We know, of course, of the Titanomachy when the gods took sides with either the Olympian Zeus or the Titan Kronos. That saw the fall of the Titans from rulership, and the imprisonment of seven in Tartarus. Not all Titans had sided with Kronos. Amongst them stood chiefly Rhea, who had preserved Zeus from Kronos, and Tethys, who nurtured him, as well as Styxx, who granted her daughter Nike to the cause, and Eos and Prometheus and the Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires. The victors enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, a new golden age for Gaia. With prosperity came ecological collapse and extinction for the birds and mammals of Gaia. The civilization that arose after the collapse, was a civilization of ants once the insect kingdom was finally able to grow into the niches of mega fauna, named the Myrmidon Mega-Ants to describe their general approach to life. Near the end of a mega-ants' life-cycle, she leaves her nest and spends the rest of her life fighting the enemies of her nest to the death. Fully grown a mega-ant is nearly two meter tall and easily 500lbs. Armoured in a thick layer of chitin bonded to fullerene plating, and possessing courage to match, Myrmidons or 'Aunties' are generally genial and helpful people, until they decide to fight. What they have in abundance in quality is multiplied by their quantity, giving them the belligerence to push the Titans and their human crops off world, and the numbers to see it through. After eons in space, the Titans have returned to a cautious welcome of a civilization condemned to the surface of Gaia by the Hekatonkheires arrays, massive planet-encompassing rings of weapons left to guard the hearth. The threat of mutual extinction serves to improve neighborly relations, but with the expansion of the human cities serves to bring the Titans into direct conflict with swarms of Aunties. As with the Titans' own exuberant conflicts, all parties are careful to stand down once a Hekatonkheire asks nicely with targeting lasers. Whether the Aunties can push the Titans off world again depends on the rate at which Titans provoke conflicts. The Titans have yet to trigger another global war...
Why am I engaging in this little bit of world building? Well, the exodus from Gaia is informing a notion for another, different game to Titanomachina. Here the idea is that each player has a spaceship that must exit the Gaian solar system, using gravity from the local star and outer planets to build up escape velocity.
The components would be:
1 of rotating sections (1 central area for the star, an orbit of six spaces, an orbit of twelve spaces, and an orbit of twenty four)
4 planet markers, one for each orbit and the sun, and 1 dark matter anomaly
4 spacecraft markers, one for each player
54 cards, of nine cards per player, including three 0 cards, five 1 cards, one 2 card. The zero cards include a sabotage card (for forcing an opponent to discard a card), an asteroids card (reduces velocity by one for opponent), and a dark matter anomaly card (places or moves dark matter anomaly marker).
4 D10 dice for tracking velocity of spacecraft markers (for the zero side).
Costs to move:
- Up an orbit costs 2
- Moving along the same orbit costs 1
- Moving down an orbit costs 0
- Moving into space with a planet reduces cost by -1, moving out of space-with-planet increases cost by +1
- Moving into a space occupied by another player reduces cost by 1.
Starting in the space of the planet (Gaia) in the lowest orbit, the players need to move up three orbits. After every player has moved the orbits rotate one increment or space starting with the innermost orbit.
