THE HIDDEN ENCLAVE
DESIGNER NOTES
The Hidden Enclave is an isolated, swirling dimension that slowly moves throughout the Universe. Random wormholes appear and disappear, drawing starships, terrain, creatures, and planetary objects into the Hidden Enclave. The Hidden Enclave possesses a unique time differential which allows it to draw from past, present, and future. However, time within the Hidden Enclave itself is constant and predictable.
Starships entering the Hidden Enclave find themselves in a strange galaxy with no apparent way to return to where they came from. Their systems and sensors are temporarily disrupted, making them vulnerable for a short period. It is during this time that nearly every new starship is contacted by the Collaboration.
The Collaboration is a massive organization within the Hidden Enclave whose member empires have agreed to cooperate with one another for the sake of survival. Even bitter enemies and rivals find common ground within the Collaboration, for they have been completely cut off from their original empires. Weapons, Technology, and Training are freely exchanged between member empires of the Collaboration. The Collaboration is vast, with many starbases and shipyards spread throughout the Hidden Enclave. However, resources, experience, knowledge, and maintenance abilities are restricted, resulting in Limited Weaponry and Limited Technology on starships within the Hidden Enclave. In time, the starships become shadows of their former selves.
But the Hidden Enclave offers something that cannot be found anywhere else in the Universe: Spectral Resources. These glowing, otherworldly resources are harvested from both space and planets in the Hidden Enclave, fueling Spectral Technology (S-Tech) and the creation of Spectral Cells. Spectral Technology gets its name from the ghostly effect that surrounds a starship whenever a Spectral Cell is activated. When the first starships arrived in the Hidden Enclave they found the remnants of a once great civilization that employed Spectral Technology. From their notes and decaying devices, the first starships were able to recreate Spectral Technology, but it too is only a shadow of what it had once been. The Spectral Technology employed by the once great civilization would surely have surpassed even Second Generation X-Technology.
The need for the Collaboration is due to the existence of the Great Beasts. The Great Beasts are monstrous entities which have lived in the Hidden Enclave since it first came into existence. They feed on Spectral Resources and hate the starships and beings that harvest them. The largest of these Great Beasts is powerful enough to destroy an entire fleet. The need to cooperate and aid one another is therefore critical within the Hidden Enclave. Anyone who refuses to join the Collaboration is left at the mercy of the Great Beasts.
As the Great Beasts are the primary adversaries of the Collaboration, I want them to be playable. This doesn’t just mean that they are Monsters under the Player’s control, but that the Great Beasts will have their own SSD’s and unique rules to go with them.
It was essential for me to not create mere duplicates of existing empires for the Hidden Enclave. Instead, there needed to be something that sets the starships apart from their predecessors on a tactical level. This became Spectral Cells (S-Tech). Spectral Cells are one use items that provide highly advanced benefits on the battlefield. Many new options are available to the Starship Captain that previously never would have been. The question of whether Spectral Cells are too overpowered is answered by their own ubiquity. If every empire has access to the same thing, the playing field is level.
Later in the Hidden Enclave Timeline, the Collaboration discovers that there is a way out of the Hidden Enclave, but that it is extremely difficult and dangerous.
