Slipstream

Lore

Slipstream is an alternate Homeworld timeline. The events of Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm/Emergence, and Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, and their manuals, are canon. Homeworld 2, Homeworld Mobile, Homeworld 3, and everything since are not.

A Dark Age

Many years after Homeworld: Cataclysm, the last remnants of the Beast were finally destroyed, but the toll on galactic order was catastrophic. With the Taiidan Empire’s rump states collapsed, the Vaygr poured into the vacuum, carving the old imperial territories into feudal vassal states through conquest. Worlds not worth conquering learned to keep their heads down. The Bentusi fared worse still: those who didn’t flee the galaxy were consumed by the Beast or hunted to extinction.

Hiigara, largely untouched, drew inward. With its navy spent fighting the Beast, the Daiamid concluded that off-world super-capital production was a liability; motherships and shipyards deployed beyond the homeworld were too easily captured or destroyed by the pirates and warlords now roaming free. Hiigaran industry moved planetside instead, and the Daiamid turned its attention to holding what remained rather than reclaiming what was lost.

The Slipstream Research Initiative

Hunting the Beast into its final refuges, Hiigaran forces stumbled onto naturally-occurring Slipgates in the galaxy’s fringes and, soon after, artificial ones bearing an unmistakable resemblance to Bentusi technology, with no Bentusi left to explain how they worked. The Daiamid founded the Slipstream Research Initiative (SRI) to study them and, if possible, reverse-engineer the drive behind them.

SRI succeeded. Its first-generation Slipstream drives outperformed standard quantum waveform hyperdrives outright, fast enough to deliver newly built ships straight to the front. Hiigara kept the technology to itself at first, using it as leverage, until it became more useful to trade watered-down versions to the Vaygr in exchange for access to former Bentusi territory.

The Price of Freedom

Neither side is happy with the arrangement. The Daiamid would rather not need it at all; the Vaygr warlords would rather conquer Hiigara outright and take the technology for themselves. But invading Hiigaran space would demand more cooperation than the constantly warring Vaygr factions can manage, and for now, a contained Hiigara suits most of them well enough. SRI, meanwhile, operates almost entirely without oversight, deep in fringe territory even the Vaygr don’t bother patrolling.

Within the Daiamid chamber, this deadlock has a name: The Price of Freedom.

Both sides race to gather resources and reinforce their positions without tipping the other off, which has turned the border between their territories into a lawless no man’s land. Fleets vanish there routinely, destroyed in skirmishes that stay unofficial unless it’s politically convenient to admit otherwise. It hasn’t stopped anyone with a fleet and an appetite for risk from trying to claim ground there anyway. Every battlefield in TPOF is a piece of that lawless border, and several carry their own local history in their map descriptions; from SRI’s salvage operations to the last resting place of the Bentusi.

Factions

Hiigara

Consolidated and defensive, sitting on the galaxy’s most valuable technology. The Daiamid has traded expansion for security, keeping its fleets close to home and its Slipstream drives out of anyone else’s hands for as long as it can manage.

The Vaygr

Feudal warlords who filled the vacuum left by the fallen Taiidan Empire, running their conquests as vassal states and squeezing them for the next campaign. United against Hiigara only in theory — in practice, the various Vaygr factions spend as much effort warring each other as they do watching the border.

Glossary

  • The Beast: the subversion entity from Homeworld: Cataclysm/Emergence, finally destroyed after a war that broke the galaxy’s political order.
  • Bentusi: the enigmatic trader race, completely wiped out by the Beast; the Slipgates and relics they left behind are the seed of everything SRI does.
  • Daiamid: Hiigara’s governing council.
  • Slipgate: natural and artificial hyperspace conduits of Bentusi origin, the basis of Slipstream drive technology.
  • SRI: the Slipstream Research Initiative, Hiigara’s semi-independent research arm operating in the border fringes.