| EarthSheep |
This is a lightly-edited version of the primer I sent to my group of players to introduce them to the setting of the campaign I will be running for them soon.
Feel free to use this, take inspiration from it, or ignore it entirely. This is my biggest project to date, so feedback and questions are welcome.
1.0 The Setting
1.1 The Earth
In designing this conception of the Earth, I had three guiding principles: 1) following World War II, the world’s small nations were inexorably pushed towards globalism; 2) humanity did come together to end the planet’s gradual warming, but not until well after the so-called “point of no return”, and the vanishing coastal cities have dominated geopolitics for the past two centuries; and 3) in general, after any nation industrialized, the living conditions of the working class of people remained more-or-less in stasis even as the living conditions of the upper classes become more and more extravagant.
fig 1. - Political map of Earth circa 2280; note geographic changes due to rising sea levels
Since the twenty-first century, smaller and less powerful nations, united by bonds of politics or ethnicity, have combined into multinational groups in order to protect themselves against Cold War-era methods that a larger power could exploit them with, and to promote the collective welfare of their members. This has been seen in four major cases: The European Compact (EC), the Pan-African Union (PAU), the United Latin Nation (NLU), and the Southeast Asian Trade Pact (SEATP).
The EC, seated in Geneva, is comprised by nearly every nation that had been a member of the twentieth century’s European Union and/or its North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with the notable exceptions of the nations of Britain and Ireland (whose strong national identities injured their willingness to lose domestic sovereignty), Canada, and, of course, the United States of America. The EC notably does, however, include Turkey.
The PAU, with its capital in Kinshasa, is the result of the unification of ethnic sub-Saharan Africans in the twenty-second century. With significant foreign investment from China, the US, and the EC, the now famously efficient infrastructure of sub-Saharan Africa led to a Renaissance in the area. Politically, the PAU is heavily invested in, and defined by, conservation efforts, science, and social equality.
As the United States of America’s global power dwindled in the twenty-second century, the rural workers of central South America rallied. This historic movement led to marches and protests over the period of nearly a decade from Bolivia to Venezuela to Nicaragua. Starting with the unification of Peru and Ecuador, state after state signed the document that would eventually be known as the Declaracion de la Unidad de los Latinos (Declaration of the Unity of Latins). Now, the Nacion de Latinos Unidad (NLU), still formally headquarted in Lima, spans the continent, from the tip of Argentina to the Mexican border.
That the SEATP has no formal seat is an indication of the loose binds that tie the nations together. Indeed, many member states are terse or outright hostile towards one or another, and its governing council has targeted individual nations with sanctions under the pretense of many a formality. However, fear of Chinese influence, as well as continuing aggression from the New Caliphate, has kept them all together. At least, it has so far.
The New Caliphate emerged from the crucible of the bloodiest wars and terrorist attacks in recent memory near the end of the twenty-first century. Islamic extremists took advantage of the vacuum of power left by the USA’s waning influence to declare themselves an independent nation. This was the fourth such attempt, and the United States, finding itself with fewer and fewer allies, wearily readied itself for another brutal fight. This time, however, the Caliphate held its own. Eventually, after an aging F-35C Lightning was shot down during a (mostly symbolic, at that point) airstrike in an event that would become known as “'iitlaq alnnar ealaa alsahm allah” (the shooting of god’s arrow), the USA quietly withdrew. What followed was an exodus of progressives and intellectuals from the region as city after town after state was pulled into the Caliphate’s borders. Many fled to what would become the SEATP where they found kindred spirits in the local progressive muslims. Others found themselves begrudgingly accepted in the US. The unlucky ones divided between the PAU and the EC, where they were met with two centuries of hatred and oppression, stemming from fear of the neighboring Caliphate, which never stopped sending its faithful to bomb crowded buildings and border crossings. To date, while many of its neighbors have taken warning shots (targeted airstrikes, small-scale invasions of isolated Caliphate territory, and the like), none have been able to muster up a force capable of liberating the territory; not while its steady supply of Russian-made weapons continues to flow.
With obvious exception of the Caliphate, nearly every government in the world has pledged a percentage of its GDP as an annual donation to the Earth Combined Space Program for at least several decades, many going back for a century or longer. The ECSP is an apolitical, global research institution, its main research branch located in the heart of the Sahara desert. While its bylaws forbid any foreign military personnel or equipment from stepping inside its borders, it also supports a significant military presence of its own, known as the ECSPDMC (ECSP Defensive Military Coalition, sometimes known simply as “the Coalition”) to ward off any potential interference or sabotage. All ECSP research and findings are available publically in any language to any human being on the planet, and it enjoys almost universal goodwill from the sundry useful inventions and techniques it has provided to the planet. The ECSP’s first major stumbling block since its inception looms, however, as the question of who is most fit to represent the people of Earth on the galactic stage needs to be answered, and soon. In addition, whispers persist of secret research, secret technology kept deep in its vaults, and a darker side to the organization’s public face.
The ECSP maintains an enormous space station at which spacecraft are built, repaired, and docked. The station itself has tens of thousands of permanent residents, almost all of whom are ECSP staff, the remainder being diplomatic officials of governments or the ultra-rich hoping for the most exclusive home in the galaxy.
In addition, the ECSP has coordinated investors that now sustain permanent colonies on the Moon, Mars, and among the moons of Jupiter. The previous two are novelties with skeleton crews of researchers and engineers in charge of maintenance (and more than a few reality television programs), while the latter is the center of a massively lucrative mining project. Space travel is feasible even on a middle-class budget, and luxury cruisers dance in spirals around the yellow sun.
Twice, spacecraft of unknown (but certainly terrestrial) origin ambushed cargo ships returning from Jupiter and made off with hundreds of thousands of tons of valuable metals. Now, armed escorts with simple but deadly conventional weapons guard cargo ships as well as luxury liners, hoping to nip the advent of space piracy in the bud.
1.2 Slip
“In addition, note that all of these conceptions we share about space, about ‘moving’, ‘travelling’, the idea of being ‘nearby’ something; these are all arbitrary constructions we have placed on the world around us. Can we say that all objects along the same radius from a given point are equally near the point’s center? Euclid says we can, but this is simply a three-dimensional construction, a model of reality. Models can be useful, but let’s try to think outside of our models for a moment.
“Consider a two-dimensional circle surrounding the same point we mentioned just a moment ago. Now, add a third dimension, but rather than the third spatial dimension, can we add any other dimension? Why not temperature? Examine this diagram:
fig 2. - image illustrating the Khachatryan theorem
“Here we have three points, each separated from one center point, A, by an amount, α, in either direction along two given spatial axes. Note that points B and C’s temperature is one degree celsius greater than the point A, and that point D’s temperature is two degrees greater.
“It takes elementary geometry to determine that, in terms of the two spatial dimensions, each of the points, B, C, and D, are equidistant, and thus equally proximal, to the center, A. In the sense of all three dimensions, however, it becomes readily apparent that points C and B are, in fact, more proximal to the center point than is point D. Thus, despite the fact that, spatially, all three points are equally distant from the center, two are actually closer.”
Excerpt from a lecture given by Dr. Maria Khachatryan, Ph.D, 2194
Once considered a semantically interesting but practically pointless argument, Khachatryan’s Theorem of Proximity found a supporter in ESCP physicist Dr. Antonio del Rosario, a former pupil of Khachatryan’s, who successfully petitioned a grant to investigate means of using nonspatial proximity to enact spatial change. His team eventually hit a breakthrough in 2213, when they successfully built a drive that could “vibrate” across a bandwidth in a little-understood dimension that has become known (somewhat deceptively) as the “Khachatryan Frequency”. The drive was tested only once. After only seconds of vibration, it violently imploded. When the dust cleared, there was no sign of the drive itself and its chamber had been ripped apart. Analysis of high-frequency camera footage of the event shed light on the matter. The drive invisibly vibrated for 16 seconds, then suddenly vanished, and space folded over itself in order to close the gap, bending its steel housing like putty, which snapped as soon as the effect receded. The camera captured over four hundred thousand frames in the 17-second period from the experiment’s beginning until the lens shattered in the blast. The phenomenon was visible in only two of those frames.
Many skeptics believed del Rosario had only managed to build a mildly inefficient bomb, but he was convinced that the drive had travelled, the one thing he didn’t know was to where. The drive was never found.
In the years following the Rosario Experiment, its namesake researcher built and launched 22 “Rosario probes”, each carrying a similar drive. Inside each drive, tucked away from any harmful effects of the implosion phenomenon, an ansible was stored. Each ansible was capable of instantaneous message transmission across an arbitrary distance, provided only that it is given its relative spatial coordinates to the recipient. Del Rosario posited that if the probes were going somewhere, it could be anywhere for all he knew, and that anywhere is very likely to be very, very far away. Thus, each probe was designed to image its view of any stars in its vision and cross-reference them with an enormous database of stars as seen from the Earth, in hopes it would be able to triangulate its own location, and report its coordinates back to an ESCP ansible in order to verify the success. No response was ever received, and in 2223, after the death of del Rosario, the project was cancelled.
In 2271, the ESCP got its response in the form of a Shirren transport bearing one of the Rosario probes and a message of peace in crude but recognizable Spanish.
Travel using a Rosario drive, once proven functional, exploded in both systems and soon became known as “Slipping”. Ships mounted with Rosario drives are now common in the space around both Earth and Shira. Traffic at the Earth-Shira node is more and more common as traders, diplomats, and tourists slip between the planets. New probes are being launched every week by one planet or the other, hoping to find new planets, new stellar routes, new lifeforms. Some Earth-based Elementary Schools are now pairing each of their students with a young Shirren peer across the galaxy, linked by the ansibles installed in their own homes.
Since Shira, three new nodes have been discovered: Earth-Yso, whose humanoid natives bear a striking resemblance to terrestrial rats; Earth-Hlalxkiln (known as “the Kiln” to the human miners working there), an asteroid belt plentiful with platinum; and Shira-Kasath, home to a strange grey-skinned race with six limbs and a conical head. The known world is expanding at a breakneck pace, proving that intelligent, civilized life is far more common than anyone had ever previously thought.
1.3 The Shirrens
Shirrens are sexually trimorphic and have three genders: female, male, and host. In reproduction, the female and male independently fertilize the host with an egg cell and a sperm cell, respectively. The host incubates the resulting zygote and provides it additional epigenetic information as well as its own immunities until it matures sufficiently to be laid as an egg. The host then continues to incubate the egg (in many cases, eggs) until they hatch into a small, larval form, a growth stage that lasts two years. While in this form, they are often carried around their environment by a parent or hive member in order to allow them to safely experience the world. For three years following the larval stage, they grow rapidly to their full size and sexual maturity. A shirren lifespan is rarely longer than 70 years.
The long, sensitive antennae on a Shirren’s head, in addition to providing sensory information typical of the organ, serve as the basis of a mild telepathic ability. While Shirrens do have a maw capable of replicating human speech (poorly) and their own spoken language, Shirrens naturally tend to use their telepathy to communicate with each other. Shirrens technically have six limbs: a set of humanoid arms and legs, and two small, weak “mating arms” between. Public display of mating arms is acceptable and common, but to use them for any trivial task would be abhorrent, and they are reserved for ceremonial purposes.
In their early, subterranean, tribal state, which lasted for tens of thousands of years, all Shirrens were telepathically enslaved to the host-queen that birthed them, their sense of self completely suppressed and their body directly controlled by the queen for their own purposes. This method of slavery is strictly voluntary - at first. One Shirren can submit its mind to another, but once given, this submission is rarely broken by anything but death. Thus, in the tribal state, juveniles were kept solely around the queen until they reached the biological maturity necessary to submit to the queen, and until that time, it was essentially impossible that they ever see a free adult, so of course the hierarchy seemed to be both natural and correct. However, it was not altogether uncommon for a stubborn juvenile to resist the queen; these individuals were, without exception, eaten by the colony.
At the death of a queen, all of that queen’s former slaves were instantly freed. However, they were essentially infants at the time with no experience or capability of fending for themselves, and usually floundered without a queen, failing to accomplish anything of note before the food supplies ran out. During that time, it was common for any hosts among the population to instinctively enslave other individuals (including other hosts, if possible) to gather food for them. Individuals were happy to be enslaved again after their brief directionless experience, having experienced for the first time the pain of hunger and of fear. This caused the tribe to splinter into multiple groups, each under a new, different host-queen. These tribes occasionally split off, the smaller group moving to a new home, but more commonly fought to the death for the right to the original.
During this stage, technology was not stagnant. Hives under host-queens developed complex agricultural systems and tools, as well as metalworking including the manufacture of steel. These gave them significant advantages over their rival queens, yet ironically it was these that were their undoing. As the volume of food stored at any given moment increased, so too did the likelihood that freed adults following the death of a queen would land on their feet, so to speak, having a supply of food they didn’t have to work for as a buffer, giving them months or even years to work out how to live independently. In this way, many hives were liberated. These free colonies were never seen as existential threats to neighboring queens, but rather as an opportunity to double their power by conquering and enslaving them. The colonies put up fights but could rarely overcome the fearless drones who fought with no sense of self-preservation and felt no pain. The queens won battles handily but never thought to halt the technological progress that allowed their subjects to live freely, and gradually died out over a handful of millenia.
Freed Shirrens were industrious and communal even without their queens. They refused, however, to live underground again, and to this day deeply resent any physical hierarchy of living space (thus finding human high-rises utterly barbaric). Occasionally, even free Shirrens would voluntarily be enslaved (almost always to a host, though of course with exceptions) and small “hives” persist at the fringes of society to the present day - despite being socially grotesque to others and in many cases illegal. In these days, the fear of being ostracized keeps many hosts from engaging in any kind of socially dominant behavior at all, and they now tend to be passive, submissive, and always struggling to be as empathetic and selfless as possible, which puts tremendous strain on them emotionally.
Borders and ethnicities were never a significant part of Shirren society after the tribal stage, and they transitioned to a global commune incredibly cleanly and with much lower crime and disorder rates compared to other intelligent lifeforms. This does come with the cost that most Shirrens lack any kind of externalized identity, and often fail to challenge their own society when it does something wrong, choosing to follow their peers rather than their conscience.
By the time the Rosario probe arrived, the Shirrens had managed to navigate between most of the planets in their home system, but found essentially nothing of value anywhere except on one of their two moons, where they found significant deposits of metals that were rare in the crust of Shira itself. Lunar mining colonies were established quickly, and any space programs that aimed any farther than the nearer moon were scrapped or postponed indefinitely. It’s plausible that their culture would have stagnated there, eventually wiped out by a rogue meteor or natural disaster, but for the miracle.
A Shirren astronomer, by a sheer stroke of astronomically improbable luck, happened to have their telescope pointed directly at the probe as it arrived seemingly from nothing. An automated ship designed only for travel between the homeworld and its moons was juryrigged and sent to the outskirts of the Shirren system to collect it. It returned bearing the probe nearly eight years later.
Seemingly the entirety of the Shirren intellectual elite spent almost forty Earth-years examining and attempting to replicate the probe. Each component was delicately removed and thoroughly investigated. From fuel residue on the surface they learned of liquid oxidation, from the circuits they learned practical applications of palladium. The astronomical database, once decoded, proved invaluable to Shirren physicists documenting supernovae. It seemed that every tiniest detail of the probe led to another scientific revolution among the Shirrens. But, perhaps no one detail was quite as important as del Rosario’s extensive documentation on the astronomical calculator’s source code: it was written in lazy but recognizable Spanish.
Even after extensive contact with humans, a pidgin combining Spanish, a dash of programming lingo, and a healthy dose of hisses and clicks with no source in any human language, remains popular among the fashionable and young, who see it as an exotic and beautiful language. Spanish media from Earth is only recently being recognized for its trade value on Shira, as the insect population craves soap opera after luchador match after Dia de Los Muertos documentary.
1.4 Spacecraft
Of known spacecraft designs, all so far are designed for utility. Few spacecraft, if any, have been constructed without cargo space for at least one hundred metric tons of material. There have yet to be any spacecraft built explicitly for combat, though with the rise of piracy this may soon change, and even dedicated freighters are outfitted with defensive weaponry.
Human and Shirren ship-mounted weapons nearly all fit neatly into one of two groups: missiles and railguns. Missiles haven’t changed much since the proliferation of rocketry in the human twentieth century. Cheap missiles are guided by infrared light and termed “heat-seeking”. More expensive missiles use radio waves. Among those discrete groups are various tiers of complexity designed to defend the guidance from countermeasures deployed by the target. For example, a “dumb” heat-seeking missile simply travels toward the biggest heat source in its field of “vision”, and thus can easily be defeated by simple flares (or by getting it to “look” at a nearby star), but a more complicated missile would track the unique heat signature of the target based on the heat from its exhaust and the gradual coolness of the hull as it becomes more distant from the engines. Radar missiles have a similar, though obviously different, set of effective countermeasures and counter-countermeasures.
Railguns, though much more expensive and requiring permanent modifications to a ship’s hull, are essentially impossible to defend against and much cheaper to reload. A railgun consists of a very long “rail” that uses magnetic propulsion to launch a metal slug from its base to the end and beyond, causing it to reach incredible speeds that would rip through just about anything like it was paper. Of course, as with anything, there are downsides. Missiles can strike at a range of miles away from a target, while hitting a spacecraft at that range with a metal slug would be akin to throwing a dart and aiming for a molecule. A weapons targeting subsystem can be installed in the ship’s operating system to assist with that kind of aiming, but can take several minutes to acquire a lock, which time can be reset by any erratic movements on behalf of the target or any object in between, and utilizes radar which could be defeated by any applicable anti-missile countermeasures. Therefore, a railgun’s rate of fire depends greatly on the range at which it is fired. At the maximum rate, a railgun could fire a slug a couple times per minute, but those shots would be unguided.
A theoretical defense against railguns would use a magnetic field to attempt to deflect the slug away from the ship has been proposed, but no such field has yet been proven in practice as the magnetic force required to significantly alter the trajectory of an object at that speed is enormous. At present, the best defense consists of radar countermeasures and staying far away from hostiles.
Every spacecraft includes two “engines”: a Rosario drive and typical thrusters. These thrusters do not have the power to escape an Earth-sized planet’s gravitational well, but modular external rockets can be purchased for the launch and then recycled after ejection. In general, the crew of spacecraft prefer to leave their ship in high orbit and approach in a shuttle, bearing only the crew’s members and their personal effects (a much lighter payload for the return trip than an entire ship).
A typical Rosario drive requires a bar of high-grade refined plutonium for each time it slips. The bar’s energy is fully depleted in the process. The drive would optimally be inspected by a qualified engineer before each slip to ensure safety of both the ship and its crew. Because of the infrequency of slips, even among interstellar freighters, most small ships assign Rosario drive maintenance to a crew member (the engine’s mechanic or a gunner, for example) on top of their regular duties.
The sensors array of a spacecraft continually sweeps its surroundings using light from across the electromagnetic spectrum, and automatically alerts the crew of any changes. It is typical for ships to employ a dedicated officer to the array, such that they can filter through the alerts and notify the rest of the crew only when something is relevant to their duties.
Any ship will come equipped with a replicator. These replicators have the ability to construct essentially anything, using a wide supply of atomic components with a vast library detailing useful chemical reactions, and a suite of tools used to shape, shave, or place the created objects. The downside to replication is that it is very slow, and can take longer the more complex the task. Making a square block that tastes vaguely of steak with the consistency of tofu would take a few hours; making a gourmet steak dinner could take as much as a week. Some crews eat meals like the former, others bring a supply of food with them. The replicator also automatically filters the crew’s waste and the ambient humidity on board the ship to provide clean drinking water and restock on organic components. In addition, it uses a variety of chemical reactions simulating those undergone by a plant cell to change the carbon dioxide waste of respiration back into breathable air. In this way, the replicator functions as the life support for the crew.
Because it is so important, and so slow, the replicator is typically reserved for active use (as opposed to its passive subroutines, like recycling waste) only with explicit permission of the ship’s captain. The typical use case for a replicator is to manufacture a small but unique part to replace one that broke, or to reconstruct sections of the hull that are damaged by a collision or enemy attacks.
When a ship’s hull tears or is pierced, all air exposed to the vacuum of space immediately evacuates the ship, carrying anything in the room with it. Crew members are equipped with basic equipment that can help them survive temporarily in the vacuum, and in theory return safely to the ship (such as a grappling hook and a small compressed gas thruster) though in practice they often sustain an injury and/or lose consciousness in the process of being sucked out of the ship and must be rescued by the ship’s crew.
To restore cohesion to the hull, a crew member can apply a special kind of foam that quickly expands and then solidifies, forming a large, but brittle vacuum seal. With that as a temporary fix, the replicator can begin shaping a sheet of metal to fix the hull permanently. A ship generally has enough breathable air on board to sustain two full evacuations and replenishments, but if it runs out, once a room is exposed to the vacuum, it won’t contain breathable air until the ship can restock.
All rooms on the ship are compartmentalized as much as possible, so damage to one room won’t necessarily impact the others. All doors on the ship are airtight, fireproof, and can be remotely controlled and locked from the bridge.
Finally, the most important role on the ship is of course that of the captain. The captain has full read/write access to the ship’s operating system, and can access that computer through a physical terminal (usually folded into a wall in each room) or via voice commands. The ship regularly conducts internal scans, including biometrics, to verify the identity of all crew members with permissions, but particularly dangerous abilities (for example, self-destruction) requires a stricter proof of identity: a 25-character alphanumeric code known only to the captain. This code doubles as the encryption key for the operating system. Any person with both physical access to a computer terminal in the ship and that code has full access to all controls, so the code is a closely-guarded secret, usually memorized and then destroyed, though some captains choose to keep a physical copy on their person. Without the encryption key, it is impossible to gain access to any controls of the ship. In the event that the captain is unable or unwilling to unlock the system, it can be commanded to do a full factory reset. After a waiting period of 72 hours (during which it will regularly attempt to contact the captain), the system will fully wipe every drive and reinstall its operating system with a new encryption key. After this is done, it is impossible to regain access to any memory that was previously stored on board the ship. While it is possible to remove the hard drive from the ship before the reset, without the encryption key it is nearly impossible to decipher.
The captain may at any time vocally assign the “conn” to any other crew member. This gives them a limited but powerful set of permissions in the ship’s operating system and also establishes the formal authority to issue orders to other crew members. This is typically used when the captain leaves the bridge for any reason to ensure that an active crew member with access to the controls is capable of responding to any emergency.
In general, the ship’s computer may take the place of any crew member, save those with physical tasks (like repairing an engine or loading a missile launcher), and trades their faster and less predictable abilities for a slower but reliable result. As such, a spacecraft piloted by crew who are each the best of the best and performing at their peak will be infinitely more efficient in most tasks than the ship would on autopilot, but a spacecraft piloted by mediocre crew with no training and little experience could have disastrous consequences, while the ship on autopilot would alternatively provide at least an acceptable baseline performance.
If the Rosario drive of a ship is damaged, the effects are unpredictable. The ship may detonate completely if a plutonium rod gets out of control; the ship may spontaneously slip with no warning, safety protocols, or direction, which is almost guaranteed to end in the death of every crew member; or possibly nothing could happen, if by some miracle nothing important was damaged, which could lead to only a handful of routine repairs. For this reason, the drive is usually located in the center of the ship, buffered from any collisions, and heavily shielded. Because it is so isolated, temperatures can be high in the chamber, 40-50 degrees Celsius while everything is operating correctly, and potentially 200 degrees Celsius if a coolant leaks or some similar problem occurs. A thermal regulatory suit is generally available near the entrance in case the environment is inhospitable for necessary repairs.
1.5 Commentary
The other aliens can easily replace or be added to the current ones. Just remember that every Rosario node is two-way and your players will only have access to travel via that network, so just add a new node somewhere or replace an existing node with one you'd prefer (swapping out ysoki for lashunta, for example). You can do the same with Pathfinder legacy races (I'm planning on including gnomes later somehow, though haven't exactly figured out how yet).
Next, you may notice that I mention no gods or magic. For my part, active deities seem to interfere with the parts of science fiction I like the most - sci-fi is uniquely capable of asking powerful, hard questions about morality, e.g. "when does an AI become a life?", "are members of my own species more valuable to me than members of others?", "how do I decide which extraterrestrials are intelligent?". It's hard for me to reconcile the existence of these questions with active deities or strict alignments, and both will be tossed in my campaign.
I do like some magic, though, but I think it works best when it's barely-understood and most people don't even believe in it. I think magic can be included on a small scale without it necessarily effecting the setting as a whole if spellcasters are rare and/or secretive enough. The same can honestly be said of deities, I don't mind if a given character is convinced that some god exists, I don't even mind if that character has actual magical abilities that they claim are sourced FROM that god; as long as the setting contains some ambiguity I feel it's enough.
On to some decisions regarding Earth geopolitics. First, I know that the presence of the New Caliphate might upset some people for a variety of reasons. It is not my intention at all to disparage muslims in general, nor to suggest that threats like ISIS will never go away. The reason it's there is to provide a basically-unambiguously-evil enemy and set up campaign hooks. A group of PCs could smuggle individuals out of the Caliphate, ambush convoys of weapons bound for it, foil terrorist plots, or even participate in a ground invasion by any number of Earth governments; and the best part is it barely matters what their personal ethics are, so even with as disparate of values as PCs might have, a GM can still find /something/ for them to do together. If this is still a problem for you, feel free to remove it and establish a multinational group of Arab governments in the same place, like the NLU or the PAU.
Second, I did use scientifically projected data for the map itself vis-a-vis rising sea levels, though I was not that scientific in its application. My goals were not to project the most likely scientific outcome, but to make a visually striking map and to "drown" some major cities. The premise of a sunken city to me has a wide variety of applications and possible scavenging opportunities. The marked sunken cities on the map are: New York, Washington D.C., Savannah, New Orleans, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, London, Copenhagen (this one is a little bit off-mark on the map), Lagos, and Shanghai. Miami, while below sea level, is surrounded by a large sea wall and is dry. The rich populations of the city have still evacuated, leaving it a wide ghetto (almost universally Spanish-speaking) with quickly-deteriorating walls. It may join (or have joined) the NLU.
Finally, Somalia (and some surrounding area) has been split between numerous foreign governments for use as military naval bases supporting activities in the Indian Ocean, as well as a means to keep an eye on the Caliphate. It is the most militarized location in the world. The harsh treatment of local Somalians by the hands of these militaries has been a subject of major diplomatic outcry by the PAU (the only major power without a base there, though of course they have several others on the Indian Ocean).
| EarthSheep |
I wrote the first adventure I'll run for my players in this setting. Again, hoping to help inspire others, and would love any feedback (especially before I run it)! Plus, writing with other people in mind helped me a lot in focusing on my thoughts and making sure that not only did I know what was going on, but that I could explain it to others too.
Sorry that it's not super-well organized, this was very much a "write-as-I-go" kind of project, I jumped around a lot and won't promise that there's no inconsistent information here. I got it to the point that I was happy with it just now, and it's 1 AM for me so I decided just to throw it up before I gave it another pass.
The Theft of the Deucalion
A Starfinder adventure suitable for a party of first-level characters (and designed with exactly three players in mind); meant to end with the party at level 2 and with a functional spacecraft. Set in “The Sol-Shira Node”.
It has now been over forty years since the Shirrens first arrived in the Sol system. Travel via Rosario nodes has become common and there are now roughly two dozen systems connected to the network. One such system is the relatively backwater Redsun system containing a red giant star and two uninhabited planets known as Redsun Prior and Redsun Second. Second is a gas giant, while Prior is an Earth-like, arid world. Its climate is slightly warmer and drier than Earth, and it is home to a plant known as “newgrain”, a hearty grain whose flour has high nutritional value and many applications in low-weight nutrition systems (like military rations). Attempts to grow the plant on other planets have thus far been unsuccessful, and demand for the grain far exceeds its supply (though its only-minor advantages over other grains keep the price from growing significantly). All interstellar civilizations are post-industrial and therefore maintain a low agrarian population, meaning there are few migrants willing to farm on the planet. Several incentive programs exist, and land on the planet is essentially free for the taking (though all of it is claimed by a variety of foreign governments; it is they who provide the land to their own citizens, hoping to grow their presence on the planet). The planet has a low population of a few million dispersed across its Earth-size surface, and only one spaceport. The population is roughly evenly divided between humans, Shirrens, and Kasatha; this marks the first Kasathan attempt to colonize a foreign world.
Due to a majority decision forced through multinational forums by non-Spanish-language nations of Earth, all cultural exports are required to be evenly distributed between the eight voting members of the ECSP Joint Council: The USA, the NLU, the PAU, the SEATP, the EC, Russia, India, and China. This law is formally known as “ECSP Joint Resolution VIII”, code “JR-8”. In practice, this resolution acts as an imposed constraint on the export of Latin media to Shira, whose fascination with the Spanish language has led to seemingly-endless demand for corresponding media. This ban is very unpopular on Shira and among the spacefaring civilizations as a whole, who see it as, at best, a feeble attempt to cling to dying national identities; but it remains popular among non-Latin citizens of Earth who saw the disproportionate demand for Latin media as drowning out their historical cultural identities, and presenting the Earth on a universal stage as a predominantly Latin world. At present, the ECSP Joint Council is slanted 6-2 for the resolution, and as such it shows no signs of lifting.
While JR-8 theoretically applies to all Earth-based media exports, it is heavily policed only on the Sol-Shira node. Among the routine scans for illicit weapons or drugs, node-based customs officials are now scanning hard drives for unregistered multi-season DVD rips of telenovelas.
The value of a spacecraft is such that there is no legitimate way a party of low-level adventurers could find themselves possessing one, aside from charity e.g. inheritance. Therefore, at least one of two things are necessary to steal one: first, outside help; second, a well-formulated plan executed secretly. This adventure affords the players both in what’s hoped to be a natural way that doesn’t seem too much like forcing them into a cockpit (even though that’s basically what we’re doing).
The subject of this adventure is the Deucalion (in this case pronounced “djuh-kay-lee-in”), an aging craft currently in the care of “Musker” O’Shane, smuggler extraordinaire. The party is invited to a mutiny by his First Mate, “Sidewinder” Fontaine, after Musker refuses Fontaine’s request to transport a vital medicine (xenoplaxicine) to the town on Redsun Prior where her family lives, which is under the effects of an alien plague. This problem is confounded by the introduction of Bluefrog, a secretive android mercenary who happens to be delivering the same medicine between two interstellar corporations and who paid a hefty fee to Musker for question-free passage. She plans to claim the ship and the medicine, and deliver it to her hometown, and thus enlists the party as muscle and/or brains to assist her in this heist. Musker does not suspect Fontaine of disloyalty, though she has been growing visibly disgruntled for several years now under his leadership.
Fontaine has discreetly contacted each of the party members, promising them a payout of 20,000 credits each upon successful liberation of the ship. This payout will never be given; Fontaine plans to cross the party members once she’s determined that their usefulness has ended. However, the “scripted” end is that Fontaine dies after the heist, leaving the party open to claim the ship.
In the first scenario, there are three simultaneous objectives necessary for the party to claim the Deucalion: they must separate it from its current crew, sabotage Musker’s hard-line communicator to the ship, and liberate the medicine from Bluefrog - all before Musker returns to the ship in approximately 12 hours (assuming no PC intervention) and reclaims the conn (having assigned it to Fontaine when he left the ship). At this point, they will have everything they need to pilot the ship to Redsun, one of the quietest ports in the galaxy. The last obstacle is the security at the Sol-Shira node: the ship is loaded with illicit home video recordings of human luchador matches worth at least 5,000 credits on the black market in Shira.
Once at Redsun, Fontaine hopes to use the documentation and a thick mixture of bribes and lies to initiate a factory reset of the ship, upon completion of which, she will be able to name herself captain, leaving Musker no remaining ability to reclaim the ship - or at least making it necessary for him to steal it back.
During the factory reset, she and the party must leave the ship as the life-support systems of the ship will be offline. Therefore, they leave it in the care of Redsun Station, orbiting Redsun Prior. Fontaine takes the medicine to the surface and the party tags along. They have a random encounter with a hostile animalistic alien, and then make it to the farming town Kisangani Nouveau (demonym: Boyomais), population about 300. She delivers the medicine to the local clinic, who promises to use it responsibly to treat the worst of the infected. Fontaine will be secretive about all of this with the rest of the party, only allowing them to accompany her to Kisangani Nouveau if convinced. If Quickfix is with the party, they insist on remaining behind, at the station, because they want to “see the ships” (actually because they saw a hot space babe).
In either case, Fontaine never leaves the town. On the third day of the factory reset, Musker and/or Bluefrog return (depending on whether they survived), and Fontaine is killed by one of the two (Bluefrog if both are present). If the party is present for this, it will be an instant death from a sniper’s shot (leading into an encounter against the sniper). If the party fights back, Musker and Bluefrog will have plausible disadvantages based on any damage sustained in their first encounter. The party is expected to fight and defeat the smugglers, but an alternative win includes returning to the ship, claiming the captaincy, and escaping. Depending on the fate of the smugglers, one or both may return as long-term antagonists.
ECSP Orbital Station “Copernicus”, Sol system
WHEN RUNNING, READ THIS FIRST: The gateway between Earth and the universe, this large station houses the largest civilian spaceport in the system, including hundreds of restaurants and bars representing as many terran and galactic cuisines, housing space for tens of thousands, and a xenocultural center designed to ease the transition for humans first coexisting with alien life and vice versa. Copernicus is always crowded by the hundreds of thousands of travellers it processes every day. The hallways are well-maintained, brightly lit, and clean. In as many areas as architecturally possible, large bay windows provide a view of the blue planet below (and automatically dim while facing the sun). [Following assumes one party member is from Earth, address them directly.] You’re surprised by a pang of homesickness, as you watch [the place they lived; go large-scale, something visible from space] slowly spin away. You turn away from the window and enter the restaurant where you’re supposed to meet. You quickly recognize your contact and sit down at her booth. You’re the last one here. [Allow players to introduce themselves to each other.] After the exchange of pleasantries, your contact clears her throat and begins talking. [Introduce Fontaine (description on statblock) and then proceed with details of the Deucalion’s crew, and the objectives necessary to pull off the heist. She can help them out a bit with their plan - it’s vital to the campaign that they end up with a ship, so make sure there’s little room for error.]
This is the location the party begins the adventure in, having separately or jointly answered Sidewinder’s call for assistance.
Copernicus: Hangar “Valentina Tereshkova”
The hangar in which the Deucalion is undergoing postflight maintenance. Quickfix and Bluefrog are onboard the ship, the former just finishing the aforementioned maintenance, and the latter not having left their quarters for weeks anyway.
Copernicus: The Black Door
A rarity on Copernicus: the Black Door has no windows. It caters to a clientele less interested in visibility for one reason or another and serves as a source of alcohol and sex for claustrophiles and outlaws alike. The various booths are dimly lit at most, the bar itself the only source of bright light. The specialty drink here is called “Shimmer”, easily recognizable by its pale pink color and faint glow. A single stereo set rests on the bartop, emanating quiet, instrumental beats day in and day out. In a back corner, a small stage is set up, and a lashunta damaya dances erotically for a small crowd. (Perception: 15) You glimpse a man with a cybernetic eye in a quiet corner, he matches the description of Musker perfectly. (Perception: 25) You also see a man you know must be Grease among the dancer’s audience.
A somewhat-shady bar in which both Grease and Musker can be found (separately), drinking in the company of various young, smiling men and women.
Interior of the Deucalion
Inside the Deucalion, the omnipresent smell of rocket propellant betrays the ship’s long history.
The Deucalion has six major areas. The four-seat cockpit comprises the narrow bow of the ship; two seats for pilot and co-pilot each directly in front of one of the two seats for gunners. Immediately aft of the cockpit is a large living area with tables, exercise equipment, and an access to the ship’s replicator. Starboard of the living area is the crew quarters: a hallway leading to four rooms each with a bed below a hideaway bunk. Opposite the crew quarters are the captain’s quarters. A door at the end of the crew hallway leads to the engine room, which has ready access to the engine powering the ship’s thrusters and a heavily reinforced door on the bow side leading to the reactor core (which also houses the Rosario drive). This core comprises the bulk of the center of mass of the ship, and is heavily armored and radiation-shielded. Beneath the “main floor” of the ship is the cargo bay, which can carry roughly 100 tons of goods when you account for the enormous quantity of stashes hidden behind false walls.
Redsun Prior, Redsun system
A warm, arid planet. Has large swaths of rocky deserts, but gets plenty of rain in certain areas, leading to enormous, flat fields of vegetation. The grasses tend to a dirty orange color while the few trees have grey leaves. Newgrain farms grow in long, straight lines, and are clearly distinguishable from wild areas. One major continent dominates the planet, the majority of the surface is ocean. There are a handful of medium-size islands in the middle of the sea, and several large archipelagos leading off edges of the main continent. The landmass is divided into three sections like a pie, and all three meet in the center. The northern mass is given to the Shirrens, and has the tallest mountains. In the western deserts, the first Kasatha colony is beginning to stabilize. Finally, to the east is the Human claim around wide river valleys, with its main city, the ECSP-founded Nacimiento Nuevo, on the longest river. Hundreds of smaller towns dot the landscape around the city, each hoping to succeed based on the staple crop of the planet known in English as “newgrain”. These three races live mostly separately, but have had no trouble so far and the borders were drawn mutually and amicably. None of the borders are policed. [Once players have landed, get them moving to the town, and remember the encounter with the alien creature before they arrive]
Redsun Prior: Kisangani Nouveau
One such town, Kisangani Nouveau was founded by Francophone African immigrants, the first (and continuing majority) of which arrived from Kisangani on Earth. The town is agrarian and fairly poor, with almost no buildings taller than one story. A makeshift brick wall surrounds the town to keep wildlife out. There is a small clinic, a public library, and a nuclear reactor providing power to the town. The nearest ansible is in Nacimiento Nuevo. The town has been plagued by a disease formerly unknown and suspected to be native to the planet. This disease can be fatal (especially to infants and the elderly), but hasn’t yet significantly spread anywhere else, so there’s very little outside interest in making the long trip to deliver medicine, especially because the town is insular enough that, outside of its walls, the scope of the disease is mostly unknown. At present, about fifty of the roughly three hundred occupants of the town are severely sick. They are currently quarantined in a large pavilion just outside of town, but with only standard antibiotics and pain relievers there’s little that can be done for them, and every few days another person falls ill with no end in sight.
Aran “Musker” O’Shane [CR 2]
A pale brown man, just under six feet tall, with a cybernetic box in place of one eye. His hair is cut short, but he’s still visibly balding. His breath reeks of guinness. One hand rests casually on a long blade held under the hip. (Engineering or Physical Science: 20) You recognize the knife as a heat blade. [Canonically this guy is gay but if your crew’s plan includes a woman seducing him, don’t punish them too harshly and maybe just roll with it if it’ll flow better - use judgement.]
Human mechanic (he/him)
initiative +3
computers +6 engineering +6 profession (smuggler) +10
Defense [HP 20]
EAC 14 KAC 15
Fort +3 Ref +6 Will +1
Offense
Melee: heat knife +3 (1d6+3 fire, crit burn 1d4) [tracking: heat knife +4; overcharge: 2d6+3 Fire]
Ranged: tactical pistol +4 (1d6+3 penetrating) [tracking: tactical pistol +5]
Statistics
Str 11 Dex 16 Con 10 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 8
Language: English
Special Abilities
Tracking (at will) - Musker can use a move action to designate a target; he gains a +1 insight bonus to attacks against the target
Overcharge (3/day) - Before rolling attack dice, Musker may add 1d6 to an attack with his heat knife (Engineering or Physical Science: 20, 15 if passed first check) Musker has bypassed the safety measures of the blade, allowing its temperature to almost double. It’ll hurt if he hits you, but it won’t be long before he depletes his batteries.
Sidorelle “Sidewinder” Fontaine [CR 4]
A tall human woman, with mocha skin and frizzy black hair pulled up into a loose ponytail that frays around her head like the tail of a peafowl. She wears a long, brown overcoat over a nondescript red shirt and beige pants. Her face is showing signs of age, from the slight wrinkles on the cheeks to the bags under her eyes. Her eyes themselves, however, are fresh and active, constantly observing the minutest details of the environment. (Sense Motive DC: 25) Her composure is amazing, but you can see through the cracks, faintly, that this is a woman at the end of her rope. She trusts you out of necessity, and likely has nowhere else to turn.
Human envoy (she/her)
initiative +7
bluff +10 computers +7 piloting +10 sense motive +10 (+1d6) diplomacy +10 (+1d6)
sleight of hand +7 disguise +7
Defense [HP 30]
EAC 16 KAC 17
Fort +1 Ref +7 Will +4
Offense
Melee: dueling sabre +3 (1d8+4 slashing)
Ranged: pistol +6 (2d6+4 penetrating)
Statistics
Str 10 Dex 16 Con 10 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 16
Languages: English, French, Russian, Shirren, Ysoki
Special Abilities
Clever Feint (at will) - standard action; feint check against enemy within 60 feet, on fail, enemy flat-footed to Fontaine’s attacks until end of her next turn; on success, enemy flat-footed to all attacks until end of next turn
Not in the Face (at will) - move action; target enemy must pass Will save (DC: 15) or take -4 to hit Fontaine until end of her next turn
“Bluefrog” [CR 2]
This slender android with pale blue skin and large dark eyes is unnervingly quiet. Not breathing, not blinking, not speaking; not moving even a single part of their body until they lithely move into a different position. They remind you of a spider in more ways than one.
Android operative (they/them)
initiative +9
athletics +5 acrobatics +8 perception +6 stealth +9
Defense [HP 16]
EAC 14 KAC 15
Fort +0 Ref +7 Will +5
Offense
Melee: survival knife +5 (1d4+2 slashing)
Ranged: rifle +5 (1d6+2 penetrating)
Statistics
Str 10 Dex 18 Con 10 Int 16 Wis 12 Cha 6
Languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Shirren
Special Abilities
Evasion (passive) - half damage from Reflex is no damage
Uncanny Mobility (at will) - select a creature when making a trick attack or using a standard action to move; you do not provoke attacks of opportunity from that creature in this action
Trick Attack (at will) - full action; move and melee attack; make a stealth check (DC 21); on success the target is flat-footed against this attack and you deal an extra 1d4 damage
“Grease” [CR 1]
Surely having emerged, dripping, from the slime of a used car dealership that had degraded over a period of millennia, this tall black man in a red suit, with dark, straight hair slicked back all the way to his neck, robotically smiles as he extols the many wondrous properties of the snake oil he peddles.
Human envoy (he/him)
sense motive +5 (+1d6) diplomacy +5
Defense [HP 10]
EAC 10 KAC 10
Fort +0 Ref +2 Will +1
Offense
Ranged: pistol (1d6 penetrating)
Statistics
Str 10 Dex 10 Con 10 Int 12 Wis 8 Cha 14
Languages: English, Russian
“Quickfix” [CR 1]
Eyes darting around and limbs constantly moving, this young Shirren host is always active. Quick to laugh, quick to gossip, and quick to vanish, off pursuing some bold idea to increase the efficiency of their engines, only to forget why they went to the engine room in the first place.
Shirren mechanic (they/them)
Initiative +1
engineering +5 physical science +5
Offense
Melee: mechanic wrench (1d4 bludgeoning)
Defense [HP 12]
EAC 11 KAC 11
Fort +1 Ref +3 Will -1
Statistics
Str 10 Dex 12 Con 8 Int 12 Wis 8 Cha 14
Languages: Shirren, Spanish, English
Special Abilities
Shirren telepathy
Alien Creature [CR 2]
You catch a glimpse of something moving in the field of wild newgrain. You refocus your eyes and eventually can make out a long, squat shape. It has four legs and seems at least superficially mammalian, but its flat head looks almost like that of a reptile, and it has two long… antennae? in place of its nostrils, nearly indistinguishable from the newgrain stalks around it. (Life Science DC: 15) You notice the darting eyes and frantic movements of its heavy tail. Little as you know about its biology, this creature seems to be under duress. (Life Science DC: 20) This creature has evolutionarily converged to be similar to a big cat from Earth; it likely uses stealth, camouflage, and ambush tactics to bring down its prey. Keep an eye on it!
Medium animal
initiative +4
perception +5 stealth +11 (+15 in grass) acrobatics +8 athletics +8
Offense
Melee: bite +6 (1d6+3 penetrating plus sickness) 2 claws +6 (1d3+3 slash)
Defense [HP 19] (flees at half health)
EAC 14 KAC 14 (+8 against trip)
Fort +5 Ref +7 Will +2
Statistics
Str 16 Dex 19 Con 15 Int 2 Wis 13 Cha 6
Special Abilities
Alien Sickness - Whenever this creature deals damage with its bite, the victim must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC: 14) or become afflicted with the disease (onset: 1d3 hours; 1d4 Str damage once per day, Will save (DC: 14) or becomes manic; cure: 2 consecutive saves or a dose of xenoplaxicine)
Sol-Shira Border Crossing [CR varies]
When crossing the border, the PCs will need to think of something to do with the 5,000 credits worth of illicit Spanish media onboard the ship. They can choose to jettison the cargo (if they do, make sure they get money from some other source, like stashed in Musker’s quarters or something like that, to keep their wealth by level up) and get through easily, or they can make some Computers and/or Engineering rolls to sneak it through. DC for this check should be roughly 20, but give circumstance bonuses to creative thinking. If the ship is stopped at the checkpoint, an officer boards the ship to inspect its cargo hold. This officer will find any cargo that’s not hidden by the PCs personally (use appropriate rolls if it is), but will give in to Fontaine’s impassioned pleas that she needs to deliver the medicine to her sick family members (this could be the first time the PCs learn her true motivation) and allow them through on the condition that they jettison the cargo first. Any foul play in this circumstance should be strongly disadvised, as it would certainly lead to the deaths of the entire party at the hands of the military presence at the node. Award the PCs as much experience as you deem appropriate for their action (for example, jettisoning the cargo would likely be worth nothing, but successfully sneaking it across the border could be worth several hundred points divided between them).
This adventure should end with the player characters hitting level 2, ideally with the following line: The ship’s AI accepts your name input, processes it for a few nervewracking moments, and then responds, “Welcome aboard the Deucalion, Captain [name]. You have the conn.” You suddenly feel the weight of responsibility. Glancing at your new crew, you realize their lives are in your hands from here on out. Then, from the port window, you see the stars. They feel so close. You could reach out, touch them, pull them closer.. The AI continues, “Captain, what are your orders?”. This gives the captain a chance to say something dumb and spacey and adventurous and sets the tone for the remainder of the campaign. Here, give the players any remaining XP they need to hit level two.
The players are expected to have 1000 of the 1300 necessary experience points for level two, maybe a bit more. At a minimum, the characters are expected have five encounters during this adventure totalling 3000 experience points between them: two against both Musker and Bluefrog, and one against the creature. Each of these encounters are about CR 2 (worth 600 XP), and can be approached in a couple of ways. Musker will be open to diplomacy-based tricks if intoxicated (which won’t be hard to do), and if he’s effectively disarmed for the evening in any way, still give the players that experience for defeating a CR 2 enemy. Bluefrog will be hard to trick or get the drop on and definitely won’t come quietly, but if the players find a great solution (or kill them hard), they may not reappear on Redsun Prior. Even still, give them the experience (lump this in with the starship bonus) for prevailing in the encounter. Beyond these encounters, it’s entirely plausible that they’ll have others worth points (like persuading Quickfix to join the crew or meeting and dealing with Grease). These encounters will usually be easy, short and thus worth less, but don’t hesitate to hand out experience in increments of 25 or 50 if you feel the players deserve it. If they end up close to the 1300 mark, let them get a little closer to level 3 by still giving them two or three hundred experience for ending the adventure.
Finally, make absolutely triple sure that Fontaine dies. Moving forward, you want the players to be the masters of their own destinies, not answering to an NPC.