1001 Planets [Space]

[AlexanderHowl]

I was just wondering if anyone would be willing to share the planets from their games? Please feel from to share details about stellar systems, planetary parameters, native lifeforms, indigenous cultures, etc.

Alfheimr (Large Garden World)

Alfheimr is a Large Garden World that was terriformed during the First Age by the Terran Federation in order to house the Alfar, a group of problematic genetically engineered superhumans. Created by the TL12 biotechnology, the Alfar were host to inherited TL12 metamorphic viruses that allowed them to reproduce with any human-sized mammalian sapient derived from Terran biology. In the case of male Alfar, it transformed any fertile egg into Alfar eggs, allowing for interbreeding (it also changed the mother so she could bear Alfar children). In the case of female Alfar, it transformed any viable sperm into Alfar sperm, allowing for interbreeding.

Alfheimr is located in orbit around a K0V star 250 ly from Terra, on the edge of the territory of the First Age Terran Federation. 65% larger than the Earth and 20% less dense than the Earth, it possesses a gravity of 1.32g and a dense nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. During the terraforming process, 80% of the atmosphere was trapped in water ices and artificial coal through the introduction of massive amounts of hydrogen and advanced nanotechnology, allowing for the seeding of genetically engineered plants that maintained the stability of the planet. The Terran Federation also seeded in with genetically engineered animal life to keep the Alfar busy.

After the Alfar War, the Terran Federation avoided violating its laws against genocide by dropping the 100 million Alfar on Alfheimr with just enough equipment the start a TL4 society. When the First Age ended, humanity forgot about Alfheimr, but the Alfar did not forget about humanity, as their longevity allowed them to live 1,000 years. The Alfar wait for humanity to return, so that the Alfar can finally rule humanity.

[Astromancer]

Ran (Cool Ocean World)

Ran is a largely Earthlike world with about two extra miles of ocean depht. Ran is cooler than the Earth and has a gravity of 1.02G. Where Earth is about three quarters covered with ocean, Ran is 96% ocean. And Ran is an exceptionally stormy and windswept world.

There is a scoutbase in a large inactive shield volcano at 31.6 degrees North of the equator (the center of the base is the zero meridian). Inside of this vast volcano is a lagoon. This lagoon and its shores represent most of the good i.e. pleasant land on Ran. Constant brutal storms lash most other "livable" areas on Ran.

However, because the scoutbase ran some experiments with aquaculture and fish farming. Experiments were several dozen earth lifeforms got loose into Ran's oceans. Ran is now stunningly rich in high quality seafood. This has led to the establishment of several cities floating in Ran's oceans just far enough below the surface to be safe from storms.

The economy of these cities is based on fishing and otherwise harvesting marine lifeforms. They also have impressive aquaculture culture systems. They export vast amounts of high quality food. Life on these floating cities is comfortable, and not uncultured. but people see them as dull tame places to live. The locals are known for wanderlust.

[Astromancer]

Nodens

Nodens is sort of a garden world, a poisonous garden. Its maroon and scarlet vegetation is both highly toxic (protein incompatibility) and all known humans and near human species are violently allergic to the smell, even when it's to faint for a human to register the scent. On the plus side, Nodens lifeforms are just as allergic to earth-life as earth-life is to Nodens lifeforms. If humans take a hand the balance can be tipped toward earth lifeforms. However it is slow work terraforming a planet one field at a time.

Over a century of struggle large areas of Nodens have been rendered earthlike. It looks good for the oceans being flipped in the next century. Meanwhile, rural life in the edge areas where the one field at a time struggle goes on life is a wheezing, sneezing, sinus headache misery. Worse, there's a rumor that intelligent lifeforms have been found.

If "native" HILFs(High Intelligence Lifeforms) have been found, the planet would be evacuated by force.

According to the locals, "Something must be done. Generations of hardwork and investment of lives and struggle can't just be overturned because some romantic pseudo-intellectuals decide that some random animal is a proto-sophant. These creeps are known to be bigoted snobs that hate colonists anyway. They've got incentive to lie. Someone needs to do something final!"

[PTTG]

Turquoise:
A Medium Garden world, slightly warmer than Earth and slightly smaller. Photosythesis evolved a distinctly blue-green color, lending the oceans and the land both a cover of turquoise-colored native plant analogues. The northern continent is slightly larger and has significant equatorial regions, making it a natural spot to land.

Diamond:
Turquoise's captured C-type asteroid-moon.

Garnet:
The larger, more ordinary silicate moon of Turquoise. Bears a significant impact crater in the southern hemisphere.

The system is home to a number of other gemstone-named barren planets, including the gas giant Topaz.

[Astromancer]

Galihoden

This arid world named for a minor Arthurian knight, is a rare shirtsleve environment in this sector and has both a large starbase and multiple resorts and vacation areas. Hospitality is the big industry here. Advanced biotech is used to make sure the vast majority of the population is blandly pretty. As the desert world has few resources other than the fact it is a rare "earthlike" world in an otherwise inhospitable sector, the locals do what they must to keep their jobs and industry.

Up to 68 percent of the population has had their minds and bodies reshaped for the hospitality industry. About two-fifths of the local population are hermathomorphs able to freely change their sex.

Note: Play up the contrast between the blandly pretty and pleasantly comfortable image and outer reality of this world and its inner sad creepiness. The PCs should visit this "Shore Leave" world a time or two before noticing its wrongness.

Think of this as a very Stepford Wives meets bio-horror world.

[jason taylor]

Legionworld/Ihaiti:

This is a lucky find with two reasonably earthlike planets with air breathable to humans and most sophants. Legionworld is called so because it has several continents one whole continent of which is reserved for military exercise. Ihaiti is a world with a disproportionate amount of steepelands good for pastoral development. It is largely reserved to be settled by incoming Aslan vassals of a human political confederation. Only a small portion of it has as yet been settled and the rest is being carefully surveyed.

[David Johnston2]

Ereshkigal is an exotic world in a backwater system inhabited by ammonia-based burrowing intelligent life with a serpentine main body but a ring of digging and manipulating members surrounding their heads. They made contact with humanity when humans attempted to set up a local mining operation using local labour. In the process of educating the eager locals so they'd be useful for mine labour, the humans were alarmed to realize that their students were wildly curious and significantly more intelligent (Curious/+2 IQ) on average than they were and beat a hasty retreat taking most of their students with them and setting them up in a colony/think tank on Enkidu,

More than a century the inhabitants of the human colony of Marduk live in fear of the Eresh who have modernized and keep obsessively sending spy machines, some of whom are very life-like androids. The Eresh robots have one big flaw in posing as human. Since their programmers can't understand humour, neither can their AIs. They are fascinated by humour because they have the misapprehension that the humans withdrew because the Eresh didn't understand jokes. While the Eresh are only sending their spies out of their obsessive curiosity the inhabitants of Gilgamesh (the human colony orbiting the K-type primary of their binary system) are constantly worried that the Eresh are plotting a war against them and there have been skirmishes in space between the two worlds.

Gilgamesh's government exploits the public fear of Eresh infiltration to maintain its grip on power. It is only nominally democratic with the opposition perpetually in the minority. One thing the Gilgameshites don't grasp is how easily distracted the Eresh are and that they are psychologically incapable of maintaining the focus required for more than the skirmishes they have already been engaging in.

[PTTG]

IRC +10420 J has yet to be given a proper name.

The planet was originally a carbon and iron rich world with 1.7g surface gravity. Its atmosphere was completely blown away by it's parent star's solar wind.

The entire planet is coated with what appear to be insects, but are in fact each a collection of tiny robots. They are either very large nanomachines or very small clanking replicators; regardless, they definitely appear to be artificial.

They are engaged in a planetwide war. Long ago, their central command authority was destroyed, and several different subcommanders attempted to take control. Since then, they have warred with small-scale ultratech for millennia. For the past two hundred thousand years, there has been a stable state of three mutually hostile factions. If one faction grows too weak, it allies with the weaker of the other two, eventually reducing the power of the strongest.

This is not a matter of intelligent power-grabbing, however; these are only crude AI executing basic damage control schemes.

The planet's purpose was to collect expelled matter from the yellow hypergiant's photosphere, using a collossal array of inductors and generators surrounding the planet. If they weren't engaged in their unending turf war, and if the stored files haven't become corrupted as have the system's damage control protocalls, the robots could repair the planet's network in a matter of months, re-enabling the planet's hyper-specialized industry.

What exactly it is going to do with multiple solar masses worth of exotic elements and isotopes is hard to forsee... What could seriously ancient alien intellect decide was worth harnessing such a cosmic oddity? (There are about 15 yellow hypergiants in the entire milky way, for context.)

[Donny Brook]

I am getting a distinct sense that these worlds were not all generated in strict compliance with the many, many, many, many detailed pages of star system creation rules in GURPS Space.

C'mon guys, they filled over a quarter of the book with rules to painstakingly generate realistic uninhabited ice balls and gas giants -- you could at least use them.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I am getting a distinct sense that these worlds were not all generated in strict compliance with the many, many, many, many detailed pages of star system creation rules in GURPS Space.

C'mon guys, they filled over a quarter of the book with rules to painstakingly generate realistic uninhabited ice balls and gas giants -- you could at least use them.

Forgive me but my copy of GURPS: Space is in storage until I can convince family members that bedbugs ( how I hate the filthy little booklice) aren't immortal.