Stars Without Number: Back in Black

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A campaign page for the Stars Without Number: Back in Black campaign, run by The Wyzard.


Adventurers

Carlos Danger AC 4, 17/17

Daniele Domici

Reynard Marko

Stargazer Darque

Rook

Companions Lost and Killed

Albrecht Ester


The Ship

Lucky Break

The Setting

Personal Equipment

Characters begin with a compad suitable for adventuring. It has the following capabilities:

  • Everything that a cutting edge iPhone or Android phone will do, plus much greater capacity in terms of battery life (a week of heavy use) and memory (all of it.) Like those, it is essentially a tiny computer. If you're on-board the ship or close to it, you can easily share data between the two.
  • The camera has decent zoom and at least HD quality, and you can take 3d photos of smaller things so long as you're willing to manually pan the camera around the thing until your phone tells you it's had enough.
  • It can tell you if atmosphere is safe to breathe, and will chirp if that changes. It will give you barometric readings, temperature, humidity, a smoke alarm, etc..
  • It will warn you if there's unsafe levels of radiation.
  • It is shock resistant and reasonably waterproof.
  • It has a transponder function that will let your friends find you, if you're still in a condition to turn it on. If you have a comm server, it can be set to give you the direction and approximate distance to the server.
  • It will automatically link up to any planetary or space station communication network.
  • If there isn't a planetary network, it can still let you talk to your friends like a walkie-talkie. If your crew has a comm server, the range gets much longer so long as you are within range of it. A comm server is considered sufficient to let you talk to your ship while it is in orbit, so long as you have LOS.
  • You can receive messages from your ship if you have LOS, even if you don't have a server and can't talk back.
  • If your ship has done even a basic survey of the planet and downloaded localize data into your pad, it can usually function as an altimeter, compass, etc., and perhaps a GPS.
  • I assume that if something can be done with an app (like using the camera flash as a flashlight) then you probably have that installed.

Armor and weapons have social implications, and you should consider what you're carrying around with you.

  • In general, armor is frowned upon more than weapons. Weapons might be worn to dissuade people from attacking you or for self-defense. People who are wearing armor are more likely to be assumed to be looking for trouble. You can get away with an armored undersuit almost anywhere outside of the most civilized places, and even there it's not a problem unless you're going someplace that will have weapon detectors set up (banks, spaceports, government buildings.)
  • Space stations are almost always a little rowdy, and you can usually get away with a sidearm and an armored undersuit, even if it's obvious you're wearing it. Many places will disallow pistols but allow swords, so monoswords are actually a very popular weapon with spacers
  • Pistols may be carried openly or concealed based on local custom. I assume PCs with guns have appropriate concealable and non-concealable holsters for them. Long-arms or SMGs are almost never carried openly. Having one "to hand," such as in a rack on an ATV, is just fine on more rustic planets. Actually carrying it around with you will make you look militarized in a way that's likely to make people uncomfortable.


Money

Electronic banking is common within the more civilized systems. However, there is no easy way to transmit financial information between systems. It must be carried by ships using spike drives. Because the mail-ships might take weeks to reach from one end of the State to the other, this isn't practical for anything less than major operations. As a result, physical credit chips are the most common currency. They are released by the central bank in the Nyx cluster, and are in common circulation everywhere that spacers go. They may or may not be accepted on the surface of any given world, and moneychangers at the space ports or stations may charge rates that are more or less ruinous. They come in many denominations, and so a character can potentially carry a LOT of credits. Of course, flashing around a handful of the 100,000 credit chips is a good way to get marked for robbery.

You might think of a credit as being worth five or ten modern US dollars. Yes, skilled spacers are VERY highly paid. A ship can be easily worth millions of credits, and it takes one bad jump for an unskilled Navigator to blow the whole thing up. Also, a spacer is typically not working every day. They work a week while the ship jumps from one system to the next, and then they're off for a week while it loads, unloads, etc.

History of the State

A long time ago, the Terran Mandate ruled a civilization vast beyond comprehension. They had legions of master psychics, impossible science, and Jump Gates that could throw a ship scores of light years in an instant.

Then The Scream came. A psychic shockwave echoed from one end of the galaxy to the other, and it killed the vast majority of psychics (of every sapient species.) It also wrecked the Jump Gates, not that they could have been operated without the Master Teleportationists anyway, and burned out most of the Spike Drives as well.

Whole worlds starved, descended into savagery, or were destroyed. The network of trade and communication collapsed. Without the guidance and expertise of the Psychic Authority, many worlds lost the capacity to reliably train those with psychic talent, and they were left unable to use their abilities safely or reliably.

Centuries passed. Much was forgotten. The location of Lost Terra is unknown. In the midst of the sleeping wreckage of the empire, a spark of light has risen again. A century ago, a highly advanced cluster of worlds known as the Nyx Federation rediscovered Spike Drive technology. Their Primus was a woman who is either brilliantly forward-thinking or merely psychotically ambitious, depending on who you ask. The Primus bent the strength of her whole civilization to regaining mastery over the wilds of space. They found other human colonies that had survived, and using their technological advantages they soon crafted a sort of hegemony, or federation. With the discovery of a long-dead psychic academy, they reconstructed the training regimens that allowed psychics to use their powers without dying or going mad. There is now a healthy and buzzing psychic academy, reconstituted fifty years ago and with growing enrollment every year.

The Nyx Federation has now become the core of what is referred to as the State. Twenty systems claim membership, with a varying number of worlds or colonies within each system. For those human colonies that are rediscovered, joining the State is nominally optional, but so far no one has refused too bitterly.

The great ships of years past are still unattainable. But the Nyx Cluster can churn out fighter and frigate-class vessels equipped with spike drives, and they are plentiful enough. A few of the more powerful worlds have a cruiser or three, and Nyx itself has a single Battleship which is widely considered invincible. Not that there is any great need so far for military vessels; no alien powers have been encountered that can stand up to a Human expeditionary force, even if it does only consist of a few cruisers and a double handful of frigates.

The State exists on a model far different from that of the Terran Mandate. Where the Mandate required control and centralization, the State is quietly fearful of a second Scream. No one knows what caused the first, and the risk of a second is far too great. Every system is required to either be self-sufficient in the absence of spike drives, or to be working toward that goal. This requires at a minimum the agricultural capacity to support its population and the ability to manufacture and maintain in-system vessels that could serve any asteroid bases or similar.

There is only a single functioning psi-academy, the Black House. At unbelievable expense, the State is slowly equipping it with psi-shielding that might allow the teachers and students that reside there to survive a second Scream.

The term 'The Black House' actually refers to both the artificial world it is built on and the academy itself. The academy itself is "merely" the size of a large university, and is dominated by a central building that is like a cross between a medieval cathedral and Angkor Wat. The artificial world is a ring approximately three million kilometers in diameter, with an inner surface approximately two thousand kilometers wide. High walls at the edges keep the atmosphere in, and the rotation of the ring provides a normal day-night cycle and 1G worth of centripetal force. The habitable inner area has a surface area approximately 40 times that of Earth, with a normal mix of land and ocean area. However, it does not have tides.

The Black House could not possibly be constructed by State technology, and there is a healthy debate about whether even the Terran Mandate could have built it. The expert consensus is 'no.' It is assumed to be a pre-human relic. It is currently open for colonization, as the human population now consists solely of the Black House and its surrounding community, probably less than two hundred thousand people.


Tech Levels and Psychic Powers in this Campaign

I am setting the game "earlier" in the process of galactic re-conquest than the Stars Without Number default. Pretech items are very rarely available for sale. At the current time, there are NO planets able to manufacture much in the way of Pretech equipment. In some cases this is because the necessary infrastructure and knowledge-base has not been rebuilt, in other cases it is because the manufacture of Pretech requires certain specialized Psychic disciplines. The following is a brief introduction to what you should expect.

  • Tech Level 0 is approximately neolithic. This is pretty rare for human civilizations, because almost any colony that manages not to go extinct will at least retain the knowledge to work metal.
  • Tech Level 1 is medieval-ish. This is substantially more common than neolithic worlds, and there are worlds in the State that are still essentially at the level of Imperial China. Worlds like this can usually scrum up enough wealth to import T4 goods for the very wealthiest, and of course they can send their psychics to The Black House. This means that they may very well have an Immortal Emperor (anti-aging drugs) with a cadre of sorcerous viziers (trained psychics.) It is also not entirely unusual for them to still have access to recorded knowledge far above their tech level, or to have access to bio-engineered crops that make farming much easier.
  • Tech Level 2 worlds almost always have full knowledge and awareness that they came from the stars, even if the Scream originally knocked them down to TL0 or 1 and they had to claw their way back up. TL2 worlds have technology comparable to the US in the 1950s, although of course culturally they could run the full range of human history, and beyond.
  • Tech Level 3 worlds are pretty similar to the modern day, give or take a few decades. The strong majority of worlds in the State are TL3, or possibly a kind of TL3+. TL3+ indicates there are a few areas where they have substantial knowledge and understanding in at least a few fields, enough that they can provide goods and services at that level. Also, they typically do manage to import a fair amount of TL4 goods, at great expense, of course.
  • Tech Level 4 worlds are signified by having access to fusion power and spike drives, which are the signature achievements of this level of tech. Also, most of the technology you can find in a Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun book is at least theoretically possible here (although since this isn't actually a cyberpunk milieu, some of it is inappropriate and it isn't really intended as a focus, anyway.) The only system in the State that is a true, full-blown Tech 4 society is the Nyx Cluster.
  • Tech Level 5 is pre-scream technology. TL5 Technology requires incredibly sophisticated techniques and often materials that have properties not available in normal matter. This paramatter or exotic matter must be crafted by psychics using disciplines lost to the Scream. There are a VERY few items of pretech than be manufactured in limited quantities in the Nyx cluster, but actually finding it for sale is difficult. More likely, TL5 items must be recovered and restored to working order. Even that requires jury-rigged tools, as the equipment to work on TL5 equipment has also usually been lost. The upper edge of TL5 equipment are the lost and destroyed Jump Gates that made the vast size of the Terran Mandate possible.
  • Tech Level 6 is crazy bullshit. The Orbital ring that The Black House is built on is TL6. Human civilization even before the scream only ever made a few TL6 items, and never in mass quantities.

Tenebrous

This is the civilized jumping-off point into the PCs' claimed sector. The two primary points of interest are Tenebrous III and IV. Tenebrous IV is a massive Terran Mandate space station. It was long-dead when discovered, and all human life in the system had in fact apparently been extinguished in the aftermath of the Scream. People still occasionally find long-mummified bodies in out-of-the-way corners of the station. State engineers have it up and running again, although they don't entirely understand all of the pretech systems. The PCs have a lease on a landing bay and some light industrial/office space.

Tenebrous III is a planet with a burgeoning colony. The wreckage of the pre-scream settlements have been picked thoroughly clean. At this time there are five colonies scattered around the planet, essentially one in the most hospitable part of each continent. The science of terraforming is still badly understood, and this planet is considered a testing-ground for the field. Biologists are regularly introducing species that are more harmonious with human civilization, and attempting to manage the ecological destabilization that results from adding a few dozen invasive species.

The population is currently less than one hundred thousand. More colonists arrive regularly, and it is very much a wild-west atmosphere.

Spacer Culture

Any PC with a spare Culture/0 slot might well consider spending it on Spacer, since spacers are the people you will have lots of contact with. There are spacers everywhere in civilization, since civilization by definition consists of the places spacers can get to. Spacers deny that there is any such thing as spacer culture. This is because spacer culture is often more about things and spaces than about [whatever people think culture is 'about'], because spacer culture is "just a common-sense reaction to living in space, not anything about mythology or rituals or taboos," and because denying that their culture is really a culture is a thing that people like to do.

Spacer culture is transmitted through, and takes its name from, the Spacer's Bible. This is a document that dates back to the Terran days, and has been expanded upon with commentary (and commentary to the commentary) over the centuries since then. The definitive edition pre-scream was known as the Little Blue Book, and it often was possessed in the form of an actual book with pages. It is now an app that is kept on the compad of almost anyone that spends much time outside of a planetary surface.

The Spacer's Bible is full of charts and useful data about how to maintain a vacc suit, how much oxygen a person needs in a given period of time and how long it will take them to deplete a given number of cubic feet of atmosphere. It has introductions to how pay should be calculated for different crew members and how votes should be conducted. It defines the standard division of duties on a vessel. It gives standardized answers to every kind of practical question, so that everyone knows the hand signals you use if comms go out, and how to secure lines if someone has to go out for a spacewalk across the hull. Even if you do not have any medical training yourself, the Spacer's Bible will give you a quick practical rundown on what a radiation leak will do for you, at least in terms of how quickly it will kill you.

It also has many practical pieces of advice and wisdom about how to conduct yourself aboard a ship. Spacer culture, and the spacer bible, was developed by people who had a lot in common with sailors and roughnecks. It is ruggedly practical and designed to function in times of high stress and pressure. It is intended to function as a lingua franca for people who might come from very different backgrounds.

Spacer Culture has as many tenets and practices as any other culture, but the following are major strains that run through it.

  • Spacer culture comes from an acknowledgment that the lives of everyone on a ship depend on each other, and also that people in potentially tight quarters such as a ship or a station must get along.
  • Spacers are egalitarian, but elitist. People on a ship can be divided between Crew and Passengers. Crew are spacers and are useful. Passengers are not spacers and should ideally be in cold sleep. Harassment or (non-playful) insult of either passengers or crew on the basis of almost anything other than proven competence and usefulness is a dreadful breach of etiquette. You don't want to insult the religion of someone you may be stuck in a can with for the next month.
  • Hygiene is a matter of serious concern. Spacers typically shave their heads for hygiene reasons, including women. Men may have their facial hair permanently removed for the same reasons. Some spacers (again, men and women) may keep wigs so that they don't stand out so much when they go planetside. All serious spacers have a small hygiene kit, and know how to maintain hygiene when there is limited water available.
  • Spacer culture is very much concerned with things and spaces. A spacer knows how to use and interpret the signals that differentiate between public and private goods and areas, when to speak to someone and when to come back later. In tight quarters, spacers will usually converse shoulder-to-shoulder rather than face-to-face. A spacer knows the rules for using airlocks and vacc suits, regardless of whether they have any technical skills that let them actually understand those things.
  • Spacers can be as boisterous and frivolous as anyone else when planetside or when in a truly huge space station. But when on a vessel, spacers will be quiet and at least nominally sober. Yelling across a space vessel without a good reason is a breach of etiquette. The typical starship crew will be equipped with earpieces linked to their compads that let them communicate across the ship.
  • A vast pay differential between the highest-ranked person on a ship and the lowest qualified spacer is extraordinarily unusual. Of course, apprentice/unqualified swabbie types might be paid almost nothing but room, board, and training.
  • A spacer is expected to be able to keep their chin up and a stiff upper lip.
  • Spacers would not have thought Ripley was being a bitch for trying to enforce quarantine procedures.
  • Spacers know how to stow their things. Spacers do not wear clothing with no space for tools. Spacers do not like clutter, things must be secured in the proper place when not in use.
  • Spacers consider it acceptable for crew members to be asked informally to segregate themselves from each other.


Language & Culture

  • All PCs receive at least two languages at generation. English, a second language of their choice (One of these two should be the most common language on their world of origin), a number of languages equal to their intelligence bonus, and the most common language of any world for which they have at least Culture 0.
  • Superior maintenance of written records and standard reference works has done a lot to stave off the worst of linguistic drift, although of course there are dialects everywhere. For this reason, most languages in wide use are the very close descendants of modern languages. Also, it's much more fun to have characters using languages we know than it is to make up a dozen with no pre-existing cultural connotation for the players. Because it's fun, we'll also assume that at least some cultural traces of Earth cultures survive in those civilizations that have inherited their languages.
  • The languages most common in the State cluster are: Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, French, Afrikaans. There are also a few worlds with their own offshoot languages.


List of systems in the State

Nyx Cluster

The Nyx Cluster is the center of the State. In practical terms it is capitol of a loose federation of the known human worlds, and has hegemonic influence over most of them. The precise demarcation between the State and the government of the Cluster is not entirely well-defined, a source of frustration for the worlds that have been strong-armed into it. It is referred to as a "cluster" because it has so many inhabited worlds, all with a single central government. The Cluster contains two Earth-like worlds, a dozen major moons, and probably a score of large asteroid colonies and space stations. It is by far the most wealthy and powerful system in the State, and it is relentlessly attempting to regain the ability to manufacture pretech goods.

The Nyx Cluster is the only solidly TL4 civilization in the State, and they use this to maintain their influence. They are capable of producing drugs and treatments that reverse the aging process. A seventy-year-old member of the political or economic elite can be rejuvenated to a biological age of 30. The cost for this treatment tends to be phenomenally high - and usually payable in favors and influence as well as more mundane currency. It is administrated, in fact, by a branch of the government, and is not normally available on the market.

The fleets available to the Cluster government include one Battleship (the only one in the State), three cruiser-class warships, and 6 non-warship cruisers. The state itself owns probably a score of frigates. In-system shuttles are ubiquitous. The Nyx Cluster disfavors fighter and shuttle craft equipped with Spike drives, and rarely uses them.

Golden Empire

The Golden Empire is a system of only one inhabited world that is mostly TL1, but with a few highly-restricted pockets of TL2 capability. It also regularly imports small amounts of even higher TL equipment, and ruthlessly keeps it under Imperial control.

Aesthetically the world of the Empire is similar to Medieval China, and in fact seems to have based its post-scream and collapse culture on those records purposefully. Mandarin is in fact the most common language (although the educated elite also learn English.)

The Golden Empire has a ridiculously fertile world, and even with only primitive farming techniques it produces a large surplus of people and agricultural products. There are a few exotic agricultural products, even, which give it something to sell to traders (it also deals in slaves, although the State is trying to stamp this out both officially and unofficially.) Further, the Empire produces an unusually high number of psychics for its population, although they are still extremely rare. No one knows why that might be.

The State is currently attempting a Prometheus Project on the world, which has been partially successful. The Emperor cooperated and allowed it to continue, until he had sufficient TL2 capacity to tighten his grip, and then began to stonewall the project. He has been resisting all further efforts to spread greater technology, because he fears it will end his rule. He doesn't dare have open military conflict with the agents of the State, but there is currently a heavy shadow war and layers of intrigue between the Emperor, the various nobles, and the NGOs administering the Prometheus Project.

Trade to and from the Golden Empire is not discouraged, per se, but cargo will be inspected thoroughly both coming and going. The State maintains a geosynchronous space station with a beanstalk lifter. Atmospheric craft are NOT allowed to land on the planet. All persons and cargo must go through customs at both the top and bottom of the beanstalk, and they are deadly serious about what you may or may not take with you.

The State thus has tacitly interdicted the Empire. They will not allow the Empire to gain any spaceflight technology, or full membership in the community of worlds, until they take on a less tyrannical form of government (Ideally, a puppet emperor. Is that less tyrannical, really? The State thinks it probably would be.) They also have nuclear-equipped gravity rods on the station, and can obliterate the Golden Empire with button-pushes whenever they want to. However, the loss of life resulting from the ensuing crisis of instability would kill millions. The Emperor, the Nobles, and the State are all aware of these facts. It's really only a question of how much blood will be shed in the process of civilizing this world.

The Emperor himself is allowed a single unarmed shuttle equipped with a Spike drive, but refuses to submit himself or his diplomats to State Customs via the Beanstalk. For that reason, it sits unused on the station.

Wolf

Wolf is a TL3+ world that is part of the influential "core" of the State. Their heavy industrial capacity reaches TL4 in some areas, although their ability to manufacture TL4 goods in other areas is limited. Outside of construction and starships, their technology is TL3 (and even for Starships, they tend to import rather than manufacture the electronics and computer equipment.) The most common language here is descended from English and is barely recognizable, but it is so heavily dialected that outsiders cannot understand it without Culture/Wolf 0. It had heavy crossbreeding with some of the norse and germanic languages common here before the Scream, and they all intermingled during the long Silence. The natives are almost universally able to communicate in standard English as well. There are also a few areas of the planet where Russian is dominant.

Wolf is a slightly colder world than Earth-normal, but plentifully fertile for its inhabitants (the world is considered fully colonized, but only about two billion people live there. They like their space.) There are also substantial colonies elsewhere in the system. Wolf is a highly rational and clear-headed society, even if the people there do tend toward melancholy and contemplation of moral and philosophical dilemmas. There are heavy strains of Norse, Scandinavian, Germanic, and Russian culture running through it. They are not expansionist or militaristic, precisely, but they do believe in self-defense. Their armament is second only to Nyx, and they have a healthy planetary defense grid, two geosynchronous space stations, and a fleet of three cruiser-class warships. They also have a largish number of various models of Frigate-class vehicles. They can manufacture vehicles of up to Frigate class easily with their own shipyards, and can manufacture Cruisers with difficulty.

Anumati

Anumati a system focused around a single world that is roughly Earthlike, but with slightly less surface area covered by water but its continents broken up into much smaller pieces. There are around a dozen landmasses in the size range between Greenland and Australia, and none larger. The common language is Hindustani. Their world is slightly warmer than Earth normal and is given to storms, but no major tectonic upheaval. The system has a wealth of asteroids with rare elements in them, and Anumati is therefore unusually wealthy. There are probably three billion inhabitants in the system.

Anumati is TL3+. They have excellent ability to manufacture personal and computer goods, and also medicine. Essentially, the cyberpunk package. However, their heavy industry and starship manufacturing capability lags behind. They can manufacture fighter and shuttle hulls on the surface, but must import spike drive parts and cannot build frigates or orbital facilities with any ease. They have a space station and a large fleet of in-system craft, but cannot sustain much in the way of interplanetary ambitions with a paltry fleet of five frigates (purchased and negotiated from other worlds.)

Anumati bristles at its lack of capacity, but doesn't have a strongly unified government. The megacorporations that rule it are unwilling to unite in common interest and continually squabble and make underhanded attacks on each other. The State is somewhat reliant on this state of affairs to maintain Nyx supremacy.

Anumati is also home to the Merpeople - victims of Mandate-era genetic engineering who were redesigned to survive underwater. There are enough of them to stay healthy and avoid inbreeding, but the rigors of spaceflight are difficult for them to survive and so they are bound to this world.

Abaddon

Abaddon contains a dozen utterly lifeless and uninhabitable worlds that contain the ruins of human or other civilizations, and the Black House. Probably all of humanity in the entire State together could move to the Black House and live there comfortably, but there is a bit of superstitious dread regarding the system. Probably because no one has any clear idea of what rendered all those worlds uninhabitable. The State, for reasons of its own, has been pushing a colonization attempt on The Black House, with mixed success. There are a few tens of thousands here, but little more. The lifeless worlds and asteroid fields provide many opportunities for mining, the vast landscapes of the Black House contains unlimited space for agricultural projects. But people simply do not want to live here.

There are currently rumblings in the State government to consider dotting the landscape of The Black House with penal colonies, or settlements for political dissidents. The Nyx Cluster's relatively tolerant democratic government doesn't feel the need to persecute its own dissidents, but if the lesser civilizations in the State feel the need to do so, then why not turn a problem into an opportunity?

Every common language is in common usage here, and English is the universal tongue. Classes at the Academy are taught in English, and if a new student arrives who does not speak it, they are taught in short order. Psi education is available up to Level 6 disciplines. Some characters have knowledge and power in excess of that, but they are rare and their abilities secret. They are usually simply referred to as The Masters, and their precise identities are concealed. The students do not know which of the teachers have attained the rank of Master. Allegedly, all of them are in cahoots with the State's intelligence apparatus.

Abaddon does not have its own government beyond the purely local (which is dominated by the academics.) It has non-trivial planetary defense capability, but generally no more than a couple frigates in the system. It has very little manufacturing (a black eye considering the State's emphasis on self-sufficiency) and by itself would probably quickly drop to a TL1 status. However, its close connection to Nyx and sponsorship by the State means that TL4 goods and equipment are available there.

There are currently no more than a few hundred students studying at the Black House. The supply of psychics in the State is extremely limited.


Corsica

The primary language here is French, with a few large areas that speak primarily a Spanish dialect (which has for some reason devolved back towards its Latin roots.) There are approximately two people here, almost all of whom live on the single terrestrial world. Corsica was TL2 at the time it was recontacted, and dove headlong into a program of advancement. Corsica had a strong intellectual culture and a number of Corsican thinkers and politicians became very influential in the burgeoning State. For that reason, Corsica has influence well above the range of its actual power. It is currently consolidating at TL3 and will likely begin advancing toward TL4 in the next ten years.

Its system of government is strongly democratic, with something closer to a federation of regional governments than a true centralized government. Corsica has full NIFP protection, a small number of shuttle and fighter-class vehicles, and a single Frigate that they have the use of at the sufferance of the State. It is currently agitating for a space station and other facilities, which the State does not wish to provide and which no one on the private market is able to.

Corsica is considered very tourist-friendly, and is certainly able to market itself that way. It is probably the most popular travel destination in the State for the kind of people who are able to travel for pleasure. It also has very little restriction in the way of customs, and people are generally allowed to bring any TL4 goods they would like.

Inari

Inari is a TL3 world with no particular technological specialties, and a population of four billion. The common language is Japanese, and there is an unusually strong Buddhist tradition in several areas of the planet, despite the secularizing influence of contact with spacefaring civilizations. They were roughly at the height of 1950s-era technology when Contacted, and are now beginning the slow crawl toward TL4 capacity. There is a lively debate in the planetary government about what area (if any) of TL4 technology they should concentrate on developing first.

Inari is most interesting for its wildly varied biosphere, and the current belief is that it was seeded with life from many different worlds as part of some Mandate-era experiment (or accident?) Even now, Inari has an unusual reliance on domesticated wildlife and a highly sophisticated agricultural system built on dozens of exotic plant and animal products.

Inari has a few shuttles, but nothing larger. They don't seem terrifically excited about expansion in and of itself, and are actually slightly insular. Their primary motivation to boostrap up is so that they cannot be pushed around, which has produced some conflict in the State as to whether they should be allowed to be insular.


The Reef

Some huge disaster befell this system before or after the Scream, and it was uninhabited when first discovered. It has no remaining planets, only vast fields of more or less huge asteroids and a few bodies that were formerly probably very large moons. The common language is English, and the appropriate culture skill is Spacer.

The Reef is the greatest colonization success story, and one of the first ones. The mining and heavy industrial opportunities here were top notch, and there were a few artifact habitations that were still intact. The system is now a network of hundreds of major habitations, up to the size of small cities, and countless smaller ones, all sustained by hydroponic technology and space industry.

As an almost entirely spacefaring society, the Reef is TL4 and has a substantial navy. There are three cruiser-class warships, a few other cruisers, and a very large number of frigates.

The population of the reef is uncertain, but probably close to a billion.

Sisters

This system contains the worlds of Antillia, Thoth, and Utu. All three are earthlike worlds with a TL of 0 or 1, depending on what part of the planet you land on. They tend to be plagued by voracious megafauna, which have never been successfully wiped out due to the large areas of wilderness. None have a unified planetary government, or even a body of governments. These three were clearly terraformed worlds, and their biospheres are simply not that old. As such, they lack the fossil fuels that would have allowed them to maintain or increase their tech levels without support. Each planet has at least one civilization that kept records and remembered. On each world, there were at least a few who had read the oldest books, and knew that their people had not come from there, and that there might be other humans out among the stars. On Antillia, the common language among the most educated is Spanish. On Thoth, it is Afrikaans. On Utu, it is Arabic. These were the languages that the oldest books had been written in. So, while they may have been dead languages at the time contact was re-established, they were quickly made use of. In all three cases this resulted in the most advanced culture on the planet being the point of contact with starfaring civlization, but since each world has something like a billion people on it, that isn't an overwhelmingly large contact to have.

The State is currently trying to slowly unify these worlds under a single government per planet, preferably one that is under State control, without having a humanitarian disaster or otherwise completely losing control of the situation.

This presents much different challenges to those of the Golden Empire. The Empire is unified, but has a powerful and cunning leadership who oppose the State's hegemony. The Sisters have no unification, but also no organized or unified opposition. It is largely a case of playing one faction against another faction of the same planet, but not doing so with such vigor that the grav tanks have to come out to prevent a crime against humanity. It's like walking a tightrope with a balancing pole occupied by angry cats.

Dealing with worlds such as these is stretching the resources of the State in a way that the Golden Empire doesn't, and the State presence in this system is arguably much too thin.

Survey Claim Map & Notes

House Rules

  • Hit Points: I reroll a character's entire pool of hit points each time they level. You take the new result if it is higher. This means that it is possible to gain a level and have the same number of HP you did previously, but it also means that you can't roll a few ones and be screwed forever.
  • Characters gain XP mostly by making money as adventurers. Every 5 credits worth of loot, salvage, valuable data, etc. that the PCs take back to civilization and sell is worth one XP. XP is pooled and divided between the characters evenly (excepting that Rook receives only half a share.)
  • As noted in the recruitment thread, characters gain double skill points on leveling. Please note the separation between class and non-class skills!
  • Squares on the sector claim map are not the same as SWN Hexes. To calculate the length of a drill route:
    • Don't count the number of squares the line showing the route passes through. Count the number of squares in the shortest distance from the origin system to the destination system. This is pretty much exactly like calculating range in D&D4E.
    • Divide the number of squares by two and round up. That's the number of hexes it counts as.
  • Weapon Damage figures in the base book are a bit too high. The following are revised. Weapons are -2 to hit against armor that is 2 or more Tech Levels higher. Weapons ignore armor that is 2 or more Tech Levels lower.
    • Small low-tech weapons such as clubs, daggers, saps, etc. do 1d4.
    • Medium-sized one-handed low-tech weapons like swords or maces do 1d6.
    • Two-handed low-tech weapons such as greatswords do 1d8.
    • Primitive and Advanced bows do 1d6.
    • Grenades do 2d6.
    • Kinesis Wraps do 1d3+1
    • Stun Batons do 1d6
    • Suit Rippers deal 1d4
    • Dagger-sized monoblades do 1d6+1. Sword-sized monoblades do 1d8+1.
    • Firearms don't differ wildly in damage depending on their tech level. However, they do interact differently with armor and of course low-tech guns can't match a modern weapon's rate of fire, ammunition capacity, or in some cases reliability.
    • Crude Pistols, Revolvers, and Semi-automatic pistols do 1d6.
    • Muskets, Rifles, Combat Rifles, and SMGs deal 1d8.
    • Shotguns and Combat Shotguns deal 2d4+1.
    • Sniper Rifles deal 1d12
    • Void Carbines deal 1d8+1
    • Mag Pistols deal 2d6
    • Mag Rifles deal 2d8
    • Spike Throwers deal 3d6
    • Laser Pistols deal 1d4.
    • Laser Rifles deal 1d6.
    • Thermal Pistols deal 2d4
    • Plasma Projectors deal 2d4+1
    • Shear Rifles deal 2d6
    • Thunder Guns deal 2d6+1, +1d6 on a 19 or 20.
    • Distortion Cannons deal 2d8

Style Guide

The style guide is a set of expectations for the players and, to a lesser extent, me. Reading it is fairly mandatory.

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