New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

In our "real world" the Birch has a unique adaptation to extremes of cold. It can switch from being a tree to a vine. If an area never has even a month of temperatures averaging above 50F, then no trees can grow there. But vines still can. Thus birches can grow were others trees can't.

On Adocentyn, most plants have similar adaptations in that they can radically alter their appearance and structure in different climatic conditions. Thus certain berry vines are suddenly becoming fruit trees. Many crop plants are becoming very different crops than what they were before. Some common weeds are now valuable plants. Some once valued plants are now noxious weeds. This is causing all sorts of chaos.

Many of Adocentyn's animals have similar adaptations. There is a type of wolf that haunts the Bittersand Desert which adapts to the rising sea levels by becoming a sea lion. This actually takes several generations.

These changes may seem outrageous but it isn't Lamarckism These animals evolved these traits in the normal way (or normal for a magical world) and those animals that can't adjust when the climate changes leave no offspring.

Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster has a planet that has a similar cycle. Might give you some ideas. There is a bamboo like plant that spreads over the ice moving needed minerals from the 'islands' that remain above the ice through the root system and builds nodules of them and then spreads farther. So you find it miles out on the ices sheets.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster has a planet that has a similar cycle. Might give you some ideas. There is a bamboo like plant that spreads over the ice moving needed minerals from the 'islands' that remain above the ice through the root system and builds nodules of them and then spreads farther. So you find it miles out on the ices sheets.

Seriously KWEL! Thanks for the tip.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

The planet Eurynome was settled by colonists that arrived in three major waves on STL generation starships. The first settlers showing up in 2743 AD.

It is now the year 3456 AD. It has been five centuries since a fleet of settlers came to Eurynome's star-system. But now new ships have arrived. And they left Earth SIX WEEKS AGO!!! Faster than Light travel is now here.

Eurynome has been a stable society, fairly homogeneous, a little static. Now they are going to be in direct regular contact with Earth and the Solar System If history is any guide, everything is going to be violently shaken up.

[David Johnston2]

Enterprise done right.

The players are the command crew of the first human vessel capable of traveling between stars with time frames measured in weeks instead of months or years. Their primary mission is to visit each of the known human colonies, functionally autonomous due to the slow travel times and convince them to agree to send voting ambassadors to the new Earth Federation Assembly. In order to do this, they must find out what the most serious problem facing each colony is and demonstrate that Earth can help deal with it, proving that it is worth strengthening their relationship with Earth. Along the way they will encounter pirates, disgruntled aliens who have issues with how fast humanity has been expanding, negative space wedgies and vacant worlds that used to have colonies and/or alien civilizations but...

Their ship will be armed with lasers and "impulse torpedoes" with or without fusion warheads. They will have no transporters and no universal translators, although they will have a telepath who is good at defeating language barriers.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Enterprise done right.

The players are the command crew of the first human vessel capable of traveling between stars with time frames measured in weeks instead of months or years. Their primary mission is to visit each of the known human colonies, functionally autonomous due to the slow travel times and convince them to agree to send voting ambassadors to the new Earth Federation Assembly. In order to do this, they must find out what the most serious problem facing each colony is and demonstrate that Earth can help deal with it, proving that it is worth strengthening their relationship with Earth. Along the way they will encounter pirates, disgruntled aliens who have issues with how fast humanity has been expanding, negative space wedgies and vacant worlds that used to have colonies and/or alien civilizations but...

Their ship will be armed with lasers and "impulse torpedoes" with or without fusion warheads. They will have no transporters and no universal translators, although they will have a telepath who is good at defeating language barriers.

This is great. And, as stated, it doesn't have to be Star Trek. It fits Star Trek beautifully but any Sci Fi universe the group knows fits perfectly. Good stuff David.

[PTTG]

Agreed, thats' an awesome seed!

I for one might put the PCs aboard the second, fourth, or eighth such vessel. Thus the PCs are still new on the scene, but there's a chance the EFA's reputation precedes them. It also means they can expect only a fraction of the support that the flagship gets, putting the PCs out on their own. Plus, PC social abilities can come to the fore. If you're on the sole flagship, then it doesn't matter that much that you're the son of an Earth Defense Fleet Admiral -- everybody's mom is putting them on such a stellar posting if they can get it. If, on the other hand, you're on Ship #5, your pull isn't diluted.

The flavor is different -- it foregrounds the institution, which isn't everyone's cup of tea. Still, I think it could be fun.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In the late 2020's contact is made with an alien species. Weirdly enough the Aliens look like US!!!

At first the UFO cranks are going "Nordics!!!. After the cranks are calmed down and the real "Nordics" are apologized to, the Aliens explain that they called themselves the Tuatha. They'd been taken by aliens long ago and came back for awhile to visit their distant kinsfolk. Now the old aliens have "Passed Beyond" and they've come back, and not just the Celtic tribes. Soon all the human groups taken by the aliens will return to share their wealth and power with their long lost kinsfolk.

The world's elites are in a panic. Not every human group is represented in the stars. And some very small, poor, primitive, and oppressed people are represented by powerful extra-planetary nations. The Earth's power relationships are going to be knocked askew. Worse, most of these aliens may be technologically advanced but they are culturally and politically primitive. The Tuatha seem to get the idea of political change, or at least since they claim Ireland and those nations with large numbers of people of Irish ancestry as their kinfolk/allies, they've decided to move toward modernity. Others might refuse.

Can Earth survive our new found kinsfolk starting a primitive war with tech level twelve superscience weapons?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Fires of Spring

The island of Ynysyddôl is mainly gently rolling hills covered with broad meadows and small forests. Most of the land is only about 50 to 100 feet above sea level in winter and summer. Which means that this broad fertile highly populated island is going to be mainly submerged in Spring and Fall.

This roughly California sized island, with a temperate Bermuda-like climate all Winter and a Borneo-like climate all summer, has about 10% of it's land mass above sea level in Spring and Fall. The local island kingdoms fight fiercely and brutally to control these high lands. A kingdom that controls no highlands simply dies once the waves cover it. Their people have no place to return to when the seasons change. Holding the high ground is the life and death of kingdoms!

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Fires of Spring

This is a science fantasy setting magical elements are freely mixed in with Planetary Romance and steampunk elements.

. If you read The Dying Earth and other works in the same setting by Vance you'll get the right mood and style. Wolf's Book of the New Sun should suggest some bio-tech ideas.

More later...

Basically, the elder Wizards of Adocentyn dabbled in bio-technology. Certain creatures are left over from these experiments.

Of importance to the PCs are the Destriers named for ancient war horses. These creatures can run at high speeds for longer than most types of wolves. In battle these steeds can charge at 100 mph. However they must be well fed to be in peak physical condition, and that includes meat. Sometime, hungry Destriers seek their own meat sources. This can be serious trouble.

Look at Wolf's The Castle of the Otter for details and ideas on the Destriers.

The Greatbats, which combine DNA from bats, Pterosaurs and stranger beasts by far, allow men to ride living beasts into the air. A healthy greatbat can carry as much as a camel at up to 80 mph.

There are many other strange beasts. Some are useful, others were meant as traps to snare the unwary. Some make no sense at all. They seem simply to be terrors.

An example of these last are strange fell hyena-like beasts that have a sinister trick. They dig up the bodies of the newly dead and after eating their brains seem to have the memories and voices of the dead people they ate. One of the favorite games of these demon things is to go to the door of a grieving mother and call out in her dead child's voice to be let in. Many a tale of horror is now punctuated with "Help me mommy."

More later...

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Dioscuri

Castor and Pollux are twin worlds that orbit a star that's 50 months of travel time from the Earth and in a setting where messages go only as fast as ships (no interstellar FTL radio). The fifty months travel time is assuming non-stop travel. The simple reason this particular star system is even visited, let alone has large bases in it, is the presence of these Twin planets.

Castor's diameter is roughly 95% of that of the Earth, the diameter of Pollux is roughly 87% of that of Earth. Both worlds have thick Earthlike atmospheres, about the same density as the Earth, geomagnetic fields like the Earth's, seas, and unicellular life. The rarity of the find called out for study.

However, since getting back and forth from Earth to these worlds is not easy (mainly because of the years of travel time required) stays at the bases are long and contact with home rare. And even though the bases are spacious and have the latest comforts and entertainments their is a certain boredom in isolation.

Boredom in isolation can lead to ideas. Someone on Pollux found a way to drip small amounts of terraforming organisms into the environment.

Normally this wouldn't be an issue. But Pollux, like Castor, is a uniquely good candidate for terraforming. There's liquid water in the environment, the unicellular lifeforms have already introduced a low level of oxygen into the atmosphere (this has been kept low because the local life can't seem to adapt to high levels of oxygen), and a strong geomagnetic field. Small numbers of organisms were enough to take hold and not need further human encouragement (unlike Mars were constant work would be needed).

The leaders of the bases now have a problem. This has been going on on Pollux for at least a few years, and it has been copied on Castor at least 15 months ago. Who are the mutineers? Can the contamination be undone? What will Earth do? Can the leadership wait four years and two months, or likely much more time, to find out? Also, many people living on the edge of Human space bitterly resent Earth's strict limits on Extra solar Terraforming. Could news of the contamination of Castor and Pollux cause a political crisis?