[OOC] The Catacombs, hard SF

[dscheidt]

The year is 5801. Man has spread from his lowly beginnings on Earth,
to more than 10,000 worlds, deep space stations, and orbital habitats.

In 2161, Dr. Jung Choi made a discovery that enabled this spread. Choi
found a seven-dimensional weakness orbiting in one of Jupiter's Trojan
points. Observation of the point showed that there was leakage -- both
out of, and into -- the weakness. Some 20 years later, other researchers
made a shocking discovery: it was possible to send something through the
weakness. It took another 30 years before the manned exploration of the
system, called Alisdra, on the other side of this wormhole began, and
nearly 50 more before the second wormhole in Alisdra's system was
discovered. After that, colonization began, and humanity spread
rapidly across the galaxy.

The difficulty and expense of interstellar travel -- and the even
greater difficulties of invading through a wormhole -- has made star
spanning empires uncommon. A huge variety of political systems are found
among humanity's 10,000 new homes, ranging from anarchist war zones to
totalitarian despots to autocratic theocracies to direct democracies
to merit-based monarchies. Most nations have reasonably large
personal freedoms, as ubiquitous information availability and
communications make it very difficult for totalitarian regimes to
survive.


Despite the difficulty and delay of interstellar communications and
trade, many nations make their livings -- and quite a number their
entire existence -- to just that trade. In sparsely populated
regions of space, that trade is the only thing that enables
maintaining the technology level of the area.

One such area is known as The Catacombs. Fourteen inhabited systems,
connected by unusually complex system of wormholes, separated by a
large normal-space gap from the rest of humanity's systems, they are
mutually dependent for their survival. Despite this dependence, the
nation-systems are a fractious bunch, with the odd border conflict,
state-sponsored piracy, and other low-scale military conflicts. When
an unknown outside threat to trade appears....

That is the background for The Catacombs, a GURPS 4E SF campaign, to
be played via post. The setting is a mature TL10, with some TL11
elements known, but uncommon in the backwater that is the catacombs.
It's a hard setting, the only super-science that exists is the limited
form of FTL provided by Choi drives and wormholes. I'd like 4 to 6
players.

Characters:
Characters will be built on 200 points, up to -75 points of disadvantages,
reduced stats, and quirks. The nations of the catacombs are conservative
towards bio-tech; modifications that make the person look different
from human-basic are unusual and mark their possessor as "not from
around here". Human basic has shifted somewhat from the 21st century,
though; genetic modifications to increase radiation tolerance, boost
the effectiveness immune system, eliminate most of the health effects
of long-term exposure to zero-gravity, and eliminate nearly all genetic
diseases have been part of the human genome for thousands of years.

Legal rights in most of the Catacombs nations are asymmetric:
While none of them would recognize an uplifted talking canine a person,
if the dog's home world did, they would treat him as one for legal
purposes, assuming they recognize the dog's home state as such, for
legal purposes. In wider humanity, the range of opinion varies
widely, but such things are reasonably common, so there's no reason we
couldn't have a PC like this, but expect some serious social stigmas.
Characters need a reason to be passenger in the first-class section of a
private liner bound from Junction to Nexa. Junction is a wormhole-rich
nation in deep space (no close star, about 0.1 light years away) that is
boundary between the catacombs and the rest of known space. About half
the systems in the catacombs are reachable from Junction without crossing
another polity's localspace; the rest can be reached after crossing
Nexa's. There are a number of passengers from out of the catacombs on
board, PCs are welcome to be among them. You needn't be rich enough to
buy your space -- you could be the servant of a really rich person, or
your employer could be footing the bill. It's a Junction ship, so it
will carry nearly any cargo that isn't intrinsically dangerous, nor
illegal at its destination.

I'll get descriptions of the catacomb systems on the web as soon as I get
them typed and webified. All also post the background on the Radivan
universe (the larger setting of which the catacombs are just a small
part.), which explains history, the science and tech available, and
some of my assumptions about the universe.