Personal Headcanons

Anyone who have interesting headcanons that you apply to your own gameplay for funsies and/or storybuilding, serious or not? I've made a quick search and found another thread about race headcanons but I kinda want to expand the idea to all headcanons in general(plus the thread is 6 months old), but if mods think I should go back to that thread, please let me know.

For the first few weeks into the game, I actually convinced myself that since my first two crewmembers - both humans - don't take fall damages, don't need to eat, have virtually no life outside of your ship/being your crew and do not react to the Erchius Ghost at all, they were actually unaware ghosts who were killed by the Ruin at the start of the game and the 'settlement' I found them on was actually the remains of the space ship they tried to escaped (in vain) in, lol.
Of course that was debunked as more crew joined my ship and everyone else acted the same, but it was still a funny idea - would be extra neat to imagine that

They finally realized they were dead all along in the final battle against the Ruin and the Cultivator brought them back to life along with me. That would be sweet.

What if one of the requirements for crew member is to be dead and your captain is basically a space necromancer? /joke

 

Posted these on the subreddit, might as well post it here:

• USCM was originally tasked with liberating the Hylotl homeworld from the Florans - but in doing so, they took the planet under what was essentially a military occupation. They simply weren't in a hurry to pull back after the world has been cleared of Floran presence, preferring to stay and "secure" it. It took significant pressure from the Protectorate for USCM to finally leave the Hylotl people to their own devices. These events left Hylotl significantly bitter about USCM's overbearing presence.
• While some Floran tribes became more peaceful and open to integration with other species, there are still numerous that do not establish contact with others and remain unconditionally hostile and savage. But back in the days of their invasion on the Hylotl, most Florans were like that. USCM made great headway in decimating such hostile tribes, which actually factored into smarter Floran tribes deciding to change their approach to other peoples. Still, while USCM's military efforts against hostile Floran tribes were surprisingly successful, they were also a huge drain on resources, which resulted in USCM facing severe financial issues.
  
• Universal translation technology predated Terrene Protectorate, but the first models were incredibly clunky and translated most phrases and words incorrectly. Once the Protectorate was formed, they took an additional effort to overhaul the translations, hoping it would allow individuals from different species to communicate more easily. They still sometimes get stuff wrong though.

 

I have a lot (Note that this is a long read, and that they're not in any particular order):

• The Protectorate is/was a NGO that was more or less like the Red Cross, but with a broader approach.
  
• Earth had a separate self-defence force (ESDF) as a military organization, that was notable for covering comparatively little territory (Little more than the Solar System), and using lots of unmanned ships and high-tech equipment in order to minimize needed personnel.
  
• Talking about military organizations, they vary depending on the exact organization. For instance, the Miniknog military isn't branched, and only has several subsections, while the aforementioned ESDF was divided into a space and in-planet branch, itself divided in naval, ground, and air branches.
• The USCM was a mix of a private military and an offshot of mainstream humanity, that could be said to be like a corporation with it's own military. They at some point even owned colonies from where they used to conscript workers, who also had various laboral issues, such as poor working conditions, low wages... which caused staff compliance problems, leading to the private prisons.
• The Miniknog actually isn't really as technologically or scientifically advanced as they seem. They're still ahead of, say, the humans or the Hylotl (Which are shown to be the other most technologically advanced species shown), but not by much. The cause of this is that the Miniknog controls their research, so they tend to further pursue lines of research. This is further compounded by the Miniknog tending to supress other Apex research organizations in order to lose their monopoly.
  
• The Miniknog's military is actually unused to fighting a similar rival, as they usually fight rebels (In no small part because they're more common than other possible enemies), and, as such, they're overspecialized in assymetric warfare in terms of tactics.
  
• There's actually highly-advanced Floran groups. They're just rare in comparison to the more tribal ones. This is caused by Greenfingers usually not allowing normal Florans to learn much about science in order to prevent their own people from killing them. The more advanced ones managed to aovid this by causing long-term societal changes in their tribes. This also explains why the greenfingers tend to frown on behaviors such as cannibalism.
• Most of the pre-1.0 lore is canon, as long as it doesn't contradict newer lore (For instance, the USCM is now disbanded, as the current lore states it outright; but Thornwing exists as a character, with his lack of mention in the current game being that he managed to prevent his very name from being leaked).
• The content of the post-1.0 updates is in-universe caused by in-game advancements (For instance, 1.3 reflects Mechs becoming viable as spacecraft). The main exception are Novakid villages, which existed all along (In no small part because I can't see why would they suddenly just appear).
• The first viable vehicle designs that later became Mechs were actually designed for space combat, and their legs were intended to act as their equivalent of landing gear in planes. Their later on-planet usage was originally improvised. This later led to the vehicles being called Mechs and being used as ground vehicles, as they allowed troop carrier ships to carry both self-defence spacecraft AND carry ground armored vehicles at the same time (Before, it was done separately, causing logistical problems). This does NOT mean that ground-only vehicles are no longer used (As the Tank Traps found in Apex rebel bases suggest that the Miniknog uses tanks), but they're usually produced planetside.
  
• There's no artificial way to quickly destroy a planet. This is the reason why there was no preparation in case it happened is that the only known way for a planet's surface to even be rendered uninhabitable was to somehow direct a large enough asteroid towards the target (As the projectiles used for space combat are usually light to make them as agile as possible, as they are usually homing shells or rockets that need to be light in order to minimize their momentum, which also makes their direct impacts weak by themselves, which is usually compensated with explosive charges; but causes them to desintegrate in the atmosphere), and this not only is so expensive it's rarely done (A space-planet invasion would be cheaper), but it also tends to give enough time for most planets to assemble a space fleet, even one made from smaller spaceships (Or even Mechs launched to space) that can evacuate the population or even repel the attack (Or at least delay it enough for an evacuation), so it's only really useful as a propaganda stunt, as using it requires a situation in which the enemy can't keep a proper armed force operational, apart from insurgences.
• Elaborating on the above, the usage of asteroids as planet-killers is commonly used by the Miniknog, with the general tactic being to dump billions of captured rebels and dissidents that are deemed unfit for other uses on planets, and then use the asteroid in order to use it as a publicity stunt (Or, alternatively, they may use it against planets that have entirely fallen to rebellion).

• EDIT: As a way to explain where Scorched planets and Toxic planets came from, the Deadbeats used to have a FAR more important intergalactic presence, having a large intergalactic empire. It eventually fell to either civil war, or wound up in a war with a different empire. Either way, they (And, if the latter, the unknown faction) had weaponry that allowed them to render planets uninhabitable. The result of said weapons, the heavy fighting, and the environmental damage caused by pollution caused by the high military production all led to their former worlds turning into Scorched planets, that were where most of the in-planet fighting took place. If a civil war, the cause was that these used to be their main population centers. If not, this is because they used to be the only planets that could be inhabited and which had Solarium Stars in them, so neither side was interested in altering them too much; with most of the change being that their magnetic fields somehow wound up weakened, causing their temperatures to raise and meteorites to fall to the ground more often, but still allowing survivors to exist; and Toxic planets, that both used to host the largest-scale weapons production, and which were more punished by the biosphere-killer weaponry and by the massive pollution, causing severe acid rain, poisoning of the oceans to the point that they became dangerous to swim in, and, in part due to large amounts of liquids being brought there to be processed causing the ocean levels to raise to the point of practically all of the planet's surface being a massive ocean peppered by islands that, rather than being caused by geological causes, were caused by the increased density of the highly-poisoned ocean waters causing masses of dirt and organic matter to emerge on the surface.

• The Player's ship is the only working military ship shown in-game, which is why it doesn't have a Mech bay (Which is cheaper than a teleporter, but also less safe, as it causes a weak point in the ship's structure that also allows boarding) and has guns, unlike practically every other ship in-game (Which only have at best a few Twiguns in their Mech bays, which are normally intended to fend off possible boarders).
• Elaborating on the previous point, this means that all hostile ships are actually civilian freighters that have been repurposed as either pirate spaceships or, in the case of Occasus ships, as freighters.

 

As someone who was never really fond of the old lore and saw the story update as a much-needed clean slate, I can't really say I like this one much. Most of that stuff was scrapped for a reason.

That being said, I do think codexes from K'arn Hollowbeak in particular could have been kept in some way. They would be great for that additional insight into Avian society, like Dr. K. Sakana's did for the Glitch. He could be handled much like Hiraki Corale or the Would-Be King, with his codexes tweaked just enough to fit.

 

I have a char called Astra Nox, who truly founded the Occasus, but sympathised with esther too much, so they cloned her. Her clone would go on to become Asra Nox, while Astra met up with Esther to undo her mistakes.

Most Story dialogue still works with this, especially Esther calling you darling, and Asra calling you a puppet.

 

Interesting, but Asra's backstory counteracts that plot

 

I mean, everything does - from Esther's journal, to yourself being a recent Protectorate graduate who met Esther by chance and had to be told everything from the beginning.

It definitely doesn't work all too well with the canon, but I guess it's fine if you like to picture it that way.

 

Actually a few points seem to imply a slight variation on this where (some of?) the pre-1.0 lore occurred in the in-universe past: Dreadwing gave up on attacking distress beacons after getting shot down a lot, the Apex rebellion has spread far and wide, Kluex is never referred to as a physical person anymore as far as I can tell, the Floran-Hylotl conflict seems mostly forgotten, Big Ape appears to have been turned into an AI lab rat...

Sure not everything fits and the USCM was even slightly retconned in 1.3 but overall it feels like the post-release universe is so much lighter and softer because of the hard work of all those early access players.

I also like to imagine the post-release patches follow an in-universe passing of time where possible: the Novakid became less restless and started up permanent settlements after the Cultivator's story arc was completed, hence their villages only appear after the Ruin was destroyed in patch order. The Vaults are pretty obvious. 1.3's mechs are a relatively new invention in-universe hence the lack of NPC piloted instances and even the top militaries only providing blueprints. No idea why fishing rods were only invented after the fall of the Protectorate however, "teach a man to fish" and all that.

Gotta disagree with that one, for varying definitions of "destroying" a planet. Toxic and Scorched worlds were clearly rendered completely uninhabitable on a global scale through artificial means. There is a distinct lack of heavy weapons though, most likely due to demilitarisation encouraged by the Protectorate, so the practical means to inflict such damage might not currently exist. No major faction would ever use asteroid bombardment due to the immense collateral damage, fanatic groups like Occasus, Avian zealots or the most bloodthirsty of Florans might try but I doubt they have the spacefaring capacity to pull it off (you don't lob giant space rocks with a drifting freighter that gets taken out by a single invader)

 

Toxic planets seem to be awful due to overpollution. The implication is that, simply put, the previous inhabitants simply wound up wiping themseles out due to being unable to regulate pollution. As for Schorched planets, those seem to have been, well, scorched by their own sun (Probably they went through too much golbal warming instead of overpollution).
Another possibility is that, judging by how Deadbeats seem to be a separate species (Althrough they have the same dialogue as humans, and are technically humans; which could be compared to how Agarans are, in terms of being game-wise similar to Florans), it could be that both Scorched and Toxic planets used to be inhabited by Deadbeats, but they wound up in a large-scale war with themselves (Or another unknown race, in which case, the unknown race could have inhabited Toxic Planets and ended up wiped out by the Deadbeats, while at the same time the latter wound up directly or indirectly having their own planets screwed over by both enemy action and by not taking care of the environment because they prioritized military production), and they could have had in that time the means to render planets uninhabitable.
Then again, your theory would also make sense (And could be compared to nuclear disarmament, so it makes sense).
As for fishing rods, I didn't think of them, but now I've got the thought that it could be that using them for fishing had been obsolete (But stil done for sport), and the PC in-universe ends up picking it as a hobby, or something.

 

Honestly, I do wonder what's up with that - with Avian history that is. While the lore behind every other race is now clear and easy to learn from, the Avian lore leaves more questions than answers.

Just how did the Kluex faith came to be, and how exactly does it relate to the Avian artifact? Did the entity called Kluex truly exist, and if so, who were they? An interpretation of the Cultivator, an Ancient, or an enlightened Avian? I do have a guess, but ultimately that's all it is. Old documents can't be taken for granted... but unlike with Glitch, Florans or Humans, it's not entirely clear what was changed, either.

 

Spoiler to save space:

I headcanon that the official floran lore is hardly accurate, as they are an disunified tribal race of different levels of progression and aggression. Many are curious of strangers and relatively peaceful, but the aggressive tribes ruin their reputation. Many are hurt by the stereotypes that they enjoy stabbing everything, and their hisses are less drawn out and consistent that they are often portrayed. More like thiss, ssometimes, than thisssss alwaysssss.

I headcanon that the novakid have actual lore (beyond the Cultivator thing that I'm still not sure how I feel about.)

And finally, I headcanon (and I must make it distinct from hypothesising, because the game doesn't support it at all, and contradicts it,) that the ancient race was not a "good" race; that they built the gate long after the Cultivator's death, not for some hero to slay the Ruin, but as a way to free it. A gate that could rip a hole in space-time like the Cultivator could, for they clearly used no such gate to seal the ruin. The artifacts are not merely (or just) parts of the Cultivator, but serve as a record of the multidimensional coordinates of Ruin's prison.
The ancient race, or the faction operating this, were stopped by an opposing force, the real heroes here, before the gate could be opened. Thus the ridiculous gambit is Esther's idea.

 

As much sense, as playing as the Occasus´s leader, but still awesome

 

There is a lot about deadbeats here:http://community.playstarbound.com/...ry-thread-spoilers.135151/page-2#post-3195434

 

Both pollution and global warming could be weaponised to some extent, and at the very least Scorched planets additionally suffered painful civil wars with heavy use of landmines, explosives and some form of bombardment (lots of bunkers everywhere). Not exactly the kind of single-stroke victory you'd achieve with a Death Star or Exterminatus but a Floran army capturing and holding one continent could probably wreck the entire planet on a scale of decades.

I'd say there are three main possibilities: the most boring one is they retconned Kluex as being the Cultivator appearing to the Avians in person, yada yada God is real free crystal tech for everyone. The second possibility would be that "Kluex" was the mortal (probably Avian, Ancient or Novakid) who first unlocked the secrets of the Avian artifact. This of course resulted in the Aviolite technology as you suggest but also involved a second aspect, possibly the Ancient Vaults but definitely some kind of hyperspace/dimensional shift tech. That of course being the origin of the Aether as a central pillar of Avian mythology. Over time the lines blurred resulting in the single all-powerful deity known in modern times. The third possibility would be a variant of the previous one where the mortal only appeared after the Cultivator perished and deliberately mythologised himself. The religion he created somehow survived the fall of this dictatorship but the "sacrifice" of dissidents went out of fashion after a while. I think in both cases it'd be interesting if the turn of events was not intended or endorsed by the Cultivator rather than everything going according to plan.

 

That's a pretty interesting idea, didn't make the connection with Ancient Vaults! "Kluex" using Ancient Gateways in some way would definitely add more depth behind Tonauac believing the Ark to be somehow connected to Kluex.

 

The genius of the Matter Manipulator is not in what it does. The Apex and Hylotl have also independently developed matter/energy conversion devices.

But the difference between the MM and those is the difference between a modern cell phone and one of those old gigantic reel-to-reel cabinet processors. Complete with the MM/phone doing all sorts of extra stuff. The MM is the result of centuries of humans getting really good at making highly complicated machinery and electronics smaller and smaller and more convenient.

The Apex and Hylotl didn't achieve this largely due to societal drives. The Miniknog don't do things small or subtle, be it science or propaganda. They haven't had to for generations. Their machines are big and clunky and have been for a long time and who cares? Just bulldoze that kindergarten if they need more space for a server bank. It's not like anyone's gonna deny Big Ape.

The Hyltol have a similar deal, only theirs is more "well we've been using the traditional method and it's worked very well for a very long time, we're sure you feel your method is innovative and we appreciate your zeal and we'll set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of looking into your ideas" and general Hylotl passive-aggressive bullshit. Huge innovation is generally socially stymied or dies in the morass of paperwork needed to properly apply for an Innovation Request Hearing to determine a hearing date for a ceremony to request research funding for blarblarblar

 

I'm sure beside the societal drives, humanity having essentially exclusive access to their artifact helped too. Hylotl actually don't seem all that apprehensive of innovation either, if their hi-tech underwater cities full of modern conveniences are anything to go by.

 

This is pretty similar to what I believe about Kluex.
In my eyes, Kluex is the first (and only) attempt at an Ancient and another race breeding together to create something that would alter the course of that race. (Think of Captain Sisko from Star Trek, if you know what I'm talking about.)
Kluex was created solely to herald a new era for the Avian race, which would mean they would be responsible/advanced enough to handle having an Artifact.
Of course he was mortal, but his legacy wasn't, and the truth was lost to time.

 

• Human colonies exist, the protectorate & USCM just don't want anyone to know that there are people who prefer running away to some far away rock and starting all over over life in the solar system.

 

I mean, the Off-Earth Human Census and its Analysis do acknowledge millions of humans living outside Earth, and an unknown, likely larger number leading a nomadic existence. Existence of those wasn't concealed at all.

For what purpose would anyone even bother lying about stuff like that, anyway? No, I'd say @M_Sipher's earlier idea would feel much more natural - the colonies could've been recently created by the survivors from Earth's destruction, or they could've even been around for a long time; they were simply too far away from Earth for anyone to find them while the census was conducted.