SECRET ORIGINS: SCARCITY AND CONQUEST
To Go Boldly
When Star Trek into Darkness came out, it broke the meta of its franchise in two huge ways.
First, it established that the transporters in the Kelvin Timeline had the ability to beam a single person between systems. In one fell swoop they eradicated the need for a Starfleet. At the very least, one of that size.
Second, it implied that the blood of Khan and his cabal of exiles could reverse biological death. Sure, a phaser set to kill, or any variety of alien disruptor could still get the job done. But the inevitable ravages of disease and time simply lost their menace.
In a post scarcity society stretching across a Federation of Planets, these changes would have led to drastic social change on an unfathomable scale.
FINE, MORE FOR ME
As with most of the media I digest, when a story doesn’t live up to my hopes or expectations, I seize upon ideas of what could’ve been and repurpose them for Achades. In this case, I tried to imagine how the tech of instantaneous travel would impact scarcity and conquest on such a small and fractured world. Jump gate technology exists almost exclusively to facilitate the short-range transport of goods and services. These gates are not portable; they’re giant monoliths requiring a great deal of power and infrastructure.
…keeping allies loyal and enemies at bay.
Run by the faction neutral Transit Guild, a Tradejack subsidiary, the nations of the Treaty could now trade with one another without passing through occupied lands. While meaningful to the machinery of commerce, it could all come crashing down at any moment if these ancient structures were ever to come under fire.
Seizing the opportunity to set themselves apart from the petty squabbles of their clientele, the Transit Guild lobbied successfully, to mark the gates off-limits as military targets. With the gate system unencumbered by conflict, it quickly becomes the most relied-upon and sought-after technology in the world; driving every nation to search in secret for any means to exploit this essential piece of Alduin tech.
So far, only one has been successful, The Hierarch of Shadowfall.
Set Status to Quo
It could’ve been awesome. Lore already established Section 31 as the invisible and bloody hand behind the Federation’s glossy utopia. They could easily push Star Fleet away from peaceful exploration into a campaign of bloody expansion. Changing the narrative from 60s era cold war analog to modern imperialism. Beaming armies from system to system; toppling every empire from Romulus to Kronos.
COURIERS OF KNIVES
By infiltrating the gate system, the nine nameless clans of Quiet found a way to travel secretly to and from anywhere in the network.
With this hijacked tech, they appear seemingly out of thin air, creating an implied threat that no one is untouchable – a powerful tool for keeping your allies loyal and your enemies at bay.