After a few minutes you were able to figure out that you were in some sort of rotating space station (colloquially, a “carousel”) and that you were near the hub. Farallon pressed Mirella for information on where exactly you were and how you got there. Seems that Mirella, though Elven, is not from Palladium, but rather Erysterai, a world which orbits Gliese 876. She is part of the Misarlon, but that is only the Palladium name for a larger group known throughout the Cognoverse (known set of systems and colonies) as M7.
M7 starts with Fermi's paradox which briefly put states that given the theoretical number of planets that could support life and advanced civilizations it is improbably that we should find so very few races living among the stars. Research over the years found that there were, in fact, as many civilizations as Fermi's equations suggested; they were just all extinct, and not by natural causes, or so it came to be understood. So M7 was formed a very long time ago to help safeguard the newer races that had appeared in the galactic scene. It is believed that these other extinct races had attracted the attention of something known as the Inhibitors. Races that tried to expand boundaries of travel too far or had used “runic” energy tended to attracted this unwanted attention, so M7 tries to keep the profile of the human races and its neighbors below the radar of the Inhibitors.
Not wanting to just sit around, you all decide to take an elevator ride down to the outer ring of the station where the gravity approaches something normal, but you unfortunately disturb the denizens of this semi-derelict station, a group of Juicers who want to play. You all race back up to the hub where Treasda and Lodos seal the safety hatches and Landros (using Eldvöð) heats up the locking rings to become untouchable, buying you all enough time for Oki to telehack into the computer system. Oki gets you all clearance to the shuttle bay and prewarms a craft for you to leave. By this time the Juicers have armed the station's weapons and are merely waiting for you to leave the bay before they destroy you. Mirella calculates that even at the 10G maximum thrust, the Juicers will have more than enough time to pick you off as you leave. Agar Prime devises a scheme to clear the bay at 10G's, which will render everyone else unconscious, and then swing the nose around and unleash the shuttle meager fury at the other ship in the bay and the bay itself. Seconds before this plan can be executed a very large dark shadow slides between the station and the gas giant below. It is a lighthugger. With nothing to lose, you follow through with Agar's plan. It works splendidly, and a fraction of a second later the lighthugger send out a series of beams that reduces the station into a shimmering cascade of tiny metal pieces.
A radio hail from the lighthugger, “Nostalgia for Infinity”, informs you that you have been arbitrarily selected to join their crew. You oblige.
On board you meet Volya, a female triumvirate of the ship and head of weapons and engineering, Sajaki, triumvirate number two, unstable megalomaniac, and Jermea, the third wheel. There is also Kori, a crew member as well as Glaston and Ephemera, both highly chimeric Ultras. Oki tries to bond with the ship and encounters a force, “Sun-Stealer”. The mere mention of Sun-Stealer makes Sajaki very mad...
To make a complicated story short, the crew is looking for a cure for the captain ,who has the melding plaque, a disease which causes the nano-chines in his body to run amok and begun melding into other things. In this case the captain is melding into the ship and has bonded with about ten percent of it. Sajaki believes that the answer can be found on Palladium, but because that system is so far away and dangerous to get to, they will travel to Anasaria and use the Rifts. Fast forward through a six year stint in hibernation and you wake up to find that this entity, Sun-Stealer is trying to destroy the entire planet of Anasaria. Apparently it does'nt want the rifts open and believes that if they are not closed the Inhibitors will come and destroy everyone. Oki is able to determine that Sun-Stealer is about a billion year old entity.
The story that emerges is that billions of years ago several races ascended to the stars and fell into conflict with each other. The war between these races lasted so many millions of years that it became impossible to tell how many races had ever been involved in the war, since the races had evolved so much over the course of the conflict. Eventually, all but one race disappeared from the conflict, those that became known as the Inhibitors. From that point forward the Inhibitors prevented any other such war from starting by preventing any race from ever achieving the technology necessary. It has been between three or four billion years since the end of the Dawn War. Sun-Stealer's people learned all of this about the Dawn War once they had stirred the hornets nest and just before they were destroyed.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Lighthugger
Lighthuggers are about 3km in length. The sleek hull is designed to cut through the relatively thick gas of space as the craft travels at 0.99c At relativistic speeds a very large gossamer sail can be unfurled to collect molecules for use in the Conjoiner engines.Alliance craft, while capable of being pushed to 0.75c, are really only designed for 0.25c to 0.45c and the design differences between the craft are astonoshing.
Alliance Vessel
Alliance Vessels are about 1000m (1km) long. Maximum Speed is 0.75c (3/4 of the speed of lilght). Absolute Maximum acceleration is 10G's. Nominal acceleration is 4G's, although for human comfort it is most often 1G.
A new era
Although the Androsien would only have a sketchy outline of the human timeline and culture (and the elf would know nothing at all), I felt it important to get everyone on the same page as we prepare to move forward.
I draw heavily on the fiction of Alastair Reynolds and his “Revelation Space Series” for much of the following.
The Timeline
2035 – Moon Resource Center Online
2051 – First Permanent Research Facility on Mars
2067 – Colonization of Mars begins
2074 – Outer Satellite Resource Project Begins
2075 – Mars colonists become Conjoiners
2083 – OSR Factories online
2087 – Conjoiner RamDrive
2090 – Deep Space Exploration Probes Launched
2096 – Alliance formed joining former Chin-American and Lunar States
2101 – Chimeric technology begins to grow in general popularity.
2111 – Alliance technology creates CFR Engines
2112 – Conjoiner Drive is created.
2116 - Epsilon Eridani Probe reports on habitable world in system
2120 – Mars Colony reaches 1 million
2121 – Alliance vessel “Plymouth” leaves for Eridani
2122 – Lighthuggers leave for nearest 100 stars, except Eridani.
2125 – Conjoiner Civil War
2129 – Civil War ends.
2131 – Conjoiner Lighthugger “Relative Legacy” leaves for Eridani based on more probe info.
2141 - “Plymouth” and “Legacy” arrive at planet, Anasaria
2142 – Lighthuggers have visited all 100 nearest systems. Palladium system not among visited because it is about 100 light years away. Emergence of Ultras. First alien race “Elves” are met near Gliese 876.
2200 – Lighthuggers become the trade ships of the expanding reaches of human colonization.
2250 – Furthest human colonies now 40 light years from earth. Divergence of human culture on a profound scale.
2262 – Conjoiners cease production of Lighthuggers.
2347 – Anasaria has grown on its own to such a size that they begin exploration star systems further out. Alliance research vessel “California” detects ruins on a desolate rocky planet in a nearby system
2455 – Archeologists learn about the demise of this ancient alien culture
2465 – Rifts successfully established to Palladium
2474 – 2500 Skedic outposts on Palladium are built.
2524 – Cataclysm
2542 – Lighthugger “Nostalgia for Infinity” stops at Anasaria for a trade run and discovers the mass destruction. Inter-System Trade Rules require that a quarantine beacon be placed until a Threat Assessment Team can be sent in.
2552 – Alliance Deep Space Listeners here quarantine beacon and assemble a task force.
2567 – Alliance TAT arrives in Anasari orbit. TAT commanders request back-up from mercenary vessels in area (“The Splendid Verschränkung”) while they observe and research the alien activity on the planet. They do establish supply drops of food and medicine for the trapped humans, although they do not travel to the surface themselves.
2575 – Return of Rifts to Palladium, “Verschränkung” arrives in orbit and assists Tar in eliminating threats.
Human settlements outside of the Solaris (Earth) system are all very isolated from each other. At best, an Alliance or Lighthugger ship will come by every dozen or so years unless, like Solaris, they are at a hub of trade. It is not uncommon for a system to remain out of direct contact with anyone else for 30, 40, 50, or more years. If you think that the midwest is a decade behind the times, then you can extrapolate how out of touch entire colonies can be. There is no over-arching interstellar government; instead each colony is highly independent and culturally utterly different from its neighbors. This is true to such an extent that humans from different colonies may seem to be only tenuously related as a species at times.
Conjoiners
A human sub-race that began augmenting the human brain by grafting on nano-neural processors. They have altered themselves to such an extent that their skulls must be modified by the addition of huge cooling fins in order to avoid overheating their gray matter. The size and style of the fins has become a symbol of which “tribe” a Conjoiner belongs to. They are extremely aloof and very bored by almost all other humans. They traverse the great divides visiting various worlds, but no one ever seems to know what they are doing. They created the technology for both the Conjoiner drives and the alliance Cold Fusion Reactor Engines. The technology inside of the Conjoiner drives is so far advanced from typical human understanding that it is totally inscrutable. Although the Conjoiners are intellectually capable of solving any human problem that is solvable, they just don't seem to care about what happens to the rest of the race.
Ultras
Ultranauts. These intrepid souls are the crew members of the intersystem ships. They spend most of their time between ports in reefersleep (hibernation); this means that most of the Ultras crewing lighthuggers today started over 400 years ago and yet they may only be in their 40's or 50's, since to their perspective only about 20 or so relative years would have passed in the last 400 or so. Despite this relative time problem, there are still Ultras who were born on ships and have never set foot on a planet. For this reason Ultras are a strange breed, often seen as sociopathic, and certainly completely out of touch with the experience of being “human” in a traditional sense. They bounce from one port to another, trading and selling goods, enjoying a few days of party and drink, and then it's back to reefersleep for another ten years until the next stop. Many Ultras are chimeric: hybrid machine and biological human, although the symbiosis is much deeper than mere cyborg implants or bionics. In chimerics, nano machines can co-opt living cells to produce a latex like skin armor, or harness mitochondrial activity to power implants, or any other number of things.
All lighthuggers are manned by Ultras. This is sort of a Chicken/Egg Paradox. Those who were suited to intersystem travel stayed on the ships to run them while those who couldn't stomach it left. When the Conjoiners stopped manufacturing ships, there was no need to recruit large numbers of crew; the crews already in service were well on their way to forming the Ultra culture we know today. And, given the lack of a grand unifying government, we can see why these ships have no political affiliation. Furthermore, given the scale of time and the relative fragility of corporate entities it should not be a surprise that, although the multi-trillion dollar price tag of the lighthuggers was originally paid for by companies, no lighthugger is currently “owned” by any corporation. Of course, there are a couple of legal battles outstanding, but it is very difficult indeed to serve a summons over the vast distances and times involved. Thus, all intersystem trade is controlled by the Ultras.
What about the Alliance? Alliance technology is vastly inferior, even the old CFR drives made by the Conjoiners are wimpy in comparison to the lighthuggers. Alliance ships also lack the integration and nano-systems built into lighthuggers, so they age and take wear and tear much more quickly. Only the Conjoiners can build CFR engines, and so the total number of Alliance ships is dwindling with no hope of replacement. In a couple of centuries all that will remain are lighthuggers and Ultras.
Earth
What the Anasari know of Earth is that it was a political mess and an environmental disaster when they left to start their own colony over 350 years ago.
I draw heavily on the fiction of Alastair Reynolds and his “Revelation Space Series” for much of the following.
The Timeline
2035 – Moon Resource Center Online
2051 – First Permanent Research Facility on Mars
2067 – Colonization of Mars begins
2074 – Outer Satellite Resource Project Begins
2075 – Mars colonists become Conjoiners
2083 – OSR Factories online
2087 – Conjoiner RamDrive
2090 – Deep Space Exploration Probes Launched
2096 – Alliance formed joining former Chin-American and Lunar States
2101 – Chimeric technology begins to grow in general popularity.
2111 – Alliance technology creates CFR Engines
2112 – Conjoiner Drive is created.
2116 - Epsilon Eridani Probe reports on habitable world in system
2120 – Mars Colony reaches 1 million
2121 – Alliance vessel “Plymouth” leaves for Eridani
2122 – Lighthuggers leave for nearest 100 stars, except Eridani.
2125 – Conjoiner Civil War
2129 – Civil War ends.
2131 – Conjoiner Lighthugger “Relative Legacy” leaves for Eridani based on more probe info.
2141 - “Plymouth” and “Legacy” arrive at planet, Anasaria
2142 – Lighthuggers have visited all 100 nearest systems. Palladium system not among visited because it is about 100 light years away. Emergence of Ultras. First alien race “Elves” are met near Gliese 876.
2200 – Lighthuggers become the trade ships of the expanding reaches of human colonization.
2250 – Furthest human colonies now 40 light years from earth. Divergence of human culture on a profound scale.
2262 – Conjoiners cease production of Lighthuggers.
2347 – Anasaria has grown on its own to such a size that they begin exploration star systems further out. Alliance research vessel “California” detects ruins on a desolate rocky planet in a nearby system
2455 – Archeologists learn about the demise of this ancient alien culture
2465 – Rifts successfully established to Palladium
2474 – 2500 Skedic outposts on Palladium are built.
2524 – Cataclysm
2542 – Lighthugger “Nostalgia for Infinity” stops at Anasaria for a trade run and discovers the mass destruction. Inter-System Trade Rules require that a quarantine beacon be placed until a Threat Assessment Team can be sent in.
2552 – Alliance Deep Space Listeners here quarantine beacon and assemble a task force.
2567 – Alliance TAT arrives in Anasari orbit. TAT commanders request back-up from mercenary vessels in area (“The Splendid Verschränkung”) while they observe and research the alien activity on the planet. They do establish supply drops of food and medicine for the trapped humans, although they do not travel to the surface themselves.
2575 – Return of Rifts to Palladium, “Verschränkung” arrives in orbit and assists Tar in eliminating threats.
Human settlements outside of the Solaris (Earth) system are all very isolated from each other. At best, an Alliance or Lighthugger ship will come by every dozen or so years unless, like Solaris, they are at a hub of trade. It is not uncommon for a system to remain out of direct contact with anyone else for 30, 40, 50, or more years. If you think that the midwest is a decade behind the times, then you can extrapolate how out of touch entire colonies can be. There is no over-arching interstellar government; instead each colony is highly independent and culturally utterly different from its neighbors. This is true to such an extent that humans from different colonies may seem to be only tenuously related as a species at times.
Conjoiners
A human sub-race that began augmenting the human brain by grafting on nano-neural processors. They have altered themselves to such an extent that their skulls must be modified by the addition of huge cooling fins in order to avoid overheating their gray matter. The size and style of the fins has become a symbol of which “tribe” a Conjoiner belongs to. They are extremely aloof and very bored by almost all other humans. They traverse the great divides visiting various worlds, but no one ever seems to know what they are doing. They created the technology for both the Conjoiner drives and the alliance Cold Fusion Reactor Engines. The technology inside of the Conjoiner drives is so far advanced from typical human understanding that it is totally inscrutable. Although the Conjoiners are intellectually capable of solving any human problem that is solvable, they just don't seem to care about what happens to the rest of the race.
Ultras
Ultranauts. These intrepid souls are the crew members of the intersystem ships. They spend most of their time between ports in reefersleep (hibernation); this means that most of the Ultras crewing lighthuggers today started over 400 years ago and yet they may only be in their 40's or 50's, since to their perspective only about 20 or so relative years would have passed in the last 400 or so. Despite this relative time problem, there are still Ultras who were born on ships and have never set foot on a planet. For this reason Ultras are a strange breed, often seen as sociopathic, and certainly completely out of touch with the experience of being “human” in a traditional sense. They bounce from one port to another, trading and selling goods, enjoying a few days of party and drink, and then it's back to reefersleep for another ten years until the next stop. Many Ultras are chimeric: hybrid machine and biological human, although the symbiosis is much deeper than mere cyborg implants or bionics. In chimerics, nano machines can co-opt living cells to produce a latex like skin armor, or harness mitochondrial activity to power implants, or any other number of things.
All lighthuggers are manned by Ultras. This is sort of a Chicken/Egg Paradox. Those who were suited to intersystem travel stayed on the ships to run them while those who couldn't stomach it left. When the Conjoiners stopped manufacturing ships, there was no need to recruit large numbers of crew; the crews already in service were well on their way to forming the Ultra culture we know today. And, given the lack of a grand unifying government, we can see why these ships have no political affiliation. Furthermore, given the scale of time and the relative fragility of corporate entities it should not be a surprise that, although the multi-trillion dollar price tag of the lighthuggers was originally paid for by companies, no lighthugger is currently “owned” by any corporation. Of course, there are a couple of legal battles outstanding, but it is very difficult indeed to serve a summons over the vast distances and times involved. Thus, all intersystem trade is controlled by the Ultras.
What about the Alliance? Alliance technology is vastly inferior, even the old CFR drives made by the Conjoiners are wimpy in comparison to the lighthuggers. Alliance ships also lack the integration and nano-systems built into lighthuggers, so they age and take wear and tear much more quickly. Only the Conjoiners can build CFR engines, and so the total number of Alliance ships is dwindling with no hope of replacement. In a couple of centuries all that will remain are lighthuggers and Ultras.
Earth
What the Anasari know of Earth is that it was a political mess and an environmental disaster when they left to start their own colony over 350 years ago.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Synopsis: Demon Temple of Naylon
So there you were - in the dungeons deep beneath the stepped pyramid at the center of Temple Naylon, walking down a hallway whose walls and ceiling were covered with fleshy pods and intestinal looking things - when the ceiling of the corridor behind you closes down sealing you inside. No way to go but forward. The kankoran and Treasda were freaking out, but Oki was able to calm them down for a bit.
A large stone double door held the party up for a while as they tried to figure out how open it. An object read and a search for concealment finally revealed the mechanism. Beyond the door was a large octagonal room with a total of four doors, one for each of the cardinal coordinates. The diagonal walls between the doors had carvings of: Charun, the demon beatles, Mania/Mantus, and Modeus. In the center of the room was a fountain, although it no longer worked. The ceiling was domed with a small hole at it apex, right above the fountain. The room was lit by an unknown light source bouncing a soft, honey light off of the dome.
The door straight ahead seemed appealing, so you opened it to find a corridor leading down to a room from which softly flickering amber light could be seen. Farallon was on his way to investigate when Oki became possessed(?) by some black, wraith-like entity. The wraith slew and beheaded Ashuntuc (one of the kankoran) using Void. Then the dark creature dragged the carcass of Ashuntuc to the fountain, raised the kankoran over its head with one arm, and slammed the decapitated body into the fountain. Immediately silver, gray, and black fibrous tendrils sprouted from the fountain, engulfing it and causing to collapse in on itself.
Regaining composure, Agar did at any rate, the party started to close the door. Oki/beast ran at the party but was tripped by Landros. She fell hard, Void clattering out of her hands. The wraith seemed to leave her, but the door finally shuts at the moment. After a second of debate, the party, bristling with weapons ready, opened the sliding stoned door just in time to see Void slide into the mass of tendrils and get sucked into the dark fibrous mass. Oki seemed fine, but then there were the footsteps. ..the footsteps of something enormous reverberating through the stone.
(past to present tense)
Lodos points the way through a door to the east. There you are promptly attacked by three Shedim demons. Treasda and Lodos protect the party beneath a powerful shield while teamwork helps whittle down the demons quickly. When the dust settles, you approach an altar at the far end of the room that seems to be protected by a halo of blue light. Silus is the first through and grabs Rök for himself.
The massive footsteps are still getting closer, so Landros opens up a rift allowing you to escape...only to face the witch. The witch of Wickmire almost has the best of you, but once you manage to land a hit, she goes down quickly.
Back at Aja you find out that the same black/silver tendrils have taken over the toriod research facility where void was scanned. Three skedic who had extensive contact trying to remove the fibers got infected and died, their bodies turned into empty husks. The party's attempts to help remove the tendrils goes nowhere.
Off to see Ecco, the dragon who is guarding Necros.
The journey is fairly uneventful and finally you arrive at a massive cave in the mountain glacier. Everything here is massive - the doors, the hallways, the rooms - all dwarven but scaled for very large dragon to use. Close to the entrance Agar notices a bloodied grat cloak on the floor.
A massive circular well ringed with a spiral staircase descends a mile into the mountain. At the base of the stairs are two Misarlon, chained to the wall. They reveal only that they were here to get Necros and then pass out. Again, Agar hears cries for help, so you follow the massive hallway down to a very large room (think indoor football stadium). Two-thirds of the room is covered in a sea of gold and treasure. Chained to metal stakes off to the side are four more Misarlon, one of whom is Mirella (the you met a while ago near D'Hurasel). She explains that Ecco had been entrusted to guard Necros for over a thousand years. The Misarlon, fearing that you would try to get Necros from him, decided to relocated the item - only Necros wouldn't give it up and killed one and imprisoned the rest. Mirella entreats you to free her, which you do just in time for Ecco to show up. One more Misarlon, a dwarve, gets it and it looks like it might be curtains when...
A blinding flash of white, everything falling away to darkness, almost unconscious, and then you all come to your senses floating weightless along with other debris in a dimly lit metallic room whose walls seem to be moving gently clockwise around some unseen axis.
A large stone double door held the party up for a while as they tried to figure out how open it. An object read and a search for concealment finally revealed the mechanism. Beyond the door was a large octagonal room with a total of four doors, one for each of the cardinal coordinates. The diagonal walls between the doors had carvings of: Charun, the demon beatles, Mania/Mantus, and Modeus. In the center of the room was a fountain, although it no longer worked. The ceiling was domed with a small hole at it apex, right above the fountain. The room was lit by an unknown light source bouncing a soft, honey light off of the dome.
The door straight ahead seemed appealing, so you opened it to find a corridor leading down to a room from which softly flickering amber light could be seen. Farallon was on his way to investigate when Oki became possessed(?) by some black, wraith-like entity. The wraith slew and beheaded Ashuntuc (one of the kankoran) using Void. Then the dark creature dragged the carcass of Ashuntuc to the fountain, raised the kankoran over its head with one arm, and slammed the decapitated body into the fountain. Immediately silver, gray, and black fibrous tendrils sprouted from the fountain, engulfing it and causing to collapse in on itself.
Regaining composure, Agar did at any rate, the party started to close the door. Oki/beast ran at the party but was tripped by Landros. She fell hard, Void clattering out of her hands. The wraith seemed to leave her, but the door finally shuts at the moment. After a second of debate, the party, bristling with weapons ready, opened the sliding stoned door just in time to see Void slide into the mass of tendrils and get sucked into the dark fibrous mass. Oki seemed fine, but then there were the footsteps. ..the footsteps of something enormous reverberating through the stone.
(past to present tense)
Lodos points the way through a door to the east. There you are promptly attacked by three Shedim demons. Treasda and Lodos protect the party beneath a powerful shield while teamwork helps whittle down the demons quickly. When the dust settles, you approach an altar at the far end of the room that seems to be protected by a halo of blue light. Silus is the first through and grabs Rök for himself.
The massive footsteps are still getting closer, so Landros opens up a rift allowing you to escape...only to face the witch. The witch of Wickmire almost has the best of you, but once you manage to land a hit, she goes down quickly.
Back at Aja you find out that the same black/silver tendrils have taken over the toriod research facility where void was scanned. Three skedic who had extensive contact trying to remove the fibers got infected and died, their bodies turned into empty husks. The party's attempts to help remove the tendrils goes nowhere.
Off to see Ecco, the dragon who is guarding Necros.
The journey is fairly uneventful and finally you arrive at a massive cave in the mountain glacier. Everything here is massive - the doors, the hallways, the rooms - all dwarven but scaled for very large dragon to use. Close to the entrance Agar notices a bloodied grat cloak on the floor.
A massive circular well ringed with a spiral staircase descends a mile into the mountain. At the base of the stairs are two Misarlon, chained to the wall. They reveal only that they were here to get Necros and then pass out. Again, Agar hears cries for help, so you follow the massive hallway down to a very large room (think indoor football stadium). Two-thirds of the room is covered in a sea of gold and treasure. Chained to metal stakes off to the side are four more Misarlon, one of whom is Mirella (the you met a while ago near D'Hurasel). She explains that Ecco had been entrusted to guard Necros for over a thousand years. The Misarlon, fearing that you would try to get Necros from him, decided to relocated the item - only Necros wouldn't give it up and killed one and imprisoned the rest. Mirella entreats you to free her, which you do just in time for Ecco to show up. One more Misarlon, a dwarve, gets it and it looks like it might be curtains when...
A blinding flash of white, everything falling away to darkness, almost unconscious, and then you all come to your senses floating weightless along with other debris in a dimly lit metallic room whose walls seem to be moving gently clockwise around some unseen axis.
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