New Player Guide

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What Is DS11?

Simply put, DS11 is a science fiction setting that's a spinoff of New Frontiers, set somewhere very far away from the events of that sim. We have permission to use their lore and have modified it slightly to align with this shifted focus. It's run by a small group that originally wanted to continue playing our faction elsewhere after it officially left NF, and so most of the relevant lore is going to be about that faction, the Ruz'kahni Directorate. That does not mean you need to know everything about the Directorate to play on DS11, since it's set on a civilian station that operates as an open port, and in fact it's encouraged for players who don't know much about the Directorate to play characters which also don't, and try to find out as much about the culture and government in character as possible!

As development continued, we became aware that there were those outside of our little group who were interested in what we were up to off on our own, and rather than keep it private, our attention turned instead towards opening it up to the public. The sim is still a work in progress, as is this wiki, but we're doing our best to keep players updated on what that progress is. As we iterate our way to official opening and full release, we maintain a development blog to try and remain transparent about our hopes and efforts.

Ultimately, what we're trying to provide through DS11 is an environment that will allow you, the players, to create your own stories as well as interact with set-piece events that will influence them. We want to give you the feeling that you're experiencing the strange and the alien firsthand alongside your character, and that you're in a living and evolving world that responds to your character's actions and decisions. To that end, as station-wide events unfold, we will be adding them to this wiki and keeping it updated to align with current events.

No, But What Is DS11?

Distant Sands 11 is a massive, mobile space station owned and operated by The United Families, a clan of the Ruz'kahni Directorate. It's been deployed along a contested border zone between Clan Kimmigani, a clan of outworlders, and their hostile, distant relatives of the expansionist Alganna Eternity. The Eternity seeks opportunities to expand, and while a united Directorate would probably win an open conflict, there is neither attitude for war nor much unity. There is a political crisis ongoing, Rokhandans of all species are still tired of the prospect of repeating the War of Ruz'kahni Survival, and even on the local level, all Directorate efforts are strained just handling the refugee crisis that the contested border has caused. Hungry and tired people of all species flood in and out of the station, and so do those who would prey on them.

Oh, and the station is kind of made of meat on the inside. Don't worry about it.

What Isn't DS11?

• A competitor to New Frontiers. We're not telling you that you can't bring your old NF character here, but the factions and divisions and events on Onia do not have much if any relevance to the Directorate, let alone the events of Distant Sands. To bring them here would be similar to an officer of the law in 19th century Hong Kong being deeply emotionally invested in a children's baseball game in the American midwest.
• A sequel to New Frontiers. While most of our initial players come from there, there is no prerequisite that you must have done so, too. This is a new, self-contained sim with a new focus and previous exposure to the setting is not required.
• A PvP sim. PvP is of course allowed, but we've taken steps to make it a more controlled occurrence.
• A sex sim. There are areas for NSFW roleplay, but it's best to keep it in private. There isn't a hard rule about this, but there may be IC consequences otherwise.

So What's Different From New Frontiers?

Actually, not a whole lot in terms of background lore. Much of the NF setting exists just as it did, only much less emphasis is placed on human or human-aligned culture. Since it takes place on a space station run by a more active government than the WBA, things are somewhat more orderly than they were on Onia, although there is still room for some chaos. The biggest actual change is just that settled space is much smaller and the Directorate is no longer packed into far corner of a galactic arm. Other than that, the setting of New Frontiers is more or less intact, but on the far side of the Directorate from us and so just not very relevant.

The Secession War

Better known in the Directorate as the War of Ruz'kahni Survival. An important event, as the memory of it is recent, but Directorate participation was limited, and was almost entirely against the Poliesu Grand Tide. Any kind of heavy Directorate involvement came to an end after the Praxis incident, where several rogue clans developed genomic weapons and deployed them to the system of Praxis. While Praxis was a military target, this strike of course had an extremely heavy civilian cost, and forced the Grand Tide to surrender, thus largely ending Directorate involvement in the war. The Coalition-Federation conflict is largely viewed as an internal, human clan war that the Directorate has no place getting involved in. The Directorate claims to have destroyed their genomic weapons after disbanding these rogue clans. That may be true, and it may not. Some of these weapons have come into Coalition hands, though the Directorate blames espionage and traitors while the Coalition claims they were given them entirely legitimately.

The Directorate, Briefly

The Directorate and its clans have their own slang, food, political systems, etc. To characters from typical sci-fi settings, Directorate characters are supposed think strangely, lack certain human biases (eg some Feni eat worms as part of their traditional cuisine), have biases of their own that humans generally lack (eg against Thinking Machines), and we want to make the discovery of all these differences part of the experience for new players. However, what characters new to the Directorate could reasonably be assumed to know:

• Feni (aka Rokhandans to most noncitizens) are the majority species, and most of them resemble various canines. They are not, however, related to canines.
• There are several subspecies of Feni.
• The Directorate is just the central oversight body for largely-independent clans with a great variety of cultures, political systems, and sometimes technology or biology. A plurality of clans exist exclusively for certain outworlder species to give them political representation. The clans are effectively separate countries, and many of them boast population numbers in the tens or hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions.
• Directorate citizens have a reputation of being benevolent snobs towards non-citizens, and effectively believe themselves to be the most advanced people in the galaxy. This is sort of true technologically and socially; in most of the Directorate they have more or less eliminated starvation, war (kind of), disease, etc. That does not mean they have done so out here on the frontier. You can expect them to be friendly towards you the individual, even while they believe that their society is the ideal one and the one you come from is rather silly.
• Feni tend to think in terms of family-style collectives and are not particularly individualistic on the whole. They also tend to be anti-democratic as a rule of thumb, believing it to be equivalent to mob rule.
• Directorate citizens and Feni in particular tend to be optimistic and future-oriented, often stereotyped as peppy or even naïve. Progress is a core element of the culture and psychology, both as a goal and a process. They are also technocrats who have made a majority of the advancements unique to the setting such as RRCT.
• There is not really such a thing as a clanless citizen. Every Directorate citizen is a citizen of their clan, which in turn has a seat in the Directorate's separate political process. Sometimes, people are granted provisional citizenship for a limited period of time while they select a clan to apply to, such as when they first join a Directorate organization such as the RDEFSS, but that's only valid for a short period of time.

Character Creation

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• As an adult sim, All characters must be adults, and mature both physically and mentally for their species. As such a 'I'm an adult but I'm basically a child' is not permitted, nor is 'I act an adult but am in a child's body.' To translate, all persons must be the equivalent of 18+ with no exceptions.
• Characters should be of reasonable size. While alien life can come in many forms, you will have more and more issues navigating the environment as a larger avatar and realistically we should consider 9 feet tall or 270 centimeters should be about your absolute maximum. While there is not an exact minimum, and a very small outworlder or thinking machine could be possible, they should not be a 'micro' or similar in design.
• Avatars should not be blatant fetish material. As an example primary and secondary sexual characteristics should not be ludicrously oversized.

Your Character

• As mentioned above, it's encouraged (but not required) to create or modify a character so as to have no connection to New Frontiers. This can be as simple as reframing Onia as some random frontier world your character spent some time on, rather than Onia itself, or it can be a full rewrite. This is not a hard rule and we don't intend to enforce it as one, but we want to reduce the chances of everyone from somewhere on the other side of known space having met previously.
• When you make a character, ensure they are not yourself. We cannot police people playing their fursona and don't intend to try, but please be aware that you are not your character, and try to ensure your character's emotions are ideally not your own.
• Not all species of sophonts are covered in our list, this is what outworlders are for. We would encourage you to run an outworlder concept by staff and if we like it enough, we may add it to the list of species. Outworlder is currently application only and we'll toggle the species on for you via a TICKET.
• If you intend to play a mercenary, assassin, soldier, etc., be aware that weapons that can cause a hull breach are banned IC. The hull is pretty strong, but this effectively rules out bringing anti-materiel weapons aboard, and lethal weapons generally should be smuggled or hidden. The big exception to this is melee weapons such as swords or axes, as many clans consider these weapons symbols of ones station and are generally not banned or confiscated.
• Consider just why your character is here. Yes, it's an open port, so anybody can come aboard (as long as they don't exceed size restrictions), but it's best to give some thought to what business your character has out on the frontier of known space in the middle of a border dispute and refugee crisis. If you find yourself struggling with ideas, consider playing one of the refugees as a sort of "default" option.

Playing a Directorate Character

Absolutely! Anybody is free to play a Directorate citizen, but if you are playing a long-time rather than new Directorate citizen, please be confident that you're somewhat knowledgeable about Directorate culture first, in order to maintain the intended atmosphere of strangeness. That said, there isn't really such a thing as uniform Directorate culture, as the clans are very pluralistic. While you're free to select your clan from the list, we also welcome new player-written clans! If you have one, please submit your clan writeup for approval via ticket.

The Factions of DS11

The Main Players

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Directorate Forces

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The Selaa Dynasty

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The Syndicate

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The Smaller Players

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Station Staff

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The Unaffiliated

refugees n shit

Player Groups

ticket that shit