[Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by (E)

The Xylysus have the "Womb" the facility where they seek to recreate their race, since the loss of the planetary fragment containing organic matter from their home planet the location is somewhat secret and very very well guarded.

Hah! is that what they told you? I suppose it makes sense if you believe the rest of the official story. But their home planet is gone! bombed out of existance! Its the only explanation for their continued failures to recreate themselves in the flesh.

Ok, there's also the folks who believe the Xylysus are just a bunch of AI's who killed off their makers. But then why do they have such realistic senses and such a solid grounding in the material world and biological senses? Those folks give the rest of truth seekers a bad name, but at least they don't blindly accept the official story...

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

More Centers of learning
The Xylysus have the "Womb" the facility where they seek to recreate their race, since the loss of the planetary fragment containing organic matter from their home planet the location is somewhat secret and very very well guarded.

More on Qn 99- The Grey Chambers
The Xylysus also have the Grey Chambers [previously mentioned here], where Ace Navigator Halacious Mooti famously studied under Theorist Gegro.

The Grey Chambers are housed in a cluster of buoyant tensegrity spheres floating in the skies of Xylote-Ki 11, a cool, outer gas giant in the Xylysus adoptive home-system. They are the Xylysus' main centre for studies of various highly theoretical sciences and arts- philosophy, ethics, noomatics, theoretical maths and physics and speculative political science. They also have an adjunct specialty in robotics and computing.

Students from all races, not only Xylysus, are welcome here and may study for free, although not many are willing to undergo the entrance procedure. The Well of Memoria is the Grey Chambers' most notorious project- it is their goal to preserve all knowledge against future catastrophe, by deep memory scanning of as many sapients as they are able, including all their students and faculty staff. Many Xylysus see it as an important duty to contribute their collected experiences and knowledge to the Well, but most other races consider it a gross violation of their private, inner selves.

The Well of Memoria is not kept as a static storehouse, it is used as a resource, a corpus of collective real-life experience and personality. Spin-off projects borrow thousands or millions of the recorded mind emulations to run large-scale simulative experiments in hypothetical governing; societal reaction to stress, torture, genocide or catastrophe; psycho-noomatic conditioning; psychological response to indefinite aging- such as Xylysus themselves face; and many others. Sometimes the results of radical government simulations are made known and taken up by groups of Xylysus colonists by founding new experimental settlements.

The Grey Chambers' research overlaps in some places with the other main Xylysus institution, The Womb, so they share a friendly rivalry. Many academics move freely between both institutions, and indeed some theorists cycle between two separate tenures.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Hah! is that what they told you? I suppose it makes sense if you believe the rest of the official story. But their home planet is gone! bombed out of existance! Its the only explanation for their continued failures to recreate themselves in the flesh.

Ok, there's also the folks who believe the Xylysus are just a bunch of AI's who killed off their makers. But then why do they have such realistic senses and such a solid grounding in the material world and biological senses? Those folks give the rest of truth seekers a bad name, but at least they don't blindly accept the official story...

For those willing to follow the actual Xylosan intraspace symposia discussions from actual Grey Chambers' nootheorists instead of reading what raving ember-addled bog farmers with too much time on their hands between harvests say, there is a serious discussion about whether the Xylysus personalities were accurately and faithfully transferred from their meat brains to their machine minds, and whether it's even possible to determine if there's a difference, and thus whether there's any meaning in recreating their meat bodies again, which would all just rot and die of old age in a few decades anyway. In some ways, it seems there's some envy of the Humanists, and similar movements in the other races, who have been able to maintain a heritage that the X's have lost, but in other ways they're satisfied to have found immortality, for the time being at least.



Question 104 by Daigoro
How long has it been since the Xylysus homeworld was destroyed anyway (if it hasn't been already determined)? That is to say, how old are all these Xylysus minds? How many years of memories have they got stored? How much memory capacity do their memoria cells have, and are any memories being lost, overwritten or degraded?

And don't forget to make new questions, folks. I think these are the only outstanding ones:

Question 90 by (E)
I have just retired from my career as a tectonic engineer where should I go on holiday now I have finished slinging Psuedo-nukes and asteroids at uninhabited planets?

Question 100 by (E)
Does it look like the Xylysus will recreate an organic branch of their species anytime soon?
Sub Question what is a good term for the Xylysus' bodies?

[Daigoro]

Question 90 by (E)
I have just retired from my career as a tectonic engineer where should I go on holiday now I have finished slinging Psuedo-nukes and asteroids at uninhabited planets?

Answer
Sightseeing- Terraformer's Tour
Well, it depends. If you still have an interest in geomorphing, you could do worse than a visit to the home system, where it all started. On Earth, you can tour a number of preserves which show exactly what it is you've been trying to emulate and convert towards on all those xenoworlds. And you can see the various historical engineering efforts made to terraform Earth itself back to its earlier state.

Most famous of these, and quite spectacular as well, are the Pillars of Saigon. Built around the Mekong Delta, this mega-engineering project built a dozen downdraft towers reaching thousands of metres into the atmosphere in an attempt to restart the local Hadley Cells to reboot the stalled monsoon season in the region. The multi-purpose towers house millions of people, integrate high-volume aquaponics levels and generate electricity from their internal turbines. Further towers followed with other purposes, such as high-altitude air-docking facilities, residential-commercial semi-arcologues, or the Commonwealth of Pacific States Forum Hall, modelled to look like a pink crystalline lotus flower blooming at an altitude of 1830 metres.

Other stops around Sol for the interested tectonicist include the monumental Martian oxygenation engines of Amazonis Planitia, now converted to seaside resorts; the coral-form platforms of Europa; and the Venusian Centre for the Sciences of Humanity has a fascinating museum park with artefacts and replicas from the history of atmospheric reformation.

Getting away from Sol, you could include a visit to the M'Pira system where they allow lava skedding in the Badlands of M'Pira-1 before the process of landmass rectification is complete. Then head to Arbitrary-4, just a few light years away, where you can go glidesuiting in the iridescent vapour plumes above their psychrological reifiers.

Hyperspace Cruise
However, if instead you want to get away from even the smell of an igneotherm, you might prefer a relaxing cruise. We offer a classic grand galactic tour package on the Halcyon Line's flagship, The Princess of Vector Calculus- this majestic old lady of the higher dimensions, featuring 8000 passenger berths, will take you on an 18-month tour of thirty two stops, taking in the Seven Nebulae, visits to the Rhii, Mar Kan, CyKoi and Xylysus homeworlds, and a not-to-be-missed, special excursion to 4000 light years above the galactic plane, where you can gaze back and almost take in the whole of our home galaxy in one single vista.

Anyway, let me zipceive you some tour brochures and I'll let you think about it, Senior Engineer Koergen, and you can tell me what you've decided.


Question Bank
As that was Qn 90, we're left with 100, 104 and...

Question 105 by Daigoro
I need help! I'm running a session next week and it looks like my players are heading to the infamous pirate haven of Repouso da Sinhá, and I need to flesh out a couple of NPCs. I'm thinking I'll at least need a Diverger pirate gang and their leader, a spaceport mechanic, a couple of prospective crewmates, and perhaps one of the planet's two diarchy rulers, so either the paramilitary guy or the spiritual cultist leader.

Question 106 by Daigoro
What are some random encounters or complications I could throw at my players en route?

Question 107 by Daigoro
What's a sub-plot I could use to connect a few different trade missions together?

Question 108 by Daigoro
Who is the rival super corporation that is threatening to buy out Blue Danube Corporation, and what ramifications are there if the takeover goes through?

Question 109 by Daigoro
You're in Vather, and Jim the Enclave Worm, holder of the ruling coalition's executive chair, contacts you to carry something to the CyKoi Scholar's Temple of History. What the hell is it? Why does he need your unremarkable freight vessel for this courier mission? Who else might want this cargo?

Question 110 by Daigoro
What exactly happened to the Xylysus homeworld? Why was transferring to robotic bodies the best solution? Why couldn't they have fled underground or into space?

BTW- It looks like Frost has expanded a lot more on post #198, in case anyone missed it.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 108 by Daigoro
Who is the rival super corporation that is threatening to buy out Blue Danube Corporation, and what ramifications are there if the takeover goes through?

The prospective buyer is the venerable but rather secretive Clarion consortium. Clarion started life as an investment company based in the old Mirny Archology on earth, in fact its first major acquisition back in the 2800's was the Mirny Archology. Since then Clarion has developed a reputation for a somewhat eclectic range of high profile purchases with an emphasis upon technology and infrastructure.

Clarion's ownership is not well understood, Mirny is a fully self governing corporate state and matters such as stock ownership details are covered by fairly draconian security restrictions. Over the years various Human and Alien governments, corporations and wealthy individuals have been linked to the organisation although nothing has been conclusively proven.

The Clarion takeover is being treated as a matter of concern in many quarters. While Clarion are generally considered to be amongst the good guys, in as far as there are good guys amongst multi-stellar corporations, nobody is comfortable with having such a unknown in charge of an important organisation. The most visible response to date has been an attempt to by a loose association of Mar Kan Corporations to assemble a counter offer. While the Mar Kan offer is unlikely to succeed it is almost certainly not going to be the only attempt.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 109 by Daigoro
You're in Vather, and Jim the Enclave Worm, holder of the ruling coalition's executive chair, contacts you to carry something to the CyKoi Scholar's Temple of History. What the hell is it? Why does he need your unremarkable freight vessel for this courier mission? Who else might want this cargo?

Ironicly the answer to this question is intimately connected to the previous one, given Vather's dependence on the shipping industry the coalition has been aggressively trying to identify the players behind Clarion. Although they have largely failed their agents have found some other interesting things.

From the point of view of an ambitious statesworm the big prize was probably evidence that Yellow Song trading (who do appear to be a Clarion stockholder) are tied up in a number of dirty deals in the Long Wall system in particular attempts to unlawfully recover a derelict ship apparently belonging to an unknown precursor species.

Jim is sending the information to the temple of history for safe keeping pending negotiations with Yellow Song. Why an unremarkable freighter? Deniability, it is one thing to try and blackmail a major corporation but it is quite another to get caught doing it. A random group of free traders is less likely to get caught than an official courier and much easier to disown. Who wants it? The question should really be who knows about it? Yellow Song want it to bury it, virtualy every other investor in the long wall colony and for that matter every other commercial rival Yellow Song has will want it either as leverage or as a way of undermining their competition.

Question 111

What sort of myths and legends are there out there? Is there some sort of 32nd century Elvis figure?

[Frost]

I found this one, while looking for something else, I don't think anybody else has weighed in on this one so I will.

Originally Posted by (E)

Followup superscience question.
Artifical gravity exists (Kim Sun-Rok) how good is it? What are the limitations?

The Academic consensus is that Kim should be ranked with the spam merchants. Reports of gravity weapons or gravity control have been leaking from Kim's settlement of Celestial Harmony for over a century but no other evidence has come to light.

The last report appeared a little over four years ago when imagery of a 'gravity manipulation' experiment was released to coincide with Kim's speech on the 1200th anniversary of the birth of the first Dear Leader. Detailed analysis suggests that it was a fairly blatant fake the 'weapon' its self appeared to be little more than the front half of an old Rhii made jump drive.

Question 112

While the gravity weapon is self serving propaganda presumably for the benefit of the denizens of Celestial Harmony's glasshouses, Kim is definitely up to something. For the better part of two hundred years Kim has been hiring a succession of groups of diverger technical advisors.
What is Kim actually up to?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Frost

While the Mar Kan offer is unlikely to succeed it is almost certainly not going to be the only attempt.

Definitely. The perennial buyout offer from Japanese financier Nishimura Takumi has been simmering for the three centuries. Takumi wants to buy BDC to dismantle the whole apparatus, allegedly because it disrupts the space whales, a plan charitably described as "catastrophic", "impractical" and "monumentally stupid".
The Kaufman's have been planning a buyback of the corporation for some time, though the division of their own shares has done little to help; neither has the recent offer.

Originally Posted by Frost

Question 112

While the gravity weapon is self serving propaganda presumably for the benefit of the denizens of Celestial Harmony's glasshouses, Kim is definitely up to something. For the better part of two hundred years Kim has been hiring a succession of groups of diverger technical advisors.
What is Kim actually up to?

While it may appear obvious to the outside observer that the gravity weapon was a deliberate fake, the actual circumstances are more complicated. Kim Sun-Rok is actually obsessed with fringe research that could be used as very dangerous weapons. After almost a century and half of work on the gravitic weapon, the researchers though it may be easier to fake it than conclusively prove the idea unworkable (not to mention less likely to offend "Dear Leader"). Unfortunately, Kim Sun-Rok found out very quickly; he's no fool after all, and reassigned them to areas where they would be of better use (i.e. test subjects for bioweapons). Anyone with a little guesswork and a careful eye watching the birthday celebrations(the Chairman of Technology returned to active military duty, then had an unfortunate friendly fire accident) could figure this out.

But what is Kim really up to? In the late 30th century, there was an elaborate plan use cybernetic implants to control dissidents and perhaps HUMINT assets, but they ran into problems finding a controlling AI (Somebody suggested using an upload of Kim Sun-Rok, but it was shot down on the grounds that it could lead to a power struggle and difficulty acquiring upload equipment.) Later on it transitioned into a supersoldier program, using a combination of genetic and cybernetic modifications to produce superior infantry. The project did manage to be completed, though how many supersoldiers have been made is unclear, though many intelligence services are reasonably sure that at least one company of special forces exists (if there are multiple, they have been careful to only send one out at a time.) In recent days, the program to make a Black Bess clone has received priority, and a prototype has been seen during at least one black op. Some intelligence services assume these are the only programs that have brought any fruits, while almost all hope that it's true.

The scarier parts are in the bioweapons division. After the failure to use cybernetic implants as a control device, they began investigating using a modified deity virus as a control mechanism. While the virus is capable of generating ecstatic visions of Kim Sun-Rok in right-thinking Koreans, effectiveness in dissidents and non-Koreans is limited. Allegedly there are experiments with a Gaiaplague-like virus, apparently to create some kind of hivemind, though evidence is very limited. Project Proteus is apparently way beyond any proteus virus that is known to the medical community; mental effects only reversible by other proteus viruses, and apparently physical effects too, though it hasn't been deployed yet. Suffice it to say, whenever a Rega Exhuma writer runs out of ideas, they use the North Korean bioweapons division, it's almost so cliche that intelligence services tend underestimate the danger.

The underfunded ancient research program has yet to make any progress, though their main focus is investigating "The Conqueror Effect" (see 147), and possibly channeling the effect into Kim Sun-Rok. They were working with an ancient device similar to the Q.E.M. drive but cancelled the project after "Yellow Song" scrapped their drives.

Question 89 (I'm happy to let this continue until all the races are complete.)
Can somebody stat one of the alien races?

Question 113
What's the history of the Eastern Theocratic Union (see below)?

Originally Posted by (E)

Eastern Theocratic Union. Afghanistan through to Vietnam.

[Daigoro]

So I just spent an hour or so updating the Races page and sub-pages on the wiki. I've tried to find as much as I could but I'm sure I've missed quite a bit. If anyone wants to chip in, please feel free to sign up. Again, this is mainly to act as a summary of what's happening in this thread, sorted so it's easier to reference.

PS- The wiki engine has an annoying habit of eating spaces, particularly between text with mixed formating. Sometimes fixable, but it often reverts when you navigate away from the page.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 113
What's the history of the Eastern Theocratic Union (see below)?

Note that there were 2 opposing suggestions on Vietnam's status.

Originally Posted by TGLS

Following the Second China War, the Chinese Spacers were forced out of the solar system, most moving to existing Diverger colonies. China had spheres of influence carved out of it by the occupying powers, India taking Tibet, Russia taking Manchuria, Japan and South Korea taking Shanghai and Taiwan, and Vietnam taking Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. Vietnam also annexed significant parts of Southern China, including Hainan. The Chinese Fourth Republic was created in the ensuing defeat, and allowed occupying troops to return. The repression was slackened slightly. In 2964, the occupying forces were withdrawn, and in 3022, the government was toppled by a corporatist faction. The government moved quickly to ensure the nearby powers that it was not interested in returning to the old Diverger ways, and continued to repress the Diverger minority as effectively as the previous government, only favoring large corporations even more.

Then I went and made Saigon the current capital of CommPac, as the site of the CommPac Forum Hall building.

Suggestions?
Keep in mind that it was also posited that Vietnamese is one of the major Humanist languages.

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 89 (I'm happy to let this continue until all the races are complete.)
Can somebody stat one of the alien races?

Are there any other open-ended questions? Precursor artefacts was one.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Note that there were 2 opposing suggestions on Vietnam's status.
Suggestions?
Keep in mind that it was also posited that Vietnamese is one of the major Humanist languages.

The reference in the Eastern Theocratic Union section was just the eastern most physical boundary of the union.

[(E)]

105a
Diverger Pirate leader
Wilfred "Wolfish" Li-10
The Genetically Engineered former Harsh bandit is almost 7 feet tall and over a century old. Gifted with a dolphin derived neural structure he has superior spacial recognition to unmodified humans. A side effect of the brain structure is the ability to go with out proper sleep for up to a month, while doing this half his brain sleeps at a time (6 hours left brain, 6 hours right brain, 12 hours full function). As a result his personality switches between the three modes. The combination of an unpredictable personality and the ability to go without sleep have meant his tenure as captain has been quite long. He is well equipped with sybiotes having "lenzs" allowing a wider spectrum of vision and X-glands that produce a powerful soporific through the skin of his hands.

The smooth skinned grey giant is usually impeccably dressed in an Eterna four piece wool and organosilk suit (under which a rather pedestrian lightweight organoweave armoured body suit is worn). When appropriate a shortened "Rage" caseless carbine with an enlarged drum magazine is holstered at his hip.

The three personalities are all gentlemen to some extent or another. The first one comes across like a thug putting on graces however, **** this one off and you will face a savage brawler with a flare for improvised weapons and 3D movement. The second is far more debonair, almost foppish even, when this personality is dominant the social skills, charisma and Wolfish's force of personality are in the fore. When his brain is fully awake however his intelligence is focused and the man's drive is obvious.

Wolfish made his first big score about twenty years ago on Harsh hijacking a "Bunker" with a custom built ship that was little more than a second hand jump drive with attachment lug. He came to Repouso da Sinhá upgraded his genetics and joined up with the crew of the "Interloper" shortly after, two years later he was running the ship. He has a talent for doing the unexpected with technology and seldom uses standard tactics, relying instead on surprise.
[more later]