Into The Black

Campaign Background

Overview

The campaign starts in the year 2433 in New London, a large city on a planet 11 light years from Earth. Humankind has colonized another solar system, the Epsilon Eridani system. The party consists of a group of government employees who have volunteered for a rescue mission that will take at least 30 years to complete.

Tech Level

This will be a mix of TL 9 & 10. 4th edition Ultra-Tech rates technologies and equipment based on both TL and whether the item is considered 'superscience'; we'll be skipping the superscience items as a general rule but there will be some exceptions (such as gravity manipulation).

Recent History

2099: Limited nuclear war in Middle East. Jerusalem & Mecca are utterly demolished in one night, and 14 million people die from radiation in the 6 months following the blasts. United Nations granted much greater authority and control in the following years.

2150: Identification of the habitability of Epsilon Eridani's planets, 11 light years from Earth.

2220: Invention of reactionless space drive, enabling space travel at fast enough speeds to be worthwhile. The technology improves over the next hundred years from 0.4 light speed to 0.99 light speed.

2260: Explorers land on Eridani Prime. Full-scale colonization begins shortly thereafter. This is coordinated, overseen, and largely funded by the United Nations, to whom all Earth countries have ceded governance of space colonization.

The Eridani planetary system

Eridani Prime, the most Earth-like of the four habitable planets, has been the focus of human activities, and this is where the campaign starts out. The other three planets (officially known as Eridani Beta, Gamma, and Delta) have more inhospitable conditions, but already are home to thousands of frontier settlers. Moons of each planet, despite having harsh conditions and very thin atmospheres, are also being developed by settlers in anticipation of future environmental manipulation technology.

No intelligent species have been encountered on any planets thus far. Flora and Fauna discovered on various planets largely comply with biological principles developed and understood on Earth. Fish, birds, reptiles, insects, and mammals are different than Earth-evolved species, but their configurations are still generally familiar to humans.

Politics and Society

Nationality (such as American or Russian) has been forgotten, except among the residents of increasingly abandoned Earth (still home to 12 billion souls). The United Nations runs the bureaucracy of governance on all civilized planets to a greater or lesser degree. Frontier worlds are left to their own devices and provided neither support nor oversight. However, once a colony is established and fruitful, the UN sends in troops to establish government infrastructure, with varying degrees of acceptance.

A growing faction within the UN leadership believes it is inevitable that hostile and sophisticated species will eventually be encountered, and the past 20 years have seen a gradual buildup of military technology, arsenal, and personnel.

To maintain control of an organically growing and far-flung civilization, in which basic communication can take years to conduct, the UN has become increasingly authoritarian and invasive over the past 50 years, requiring regular dispatches from local technocrats and developing a strictly defined chain of command. Laser weapons are completely illegal (excepting military), and other weapons are strictly regulated on Eridani Prime. These laws apply on other settlements but are rarely enforced unless UN security forces are present.

Inevitably this has resulted in factions that resent UN rule, and seeds of discontent are gradually brewing outside Eridani Prime. Civil unrest and rebellion are not uncommon on recently (<50 years) established human settlements, while older colonies are generally peaceful and civilized. However, no group or rebellion seriously threatens UN hegemony.

Cyberpunk

A rash of excessive “enhancement” in the 2200s has led to the outlaw of most cybernetic implants. Bionic limb and organ replacement to save a life is universally accepted and commonly practiced, but voluntary unnecessary bionic enhancement is illegal and culturally frowned upon. However certain elite units of the security forces are known enhance their troops, causing endless societal debate.

An underground market for enhancement or “chroming” exists. Costs listed in Cyberpunk book are doubled.

Space Travel

Space travel speed has “maxed out” at the speed of light. However, “jump points” have been mathematically proven and identified in the galaxy. Scientists have been laboring for decades to work out a way to use them to “skip” huge distances in space. It is anticipated that the technology is within a few years of actual testing (transferring small amounts of inanimate matter is the first test); governments and corporations are spending vast sums of money and resources to do it.

Recently, enthusiasm abounds for further space travel because of the development of stasis chambers. When engulfed in one of these gel-filled “cocoons”, humans age 90% slower, allowing a 20-year journey to have little effect on the perceived age of the traveler. This is a far cry from the initial journey to the Eridani system, during which babies were born and grew to adulthood on the transport vessels, only setting foot on a planet well into their thirties.

However, the cocoon technology is imperfect, and the risks associated with long ”hibernation” periods is still substantial. To minimize this, travelers are brought out of stasis for a few weeks of each traveling year to recuperate. There's a trade-off though, because the special biomatter gel is bulky and expensive, and must be entirely replaced before re-entering stasis.

Colonization

The settling of the Eridani planets has led to a thriving human population, which, when combined with rapid advances in technology, has resulted in the planning of additional colonization of surrounding star systems. First is the twin system of Sirius A &B 16 light years away, which are orbited by at least two planets. Data from exploration drones indicates both may be habitable, and human exploration teams are en route.

The UN has decreed hundreds of planets within 100 light years as “fair game” for settlement, and future colonists are organizing resources for the land rush. These groups of adventurous souls generally consist of two types, profiteers or idealists, and those founders' attributes will inevitably leave their mark on the culture that will develop in each colony.

Over the past 75 years, numerous aspiring colonists of like-mind have launched massive 5,000-person superliners in the direction of various theoretically habitable worlds, and have not been heard from again; their status is unknown.

Additionally, “terraforming” technology is being developed. This will involve massive machines capable of producing air and water from local elements. On smaller planets and moons, optimistic technocrats are estimating 10-20 years to turn a barren rock to a habitable but harsh home for humans. Such deployments are already underway on moons in the Eridani system.

"Science"

• We're re-imagining the Milky Way as having numerous stars with habitable planets within a few dozen light years of Earth.
• We're ignoring Einsteinian time dilation. If you travel at the speed of light for 15 years, then 15 years pass for the departure point, travelers, and at the destination.
• Gravity Manipulation: We're generally adopting the Firefly-esque concept of standard on-board gravity in space – as long as the ship is pressurized with breathable air, normal gravity is present. However there are some nuances:
  • Internal artificial gravitational field generators are common on all space-faring craft. These generators are rated on the Gs they can override, so even if your reactionless drive can accelerate/maneuver faster, the Gs might crush you if the internal compensator can't keep up.
  • In the upper ranges of acceleration for which a gravity generator can compensate, gravity is experienced as palpably 'off'. Eddies of spurious anti-grav can cause nausea, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, euphoria and localized earthquake-like tremors. (see B434, "Space Sickness" and "High Acceleration" for some ideas)
  • New technology has been developed (and trademarked under the name Grav-Right) that overcome all these limitations, and provide a perfect experience of 1G within a craft, but it is only available on very high end small (< 5 passenger) luxury craft and one-man military attack craft, neither of which is capable of long distance travel.

Campaign Intro

Plot Setup

You are inhabitants of New London, a tightly compacted city of silvery towers on the Earth-like planet Eridani Prime, home to three million souls. Beyond the city, another two million inhabit the mild, fertile planet. You have lived here all your life.

You have been brought together by volunteering for an expedition organized and funded by the Advanced Research Division of the United Nations' Galactic Exploration Agency.

Thirty-five years ago, concentrated Tylium was discovered on GD-66b, a small mineral-rich but inhospitable planet in a neighboring star system 15 light years away. A key ingredient in cutting-edge star drives, and widely believed to be the key to faster-than-light speed as well as jump drives, Tylium's presence on GD-66b ensured rapid mining development and research.

This went well for three decades, until communications with the research station and colony suddenly ceased. Messages take 15 years to traverse the distance, and so the final communication (which was entirely routine in nature) had been sent 15 years previously. The most popular theory was that the station had been utterly wiped out by a meteor, common in the system, but a deep space drone telescope revealed no such evidence. The buildings and mining structures appeared intact.

So, this expedition has been organized to investigate and rescue any survivors.

Because it is a thirty-year round trip, the expedition accepted only volunteers, provided they met certain physical and training criteria. Specially-qualified individuals were also be allowed to bring their spouses, again, provided the spouse met the same physical criteria.

Estimated population of the research station is 200, accounting for probable deaths and births. The craft selected to make the trip is a Valeria IV, a military troop transport with modest defensive capabilities and 250 recently-developed stasis chambers.

The chosen breakdown of volunteers is as follows:

• Ship's crew -- essential personnel required to operate the craft, consisting of a captain plus seven crew members with various engineering specialties.

• Security Forces: Sixteen UN "Peacekeepers" are assigned to the mission in case the facility has been overtaken by hostile forces, consisting of a captain and three sergeants to whom four-man squads report. This contingent of military force will double as fields medics and heavy physical labor in the event that the facility is in need of significant construction repairs.

• Scientists and support staff: A handful of prominent and accomplished scientists accompany the mission to provide engineering, medical, and other deep expertise.

Character Requirements

These apply to all:

• Because of the dangers of spending 15 years in a stasis chamber, all volunteers must have an effective HT of 12 or more. (Fit or Very Fit applies.)
• All PCs must have a Sense of Duty (optionally: Fanatic) to the UN and the mission, unless you take a GM-approved Unusual Background.
• All have at least 3 points in electronics operation (various types as desired) & computer operation unless you take a GM-approved Unusual Background.
• Cultural Familiarity: Eridani Prime
• At least 1 point in Area Knowledge: New London
• At least 1 point in Area Knowledge: Eridani Prime

Character Templates

This mission will need a variety of specialists. The character types/templates proposed are:

• Security Forces Sergeant:

• Ship's Crew:

• Scientist: