History Fanfic / TheWarOfTheMasters

* MoleInCharge: Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn, the head of Starfleet, is an Undine infiltrator who replaced the real Quinn. As such, he is in a position to do serious harm to the Federation, and does so repeatedly, starting with signing off on the plan to forcibly resettle Klingon-border colonies and keeping Admiral Menninger in charge of the local Starfleet forces long after he should have been sacked. His {{Dragon}} is Rear Admiral David Huntington, who is a human Masters cultist and recurring villain. There are various other Undine infiltrators in high positions as well.

* HumanSubspecies: The Denali, denizens of a world of same name located in the galactic halo well "below" the important Federation-Klingon border region. They were a "warp boom" Earth colony that genetically engineered themselves into something like UsefulNotes/{{furries}} to better survive on their bitterly cold adopted homeworld.

** The Orions are liked by approximately ''nobody'' on the border. {{Justified}} given their habit of raiding planets for slaves, a practice that was banned by their current leader Melani D'ian as a condition of her alliance with the Klingons, but still happens behind her back.

** [[invoked]] The Moab Confederacy initially looks like a [[LibertariansInSpace right-libertarian-capitalist]] MarySuetopia, much in the vein of Creator/MichaelZWilliamson's ''Literature/FreeholdOfGrainne''. However, author's intent, which Patrickngo admits didn't turn out as intended in the original stories due to a failure to sufficiently show the Confederacy's internal problems, is for it to be a deconstruction. Moab wreaks havoc for several years but gradually overextends itself in its quest to prove its worth to the Klingons and give the Federation the finger. [[ApocalypseHow Then the Fek'Ihri invade it.]] The loss of a vast amount of infrastructure and over 100 million people, coupled with revelations of their use of ChildSoldiers and the virtual lack of a social safety net, leads to a bloody civil war in 2412. Among the other notions torn down are far-right ideas on restricting the right to vote: in Moab's case, restricting the franchise to "people with sufficient income to pay net taxes" means it's phenomenally easy for a sufficiently wealthy organization to rig an election in their favor: they just set up a shell company and hire people likely to vote the way they want.

TheVerse stretches the events of ''Star Trek Online'' out over approximately a decade instead of the mere three years in the actual game, and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] a number of tropes that are taken for granted in ''STO'', usually by means of a version of SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome dubbed the "Rule of Natural Consequences" by Patrickngo. Chief among the deconstructions is the idea of the PlanetOfHats, which is sometimes referenced InUniverse as the idea that your species dictates your politics. A semi-redux of the Maquis plot from [=DS9=] ensued with the invention of the Moab Confederacy, a group of primarily human and politically conservative colonies on the Federation-Klingon border that secede from the Federation in 2406 due to both cultural factors and abuse by a GovernmentConspiracy, and align themselves with the Klingon Empire.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: {{Enforced}} by means of the writers' Rule of Natural Consequences, or RONC: "For every action, there will be multiple logical but unforeseen consequences."

* MixedAncestry: The Moabites are a melange of various groups with a bone to pick with post-WorldWarIII Earth, among them Jews of Israeli origin (Israel was destroyed by the Arab League in WWIII) and Vietnamese and American nationalists and anti-communists (dislike Earth's post-scarcity welfare state). Plus there's been considerable interbreeding with local Klingons (most of them dispossessed, or descended from same, in various feudal power struggles in the Empire).

Though over a dozen authors contributed stories, TheVerse largely went on hiatus in 2015 [[AuthorExistenceFailure due to Sander_233's illness and eventual death]], and other authors subsequently left the community for various reasons (among them Marcusdkane being banned for an unrelated FlameWar). In summer 2017, however, the Masterverse [[OutlivedItsCreator resurrected]] in a SoftReboot with new stories by Patrickngo, [=Knightraider6=], and Tropers/StarSword-C. The new stories {{retcon}} certain aspects of the earlier stories that no longer match up with the later ones.

TheVerse stretches the events of ''Star Trek Online'' out over approximately a decade instead of the mere three years in the actual game, and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] a number of tropes that are taken for granted in ''STO'', usually by means of a version of RealityEnsues dubbed the "Rule of Natural Consequences" by Patrickngo. Chief among the deconstructions is the idea of the PlanetOfHats, which is sometimes referenced InUniverse as the idea that your species dictates your politics. A semi-redux of the Maquis plot from [=DS9=] ensued with the invention of the Moab Confederacy, a group of primarily human and politically conservative colonies on the Federation-Klingon border that secede from the Federation in 2406 due to both cultural factors and abuse by a GovernmentConspiracy, and align themselves with the Klingon Empire.

* RealityEnsues: {{Enforced}} by means of the writers' Rule of Natural Consequences, or RONC: "For every action, there will be multiple logical but unforeseen consequences."

* OffTheRails: While small divergences from STO-canon are present throughout (especially the expanded passage of time), the big point of diversion happens in approximately 2409-2410 when an armistice is inked between the Federation and the Empire ''well before'' the discovery of the {{Dyson Sphere}}s. At time of writing, Cryptic had not significantly advanced the game chronology for several years due to lack of funding, leading to this fanficverse [[OvertookTheSeries overtaking the series]].

* MoleInCharge: Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn, the head of Starfleet, is an Undine infiltrator who replaced the real Quinn. (This was a somewhat common {{WMG}} for the game before it was {{jossed}} in the mission "Surface Tension".) As such, he is in a position to do serious harm to the Federation, and does so repeatedly, starting with signing off on the plan to forcibly resettle Klingon-border colonies and keeping Admiral Menninger in charge of the local Starfleet forces long after he should have been sacked. His {{Dragon}} is Rear Admiral David Huntington, who is a human Masters cultist and recurring villain. There are various other Undine infiltrators in high positions as well.

** Bajor has the Conservatives and the Social Democrats (the most Federation-friendly of the major parties), but the most powerful appears to be the Bajoran Nationalist Party, which frequently accuses the Federation government of overreach and is said to win three out of every five elections. Bajor's incumbent government at the start of the Klingon War arc is Socialist, but they lose the 2406 election to the Nationalists.

* MixedAncestry: The Moabites are a melange of various groups with a bone to pick with post-WorldWarIII Earth, among them Jews of Israeli origin (Israel was destroyed by the Arab League in WWIII) and Vietnamese anti-communists (dislike Earth's post-scarcity welfare state). Plus there's been considerable interbreeding with local Klingons (most of them dispossessed, or descended from same, in various feudal power struggles in the Empire).

* ThreeLawsCompliant: The "Ten Commandments" of AU-type ArtificialIntelligence, which were intended to be more comprehensive in subordinating AI to the will of organics than the Three Laws. In one case, a moral conflict between some of the Commandments during the Battle of Goralis led to an AI seeking outside assistance that led to it being unshackled completely.
-->1. "Have no gods before Me." An AI can only operate at the behest of human (changed to "organic" after FirstContact) masters.\\

* DeathWorld: Moab III is only marginally Class M, featuring a biosphere and chemistry inimical to much Earth-origin life. The water is often toxic, most Earth crops won't grow, and the inhabitants frequently develop a genetic abnormality called Degenerative Nervous Sheath Syndrome, or DNSS, that typically kills sufferers around age 50 (it was much earlier before the arrival of Federation medicine). The Moabites commonly use the venom of one of their nastier native animals, the fursnake, for {{Mercy Kill}}s to terminal DNSS victims.

** [[invoked]] The Moab Confederacy initially looks like a [[LibertariansInSpace right-libertarian-capitalist]] MarySuetopia, much in the vein of Creator/MichaelZWilliamson's ''Literature/FreeholdOfGrainne''. However, author's intent, which Patrickngo admits didn't turn out as intended in the original stories due to a failure to sufficiently show the Confederacy's internal problems, is for it to be a deconstruction. Moab wreaks havoc for several years but gradually overextends itself in its quest to prove its worth to the Klingons and give the Federation the finger. [[ApocalypseHow Then the Fek'Ihri invade it.]] The loss of a vast amount of infrastructure and over 100 million people, coupled with revelations of their use of ChildSoldiers and the virtual lack of a social safety net, leads to a bloody civil war in 2412. Among the other notions torn down are far-right ideas on restricting the right to vote: in Moab's case, restricting the franchise to "people who pay taxes" means it's phenomenally easy for a sufficiently wealthy organization to rig an election in their favor: they just set up a shell company and hire people likely to vote the way they want.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Profanity flies freely from many characters (something virtually unheard-of in canon until ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery''), and the various battles fought in the war are considerably nastier than the fairly cartoonish ones in the actual game.