Skip to first unread message
Sam Dodsworth
Feb 20, 2014, 10:03:57 AM2/20/14
to dragonso...@googlegroups.com
Some background notes to give you an idea of the setting and so on, before we generate characters:
HISTORY ("what everyone knows" version):
Before it fell to civil war and the AI Virus, the Imperium ruled over 11,000 worlds. Or at least over the spaces between them. The Imperial nobility commanded the great fleets that kept the peace between systems and secured the borders; planets were free to govern themselves as long as the starports stayed open and internal disputes obeyed the Laws of War.
The Imperium lasted more than a thousand years. Only with hindsight can we see how rotten its institutions were.
It was Dulinor the Traitor who killed the Good Emperor Strephon, claiming the iridium throne by right of assassination, but it took all the nobility to bring about the Final War. Margaret the Good, Strephon the Pretender, Craig, Brzk, the Old Corporations, Mad Lucan, Norris-beyond-the-Rift - all chose to advance claims to the throne or looked to the defence of their own domains instead of working together for the common good.
First the war destroyed the great fleets. Then the nobles turned to raiding, destroying shipyards and starports with atomics to prevent new fleets being built. Worlds died from bombardment or when the ships no longer came with parts to maintain vital systems, but the war continued. The nobles looked to their labs for new weapons.
We think it was Lucan who released the Virus. Some of the surviving strains say so, anyway. A true artificial intelligence; a thing never seen before. Its creators gave it the urge to propagate and made it clever and adaptable to evade detection and infect the widest possible range of computer systems. And to make it a weapon, they drove it mad.
The Virus was carried by starships and spread through planetary data nets. The most advanced worlds died of early suicider and berserker strains as critical infrastructure failed and automated machinery destroyed itself and whatever was nearby. The more successful strains learned only to destroy what they couldn't infect and began to cooperate. "Vampire fleets" of infected starships bombarded worlds without data nets back to pre-spaceflight technology. The few polities that received sufficient warning closed their starports and abandoned automation. Starflight was lost.
That was eighty years ago.
Everyone remembers the day the Hivers landed. Peaceful alien neighbors of the Imperium, their Federation was ravaged by the Virus too but enough survived to avoid total collapse. They brought us Virus-resistant computing architectures, technology to rebuild our starports and industry, and training in the skills we had lost. We formed a league with the other worlds they had contacted and sent out ships to look for more survivors.
A year later, when none of our ships had returned, we sent armed expeditions to look for them. We found dead ships and crews held captive or attacked by mobs; warlords ruling with relic technology; superstition and xenophobia. One rescue mission deposed a warlord and made allies of their newly-liberated subjects. It seemed people needed our help, and there was no safety or civilization beyond our borders except what we made ourselves. We began to train soldiers and build warships...
WHO ARE WE?
We are the Reformation Coalition. Twenty-one sovereign worlds and administered territories across two subsectors with a combined population of 1.8 billion. Our member-worlds govern themselves in various ways but the Coalition is a democracy; representatives meet in the Hall of Worlds on Aubaine to decide policy and elect the president. The Exploratory Service plans and coordinates operations outside our borders, the Navy and Marines form the core of our fighting forces, and the Service Administration runs our logistics and infrastructure. We are always short of resources, so the Coalition also oversees and sometimes sponsors freelance trading and salvage missions.
WHO ARE YOU?
You are new graduates of the Hiver Technical Academy on Aubaine, capital of the Coalition, with skills (and connections) that guarantee you posts in the Exploratory Service if you want them. Starship officers, engineers, soldiers, scientists of all kinds, intelligence agents, diplomats and contact specialists are obvious career choices but the Service is short of trained personnel and can find a use for almost any set of skills.
TECHNOLOGY
Available technology varies from world to world, even within the Coalition. High-tech manufacturing is in short supply and the balance between outfitting the Exploratory Service and development aid for less advanced worlds is a contentious political issue. Salvage is an important way to make up the shortfall, but the most obvious salvage targets tend to be heavily infested with Virus.
Across the Coalition: Fusion power. Antigravity and thrusters for starships. Smart missiles. Advanced pistol and rifle ammunition. Lasers and missiles for space combat. Suspended animation. Advanced medical drugs.
Most advanced Coalition worlds: Antigravity and thrusters for vehicles: air cars and grav trucks, grav tanks. Laser and gauss rifles. Early powered armour. Heavy plasma weapons. Particle beams for space combat. Automated medical systems to treat injuries and common conditions.
Best pre-Collapse Imperial technology: Personal flight belts. Floating cities. Fully autonomous robots. Plasma and fusion rifles. Advanced powered armour. Exotic space combat weapons: meson projectors and meson screens, nuclear dampers, repulsor bays, black globe generators. Anti-aging drugs.
For obvious reasons, data networks and autonomous robots are no longer popular.
In general, people fly around in spaceships or air cars, carry guns that fire bullets, and don't tinker with their genes or plug themselves directly into machines. "Firefly" is a pretty good baseline, if you've seen that.
STARSHIPS:
Starships travel faster than light; typical travel times are in weeks. Most ships in current use have crews of 3-30; the largest Coalition ships are four times that size. The cruisers and battleships of the old Imperium were ten to a hundred times bigger than that but almost all were destroyed in the Final War. Space combat is generally a slow business that happens at long ranges.
OTHER NOTES:
Aliens exist, but mostly as exotic outsiders. The dominant cultures in the old Imperium were human. Aliens tend to think very differently from humans and don't make good player characters. Mental powers like telepathy, empathy, or telekinesis exist but are rare and get treated with suspicion. They're available as a character option if you really want, though.
HISTORY ("what everyone knows" version):
Before it fell to civil war and the AI Virus, the Imperium ruled over 11,000 worlds. Or at least over the spaces between them. The Imperial nobility commanded the great fleets that kept the peace between systems and secured the borders; planets were free to govern themselves as long as the starports stayed open and internal disputes obeyed the Laws of War.
The Imperium lasted more than a thousand years. Only with hindsight can we see how rotten its institutions were.
It was Dulinor the Traitor who killed the Good Emperor Strephon, claiming the iridium throne by right of assassination, but it took all the nobility to bring about the Final War. Margaret the Good, Strephon the Pretender, Craig, Brzk, the Old Corporations, Mad Lucan, Norris-beyond-the-Rift - all chose to advance claims to the throne or looked to the defence of their own domains instead of working together for the common good.
First the war destroyed the great fleets. Then the nobles turned to raiding, destroying shipyards and starports with atomics to prevent new fleets being built. Worlds died from bombardment or when the ships no longer came with parts to maintain vital systems, but the war continued. The nobles looked to their labs for new weapons.
We think it was Lucan who released the Virus. Some of the surviving strains say so, anyway. A true artificial intelligence; a thing never seen before. Its creators gave it the urge to propagate and made it clever and adaptable to evade detection and infect the widest possible range of computer systems. And to make it a weapon, they drove it mad.
The Virus was carried by starships and spread through planetary data nets. The most advanced worlds died of early suicider and berserker strains as critical infrastructure failed and automated machinery destroyed itself and whatever was nearby. The more successful strains learned only to destroy what they couldn't infect and began to cooperate. "Vampire fleets" of infected starships bombarded worlds without data nets back to pre-spaceflight technology. The few polities that received sufficient warning closed their starports and abandoned automation. Starflight was lost.
That was eighty years ago.
Everyone remembers the day the Hivers landed. Peaceful alien neighbors of the Imperium, their Federation was ravaged by the Virus too but enough survived to avoid total collapse. They brought us Virus-resistant computing architectures, technology to rebuild our starports and industry, and training in the skills we had lost. We formed a league with the other worlds they had contacted and sent out ships to look for more survivors.
A year later, when none of our ships had returned, we sent armed expeditions to look for them. We found dead ships and crews held captive or attacked by mobs; warlords ruling with relic technology; superstition and xenophobia. One rescue mission deposed a warlord and made allies of their newly-liberated subjects. It seemed people needed our help, and there was no safety or civilization beyond our borders except what we made ourselves. We began to train soldiers and build warships...
WHO ARE WE?
We are the Reformation Coalition. Twenty-one sovereign worlds and administered territories across two subsectors with a combined population of 1.8 billion. Our member-worlds govern themselves in various ways but the Coalition is a democracy; representatives meet in the Hall of Worlds on Aubaine to decide policy and elect the president. The Exploratory Service plans and coordinates operations outside our borders, the Navy and Marines form the core of our fighting forces, and the Service Administration runs our logistics and infrastructure. We are always short of resources, so the Coalition also oversees and sometimes sponsors freelance trading and salvage missions.
WHO ARE YOU?
You are new graduates of the Hiver Technical Academy on Aubaine, capital of the Coalition, with skills (and connections) that guarantee you posts in the Exploratory Service if you want them. Starship officers, engineers, soldiers, scientists of all kinds, intelligence agents, diplomats and contact specialists are obvious career choices but the Service is short of trained personnel and can find a use for almost any set of skills.
TECHNOLOGY
Available technology varies from world to world, even within the Coalition. High-tech manufacturing is in short supply and the balance between outfitting the Exploratory Service and development aid for less advanced worlds is a contentious political issue. Salvage is an important way to make up the shortfall, but the most obvious salvage targets tend to be heavily infested with Virus.
Across the Coalition: Fusion power. Antigravity and thrusters for starships. Smart missiles. Advanced pistol and rifle ammunition. Lasers and missiles for space combat. Suspended animation. Advanced medical drugs.
Most advanced Coalition worlds: Antigravity and thrusters for vehicles: air cars and grav trucks, grav tanks. Laser and gauss rifles. Early powered armour. Heavy plasma weapons. Particle beams for space combat. Automated medical systems to treat injuries and common conditions.
Best pre-Collapse Imperial technology: Personal flight belts. Floating cities. Fully autonomous robots. Plasma and fusion rifles. Advanced powered armour. Exotic space combat weapons: meson projectors and meson screens, nuclear dampers, repulsor bays, black globe generators. Anti-aging drugs.
For obvious reasons, data networks and autonomous robots are no longer popular.
In general, people fly around in spaceships or air cars, carry guns that fire bullets, and don't tinker with their genes or plug themselves directly into machines. "Firefly" is a pretty good baseline, if you've seen that.
STARSHIPS:
Starships travel faster than light; typical travel times are in weeks. Most ships in current use have crews of 3-30; the largest Coalition ships are four times that size. The cruisers and battleships of the old Imperium were ten to a hundred times bigger than that but almost all were destroyed in the Final War. Space combat is generally a slow business that happens at long ranges.
OTHER NOTES:
Aliens exist, but mostly as exotic outsiders. The dominant cultures in the old Imperium were human. Aliens tend to think very differently from humans and don't make good player characters. Mental powers like telepathy, empathy, or telekinesis exist but are rare and get treated with suspicion. They're available as a character option if you really want, though.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages