[PaladinX]

Will you explain why you are giving this name to the mod (e.g.: what is the general theme of the mod about?)

Well, since you asked...

I'm calling it the Haven Project because it's based on a gameworld I call Haven, or Synergy. One of the factions in the game will be the Haven Brotherhood. I call them factions because they're not necessarily different races. The Haven Brotherhood and the Terra Nova Republic are both human factions, just for instance. There's also the Hundred Houses of Hadrian who won't be making an appearance in the mod.

Basically the background goes like this:

Humanity was born on the planet of Haven, and had been a galaxy-spanning empire in ancient times. Earth was just one of those colonies. The empire collapsed in a bloody civil war which threw the entire Galaxy into a dark age that took millenia to climb out of.

The whole history is very complex, but suffice it to say that Terrans found a way to reopen the Haven network, which are planetary gateways which allow travel between the worlds that made up the original Haven empire. Eventually they find Haven itself.

Renewed contact between the former member worlds of the Haven empire allows the knowledge that several cultures have developed with regards to the gateways to be brought together, and from the whole mass of research, their workings are finally understood. Giant jumpgates are built in each solar system, allowing starships to travel between them, and portals are built to new systems. The Terran government, now a monolithic republic, begins to colonize new worlds, and many established worlds eventually join in this republic.

Earth becomes the capital of a new Galactic Empire, but this time in the form of a Republic. A few worlds decline to join, and amongst them is Haven.

Haven has been through countless power struggles in its history, not the least of which was the civil war in which the gate network was rendered nonfunctional. In time, they finally abandoned government altogether. They are effectively an anarchy, but they follow a monastic order known as the Exemplars, or the Haven Brotherhood. The other worlds which chose not to join the Terran Republic mostly adopted the customs of the Brotherhood.

Terra allowed them to go their own way because there was no compelling reason to do otherwise, and because the Brotherhood had a reputation as fierce warriors (They are a warrior order, think Shaolin monks, or Jedi Knights).

Centuries passed and relations between the two powers were cordial. Then Hadrian came.

Hadrian was a citizen of Haven who claimed to have discovered that he was the direct descendant of the Last emperor of the Haven Empire. He argued that he was entitled to rule Haven. The Brotherhood and the people of Haven had chosen long ago never to obey another ruler however, and he was exiled. He travelled to a remote Terran Republic colony, and was not heard from for years.

When he emerged onto the galactic stage again, it was at the head of an army of cultish worshippers. He now made the direct claim that he was the rightful ruler of the entire galaxy, and his followers quickly seized control of a few remote colonies.

The Republic dismissed him as a non-threat, and dispatched a small disciplinary force to retake their colonies. With their high tech weapons and equipment, the Republican soldiers were overconfident, and underestimated their opponent. Whether or not Hadrian was truly descended from the Last Emperor of the galaxy may never be known, but he was a strategic and tactical genius. Outnumbered and outgunned, he managed through guerilla tactics and unpredictable maneuver to totally wipe out the Republic's forces in a week's time, and with the ships and weapons they took from the disciplinary force, his followers were able to strike a large, wealthy colony and take control of it before the Republic could react to their surprising loss.

He continued to make inroads against the Republic for decades, against all odds carving a kingdom for himself from the holdings of the most powerful political entity in the galaxy. He gave rulership of conquered worlds to his best soldiers, creating a feudal style kingdom with himself the High King. The Hundred Houses of Hadrian was born.

During all this time, the Republic, which had relocated its capital to a world called Terra Nova, closer to the galactic core, had been leaning hard on the outer colonies to provide them with the resources for their war effort against the Houses. The outer worlds began to crack under the strain, and the Republic just demanded more.

The outer worlds began to defect to the Haven Brotherhood in droves. The colonists on these worlds had always been very independant people, and they had become fed up with the Republic taking their resources and never giving anything in return.

The Republic had left the Brotherhood alone up until now, because they posed no threat, but now that they were absorbing Republic worlds (And Republic resources), they began to show a strong military presence in the outer reaches, thinking that the Brotherhood wouldn't want to risk war by supporting breakaway worlds.

What they didn't count on was the Brotherhood's code of honor, which required them to come to the aid of any who asked.

No one knows who fired the first shot, the Republic claims the Brotherhood ruthlessly destroyed a weaker vessel near a world that had newly broken away from the Republic. The Brotherhood claims that the Republican vessel fired on them without provocation, and that their salvage teams produced a computer core with evidence that the Republican vessel had been ordered to provoke a conflict. The core was somehow lost afterwards however.

Either way, the result was open war between the Terra Nova Republic and the Haven Brotherhood.

The events that this mod will cover take place about 5 years later, with the Republic fighting a two front war against the Houses and the Brotherhood, when a mysterious fourth faction appears on the scene...

I've run this scenario in pen and paper games, and I called it the Pandora's Box scenario.

Anyway, now you see what a long post that made, you know why I didn't write it in the first one