Starfinder Kaidan Star Empire (setting supplement)

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Working on publishing a series of setting guides set in my Kronusverse (alternate Milky Way galaxy) and Colonial Space. For the first location in Colonial Space, I'm recreating my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror upgraded to Starfinder RPG. At this point, I'm creating illustrations and I started by creating illustrations of the Kaidan Imperial Navy...

The only image showing the largest vessel, the Mikado class dreadnought, I created in an image showing all the capital ships of the navy. I also included all boats of the navy from destroyer down...

 

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Here are some illustrations of the individual boats and ships...

Shuriken class fighter (in squadrons aboard carriers and dreadnought), and an Ushi class armed transport.

 

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Capital ships, less the dreadnought as individual illustrations: Butai (ranger) destroyer, Taka (hawk) battle cruiser, Tsunami battleship, and Arashi (storm) carrier.

 

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Kaidan-kyo imperial capital, located on the planet, Kaidan. It is in the shape of the imperial crest, the Chrysanthemum. This city is primarily an administrative headquarters for government and the megacorps, as well as shopping, and upper class residences. Most of the people live in smaller communities scattered across the globe resembling 16th century towns and villages, without obvious modern conveniences, including lights. All traffic is below ground via high speed subway systems. Everyone dresses in traditional clothing - kimonos and sandals. Technology is used by is hidden. A folding fan my serve as a phone and IPAD, for example.

 

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Ukiyo-e Station, leased and operated by the Yoshiwara Entertainment Group (a private company owned by the Yakuza), as a kind of Las Vegas with an emphasis on Japanese hedonistic ways. The forward torus is for family friendly "Disney World" entertainment center, while the aft torus is adult entertainment - catering to every fetish, preference no matter how perverse. Prostitutes, highly paid courtesans, entertainer/courtesans and ultra realistic sex dolls, in addition to casinos, every kind of stage show, drug dens and violent sports. Your social caste doesn't mean anything here, only how much money you have to spend. Ukiyo-e literally translates to "views from the Floating World", with the floating world being a place that is all activities that occur there are fully meaningless - for entertainment purposes only. So I figure "a floating world" in a sci-fi setting is best depicted as a space station. This station is also a vessel able to take crews and guests visiting all the notable moons across the Kaidan Star system, a route that will take a year to fully accomplish as the ship's speed is so slow.

Each torus measures 7.5 miles in diameter, with a circumference of 23.8 miles, the torus width is one mile, and the interior height is 1.25 miles from deck to ceiling, and spins at .38 rotations per minute to create 1 G force, with plenty of square footage to host tens of thousands of guests and staff within each torus. Guests stay in hotels inside the torus section, while off-duty staff reside and work within the central hub. The vessel measures 10 miles from stem to stern, and colossal scaled.

 

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The Spacers Guild is the merchant marine service in Colonial Space, and colonial economies exist because of the spacers guild. While the bulk of their fleets consist of bulk freighters (huge) - the smaller ship shown, and using my adjusted cargo hold tonnage for ship scale (included in Starships, Stations and Salvage Guide). Interstellar logistics involve using Odysseus class massive container ships, which can also be configured to haul spherical gas/liquid tanks and other cargos. This vessel is 14,000 feet long, just a 1000 shy of colossal scale. The costs in taxes and insurance going to actual colossal scale isn't cost effective, so this is the largest ship used in the Spacers Guild. Many Phormio class bulk freighters are privately owned and operated, though it is still a mainstay of the Spacers Guild fleet.

 

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I'm creating the great samurai houses of the feudal period as the great corporations of Kaidan. I'm creating illustrations that has the feel of a corporate ad, showing vessels and equipment as products created by a given Samurai house, the main corporation uses the houses kammon symbol for a logo. Then I list 4 other companies owned by the same house. Not only are they corporations, but just as their feudal counterpart, each maintains it's own security force (private army), and in every way act as they'd done a thousand years ago, just with sci-fi accourterments.

Takeda Corporation, like their famous Sengoku Period forebears is a great military house, and in the current empire are the military industrial complex. This is a wealthy and powerful martial house.

Shimizu Biotech Corporation, is an homage to my mother's family, as both samurai and as physicians, showing an ambulance fighter scaled ship and a colossal hospital ship.

Sagara Corporation are an ocean and heavy industries company specializes is sea ship building, a sea lander oceanographic station, and the Nautilus small fighter, submersible ship on contract with the Colonial Navy (as the Kaidan Star Empire is a part of the Confederation of Independent Colonies of Colonial Space).If you think it's odd to design an llustration that appears as a corporate ad, I think it's a great way to build the setting...

I plan to do five or six more...

Each house will get a page or two of text content, describing it's history and it's direction in the 'modern age', each one will sport a private security force which is their private army, much as what they would have had in the feudal times. Since the largest Japanese Corporations today were the great samurai houses during the Sengoku Period, it only makes sense that in a sci-fi megacorp setting, the megacorps are the great samurai houses.

 

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Another Samurai House/Corporation as a major mining concern in the star system. Shown is Yamana Station, once a mine operation, but once it's value content was mined away, the remaining asteroids and structures was converted into an ore processing system and massive forge inside the asteroid. It is also an administrative center for the many mining colonies within the asteroid belt.

 

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The next Samurai House/Corporation intro illustrations.

Hori House/Corporation is the primary builders of extra-planetary mega structures, especially space colonies like toruses. As a heavy industry company they manufacture an assortment of heavy equipment machines, including the tiny utility ship, the Constructor Crab. This house has strong ties with Yamana Corporation and like them are pro-union.

Maeda House/Corporation is the primary producers of food in the system, despite the robust agriculture on the Kaidan homeworld. Farm rings are toruses where soil based farming occurs that is fully managed by drones. While Maeda prefers natural systems like using bees for pollination, bees use the sun for navigation, and spinning toruses disrupt their navigation. An attempt was made to train the bees using life-like drones, however it proved futile. So the drones now do the cross pollination for the farm rings.

 

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A samurai house you should be familiar, and if argue, that no that's a ninja house, you'd also be correct, by Hattori was a samurai...