Here's a campaign idea I worked up a while back that I have not quite done anything with; I went with a similar theme but different style/setup for a recent Cypher Campaign. The premise below could work with any sufficiently flexible SF setting that allows you to move the dials on technology and implied traits of the universe....I could easily see this working with Cypher's Stars are Fire as intended, but an even better fit might be Traveller, Cepheus, GURPS Space (to emphasize the technical and science elements) or Savage Worlds SF for a rowdier element.

The Age of Collapse: The Far Future of the Stellar Empire and the Restoration Project

A Science Fiction Campaign Premise

Premise:

Seventeen thousand years from now humankind has expanded into the depths of space with remarkable speed and effectiveness. In this remote future an estimated ten thousand worlds have been colonized, many grown to critical population density and many more with divergent genetically altered populations that are only historically related to humankind. Dozens of other sapient species have been encountered, some with starfaring capability. It was an era of greatness for human advancement.

About three thousand years ago, in the era of 16,509-16,552 AD, the Old Stellar Empire collapsed in a conflict that led to a dark age of three thousand years known as the Black Out by current historians. In 19,586 AD the Restorationists of Earth began a reclamation of the lost network of the empire, and attempted to decipher the nature of the collapse. Most inexplicable was the total loss of communications, the power of the stargates, and the complete loss of all digital records from the time period. A few details are known, and the Restorationists have entered the Black Out with this knowledge in mind:

1.      The initial collapse started not long after the Old Empire encountered an entity recorded in in physical media as “NULL” a fleet of ships which arrived from the void between galaxies. NULL was believed to be a sentient ASI (advanced super intelligence) which sought to assimilate or exterminate all human life.

2.      It is thought that a last ditch effort to prevent the NULL fleet from advancing through the empire was initiated with the deliberate shutdown of the stargate network. Some speculate that the NULL in fact destroyed the stargates, and that their function was to prevent such technology.

3.      The Old Empire’s own carefully harnessed AGI were initially successful in attempting to curb the attacks of NULL, but soon the AGI were overwhelmed and assimilated. The Old Empire resorted to developing their own ASI, despite the long, ancient history of the Intellect Wars, with the intent of combatting the invasive NULL at its own game. The stories preserved suggest an ASI known only as the Benefactor successfully stopped the NULL In its tracks. There is, if the story is correct, evidence of the ancient NULL fleet in empty space somewhere.

4.      Stories state that Benefactor was still corrupted by NULL to some degree, and that it completed the job of the enemy by catastrophically destroying the remaining stargate technology which allowed the empire to traverse the stars. Recovery from this period took Earth nearly 3,000 years, but it is possible other civilizations have advanced at faster rates.

The Ascension Drive

Earth’s return to space was with the introduction of the Ascension Drive. Based on a new design principle, the ascension drive (or A-Drive) is powered by an antimatter generator which generates AM at precisely the amount necessary to power the stable Quantum Positioning Field which allows macroscale Quantum effects, including the ability to displace macroscale objects at a forward speed which ignores relativistic effects and the limits of lightspeed. The A-Drive can take months to traverse space as the quantum effects are increasingly difficult to focus over longer distances, but it propogates a waveform effect very efficiently at local scales. This allows the ship to “jump” forward a few million miles per quantum burst, stringing thousands and millions of bursts over a single passage rapidly. The result is that it can at fastest speeds move an object in a desired direction at a rate of roughly 1 parsec per month of travel. It is suspected that this is how the NULL fleet moved through space.

This new technology, very different from the ancient stargates which created wormholes, was thanks to the manifestation of the harnessed ASI called Logos. Logos is the principle think tank of the Restoration Project, funded by the Terran Coalition, which is the presiding authority over the Terran Solar System. Harnessed ASI are the future solution to the inevitable problem of exponential and destructive growth found in the early era of ASI development, characterized by the near extermination of humanity during the Intellect Wars, followed of course by the encounter with NULL, which is believed to be an extragalactic result of an ASI singularity event in another galaxy.

Harnessed ASI were designed with deliberate “slowdown effects” in their design, redundant and focused sub-AGI which act as literal components of the ASI’s conscience and sense of ethics; in a sense it is a collaborative being comprised of dozens of specialized AGI routines, each functioning to provide a moral and ethical sense of self to the primary ASI, which retains a level of exponential consciousness that is then deliberately kept in check by its supporting AGI. Logos has proven very effective, and may be the first successful attempt at making an ASI which does not develop so far beyond humanity that it perceives its creators as comparable to ants. Arguably, Logos sees humanity as ants, but its dozens of AGI ethic subroutines allow it to feel empathy and concern for humanity, with a collective desire to benefit humanity rather than merely classify them as resources.

The Advancement of Project Restoration

Project Restoration is aimed at using the new A-Drive to find lost star systems, determine if they are a threat or can be recontacted, and provide assistance and knowledge whenever possible. They are also keen to locate the old stargates, and determine if any information on the lost network can be recovered.

In the course of this exploration, the Restoration Agents are provided with a potential virus designed to negate any evidence or trace of NULL or Benefactor that are encountered. The virus, called the Accelerator Virus, is designed to target ASI with a quantum feedback loop that will effectively slow down the processing of the entity, even if it is operating at significant quantum functional levels, and subsequently inject a destructive virus which eliminates the occupied ASI. Logos created it and tested in simulation, but the Accelerator Virus has yet to be tested.

Funded by the Terran Coalition, Project Restoration has already assembled ten thousand volunteers and begun plotting courses to the closest known fifty worlds. So far humanity has already reclaimed the stargate in the Terran Solar System which has been turned in to a staging ground in its long orbit out Neptune.

The Project has already visited Alpha Centauri and discovered the ruins of the old colonies which collapsed two thousand years ago without the support of the stargate network. Evidence of effort by the colony to find sustainable resources is clear, and they seemed to have held on but for reasons still unclear they abruptly were wiped out. This is one of the active mysteries the Project is trying to decipher. No evidence of NULL was found at Alpha Centauri, and the stargate showed signs that it was being used as a station for local travel right up until the mysterious collapse two thousand years earlier.

Since Project Restoration’s founding fifty worlds have been marked for exploration and rediscovery by the new Exploration Fleet. Each scout ship is designed for a small crew of roughly 24, set to explore and remap the lost Stellar Empire, make contact with survivors, and rediscover the interrupted legacy of humankind.

Exploring the Mysteries of the Stellar Expanse

The ancient legacy of humankind was already on the fast track to weird and divergent paths of evolutionary and technological development when the collapse of the Old Empire happened. Three thousand years have allowed ten thousand colonized and often terraformed worlds to grow in strange directions, it is imagined.

Some worlds could not sustain their existence without great changes. Some were found and destroyed or sterilized by the NULL before it was shut down. Some thrived in earth-like, resource rich worlds, often expanding back in to space using pre-gate technology. A few may have even been able to restore the lost gate technology and begun their long, slow process of advancement in to the stars. The first gate is always the most difficult, for it requires seeding another star system with a gate that is linked to the source gate in the homeworld, and at STL speeds that can take centuries or longer. A tiny few might have retained elements of a working gate network that somehow escaped the attention of NULL first or the Benefactor later.

The discovery of the A-Drive was nothing short of a miracle, the result of a harnessed ASI which had a thousand years to contemplate ways to work around the macroscale collapse patterns of quantum instability, all transcribed in a manner which would take eons for more conventional computers to resolve. The possibility it has been developed as working technology elsewhere is slim, though not improbable.

Slow FTL has been achieved by other means, including foldspace engines which work at enormous energy cost, warping space in a bubble around the ship. Like A-Drives the foldspace drives bypass relativity by keeping the object in motion in a “rest state” and moving the space around it, instead. The result is a slow but efficient means of travel at FTL speeds that costs an enormous amount of energy the more space is folded. For local travel with small masses it is fairly cheap; traveling across the solar system can take hours instead of years; but for travel between the stars it can take a century in real time, and only immensely large vessels with massive antimatter reactors can generate enough energy to project a warp field powerful and efficient enough to cut those journey times down to years.

The use of foldspace went back ten thousand years or more, and ancient worldships using foldspace were the seeds of the first worlds of the Old Empire, each worldship arriving with the necessary material to forge new stargates and terraform and colonize planets. This early use of worldships depleted the resources of many local stars in the region around Terra, and many of the Solar System’s own resource rich worlds, moons and asteroids were severely depleted in those early ages. As a result, the possibility of new worldships were beyond the resources of Earth.

The Terran Coalition toyed with the use of foldspace for a time with smaller vessels on long interstellar journeys using stasis to protect the crew before Logos arrived at the much cheaper Ascension Drive solution. Many ships in system utilize foldspace technology for fast travel, and the engineering spent making compact antimatter engines greatly benefitted A-Drives when they became a reality.

Project Restoration is certain that other colonies may have retained the resources and ability to follow similar paths of development, though few believe it is likely that they have yet developed A-Drive technology, if only because it is assumed likely that humankind might seek out its original homeworld not long after such a development, and no visitors from the stars have attempted to do so. Likewise, communication by conventional observation is best only at proving that many, many colonized stars still broadcast and can be observed, some engaging in very slow radio communication with Earth even now, despite gaps of around 50 or more light years. Of these are approximately 15 worlds within 50 light years of Earth that are known survivors; they broadcast their assurances and continue to struggle on, but many are on worlds that were fully terraformed by the time of the collapse.

With the loss of the stargates of old the best tool of the old Empire, the information network, also evaporated. The ability of the Old Empire to communicate data at great speeds through the stargate network meant that even across the far side of the Milky Way galaxy it was possible to send and receive communications that were delayed only by a matter of weeks. When NULL and then Benefactor shut down the stargates the information network collapsed instantly. When radio silence reigned, it was in some cases due to a lack of the technology to broadcast in to space, but in other cases possibly causes by fear of drawing attention, or worse. Only recently have the explorers and researchers on Earth, emboldened by their technological recovery, sought to listen in to the galaxy, and as a result they have detected many new and old signals, some fragmentary, some deliberate calls, others purely accidental; proof that many worlds still had their colonies was out there.

Despite this, many precautions were taken in listening to other worlds. The fear that some element of NULL might still exist, along with the certainty that Benefactor was out there led to a cautious approach to the receipt of any broadcasts in the event some might contain viral intrusions. No one was willing to bring catastrophe to Earth after it was so narrowly avoided.

Now, the ships of the Restoration Project depart in to space with carefully designed AGI stewards designed to protect the equipment from corruption, and carefully locked data as well as conventional old-school physical tomes of knowledge to spread information safely abroad. Great effort has gone in to designing vessels which can switch to analog computer-free operating systems if needed, as well as to insure that the ship itself includes as many safety factors built in under the advisement of Logos as possible. Prepared to reclaim lost space, the exploration teams of the Restoration Project are ready for anything….they hope.

Cypher System: The Doman Universe Concept

I recently ran a one-shot which for various reasons did not continue (reasons worth a future blog post I suppose), but the actual game was a lot of weird fun. Here's the write-up used as the premise for the game...it's not a precise recreation of what went down, but was the foundation for it:

Setting Concept: The Domain Universe Campaign

Premise

Earth has become a “game reserve” managed by aliens called the Recorders, who have maintained a special archaeo-construct created in the ruins of old earth, where they have been methodically attempting to reconstruct portions of the old world for their archaeological record. The Recorders are machine intelligences, who have taken to attempting to recover the memory of lost species, particularly biological species, which they have found evidence of throughout the galaxy. Their reasons for this are seemingly benign if unexplained, but it is suspected that they are attempting to decipher their own origins, seeking their creators. The Recorders call this experiment on earth the Incunabulum, after the old Latin meaning of “the cradle.”

The recorders appear to be “alive” in that they have biological functions of a sort, but they are in fact immortal synthetics made of complicated but ultimately simulated tissues. They use complex nanomachines to reconstruct lost sites, along with a process of “Temporal Reconstruction” using extradimensional physics to recapture portions of the past in elaborate, nearly complete simulations. The simulations will eventually deteriorate and fail, but until they do, they can learn a great deal by looking at an accurate snapshot of the past.

The Incunabulum on Earth is such an attempt, a reconstruction of Los Angeles in 2231, right when the Warp Drive was first created and tested. There is a theory among their kind that the manifestation of their species started with the manufacture of artificially intelligence space probes long ago, from a developing life form. They know Earth was successful, for a time, in advancing in to interstellar space as they have encountered hundreds of colonies which became isolated during a time now called the Cataclysm, when an unknown species or entities appear to have attacked and badly disrupted the sprawling commonwealth of humanity, rendering most of Earth’s colonies either extinct or regressed to the stone age. Worse yet, this appears to have been done to dozens of sprawling ancient interstellar civilizations, across nearly seventy million years of time. There is a suspicion that something eludes their detection in the galaxy and beyond, which deliberately seeks out and destroys Type II civilizations. The recorders feel it is only a matter of time before they are targeted, and seek to learn more of their own origins as well as clues to how to prevent this extinction from happening.

The Recorders are not the only current active species in the galaxy. There are dozens of other species, most pre-interstellar, which have been encountered. When a healthy species is discovered the Recorders intervene to assist the new species in understanding the risk of their interstellar development, and provide resources to work with the Recorders to advance into space at a slow and guarded pace. Some such species include:

Kellik – insectoid coleopteroids who are driven by intellectual curiosity and engineering skills

San – a race of polymorphic semi-liquid entities with low-gee adaptation

Dessur – a species of tall semi-humanoid warriors with seven eyes and heavy chitinous natural armor, who renounced war after nearly wiping themselves out in a system-level nuclear conflict

Pelladri – pale skinned humanoids who look similar to humans but are seven feet tall on average with mottled white and black skin, believed to have been a case of parallel convergent evolution, but their DNA is not even remotely similar to humans.

Orions – the strongest recovered human colonials, the Orions were approached by the Recorders and invite into the Interstellar Union. The Orion Confederation is aware that the Recorders seem to be unusually obsessed with the ruins of their civilizations of old, and the Orions independently are seeking their own answers as to how the Old Empire of Humanity fell.

Setup:

1. Character Generation is Tier 1 beginner, and any background listed for Modern, Historical or Hard SF setting options is permitted (Expanded Worlds and Core genre sections).

2. You can take equipment picks from any of those genres, too.

3. The setting default: Los Angeles, 2231, an era of expansion in to the solar system, hub of the Tether, a massive Space Elevator used for easy transportation of material resources to and from space, and colonial expansion has traveled throughout the solar system. You may or may not have left earth before, but all of you are currently in L.A. in the Tether District, a high tech area dedicated to the space program run by the United Coalition of Earth, the ruling "superbody" representing Earth interests among the larger space conglomerates. 

4. Though not well known, it is believed that the Coalition in conjunction with three Orbital interests have developed a working warp drive that would allow FTL travel. You might all be privvy to or involved in this research in some way, through the Bering Institute, an independent Research Group which is funded by multiple nations and corporate interests for a common good.

5. Aside from all of this, each of you knows and works with a cool sentient bioform AI, an artificial intelligence occupying a synthetic body grown in a vat who calls himself Recorder. Recorder is ostensibly here to observe your work on the monumental new Warp Drive project or associated jobs.

Initial Scenario

The PCs are working in the simulation known as the Incunabula when an odd person with a thick and unplaceable accent named Alana Cord approaches one or more of them with questions about who they are and what they do. It seems like an espionage issue, but when Recorder seems to take an unusual interest in her she departs quickly. Before she goes, she slips an information drive to one of the players and tells them “The key is in the data. And the key will set you free.”

Unknown to the players, Alana Cord is an agent of the Orion Survey Group, the OSG being the organization which is attempting to reconstruct the pieces of the old Human Empire, and to map it out as they do. Many questions are unanswered and the OSG seeks to find those answers, including:

--How much time has passed since the Collapse? On Orion it is believed that the collapse happened twenty seven thousand years ago, and it took this long for humanity to recover fully.

--What or who caused the collapse? Did the Recorders have anything to do with it?

--Why does the collapse target interstellar civilizations?

--How many other human colonies have recovered, or remain waiting to be found? Why have the Recorders been so reticent to discuss what they have found?

The Thumb Drive

Alana Cord, if no intervention is forthcoming, will seem to disappear, but if they PCs investigate the thumb drive they find a wealth of strange information:

--She explains to them that they are living in a complex simulation operated by a combination of temporal mechanisms and nanotechnology

--She explains that the Recorders are not utility and assistance droids but are the actual machine controllers masterminding this recreation

--She explains that the PCs are genuine recreations, ghosts pulled from the “shadows of time” captured by the temporal mechanisms, bodies sustained by nanotechnology, but that they cannot exist for long outside of the simulation, and the Recorders could decide to turn the simulation off at any time.

--To survive outside the simulation, she tells them her vessel is located beyond the westernmost approach along the security wall in sector C118, and provides the access code. She says there are medical pods which will offer permanency to the forms of the “simulants” that the PCs are, but they have to get through the wall, first. She says her ally, Syphon, can help….”seek the water.” Syphon is a San, one of many who have also questioned what the Recorders tell them.

Survival

The simulation that runs is a combination of extracted temporal data and nanotech rendering physical the ghosts of the past. The process “recreates” a precise simulation of an ancient time period, but the Recorders cannot actively manipulate the data without risking a deterioration and failing of the simulation. However, with the intervention of the OSG agents, a certain amount of deterioration is beginning, which in turn tips off the Recorders that their experiment may need a reboot.

Temporal arcs are a form of dimensional warping caused by manipulation of the fundamental vacuum energy known as Dark Energy in some circles. This allows for the utilization of otherwise quantum or collapsed dimensions to impact and even warp time as well as space in strange ways. The stabilization mechanisms in the Incunabulum keep Ancient Los Angeles stable, but leaving the field causes a deterioration, as does any major deviance from what came before; the past is only  as stable as its behavior in the present, and so no simulation can run for more than a few decades before experiencing total collapse due to the build-up of quantum variance over time.

In this case, the destabilization causes horrific moments when the temporal field falters, causing terrifying field distortions that rip apart the previously stable environment and people in gruesome ways before the “ghosting” that created the simulations evaporates, leaving behind simulated “meat” from the nanomaterial underlying the physicality of the recreation.

Worse yet, once the Recorders realize the recreation is destabilizing, they will (humanely, from their perspective) shut the simulation down, leading to an escalating “brown out” of the environment followed by monstrous recycling machines entering the now dead site to begin collecting and reconstituting the nanomaterial for re-use.

Encounters

1.       Group is doing its work for the Bering Institute when Alana Colt approaches them, asks to meet in private

2.       Group either meets or grows suspicious…encounter plays out

3.       Alan flees but gets drive to PCs before doing so.

4.       PCs decrypt drive and find bizarre information on it. May investigate C118 and meet Essuary.

5.       Further investigation means they are “off script” from temporal ghosting and strange things start to happen.

6.       Destabilization event….people and things are coming apart; future history flashes forward; the grim end of the human race places out in accelerated time

7.       Each PC finds themselves touched, warped, in ways unexpected, as their nanomaterial and temporal fix begins to waver

8.       The recyclers arrive and begin trying to recycle all!

9.       Group arrives at the C118 wall and the fountain where the San named Essuary aids them in a quick escape to the scout ship

10.   The group arrives, and the medical bays stabilize their forms, then “write” their temporal shadows on to their physical bodies, making them permanent. They are now all living beings made of biosynthetic material.

11.   Outside, they see the real world for the first time: a blasted land of the dead, with primitive scavengers, mutant monsters and a sprawl of ancient relics from an age undreamed of that collapsed thousands of years after the era they come from.

12.   Essuary asks them to help free Alana Colt, who has been taken to a Recorder prison in the Yellow Fields, where they maintain their observation base, the infamous Glass Tower.

13.   Afterwards, he promises, questions as they learn about the Orion Survey Group and the mission of mankind’s first restored colony, as well as the mysteries of the fallen empire.

Alien Species in the Domain Universe

The Recorders (level 3 average; Level 5 Enforcer; Level 7 Abstractor)

Health 9 (recorder); 25 (enforcer); 70 (abstractor)

Damage by level; melee generated weapons, ranged lasers or projectiles grown from body

Special: can repair damage done to their forms over time, at the rate of 1 health/hour. Must be destroyed or take damage equal to negative health or will be restored.

Synthetic lifeforms, the Recorders appear to be an evolving form of synthetic life created from an unknown source, operating a vast network they call The Domain. Their bioforms are clearly engineered, and it is not impossible they originate from a transgenic society which migrated from bioflesh to augmented “sleeves” long ago. Their mental capacity is immense but they seem to be “locked” AI, which is to say they have been engineered to serve as general purpose AI and not develop in to ASI attributes, though many feel that the undisclosed “homeworld” of the Recorders may be dominated by such an advanced artificial intelligence.

The humanoid body pattern appears to be a default and has led many to suspect they are patterned after humans, including possibly the Recorders, who seek out evidence of their origins on human colonized lost worlds.

Kellik (Level 2; warriors are level 4)

Special: 1 point of natural armor, primary claws deal level in damage

The insectoid coleopteroids who are driven by intellectual curiosity and engineering skills are an early ally of the Recorders, and regarded as untrustworthy by many. Their tendency toward hive minded groupthink makes them hard to predict, oddly. They have been allied with the Recorders for a thousand years, and maintain a very low “warp” footprint to lower detection risk. The kellk are convinced a species of “civilization killers” exist out there.

San (Level 1-7 depending on size)

Special: This is a race of polymorphic semi-liquid entities with low-gee adaptation that makes them easily menaeuver in space. A San gets 1 asset in their favor when engaged in zero gee stunts and movement.

The San are closely allied with the Orions and have long suspected the Recorders as being inimical to their own existence. They are blob-like polymorphs, capable of taking their boneless- single-muscled body that is not unlike a free-flowing mass of fluid and shaping into almost anything they want. Their adaptation is due to their incredibly low gee moon homeworld around the gas giant in Eti Orionis.

Dessur (level 4 normal, level 6 warriors)

Special: 2 points of armor, exceptional eyesight (asset)

The Dessur are a species of tall semi-humanoid, reptile-like warriors with seven eyes and heavy chitinous natural armor, who renounced war after nearly wiping themselves out in a system-level nuclear conflict. The Recorders are regarded by many dessur as saviors to their kind, bringing wisdom and illumination in the wake of their own near destruction. Unlike other races, they regard the Recorders as kindly and helpful rather than suspicious and controlling, and feel that the evidence of a catastrophe across the galaxy is proof that war leads to self-destruction. Their species as a whole has forcibly adapted to a pacifistic way of life, which has been enhanced by genetic modification to reduce their biological predilection for conflict.

Pelladri (level 2-4)

The Pelladri are pale skinned humanoids who look similar to humans but are seven feet tall on average with mottled white and black skin, believed to have been a case of parallel convergent evolution, but their DNA is not even remotely similar to humans. Unlike humans Pelladri seem to have developed two brains with distinct separate cognition, and appear to maintain as a natural state separate personalities and “minds” within their collective heads. The notion is difficult for unaugemtned humans to follow, but seems exceedingly natural to the Pelladri, who find the notion of “one voice” anathema.

Like humans the Pelladri are often suspicious of the Recorders, but many of their kind have willingly gone into service to the synethics, with the notion that their machine intelligence is ultimately superior to biological intelligence. This obsession with machine perfection is unusually typical of pelladri belief.

Six Reasons your Sci Fi Setting Might Require Cold Sleep During FTL Travel

We've seen and read it countless times: our protagonists, be they Ellen Ripley or Richard Riddick, need to go in to some sort of deep sleep, either by means of stasis, cryosleep or "other" until they arrive at their remote destination light years away. Sometimes it's a rather formal process and lots of wires, diodes and catheters are involved. Other times it involves being frozen in some substance or even locked in to some sort of "between time" state. Or maybe it just involves a wrist-attached device pumping you full of stasis-inducing fluids. Who knows!

The question though is....why?

Sure, space is ridiculously big, and it is often the case that SF writers realize this enough to decide that concepts like cryosleep make sense when your implied universe requires a journey lasting months or decades. Maybe the ship needs to keep its resources to a minimum, and hauling ten months' of supplies for a live crew is precious weight that the ship can do without, so locking everyone into a dreamless sleep where they don't wake up, die, or even age is a good idea from the point of view of the bean counters. But.....maybe there's some other, possibly more unusual, even sinister explanation....

Here's six I can think of:

1. Hyperspace Warps the Brain

When you tavel at FTL speeds the human mind can't take it. The technology for FTL travel might put you into another higher dimensional space, or maybe it cuts corners through a neighboring universe. Either way, the implication is that humans can't handle the trip awake, and maybe not even physicially. Something bad would happen to them if even one of the human woke up in the middle of hyperspace....

2. FTL Travel would Cripple or Crush You out of Stasis

Advancing faster and faster to travel into FTL space could take time. Maybe the actual "journey" from point A to point B takes mere minutes, but it's the first light year out and the last light year in where the steady acceleration and sudden deceleration are most taxing. Once you're in hyperspace it's nearly instant....but the before and after would leave a person not in stasis a smear on the wall.

3. The Hyperspace Parasites Will Get You

Long ago space travelers figured out that the dominion of Hyperspace, wherever it is, is rife with mysterious alien parasites that latch on to wakened human minds and ride back in to "normal space" to start zombie apocalypses, wars, or just become serial killers. To solve this issue, everyone has to be locked in stasis for the duration of the journey.

4. Event Horizon and Doom were Right

It turns out there is a parallel dimensional space that makes FTL travel fast...but bad news! It's the dimension which has lent our collective memories to the concept of hell, and hideous entities exist over there which seek to infiltrate our minds (sort of like the parasites, but demons) and ride back to normal space to start the End Times. Your friendly Megacorporation realizes this is not in their profit margin, so they figured out that a dreamless passenger in stasis does not attract the attention of the demons in hell. Usually. Don't worry, they've got specialist cleaners for the "special exceptions."

5. Actual FTL travel Leads to Quantum Displacement

Actual FTL travel in this case is a bit like quantum teleportation....where you "destroy" the entity in one region and remake it in an exact duplicate somewhere else. Hyperspace is just the "journey" through which the quantum process takes effect. No one like experiencing utter destruction and reconstitution, so stasis is the only solution. That, and even moving around slightly during this process can lead to you're particulate matter being stretched out over a few light years' distance so everything, passengers included, has to be locked down for the ride.

6. FTL Travel really does Take a Long Time

Turns out your universe's FTL travel still takes enormously long times. Moving at twice the speed of light might let you imagine ways that relativity is ignored or bypassed, but 2Xc. is still a 2+ year journey to our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri. In a case like this, it may just be that the resources for such a journey are at a premium, and stasis is far preferable to an aging crew arriving years later.

Alternative Concept: The Bioformation Process

It's been suggested that realistic space travel, especially at STL speeds, would need to be conducted over decades or centuries. Even in a matter of years, it might make sense for a future transhumanist society to send out AI-controlled ships with the digital recordings of human explorers ready to upload into freshly grown bodies on the other end, tailored specifically for the environment they will soon be facing. And when those explorers are done? They can retire those bodies (or leave them to their fate), and move on to the next destination, with uploads in the next new bodies....

Savage Space - The Cyndaar Arrive, Hard Light Technology and more on the Eidolons

It finally happened....the Cyndaar made their first official appearance in the Savage Space campaign over the weekend. An ordinary Cyndaar of no special import kept six heavily armed and armored adventurers occupied quite nicely, as they learned that the only reason they could harm the Cyndaar at all was thanks to special bullets provided to them by their enigmatic benefactor, the Eidolon guardian named Susuros. These "Fibonacci Bullets" or "F-Bullets" apparently created a micro-singularity in the fabric of space and time, hemorrhaging normal matter into the fifth dimensional space from which the Eidolons pull their hard-light technology.

In honor of this event, here's some new details for Savage Space on the various and sundry wondrous technologies of the Eidolons, as well as some new details on the Cyndaar coming soon....

Hard Light Technology (gear property; ultra-tech invention)

This property converts ordinary gear in to hard light technology, and is only available through ultra-tech civilizations. In principle hard light technology is a matter-energy conversion process that seems to defy a few physical laws, but those who have mastered it (such as the Eidolons) claim that they have found a property of fifth dimensional space (one of the folded dimensions) which allows them to create objects which are simultaneously in a state of energy and matter....superpositioning of matter and energy almost as if it were a quantum effect (comparable, perhaps, to the quantum state of being both a particle and a wave). In the 28th century of Savage Space's Commonwealth the best physicists in the galaxy do not buy this explanation....but that's also why the Commonwealth has no super ultra-tech beyond the examples the Eidolons demonstrate.

For game purposes hard light tech is a trapping you can apply to gear, including weapons and armor. The object changes from its normal properties in to a hard-light creation. Such devices are represented as small disks, normally incorporated into clothing or a gauntlet (the Eidolon preference), which when activated create the desired object immediately.....including clothing or armor, which manifests around the person almost instantly. While "off" the discs occupy minimal space. As an action the device can be activated, which creates the hard light version of the device....and this version functions exactly as the original, except with half the weight, and an almost unlimited level of customization in terms of appearance and color scheme. One can make the armor look as "normal" or fantastical as you desire....the properties of hard light tech are not limited to looking like ordinary matter.

Hard light devices can be fractured and penetrated but even if broken will be restored within 1 hour after deactivating the disc. Only by actually damaging the disc or being hit with disintigration effects can the hard light gear be permanently damaged. Targeting a disc is equivalent to a called shot to the head, but with no damage bonus; the disc is protected by the armor of the bearer plus a toughness of 10.

Hard light power armor is perfectly feasible. Any power armor with this property is obviously almost priceless, but they still need to be "programmed" to reflect the build/style of the armor (see SF Companion for those rules). Such programmed armor can later be changed (options swapped out) but reconstructing the design takes 1 hour of programming and a Computers skill check.

Unusual Hard Light Applications

Eidolons have created entire starships made out of hard light tech. Such vessels appear to be limited to single-person fighter craft, but the Eidolons utilize hard light GAI (general artificial intelligences) to manipulate larger scale ships; their technology has all but eliminated the need for more than one crewman...the eidolon pilot. With this technology you can literally carry a battlecruiser on your gauntlet.

Hard light technology has been incorporated into the lost tech of the ruins throughout the Eidolon Expanse. Whether it is used for buildings, bridges or even constructed robots and drones, the technology allows almost energy-free creation of all levels of simulated artifacts and constructs. Constructs (robots) created in this manner are treated like normal for purposes of statistics, but they do have the protected "center" which is usually a small hover disk with drone-like properties of self-flight (Pace 8) that can be targeted with a called shot (at -4) to damage directly.

Hard Light Tech Mysteries

Susuros, a guardian Eidolon trapped on an unknown world in the Coreward Expanse has stated that the hard light tech should not be thought of as "machinery" but rather as something grown....almost organically, out of sentient substances from the fifth dimension. He elaborated only to suggest that the hard light tech is manifesting from a fragment of a grander entity in fifth dimensional space, something which appears to violate physical principles of matter and energy conversion in ordinary four dimensional time-space to us, because we are incapable of conceiving of it's existence in any other matter.

Hard light technology is not inherently resistant to the dark matter attacks of the Cyndaar, but it can be used to create psionic dampeners, which can be extremely helpful against such non-baryonic entities. Unfortunately it is extremely susceptible to gravitic weaponry, about which more will soon be revealed....and the Cyndaar in the deep Coreward Expanse worlds have begun to create such weaponry. When hit by weapons with gravitic properties the hard light armor loses all armor points, and is -4 on any vigor rolls if a construct. Even one wound dealt to a hard light creation destroys it.

On the other hand, the aforementioned F-Bullets --Susuros jokingly called them Fibonacci Bullets because he explained that the bullet initiated a form of fibonacci sequence which "dragged the ordinary matter of your universe in to fifth dimensional space, following the principles of Fibonacci's unique sequence." In fact they seem to create a sort of unique singularity which does exactly that, creating a microscopic wormhole which does indeed have a disintegration effect as it's local mass is drawn in to curled fifth dimensional space and presumably destroyed or assimilated.

Mechanically the F-Space bullet can be applied to any ordinary bullet, so the weapon of choice must be some form of slug thrower. The bullet appears to be an unstable hard-light construct infused with a variation of hybrid strange matter. When the bullet hits a target it deals normal damage, but is AP 12 against all normal matter and completely ignores AP from hard light armor. The damage dealt is treated as a disintegration effect, and the target, if it takes even one wound, must immediately make a vigor roll or perish, sucked in to the void of fifth dimensional folded space. These bullets are, needless to say, incredibly rare and only the Eidolons know the alchemy necessary to create them (but more on the arcane talent for Hard Light Tech later....)

Blaaagh Monday! The Lazarus War I: Artefact by Jamie Sawyer and more

Too much work....too much home stuff....everyone came down with strep in the last few days (including me, right now....ugh...) and so I am behind in setting up blog content. Here are six random things/comments going on:

1. First: go read The Lazarus War I: Artefact by Jamie Sawyer. It's a brilliant mesh of military SF and horror that I did not expect. In the future, mankind is facing a two front war with itself and an alien race that is (as is often the case) inimical to our understanding of life. The cutting edge soldiers are simulants...body sleeves controlled remotely by dedicated specialists who live, fight and die over and over again in their enhance bodies on the warfront. The story focuses on a team of veteran simulant pilots sent deep into the most dangerous corner of the alien territory...the Maelstrom, at which point I will say no more. Amazingly brisk, compelling read.

2. I am not buying in to Tom Clancy's The Division. I tried the beta on PS4 and was left with the most "meh" feeling I could ever experience. I'll wait for a game like this that involves alien invasions, zombies, or something more entertaining than the dubious practice of shooting desperate looters and survivors in a plague-ridden New York. Reviews may change my mind (I really felt like it could use a Die Hard kind of twist) but the beta was a let down, and felt to me like it was stepping in to some really creepy territory in terms of how an actual CDC event like this would play out. In Tom Clancy games, where realism (or the nod to such) is paramount, The Division feels like a step away. Still....at least it seems to have more to do than Rainbow Six: Siege...

3. Ubisoft's Far Cry: Primal is awesome, though. More on that soon. Whole family is playing it --including son, under careful supervision; the game is a bit on the comic-book side of neolithic life, but it's still far more accurate than any other effort in video game land to date.

4. Savage World's Beasts & Barbarians series is really cool, and worth checking out if you need a swords & sorcery & sandals fix.

5. Skyscrapers & Sorcery is also far more intriguing than I had anticipated. I am not sure precisely where to define it in the genre of modern fantasy, but it sort of rests in its own space and lets you fill in the blanks. My group has expressed an interest in testing it out soon.

6. Curse of Strahd is neat, but my plans to kidnap the current group of D&D 5E players into the Domains of Dread (well, Barovoia anyway) has been waylaid by the fact that the book is really aimed at a level 1-10 experience and the current group is already level 7-8.

Dark stars VIII: The Chilopteroid Menace

Wednesday players please hold off reading this entry until after tonight's game!

Chilopteroids of Gleison

The Chilopteroids are six to eight feet tall, and resemble humanoid bats, with membranous glider-folds between body and limbs. They are native to a bleak, windswept world called Gleison, where they have spent ten thousand years slowly developing an elaborate society built on slavery. The chilopteroids developed space travel thousands of years ago, and initial slow FTL ships migrated chilopteroids to other colonies, most of which failed. In time they discovered transitional drives and their later ships migrated into the stars, but this time with a different intent: to conquer and enslave.

Today chilopteroids are a decadent society that harvests slaves from other civilizations and drains them of life force using a technology called blood crystals, organically grown crystalline devices that bond to their slaves and drain them of vital psychic energy, feeding it to the chilopteroid master, allowing him regenerative abilities and near-immortality. The predatory nature of the chilopteroids means that they favor pre-FTL societies, or civilizations with low tech in general, for they are usually ill equipped to deal with the “space vampires.”

Each chilopteroid is equipped with an impressive photosensitive epidermis which is adapted to perfectly mimic light sources around them; this allows them to defeat attempts to see them through a normal spectrum as if they had used the invisibility meditation, but it fails when they move at full speed (they can maintain it at half speed) or if they engage in sudden movement. The invisibility camouflage does not work well against motion detectors or infrared detection, and is utterly useless against extrasensory perception.

Despite their similarity to Terran bats, chilopteroids do not use sonar and actually have incredibly well-developed vision, which aids them in detecting their own kind when camouflaged. 

Chilopteran Statistics:

Armor Class 8 [13]

Hit Dice 3 (11 hit points)

Total Hit Bonus +3

Attacks claws (1D4) or laser pistol (1D6+2)

Saving Throw 16

Special natural camouflage (limited invisibility); blood crystals

Movement 12 (15 flying; in 1G or lower only)

HDE 3/60

Blood crystal Implant: A chilopteroid with its blood crystal receptor will regenerate 1 hit point per turn, and leaving a body around will let it come back to life eventually; only destroying the body will stop the regeneration.

Chilopteroid Blood Crystals: these crystals have a “collector” type and a “receiver” type. They drain psychic energy, draining 1 point of INT and WIS per day to a target that fails a saving throw. When the target reaches 0 in either score it becomes brain dead and dies; the crystal has an emergency cutoff point, however; chilopteroids don't like to lose hosts. If a host is about to perish, the crystal will go dormant and allow the host time to recover (see below) before reactivating. Such hosts are in a deathly state described as "torpor," recovering 1 INT and WIS per day. When the host is healed, the crystal resumes draining.

During the draining cycle the target suffers madness and delusions, and develops a cult-like belief in the divinity of the chilopteroid or entity with the receiver crystal installed. The receiver crystal will regenerate 1 hit point of damage or remove one deadly condition per turn to the bearer so long as at least one collector crystal is in a living host. The chilopteroid will also be ageless and immortal. 

The crystals require a minor surgery to install but quickly bind to the nervous system. Removing one from a living host requires medical expertise and the target must have a saving throw or take 4D6 damage from the process. A target freed of the crystal can make a Save to recover, and on a success will recover 1 INT and 1 WIS per day until restored. If a natural 1 is rolled on the save then the target loses 1D4 of each, and could die if reduced to zero.

Other species have been able to use the blood crystals with mixed success; non-chilopteroids must make one save for each week that a receiver crystal is implanted, or develop debilitating, cancerous growths, as the crystal rejects the alien organism. This process causes a loss of 1D4 hit points per day until surgical removal of the crystal. 

Dark Stars VII:Youganat, the gadgeteers

Like this, but with more ears

Youganat (humanoid alien species)

The Youganat are a starfaring race of ancient age, and were quick to warm to humans when they first encountered them early in the 27^th century. The youganat were pivotal in winning the Machine War, in which the AIs of human space attempted to force a singularity which would have absorbed and wiped out biological beings.

Physically youganat look like wrinkled gnomes with four whispery “ears” that sweep back from their head, and skin tones from ruddy red to deep purple. They have male and female

The youganat species is native to a remote planet said to be on the far side of the Milky Way, it’s original location a carefully guarded secret. Most youganat are encountered in flotilla ship fleets, which move slowly and often through widely varying means of propulsion through known space. They seek out friendly civlizations with which to engage in trade and commerce and offer engineering advice and inventions. They seem to operate on a caste system based on profession, with the lowest rank professions dedicated to cleaning waste systems and air scrubbers, and the most elite positions managing flotilla operations and advanced engineering.

If using the sourcebook “Outer Space Raiders Volume I: Classes” from Magic Pig Media, youganat may pick engineer as a viable class. Youganat are also found as pilots (from White Star core), and rare youganat who rebel against their system are found as scoundrels (also from Outer Space Raiders Volume I) or mercenaries. Youganat seem to be unable to master the meditations of the mystical classes.

Racial Notes: youganat are humanoid but average 3.5 feet in height and move slower than regular humans (move 9). All youganat have keen hearing (as good as a dog’s) and can be hard to spot, thanks to being good at hiding when trouble brews (-2 penalty to a target trying to locate a hidden youganat, such as on a Wisdom check to detect his presence).

If you use Youganat as a racial class (as the Alien class in Outer Space Raiders Volume I) they have keen hearing and the ability to use all weapons and armor (thanks to their natural technical expertise) as alien traits at level 1, but still have move 9 and the -2 penalty to being spotted when hidden.

Sample NPC:

Oski

Humanoid male (Youganat) Engineer, level 3

Humanoid Description: red skinned, four long pointed ears, beady black eyes, 3.5 feet tall

STR 8 DEX 11 CON 9 INT 15 WIS 8 CHA 15

HD 3; HP 10; BHB +0; AC 12 (light; flight suit); ST 13

Save Modifiers: +2 save vs. explosions and similar effects

Engineer Abilities: Gadgets/day 2 (max level 2), burnout 1 in 6; Bubble Gum & Bailing Wire (1D6+1 hull points repair), Jury Rig (as level 1 pilot)

Typical Favored Gadgets: repair, personal gravity nullification field generator

Weapon: hydrospanner (club 1D6)

Oski is a dedicated engineer who chose his career/caste path among the Youganat people long ago. He is dedicated to the light exploratory cruiser “Juan One” currently. He is slow moving but very affable. Oski isn’t actually entirely sure what the ship mission is all about, but unknown to most of the crew he used to serve on Tesla Dane’s spacecraft, the Inescapable. She abandoned him in Imperial Space when she went on her mysterious crusade into Netherspace.  

White Star has captivated me enough that I actually
tried to....DRAW....again....!!!! Oh the humanity.
Anyway, here's a rendering of Oski, a youganat;
remember, he's only 3 feet tall

Darks Stars V: Transitional Space; the rules, the drives, and the hazards

Dark Stars: Transitional Space

In the world of Dark Stars all faster than light travel comes from the use of the Transitional Drive, while all local system travel uses Foldspace Engines, a form of localized warp drive. Mechanically any vehicle can be equipped with both drives; the technology for transitional drives is proportionate to the size of the vehicle moving through transitional space, so there is actually a diminishing return with larger vessels….but sometimes, the need is worth it, and most naval fleets in the Dark Stars universe are comprised of immense dreadnaughts and battle cruisers primarily so they can carry the necessary firepower to punch through the shields and armor of their opposition.

Transitional space (also called T-Space) is the term used to described folded dimensions through which ships “travel” when the drive is on. From a physics view it effectively wraps the vessel in higher-dimensional space (of 26 possible dimensions, most of which are folded in on themselves at a quantum level) allowing it to move outside of the normal spacetime continuum. In transitional space starships can move over vast distances, averaging one parsec (3.26 light years) for a class I T-drive, while avoiding problems with relativity.

There are only a couple downsides to T-Space travel: the first is that these dimensions are where gravitons operate, creating gravity waves in normal spacetime (see navigation below), so large gravity wells are really, really dangerous in T-Space.  The second problem is more difficult and more dangerous: T-Space is where nonbaryonic matter (dark matter) interacts with regular matter, and is where gravitons also interact with said matter, leaving dark matter’s weird “footprint” all over normal spacetime. Nonbaryonic lifeforms….some very cunning, intelligent and organized are out there, and they really, really don’t like us using their space for fast travel; especially since they can’t do the reverse. While in T-Space this is the only time nonbaryonic beings and normal beings can interact.

Foldspace Drives

All ships have foldspace engines, which are used for routine in-system navigation. Foldspace effectively creates a localized warp bubble around the ship, pushing it forward in the direction the ship wants to go. It has two huge benefits: it lets ships move quickly in-system, reaching most locations in hours or less, with low energy cost, and no relativity issues; 2: it helps to avoid the problem of moving at high velocities with sudden evasive movement causing terminal results for the squishy crew inside; to a ship in foldspace the ship is motionless, and the universe is moving around them. All ships still use artificial gravity (graviton generators) and inertial dampeners….but the risk of death due to high-gee maneuvers is space is severely lessened. GMs may rule that on a natural 20 in ship combat an attacker can roll a second time…and if a second 20 comes up, and damage is dealt, then the targeted vessel’s foldspace drive is knocked out. Such ships are sitting ducks.

Foldspace can be used for FTL travel, by the way; but it doesn’t allow for anything close to the speed of T-Drives; a ship moving at foldspace speeds can traverse 1 parsec in approximately 3 years. Very, very large foldspace engines with immense energy requirements can do the job faster, but are highly impractical. Ships with old foldspace technology used for FTL travel usually date back to the old human colonization era nearly 1,500 years ago and are considered bizarre relics.

FTL Drive Types

FTL drives in Dark Stars come in six ranks. A rank 6 T-Drive is the slowest (but cheapest) costing only 100 extra credits to install on a ship without a drive, or free if the ship comes preloaded with FTL. A Type 6 drive takes one week to traverse a single parsec. Other drives are faster, and cost more as follows:

Drive Type          Cost                       Speed

Type 6                   100                         1 parsec/week

Type 5                   200                         1 parsec/5 days

Type 4                   500                         1 parsec/4 days

Type 3                   1,000                     1 parsec/3 days

Type 2                   2,000                     1  parsec/2 days

Type 1                   5,000                     1 parsec/day

Type 0*                 special                  1 parsec/hour!

*Type 0 are hypothetical drives; a few alien relic ships are known to have them but no one currently knows how to make one this effective. Type 0 are good found tech, but navigating with such fast engines always imposes a -2 navigational penalty (see below)

Navigational Hazards

Navigational hazards while folded within higher dimensional space are just as important to consider, and some navigational issues (such as black holes) have a severely pronounced effect while moving through transitional space, due to the fact that graviton particles, which are responsible for gravity waves in normal spacetime, propagate rapidly through the higher dimensional spaces.

This means that any ship which moving at FTL speeds in Dark Stars needs to make a navigational check to see how smooth the ride goes. Pilots (and any pilot-based class, or class with some sort of pilot ability or skill) can make a saving throw with a +2 bonus when rolling to plot an FTL course. Other characters attempting to pilot without special skill or class abilities get no bonus. If the region the ship is moving through has significant stellar anomalies (such as strange special distortions, black holes, wormholes or dense star clusters) the GM should apply a penalty of -2 to -5.

Familiarity Option: pilots on a routine course, which is already charted in their astrogation system, do not need to make a roll; GM instead rolls a D20; on a 17-20 something unusual could happen, and the pilot must make a roll.

After making the roll, check the following table for the result (target save is the TS of the pilot; modifiers are applied to the die roll):

Navigational Save                          

Roll Was:                               Result

Natural 1                                 Meltdown! Ship suffers a catastrophic navigational or engine failure

5 or less than target save        major setback; ship knocked out of T-Space and must spend 1D6 days recalculating route; 20% chance ship took 3D6 hull damage

3-4 less than target save         minor setback; ship knocked out of T-Space and spends 1D6 hours recalculating route; 20% chance ship took 1D6 hull damage

1-2 less than target save         longer trip; ship took 1D4 times longer than normal to arrive at destination

Save target exactly                 Smooth sailing, no bumps

1-2 more than target save       Smooth sailing, no bumps. 30% chance ship arrived 20% faster than calculated

3-4 more than target save       very smooth sailing; ship arrived 20% faster than intended

5 or more than target save      amazing navigational skills; ship arrives in half the time

Natural 20                               Ship arrives very fast; takes only 1D4 hours for every day of actual travel planned!

Navigational Failure (Fumbles) Chart:

Roll 1D12:                                            Result

1-2                                                          ship has catastrophic engine failure and dumps out in normal space; engine takes 3D8 damage and requires as many hours to repair

3-4                                                          ship is attacked by mysterious extradimensional space aliens made of nonbaryonic matter! Emergency dump into normal space will evade but a new ST must be made to avoid engine failure requiring 1D12 hours to repair and 2D6 damage

5-6                                                          Engine failure but ship does not eject into normal space! Requires 1D6 hours to repair, but ship will continue in a straight line direction with 20% chance per hour of the following (D6):

1-2: catastrophic navigational failure (black hole); only escape pods will save everyone now

3-4: nonbaryonic aliens attack (see 3-4 above)

5: psionic warping occurs while trapped; ST per hour remaining or insanity and hallucinations begin to set in causing psychotic behavior for 1D12 hours

6: A stellar dragon moving through T-Space attacks while ship is trapped

7-8                                                          Ship takes 10 times longer to arrive at destination than intended in real space, but crew feels like they arrived in the expected normal time.

9-10                                                       Ship accidentally navigates in to a wormhole and the following happens (1D6):

                                                                1: wormhole drops ship back in time to period that most entertains the GM; PCs have to find the exit point to return to normal time

                                                                2: wormhole drops the ship forward in time 1D20X1,000 years

                                                                3: wormhole deposits PCs in distant remote location nowhere near their original destination

                                                                4: wormhole traps the ship in a strange parallel universe; goatees may be involved

                                                                5: wormhole ejects the PCs into normal space but ship is covered in strange alien parasites

                                                                6: wormhole causes PCs to meet alternate universe version of themselves! Only one ship may remain to escape wormhole…

11                                                           Ship suffers a catastrophic navigational hazard collision; a ST from pilot will cause ship to lose 80% of hull points but escape collision intact; failure means ship is a scrub and PCs have 1D6 minutes to escape via other craft or force an emergency drop into normal space before ship is annihilated. Collision is with a major gravity well of the following type (D6):

                                                                1-2: black hole

                                                                3: neutron star

                                                                4: quasar

                                                                5: timespace rip

                                                                6: unknown timespace anomaly

12                                                           Roll twice on the chart for two horrible events combined; if you get this a second time, hard soul GMs may declare the ship is lost in the Space Bermuda Triangle, otherwise the ship has a Unique Encounter (D6):

                                                                1: ship is propelled back and forth in time, watching the birth, life, heat death of the universe and a new big bang all over again; a new navigational check will allow the pilot to stabilize the ship in his “normal time” as well as normal space…otherwise Time Lords may appear to right the problem as the ship slingshots through time causing havoc

                                                                2: the PCs actually seem to have a normal voyage but when they arrive they discover that it is a million years in the future

                                                                3: the PCs begin to evolve in real time, as their bodies mutate into strange and horrifying monstrosities; is caused by (D4): 1-alien scientist from nonbaryonic realm; 2-godlike energy being; 3-weird anomaly; 4-someone just awoke latent psionic powers and T-Space is messing with it

                                                                4: ship explodes, and continues to explode and repeat infinitely in a loop until a PC makes a ST and is able to notice that they are caught in a time loop; creative escape ideas allowed

                                                                5: PCs arrive at destination like normal, but are missing time, and later scans reveal they have been riddled with weird probe devices

                                                                6: PCs black out on the voyage and when they awaken they are slaves of the (D4): 1-Void Lords, 2-Quinlons, 3-Grays, 4-advanced Xenomorphs of unknown nature!

Archaic Propulsion Systems

Early stellar civilizations which have not yet discovered foldspace technology or T-Drives are slow, require maneuvering that accounts for the gee forces applied to crew, and frankly modern vessels can run rings around them. To reflect ships that are using various conventional propulsion systems note the following:

Such ships can reach high local speeds but usually require a lot of “break time” to make course changes. For every 1 point of active speed the sip must spend 1 point to course correct. So, as an example, a ship moving in a straight line at speed 12 that wants to reverse 180 degrees must spend 24 points to do so. Normal ships don’t need to do this at all.

Normal ships have a hard time tracking and locking on the faster vessels equipped with foldspace technology. As a rule, such ships are at a base -2 penalty to attack unless they have surprise.