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Old 12-21-2018, 12:57 AM   #1
scc
 
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Default [Space] Haven And Carson's World

For those who don't know Haven and Carson's World are the two worlds of a single star generated in the example sections for world building chapters in Space. The rest of the 'setting' for the two seems to be a straight copy of Star Wars or the Foundation novels.

Haven is stock Garden World inhabited by a group refugees from the empire who are trying out democracy and Carson's World is a Mars like world in the next orbit out. The interesting thing about Carson's World is that it has some alien ruins on it that rebel scientists are exploring. Now this is a bit problematic, why are there ruins on the uninhabitable planet but not the habitable one? And given that there is an unexplored M5 companion star, I'm guessing that there's some sort of alien relic in orbit around that as well.

Now using this as the basis for a campaign it's TL10^ and either Safetech or Retrotech, it's a bit hard to tell with Star Wars' science fantasy setting. The tricky thing I've got is how to set the players up, the only idea I've got is that one of them inherits a spaceships, but I'd rather something more broad minded then independent traders high-jinks.
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Old 12-21-2018, 02:56 AM   #2
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

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Haven is stock Garden World inhabited by a group refugees from the empire who are trying out democracy and Carson's World is a Mars like world in the next orbit out. The interesting thing about Carson's World is that it has some alien ruins on it that rebel scientists are exploring. Now this is a bit problematic, why are there ruins on the uninhabitable planet but not the habitable one? And given that there is an unexplored M5 companion star, I'm guessing that there's some sort of alien relic in orbit around that as well.
Well, the why of this can be a mystery for the PCs to solve, if you want. As for an answer for you, as GM - make something up. Maybe the aliens wanted something that's found on Carson's World but not Haven. Maybe there are ruins on Haven but the more active environment has destroyed them, or they simply haven't been found yet because they're buried in a jungle.

As for whether or not there are alien ruins somewhere around the companion - that's entirely up to you.

And when it comes to giving the PCs a ship, but not wanting them to just be independent traders - make the ship one that's unsuited to trading. Maybe have it be provided as some government-sponsored mission to go out and find something, or to be spies.
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Old 12-25-2018, 10:41 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

If you wanted to take a different tack from Star Wars, you could steal an idea from Brian Daley's space opera series about Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh, which began with, Jinx on a Terran Inheritance.

In that series, the ancient Precursors left unique ruins and machinery throughout the galaxy, all of which seemed designed to promote intelligence and psionic abilities, and get a handle on causality in such a way as to provide very limited oracular insight about possible future events.

This made them so highly valued that sometimes people fought wars to control the sites. Also, attempts to understand the Precursors acted as a unifying theme for background events, and provided long-term goals for the main characters in the trilogy.

Make the ruins an old, abandoned research post left by a vanished race, which they used to try to manipulate a Precursor site deep within the planet. Say they did something, and it wiped out the sizable colony the researching race had on the garden world.
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Old 12-25-2018, 10:47 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
For those who don't know Haven and Carson's World are the two worlds of a single star generated in the example sections for world building chapters in Space. The rest of the 'setting' for the two seems to be a straight copy of Star Wars or the Foundation novels.

Haven is stock Garden World inhabited by a group refugees from the empire who are trying out democracy and Carson's World is a Mars like world in the next orbit out. The interesting thing about Carson's World is that it has some alien ruins on it that rebel scientists are exploring. Now this is a bit problematic, why are there ruins on the uninhabitable planet but not the habitable one?
The habitable world probably had its ruins eroded by the elements and buried by geological movement while its abandoned colony founded by Alien Musk was relatively well preserved by a trace atmosphere and being geologically dead.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 12-25-2018 at 11:53 PM.
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Old 12-28-2018, 12:42 PM   #5
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

The aliens might be anaerobic life, and thus find a planet full of oxidizer as terrifying as we would find a planet with open seas of chlorine.
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Old 12-28-2018, 01:47 PM   #6
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

The precursors could be very into not causing ecological disasters. Colonization would make such things inevitable.
That's if they could survive the planet as easily as humans. It doesn't have to be as extreme as radically different forms of respiration. It could be amino acid differences, unpleasant gravity, or just native life really stinks to them.
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Old 12-28-2018, 06:59 PM   #7
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Why would colonization inevitably cause destruction?
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Old 12-28-2018, 07:38 PM   #8
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

Invasive species. It would be logistically impossible to 100% stop all alien life from spreading if people are there all the time. Not necessarily large pests like mice, but equivalents of yeasts, bacteria, viruses, etc.
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Old 12-28-2018, 09:51 PM   #9
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

And the equivalent of parasite could go both ways if the ecosystems are anywhere near compatible. Imagine the horror that humans would feel if an alien parasite infested humans while they were sleeping appeared on the Earth from a recently colonized planet. It could just be a parasite that lived in the large intestine, feeding on human waste while laying its eggs in human feces before it is excreted, but humans would flip out when they realized that they were hosting an alien organism. If it also influenced their mental state by releasing chemicals that the bowels absorbed, the flip out would be on an epic level.
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Old 12-29-2018, 01:00 AM   #10
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Default Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World

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And the equivalent of parasite could go both ways if the ecosystems are anywhere near compatible. Imagine the horror that humans would feel if an alien parasite infested humans while they were sleeping appeared on the Earth from a recently colonized planet. It could just be a parasite that lived in the large intestine, feeding on human waste while laying its eggs in human feces before it is excreted, but humans would flip out when they realized that they were hosting an alien organism. If it also influenced their mental state by releasing chemicals that the bowels absorbed, the flip out would be on an epic level.
We already have similar parasites, and they are native to Earth. We don't flip out, we go to the doctor and get the applicable treatment if we're in a wealthy country, and if we're in a poor one we manage as best we can with folk remedies, minimal professional treatment, and/or simply living with the parasite.
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