads or posts about it, from player and GM alike.

I have to say I remain very curious as to what context they actually play this game in. Like, I am largely aware of the exploits of the nation they are a member of, but I don't entirely understand what role the PCs serve in directing its actions. Or hell, what their characters are. I got the impression one might be some kind of high ranking G-man special operations director type figure, but thats about all.

I mean they sure as hell aren't playing soldiers on their side. Unless you have character switching going on.

As for contributing to the topic, you might want to elaborate on the culture of the world they just captured a bit more. It may suggest some possible means by which they could express their collective grief in some more odd and unsettling fashion. Mass suicides, destroying all their works of art, ceasing to speak a certain language etc.

oh god feminism OP.

So many dead men means women stepping up to fill the empty spots and for keeping society working. You could lots of fun emulating the feminism movement except with all the horrors of the war.

>>14901872
The answer is the GM (you?), a player, the GM, a player (who may or may not be the same one as before. I don't even know what kind of character they play.) and now you again.

Seriously I'm surprised you don't remember more of your own exploits here.

>>14901913
>some possible means by which they could express their collective grief in some more odd and unsettling fashion. Mass suicides, destroying all their works of art, ceasing to speak a certain language etc.

Outside of the Bible and cheap fiction, nobody seriously did that. That's Final Fantasy grade drama.

>>14901891
Oh! Oh ok, that's fine. This was probably six, seven months ago? We've run through this campaign with different people, and a different GM twice now. Me and two others are the permanent members, we recruit newbies to try and adjust it, get a good feel for how they react. Gets better each time.

The guy you're thinking of, almost certainly the Spook, ended up saving most of the blue folk by converting them to the state religion. (That was back when they were blue. Might go back to them being blue, green didn't evoke enough emotion. ) Anyway, he was a good kid. Too good for this kind of campaign, we set him up with the pathfinder group, he's doing much better.

>>14901943
I constantly have to hold myself back from speaking the extent of what I know about Glorious Leader, despite being incredibly curious as to how much deeper the rabbit hole goes than that.

>>14901913
It's a complicated schtick. Last time we got involved with the war effort, because we were those kinds of dudes. This time, they universally dodged the draft and started profiteering. They got sucked into a plan so horrifying I will not speak of it here, but which the government is basically willing to throw any amount of money at them if they can make it succeed... Because it will save the country.

But I don't think they fully understand what 'saving the country' means at this point. They seem to think it means exploiting the new world's resources faster. But that's not the problem at all, the problem is that there's not enough people to USE the exploited resources. I must convey to them that the only possible motive this project can have is somehow producing more blood. Getting more people. Fabricating them out of nowhere. I want them to understand what they're doing before pulling the trigger, and this is a good first step.

Have you read much fiction from people who lived in the Soviet Union about life back then? There was the party line, and then there was what those who were observant knew. You're going to have a schizophrenic populace in which some people carry the burden of knowing the price that was paid, some people believe the party line, and others struggle knowing a dark, evil secret is behind the conquest but can't quite put a face to it. And no one is allowed to talk about it. And factual sources are going to be hard to come by, so a lot of misinformation will be going around.

So, some of the public is going to notice that something is up. How is this news going to be shared? Imagine how this undercurrent is going to run through your world's public discourse. Messageboards, chatter in cafes, scuttlebutt at work --- there are going to be people talking about this. Are they going to trust the party line? What kinds of urban legends are they going to come up with? This kind of disaster is going to have far-reaching effects for the communal psyche, resulting in strange trends and rumors. Imagine how kids, especially those who are just old enough to understand the magnitude of what occurred, are going to respond. Suicides, mental illness, survivor's guilt, extreme obsession with military conquest --- this society is going to have some fucked-up people as they try (and fail) to grapple with this knowledge.

One question is where all that human meat went. Sure, they'll say most casualties were incinerated during orbital pod insertion, but we're still talking about tons of dead flesh
scattered across continents. There are going to be jokes and anecdotes about finding dead bodies on the conquered planet for a century or more, and then there will be rumors about lucrative "reprocessing" contracts. After all, it is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks...

>>14901533
So, what is the story behind that image? It's dead germans... but WW1 or 2? I kinda assume it has something to do with Stalingrad...
>>14901943
>Blue
>Green
So you are racist towards the Reds?
>>14902020
DAMN YOU
Now I want to hear what the fuck is going on....

As for the thread:

Maybe you could make them encounter survivors with Shell Shock... If you can convey their mental scars it'll make them aware of the horrors of war...

>>14901968
Oh don't worry, I know what Rich's deal is. Dumbfoundingly, nobody else seems wary of him, they assume he's just another political snake oil salesman.

>>14902025
Right out of left field, comes a man with a solid block of good advice. And you've hit it dangerously close to the head too, what with the human meat business. Part of the PCs' plan (even if they're not quite sure of it yet) involves using a lot, LOT of human corpses... And near-corpses. For science.

>>14902020

I call rapefactory.

>>14902056
And to add to that:
You might want to get a few 'Unpersons'.
Basically people that got erased out of history. People that not only have been killed but also vanished completely. People where your PCs might know existed but will stumble upon the realization that there is no proof of them existing anymore (except maybe some printed media they find somewhere which has been overlooked)...

Just look up Unperson on wikipedia.
Also the soviet union (allegedly) lost a lot of Cosmonauts in their early days and officially the 'probes' never were manned. But still broadcasted SOS in Morsecode or Biometrical data... or cries for help.

Maybe you can have some sort of 'What happened to Special Landing Force Unit #731?'
-> There (officially) never has been a SLFU731... however the wreckage of their dropships could still be found at whichever god forsaken place they crash landed after being used as meatshield for a ground-based anti-spaceship barrage...

>>14902056
Believe me, the day will come soon when we will tell all of /tg/ all about it. We're on campaign 2/3 before we have our compiled results. Three extremely different GMs, running the same campaign with three sets of fairly similar neophytes. The story is going to be a thing of beauty.

>the only possible motive this project can have is somehow producing more blood. Getting more people. Fabricating them out of nowhere.
>After all, it is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks...
>involves using a lot of human corpses... And near-corpses. For science.

I have just been chilled to the contextual bone.

>>14902099
And now I feel silly, because this guy put it much less obtusely.

>>14901810

They don't even need to discover corpse mountains. Something clean, efficient, and faceless can deliver a dramatic punch, too. If someone in the bureaucracy kept accurate records, you can steal a page from Nazi Germany. A Soviet Union with computers would surely love to keep a tabulation of the dead and their effects. Are they recycling bodies? How many tons of gold were recovered from personal effects and surgical implants? If they were incinerating human corpses, a few lines from a planetary energy budget showing how much energy is being expended in the burning of human remains can say a lot to someone with a little bit of deductive power. How does that energy consumption compare with that of various industries? Imagine a memo describing the disaster: the conquered planet is spending as much energy on disposing of human remains as it is on growing and processing food for the survivors and colonists! Fortunately, recent advances in plasma torch technology have led to promising developments in the mass disposal of organic matter and the reclamation of trace elements therefrom, and it is expected that new reclamation facilities will be ready by this time next year. (This, of course, allows the players to ask why the government would need the means by which to dispose of so much organic waste.)

>>14902103
Delicious.

>>14902099
>>14902129
Hey. Hey you two. Stop being smarter than my players.

>>14902056
I think it's either Stalingrad or Leningrad. I remember the guy on the bottom left there with the striped knickers.

>>14902134

Don't feel sily OP, I still think it seems like cool campaign and setting, whether there are rapefactories or not.

People mentioning France and Serbia as having lost a lot of men in WW1. Puhleeze.

Look up Paraguay in the War of the triple Alliance. More than 3/4 of the male population of Paraguay was killed.

>>14902146
This is a good idea, especially in light of the kind of players I've got. They're corporate types, and their specialty has basically been in knowing how to scan tax returns and the like for this kind of stuff. Good angle man, good angle.

>>14902146
Oh man...
I just imagined someone finds a dosier about the energy supply of the planet...
50% Plasmaturboencabulators
20% Fission/Fusion
10% Geothermal/Solar

And the rest is not addressed directly but rather just implied to be a special energy source that is never quite enclosed but always referred to as 'Plan 9' or whatever.
As it turns out 'Plan 9 Plants' are to be replaced very soon.
Digging deeper reveals they are basically incinerators for human bodies (or Green/Blue bodies or whatever) that power steamturbines...

>>14902209
Yes but France and Serbia are (or in case of Serbia, were) serious, civilized countries that had some kind of impact on mankind. Who gives a fuck what happened in Paraguay.

>>14902241
People from Paraguay, I assume...

>>14902208
Oh no, no I'm not worried about it. And rape factory is a really harsh way of putting it.

I'd liken it more to... What is it those Kriegers use in 40k, the artificial wombs? Just remove the artifical part. They're all organ donors after all, and the law says it isn't human unless it was born from a womb. Very important, the letter of the law. Less so the spirit.

>>14902217
I was concerned for a moment, but then I did some thinking on it, and I'm fairly confident this would work. Human bodies don't burn too well unless they're added as fuel to an already significant blaze, but once you get the bones going they carry their own weight. Or sufficient desiccation.

Yes, the human reactor project is go.

>>14902241
Serbia's mentioning in this thread actually fills me with a sensation of dread. One of the other three permanent players/GMs is a Serb himself, and it seems like just mentioning the country draws him forth. Like speaking of the devil.

And I know he's on this board periodically, so hearing the mention of his country is like hearing that ominous John Williams music.

>>14902329
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLO4acMTCM

DUN DUN DUN DUN
Unless you meant the Jurassic Park one.

>>14902350
No no, Jaws theme, that's the one.

>>14902217
You. You sir. You are a blight. And a genius.

You can go a long way without showing anything about the actual conflict. Show instead what happens to people who try to talk about the conflict. People being dragged out of their cubicles at work for talking a bit too loudly around the water cooler, bloggers being blackbagged, etc. The simple lack of voices speaking contrary to the state will in and of itself be so bizarre that the players will grow suspicious.

>>14902265

Secret statistics indicate a post-war baby boom far in excess of what the existing population could manage, even if every female in the homeland was pregnant at once. With triplets.

Statistics on losses due to defects, nonviability, problems perfecting the surrogacy program, that kind of thing. Be sure to mention the batches lost due to contamination of nutrient solutions or imperfect technology and the stage of foetal development. Research on the optimal number of infants per gestation cycle, with statistics analysing the balance between output and safety. At first all the documentation is extremely vague about what is being "produced", with suitably banal euphemisms. "Units", "batches", etc. Only later by reading between the lines does it become apparent that the figures are talking about mass-produced human beings.

Plans to raise the next generation on an industrial scale. Factory farming infants, as automated as possible due to the limited manpower available. Indoctrination/education programs, kids' TV and music aimed at fostering obedience, loyalty, hatred of whatever enemies exist. An entire generation of children raised with minimal human contact, taught to obey, to work, to fight.

Projections based on expansion of the artificial womb project - with a portion of the female infants set aside to be the next generation of womb donors, and studies of the minimum age at which they would be viable for such. Studies on the use of hormones to speed up that process and have them ready sooner.

>>14902492
I can feel my testicles attempting to climb back into my abdomen.

>>14902511
(Eegh. You and me both.)

>>14902492
Alright, DAMN dude, I'm going to start writing this one down. The opportunity for ominous intercepting Emails and innocuous status reports that lead to horrifying reevaluations is just too good to pass up. Hot damn but I love /tg/.

MY GOD I LOVE /tg/ SO MUCH!!! OP, this is an insanely interesting campaign concept.

>>14902543
Thanks. And thanks to /tg/, it's just gotten considerably more interesting. You guys are the best, seriously.

>>14902492

Further clues: factories dedicated to the production of necessary supplies. Saline solution, blood plasma substitute, antiseptics and antibiotics, surgical tubing, pumps, filters, life support equipment sufficient for vast numbers of coma patients. Vary this depending on how much of the "donor" is required for the womb to be useable.

If the donor is "pruned" to the minimum biological components necessary (less meat means less nutrients required to keep it alive - efficient!), what happens to the extraneous parts? Medical waste dumps heaped with nothing but arms and legs, surgically excised. Or maybe that's a waste of perfectly good protein, and the surplus limbs are recycled elsewhere - transplanted to injured war veterans? Soylent Green?

To maintain diversity, genestock is harvested from the war-dead. Each child can be told about their genetic father, a patriot and a hero who died on the battlefield for the glory of the homeland, an inspiring example that they are destined to follow.

The surrogacy facility itself is a model of efficiency. Clean. Sterile. Antiseptic. Automated systems to ensure that the donors are kept healthy and productive. Further systems to dispose of those that are not. Occasional glimpses of past lives among the silent rows of pregnant meat - a tattoo with a lover's name, a faded scar from some childhood misadventure.

Otherwise they are docile, unresponsive. The facility is silent but for the occasional beeps and whines from the automated systems, the hum of fluid pumps and steady, regular whisper of thousands of bodies breathing in unison.

>>14902645
>>14902492

This is disturbing as fuck.

>>14902645
Proposal for additional horror: Stumble upon a facility in which something went awry. The power went out, the subjects awoke, and due to a glitch in the alert system, nobody was sent to deal with the problem for several weeks.

Here's a few things to think about...

Precious resources are often destroyed in order drive up profits, because a resource that is perceived to be lacking will always fetch a higher price.

Humans are a resource that can be exploited too. What if there were humans that existed solely for the purpose of producing other humans? Think battery hens, but with people.

One of the things I find most horrific about war is the way a person's humanity is suppressed so that they can carry out atrocities. In our world this is usually done via means of indoctrination, propaganda, and instinctive training. This is imperfect because a person's humanity is not entirely suppressed, and you end up with things like post traumatic stress disorder.

What if the soldiers used to invade this planet were altered in such a way, that they will never be able to return to a normal way of life? Soldiers that have been altered though psychosurgery so they feel no compassion, no remorse, no fear. Where satisfaction is only gained by following orders, where the mission they are tasked with is their only reason to exist.

What if that mission was psychological warfare? Special units created with the sole purpose of instilling terror in this planet's population. Humans engineered not just to torture and kill, but to take pleasure in it. Imagine if a soldier in one of these units made it back to earth, where the mission didn't end on that world, where they brought the war back with them?

I'm interested in this as well; I'm great at portraying the horror of war in the most brutal, abject manner possible while it's going on ("Get some! get some!"), but I'm at a loss for how to do it afterwards without seeming heavy-handed.

>>14902711

Constant sedation is an unnecessary expenditure. Removal of higher brain functions is a much more effective long-term solution. Studies comparing different methods (physical excision of tissue vs. wires inserted and heated to cauterise tissue vs. tissue sterilisation by targeted high-dose x-rays).

Which means that if something goes wrong the donors will not awake. They'll just lie there and slowly succumb to malnutrition, dehydration, or even infection and predation by vermin if the facility's sterile seals are compromised.

>>14902025
> One question is where all that human meat went.
After an event like this, I reckon one of the first colonization tasks would be to clean up all the bodies. (I assume that includes both invaders and defenders? Who lived there before the invasion?) That's going to be an industry unto itself, and will require significant logistics to pull off. It's entirely possible they would use forced labor to haul and incinerate the bodies. The ash might be used for fertilizer, and the phosphorus might be reclaimed if the colonists are using industrial incinerators (rather than just piling the bodies on a heap of wood and gasoline). Anyway the logistics of this is going to leave a paper trail.

>>14902492
>An entire generation of children raised with minimal human contact, taught to obey, to work, to fight.
1984 kinda looms behind this concept.
The indoctrination would encompass such things as 2+2='everything but 4 and 4 at the same time' (to train them to accept and never question 'facts' presented to them) and strict - yet senseless- rules (maybe even rules that contradict each other partially) that are punished with draconian measures (to teach them to listen to commands and always obey the rules no matter what that means)

I like your idea, but these artificial humans, would they live like slaves or the clone troopers in Star Wars? Maybe the blunt would be kept like cattle and trained like dogs to make the perfect army, never disobeying, never asking, never retreating, always fighting. Or to be the perfect workdrones. And a few would be put into 'orphanages' to help build up society.

And yet another creepy thought:
Depending on the culture there might be a shortage of female babies in families. I don't know how it would be with endowments but for instance: In many asian countries, the elderly are looked after by the oldest male offspring, so when you only got female babies, this means you will get in trouble when you hit a certain age. So it's better to 'not have' a female baby and abort (or later kill) female infants.

This shortage of 'normal' women would make it a tempting idea to simply flood society with 'female orphans' (that actually are from breeding factories and artificial wombs) just to not suffer from an overpopulation of men...
>>14902364
Does that mean you liked my idea?

What the fuck am I reading

>>14902803
Goddamn right I like your idea, I haven't seen an idea that wasn't awesome in the last hour. I'd be busily praising you guys if I weren't equally busy taking furious notes.

>>14902778
expanding on this anons great post

They've decided to introduce a cost-cutting program where they stop using sedation or don't remove higher-brain functions either. They use them as is.

And a factory where the humans are *completely* sterile. As in no gut bacteria or anything so they have completely vulnerable and stunted immune systems. All it then takes is one normally harmless diseases which then would leave a pretty nasty sight for any player characters to encounter.

>>14902721
>Special units created with the sole purpose of instilling terror in this planet's population.
"A Perfect Day for a Jungle Cruise" OH FUCK....

>>14902020
> They seem to think it means exploiting the new world's resources faster. But that's not the problem at all, the problem is that there's not enough people to USE the exploited resources.
Another problem in any top-down economy is that resources are subject to MASSIVE misallocation and waste. The economy is supremely inefficient. Add to this the fact that wars are so expensive, and you should be experiencing shortages of food, medicine, housing, anything made of metal, anything with a long or complex production cycle (like electronics), etc. To the point that it might not be uncommon for people to die of malnutrition, disease, etc. And those problems aren't going to go away. The long, slow process of colonization might *ease* some of those problems in the very long term, decades down the road. But in the meantime, it's going to keep happening.

Also, parties that benefited from the war are going to be reluctant to demilitarize the economy just because the war is over. They might have a stake in turning the colony into something like a cross between a military base and a prison, with the military controlling the every move of the colonists.

>>14902887
It took me a while to realize they weren't wearing red t-shirts.

Well, one way to hit them is to assign one of the PCs to the consription project to make up for the losses, and give him/her an absurd quota. Have on the assignment sheet that they're "emergency recruitment officer #<Something very high>" So that they can do a rough math estimate without outright shoving the numbers in their face.

>>14902803

It's more like "Brave New World", to be honest - no natural births, infants are gestated in vitro and "decanted" rather than born; omegas, those destined for menial low-grade roles are deliberately brain-damaged during development to remain dull, unimaginative and obedient.

Given that those in charge of the surrogacy program effectively have absolute control over the upbringing of potentially vast numbers of citizens, it's likely that they will do a lot of experimentation to find the "optimal" methods of indoctrination - the ideal is to produce individuals who are loyal, obedient and productive, but who can still interact with natural-born members of the homeland. So barring any military caste (who will be raised as utterly obedient but sociopathic fighting machines), most individuals will be raised on an idealised version of the homeland culture, taught to respect and venerate the government, to love the homeland with all their heart, to be utterly dedicated to doing whatever it takes to ensure that their wonderful, wonderful homeland will prosper, whether that's by working in the fields, toiling away in an office job, driving public transport, whatever.

They are truly blessed to live in the glorious homeland, grateful to be given the opportunity to be part of such an amazing culture, whole-heartedly patriotic and unquestioningly supportive of the government. They are utterly sincere in this conviction, in marked contrast to the cynical and weary populace who've lived through the war and learned to read between the lines of official propaganda. They're not just saying it to avoid the Thought Police, they really do love the homeland.

>>14902945
Good times, with 1984 and BNW.

>>14902887

That's where I got the idea, definitely the creepiest episode of GITS.

>>14902994
It's a cool idea. Given what we know about OP's civilization, I wouldn't bat an eye to hear they've got torture battalions.

>Implying this thread will not be archived
Anyone got a good idea for a name?

Sweet Jesus Christ, it's like Christmas came early and decided to spend the week.

Recruit 4 to 10 THAT GUYs from your FLGS, and force your players to beat them in combat before the session resumes.
Make note of every PC that dies.

Inform the players that 100 MILLION characters die to take the planet.

>>14903041
I am confus

>>14902994
One of my favorite episodes for its portrayal of Batou... The poor bastard went through hell.
>>14903016
I think a look into history will reveal quite some other stuff to be useful...
Unit 731 springs to mind. They're to the japanese army what concentration camp doctors were to the germans. Only their existence has never been aknowledged by Japan (and the USA I think) and the stuff they did would have been harsh, even by Nazi-Germany's standards...

Someone earlier mentioned a potential feminist movement stepping up to take power after the demise of so many men. Fuck that. If you want mass movements, instead:

Mash up what's been said about rape factories n' such with polygamy on a massive scale. The richer the man you are, the more wives you have, so that the possession of women themselves becomes a status symbol with the most powerful of men easily 'married' (read:controlling) hundreds of women.

Then throw in the feminist revolt.

>>14903027
"Dr Frankensteins Horrible Human Resource Relocation Joy Camp Ride"

>>14903037

Christmas comes every day when you use Tastex!
Yes Tastex, the perfect food additive. Makes any meal gourmet sensation. So why don't you treat yourself to a Christmas dinner tonight with Tastex.

>>14903151
And after the feminist revolt has been dealt with, there is a great influx of Unpersons and new wombs...
Whelp...
What is space russian for 'we created a monster?'

>>14903151
Actualy femenist movement wont step in. There is no reason for that. Women wouldnt feel any need to fight for thei rights and position, those rights and positions would be automaticaly granted, as society still needs someone to fill those positions, once occupied by men. So this ehhh female 'liberation' would come easy and unnoticed.

>>14903275

Unless the men still expect to hold the same positions as before the war. Or invalids come back from the war and are pissed because women took all their jobs.

>Code sportmand

Meanwhile: the agencies tasked with setting up the surrogacy facilities are not entirely in step with the agenda of the homeworld government - or their agendas diverge after a time. Which is bad news for the powers that be, because the surrogacy administrators have absolute control over the upbringing and indoctrination of a sizeable fraction of the next generation, and can instill them with their values.

Eventually the baby boomers will be of age, and begin acting on certain deeply-embedded views and motivations. The older generation is out of touch. They have become decadent, corrupt. They don't really love the homeland, they're just in it for the power. They are betraying the homeland's proud legacy, squandering the victory paid for by so many lives. There is a groundswell of support for change, and a young and charismatic member of the boomers is swept to power by his brethren - who may, depending on the success of the surrogacy program, outnumber the natural-born population. They begin purging those who are insufficiently devoted to the homeland, establishing education programs to pass on their values to the younger generation, surrogate and natural-born both. This is good for the directors of the surrogacy program, but only as long as their agenda coincides with the worldview they have instilled in their charges. They may find themselves similarly declared enemies of the homeland and purged, until only boomer culture remains.

And then, convinced of the supremacy and superiority of their homeland, bolstered by the surrogacy facilities inherited from their creators, they begin to look outward. Interplanetary conquest becomes viable, fuelled by industrial birthing factories and unquenchable patriotic zeal.

>>14903448
This is why you never build anything you can't kill quickly in at least four ways.

Say OP, if you're still around, can I steal some of this for my personal writefaggery?

>>14902963

That's what Orwell looks like to me in that picture.

>>14903573

If I wanted to write science fiction, I would ask the same thing.

As I don't, please write the series of the millenium.

OP mentioned a Krieger-like artificial womb concept. I know this is rather late, but look into the manga: Akumetsu. I suggest reading it since it's a fantastic series, but it has some concepts you may want to look into.

THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MANY SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES, READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL!!!!!

Without getting into the plot, just know that there is a (terrorist) organization consisting of one, and only one, member. But there are a lot of him. He uses an advanced cloning 'vat' thing that takes biological material and using nanites or something to produce exact replicas of human bodies (his, in this case). Since this process obviously has no way to reproduce memories, a second procedure was added in which (and this is some Star Trek level bullshit technobabel) memories are copied on a *chemical/electrical level. They wear this thing on their head that drills into their brains and makes a copy of the chemicals and electrical impulses in the brain at time of death. These chemicals are reproduced artificially and injected into the clones' brains. They can also share memories by taking a pill with similar chemicals, but with less than perfect results (2-3 day max). To 'make it work' you try to remember what has happened to you recently and you find things there that weren't before.

If you dumb down the effectiveness of the process, you could have the country mass produce troops by recycling their dead ones. They'd need to train a few troops to perfection, copy their memories (which would kill them, of course), and implant the clones with them. Discounting wargear, the process allows for perfectly capable combat troops that need only minimal training (a refresher course) after a 72hour incubation period. By copying memories of field troops, they could make troops that already know how to fight the enemy.

The memory sharing thing would also be a neat way for them to learn... unpleasant things (or to quickly gain skills)

>>14905407

Actually, if you tweak it right you could have the government train a bunch of people to be physically perfect, and another group to be the perfect soldiers. Clone the perfect body, implant the minion-minds, presto! Scary as fuck super soldier. Just be sure to make the 'perfect soldier' group be trained from birth/childhood a la Sparta (or something similar). If you never have a change to have humanity it is impossible to gain it later.

This would probably work best if it is a plan 'in the works,' one of the many horrifying concepts the government is pursuing.

Okay, listen OP. I've got a book that will be right up your (campaign's) alley:

Brave New World

It's got EVERYTHING you need:
-artificially produced humans,
-random genetic makeup (they take embryos from hundreds of women and semen from hundreds of men, mix them all together, and take out the fertilized results)
-predetermination: certain chemicals/conditions added or denied to the embryo/fetus during various stages of development resulting in controllable levels of intelligence
-caste system: stupid ones do manual labor, smart ones run factories and control the government
-wide scale, government sponsored (forced, in some cases) recreational drug use.
-government controlled media and entertainment

The list goes on.

Remember, OP, until the Russian Revolution there were TWO factors that lead to just about EVERY revolt/revolution and in some cases war: 1) food. The 2) slightly less important, too much free time (you don't think about complaining if you are VERY busy).
The Russian Revolution lead to a third factor: ridiculous battlefield losses. The Russians lost so many people in WWI that SERFS decided to quite the war and rebel against the Czar. But remember, this might not have happened if they had been well fed. They were not.
Think of Rome, if you keep the people fed and entertained (or busy, if that's your thing) you stay in power. When people are not entertained (or busy) they start to grumble. When they are starving they revolt.

Just look at the middle east, Libya, in particular. Gadhafi ruled with an iron fist for 30+ years and the people were fine with it. Recently, however, the price of food in the region has been skyrocketing and what happens? VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

A well maintained food supply is the number one factor of control for a totalitarian government.

>>14905691

Well it appears that someone has already mentioned Brave New World. Blast.

I really ought to read more thoroughly before posting.

Bumping with an observation:

There's going to be a vastly increased use of robots in the immediate future to make up for the drop in population.

Probably also a lot of research done on how to accelerate aging so as to get the New Soviet Men and Women from infancy through puberty in the shortest possible length of time without physical or mental problems. Expect that there would be a number of failed test groups that would have to be disposed of before they find a formula that works.

Also expect fertility drugs to be quietly provided to all and sundry. If homosexuality is accepted to any degree, assume that pressure will be placed on gays to "lie back and think of England", or at the very least to donate sperm/be artificially inseminated.

Sorry gents, I fell asleep while taking notes. I doubt many of you will read this, but you have my eternal thanks. I hope to someday be as much help to any of you as you've been to me here.

>>14908242

Godspeed, OP, godspeed.

>>14908242
I'm curious about the background to all of this. What was the original reason this war started? Was any other nation observing it? How exactly did the war play out? What's happening to the side that lost?

If the conquered world was in a different system from the Union of Soviet Spacefaring Republics, then the official end of the war might not be the real end of it. Even if the enemy homeworld was conquered and completely pacified (as in, no guerrillas hiding out in remote areas), there might still have been a few outposts in the rest of the system that were bypassed or simply not found during the main part of the campaign. Clearing the rest of the system could take years, kind of like how there were still Japanese soldiers from WWII trickling out of Pacific jungles into the 1970s.

People will be dying from unexploded ordnance, forgotten minefields, toxic debris and other detritus of war for years. Entire regions of the planet will look like Passchendaele and the Somme, and there will still be empty lots and ruined buildings in the cities for at least a decade or two after the war.

>>14908402
The war was started between them and an alien empire, which was itself undergoing enormous internal strife due to relying heavily on what amounts to feudal houses to provide its military. The space-soviets, who were called Chiron, if that is any help, lost many people in the war, but were able to push the aliens out. Then, 20 years later, they followed the enemy back to where they came from, to take revenge.
The world taken wasn't actually the Empire's property, but rather an auxiliary species that was recently promoted into a House of its own as a reward for good service. Because the Empire-Proper was basically fighting a civil war... When the space-soviets showed up to take its revenge, nobody showed up to stop them.
It was a massacre. I'm told that that story has been relayed on /tg/ before. There were observing nations, but the ones who cared had no way to really intervene. Earth was in its own war, the colonies were mostly weak and blind, and other nearby alien powers are distrustful of the alien country which were harmed, far more than they are of humans.

The idea of persisting rebels, though, I like. Poor bastards fighting an unending war that everyone else has forgotten. Guys living in bunkers for the rest of their lives, waiting for an enemy tank to drive into their line of sight so that they can detonate the C4, etc.

>>14908631
>Chiron
Easymodo to the rescue! I've found the last thread.

http://archive.easymodo.net/tg/thread/13873133#p13873640

What system are you using, good sir?

>>14908751
This is definitely our setting, but it raises a lot of questions. A lot of uncomfortable questions.

>>14908774
Currently, heavily modified Cyberpunk. We've gone through multiple systems, some fully homebrew, some less so. GURPS is next on the list, but we might not need it.

OP, you mentioned earlier that the war casualties were more than enough to attract attention... why not have the secret human factories exist earlier, so most of the dead were factory-made cannon fodder? Have the PCs stumble upon war journals written by 'normal' soldiers who are also in the war, secretly stashed and stuff like that. And then finding out that these human factories have existed long before the war.

Also, what if the space soviets integrate non-humans in the army? As in, they take a dog's brain and put it in a robot body or scary science stuff like that. Factory-made humans purposely grown to be de-limbed and implanted into warmachines. Or maybe a gruesome Beowulf Cluster supercomputer made by linking factory-made human brains, not computers...

>>14908631
Well, the alien empire is likely to start getting dogpiled. Its internal strife will get worse as its tributaries realize it can no longer protect it. And the space-Soviets are still at war with them, because revenge won't be complete until the alien empire is destroyed and the space-Soviet flag is flying over the alien Reichstag.

Also, assume that the Chironian General Staff is now studying after-action reports for the entire campaign and analyzing how to improve planetary/interstellar invasion tactics. Also, if they're smart, they're working on counters for those tactics, for use if somebody else tries to invade them the same way.

>>14908833
Ah, IG. My fellows speak highly of you. In this case, I think having most of the dead being pod people might lessen the horror of the enormous casualties.
Then again, the idea that the government was already planning on replacing some of the population with their action figures might also strike a chord.

>>14908833
Seems more likely that the human-factory would have started at some point in the last five years or so of the war, as the manpower reserves back home ran dry.

By this point, lessons learned during the first iteration of the project are starting to be applied to the next generation of models. Figure that we're heading from a proof-of-concept model into the alpha testing stage now. Depending on the aging thing, beta testing can start in another five to ten years. Twenty to twenty-five years on, the factories will be ready for mass-production, with only minor QA issues left to work out.

In other words, just in time for the next phase of the Great Patriotic War to commence.

Assume that the blue aliens are currently being evaluated for their own factory apparatus, and that at least one bluepeople-factory would be constructed in order to compare the results against the human-factory.

The best part of that is that you can sell it to other nations as an attempt to restore the species that you nearly exterminated to its former glory, while quietly diverting attention from the indoctrination of the New Blues and the handing over of the Old Blues you don't have any use for to the Blue Mongols. Plus a few slaves and specimens sent home, of course.

Resurrecting the Blue culture is part of the creation of the New Blues. Loyalty to the State is implanted alongside it and above it, but not replacing their culture; as long as they ultimately serve the state, things like language or traditions are irrelevant. And studying this will provide reams of useful data to apply to indoctrinating populations you didn't breed yourself.

>>14909198
Holy God, I hadn't considered making more of the blues. Greens. Whatever we're calling them today. Creating a loyal, fanatical generation of the conquered species would be a morale boost like no other. Granted, we put less emphasis this time around on the aliens and more on the humans, but it'd compound well with everything else.

>>14908921
On the other hand, the pod people thing is just because you need to repopulate your star systems quickly. The indoctrination part is something that most of your population should have no major problem with, and less so as the people who were adults pre-war die off. They'll be proud of their children for being born as New Soviet Men and Women instead of having to overcome the faulty teachings of pre-war society first.

>>14908833
>As in, they take a dog's brain and put it in a robot body

What you did there, I see it.

>>14909353

>>14909376

>>14909382

>>14909395

#5 was the first pic, I saved that one out of order on accident.

>>14909404
The interesting part is, they got as far as this picture.

>>14909404

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

>>14909440

>>14909473

That's all folks!

>>14909455
The death of billions is a promotion for the guy who developed the RKKV what did it.

>>14909432
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk

>>14909293
Use it as a contrast to the shattered ruins of the Old Blue civilization, and the million or so Old Blues who were left alive in its wreckage when their homeworld finally fell. Have the PCs get to visit a Blue Cossack camp, and be offered the use of Old Blue slaves that the Cossacks claimed as spoils; this is on top of getting to watch all the casual unpleasantness that gets inflicted on members of a slave race.

Bump for late-night /tg/ to get a look at this.

Grimderp.

>>14910042

The best kind of derp.

>>14910042
There's a little, little bit of derp. That's just how /tg/ rolls, but I think this is something worth monitoring.

Elegen/tg/entlemen, the Bene Tleilax thank you all for your unwitting service. Facedancers will be replacing all of you shortly.

>>14910042
A little, but then again none of the real-world nations that have suffered casualties like this in war have also had the technology and political will to use unorthodox strategies to fix their demographic catastrophe.

>this thread

>>14910102
>>14910059
>>14910365
Having actually read the thread now, I must retract my grimderp. This isn't actually much worse than anything that has happened in the real world. Accept my apologies, gentlemen.

If your players ever glance at the stock market, point out that the stock prices of companies that deal in cremation, bodybags, etc, have been skyrocketing.

>>14908751
Gentlemen. This time, I truly believe it is the end of the thread, but I have something to report. This Easymode archive I have been presented shows deleted posts, and upon reading it, I noticed two identical posts.
One by the Op, and one by John Galt, the latter deleted, clearly being a mistake, perhaps autocorrect rearing its ugly head. Now I know this man, he was the first game's GM, and most certainly not the player in question. I do not know his motives for relaying this tale from another group member's perspective.

Something is afoot. The Serb is deceitful, it is in his nature. Be wary of future stories regarding this setting, because clearly, Dusan is playing god.

>>14912306

The plot thickens.

>>14905407
the scariest thing about this, for me, is the idea that when a common soldier learns something new about the enemy, (a new weakness to exploit or whatever) or does something heroic . . . .
he gets special leave to "go home" and is never seen from again.
In reality, he gets straight up mafia abducted by the government and murdered so they can take his knowledge and improve the clone soldiers just one little bit more.

Of course, this being a scary as fuck space russia, they do this even to soldiers who learn the most minor details about the enemy, things that wont even help all that much in the grand scheme of things, but it doesn't matter.

>>14913799
Not during the war; you don't want to make your troops less effective while you're still using them.

But now that this phase of the war is over, expect that a surprising number of combat veterans are going to commit suicide, have unfortunate accidents, etc.

Or, alternatively, are going to be replaced by themselves, except in freshly cloned bodies that were then carefully altered to be exactly like the state of that veteran's body when his mind was destructively uploaded.