Editing Stars Without Number: Back in Black (section)

== List of Systems in Malediction sector ==

=== Hades 77 ===

;INITIAL SYSTEM SCAN
* Central body is a red dwarf star. 
* Orbital I is a terrestrial planet, .5g. Remote scan indicates breathable quantities of oxygen. Temperatures are human-compatible over most of the planet's surface; cold weather gear advised. 2 moons, neither remarkable.
* Orbital II is a black body, minimal heat signature, 500km across. Mass signature indicative of a hollow artificial structure.
* Orbital III is a relatively conventional artificial space station less than 1km in its widest dimension. No power signatures detected. 
* Orbital IV is a system of 2 dwarf planets and 4 small unremarkable moons. IVa is low gravity, no atmosphere. IVb shows unexplained gravitational fluctuations, CO2 atmosphere.
* Orbital V is a terrestrial world. High tectonic instability. Atmosphere is high in sodium, likely highly toxic and corrosive. Temperatures are too high for compatibility with human life. No moons.
* Orbital VI is a system of two terrestrial planets and 5 unremarkable moons. Both medium gravity and CO2 based atmosphere. VIa appears mostly rocky; VIb shows signs of substantial water and likely organic life. 
* Orbital VII is a white dwarf star.


It looks like in the relatively recent (in astronomical terms) history, the red dwarf captured a much smaller white dwarf into its outer orbits. This has eaten the outer planetoids and the gas giants, and also scattered a few smaller rocks through the system, and generally played hell with everything. The binary planetary systems are probably a result of things getting thrown out of their normal orbit; same with the high number of large natural satellites. Orbital V is a total hellworld; probably a result of eating a broken-up moon or otherwise huge amount of meteor strikes within the last thousand years or so.

==== Orbital III ====

It's midnight ship's time when you reach the station. It's dead, as nearly as you can tell, and with your sensor package and Graham on sensors, you should know if it wasn't. The shielding is good enough that you can't get an in-depth picture of the interior, but if anything at all is still running on-board, it would have to be both low-power and deep in the interior. 

The station itself is huge by the standards of modern construction, a fat disk slightly over 700 meters across, and two hundred meters through the center. It must have been one of the greatest construction projects in the history of whatever world built it, because the quality of engineering and hull material is otherwise less than the current state of the art in Nyx and the Reef. There are eight internal frigate bays evenly spaced around the edge of the disk, all currently sealed. The remains of heavy weapons pods on the central dorsal and ventral areas says that this was a military installation of some kind, or at least militarized. Something wrecked them pretty thoroughly, though.

The killing blow is obvious, even from a safe-ish distance of a thousand kilometers away. Something punched clean through the center - in the ventral side and out the dorsal, at a slight pitch so the entry and exit holes are on opposite sides of the central axis. The hole is a good fifteen meters wide, and you're glad that whatever made it must have happened centuries ago, because you wouldn't want to meet it. There are other pits and scars across the surface of the station, but nothing that should have been terminal on its own.

You arbitrarily designate four of the frigate bays as the cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West for easier description of the base.

=== Oneiros Beta ===

Oneiros Beta - Outer System
 December 26th - 1100 Universal Clock Time 
 The Lucky Break

The initial system scan takes about two hours. From what you can tell, there really isn't much in the outer part of the system. The various orbital bodies are all
fairly close in.

The outermost object you can pick up is a gaseous planet, but not really all that large. Your sensors indicate it's mostly nitrogen, and probably has a gravity
close to 1G.

In from that, and not very far out from the edges of where the nebula gets really dense, there's a terrestrial planet of roughly Earth-equivalent mass. You're even detecting an oxygen atmosphere. You suspect it's habitable, but it's also going to be very cold. You're going to want to wear a vacc suit or other cold weather gear, even if the atmosphere is breathable. 

The next thing in from that is a massive field of ice asteroids ringing the very edge of the nebula. You'd guess that at least one truly enormous gas giant or multiple ice worlds had to be ripped apart to produce enough free mass for that. You shouldn't have trouble navigating it, but it is pretty big and there's some huge chunks of ice in there.

Rook spends a fair amount of time on the computer before completing her report. "I've located five additional planets inside the nebula. I'm working from raw gravity signatures, though, so I can't get much more information on them than their location and rough mass. No details on their composition or nature will be available without a closer look."

"From the closest to the binary outward, we have: One small world, a second small one, one that is very large and...quite high density, I'd say terrestrial, one that is roughly earth-equivalent, and a third small one. Next out from that is the ice field."

==== Black House contract re: Oneiros Beta ====

Within the next calendar year, the adventurers and the Black House will engage in a joint expedition to an alien colony that is within the bounds of the adventurers' sector claim map. In return for an introduction and guide services, and for the non-exclusive right to recruit psychic talent from the habitat (and with no other rights to economic exploitation), the Black House will provide the adventurers with a number of services.

One, transport for up to ten persons on the initial expedition, to and from, which may be expected to take at least three months. Two, an official report on any possibly-extant mecha facilities from the Mandate era, including any available navigation information. Three, up to two hundred hours of research by qualified researchers per year for the next five years (this means that you can ask for some grad students or a professor to find out about X topic, and they'll work on it. Results are likely to be dependent on a skill check by the NPC.) Four, secure work and living space at the Black House, and warehouse space at the spaceport, for the next ten years, with an option to renew for an additional ten year lease at 75% fair market value (FMV.)

The adventurers maintain rights to all salvage of Unconventional Technologies*, and are given a fee equal to 20% of the FMV of any such items removed from the habitat by the Black House or its agents, if they do obtain any items from the habitat or its inhabitants.

The contract is non-assignable and non-transferable. The expedition will begin from the Black House, and the adventurers are to send word through standard State courier services two weeks before they begin making their way to Abaddon to embark on their next expedition to Oneiros Beta. The adventurers are responsible for transporting any of their own chosen passengers (the technicians, essentially) to Abaddon, after which time they will become the responsibility of the Black House.

(*) This is an actual legal standard in the State. It includes basically anything that can't be reproduced and obtained on the market, so anything TL5 basically.

=== Ulysses Upsilon ===

You find that Ulysses Upsilon has several rocky and icy planets, and one close-in asteroid belt less than an AU from the star. There are no gas giants. There is also one relatively terrestrial planet; you think that the atmosphere may have once been breathable. However, it's far out from its darkened star, and is now completely frozen. Drifts of crystallized oxygen now sit crusted over its surface.

Unusually... you can detect some activity in the system. There are at least a few radio beacons weakly pinging from here and there in the asteroid belt, and another one from the moon of that frozen terrestrial world. There's no indication they're Chittik. You can be almost certain it's human, since they're transmitting short repeating patterns in a 9-bit format that was standard in the Mandate era and still is in the State. You just can't make sense of the information. A bunch of seemingly random alphanumeric characters. They could be place designators, or they could be garbled, crappy data from systems that are about to fail from not having maintenance in a thousand years or so.

You are able to identify the sources of the radio signals as being ancient installations of some kind. The two asteroid bases were probably mining operations. The signal from the moon was almost certainly an orbital space station that has since crashed onto the surface, and somehow one of the beacons survived. You also identify some signs from the frozen world that there were habitats there, although since you aren't detecting any heat or energy, they are almost certainly long-dead. There's no way people could survive that kind of cold without a solid and sustainable technological base. You can be fairly certain you're the only living humans in this system.

=== Tyson Strange ===

0. The star is a yellow dwarf, very much like the Sol that Lost Terra orbited once upon a time.

1. The first orbital body is a thick nebular ring.

2. The second orbital body is a thick ice field.

3. The third orbital body is a small, stony dwarf planet.

4. The fourth orbital body is a very Earthlike world, but largely aquatic. You think there are only two smallish continents, on opposite sides of the planet from each other. There is a mix of radio signals from this world. Low-tech broadcasts, too muddled to get much from this far out.

5. The fifth planet out is also habitable. Chilly, probably, but you can tell the atmosphere is a breathable mix, and it's covered in vegetation. You can't detect any signs of inhabitation, though.

6. The sixth and seventh planets out are both very small gas giants, with gravity slightly less than 1g. The sixth one is almost pure hydrogen. Your fuel scoops could refuel in only half the time, or two days.

*The fourth planet has three moons. Two are rather small, the third one is close to as big as lost Luna. That last one has a LOT of wrecked starships on the dark side.
*You can spot the nuclear bomb sites pretty easily from orbit. There are a couple scattered islands around the southern continent that were used for tests. There are at least two cities in the interior of the continent that were nuked in anger. As of right now, though, you don't see any large mobilizations and would say that the planet is at peace.
*The continent has a pretty good number of coastal cities and interior cities. There are still broad swaths of back country, but it's definitely been settled for a while. You don't see much sea traffic more than sixty miles from the coast, though.
*The northern continent is pretty much completely unsettled. There are a few shacks and cabins near the coast, but you don't see any signs of serious occupation.
*Your impression of the local tech level was generally correct. Lots of counterculture radio broadcasts, not much from the establishment. Looking down, you can see a weak highway system and a well-developed rail system.
*You think the place is actually kind of metal-poor. There are a lot of minerals that they might not have enough of to really bootstrap themselves up past their current tech level. The mineral deposits at the northern continent are much richer and more accessible (it's a very mountainous region) but those aren't being exploited.
*You can make some kind of educated guesses at national boundaries, but you don't have enough data yet to make that information useful. The continent seems (broadly) to be divided up into four quadrants, with some kind of major interconnection in the rough center. There's heavy rail traffic, highway access, and some river access. It's not the most geographically convenient spot imaginable, though, so it's a bit curious as to why it would be placed there, other than the fact that it's the center of the continent...

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?717974-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Space-Oddity&p=17684485#post17684485 Salvage] on largest moon of fourth planet - The aren't even what you'd call hulks, anymore. They were cut apart or in some cases actually wrecked on the moon. There were definitely cruisers among them, but you don't see evidence of capital ships.

You can get 2d4x1000 tons of salvage...nice roll. There are 7,000 tons of salvage there. There is an even greater quantity of scrap, let's say ten times as much. Salvage is as per the rules I've given for salvage. Scrap is basically hull plating and stuff, it's equivalent to "Metal Ingots, Common" on the trade tables. (Notice that common metal ingots are 1,000 per unit, but they're Bulky, which means a unit is ten tons. Since salvage is 1d4x100 per ton, this means that the average load of salvage is worth 2.5 times the equivalent tonnage of scrap.)

==== Details on Thalassa ====

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?709157-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Welcome-to-the-Jungle&p=17726111#post17726111 Link to post] describing the different countries on Thalassa's main continent.

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?709157-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Welcome-to-the-Jungle&p=17732844#post17732844 Link to post] with details on the Church.

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?717974-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Space-Oddity&p=17921455#post17921455 Link to post] with details on the comparative military strength of the countries.

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?717974-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Space-Oddity&p=17933465#post17933465 Link to post] with details on unique Thalassan item: Bone-Jewel.

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?717974-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-II-Space-Oddity&p=17932979#post17932979 Link to post] with details on the Thalassan graduate students.

Students with space flight experience:
*Inigo - 1 flight
*Amari - 1 flight

==== Thalassa exchange rates ====

For purposes of this campaign, we're going to say that one unit of Trade Metals breaks up into ten "coins," which might be a great big krugerrand, a couple little ones, a big gem, or a few smaller ones, etc. Saul is offering you 2,500 in local currency (Lucre) per unit of trade metals. You can alternately think of this as 250 lucre per "coin."

At this point, you've had enough of an opportunity to examine prices for goods in the local economy. For purposes of convenience, we're going to say that objects have a cost in lucre equivalent to modern-day real-world dollars. Items which are made primarily of metal cost 150% more, and may have shortcuts taken to reduce their metal content.

And, of course, it's 1950s technology. So, you can buy a good refrigerator for 1,000 lucre (that's about what I get when I google "refrigerator"), but it's going to be a nice refrigerator from the 1950s, not a nice refrigerator from 2014 Home Depot.

He can move four units of trade metals per week, or 40 coins. That's 10,000 lucre. If you continue to do business with him, the amount he can move per week will increase.

He's guaranteeing you get clean local currency, and that it won't be traced back to you.

==== Goods left on Thalassa ====

*4 units industrial tools to build spaceport.
*40 tons of material/equipment needed to build spaceport.

==== Thalassan Defense Force ====

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?724403-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-III-Lost-in-Space&p=18127005#post18127005 Three Scarab-class frigates]

==== Thalassan national militaries ====

[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?734598-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-IV-Big-Trouble-on-Planet-Pleasantville&p=18241645#post18241645 Thalassan national militaries]

==== Duchy of Dreswen ====

Sector 16.32 and the six immediately surrounding hexes. [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?724403-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-III-Lost-in-Space&p=18137671#post18137671 Queen Valentin's grant], [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?724403-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-III-Lost-in-Space&p=18142710#post18142710 further delineation of the Duchy]

==== Nuclear Inhibition Field Projector (NIFP) distribution ====

* 1 for our spaceport
* 1 for the Holy City
* 2 for Kadak (one in capital city, other at their discretion)
* 2 for Chowald
* 1 for Jeriat
* 1 for Acacia

==== Thalassan Trade Goods ====

* bone jewels (Compact, Mineral, Luxury, 1 unit = 1/10th ton, 25k credits base price)
* [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?734598-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-IV-Big-Trouble-on-Planet-Pleasantville&p=18273941#post18273941 Tlalix alcohol] (Fine Liqueur trade good)

=== Auspicious Enterprises ===

====Real Estate====
*Corporate Headquarters in New Augusta.  This concrete structure is a level 5 corporate headquarters. [http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/dallascityhall/dallascityhall2.jpg]
*The Sawmill.  The original headquarters have been turned into a corporate retreat and spa.
*The Spaceport.

You have a level 5 (upgrade) corporate headquarters, the central offices of which are referred to as "The Sawmill," although it's rather larger than the original sawmill now. You also have a lot of office space in Sommerset, and a some office space out at the spaceport, as well. Your factor is Saul, who is at +3 to Business, +2 to Culture/Criminal, and +2 to Steward.

*What you have in place with that holding:

**Ship Service Depot (3)
**Corp Security, Major (6)
**Production Center, Minor (Bone Jewels) (2)
**Prometheus Project, TL3 (2)
**Production Center, Major (concrete) (5)
**Production Center, Minor (electronics) (2)
**Production Center, Minor (Carbon Fiber)  (2)
**Minion School: (3)

**25/27 Holding Points.

This is at least self-supporting, and also gives you substantial local currency to play with. If you want to add more Holdings, you're going to need to upgrade your headquarters to Level 4 or higher. You estimate you could get as high as Level 5 before you were under untenable amounts of local scrutiny.

====Assets====
*Liquid Assets: 1.48 mil lucre.
*Material Assets:
**20 units of Fine Liquor: 2 tons
**10 units of fine, handmade clothing: 10 tons (This is like normal clothing, but add the luxury tag and give it a base price of 5k.)
**20 units of native artwork. They've really given you the farm on this one. There's some pretty heavy stuff in here.
**They also intend to send along a pair of cultural experts/salesmen, who will be able to properly explain the provenance of the goods and assist in gaining a good price for them. 20 tons.

==== Prometheus Project ====

The Prometheus Project is self-supporting, and continues in effect every year so long as you keep the holding points devoted to it. The total number of people uplifted doubles each year. I think this in-game year (Year 1) you have about 20,000 people at TL3, and it will double next in-game year to 40,000. And on from there.

===Minion School===
*Two Scarab class frigates
*[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?724403-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-III-Lost-in-Space&p=18174431#post18174431]237 rail guns
*40 students:
**20 Jerians
**10 Kadakians
**10 Church-folk