Difference between revisions of "Have Rocketship Will Travel"

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== Known Factions ==
 
== Known Factions ==

Latest revision as of 18:49, 1 August 2020

Haverocketship.jpg

A SWADE Space Opera

GMed by I.M.Goose

It is the 25th century. The development of the fusion rocket and the Einstein-Rosenberg drive has allowed mankind to expand into space and colonize distant star systems. However Earth is not free, but under the rule of a autocratic bureaucracy controlled by a directorate.

Earth does not directly control all of its far flung colonies, but instead has created the Frontier Trading Corporation to manage them. The FTC is essentially the East India Company in space and controls the trade routes and extracts tribute from the colonies with a fleet of warships and an army of robots. It also seeks to expand Earth's influence over alien planets as well, often at the end of a laser rifle.

Our heroes are a crew of renegades that have, for various reasons gotten on the FTC's bad side and are now trying to elude its grasp. Renegade colonists, deposed alien royalty, or just in the wrong place in the wrong time. They will seek to help others in return for aid in fighting the FTC.

Setting Rules[edit]

Born A Hero - Player characters ignore Rank requirements for Edges during character creation.

Dumb Luck - Characters may spend a Benny after a Critical Failure, allowing another chance for success in unusual and unexpected ways.

Fanatics - Enemy thugs take the damage for their masters

Fast Healing - Characters make natural healing rolls once per day instead of every five days, and recover a level of Fatigue from Bumps & Bruises every four hours instead of every day.

Multiple Languages - Characters know half their Smarts die type in different languages at d6.

Unarmored Hero - Wild Cards without armor add +2 to their Soak rolls

Our Heroes[edit]

T'lurra Grace-of-Mind, played by Talisman

Newton 'Ace' Jaenke, played by Karl Green

(Captain) Harrison Starstrider, played by Elfwine

Dr. Verek Kane, played by Tom B

Neve Talvan'i, played by Gremlin

SWADE Charsheet

Setting Details[edit]

Weapons & armour:

The most popular ranged weapons in known space are radium-powered energy weapons, known simply as radguns, represented with the laser weapon rules. Monomolecular-edged melee weapons are also relatively popular among pirates & marines who fight in close quarters as well as the upper ranks of the FTC and alien monarchies, for whom duelling has come back into vogue as a popular sport.

Personal energy shields based on the energy skin modification on pg 72 of the rulebook are also available. They cost $100 and are wearable as belts. They are popular with FTC officers as they provide some protection from radguns over their uniforms without having to wear cumbersome armour. You can't wear them with military armour, though, only civilian body armour.

FTL travel

Travel between systems is handled by the Einstein-Rosenberg Drive, or simply the wormhole drive. This device opens a temporary wormhole in space, allowing a ship to make the journey from one star system to another in a short period of time.

The drive has an important limit in that it cannot be used when too close to a star or a large gravitational body; this means that if your ship is being pursued by an FTC warship you'll need to outrun it by conventional means before you can jump to safety.

AI

This is a 'low AI' setting where most robots are well below human intelligence and lack independence, only able to follow pre-programmed orders. Smarter machines able to think for themselves may exist but are rare and highly expensive.

Ships & vehicles

Ships in this setting are atomic-powered rocketships, so their internal deck layout is vertical and they land and take off engine-first.

Most earth-built vehicles are hovercraft and get Hover for free.

History & Culture

This world diverged from ours in the 50s-60s, when atomic powered rocketry took off and humanity began colonising the solar system and exploiting it's bountiful resources. This peace continued through the development of the wormhole drive which allowed mankind to spread to the stars and begin encountering alien civilizations.

Shortly after this however, many of the Earth's superpowers began engaging in imperialist ambitions towards their alien neighbours. This lead to a scramble for space, which resulted in wars not only between humans and aliens but also rival superpowers, eventually resulting in the Atomic War on earth.

After the war put an end to many of the old powers on Earth, an alliance of super-wealthy industrialists who had fled Earth beforehand (and had no hand in starting it, they claim) returned and formed the Directorate, an autocratic regime that favours the Board of Directors and their immediate circles of wealthy families and allies. If you are lucky to be part of Earth's upper classes life is near utopian, but for everyone else life is about learning to be a cog in the Directorate machine.

To manage the colonies and continue the process of extracting as much wealth as possible from the final frontier, the Supreme Director ordered the creation of the FTC. The FTC employs a large number of high ranking officials referred to as viceroys who command it's fleets and govern the sectors under it's control. The Directorate takes little direct interest in the FTC's activities so long as a steady stream of wealth and tribute flows it's way.

The FTC has a large fleet of warships and legions of robot troopers to enforce it's will, although the really cutting-edge ships and weaponry is reserved for the Directorate's own forces, which are only deployed in the event that the FTC proves too incompetent to handle a threat.

Languages

The most common language spoken in FTC-controlled space is Earthlang, an English-based creole of several human languages. Each race also has a common tongue that other races can learn to communicate with them.

Known Alien Races[edit]

Doyga

Ennari

Kotoan

M'Borak

Sem

V'Tori

Za'alan

Known Factions[edit]

The Frontier Trade Corporation (FTC):

The main antagonist of the setting. A massive and imperialistic trade corporation chartered by the Earth directorate that rules the trade lanes with an iron fist.

The Independents:

A group that exists solely to fight the FTC. Their members come from those whose lives were destroyed or way of life threatened by the encroachment of the FTC and its usurpation of the autonomy of the local colonies.

The Wraiths:

A small coalition of beings, the survivors of groups and cultures crushed or annihilated by the FTC's greed. Numbering a few hundred at most, the Wraiths are varied and diverse, but united in their hatred of the FTC. They are violent extremists who attack FTC assets with extreme prejudice, and are not shy about casualties. The FTC considers them to be nothing more than especially ruthless bandits, but certain members of the Wraiths possess far-reaching powers and influence. Possibly a more extreme offshoot of the Independents.

Pirate's Guild

A loose alliance of privateers, smugglers and freeholds that sprung up in the aftermath of the Atomic War. Although their activities expand far beyond piracy of FTC trade lanes, they have happily appropriated the moniker that the corporation uses to refer to them.

Monopsychics

A growing religion that believes Mankind's destiny lies in accessing the collective Human subconscious, a pool of consciousness that we leave when born and return to after death. They believe that by accessing this while alive, you can achieve knowledge and enlightenment. It's a fairly new movement, and it's hard to see how the FTC would have much of a policy toward it yet, any moreso than any other religion.

Sun-children (Sternenkinder Sol-vellis, Atellain):

A multiplanetary religion that hold to a simple but strange belief: stars are eggs, and those eggs will someday hatch. Some graft this onto the framework of other religions, attributing to certain stars the names of their own religious figures, or asserting that that which hatches from the sun-eggs will be angels, demigods, or the last and greatest species, which will then dominate the universe. Some take a more metaphorical view, seeing stars as intelligent beings whose minds work on a vastly different scale than that of most beings; their "hatching," therefore, will be them awakening to full awareness of the galaxy as a whole, and the other intelligent life that inhabits it. What will happen next differs based on the tale-teller, but most tend to predict either a new Golden Age . . . or the end of all.

Known Locations[edit]

Blake's Orbiting Trading City

Found orbiting the Gas Giant Sloggy III in the Onduby System (sort of a galactic hub of this sector of space) Blake's Orbiting Trading City (or Blake's Trading for short) is a massive orbital platform first created by the Klaxon Trading Corporation about a century ago to fill its corporation trading needs for this sector of space. When the corporation hit difficult times do to a hostile trade war with its rivals, Thomas Howard Blake, a human multi-billionaire, acquire the sole rights to the Trade City though some private (although rumored to be shady) means. He renamed the station after himself and move most of his business (his main corporations are the Blake Investment Group and Goliath System Arms) and personal interests here. As the Onduby System was unclaimed space the Trading City has always enjoyed little or no interference from the FTC ... until recently. There are rumors abound throughout the station that the FTC has been pressuring Blake to join the FTC or at least accept FTC sponsorship and "protection". So far Blake has been able to hold them off. But for how long will the station remain independent and free?

Daystars

A phenomenon known on the planet of Capricus (a gas giant): accretions of minerals formed from the shells of coral-like animals which drift gently on the breezes of the upper atmosphere. In effect, they are a vast swathe of floating islands floating in the sky of a planet with no solid surface. They vary in size from a few dozen feet in diameter to two or three miles; they grow constantly due to the actions of the coral-animals, sometimes breaking apart and forming multiple, smaller islets. Although devoid of sapient life, they are home to a bizarre ecosystem of lighter-than-air creatures that blur the line between plant and animal.

Although sturdy enough to support human(oid) explorers, the Daystars cannot support the infrastructure of a starship base, especially one capable of lifting off from Capricus's enormous gravity well. As a result, although the native lifeforms produce a variety of rare and exotic substances, they are dangerous to visit and hard to acquire.

Shroud

An area of space that is just . . . wrong. Located in an interstellar gulf midway between three important solar systems, it is effectively a Bermuda triangle of vast size. Readings taken of the area in the Shroud, or light passing through it, are never the same (even if the differences are minimal); ships and objects passing through it may take far longer than anticipated, or have anomalous encounters ("living asteroids", a section of space that screams, and light-waves bending into hideously suggestive patterns have all been reported) . . . if they make it through at all.

No one is certain of the true cause of these effects, but the Shroud is avoided by most spacefarers unless they are truly desperate or supremely arrogant.

The Banyan Rift

A strange spatial phenomenon found at the rim of explored space has been dubbed 'The Banyan Rift' by scout ships. The Rift is entirely impassable via FTL, and any attempt either ends in lost or damaged ships are they are either shunted catastrophically back into normal space or they disappear entirely. It's unclear how far it extends since nobody has made it around the Rift so far, but there are no stars observable in the region affected and no unusual activity.

The Tartarus Expanse

The true Ancients are gone, but there are always rumors and sightings. Stories of huge aliens ships of immense power suddenly appearing and either annihilating or capturing lone ships. Possibly mis-reported sightings of known ships and races, or some type of natural phenomenon? These sightings seem to be more common in one particular region now termed 'The Tartarus Expanse'. Colonists of the worlds Eden and Nightfall continue to file reports of strange sensor readings, ships that appear and vanish without leaving the quantum signature associated with the familiar wormhole drive, as well as strange visitors to the planets themselves. So far, no official investigation has turned up anything other than rumors and inconclusive readings.

Known NPCs[edit]

Angus Devine

One of the better known black marketeers in the sector is . He's built an organization with a reputation for being able to obtain anything...for the right price. Operating through a web of aliases, doubles, cut-outs, and phantom corporations, the FTC has had little luck even identifying his actual identity.

Ceran Kane

Dr. Kane's brother, works for the FTC. Verek and Ceran parted ways years earlier due to a fundamental difference in their outlooks on life. Ceran went the corporate route, specializing in backroom deals and negotiating the difficult transactions. From time to time he contacts Verek to try and convince him to come put his talents to work for the company, but Verek finds his brother's idea of paradise to be anathema.