#WORLD52 WEEK 11 SUBMISSION:
BATTLE BROTHERS &
THE PROTECTORATE OF MAN
Hey Voyagers! It's Week 11 of #WORLD52, and I'm dropping a little lore for my Grimdark Future Transhuman Drama Webcomic-
For those of you who've been following all my latest updates (including the ones on my PATREON...), BROTHERS: A TALE OF TREACHERY & WOE is set in the universe of GRIMDARK FUTURE, which has a rich lore all of it's own! So, while our tale takes place far from the SIRIUS SECTOR of most of the narrative of GRIMDARK FUTURE, I still think it serves us well to get in a little framing.
Especially around our Transhuman Protagonists!
-------------------------LORE BEYOND HERE-------------------------
While the Charybdis Sector is separated from the Sirius Sector by many months of travel (even by the most expedient and unstable Warpgates), the influence of THE PROTECTORATE OF MAN is felt everywhere across the sector. The Watch Charybdis and the Brotherhoods of the Four Watch Detachments
To understand The Protectorate of Man's present, one must understand it's past.
Even before humanity was thrown into the Sirius Sector against its will, mankind was at war with itself.
A singular figure, known as the Founder, had overthrown much of humanity's governments, chasing an idyllic vision of humanity uplifted through genetic modification and dedication to their own galactic supremacy. This Founder created the first Battle Brothers: transhuman supersoldiers clad in technologically advanced warsuits, and enhanced by the cutting edge of combat gene mods. With these soldiers, he began to spread his doctrine across the territories and colonies of humanity, backed by the boot and the blade of his growing transhuman army.
But humankind resists would be dictators on impulse, and where some saw the Founder's vision as a beacon of order and promise, others saw authoritarian ambition and fear. Even among the Brothers themselves, the divide emerged, splitting the transhuman supersoldiers between those who felt the future of mankind was worth any sacrifice, and those who felt that humanity without choice wasn't humanity at all.
In their final battle space battle, the Loyalist Followers of the Founder chased down a fleet of refugees fleeing for deep space, only for both fleets to find themselves pulled through a freak wormhole and dropped into the alien expanse of the Sirius Sector, scattered and disoriented far from the light of Sol. The Founder, slain in the final moments of the battle, his consciousness & memories copied into a cloned body, surveyed the chaos of this new scenario, and set about making the most of the opportunity forced upon them over the new few millennia.
The new nation-state the now-called Conduit created is the modern PROTECTORATE, an empire built on mathematical precision, the unrelenting pursuit of scientific advancement, and a militantly human-supremacist mindset that often make foes of the many non-human sentients that call the Sirius Sector their home.
Citizens live in the shadow of soaring towers of shining glass and fluttering banners, their industrious lives turned towards the furthering of their culture and their military supremacy. Even play and education, while encouraged, are built on a framework of competition and ambitious self-honing, of winners and losers and testing oneself against one's limits to chase the glorious future the Conduit sees for them. And while the gene-sculpted citizens of the Protectorates find themselves living healthy lives in the light, outsiders and non-humans those who find themselves under the banner of the Conduit's empire find themselves relegated to the edges of society, controlled in movement and forced to suffer the oppressive consequences of the civilizations authoritarian dreams.
The backbone of this civilization is the Battle Brothers, whose many fleets and detachments of transhuman supersoldiers continues to be it's primary source of military power. Focused, hyper competent and having long left the limits of their humanity behind, they embody the hopes of the Conduit: a humanity perfected through science and will.
The term "Brothers" is technically something of a misnomer, since the ranks of their detachments are not mono-gendered, and many human women, intersex & transexual volunteers serve in their ranks with pride and distinction. Their forces are divided into Detachments, autonomous forces with their own internal cultures, iconography and styles of warfare. While all the Brotherhoods serve the vision of the Conduit and heed his call to war and battle, they have significant autonomy in how they achieve their goals, and use that strategic latitude to pursue their goal in their own ruthless ways.
Despite the thriving of the Protectorate, the Conduit and the Battle Brothers still dream of the light of Sol, and their banner soaring over their homeworld. The odds of making such a journey are suicidally slim, for even all these years later, the path back to their home in the Milky Way is still hidden, and so distant as to be laughably impossible to even attempt to trip, even if they did know the way. So, the Conduit commissions detachments of Brothers to explore the borders of the Sirius Sector, and the uncharted places beyond its edge, in hopes it may one day lead to a path home.
So the Charybdis Sector was explored and settled, and for hundreds of years, endured as an outpost of the Protectorate, ruled by the Brothers assigned to the Watch Charybdis as their fiefdoms, controlled and run in the ways they saw fit. But pride comes before a fall, and the Sector plunged into civil war and chaos as rebellion and local non-human empires struck at the isolated colonists. It took centuries to send out reinforcements, and by the time they arrived, only the Arachnia Astra remained of the original four Watch detachments, and the sector was .
It has been hundreds of years since the reestablishment of the Watch Charybdis, and now the detachments of the Knights Numenarie, Venators Titian, Guardians Culprite and Arachnia Astra seek to rebuild their holdings in the sector. Yet they are far from the heart of the Protectorate, and so far from the light of the Conduit and the shining halls of Lucipol, and in the shadow of the yawning maw of Charybdis, the Brothers will find their purpose questioned, their faith tested, and their beliefs shattered.
Only time will tell if the Watch will hold the sector, or if the worlds of Charybdis are truly as cursed as some whisper.
-------------------------LORE END HERE-------------------------
Thanks for joining me in this week's #WORLD52!
I'll be back next week for WEEK 12, my Voyagers!
