[Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

You see many people traveling from system to system.

I'm guessing this is for Qn 54?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 62 by TGLS
We know there was a break between Humans and divergers; when did it happen and how fast was it (i.e. years of dissent and repression, or rapid departure?)

I'm working on this one, full post below.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 46
The story really begins with Melvin Scales, a Tau Cetian astronaut, in the year 2308. During a “routine” maneuver to hop towards the then unexplored moons of Kelso (the largest gas giant in Procyon), a computational error made by Scales sent the ship on an unexpected detour 35 light-years away.... This led Scales to realize that faster than light travel between star was not only possible, but also controllable.

So, I'm trying to integrate a bit of background with the excellent work here, but I'm stuck on this detail.

We seem to have 5d jumping at this point, which is fine. But, if Scales was from Tau Ceti, there must already be pretty fast interstellar travel if he's in Procyon. We could say that early interstellar travel was done by a series of a great many short jumps of 0.1 light years each. With 120 jumps (11.8 ly) to Tau Ceti, that could've taken 2 years at 1 week per jump, which can explain how colony ships originally got to Tau Ceti.

But if we look at a star map, we see Procyon and TC are on opposite sides of Earth, so it seems like a bit of a stretch.

Would it be a problem if we amended the above to say he was jumping around in the Tau Ceti system instead? I know it's not a major detail, and was probably given as off-the-cuff flavour, it's just that I didn't want to rewrite someone's contribution without checking.

[(E)]

The Rhii

The Rhii evolved on a smaller planet (Raykhyic) with large amounts of volcanic activity. The 1.1 G world provided them with a plethora of small lakes and seas to hunt in. Their body plan is basically flat and rectangular. They have two strong grasping fins that where originally used to catapult themselves at prey or to hold their prey while they finished their victim off with their jaws. They have two clusters of nimble appendages on either side of their mouths. The Rhii's non tool using ancestors used these to strip the edible parts from the incredibly tough shelled crustaceans of Raykhyic as well as ferreting smaller prey out of crevasses and holes. In water they operate not unlike a swimming hexruped, while on land they operate in a semi upright fashion though they can move comfortably enough just with the undulation of their lower bodies. They have two pairs of eyes one top and one bottom, when lying on the sea floor they use their "top" eyes which work best underwater to see while their bottom eyes remain closed. When on land in an upright posture their "bottom" eyes which work best in the air are used while their "top" eyes act as little more than rear facing motion detectors.

The independence of the Rhii is legendary, they need a personal relationship with their leader before they take any orders. This also means a Rhii can be quite casual about historic agreements and treaties if they had no personal knowledge of the beings involved. Loyalty is usually fairly tight within a Surge and when the Rhii's equivalent of adrenaline is flowing they are intensely cooperative and obedient to their Skepp.

As well as the traditional characteristics of large predators the Rhii also place value in cunning and audacity, this has something to do with their wildly divergent sizes a successful Rhii may be only 1/5 the size of his competitor. This importance they placed in cunning has contributed to their technological development. When they had FTL fall into their laps all those years ago they had already colonized most of their system and where in most areas more advanced than Humanity.

Their government as a species is best described as a casual democracy doing little more than collating and redistributing the current opinions of the Skepp who choose to take part. Each Skepp is beholden to no one except their Surge. Meeting a Rhii for the first time you have no guarantee what they will do. Most will be friendly enough but they have that independent streak.

Their greetings are typically somewhat challenging i.e. "hey you, you ugly s.o.b." responding in kind usually gets things off to a good start. This can be hard to remember when you have a five meter tall alien looming over you though.

Rhii Glossary
- Surge, Human translation of the Rhii term for a group of Rhii
- Skepp, The leader of a Surge
- Raykhyic, Rhii homeworld the fourth world in the Fjii system.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 62 by TGLS
We know there was a break between Humans and divergers; when did it happen and how fast was it (i.e. years of dissent and repression, or rapid departure?)

Answer
Diverger History Lesson
Most people think that the Divergers are the ones who split from humans, the ones who choose to 'diverge'. The truth is actually more like the reverse.

In the 21st century, humanity completed the Human Genome Project and slowly began to exploit that knowledge. By the turn of the 22nd century, mankind had colonised the Solar System- with progress on Martian terraforming, colonies on Venus and many Jovian moons, and space stations everywhere else. Genemods were a tool to enable humans to live and work in these harsh environments, but as time progressed they became the favoured tool of most corporations. Problems that were normally solved with mechanical engineering could now be solved with genetic engineering- instead of upgrading air filtration systems, inoculate the inhabitants with mods to reduce their susceptibility to pollutants and toxic gases; instead of installing radiation shields, give workers radiation blocking fish scales. Costs could be saved across the board- replace entertainment sections with a reduced propensity for boredom; engineer loyalty to avoid strikes; reduced requirements for oxygen, water or tasty food meant lowered staff overheads.

Entering the 23rd century, humanity started to fear for the future of their genetic heritage. Real humans were being engineered out of existence, and all in the name of the bottom line. People felt they had ceded control of their bodies to the corporate state, and in a way more insidious than slavery- it was said that a baby was born with 250 millilitres of blood in its body, 270 bones, and 29,000 patents. Thus, a widespread grassroots movement against this corporate hegemony began to take hold, and the text known as Humanity's Creed (quoted below) came out of this time. It was popularised in social media posts, as protest placards and in songs, becoming the centrepiece of the humanist movement. Over the course of the century, political will turned against rampant genetic modification and many governments introduced laws reducing, restricting and banning it. Held especially sacred was the right to be born with an unmodified genome, the product of human evolution, not the product of a corporate committee's design specifications.

However, moving towards the 24th century, colonisation of other star systems had been progressing for some time, and early colonists had all been genemodded to help them survive the harsh conditions they were expected to face. With increasing ease of space travel, those colonists who returned to Earth with their children or grand children were surprised to be faced with hostile discrimination against them. What had been normal a century before was now objectionable, and they had been left behind. These returning colonists found sympathy from some corners of society who still supported self-modification, whether through bionics or genomics, and formed their own counter-movement- the Divergers.

Many Divergers moved back to the early frontier worlds, where they were tolerated as a normal part of society, even respected for their contribution to the colonisation drive. But other Divergers wanted to fight against the new mainstream, who they termed 'Recedents', turning away from the promise of the Fourth Wave, and often chose violent methods to do so.

This set up the political tension for the next few centuries, with some Diverger factions carrying out violent attacks because they felt their rights were being violated, then mainstream polities bringing sanctions and reprisals against Diverger nations in return, who were seen as sympathisers and supporters of the terrorists.

However, if you were to select a single event as the turning point of the conflict, where it went from simmering distrust to open vindictive warfare, it would be the 2306 attack on Tangga Bintang, the orbital beanstalk at Penjantan Island, Indonesia. The collapse of the elevator itself and the resulting tsunami killed 8 million people in equatorial territories, and meant trillions of G-yen of damage to the Earth's economy. And all over a group of just 11 Divergers who had been detained for violation of Monaco's strict genome laws.

---

This text is the Humanity Creed, found printed on page one of a simple eighteen page pamphlet, The Birthright Manifesto. This nine century-old text is revered by many governments of the modern humanosphere, forming the core tenet of a number of their constitutions or charter documents.

The Humanity Creed

• I am a human being
• I am not a corporate product
• I am not a patent number
• I am the Mitochondrial Eve
• I am the Y-Chromosomal Adam
• My genome is my birthright and my legacy
• I am my ancestor's progeny
• I am my descendant's forebear
• I am 200 millennia old
• Earth was my cradle and the Galaxy is my crucible
• I am not a biology experiment
• I am not a cost cutting measure
• Give me the tools and I will do a day's work
• Give me respect and keep your hands off my DNA!

  The Humanity Creed, page 1 of The Birthright Manifesto (2232)

---

Question 64
NPCs
I need help! I'm running a session next week using this setting, and I need 1-3 NPCs that the party can approach for a mission.

I was thinking that there'd be-
a) a mercantile agent
b) a smuggler boss
c) a military, police or security officer
but I'm willing to take other options.

Who are they? What do they look like? Where can they be found?
Thanks!

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

So, I'm trying to integrate a bit of background with the excellent work here, but I'm stuck on this detail.

We seem to have 5d jumping at this point, which is fine. But, if Scales was from Tau Ceti, there must already be pretty fast interstellar travel if he's in Procyon. We could say that early interstellar travel was done by a series of a great many short jumps of 0.1 light years each. With 120 jumps (11.8 ly) to Tau Ceti, that could've taken 2 years at 1 week per jump, which can explain how colony ships originally got to Tau Ceti.

But if we look at a star map, we see Procyon and TC are on opposite sides of Earth, so it seems like a bit of a stretch.

Would it be a problem if we amended the above to say he was jumping around in the Tau Ceti system instead? I know it's not a major detail, and was probably given as off-the-cuff flavour, it's just that I didn't want to rewrite someone's contribution without checking.

My original conception was that travel between the stars were long, dangerous missions before 7D jump drives. The Tau Ceti colony was created because planet hunting at the suns gravity lens discovered an eminently habitable world near Tau Ceti. Then, through a sublight but comparatively fast travel system (perhaps performing repeated flybys of the sun using 5D hops to return to the beginning of the loop, because 5D jumps can't be too far from a star), the first colony in Tau Ceti was founded.

The mission Scales was on was intended to be like a the Discovery One mission from 2001; a long mission, one where the crew could not expect to return for a very long time (Perhaps 50 years, departure to return?). It could be rewritten to have the mission be around Tau Ceti, but it was also intended to describe why the astronauts didn't lynch Scales when they were stranded in the middle of galactic nowhere, why they would be content to wait for a return trip in cold sleep, and why there was lots of jumping around the Procyon system. Perhaps to describe why this mission was happening, there was some unexpected decrease in travel time from Tau Ceti to Procyon that would motivate this mission (It's a golden opportunity).

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 63
NPCs
I need help! I'm running a session next week using this setting, and I need 1-3 NPCs that the party can approach for a mission.

I was thinking that there'd be-
a) a mercantile agent
b) a smuggler boss
c) a military, police or security officer
but I'm willing to take other options.

Who are they? What do they look like? Where can they be found?
Thanks!

a) Lauren Kelso IV
Lauren is the VP of Colonial Affairs for the Tau Ceti based Kelso Co. She was placed in that position by her mother, Lauren Kelso III, for development for when she takes over the Kelso Co. She auburn hair, and unlike most Tau Cetians, she is slightly shorter than average; not outside human norms, but distinctive on Tau Ceti. She has placed an ad hiring out a merchant ship to break a mining strike on a nearby colony owned by Kelso Co. If the PCs apply to the mission, she will meet with them in a country club on the planet you're starting on.

b) Ma Jiang (Chinese name; surname comes first)
Ma Jiang is completely unaffiliated with the Diverger Triads, merely a honest businessman who runs a nightclub (The Aquarium) and a successful import/export contractor. Jiang's blue hair is tragic side-effect of radiation poisoning, not genetic engineering, and his bulging muscles from years of training and diet, not illegal cybernetics. He does not meet with associates of highly dubious ethics on Mondays at 8:30 PM to handle the transport of sealed packages, which regularly contain illegal goods, but distant cousins bringing ill-tidings and small gifts (i.e. have the PCs make a Streetwise+x roll, and tell them that they should present themselves as distant cousins and bring a small gift if they succeed, otherwise tell them nothing and have them be in for a surprise).

c) Colonel Qi Timu
Colonel Qi Timu is a Kagoshi army officer placed in charge of procurement for the Kagoshi armed forces. Like most Kagoshi, her fur is of different colors, but predominantly black on her arms and head, and is of an athletic build. She was previously in charge of Kagoshi special forces, but was promoted to the more administrative position of procurement, a move she loathes. Her current assignment is to acquire templates for the J-82 EMP module. She thinks she has found a source, but is awaiting transport to meet with them. She can be found drinking in at The Aquarium from 8-10 fairly regularly.

And one extra:
d) Dibsurama Khachi
Dibsurama Khachi is a Wren Ti diplomat. Dibs is tall for a Wren Ti, and has green plumage on his head. He hates the weather on [planet], it's much to cold and dry for his taste. Through a variety of sources, he has found processing facility where Wren Ti are apparently being bred and chipped, for sale on the galactic market. However, he can't seem to find anyone to mount a raid on the facility, mercenaries ask too much in advance, the government on the planet actively supports slavery, and the current Wren Ti government can't spare the forces to mount a raid. He wouldn't want that anyway; orchestrating the rescue himself would be political gold for him, might even get him reassigned somewhere nicer. He makes a number of meetings with local officials at the local country club.

Question 58 by PTTG
What, if any, technologies are surprisingly regressed in this setting, universally? If none, are any species particularly good or bad with a specific field of technology?
Question 61 by Daigoro
How easy is it to detect an incoming jump? And how much warning is there beforehand, i.e. how long beforehand is it noticeable?
Question 64 by TGLS (New)
Is there lots of strain between the two "new" species (Wren Ti and Kagoshi) and the big three?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by (E)

Question 63
What animals are commonly seen throughout the galaxy?

Well, its common for pets and pests to accompany their master species, but that's to be expected.

The real 'common animal' is the rooroo, a downy four-eyed creature the size of a rat. Their stomach has a very sophisticated mechanism for both sorting useful bacteria and channeling the animal towards food that's nourishing. As a result, the things can live on pretty much on any planet -- though it takes a number of them before one will make the jump. As far as terreforming goes they are considered 'The devil you know' -- some folks intentionally introduce them.

Question 63 (continued)
What extraterrestrial pets and pests are commonly seen throughout the galaxy?

Auxillary Question:
What species are most biologically compatible with the rooroo?

[(E)]

Question 58 by PTTG
What, if any, technologies are surprisingly regressed in this setting, universally? If none, are any species particularly good or bad with a specific field of technology?

The exact biochemical make up of species means that biotechnology levels are diverse among the major species. Humans have been very cautious with biotech developments. Farming and food production has also been limited by environmental concerns and issues stemming from the various environmental catastrophes of the twenty-first though twenty-fourth centuries.
Medical technology is struggling to cope with the vast array of new "phages" coming from contact with so many new microorganisms and parasites.

One new piece of human technology that is slightly old fashioned to some observers is the "Black Bess" a slower rate of fire railgun for military use. (more later)

The Xylysus are well behind in most technical areas except those to do with robotics.

Enclave worms are problematic to categorize, much of their technology is of little use to other species, they are possibly the most advanced in FTL travel even though some consider this to be a neurological advantage not a technical one.

Some alien supremacy theorists say that the CyKoi are the most advanced its just that they haven't chosen to utilize the new technology yet.

The Sulth are without a doubt the most advanced in the field of biotechnology. While the life support systems that they produce are technically illegal on some human worlds many captains choose to install them. The Sulth life support systems are one tenth the size of human manufactured ones and have an unsurpassed reputation for reliability.

Mar Ken have the most advanced shielding and real space propulsion technology but humans are gaining on them rapidly.

The Rhii have recently lost their place as the most advanced overall, one signature of their technology is the odd flare of brilliance in applying technologies. The Rhii have an aptitude for making do with what they have in difficult situation technically speaking.

Question 65
How bad is the discrimination against Divergers in human space? Could for example a Genetically engineered person go to the core worlds and get a university style education? get a job? start a business?

[Daigoro]

I screwed up the question numbering yesterday. To get us back on track, they should look like this:

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 54: by TGLS
Do passengers regularly travel from system to system? If so, what are normal rates? When are rates higher than normal?
Question 58 (number edited) by PTTG
What, if any, technologies are surprisingly regressed in this setting, universally? If none, are any species particularly good or bad with a specific field of technology?
Question 61 by Daigoro [Open]
How easy is it to detect an incoming jump? And how much warning is there beforehand, i.e. how long beforehand is it noticeable?
Question 62 by TGLS
We know there was a break between Humans and divergers; when did it happen and how fast was it (i.e. years of dissent and repression, or rapid departure?)

Originally Posted by (E)

Question 63
What animals are commonly seen throughout the galaxy?

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 63 -> 64
NPCs
I need help! I'm running a session next week using this setting, and I need 1-3 NPCs that the party can approach for a mission.

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 64 -> 65 by TGLS [Open]
Is there lots of strain between the two "new" species (Wren Ti and Kagoshi) and the big three?

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question 63 (continued) [Open]
What extraterrestrial pets and pests are commonly seen throughout the galaxy?

Auxillary Question: [Open]
What species are most biologically compatible with the rooroo?

Originally Posted by (E)

Question 65 -> 66 [Open]
How bad is the discrimination against Divergers in human space? Could for example a Genetically engineered person go to the core worlds and get a university style education? get a job? start a business?

Or, in one quotable block of currently open (and continuing), correctly numbered questions:

Question 61 by Daigoro
How easy is it to detect an incoming jump? And how much warning is there beforehand, i.e. how long beforehand is it noticeable?

Question 63 (continued) by ericthered
What extraterrestrial pets and pests are commonly seen throughout the galaxy?

Auxillary Question to 63: by ericthered
What species are most biologically compatible with the rooroo?

Question 65 by TGLS
Is there lots of strain between the two "new" species (Wren Ti and Kagoshi) and the big three?

Question 66 by (E)
How bad is the discrimination against Divergers in human space? Could for example a Genetically engineered person go to the core worlds and get a university style education? get a job? start a business?