Steampunk, Space and Aliens

[scc]

OK every so often a very weird steampunk/space campaign idea demands some attention from my head.

So the setting is the moons of a Jovian planet, three of which are habitable. Humanity evolved on one and has just enough tech to colonize the other two, which are taking the thematic place of Africa.

Currently I'm thinking that including aliens might be interesting, but as of yet I have very few firms ideas about them, they should be:

• Genre appropriate, that is conform to what people from that era thought aliens would be like, or what is likely to appear in modern fiction based upon those ideas
• Not be stupid, the campaign is going to be hard science, so no ideas based upon scientific concepts that have since been disputed
• A good stand in for Africans, so era views on Africans should apply to them
• And potential player characters

[Gef]

It's not African, but I'd give natives of one of the two other moons telecom, natural radio, if the humans haven't invented it yet, and brainstorm more scientifically plausible capabilities that would seem like magic to humans, maybe a "curse" carried by a parasite.

How close genetically are the different biomes? Independently evolved, or did life start on one and colonize the others in waves, maybe because of vulcanism? Were the three moons actually one big moon at some point?

[Flyndaran]

Steampunk as most people use it requires pseudoscience.
And you're going to need some hand waving having one habitable moon, let alone three.
I'm not sure what you want if you want plausible impossibilities.

Edit: I don't mean to "thread-crap". I just don't think you're going to get what you want the way you phrased things.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Gef

It's not African, but I'd give natives of one of the two other moons telecom, natural radio, if the humans haven't invented it yet, and brainstorm more scientifically plausible capabilities that would seem like magic to humans, maybe a "curse" carried by a parasite.

I figure that radio would be one of the very few prerequisites for making the setting work, other wise you'd be forced to use physical couriers to move messages back and forth, landing SSTO's wouldn't be able to talk to control towers and lots of other *FUN* stuff would be happening.

I also figure the natives are TL 1 or 2, but not likely to be any higher. Somehow humans have figured out how to talk to them

Originally Posted by Gef

How close genetically are the different biomes? Independently evolved, or did life start on one and colonize the others in waves, maybe because of vulcanism? Were the three moons actually one big moon at some point?

Single source of LIFE the moon humanity comes from and then panspermia spreads it throughout the system

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Steampunk as most people use it requires pseudoscience.
And you're going to need some hand waving having one habitable moon, let alone three.
I'm not sure what you want if you want plausible impossibilities.

Edit: I don't mean to "thread-crap". I just don't think you're going to get what you want the way you phrased things.

Improbably yes, implausible no. It's steampunk more because of divergent paths of development then different laws of physics. If looked up into the sky and saw other worlds you'd probably want to go there someday and the steampunk comes from the fact that there's been a very focused development of flight, especially spaceflight, so when someone comes along with a wacky idea that seems like it might work, well they're probably more likely to get funded and as there's now a reason to go there.

Personally I reckon that powered flight would have been achieved sometime mid TL4 when someone got the bright idea to put some rockets onto a glider developed by someone like da Vinci

[mikeejimbo]

Wildlife is terrifying, but natural-looking. There are beasts that are two stories tall with impossibly thick skin - they shrug off most conventional small arms. Their legs are the size of tree trunks and they can crush you without even noticing. Being charged by one is a death sentence. Interestingly, they're herbivores - they evolved these traits as a defense mechanism against the predators, which are smart, swift, and agile, with claws as sharp as men can made blades. They hunt in packs but mostly pick off smaller prey animals, such as the herds of wild grazers that can run as fast as any of the land-based vehicles you can make, with wicked sharp horns.

In short, just take African animals and turn them up to 11.

[ericthered]

Are humanoid aliens 'stupid' in your view? That's the number one decision you need to make in designing these aliens. And given the genre you're working with, they probably don't break suspense of disbelief... probably.

Once you've made that decision, its just a matter of either browsing through existing aliens or using the SPACE generation table to build something that you like. We have a thread on 0-point space opera aliens. Fiction is rife with ideas.

So give us a narrower scope, particuarly in terms of humanoid vs. nonhumanoid.

I'm going to guess reptilemen are off the table?

[Dr. Beckenstein]

What if the inhabitants were planted there in the distant past?

They could be human - and alien - descendants of people who lived there when the galactic society collapsed and the long night started. After thousands of years, the humans have build a steampunkish society, maybe based on old tales and novels (the holy Sherlock) and discover old spaceships from pre-collapse that help them to conquer the system.

And what if the whole system was build by an ancient race?
A gas giant with one habitable world is unlikely, and one is a few is almost impossible...

[tshiggins]

Okay, leaving aside the fun but implausible notion of spaceflight before TL7, let's focus on the culture of the natives of the other moons.

The first thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a single "African" culture. Africa is the second largest continent on our world, and various parts of it came under different influences, throughout its history.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...jection_SW.jpg

That means the people who live in different parts of Africa have cultures that differ substantially. You need to figure out how many cultures exist on your moons, and how they interact with one another, so as to capture the complexity of the situation your astronauts find, when they arrive.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8201e.ct001273/

Generally speaking, the eastern part of Sub-Saharan Africa is higher and dryer than the western half of the continent, with the exception of the Kalahari and Namib deserts of Southwest Africa. The climate is more mild, with well-watered grasslands of the Serengeti (from the Massai word meaning "endless plains"), as well as the light woodlands and rugged badlands of Mozambique, and the fertile grasslands and deep forests of Tanzania. The most advanced indigenous societies existed there, in large part due to the early interaction with traders from other coastal regions of the Indian Ocean, as well as the region's amenability to animal husbandry (especially cattle, although you might want to look at an analog for elands as the primary domesticated animal).

http://wildliferanching.com/content/...agelaphus-oryx

By contrast, the western part of the continent -- especially in the Congo River basin -- struggled to develop due to limited crop choices, as well as insects and parasites that killed cattle.

South Africa, which has one of the best climates in the world, was so isolated and so difficult to reach that it lagged in development as compared to the north and east, and fell quickly to European colonialism -- although, the Zulu gave the British a tough fight, for a short time.

So, how would you map out your cultures? Would you avoid the more developed cultures such as those that emerged on the Swahili Coast, and just make the natives analogs of the Massai, the Zulu, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, and the Igbo?

The latter choice more closely fits the formerly popular (and grotesquely mistaken) view of Africa as the home of cannibals and spear-chucking savages, but might be easier to play in an RPG setting. To have an area that resembled the more sophisticated cultures of coastal East Africa, you'd have to figure out how those societies developed, absent constant access to trading partners.

[scc]

Originally Posted by mikeejimbo

Wildlife is terrifying, but natural-looking. There are beasts that are two stories tall with impossibly thick skin - they shrug off most conventional small arms. Their legs are the size of tree trunks and they can crush you without even noticing. Being charged by one is a death sentence. Interestingly, they're herbivores - they evolved these traits as a defense mechanism against the predators, which are smart, swift, and agile, with claws as sharp as men can made blades. They hunt in packs but mostly pick off smaller prey animals, such as the herds of wild grazers that can run as fast as any of the land-based vehicles you can make, with wicked sharp horns.

In short, just take African animals and turn them up to 11.

Thanks for bringing this up, I hadn't considered wildlife apart from thinking that it would be alien. That said I'm not planing on having the PCs spend a lot of time in the buch

Originally Posted by ericthered

Are humanoid aliens 'stupid' in your view? That's the number one decision you need to make in designing these aliens. And given the genre you're working with, they probably don't break suspense of disbelief... probably.

Once you've made that decision, its just a matter of either browsing through existing aliens or using the SPACE generation table to build something that you like. We have a thread on 0-point space opera aliens. Fiction is rife with ideas.

So give us a narrower scope, particuarly in terms of humanoid vs. nonhumanoid.

I'm going to guess reptilemen are off the table?

Humanoid aliens would not be stupid, and probably be the better solution. In fact I probably want to use the human aliens trope as the campaign as I'm aiming for steampunk with space travel, not space travel with some steampunk (badly) taped on, so outwardly the aliens should act human, something where tropes like jungle princess could be applied very nice.

Originally Posted by Dr. Beckenstein

What if the inhabitants were planted there in the distant past?

They could be human - and alien - descendants of people who lived there when the galactic society collapsed and the long night started. After thousands of years, the humans have build a steampunkish society, maybe based on old tales and novels (the holy Sherlock) and discover old spaceships from pre-collapse that help them to conquer the system.

And what if the whole system was build by an ancient race?
A gas giant with one habitable world is unlikely, and one is a few is almost impossible...

Would make the situation too high tech focused

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Okay, leaving aside the fun but implausible notion of spaceflight before TL7, let's focus on the culture of the natives of the other moons.

They are at TL7, if only for spaceflight.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

The first thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a single "African" culture. Africa is the second largest continent on our world, and various parts of it came under different influences, throughout its history.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...jection_SW.jpg

That means the people who live in different parts of Africa have cultures that differ substantially. You need to figure out how many cultures exist on your moons, and how they interact with one another, so as to capture the complexity of the situation your astronauts find, when they arrive.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8201e.ct001273/

Generally speaking, the eastern part of Sub-Saharan Africa is higher and dryer than the western half of the continent, with the exception of the Kalahari and Namib deserts of Southwest Africa. The climate is more mild, with well-watered grasslands of the Serengeti (from the Massai word meaning "endless plains"), as well as the light woodlands and rugged badlands of Mozambique, and the fertile grasslands and deep forests of Tanzania. The most advanced indigenous societies existed there, in large part due to the early interaction with traders from other coastal regions of the Indian Ocean, as well as the region's amenability to animal husbandry (especially cattle, although you might want to look at an analog for elands as the primary domesticated animal).

http://wildliferanching.com/content/...agelaphus-oryx

By contrast, the western part of the continent -- especially in the Congo River basin -- struggled to develop due to limited crop choices, as well as insects and parasites that killed cattle.

South Africa, which has one of the best climates in the world, was so isolated and so difficult to reach that it lagged in development as compared to the north and east, and fell quickly to European colonialism -- although, the Zulu gave the British a tough fight, for a short time.

So, how would you map out your cultures? Would you avoid the more developed cultures such as those that emerged on the Swahili Coast, and just make the natives analogs of the Massai, the Zulu, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, and the Igbo?

The latter choice more closely fits the formerly popular (and grotesquely mistaken) view of Africa as the home of cannibals and spear-chucking savages, but might be easier to play in an RPG setting. To have an area that resembled the more sophisticated cultures of coastal East Africa, you'd have to figure out how those societies developed, absent constant access to trading partners.

I know this and was never planing on making them a mono-culture, but cultural and language blocks will probably be bigger then on Earth, if only to keep the amount of book-keeping down.

[scc]

So I've figured out one of the alien species.

One of the weirder ideas that Victorians had was recapitulation and they also thought that certain groups, like Africans, were 'living fossils', combining these two ideas and you get selkies, blue-skined men with gills, somewhere on their persons. Ones raised entirely in water will grow tails instead of legs, whilst those raised far from water are unlikely to have the gills