[For Barrayar] PREMISE

[barrayarmods]

artwork by runawayballista

it is the thirty-first century.
Humans began colonizing other planets a millennium ago, and the advent of wormhole jump technology has allowed them to spread across the galaxy to terraform and settle new worlds. Humankind technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, creating a galactic Nexus networking dozens of autonomous colonies.

Except for one.

The initial settlement population on the new colony of Barrayar was stranded when the only known wormhole route to it collapsed, sending out a blast of radiation. Their technology all but decimated and their new home half-irradiated, the settlers' society waxed feudal. Seven hundred years later a new wormhole route to the planet was discovered, and Barrayar rejoined the Nexus.

A mere twenty years after their reintroduction, the rocky process of trying to catch up to the Nexus was interrupted by an attack from one of the most threatening military presences in the Nexus. Intent on making Barrayar the ninth planet under its rule, the Cetagandan Empire invaded without mercy and demanded surrender. The Barrayarans refused.

Outgunned, outmanned, and at the mercy of technology far superior to anything they possessed, the Barrayarans took to the hills. If they couldn't meet the Cetagandans head-on, they'd pick their battles and fight on their own ground. They'd do anything to live and fight. They'd do anything but surrender.

Ten years later and the invaders still haven't managed to suppress the Barrayaran guerrilla resistance. Ten years, and even the mighty Cetagandan Empire hasn't succeeded in annexing one backwater planet of so-called barbarians. But the invasion goes on, because the Cetagandan Empire and Barrayar both will do whatever it takes to win the war…

...for barrayar.

You came to in a strange place in the night with no memory of how you came to be there, but you feel oddly jetlagged, maybe a little queasy. And you're not the only one. It wasn't until the soldiers arrive to steal you away to their camp that you realized you've just landed in a war zone.

If it's the Barrayaran guerrilla fighters who find you first, you learn that this is their home planet, that they were attacked without warning or cause. They'll settle for nothing less than to see their planet free again, whatever they have to do. There is no tactic they won't use.

If it's the Cetagandan soldiers who find you first, you learn that they haven't come to wipe out Barrayar's people, but annex them into the Cetagandan Empire as the Ninth Satrapy. The Barrayarans are a barbaric people, far behind the times, they'll say. They're merely here to save the Barrayarans from themselves, to bring to them the light of real civilization.

Whichever side you're on, the situation becomes clear: if you want to survive, if you want to find a way home, you'll have to do your part to help the war effort. It's the only way you'll make it out of this alive -- and the only way you'll uncover the mystery of you got there, and how you'll get home.

For Barrayar is a panfandom game based on Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vorkosigan Saga, set during the First Cetagandan Invasion.