Strange matter/Tiberium/Ice-Nine

[MateuszS]

In general, highly toxic, self replicating substance. Some kind of superweapon that contaminates infected planet tile by tile and kills/mutates inhabitants. When all tiles are infested, planet turns into toxic one. What about that? Player (human or AI) could develop that weapon (from Scourge remains?) to destroy enemy planets in galactic scale attrition warfare.

 

[JETZAaren]

That'd be cool, go well with a virus crisis also.

 

[The_Red_Star]

In general, highly toxic, self replicating substance. Some kind of superweapon that contaminates infected planet tile by tile and kills/mutates inhabitants. When all tiles are infested, planet turns into toxic one. What about that? Player (human or AI) could develop that weapon (from Scourge remains?) to destroy enemy planets in galactic scale attrition warfare.

I actually thought this out myself.

Take a look:



Toxic phlebtonium isn't quite inseparably integral to the space opera genre, but its two most iconic examples; Phazon and Tiberium from Metroid and Command and Conquer are cool enough that I thought that something inspired by them could serve as the basis of a crisis.

The first inklings of the issue could start rather early in the game; perhaps midway through when you or someone else discovers a planet seeded with the substance through means of FTL meteor sent by the progenitor of the substance (let's say a living planet, the very first planet in the galaxy corrupted by the substance) some time ago. The substance has caused significant ecological disruption, turning wildlife exposed to it incredibly dangerous and hostile, but the substance itself has tremendous usage for well...everything. It's a power source that can put zero-point energy to shame, it can be used as a mutagen to create deadly super soldiers, and like Tiberium it can be easily used in nanolathes to create just about anything. However the more it's used the more it corrupts a planet, and both mechanical systems and life forms infused with it will also show signs of corruption with the occasional supersoldier becoming a berserk monstrosity.

However it's just so good that it's hard to not go farther with using it everywhere, spreading it across the empire(s) that discovered it and intensifying the level of corruption throughout the galaxy. Eventually you start getting things like Brotherhood of Nod esque cults dedicated to the substance that if not appeased through essentially giving them the keys to society will end up starting a civil war; or take over the empire entirely as the dominant faction if allowed to. This starts phase one of the crisis where the cult or corrupted empire tries to aggressively spread the substance to everyone whether they want it or not, pushing what they can do with the material to ever greater heights, though this makes everyone who rejects the corruption turn on the "carrier" civilization.

Phase two begins when some form of life form native to the progenitor world emerges and takes over all of or part of a civilization, creating another "carrier" civilization, though this one has greater control over the progenitor world itself to the point of being able to direct the planet's FTL meteors and controlling the corrupted life forms. Like the Vehement or Aberrant they are quite likely to be hostile to the cult, which wants to use the substance to launch some sort of ascension while the controller entity wants to use it to dominate the galaxy. If an espionage DLC is released before this, the controlling entity would be much more difficult for special forces/bounty hunter/spy teams to kill than the cult leader who would probably be a more Kane like being in that they rely mostly on charisma and genius rather than personal power to manage their cult if not nearly impossible (and quite possibly neither stays dead for too long when killed outside of the appropriate contexts like Kane and Dark Samus never seem to stay dead until all Phazon in the universe was destroyed for the latter and I'm pretty sure nobody's ever figured out a way to keep Kane dead).

The third phase comes when an extragalactic civilization heavily tied to the substance (to the point of being life forms based on it) determines that the galaxy is sufficiently seeded with the corruption to begin the harvest. This civilization is hostile to both the controller and the cult and cannot be meaningfully negotiated with, as the harvesters don't really care about whatever objections carbon/silicon based/synthetic life forms have to the Harvesters' operations. The harvesters of course focus on spreading and mining the substance and destroying any civilization that would try to interfere with the harvest.

Ending this long running crisis of course requires cutting the serpent off at the head, you must find some way to destroy the substance. To deal with the Cult (if you aren't yourself the cult), you have to thoroughly militarily crush them and ensure no POPs that are members of or are sympathetic to the cult have access to the substance. To deal with the controller you need to engage in a questline to find the progenitor planet after dealing with heavily corrupted seeder planets to launch an assault against the living planet and deal with the controller entity once and for all. To deal with the harvesters will require forcing your way through the primary threshold gate to launch a direct attack on the hub of their operations in a special solar system outside of the galaxy to persuade them to leave this galaxy alone, with your forces then high tailing it back to the galaxy before the harvesters can send in reinforcements to crush the intrusion in their home galaxy and before the gate back home closes and traps everyone you sent (which would be counted as losing all forces there as they're lost in another galaxy with no way home with retaliatory strikes on their way).

Attacking the harvester hub would be a challenge in and of itself as not only are there some doom stacks waiting there at all times (along with heavy fortifications around the hub) and fleets coming in from the rest of the harvesters' multi-galactic empire to get ready to transfer into our galaxy through one of their threshold gates, but the moment the Hub is attacked enemy reinforcements will continually pour in the longer the battle goes in to deal with the intrusion. So you really need to push through fast and hard and land a bunch of armies to destroy the hub before turning back. It's meant to be a bastard and a half of a battle to win as sort of a punishment for letting the levels of galactic corruption for getting this out of control. Luckily for you, once the hub is destroyed, said multi-galactic civilization decides your galaxy isn't worth the bother and leaves you alone since a war of attrition with a Type III civilization that controls more galaxies than you control planets when it cares to go into total war against you instead of just using harvester security fleets to protect their investments is a losing proposition every time.

In essence in a game with the corruptive substance, you are offered tremendous power at the cost of possibly damning the entire galaxy to madness and addiction to a poison that has an overpowering directive to spread; to twist life into degenerate mutants and turn whole worlds into radioactive hellpits consumed by the substance. And the people who spread the substance in the first place are going to be collecting the return on investment sooner or later. Meanwhile the Galaxy tears itself apart as some see the substance as merely a tool but the path to ascension and godhood, while others fall under the thrall of a malevolent predator born of the substance who wishes to dominate the whole galaxy with it. And unlike most other crises, you yourself could become part of the problem if you choose to surrender to the addiction rather than fight the substance.

The only thing I'm not sure on is what to call it without sounding totally dorky or obviously borrowing from Phazon or Tiberium's names. Exteritite (from one of the latin terms for corruption) mayhaps?

 

[MateuszS]

Addictium maybe?

 

[The_Red_Star]

Addictium maybe?

That kind of falls into the "silly" side though.

 

[MateuszS]

Name is quite unimportant and can be derieved from any language with -ium suffix. More fun is hidden potential: crisis that can be supported by various sides - opportunists, Nod-type cultists, later mutants themselves and (when significant part of the galaxy is corrupted) original creators of the mineral. So if you don't know that minigng, weaponizing and utilizing this substance can cause galactic scale attrition war and later bring creators to your galaxy, you would use it as innocent strategic resources.

 

[The_Red_Star]

Name is quite unimportant and can be derieved from any language with -ium suffix. More fun is hidden potential: crisis that can be supported by various sides - opportunists, Nod-type cultists, later mutants themselves and (when significant part of the galaxy is corrupted) original creators of the mineral. So if you don't know that minigng, weaponizing and utilizing this substance can cause galactic scale attrition war and later bring creators to your galaxy, you would use it as innocent strategic resources.

Ah I forgot to put in a forgotten esque faction of "stable" mutants who resist the cult as well as the Dark Samus type "controller" entity and the Harvesters. Thanks for reminding me of that. It'd certainly add some moral complexity (or would if casual genocide weren't so popular among the fanbase :V) as they could actually be unambiguously helpful if treated kindly, but of course they need the substance to survive.

 

[The_Red_Star]

I also thought on this further and figured that the cult system could piggyback on the faction system to some degree. I.E certain pops will have an attraction factor towards joining the cult, particularly POPs who are downtrodden (low living standards, slaves, unemployed POPs, POPs with low happiness in general) and the POPs of vassal empires as generally speaking people who are oppressed are the first to seek solace in cult organizations or in demagougic movements. A.I empires who are on economic hard times or are militarily weak and threatened by other empires or had recently been defeated in war are also more likely to embrace the substance then they are to reject it in the hopes of turning their fortunes around. Obviously to make a cult work properly it shouldn't be immediately obvious which POPs are part of a cult if you do not choose to embrace the cult.

You could go a number of paths for embracing the material. You could simply go the GDI or Galactic Federation route and make more limited use of it, acknowledging its value but trying to contain it still; which does limit how much benefit you can get out of it but doesn't lock you out entirely. This does however risk internal issues as inevitably some POPs set to harvest the substance will either mutate or undergo Exteritite madness where prolonged exposure can drive even Synths or Hive minded POPs insane due to the energies of the substance frazzling their systems. POPs who undergo Madness essentially become hostile armies on the spot like synths during the A.I revolt, while mutants simply gain some new traits and gain attraction to mutant rights factions and perhaps to cultist factions. A corrupted planet would also gain some modifiers to represent the immensely more dangerous wildlife, the decaying of the ecosystem as the substance xenoforms the planet, and gives you choices to either try and contain the spread to manageable levels (varying degrees of which), try to destroy the substance or just let the crystal consume everything.

The higher the level of corruption, the lower the habitability of the planet is for all non-corrupted forms of life. Tomb world preference and the irradiated trait provide some extra defense and Mechanical POPs can last quite a bit longer than meatbags but even this can't last forever as the material is not simply radioactive but also able to absorb and convert/mutate life and other forms of matter and corrupt machinery. However the more corrupt the planet is, the more tiles have access to very powerful resources that can generate huge amounts of energy, vast amounts of minerals, boost your research, and gain a whole bevy of goodies to buff your military and economic capability.

Mutated or "ascended" (artificially altered to accept the substance) life of course has perfect habitability on corrupted worlds and mutated and corrupted POPs are just better than those not yet corrupted. They're better fighters, they're smarter, they live longer, they reproduce faster, they're more productive and need to eat less. This is all meant to be extremely tempting, but of course it is essentially a deal with the devil as the more you embrace the substance the more corrupt your worlds become and the bigger of a target you become for the harvesters and the more you risk losing POPs to the Controller when they pop up. And of course, the Cult will still target empires who embrace the substance but reject the cult's teachings for the crime of heresy. And if you do embrace the substance, non-corrupted empires will like you a hell of a lot less (with the intensity of the Malus depending on how deeply you've embraced the poison) and want much less to do with you, not even trade with you for fear that you might spread your corruption to them. And simply being fellow corrupted doesn't guarantee friendship either. All empires that have embraced the cult could be part of a special federation just for them of course.

Fallen and Awakened Empires of course will be very, very much not okay with the corruption and its spreading. Xenophiles will fear its destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity, Spiritualists will balk at the corruption it does to your psychic essence, Materialists will be terrified of the dangers of the science you're unleashing, and Xenophobes will react with absolute d i s g u s t now that even being near you risks contamination. Empires joining the cult or becoming corrupted near a Fallen Empire should awaken it in a hurry as they go into "CLEANSE EVERYTHING" mode. Though I do wonder if even Fallen and Awakened Empires should be corruptible, the way that not even the Chozo were safe from Phazon in Metroid Prime and how Tiberium was the first step towards the ruination of the Hyksos (the makers of the Tacitus) in C&C.

 

[MateuszS]

So, overhaul of the factions (to allow slaves to join and create secret cult like in Monks&Mystics DLC for CK2)? Actually, this would be perfect, gradually increasing threat for the galaxy. Not some kind of demon/alien invasion/AI revolt, but high risk-high reward choice (initially, boost to energy and minerals production, later techs regarding supersoldiers/weapons; side effects - gradual destruction of planet surface, social instability, galactic war with other empires/cult/extragalactic invaders). Actually, even simple techs regarding Exterite could alert everyone, because "what if these scientists are making a WMD?". Obtaining Exterite missles or something like that (de facto planetary destruction system, as many hit planets will slowly die, before cure could be developed) will be like IRL Cold War with nuclear weapon developements on steroids. And later, possible Creator invasion/cult messing somewhere/maybe mutant revolt? I'd be better than simple "massive alien invasion".

 

[The_Red_Star]

I also thought of a few new precursor event chains that could go with the Corruption pack that can foreshadow what Exteritite does to planets and civilizations.

First are the Zenthuri. Some seventy million years ago they had created an empire that spanned much of the galaxy, ruled by wisened Technocrats who constantly pushed forward with science and technology, though they had some enemies such as a Hive Minded species now lost to time and a Confederation of Civilizations sharing a religion. They had great knowledge but believed themselves able to handle anything after having managed to make peace with their A.Is, conquer disease, and manage their network of vassals and were preparing for synthetic ascension.

The Zenthuri were a reptilian species with notably large brains and slender bodies that prompted them to invest heavily into A.I as a means of labor; and some of their mining drones uncovered an unusual substance. They named it Luminium due to its intense glow, and were astonished by its amazing properties that promised to revolutionize their production, their energy generation system, their science, and even their own genome.

So they started to make heavy use of it, replacing zero-point energy generators (or whatever's the top tier reactor if Paradox takes notes from the mods that expand the tech tree) with it due to it blowing those generators out of the water power wise. Their Synths are fuelled by it, their ships are propelled by it, and their cities are powered with it. Some concerns from other technocrats are overruled as alarmist nonsense and they start using it to enhance their own bodies. However some of them start to experience Exteritite madness and ecological groups among the Zenthuri express concern at how the substance is xenoforming their planets and even their habitats. However the pro-Luminium faction is starting to become manically obsessed with the substance, like an addict looking for their next hit.

Eventually the Anti-luminium faction sends a delegation to take the issue up with the Pro-faction face to face only to find to their horror that the leaders of the Pro-faction have become a degenerate cult of addiction. Aghast, the leaders of the Anti-luminium faction start a civil war against the corrupted, but even with the help of the Confederation and the Hive Mind they struggle to defeat the corrupted and are gradually being forced back and some malevolent entity the Zenthuri name "Xel-Quan" ends up taking control of many of the corrupted, which starts to drive the alliance to breaking point.

Out of options, the Uncorrupted Zenthuri, the Hive Mind, and the Confederation deliberately unleash the Unbidden with a number of huge breaches in spacetime, sacrificing the entire galactic cycle to stop the corruption from becoming terminal. The Unbidden and the corrupted fight to mutual annihilation, with the last unbidden fleets striking at the corrupted homeworld; the battle ripping apart the solar system; leaving debris, asteroids, and a broken artificial planet as testament to the devastation.

The second would be about the Uluthra, a Molluscoid civilization with great psychic power and amazing technology that existed some thirty million years ago. Their civilization gently guided others to more peaceful and democratic forms of society, taking others under their wing. They essentially created a peaceful hegemony over the galaxy where most of it was living in glorious Utopia. Then one of their protectorates uncovers the substance which the Uluthra simply call "the Poison".

The Poison begins to spread as others start to notice its usefulness, and the Uluthra start to grow concerned as they debate how to deal with the spread of the substance. They try to allow for a contained spread, but a cult to the substance starts breaking quarantines and starts causing trouble forcing the Uluthra's hand. The Uluthra and the Cult of Radiant Ascension engage in a long running war with the Cult starting up again just about every time it seems defeated. The Uluthra start researching ways to try and deal with the corruption, creating codexes containing all their research on the substance, but in time some of them become corrupted.

One of the event logs would detail an Uluthra researcher who ended up being corrupted by the substance, with their final log being nothing more than "THE POISON IS ONE, THE POISON IS ALL" when they realize that the substance is alive and some of it has corrupted their bodies. The later logs show the Utopian spirit of the Uluthra has largely died, but some portal opens up at the edge of the galaxy. Things fall apart very quickly from there as the Uluthra and the Cult are crushed by "Azhranth", their name for the harvesters.

All attempts at contact are met with incomprehensible requests to "please file a formal complaint" as the mining security forces are simply engaging in standard protocol and the largely automated (although not with machinery we'd recognize as machinery) Harvesters don't even recognize the Uluthra as sapient life, requiring any request to stop them to have to go through a bureaucratic system that the Uluthra can't reach.

The Uluthra homeworld is found to have been scoured clean, but the scans make it clear they did not go quietly. The Harvesters collected all of the substance they could find, leaving some fully corrupted worlds and planets terraformed to be fully supporting of uncorrupted life behind to seed a future harvest; and then promptly left.

 

[MateuszS]

While I'm not sure about new/upgraded Precursor chain (as current are a bit bugged), it's nice reference to Mass Effect universe (cycle of genocide, Harvesters-Reapers). Combining lore from various games (C&C, ME) and add into Stellaris...
Hmmm, maybe unique Exterite Precursor chain? "We've found traces of ancient empire dating 50 000 years ago. It seems that their demise was preceded by combination of civil war, pandemy and full scale alien invasion." Then events about strange substance, alien invaders, all that stuff. Their homeworld (or last refuge/some kind of "easily accessible colony") is full covered with Exterite. After that you could either use it (knowing that it can be dangerous) or maybe destroy.

 

[The_Red_Star]

While I'm not sure about new/upgraded Precursor chain (as current are a bit bugged), it's nice reference to Mass Effect universe (cycle of genocide, Harvesters-Reapers). Combining lore from various games (C&C, ME) and add into Stellaris...
Hmmm, maybe unique Exterite Precursor chain? "We've found traces of ancient empire dating 50 000 years ago. It seems that their demise was preceded by combination of civil war, pandemy and full scale alien invasion." Then events about strange substance, alien invaders, all that stuff. Their homeworld (or last refuge/some kind of "easily accessible colony") is full covered with Exterite. After that you could either use it (knowing that it can be dangerous) or maybe destroy.

I'd go for rather older than 50,000 years ago.

The harvesters aren't working on an exact timetable, so much as they're coming to collect whenever they sense that the substance has reached a certain level of spreading in the galaxy. This would be marked with a hidden counter that ticks towards terminal corruption; enough for the harvesters to deem the galaxy is ready for harvesting. This can be accelerated with certain events, and the cult's leader might in true Kane fashion; attempt to manipulate the Harvesters by tricking them into coming a bit sooner than expected by doing something catastrophic to fake the signal. The controller entity would probably be found contained by some long dead empire or a fallen empire, waiting to be released to enact its own plans for domination of the galaxy through control of the corrupted and the mutated while corrupted empires and the cult duke it out with each other, with mutant uprisings, with the mad, and with the uncorrupted.

I'd also like to see something like the sentinels form at a certain point; an order devoted solely to containing the spread of the substance and to dealing with mutants, cultists, corrupted, and dominated and the harvesters when they come. This would provide an additional ally if you choose to spurn the corruption but also another enemy should you deign to embrace it or open your arms to the cult. Some additional leviathans could also be added here, such as the faster than light meteors used by fully corrupted planets to "reproduce", which are actually more like a bizarre spaceborne living organism with a sort of organic jump drive. While any amount of the substance can gradually corrupt a world, a world impacted by a Seed of Corruption will be corrupted significantly faster. If you choose to purge the seed via special project, you would then have to deal with special event armies as the seed defends itself with corrupted organisms; including a special very heavily buffed guardian army picked from the strongest army on the planet. If the event armies win, the world will be quickly lost to the corruption and will eventually turn into a fully corrupted world that will eventually spawn more seeds to worsen the spread of the material even more.

When the controller arises, the controller will end up taking control of most of these fully corrupted worlds, making a proper empire out of them and of empires that have succumbed to terminal corruption but have not embraced the cult. The controller is a much more openly hostile force than the cult and seeks to control the entire galaxy to spread its corruption and in doing so establish its ecosystem as predominant. Whereas the Cult and normally corrupted empires merely utilize the system to augment standard technology, the controller basically just straight up uses the substance outright. So instead of using Exteritite power sources to augment a laser it would be using exteritite to just straight up fire a deadly beam of the energies it emits like the Hyperbeam in metroid prime 3. The harvesters would use even more esoteric weaponry such as weaponizing various strange effects of quantum mechanics and distortions of spacetime.

Also I'd like for any pack made based on this idea to take a cue from the soundtrack of the Metroid Prime trilogy and make heavy usage of sine wave whistling.

It'd be a really nice touch.