[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.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

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.

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.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

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.

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.

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.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

Why would colonization inevitably cause destruction?

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.

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.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

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.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

Everyone that I know who contracted a parasite while traveling flipped out.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

Most parasites have natural hosts. Things often go very badly for hosts infected with parasites they hadn't co-evolved with.

That minor athletes food astronaut Jim landed with could perhaps obliterate native species that had never dealt with fungal infections in the planet's entire history.
Maybe even something as innocuous as dust mites could wreak havoc.

We tend to worry about aliens harming us, but it's at least as likely for it to go the other way.

Of course proper sci fi adventure stories don't go the hazmat 24/7, researchers only, "sensible paranoia" route.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

Human lungs could be a wonderful habitat for an alien version of fungi. They are warm, moist, and have plenty of oxygen. Under certain certain circumstances, terrestrial fungi can grow very rapidly, and their alien equivalents are likely to be just as rapid.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

There are really two problems I have with the whole setup: The trope of alien ruins on a dead world, the aliens being dead is understandable as it's rather hard to have them leaving behind ruins without being dead, the the planet(s) they inhabited as well? The other is RPG's including mysteries like these without not only any answers but also theories or hints.

The thing to make actually adding in any more ruins I've got to have a reason for there to be more ruins, more ruins for the sake of at just won't cut it.

I'm planing a really slow FTL system, so trading isn't really an option, and I figure that the planetary government of Haven likes to pretend the rest of the galaxy doesn't exist.

This is probably the the best explanation, as I can't see any ban on settling habitable worlds over potential environmental and ecological consequences working. Still doesn't explain why the world is dead.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

Maybe the aliens choose Carson's World because it was lifeless and out of the way. Because they where working with something / somebody dangerous there.

Re: [Space] Haven And Carson's World
 

In that case, the PCs don't get an FTL ship of their own. At best they get a loaned in-system ship from a patron if they're part of a mining op or research mission that needs one. If/when the campaign goes interstellar, well hopefully you'll have a rationale for that, and that should provide a mechanism for the PCs to travel FTL, be it in their 'own' ship or as passengers.