bluegargantua

Darmini's Rest T-1 E0 R0

Slipstream disruption can isolate systems for long periods of time. There are numerous stories about isolated systems falling into chaos and ruin. It's a nightmare scenario for most high-tech worlds. For the people of Darmini's Rest, however, slipstream isolation has been something of a blessing. The original inhabitants were the losing side of a civil war. The losers fled in a massive colony ship known as the Darmini with the winning side hot on their heels. The pursuit forced a hasty exit that resulted in a mis-jump.

The Darmini came out of slip space into an unremarkable system that was fortunate enough to possess a habitable world. The Darmini put into orbit and the survivors took stock. The mis-jump forced the Darmini through the slipknot but the system itself was disconnected from the slipstream. The random nature of the mis-jump meant that the Darmini's pursuers were unlikely to be following along. So the passengers set about the task of investigating and colonizing the habitable world which became known as Darmini's Rest.

The system remained isolated for several hundred years and during that time, technology slipped back considerably. The inhabitants hadn't lost the knowledge or skills, but the necessary infrastructure was just too difficult to maintain in the face of more pressing needs. Further, the planet was dotted with islands, none much larger than Greenland and the Darmini just wasn't optimized for dealing with water-rich worlds. The system stabilized at an atomic-power level of technology but maintained small group of scientists and technicians who worked to preserve as much data as possible. The group was also responsible for maintaining a series of monitor satellites near the slipknots.

Thus when Darmini's Rest was attached to the cluster, the Darmini weren't surprised. Apex and Eigen ships arrived almost simultaneously and instantly began courting the system. Although technically out-classed by Apex and Eigen, the Darmini have the capacity to catch up if they strike the right bargains. The Confederation (via Apex) can offer high-tech information to help the Darmini grow, but Eigen can offer valuable resources to make that happen. The Darmini are valuable as potential allies, but they could also be useful pawns. The Darmini still remember the results of backing the wrong horse and so they've been very careful to play both sides against each other. There are factions within the Darmini who favor one side or the other, but all of them are careful to keep their options open.

Aspects:

• Careful dealings with outsiders
  
• The Ministry of Knowledge Preservation
  
• Mostly ocean
  

later
Tom

Concordia: T-2 E4 R0

Concordia is the Confederation's greatest technological achievement although some might argue they were merely building on the shoulders of giants. The Concordia system consists of a small star embedded within a large cloud of gas. The cloud is dense enough and contains enough oxygen that humans could easily survive in the open within a fairly thick band. It's not clear is this was a natural formation or the leftover remnants of some massive engineering project from a prior civilization. In any event, there was massive amounts of habitable space, the only thing missing was something to stand on. Confederation scientists fixed this problem by genetically engineering a wide range of plants and animals that could survive in the free-fall conditions of Concordia. A distant tours of asteroids (similar to the Oort cloud) were mined to provide minerals and to provide lattice-work structures for plants and buildings. Eventually, an immense ecosystem was built up and this provided enough organic materials to create small rings to provide gravity.

After that, the Confederation shipped in pioneers as quickly as it could fill the ships. Concordia was sold as an idyllic paradise so it didn't take much to get people to sign on. And for the most part, life within the system was pretty idyllic. The free-fall environment made industrial progress difficult, but the abundance of organic substitutes made life easy enough that the few space stations maintained near the slipknots to manage stellar traffic could provide all the high-tech needs of the system.

The disruption of the former Confederation system had little impact on the Concordia system as a whole and there are a number of residents who aren't even aware of the event. These days, Apex ships keep a tight watch over the system and do their best to mitigate traffic from Eigen. Eigen smugglers still make an effort to get through but often find that their efforts are less lucrative than they'd like since Concordians aren't interested in a lot of what the smugglers offer and have little to pay for the things they do want. The smugglers have found that human trafficking is the most lucrative scheme.

Living in a zero-G environment, Concordians make extremely capable spacers once they've been given some training in using high-tech equipment. Although the hard labor and close confines of starships can be hard on their psyches, younger Concordians with a sense of wanderlust, can easily get jobs on starships. A tour of a few years can provide them with a significant grubstake when they return. With the vast population, there are often thousands of Concordians competing for a few slots and the Eigen have been quick to exploit those who didn't quite make the cut. Smugglers offer to take potential recruits out of the system to Eigen where they can get a job, but their labor contracts are often a quick trip to indentured servitude.

Aspects:

• Life in Free-Fall
  
• An Ecosystem of Leisure
  
• Adventures Are Fun!
  

later
Tom

Bellweather: T-1 E-1 R0

Bellweather is an ice-covered ball on the fringes of its star's habitable zone. Temperatures run well below freezing and that's before the windchill sets in. The harsh climactic condition, slightly higher gravity and unremarkable resources made it the ideal prison world during a particularly dark time in Confederation history.

The one thing Bellweather does have is an abundance of steam thanks to numerous geothermal vents. Using this ready source of power, the Confederation drilled down through ice and rock and set up sprawling underground prison complexes complete massive hydroponics for food.

Conditions in the prisons were extremely harsh. The traditional problems of prison gangs and conflict with wardens were altered by the need for everyone to work hard to maintain the systems that kept the prisons viable. After one particularly disastrous riot, an entire facility lost power and was quickly turned into a frozen graveyard. This tended to force some degree of cooperation, but when buried grudges came to the fore, they were often more brutal. Over time, corruption set in and the wardens were integrated into the gangs in various ways. Often they ruled a gang as the top dog, but sometimes a crafty gang would get leverage on a warden and use them as a puppet.

Eventually, Confederation politics changed and Bellweather was decommissioned as a prison, but the culture of Bellweather had mutated to the point where everyone saw more benefit staying put. In flagrant violation of prison rules, a number of generations had actually come of age within the walls. People either had some sort of seniority in a pecking order that would be lost if they went back "outside" or they had no useful place in regular society. So Bellweather applied as a colonial protectorate and was largely ignored by the rest of the Confederation.

Then a desperate merchant decided to hire a small gang of Bellweathers to protect his ship. The pirates who tried to board the merchant were cut down to a man. The claustrophobic prison warrens were very similar to life aboard a starship and the Bellweathers knew lots of ways to kill someone in a close-quarters fight where guns and explosives weren't an option. Soon Bellweather's chief export was Shipboard Security Services. The Wardens generally negotiated services and commanded the forces on-board. Despite some early (and swiftly punished) episodes of betrayal, the Bellweather teams were loyal and dedicated to their employer and the Confederation as a whole. The Confederate Navy experimented with incorporating Bellweather forces into their Marines, but these experiments were always small scale and kept fairly quiet to avoid a PR disaster.

When the slipstream connections to the Confederation broke up, there was a period of several months of violent outbreaks as power vacuums were exposed and filled. Things were soon sorted out and life on Bellweather returned to normal (although the lack of work was keenly felt). The re-alignment of the slipstreams has brought new opportunities and new problems.

The Wardens in particular, still hold some loyalty to the Confederation (even in its greatly reduced scope). They continue to favor working with Apex and Concordia. The gangs, on the other hand, are mostly loyal to their gang and the biggest paycheck. Merchants and mercenary groups from Eigen are anxious to get Bellweather gangs on their payroll and they generally have a lot to offer. So far, Bellweather accepts only limited contracts to work for Eigen merchants, but it's a rapidly growing sector of their trade and the pressure to do more lucrative deals with Eigen is steadily increasing.

Aspects:

• Natural Born Killers
  
• The Gang is Everything
  
• Steam-powered Warrens
  

later
Tom

Apex: T3 E2 R-2

The Apex system (along with Bellweather and Concordia) was once a part of the Confederation, a cluster-wide political organization that sprawled across 8 different systems. Apex, with its twin garden worlds and numerous space habitats was mostly devoted to scientific research and development. The theory was that cutting-edge science could be conducted within Apex and if anything went wrong, nothing too terrible would happen. The system's lack of material resources and the Confederation's high level of livable planets meant that Apex was the most expendable of the systems within the cluster.

Unfortunately, innovation can come from anywhere. Apex scientists still aren't entirely sure what happened, but based on the last news dump they received there was some sort of advancement in CyberCom technology. The current theory is that billions of people linked together via CyberCom may have formed some gestalt intelligence that sparked singularity. The outcome of this event was that the slipstream network connecting Apex, Bellweather and Concordia to the rest of the Confederation cluster broke up. The three planets were trapped in their own small cluster for almost a year and then the slipstreams re-aligned and now Apex is part of a new cluster.

Achieving Singularity has been a goal of many people in Apex. Advancing science and technology has been everyone's priority. Getting left behind while the rest of the Confederation moved on has stung them deeply. So they've thrown themselves into cutting edge research. Without a steady stream of resources from mineral-rich systems of the Confederation however, a lot of this work is still mostly theoretical. A great deal of effort is expended in simply preserving the technology they currently have. In this case, that means maintaining their starship superiority.

The Apex fleet, even with only a few dedicated warships, is the mightiest in the system. But it's old and while Apex still possesses the know-how to fix and maintain the ships (or even build new ones), getting the necessary materials to do the job is the problem. Analysts have concluded that Apex could probably wipe out the entirety of the Eigen space fleet, but would itself be destroyed in the process. If Eigen ever captures an Apex ship and manages to reverse engineer it, that would be the end of Apex dominance. The upshot is that Apex captains are very protective of their ships. It also means that Apex most valuable commodity, scientific and engineering information, must be traded away very carefully and for the highest of prices.

Aspects:

• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
  
• Achieve the Singularity
  
• Guard the Tree of Knowledge
  

later
Tom

Hi,

So I recently recieved a copy of Diaspora, a hard sci-fi RPG that uses FATE as the engine. It looks pretty slick. It's got a system of mini games for starship combat, mass ground warfare and social interactions. The group that put it together played a lot of old-skool Traveller and it shows through.

I'm still digging into this but it seems like they really slimmed down the stunt system from Spirit of the Century and their new mechanics borrow a lot of good stuff from Burning Empires and it all gels together. I need to do some more reading, but I'm already pretty jazzed about it.

So jazzed that I built a star cluster:



Right, so the game posits that FTL travel between worlds happens via "slipstreams" with "slipknots" (i.e. jump points) located high above the ecliptic of each system. Apparently something went wrong with the slipstreams and now only small clusters of systems are linked together. The yellow lines on the map show how the systems in this cluster are connected.

The names are alphabetical and probably should be changed, but they'll do for now. The letter number pairs after each name give the system's basic stats.

• T = Technology
  
• E = Environment (how easy it is for humans to survive there)
  
• R = Resources
  

In classic FATE/FUDGE fashion, the values for these three stats run from 4 (unbelievable) to -4 (oh my god awful). So you can see that Apex is the most technically advanced system, but is desperate for raw materials. Eigen Inc. is probably a close rival of theirs and has a pretty good lock on the resource-heavy systems (itself and Fairhaven). Bellweather is a bit of a hole and Concordia has a lot of habitable space. Darmini's Rest is the most comparable to our Solar System.

I might flesh these out over the next few days. A bit of flash fiction since I'm not doing NaNo. Then I might build out a character or two.

later
Tom