Actual Test: Dungeonfruit's "Making Good Factions" for a star system

Nothing like a good workflow to get the juices flowing and Dungeonfruit's "Making Good Factions (For Your Dungeon)" is a good one.

Dungeonfruit gives us 5 steps for setting up dungeon factions
1. Building the house - lay out the levels
2. Getting pets - assign factions to levels
3. Meeting the parents - create suitable leaders
4. Family meeting - set faction goals and environment interactions
5. Rats in the walls - add some short complicating factions

I thought to adapt it to figuring out what is about in the Spelljammer system I have been knocking together. This is Smoulderspace - after the gigantic out-system cool fire-world. Sol system planets and their distances from the sun provided for comparison.

1. Building the House - this is a recap of the end-point of the crystal sphere generation test where we ended up with the six planets on the bottom of the track above.
Planet 1 - Forge - a Mercury-sized earth-type flatworld with a ring, right next to the sun, inside Mercury orbit, populated by fire giants and other heat-lovers.
Planet 2 - Pond - a very small (Ceres-sized) water-world where Venus is with two moons, an air-type and an earth-type. Elves live hear on giant yachts
Planet 3 - Skyforest - a Neptune-sized hot air-type flatworld, populated by air-genasi, awakened giant dragonflies and filled with floating forests
Planet 4 - The Deep - an enormous Saturn-sized water-world surrounded by asteroids with primeaval oceans
Planet 5 - Smoulder - an enormous cool fire-type elliptical world, with cinder caps atop a sea of molten metal, populated by red and gold dragons
Planet 6 - Ice-disc - an enormous water-type flatworld with an ice-ring and an earth-type moon, mostly ice with some water, inhabited by all sorts of cold-adapted aquatics

2. Getting pets - adapting step 2 is interesting because we have six worlds only some of which have spelljamming capable populations. Micro-planet #2 is an elven ocean paradise world so has an Elven Imperial Navy outpost on the moon above. The Airdisk #3 has some rag-tag air-genasi with second-hand Spelljammers. The outermost icedisk #6 is so enormous it has two groups - sahuagin and koa-toa. The other planets have local populations who may come after flyers in their own atmosphere but they cannot cross the void.

So to end step 2 we have:
Planet 1: groundling powers (firegiants), no spelljammers
Planet 2: faction #1: backwater Elven Imperial Navy outpost
Planet 3: faction #2: do-gooder genasi in rust-bucket Spelljammers
Planet 4: groundling powers (oceanic), no spelljammers
Planet 5: groundling powers (dragons), no spelljammers
Planet 6: two factions, #3 sahuagin raiders (stolen ships) and #4 koa-toa traders (bootstrapped flyers)

3. Meeting the parents - here we are encouraged to identify what leaders would sit naturally at the top of the factions you have identified.

So for faction #1 the Elven Imperial Navy local squadron we have a stuffy commander, hacked off because of this 'exile' position in this dreadful system babysitting the dilettante yachts-elves.

For faction #2 we have air-genasi 'park warden' types, following an earnest druid-type

For faction #3 the sahuagin raders are lead by a 'combat is glorious' war-leader, courageous, aggressive and risk-seeking.

Faction #4 is lead by a kuo-toa mage, cautious and organised, twitchy about the sahuagin.

4. Family meeting - setting the goals of the factions and elaborating their constraints and advantages.

For the Elven Imperial Navy, their goals are 'defend elves, impose order'. They are a to-the-bone elven supremacist organisation with shoot-on-suspicious rules of engagement for any non-elves. They have the only dedicated warships with trained naval sailors in the system together with repair and resupply facilities. They major disadvantage is that this is a bottom-tier priority location with no historical threats so the force stations here is insufficient to patrol the whole system let alone dominate it.

For the system wardens, their goals are to 'preserves these worlds and their inhabitants' seeing multiple unique and undisturbed creatures and ecosystems present. They have rag-tag gear, with patched and repaired old ships and a mend-and-make-do attitude. They tend to over-extend themselves, getting involved in everything and taking damage to ships and losses to personnel as a consequence.

The sahuagin raiders have the goald to 'assert our rights to these worlds' - they are in fact the result of a neogi slaving raid gone badly wrong. A trio of mind-spiders and a death-spider were over-come when they raided Ice-disc and the sahuagin have learned how to operate the life-jammer helms on the mind-spiders. The mightiest among them take turns to sacrifice energy to drive their ships. They have no idea how to use the more advanced major helm on the deathspider nor how to effectively fight the ships in ranged combat. They act like viking raiders with longships - the warriors are the weapons, raiding is the purpose. So far they have probed the other worlds and identified the Deep and Skyforest as interesting targets to conquer.

The kuo-toa traders seek to 'access the resources we need' - they are boot-strapping spelljamming know-how from a single ship and the knowledge that the sahuagin are doing it. So far they have made vessels that can fly at sub-spelljamming speeds but have not figured out how to accellerate to interplanetary speeds. Their vessels are repurposed skeletons of large aquatic creatures. and they have managed to establish a presence on their planets moon. They have traded with the Genasi wardens to get a single ship and now use that to trade throughout the system with others.

5. Rats in the walls - beyond these major factions with interplanetary capabilities there are a couple of other players in the system.

The giants of Forge, dragonflyfolk of Skyforest and dragons of Smoulder are all territorial about their planetary atmospheres even if they cannot go beyond. A determined fire-giant can leap to the planetary ring around forge and they will collectively pelt an intruders with rocks. Both the dragonflies and dragons will likewise be hostile towards intruders who come within their grips.

There are irregularly out-system hunters who set up in the asteroids above the Deep before raiding the rare primeval aquatic life there. They tend to be wholly self sufficient, interact as little as possible with the locals and flee if confronted. The system wardens will try to chase them off and the other factions will attempt to capture their ships.

Multiple rings and asteroid fields are home to wildspace life like astereaters.

Aboleths dwelling in the Deep can sometimes attempt to dominate and enslave outsiders.

Wrap-up - this is a great work-flow, I found the iterative approach to layering on more and more detail great for building out a cool set of factions. I am pleased that I have got a set that now offer some challenge to people coming to smoulder space while keeping its 'deep wilderness' feel. Go check out the original article, "Making Good Factions (For Your Dungeon)" whether for dungeons or another project, Dungeonfruit has something good here.