Dirigible
Explorer
Because of all the great help you guys have given me, I've decided to expand the range of my request for input (no good deed unpunished and all that). So, here's more info on the campaign:
It's mostly inspired by Andromeda (which we don't have in NZ, so it was a novelty when I saw it in the UK), with ideas and elements taken from a zillion or so other sources. The PCs are the crew of a ship patrolling the edge of human colonised space, keeping pirates on their toes and conducting diplomacy where needed to keep the colonies peaceful and integrated. They are called to a distant system, where a conflict has emerged between the planetary colonists and asteroid miners has arrisen. The miners came across an alien artifact, a huge nodule of biotech coated in rock; they claim it as finders keepers, but the colonists claim it is not covered by the miner's contract, and belongs to the system as a whole (ie, them). The PCs have to try and keep things civil between them, and find a solution. However, just as things seem to be going along nicely, the side I feel has been most slighted in the negotiations makes an attempt to seize the artifact.
And hit the 'on' switch.
The artifact hatches into a ship; the first aliens anyone has ever seen, bar a significant number of ruins. A big, nasty ship, that begins to exterminate everyone nearby. The ship is a Berserker, an automated vessel left by an ancient alien race to prevent the rise of any interstellar civilisation that could threaten them. At this stage, it'll be like the Shadows were when they first appeared on B5: implacable, invulnerable, relentless and destructive. The captain of the PC's vessel, an NPC, sees that battle is futile; the Berserker shrugs off every weapon they throw at it. He decides to try and take it out in a blaze of glory, by breaching the ship's Zero-Point Core, which should create a blast powerful enough to take out the entire asteroid belt, and the alien ship with it.
But things don't work out that way. The ZPC is very experimental, and rather than unleashing a hellish blast, the energy is channeled inwards, tearing the ship out of this universe for a time. To everyone outside, it collapses into a wink of light, gone. Well, heck. The Berserker shrugs its metaphorical shoulders, and goes about making mankind a distant memory. Sending out a call to its nearby colleagues to awaken, they start to destroy every ship, station and colony they can find. And they are very good seekers.
When the PC's return to realspace, they find the colonies in disarray, with dozens of human-occupied planets scorched and barren by the Berserker's methodical genocide. Much of their crew simply vanished during the sojourn to... who knows where (and, worryingly, something seems to have come back with them...). They have been outside of history for a long time (I'm thinking somewhere between 25 and 50 years, but I haven't decided yet). All the jumpgates to Earth have been cut off, though the others are still active (and controlled by rapacious merchant-crimelords), and no-one knows what happened to our homeworld, though many beleive that they still hold out against the Berserkers. Society has been all but destroyed, reduced to hiding balkanised colonies struggling to survive amidst the destruction. Worse, the Berserks return from the interstellar void every now and then if they detect too much activity, and destroy it.
UNIPAX (United Nations Interplanetary Peacekeeping Force)
The PCs. Perhaps the last UN ship left in the colonies, with a heck of a job of reconstruction and reunion to accomplish.
Muse-Class Scout Cruisers
Berserkers
“...” (followed by sound of planet being reduced to nuclear slag)
Awesomely powerful relics from a long extinct civilisation, Berserker ships emerge from nests scattered across the galaxy when they are interfered with, or detect a certain level of technology in the vicinity. Activated by greedy miners, selfish colonists and meddling PC's in an outlying system, the Berserkers began a systematic annihilation of our species. They are a form of biotech, and each ship is a hideously powerful entity driven by the need to expunge sentient life.
Generally, Berserker ships frown on each other having names. Privately, however, they tend to refer to themselves by a descriptive name:
the Regulation
“Consider the attempted kidnapping a sign of my respect for your intelligence and acumen. Given your previous encounters with my operatives, I expected you would consider any overtures on my part as an attempt to entrap you. Now, let us get down to business.”
The Regulation is an interstellar crime and merchantile syndicate that controls the jumpgates: the only method of travel between solar systems. Unbeknownst to the galaxy in general, the Regulation is headed by M1-L, formerly a Governor AI (the computer charged with operating the world-wide infrastructure of a colony) of a planet destroyed by the Berserkers. In its own odd way, M1-L is a patriot; it seeks to help the PCs restablish UN control and rebuild the colonies.
Regulation ships tend to have cold, mechanistic names with overtones of criminality, capitalism and the threat of force.
the New
“No power in the Verse can stop us. Life embrace the Steel, Machine embrace the Flesh, forever and ever, Neoverse come.”
A sect of cyborgs who believe they will be spared by the Berserkers, and will take over the galaxy after humanity. The New neither worship the Berserkers or seek to destroy humanity; they regard mankind's extinction as inevitable, and the see no harm in waiting politely. In the meantime, they have a perfect society to design.
Ships of the New tend to have high-tech, aspirational names, with an overall 'Culture'-like tone.
So, things I crave to tap the collective evil genius of ENworld for:
* The weapon the Berserkers use to cleanse planets. At the moment, I'm thinking of an energy beam that causes a disruption in the strong nuclear force. Fired from orbit, the beams causes some atoms to disintegrate and others to fuse with their neighbours, sending a shockwave of ever-increasing energy around the planet that burns the whole thing to a cinder. Underground facilities and shelters tend to survive, however; this is why there are still some people left.
Other ideas are kinetic harpoons or mass drivers, so beloved of the modern sci-fi writer, or good old fashioned antimatter bombs. What do you think?
* One of the technolgies I want to emphasise in this setting is ubiquitous computing. Basically, everything on UN ships and colonies has a chip, from guns to coffee cups to books to appliances; computers are everywhere, including in the PC's uniforms. But what can I do with this?
Some of it is obvious; PC's use their collars to communicate, and their sleeves to type. The ships' computer knows where they are at all times in relation to other chips (allowing doors to open for them, elevators to predict their destinations, coffee to be brewing when the go to their quarters, and countless other creature comforts). Workstations can be more fluid, as you can enter and access data practically anywhere.
But I'm having trouble comming up with much more. Perhaps it's because I'm about five cars behind on the technology train; no palmtop, no iPod, heck, my cellphone doesn't even have vibrate
so I'm not au fait with what bleeding edge technology can do to change your behaviour. Thoughts?
It's mostly inspired by Andromeda (which we don't have in NZ, so it was a novelty when I saw it in the UK), with ideas and elements taken from a zillion or so other sources. The PCs are the crew of a ship patrolling the edge of human colonised space, keeping pirates on their toes and conducting diplomacy where needed to keep the colonies peaceful and integrated. They are called to a distant system, where a conflict has emerged between the planetary colonists and asteroid miners has arrisen. The miners came across an alien artifact, a huge nodule of biotech coated in rock; they claim it as finders keepers, but the colonists claim it is not covered by the miner's contract, and belongs to the system as a whole (ie, them). The PCs have to try and keep things civil between them, and find a solution. However, just as things seem to be going along nicely, the side I feel has been most slighted in the negotiations makes an attempt to seize the artifact.
And hit the 'on' switch.
The artifact hatches into a ship; the first aliens anyone has ever seen, bar a significant number of ruins. A big, nasty ship, that begins to exterminate everyone nearby. The ship is a Berserker, an automated vessel left by an ancient alien race to prevent the rise of any interstellar civilisation that could threaten them. At this stage, it'll be like the Shadows were when they first appeared on B5: implacable, invulnerable, relentless and destructive. The captain of the PC's vessel, an NPC, sees that battle is futile; the Berserker shrugs off every weapon they throw at it. He decides to try and take it out in a blaze of glory, by breaching the ship's Zero-Point Core, which should create a blast powerful enough to take out the entire asteroid belt, and the alien ship with it.
But things don't work out that way. The ZPC is very experimental, and rather than unleashing a hellish blast, the energy is channeled inwards, tearing the ship out of this universe for a time. To everyone outside, it collapses into a wink of light, gone. Well, heck. The Berserker shrugs its metaphorical shoulders, and goes about making mankind a distant memory. Sending out a call to its nearby colleagues to awaken, they start to destroy every ship, station and colony they can find. And they are very good seekers.
When the PC's return to realspace, they find the colonies in disarray, with dozens of human-occupied planets scorched and barren by the Berserker's methodical genocide. Much of their crew simply vanished during the sojourn to... who knows where (and, worryingly, something seems to have come back with them...). They have been outside of history for a long time (I'm thinking somewhere between 25 and 50 years, but I haven't decided yet). All the jumpgates to Earth have been cut off, though the others are still active (and controlled by rapacious merchant-crimelords), and no-one knows what happened to our homeworld, though many beleive that they still hold out against the Berserkers. Society has been all but destroyed, reduced to hiding balkanised colonies struggling to survive amidst the destruction. Worse, the Berserks return from the interstellar void every now and then if they detect too much activity, and destroy it.
UNIPAX (United Nations Interplanetary Peacekeeping Force)
The PCs. Perhaps the last UN ship left in the colonies, with a heck of a job of reconstruction and reunion to accomplish.
Muse-Class Scout Cruisers
Vehemence of Useless Tears, Waters of Bitterness, Rare and Radiant Maiden, Night's Plutonian Shore, Naming of Parts, Twilight's Last Gleaming, Pro Patria Mori, Pleasure Dome of Xanadu, Vorpal Sword, Tasted of Desire, Widening Gyre, Hear the Falconer, Mere Anarchy, Blood-Dimmed Tide, Ceremony of Innocence, Full of Passionate Intensity, Revelation at Hand, Pitiless as the Sun, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep, Vexed to Nightmare, Rough Beast, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Glides Upon the Bitter Deeps, Torn From Native Space, Captive King, Stricken Pride, Prince of Tumultuous Skies, Strange Aeons, Cruellest Month, Intellectual Being, Poison Tree, Fearful Symmetry, He Comes to Isidora, Curves of the Planispheres
Berserkers
“...” (followed by sound of planet being reduced to nuclear slag)
Awesomely powerful relics from a long extinct civilisation, Berserker ships emerge from nests scattered across the galaxy when they are interfered with, or detect a certain level of technology in the vicinity. Activated by greedy miners, selfish colonists and meddling PC's in an outlying system, the Berserkers began a systematic annihilation of our species. They are a form of biotech, and each ship is a hideously powerful entity driven by the need to expunge sentient life.
Generally, Berserker ships frown on each other having names. Privately, however, they tend to refer to themselves by a descriptive name:
One Which Is Pleased By Xenocide, One Which Finds the Sound of Boiling Atmosphere Soothing, One Which Yearns To Quench Stars, One Which Laughs at Oblivion, One Which Ignores Please For Mercy
the Regulation
“Consider the attempted kidnapping a sign of my respect for your intelligence and acumen. Given your previous encounters with my operatives, I expected you would consider any overtures on my part as an attempt to entrap you. Now, let us get down to business.”
The Regulation is an interstellar crime and merchantile syndicate that controls the jumpgates: the only method of travel between solar systems. Unbeknownst to the galaxy in general, the Regulation is headed by M1-L, formerly a Governor AI (the computer charged with operating the world-wide infrastructure of a colony) of a planet destroyed by the Berserkers. In its own odd way, M1-L is a patriot; it seeks to help the PCs restablish UN control and rebuild the colonies.
Regulation ships tend to have cold, mechanistic names with overtones of criminality, capitalism and the threat of force.
Inevitably Successful in All Circumstances, Invisible Hand of Commerce, Motivated by Accumulation of Capital, Initiator of Negotiations, Prestigious Attainment of Objectives, Negligeble Concern for Bystanders, Exchange of Goods and Services, Fiscal and Military Endowment, Maximum Gain, Minimum Cost, Ensurer of Peaceful Relations, Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means, Proceeds of Crime, Oppourtunity Costs, Dismal Science, Culture-Logic of Late Capitalism
the New
“No power in the Verse can stop us. Life embrace the Steel, Machine embrace the Flesh, forever and ever, Neoverse come.”
A sect of cyborgs who believe they will be spared by the Berserkers, and will take over the galaxy after humanity. The New neither worship the Berserkers or seek to destroy humanity; they regard mankind's extinction as inevitable, and the see no harm in waiting politely. In the meantime, they have a perfect society to design.
Ships of the New tend to have high-tech, aspirational names, with an overall 'Culture'-like tone.
Appeal To Reason, Ethics Gradient, Yawning Angel, Tactical Grace, Gray Area, Ambient Morality, Ends Of Invention, Eschatologist, Division by Zero, Intellectual Ascendance, Translucent Logic, Student of Phenomena, Asymptotic Momentum, Divisible Prime, Agorophile, Truth From Error, Pressure Of Grace, Pace of Nature, Universal Infrastructure, Face to the Sun, Degree of Freedom, Indistinguishable From Magic, Attempting the Impossible, Reconnaissance Without End, Variation of Sadness, Cultivation of Ideas, Age of Reason, Emitter-of-Radiances, Manifesting Destiny, Multiaural Perceptor, Singularity-Negator, Triumphant Destiny, Destroyer-of-Death, Universal Meta-beginning
So, things I crave to tap the collective evil genius of ENworld for:
* The weapon the Berserkers use to cleanse planets. At the moment, I'm thinking of an energy beam that causes a disruption in the strong nuclear force. Fired from orbit, the beams causes some atoms to disintegrate and others to fuse with their neighbours, sending a shockwave of ever-increasing energy around the planet that burns the whole thing to a cinder. Underground facilities and shelters tend to survive, however; this is why there are still some people left.
Other ideas are kinetic harpoons or mass drivers, so beloved of the modern sci-fi writer, or good old fashioned antimatter bombs. What do you think?
* One of the technolgies I want to emphasise in this setting is ubiquitous computing. Basically, everything on UN ships and colonies has a chip, from guns to coffee cups to books to appliances; computers are everywhere, including in the PC's uniforms. But what can I do with this?
Some of it is obvious; PC's use their collars to communicate, and their sleeves to type. The ships' computer knows where they are at all times in relation to other chips (allowing doors to open for them, elevators to predict their destinations, coffee to be brewing when the go to their quarters, and countless other creature comforts). Workstations can be more fluid, as you can enter and access data practically anywhere.
But I'm having trouble comming up with much more. Perhaps it's because I'm about five cars behind on the technology train; no palmtop, no iPod, heck, my cellphone doesn't even have vibrate
so I'm not au fait with what bleeding edge technology can do to change your behaviour. Thoughts?
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