Transport WTF5309

Campaign Background

Seventy-five years later, Into The Black II transpired...

Overview

It is the year 2433 and humankind has colonized another solar system, the Epsilon Eridani system. New London, the capital, is a large city on Eridani Prime, a planet 11 light years from Earth.

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, Eridani Gamma, and Delta) have more inhospitable conditions, but already are home to thousands of frontier settlers. Moons of each planet (numbering in the dozens), despite having harsh conditions, 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 120 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.

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).

"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

The scrappy settlements on the other habitable planets and moons of the Eridani system are often beyond the reach of UN laws and regulations. This has led to a sort of "wild west" of regional pseudo-authorities and a thriving black market for:

• Weapons - technology has brought about devastating weapons; the UN restricts many weapons to uniformed troops.
• Slaves - the only thing better than cheap labor is free labor.
• ChromeTech - banned cybernetic/genetic human enhancement/augmentation technology
• Drugs - the list of synthetic drugs prohibited by the UN now numbers in the millions.
• Regulated goods - alcohol, fuel, and certain technology and equipment that are legal but require transfer licenses, fees, inspections, regulations.

The thriving black market has generated an ever-increasing UN 'Wanted: dead or alive" list.

Which has led to a secondary (tertiary?) market for bounty hunters. Of course, some roguish individuals play the role of hunted and hunter at different times.

Your Team & Vessel

You are part of the crew on WTF5309, a small cargo shuttle capable of travel throughout the inhabited Eridani system. Like many other vessels, yours is part of the black-market/bounty hunter ecosystem. As a group, you might be considered "chaotic good", not caring much for the laws and regulations of the UN, but generally hewing to principles of justice and fairness -- as long as you can make a buck in the process. (You'd rather collect a bounty on a slave trader than make the same money buying and selling slaves, for example.)

Whether your team has a 'smash and grab' style or a more diplomatic approach to encounters depends on the characters created.

The WTF5309 can be manually operated by just two people. Is is quick and nimble for its class, but has no offensive capabilities (a strictly regulated configuration). It is equipped with a relatively modern medical bay, private bunks for 12, and an excellent array of tools, cargo rigging, and containers. To support your occasional dalliance in smuggling contraband, there are multiple small secret cargo holds that typical inspectors almost never find. Finally, you have one all-terrain ground transport vehicle; it's pretty banged up, but reliable.

Character Creation

This is TL 10.

• These are 150-point characters
• Max -50 Disadvantages plus up to -5 in quirks
• Any genetic/cybernetic enhancement requires an additional 5 point Unusual Background advantage and is subject to GM approval
• Some characters should have some Skills in:
  • Navigation (Space)
  • Legal Enforcement Powers (bounty hunting license)
  • Piloting (High-Performance Spacecraft)
  • Mechanic (High-Performance Spacecraft)