Random Interstellar Empires/Star Kingdoms

[taalismn]

I believe there're from one of the Nightspawn books....Between the Shadows, I think....There's also some expansion in one of the Rifters. And frankly there's not a lot of hardcore information on them...sorta like alchemists in PFRPG.

They're essentially high-power spells that acquired sentience and human form and became self-sustaining.

[SolCannibal]

I believe there're from one of the Nightspawn books....Between the Shadows, I think....There's also some expansion in one of the Rifters. And frankly there's not a lot of hardcore information on them...sorta like alchemists in PFRPG.

They're essentially high-power spells that acquired sentience and human form and became self-sustaining.

That's interesting and should be fun to look into and compare on what do they differ or resemble a number of creatures with inherent magical powers/spell-like abilities. Not like one form fits all, or some ambitious magicians wouldn't experiment further, from singular spells to manuals or whole living grimoires of sorts...

[taalismn]

Until somebody tells me otherwise, I tend to treat Living Spells as a mixed bag of attributes, but with an orientation based around the spell they were built around...examples: A LS of Supernatural Strength would be heavily muscled and athletic, but perhaps not too intelligent, a Spinning Blades spell would have that spell as an ability, but would be an excellent knife fighter, swordsman, or skilled in blade lore, a Charismatic Aura LS would have a high MA and be able to radiate the ability to encompass people around them. etc. They have some resistances to magic and psionics, generally show up well to magic senses, don't suffer from a lot of mundane maladies, and may or may not age.

Something like longer-lived versions the Ludicrous Mage Create Carnies simulicra.

[taalismn]

The United Systems Alliance Joint Command Fleet---The Second Generation(Spacer Academies)
The severe young woman in the black, silver, and green jumpsuit and cadet pips of a USAJC Fleet midshipman saluted smartly. The Captain raised an eyebrow as she read the middie’s name-bar.
“Midshipman Murchison, correct? First assignment out of Hghguard school? You’re from Kendselson, yes?”
“Yessir, Newstart Landing, sir!”
“Second generation?”
“First actually, from Earth...Earth-Shute One. I was eight years old when my parents decided to flee the death clouds to the southlands rather than sit and die. Fortunately an angel patrol saw and picked us up before we got irradiated. I got a window seat on the evac shuttle up from Agasar, saw the Fleet in orbit and fell in love. First chance I got I applied for spacer school.”
“I’d have thought the Kendelsonians would be reluctant to let their young people go offworld while they’r still settling in. Want to build up their population and all.”
“I banked gene samples before I shipped off. And half my wages go back home. Wanted to be part of the Fleet and my parents couldn’t say no. I serve both homeworld and nation.”
“Welcome aboard, then. I look forward to watching your progress.”

“Some member worlds still regard space training as glamorous and adventurous, others approach it with near-religious zeal, while others casually treat it as equivalent to getting your automobile license. We get all types applying for academy training. Doesn’t matter where they come from, we treat them all the same. We strive to turn out the best damn spacers we can, and if we do our jobs right, with adequate preparation and a bit of luck, upon graduation they might just survive their first real missions.”

“So...where are we taking our senior cadets this year for their ‘Big Hike’? Trycos, Panmandu, Styx, Cenax, or someplace REALLY dangerous?”

“No, I don’t have any objections to any of our academy people doing a season or two as guest teachers with the United Systems. I expect them to learn as much as they teach.”
-Admiral Horace Shaw, CAF

While virtually all USA worlds with any sort of space presence have some sort of training programs(even if it’s an apprenticeship in the cockpit of a cargo shuttle), more formal and extensive programs are becoming available thanks to the United Systems University and the Alliance Joint Command. Currently the major centers of training are on worlds that already had the robust economies to support mercantile and space defense fleets, so expanded into more proactive operations, but the USA is looking into building new schools as its extent and activities increase. With the expansion of the Jint Command forces, the USA has to build up reserves of trained and experienced personnel held to a high standard of professionalism. A network of advanced raining academies is emerging on the Fringe-frontier to supply them.
Specific curricula vary from school to school, but in general, USA space academy training with a military career in mind covers both space and planetside training. Familiarization with zero-gravity activity, the basics of space navigation, primary spaceship systems, and both space and basic planetside survival are covered. Senior year training will include several offworld excursions to colonial worlds to ‘rough it’ under ‘wild’ conditions and to acclimate cadets to alien environments.
Spacecraft training will be aboard several different types of vessels, starting with civilian transports and culminating in extended operational training aboard a military vessel(typically an older demilitarized vessel with facilities for training in different specialties, such older Sangus, Javelins, and Blackjacks). Familiarization with spacestation operations will also be covered, and most serious training academies will have dedicated space platforms for this purpose.
Upon learning the basics, and proving their strength of will and character, graduates will proceed to advanced training in their Occupation Specializations, and be assigned to their first operational posting aboard a warship or space platform to start their carreers.
Naturally, not everybody makes the cut. Those who flunk out frequently go on into merchant marine services with lower standards, and a few of the very unsuitable are reprimanded to possible therapy(or law enforcement watch lists). Those who pass the USAJC standards, though, can arguably be counted among the better-trained military professionals in the Three Galaxies.

Notable Space Academies in the United Systems Alliance:
*Eugenia---Prior to the formation of the USA, Eugenia had the largest space militia and training programs, so it was a fairly simple matter to expand the programs and enrollment. Eugenia’s HighGuard Academy continues to be the best in the USA, with advanced combat training in nearby desert systems. (Optional: Graduates of the Eugenian academies get a +1 on Initiative in space combat, and a +1d6% to spacecraft piloting skills).

*Kai-Shem---Regarded as one of the physically-toughest training schools because most of the training was designed around the rugged minotaur physiologies of the locals. Grel-Sada, the ‘Grindstone’, is especially popular with heavy-gravity worlders able to tough out the rigorous and demanding phys-ed components of training. (Optional: Graduates of the Kai-Shem academies get a +1d4 to the P.S. and P.E. attributes).

*Gilbert----Space academy in Gilbert’s system is considered a ‘gentleman’s school’, complete with odd local traditions, but it produces a good share of excellent sailing masters. Though it borrows heavily from CAF training, it has also adapted USA MOS programs as well. (Optional: Graduates of the Gilbert academies get a +1d4 to the M.E, attribute, the extra skill of Social Etiquette(Galactic) at +5%, and a +1d6% to Tecnnical and Cultural skills. Or, conversely, graduates may choose a CAF OCC).

*Jorgmundson---- This industrial center also has some very dense asteroid belts that make for good training grounds, and the Jorgmundsonians are also very enthusiastic about live-fire exercises. Given the dangers of pirates and exolife around the Jorgmundson home system, training is hard and frequently dangerous, and many cadets graduate proudly bearing scars to prove it. (Optional: Graduates of the Jorgmundson academies get a +1 on Initiative in personal combat, and a +1d6% to spacecraft piloting skills).

*Lakye----A generation’s worth of nomadic wandering space in search of a home have taught the Tme a thing or two about training spacers, and their newly-established schools around their new homeworlds are sharing that expertise. The Tme have opened their schools to non-Tme to further cement close relations with their allies, and early graduating classes are proving the wisdom of that move. (Optional: Graduates of the Lakye academies a +10% to weapons systems and sensor operations skills).

*Tarkulaam/Thelheim----After the Central Party’s commissars and political toadies were cleared out, the military fleet academies of these former Cynoceran worlds saw top to bottom reforms, including the removal of most of the sadists who once excessively culled the cadet classes in favor of obedience and political reliability . Though there have been some protests from the Odina Federation about a restarting of military training schools by worlds of their former nemesis, the former Cynocerans in the breakaway worlds are actually looking forward to a coming era of increased galactic trade and exploration and intend to be ready for it. (Optional: Graduates of the former Cynoceran academies get a +1d6% to the Weapons Systems skill).

*Regoniss Tard-Rebla./Res’shel---The Rebliss maintain a very serious and comprehensive space training program, though it’s almost exclusively available only to the Rebliss, A few guest cadets have found the training psychologically trying, given Rebliss mental attitudes, and have concluded that space travel is as much a philosophical concept to the Rebliss as it is a physical practice. Others have described Rebliss training as ‘long tedious stretches of utter boredom, punctuated by random moments of terror’ with final exams being anxiety-inducing in anticipation of what the instructors are planning to pull on cadets. (Optional: Graduates of the Rebliss academies get a +1 on Initiative, and a +1d6 to the M.E. attribute).

Of Mention:
*Skensi---The Skenzians pretty much taught themselves space operations dealing with their pirate problems. Though small, their spacer academies train rigorously and with hard purpose, though overlaid with aristocratic traditions almost as pervasive as Gilbert’s. Military spacers are also expected to be proficient in at least one bladed weapon, especially swords, against possible boarding actions. (Optional: Graduates of the Skensian academies get an extra Ancient Weapons Proficiency skill and a +1 to strike/parry with it).

*Quishin---The Kamasaugh have recently begun accepting non-Kamasaugh applicants into their space academies, despite the distances involved. As the Kamasaugh regard space travel as a spiritual experience, the raining of spacers tends to be rather unconventional to say the least, and many cadets drop out early rather than effectively convert to the Kamasaugh religious/philosophical beliefs. Some have described Kamasaugh training regimens as being as trying as Rebliss schooling, but for those seeking familiarization with magic and spiritual aspects of space travel, the Kamasaugh schools are highly regarded. (Optional: Graduates of the Kamasaugh program can gain a +1d6 PPE, and a +1 to save vs Magic and Horror Factor).

*Vybrant----The Brising Spacer Academy was effectively a finishing school for elites in the Vybrant/Tolscant system. It is also out of date and was, until fairly recently, shot through with corruption. Since an incident that saw an entire cadet cruise-class abducted by slavers, and contact with the United Systems Alliance, the Brising Academy has come under intense scrutiny and long-overdue overhaul to root out its problems and bring it up to date. It may yet arise to be an important educational center again, but until then, a number of more open-minded Vybrantan -clan families have been enrolling their young people in outsystem USA schools.

[taalismn]

Random Roll Tables:(United Systems Alliance Character Origins)

Personal Origins:
01-40% Fringe Colony---You have your roots in the new frontier

41-55% Strandee from Another Dimension---You were sucked through a dimensional rift, or maybe extradimensional aliens abducted you from your homeland. The USA offered you sanctuary, safety, and maybe the best chance of getting back to your homeworld.

55-65% Refugee from an Extradimensional Shatterworld. Your homeworld turned into hell, but maybe you found an escape hatch to safety, or somebody reached across dimensions and gave you a way to escape extinction.

66-80% Metroworld---You hail from a developed coreworld or star system. Though metroworlds have been known to economically or environmentally fail, by and large they tend to be stable, command more resources and affluence than other worlds. They also tend to be rather static and hidebound in their ways in the worse of cases. You may be a child of privilege, or one of those in the lower classes. The United Systems Alliance offers adventure, a change of pace, or opportunities denied you back home.

81-95% Refugee from a Failed Colony---You come from a land of failed hopes, optimism that didn’t pan out, dreams that were crushed by cruel reality. The United Systems Alliance is a potential second chance.

96-00% Cosmic Nomad---You were born and raised on a starship wandering the stars, with no one fixed homeland. You could consider yourself a citizen of the cosmos or a social misfit isolated from mainstream society.

Reasons for Joining the United Systems Alliance Military

01-10% Escape-- You want off the mudball, suffocating society or festering hive of a homeworld you were born on to escape being dragged back down into it. You may be escaping legal trouble, or maybe a bad domestic situation, or some serious boredom, but the prospect of getting shot at on the galactic marches looks a lot more inviting than getting stuck back home.

11-20% Economic/Environmental Refugee----Your homeworld’s overcrowded, or in economic collapse, or resources or scant; joining the offworld military gets you off and out, gets you employed, and either allows you to seek greener pastures or acquire money and resources to help the folks back home.

21-30% Idealist---You believe in something greater than yourself. It might be spreading the word of your planet’s god(s) or it may be that you subscribe to the United Systems Alliance’s credos of helping others, unity in action, and freeing the enslaved. You’re going to carry the torch of enlightenment to the cosmos, spearhead the crusade, and herald the arrival of civilization.

31-35% Drafted---You really don’t want to leave your comfy homeworld, but your government/leadership sez otherwise. You signed a contract or made a deal and the other party exercised a clause or condition that allowed themto send you offworld. Maybe you’re already part of your homeland’s military, and you just got assigned to an offworld tour of duty with the Allies. Or maybe you’re doing penance or serving out a sentence for a crime that allowed you to pay the penalty in service. You’re hoping to serve your time uneventfully before returning home, but you’re afraid that the universe might not be so accommodating.

36-40% Honor Debt--You or your people were saved or helped by the United Systems Alliance or one of its members at some point in the past. You and your people believe in paying back that debt with service. Maybe all your people have to pay with is their blood and sweat, but the debt will be paid.

41-50% Born for Service----You were born or bred for a specific purpose, perhaps as an experiment or as a production-line caste. Whether you escaped a life of servitude or were assigned to duty, you find yourself falling back on what you were created to do...at least until you find new purpose.

51-60% Warrior Tradition--Your family, culture, or species prides themselves on being warriors, and the USAJC offers opportunities for service and glory. This may require you to work with different Others, perhaps even species and cultures you might otherwise have considered enemies or targets, but your discipline will not be found wanting.

61-70% It’s the Money, Stupid---You’re in the USAJC for the pay, and the potential of acquiring loot. Though the USA isn’t about plundering, it is a little loose on disposing of captured assets of enemy states, and a little free about distributing land on new worlds, so there’s a good chance you could get a piece of that. Of course, if you’re of a less scrupulous alignment, you may be looking for an opportunity to do a little unauthorized acquisition of your own on the side, sc ore some trade contacts, and make a few lucrative deals.

71-80% Glory and Adventure----You don’t seek material wealth as much as you seek attention, excitement, and achievement. You want to stand tall and victorious and be able to boast of being one of the best. If you’re of a more selfish bent, you look to martial prowess as a tangible stepping stone or clout to high political or social standing.

81-90% Revenge---You or your people were done dirt by somebody or something; maybe it was the Splugorth, or pirates, or the CCW that abandoned your colony, but joining the Armies of the Fringe seems the best way of paying back that debt of blood, by hunting your former oppressors down or humiliating those high-pockets that left you behind.

91-00% Personal Quest---You’re looking for something in the cosmos and the USA’s legions give you a better chance of finding it. Maybe it’s lost tribes of your people, family you lost when you were a slave, ancient artifacts of your culture, your dimensionally-lost homeland, or maybe you’re seeking meaning, but it’s always on your mind alongside your assigned duties.

[taalismn]

Yavuul(United Systems Alliance Protectorate)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
(aka ‘Ustin’s Starworld’, ‘Wurmworld’)
“Talk to the humans, but always respect the vurms.”

“I’ve seen Yavu-vurms that can exude acid from their skins that can burn through hull-metal, yet I’ve seen the local Yavuulans stark-naked snuggle up full skin contact to those same vurms and not be bothered by even a rash. ”

“Despite the fact that this place was lost for several centuries, it seems that almost as soon as we arrived in-system, other starships began to show up hot on our heels. We suspect that there’s leaks in the expedition system, though we weren’t exactly deep-secret, and there’s plenty of groups that are eager to follow on any possible system discoveries or contacts and be first in to stake claims, claim-jump, or strike up lucrative trade deals with the locals, be they new sophant species, or lost colonials. Problem is, some of these trailers, for various reasons, don’t wait for us to clear the planet for open landings, and try to make their own landfalls. They learn the hard way why slow and careful’s the way to proceed. Three private expeditions had to leave in a hurry with casualties, and two lost their ships altogether when the local virms burned through their landing gear. Fortunately the locals let us rescue the survivors and clean up the mess of the wreckage before they could become environmental crisises. But we’ve already got another half-dozen in orbit awaiting an opportunity to go down, with or without our permission. ”

“The whole time I spent interviewing the village elders, I was aware that I was being watched from all sides...not just by the human colonists, but by their native companions. Everywhere, especially out of the corner of my eyes, there was a sense of -slithering-....I could even feel vibrations in the sand underneath me. As friendly as the local humans acted, I was under no delusion that had they wished, they could have overwhelmed me in seconds, and well before I could warn my overwatch for help.”

Yavuul is a tropical, swampy, planet in the Thundercloud Galaxy. The Colvee system and its satellites contain a number of cosmic anomalies that would draw scientists to study it even if it did not have a terrestrial lifeworld in it to attract settlement. It is also a recently-declared United Systems Alliance Protectorate, to protect a Human Alliance Lost Colony.
Yavuul was first catalogued over five hundred years ago by the first wave of explorers from the Corkscrew Galaxy. During the First CCW/TGE War, a number of self-supporting colonization efforts set out to escape what some feared would be an apocalyptic galaxy-engulfing conflict. The Ustin Expedition set out for Yavuul, crossed the galactic void, made landfall in the Thundercloud, and sent a message torpedo back via roundabout route informing their backers that they had arrived at ‘Ustin’s Star’ and were beginning their colonization efforts.
That was the last anybody heard from the colonists. It was presumed that either the colonists, unaware of the Lanator Accords, were laying low...or that the colony had succumbed to some local hazard.
When finally somebody did get around to checking on old Great War-era colony expeditions, the first new arrivals(a United Systems University-sponsored expedition) to Ustin’s Star thought the latter aforementioned fate had befallen the Ustin Expedition. Though verdant, the planet that was the expedition’s destination was devoid of signs of techological civilization. The local ecology was dominated by a variety of large vermiforms, many of them hostile to the landing parties. The search seemed ill-fated until aerial reconnaisance sighted canoes out at sea and discovered humanoids gathering food along the coral-analogue reefs dotting the coastlines. After careful observation and the subsequent discovery of villages hidden in the planet’s dense jungles, tentative contact was made.
The humanoids, initially thought to be of elven lineage due to several anatomical features, were, upon clsoer examination, indeed the descendants of the lost Ustin Expedition. The human settlers seemed to have dramatically regressed technologically, though somewhere along the line, they had evidentally been genetically modified to adapt to the planet’s environment and in particular to communicate and coexist symbiotically with the local vermiforms. It is unknown whether this genetic modifcation was done by the colonists themselves using techniques they developed on their own or found, or whether some unknown second party was involved. The colonists either erased the records of their past and destroyed most of their technology, or this was done for/to them. Existing tribal histories only go back a couple hundred years.
The Yavuulans exhibit little interest in offworld affairs, including what happens in the rest of their solar system, but are very protective when it comes to Yavuul itself. The Yavuulans are intolerant of unauthorized landings and trespassers will eventually be attacked by the local life(and possibly the native humans as well, if any are near and in a position to mount offensive operations). Through careful approach and respectful negotiation(facilitated by magic and psionics), the USA has managed to gain landing rights in specific areas and establish a central base and several outposts, with even conduct a limited amout of trade. Several other expeditions, run by other organizations with less attention to caution, have fared less well upon landing, and part of the protectorate mandate declared by the USA is to control access to the planet, protecting both the natives and incautious offworlders.
Out of respect for the locals, the United Systems Alliance has promoted the use fo the natives’ name for their sun, -Colvee-, in place of the previously used designation of Ustin’s Star. Likewise, Yavuul has replaced in common usage the previously used Ustin-Two or Mathen.
Access to Yavuul is considered Restricted, enforced by the USA, though the USAJC has not yet established a comprehensive presence in the system as yet(so sneaking past the orbital patrols is still possible). The Alliance is assembling a Plymouth-class Outpost Station in orbit to service the scientfic presence and serve as part of the protectorate’s security garrison.

Solar System(Colvee/Ustin’s Star)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 3
-Gas Giant(Dykel)----Large and possessing eight moons of note, Dykel(the Yavuulan name for the planet as observed from the second world) seems likely to be developed as the colonial-industrial hub of the system.
Three of the moons have been found to have substantial deposits of Livian Crystals(an opal-like mineral that has several medicinal qualities/applications), a concentration of bodies containing the same exotic mineral that have planetologists both baffled and intrigued. The discovery has come as very good news to the USA because the valuable deposits justify the establishment of a large presence in the Colvee system, and help defray the costs of that presence. As the Yavuulans have expressed little interest in what offworlders do in the rest of the star system, this has been seen as permission for the USA to develop the Dykelian satellites.

-Terrestrial(Yavuul)----System Lifeworld

-Exotic(Estav Moylah)---- Estav Moylah is a small nebula of cosmic gases orbiting on the outskirts of the Colvee system. It is not certain what caused the formation of the gas cloud that is some 15 million miles in diameter, but it is suspected that possibly a concentration of strange matter lost cohesion and flew apart, decaying into mundane matter that forms the greater portion of the nebula’s mass, and which interacts in luminescent fashion with the solar winds both from Colvee and other stars. Estav Moylah is readily visible from Yavuul and provides a spectacular sight, especially at night.

Planet(Yavuul)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 7,000 km
Gravity: 1.3 g
Temperature: Temperate, on the tropical side. Yavuul has only small ice caps which often disappear seasonally.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Craters----Yavuul is dotted with old impact craters, suggesting, in the absence of outer system ‘sweepers’ like gas giants, that the planet has been subjected in the past to substantial bombardments.

Atmosphere:
Breathable terrestrial nitrox mix
Terrain:
Varied, but with Unusual Mineralogy. Impact craters are a common feature of the surface.
Substantial amounts of Corminium, a compound crystal of rare earths and useful in the manufacture of high-capacity energy storage systems, has been detected in Yavuul ‘s crust. The USA has not been allowed, as yet, to extract any of the mineral, but the natives have traded small amounts to the Usans, once they learned of the offworlders’ interest in the material. Though initially thought to be scavenged surface erosion findings, closer examination of the bartered crystals/nuggets show the signs of vurm teethmarks and acid burns, suggesting the natives may be actually mining the crystals with the assistance of their vurm partners.
Yavuul’s heavy gravity for its small size would also suggest an unusually dense core.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Gold/Silver
- Zinc
- Lead
- Tin
- Asbestos
- Nickel
- Thorium
- Calcite
- Corminium
Hydrosphere:
Moist: 75% of the planet’s surface is covered in open water.
It should be noted that many bodies of Yavuulan water(and soil) contain potentially toxic amounts of lead, asbestos, and thorium particles. Water filtration is a must for offworlders visiting Yavuul.
Biosphere:
Verdant---Yavuul has a rich ecology both on land and in the water. The dominant animal bodyform is vermiform and that has suggested to some xenobiologists that at some time in the past something catastrophic happened(possibly one of the planet’s ancient meteor bombardments) that killed off most other branches of life, leaving worms as the surviving line to colonize the planet.
Besides the ubiquitous vurms, other lifeforms of note include arborms, that resemble long-rooted mangrove trees, but are actually adapted marine worms grown gigantic, and which have adapted to live symbiotically with chlorophyll-rich algaes living in hteir upper arms. Massive geotines honeycomb coastal headlands with tunnels bored through the rock as the giant worms graze on various mineral strata. Schools of small parasitic remorms and hemoflukes make unprotected swimming in some waters hazardous.
Yavuul would be a bonanza for genetic engineers and biotechs looking for new material, but for the aggression of the native lifefoms endangering study and sampling efforts. It is hoped that negotiations with the Yavuulans may facilitate scientific enquiry by allowing research teams to work unmolested.
Civilization:
Settled---Yavuul is considered Settled by the previous Ustin Expedition. The planet is currently considered not open to further colonization.
Population:
4 million Human-Yavuulans
Technology:
Regressed---- The human colonists have dramatically reverted to a late stone age/early metal age level of technology. They know how to smelt some basic metals, and make metal tools, and their carpentry and holistic medical practices are quite sophisticated, but they eschew large-scale industry.
This dramatic new baselining and divergence puzzles offworld sociologists, as does the faiirly large population of the Yavuul colonists. given that they were only out of contact for several centuries. Some models of social/technological development and population growth say that the Ustin Expedition survivors, given a catastrophic collapse and loss of their technology soon after landing, could not have risen/recovered so quickly to their current levels. This has suggested to many that, together with the very obvious genetic engineering performed on the colonists, that someone or something helped them attain their current level of stability.
Economy:
Hunter-Gatherer with some farming
Wealth:
The Yavuulans do well enough, living simple lives.
Government:
T ribal; the human tribes are led by local headsmen/women(the gender ratio of male and female tribal heads is roughly equal).
Law Level:
Effectively Lawful among the Human-Yavuulan tribes. The virms sometimes exhibit territorial behavior between packs, but notably none of the Human-associated packs fight among ach other or involve their Humans in any hostilities with other virms.
Currently the USA scientific expeditions enjoy a tolerant, and sometimes amiable, relationship with the locals, as long as the former remain respectful and non-intrusive on the territories they are allowed in, but strangers and those disrepectful of local land and inhabitants(including unauthorized landings) are very likely subject to attack.
Popularity:
A few Yavuulans , however, feel a strong wanderlust and desire to see new sights, and have decided that that startravel offers them great new opportunities. Despite the difficulties involved(especially if they intend to travel with a vurm companion or several), these intrepid souls seek passage offworld.

Stability:
Stable. The Yavuulans seem to have attained a stable, perhaps symbiotic, relationship with the local lifeforms and each other.

Human-Yavuulans
Yavuulans are the descendants of human colonists of the lost Ustin Expedition.
They lost most of their technology, and now live at a simpler, more primitive state.
They have been modified via genetic engineering to adapt them to coexisting with the Yavuulan fauna. Yavuulan -Humans are distinguished most readily by pointed ears(which caused some initial confusion as to whether they were humans or a lost Star Elf colony) and by the pair of ear-like organs protruding from the top of their heads; these are really psionic receptors.,

Natural Abilities:
*Toxin Resistance----Yavuulan -Humans display a great resistance to the many poisons in their environment and local plants and animals; +8 save vs poisons.

*Resistance to Cold---Many Yavuulan -Humans eschew clothing for all but decorative or ceremonial purposes, because they are immune to normal cold and damp.

*Acid Resistance----Yavuulan -Humans produce a glandular mucus or oil from their skins that renders them effectively immune to the acid secretions of virms, as well as most other corosive agents. Even MD acids will only do SDC damage, and at HALF their normal rate.

*Physically Fit----- Yavuulan -Humans have the following bonuses: +1d6 P.E., +1d4 P.S., +1d4 P.B., +1d10 to Swimming speed.

Psionics:
YavHumans count as Minor Psychics: Base ISP is ME +3d6 +1d6 per level of experience.
*Four Sensitive Psionic powers of choice
-Comunicate with Vurms----Yavuulan -Humans can apparently commune with the local Vurms on a psionic frequency inaccessible to others. The range of this ability is unknown, but in some instances local humans have seemed to be able to call vurms from several miles away.


Yavuulan-Vurms(aka ‘Virms, ‘Vorms’,’Sehsa’, ‘Faiyu‘)
The apex lifeforms on Yavuul are multiple species of large worm-like creatures. Vermiforms are the dominant lifeform on Yavuul, ranging from tiny annelids to massive earth-moving monsters on a scale with the larger Worms of Taut(though they are of no relation). The species most commonly associated with the Human-Yavuulans, though, are several varieties of roughly man-sized serpent-forms that hunt in packs and exhibit great cunning. These have been tagged as ‘vurms’ by offworlders, though the human--Yavuulans know them by a variety of terms distinguishing various variant races, regional groups, and even specific individuals. ’Sehsa’ and ‘Faiyu‘ are the most common linguistic terms used to describe the vurms, but those are used far less often than the common name the humans use for them, but are telepathic in nature and cannot be accurately translated into vocal speech(even with Trade Two) or written language.
It is suspected that the vurms, and perhaps other lifeforms as well, are part of an actively networked Gaiaistic macroorganism or planetary consciousness. The Ustin Expedition colonists were added, by parties unknown, into the network, but outsiders will generally be attacked.
It is difficult to ascertain just how intelligent vurms really are; close study is discouraged by the aggressive mass attack response that seems inherent in the various species. Corpses for dissection are also hard to come by, as the virms tend to eat their dead and the few vurm bodies that have been recovered were either so badly deteriorated as to provide little substantial data, or else what was learned was contradicted by observed behavior of living examples.
Vurms are effectively blind, except for very rudimentary light sensing cells throughut their skins, but they have other very acute senses, including excellent senses of hearing/vibration detection, taste/smell, and extrasensory perception.


Alignments: Can be considered Anarchist or Evil(animal predator)
Lifespan: 90 years
Size: Roughly1-2 ft in dameter and about 15 ft long. Weight 400-800 lbs
Gender: Hermaphrodites producing eggs and sperm. Packs gather in shallow water to create mutual eggmasses, then contest outsider pack members approaching to attempt to fertilize the egg mass. The worthy that manage to break through the cordon fertilize the mass. Then the packs do it again with other packs in turn, attempting to run the gauntlet to gain fertilization rights.

Physical Attributes:
IQ: Generally believed to be a high Animal IQ of 8
ME: 2d6+10
MA: 2d4
PS: 2d6+10
PP: 2d6+13
PE: 3d6+12
PB: 1d6
SPD: 18 ( 13 MPH) crawling, 52( 36 MPH) swimming
(PPE): 4d4

MDC: 2d6x10
Horror Factor: 12
Natural Abilities:
*Gills----Virms can breath water indefinitely, given enough dissolved oxygen in the medium.
*Natural Swimmers---Fast swimmers
*Prowl 75% on land, 85% in water
*Track by Smell/Taste (in water) 80%
*Electromagnetic Sense----Virms can ‘smell’ electrical activity; 500 ft range.
*Sense Vibrations Underwater----Effective range of 1,000 ft.

*Resistant to Phsyical Damage----Flexible shock-absorbing bodies means that Virms take HALF damage from physical blows, concussions, and physical shock.

*Poisonous Bite-----Virm venom does 4d6 SDC or MD(depending on the physiology of the victim), plus adversely affects nerve tissue; the victim is -10 to strike. parry, dodge, and can move at only 10% of their normal speed for 2d6 hours. A successful save versus lethal poison HALVES damage and effects/ duration.

*Secrete Acid---This is apparently normally used to eat through the hard shells of the trap-worms and giant mollusks that make up a large part of the virm diet, but dispersed in water also acts to repel parasitic flukes. Virm acid does 2d6 SDC or MD(depending on the physiology of the victim), plus 1d6 per melee for 2d4 melees.

Psionics:
*Sense Auras (No ISP cost)
*Sixth Sense(No ISP cost)
*Presence Sense(No ISP cost)
*Telepathy(No ISP cost, bit only usable between other vurms and Yavuulan -Humans)
*Saves as a Minor Psychic on a roll of 12 or better.
Magic:-----
Combat: 6 attacks per melee
Initiative +1
Strike +3
Dodge +3 underwater
Damage:
Bite 2d6 +3 MD
Body Block/Ram 1d4 MD
Society:
Pack hunters, hunting/traveling in schools of 10-80 members. Larger groups are often associated with breeding activity or nearby human communities. Survivors of some of the failed modern landings reported being attacked by waves of ‘hundreds’ of vurms of various species.
Virms are cooperative with Yavuulan -Humans and have rarely ever ben observed to attack them. The nayve-colonists refer to the virms as their ‘earth-cousins’ and have been seen cooperatively hunting/fishing with them, or combining forces to bring down larger predators.

[taalismn]

The Lidian Access(aka The Androbar Pass)
“The Lidian Access and similar worm-ways explains UFO sightings for a number of world-lines and why they don’t see evidence of their visitors in local space; they aren’t traveling through interstellar space, they’re traveling through INTERDIMENSIONAL space.”

“The fact that the USA thinks enough of the Lidian Access worlds to be actively patrolling it should be of concern; if the Splugorth take renewed interest in it, it may bring the two powers into direct conflict with each other sooner than either would prefer. But there’s sufficient amounts of low-tier piracy and hints of other supernatural activity that the Alliance can use to justify their military presence in the Access.”

“Enough sociological work on the Lidian Access worlds to sponge up the output of several academic institutions. We got darknet spysats in orbit. We got several teams of on-site observers down among the locals performing studies. Of course, they’re also on the lookout for anything that might threaten the local environment and our trade routes, overseeing our local trade, and sometimes bootstrapping the locals with some introduced ideas and technology. Usually they can handle themselves, and the worlds are pretty quiet, but sometimes we got to intervene, and sometimes we capital-I Intervene. Like if hostile aliens invade, or an dinosaur killer asteroid shows up, or somebody unleashes a nasty bioweapon, or starts playing around with dark forces. Usually just a few agents are necessary, but once we had to deploy a battleship.”

“Continue developing the plans for the action on Androbar, but leave it open; we may have to expand our plans to include a larger and more permanent presence in the system if we don’t want somebody else to creep in and set up shop, taking up where the pirates we intend to oust left off.”

The Lidian Access is a region of weakened space/time that accesses several universes, including the Three Galaxies. It also has a local ‘nexus’ just outside the Androbar system, and any vessel with a correctly tuned gravitic FTL drive can use it to access a number of universes, though the nearest worlds to the gate-points are low-tech alternities.
The Lidian Access might attract more attention from those powers with extradimensional travel capabilities, but the Access’s location in near-interstellar space limits travel in general to those cultures with spacefaring abilities. The slaver-pirates of Androbar have used the Access as a means of reaching those low-tech worlds that they can raid with ease with their motley collection of low-galactic starships that would hardly constitute a threat to anybody else. The Splugorth know of the Lidian Access, but regard it as a backwater dimensional corridor, not yet worth exploiting more thoroughly(they see the pirates of Androbar as low-level dregs, though they occasionally do stop to trade with them for anything particularly interesting, as well as to put a scare into anybody hiding on the backwater). There is some archaeological evidence on Androbar to suggest that some of the ancient (and most likely extinct) cultures that inhabited the planet traveled the Lidian Access or originated through it.
The United Systems Alliance has somewhat greater interest in the Lidian Access, having discovered it fairly recently via other access means. They see it as a possibly more efficient way to access and network new potential worlds, bootstrap potential allies, and expand their territories. In addition, they are interested in eliminating the interdimensional slave trade of which Androbar is a (small, but still a) part of. As the Androbar Pass seems to be one of the primary termini of the Lidian Access, the USA speculates that if they were to take effective control of the Pass, they could theoretically control outside traffic entering the Access. This is making planning a police action against Androbar into a much more strategic action.

The worlds of the Lidian Access are generally low-tech enough that the USA can operate starships fairly close to their star systems without fear of being detected. Most inhabited planets lie within a light year’s distance of the hyperlanes charted between dimensional jump-points in the sequence. The USA has thus felt comfortable enough setting in place a series of navigational beacons to guide their ships.
Several of the Lidian Access worlds have high enough ambient magic to attract the attention of the USA. In order to secure their trade routes and keep an eye out for possible dimensional incursions off the hyperlanes, the USA pays special attention to these worlds. There is also some small covert low-level trade with the planets. The United Systems Alliance has often established small waystations(typically a PSS-SPH-2 Plymouth Multipurpose Space Platform/Habitat or colonized asteroid) nearby to assist travelers, respond to distressed starships, relay communications, monitor the inhabited planets in the neighborhood and support surveillance webs and study teams.

*From the Personal Journal of Doctor Nevias Ikkaku, Physician attached to the Livian Access Dimensional Studies Group(Lidia-Earth Eight-TeeAr):

I wanted work experience abroad, but didn’t want to join the military. Xenological medicine, even if it’s on alt-world humans, suited me just fine when Human Resources found me a slot with Planetary Expeditions and Dimensional Studies Group investigating one of the Lidian Access worlds. I could work by myself in the local medical establishment, while still part of the trade and monitor team buying tea and chocolate for transport to the waystation sitting unnoticed on the edge of this solar system. My job was to assess local medical capabilities for anything interesting and useful, but I also got to practice practical medicine.
There’s enough ambient magic on this world and random strangeness that my particular outworld and out-dimensional skillset and expertise don’t stand out. However, the local establishments cling to a set perception of reality that doesn’t publicaly acknowledge that strangeness when it crops up. My work with the cases involving the paranormal are glossed over as medical anomalies and recovery due to delayed responses to conventional treatment...or initial misdiagnosis. It keeps me out of the limelight and allows me to slip the occasional medical ‘miracle’ in unnoticed.
Still, my record with cases gets me assigned to enough ‘medical anomalies’ that I suspect somebody in hospital administration recognizes the differences.
That’s what got me assigned to the latest case.
Teenager, brought in with systemic organ failure. The kid’s dying of something that defies conventional medical analysis and treatment. One of the diagnosticians described it as the patient’s body forgetting to work. I got called in to consult. Took one look to recognize dark magic at work . SERIOUS dark magic. The sort as USA physicians we’re expected to report on as soon as possible. The poor kid’s got at best a day left, probably less as the damn curse eats her away. Family’s already gathering to say goodbye.
I had to act. As soon as I could I slipped away and hot-linked to the waystation. I needed Intervention.

*****

There, it’s done. I’ve wrecked my medical career here, and overturned the worldview of an entire planet in the process.
Bless the Meta-Judiciary and their rulings on dark magick. My report must have screamed up the chain of command because less than a hour later they’d thrown together a response team from what they had at the waystation and launched. The first I learned of it, they were already knocking the door on the atmosphere. Credit to the Alliance; they move fast when there’s supernatural evil involved and innocent lives at stake. Bless too that our version of the Prime Directive has lots of loop holes to allow the cavalry access.. The speed with which things progressed, I’d almost think they already knew about this in advance and were suited up just waiting...on second thought, given what I’ve heard about Usan precog and prognos intelligence spooks, it’s entirely possible they DID know about this and were just waiting for a sign like my call to go into action. But there’s still the fact that a dying teenager on an unaffiliated backwater dim-world triggered a top-level Alliance response.
Considering that an alien assault shuttle just broke the sound barrier(after what had to be an FTL jump to the edge of the atmosphere!) over one of the densest urban areas on the planet, landing adjacent to a metropolitan hospital, disgorged a squad of heavily armed and armored soldiers, some very obviously not humanoid, who invaded said hospital, then proceeded to (gently!)kidnap a terminally-ill local teenager from her deathbed, while stunning and abducting her family and several bystanders(including, conveniently, myself), before roaring back into the sky, to say we’ve made a splash is understating it. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cellphone cameras and webcams must have caught it on video.
The Cultural Observations section chief thinks rather optimistically that the local authorities will pass it off as a publicity stunt for a movie, while covering up the hospital raid. Of course, I imagine the military anthill’s been kicked over and they’re watching the skies now like nothing before.
But at least the kid’s going to live. Full life support down to the cellular level, magic circle protections down to the bone, stasis back-up, and every cursebreaker in the sector heading in to lend their expertise. Even have a Wayfinder merchant on stopover offering to do a soul transference if nothing else works. Justicars and Inquisitors are on the way too, I hear, to track down the source of the black magic. I still have to calm down an understandably very agitated family and some startled local colleagues who came along for the ride, but at least I can tell them there’s very real hope for this case.

“According to certain high-level sources, that little rescue effort out by Lidia-Earth Eight riled up some of the local deity-entities something bad. They’re supposed to be Hellenic Pantheon-linked.”
“If they really are, then they were encroaching on Japanese deity territory. No, those ‘Three Fates’ impressed me more as opportunistic alien intelligences playing cruel games. Did everybody a world of good to smack them around and break their toys.”
“That seems to be understating your actions, Captain Hibiki. One of your subordinates described you as a ‘primeval terror who promised to forcibly remove said Fates’ spleens or whatever passed for those organs through their eye sockets if you ever caught them playing with mortals’ lives ever again’, unquote.”
“That’s interesting coming from Sergeant Carstars, considering he was the one who threatened to murder them in their sleep if they ever tried coming after us.”
“In any event, scrying seems to indicate they’re currently cowering in their equivalent of a closet, unaware that they were being watched.”
“Good to know their security sucks so badly, if I have to pay a repeat visit to emphasize the message.”

[taalismn]

(BIG color post)
Food Production and United Systems Alliance Soft Power
“They’ll feed you when you’re down and while you’re eating, they’ll work to fix your world if they can.”

“When the call went out about the solar flare-caused famine looming on Tessburghen. it was hardly a week before the first usan relief ships arrived unannounced from their nearest worlds, their hulls packed to the rivets with foodstuffs and agro-gear. Furthermore, they weren’t afraid of the rioting that had begun on the surface; they brought their own security to protect their people and equipment while they landed the supplies and secured the distribution centers. We found out that a lot of the usan crews were from shatterworlds that had suffered their own problems and they knew what going hungry was like from personal experience.”

“Pirates on the Rim are now just as likely to try going after usan crop-worlds and food transports as more traditionally valuable cargoes. Even with the stepped-up usan anti-piracy campaigns hunting them, the bandits are twigging to the real value of the increasing agro-business shipping. They used to pass on hitting grain transports, warehouses and canneries, but somebody realized that to a lot of people calories and proteins are worth more than gold.
That having been said, there’s no shame in riding security escort on a larder-ship or harvest convoy, because more than likely you’re going to see action and earn combat-pay at some point.”

“I don’t know if it’s forgetfulness on their part or a subtle psychological campaign, but I note that in a number of the USA’s relief aide programs, their aid parcels give credit to the Dynasty, though I know that in many of the efforts, our participation has been only very indirect. So either it’s a series of misprints, a dig at us, or members of the Dynasty have been writing checks on the side and not reporting them to the Financier Grandee. Regardless, the PR feedback has been most positive for us.”
----Tralv Maldan, Deputy Manager of the Financier Grandee, Altess Dynasty.

“It’s understandable why many Usan worlds are obsessed with food production; many have been only one or two meals away from anarchy in the past and want to secure their food supplies by various means. Once they did that, though, and built up comfortable surpluses, they began supplying their neighbors with exports and feeding others, in part to secure alliances and making sure their trade wasn’t interfered with. It seems to have worked out well for them so far.”

“Admittedly, a steady diet of the same-pattern magically-conjured meat and vegetables can get rather monotonous after a while, but it beats the alternative. The usans could sell their magic insta-food spud buckets, rock-meat convertors, bread-makers and salad-balls for a LOT more than they typically ask and they’d still get the money. They HAVE to know what the black market gouges in sales of second-hand wiztech food-makers.”

Between their opening up new colony settlements, their biotech, and their food synthesis technologies and magic, the USA has considerable food production resources at their disposal. Originally intended to give their members food security, storable reserves against future need, and leave a little for offworld trade, their food production programs have since blossomed into powerful political tools. The USA emergency relief projects and food shipments to distressed worlds have given them great clout with the mainstream galactic community. Regularly-scheduled ‘larder ships’ travel between the various member worlds and colonies, transporting foodstuffs for sale, encouraging trade and economic development, familiarizing USA citizens with what their neighbors are producing and eating, and setting aside some of the surplus for leaner times and emergencies. The USA maintains a number of such warehouse caches of foodstuffs and equipment against food crisis contingencies.
Besides warehousing agricultural surplus, the USA also stockpiles TW food-producing gear, terraforming/bioremediation equipment, and ready-to-go agricultural modules that can be set up to ‘hot box’ crops, such as forced-growth hydroponics.
The USA is also promoting ‘food tourism’, inviting outsiders to visit their worlds to sample unique foodstuffs and regional cuisines. Surprisingly, the Altess have done much to promote USA-produced ‘luxury’ foodstuffs, often through conspicuous consumption of them(though some of the promotionals have been decidedly cheesy in execution, as with the much-parodied ‘Altess Rim-Yummy!’ ads seen in many sectors, while other ad-spots have bordered on outright food-snobbery). But people have taken notice of what’s being served at Altess social functions and of the heavily-escorted ‘special delivery’ freighters making runs between the Altess homeworlds and the Rim.
The result has been that the USA has enjoyed considerable diplomatic goodwill for its humanitarian efforts, and respect for being both self-sustaining and self-assertive(especially when the USA runs blockades in the many fringe rim-wars to deliver much-needed food supplies to beleaguered populations). One CCW official called it ‘sandwich diplomacy’, referring to both the giving away of food and analogizing food relief as a ‘ soft nutritional filling between two slabs of armor’.


Agrobots----
“The GNE KNOWS by now that many of its robots are being hack-possessed by psionic entities, but as long as the things don’t pose a danger to organics, the geeners don’t mind them. Why? Turns out the possessed robots are actually MORE efficient, even with sleep breaks, at taking care of the crops and increasing their yields. So they let the ‘bots take their naps and their contemplation breaks, let the poetry flow from the fields, and watch the bumper harvests come in at the end of the grow-season. ”

The USA is also a big producer of agrobots of various types which are sold, often at cur-rate prices, to developing worlds along the Rim. Just as the USAJC uses robots and drones as ‘force multipliers’ for its forces, the USA’s agrobot programs effectively increase the labor pool for starter colonies and terraforming efforts. Worlds like Kendelson, New Styx, Cenax and Kaxxion make use of large number s of ‘bots to expand their croplands and food production.

‘AgroBob’---Agricultural Labor Robot(s)

‘AgroBob’ is just another of the United Systems Alliance’s growing stable of agricultural robots, ranging from drone farm tractors to giant walking nomadic agrarian forestry platforms.
‘AgroBob’ specifically is a farm-adapted Paladin Steel PS-Rb-02 ‘Magnus’-frame humanoid robot skinned in stain-resistant, dirt-shedding plasteel, fitted with various environmental sensors, and programmed for crop or livestock management. Agrobobs are counted among the smarter agrobots, and cannot only directly tend crops, but can also supervise other drones, such as crop-scanner fliers and robo-plows, to specific fields and farm areas. They are also humanoid enough to drive/pilot most agricultural vehicles such as plows, tractors, and harvesters.

Other robot types may be used for wrangling larger livestock and protecting croplands from various local pests.

Typical Stock Agrobot Conversions:
- PS-HULR-02b Busbee Light Bipedal Utility Rbot Drone
-PS-R-DWB-01 ‘Dweeb’ Domestic Work Robot, Light
-PS-R-10 ‘DanBot’ Humanoid Utility Drone
-PS-Rb-02 Magnus Semi-Autonomous Humanoid Utility Robot
-PS-R-15 Semi-Autonomous Utility Robot (Fully robotic version of the Maczek Full Conversion Cyborg)
-PS-TAA02 ‘CyberSpinne’ Semi-Autonomous Android, Cybernetic Intelligence Life Assistant(typically assigned to running greenhouses and maintaining farm equipment)
-PS-HLUR-03 ‘Atlas’ Heavy Labor Utility Robot
-PS-ROVAR-02 ‘Rovar’ Ground Exploration Robot, (Remote Observation Vehicular Autonomous Robot)
-PS/ASI-R-BS5-0 Semi-Autonomous Police Security Drone(Interior prisoner cage replaced with a small animal cage, sprayer tank, planter rack or harvest bucket)

-A number of FALSTAFF, CILA and MARI androids have also been programmed with farmwork in mind, often as supervisors and administrative assistants on farms.

Typical Modification Upgrades:
*Environmental Sensors---- Soil chemistry probes, molecular analyzer, IR optics. humidity sensors, weather gauges. Livestock-wrangler ‘bots may be fitted with medical scanners for examining animals. Can include cell-sample biopsy probes.
*Stain/Dirt-Resistant Skin---Sheds dirt, sap, and agricultural chemicals.
*Soft Earth Footpads---For those ‘bots with feet or treads, wider foot-soles or tread-’grousers’ allow the drones to cross soft soil and mud more easily.
*Water/Chemical Sprayer-----For spot irrigation or dispensing of fertilizers and pesticides.

Typical Programming Packages:
(Agriculture)
*Farming and Gardening 85%
*Identify Plants & Fruits 92%
*Botany 84%
*General Repair and Maintenance 90%
*Carpentry 85%
*Hydrology or Landscaping 84%

(Livestock)
*Herding Livestock 80%
*Biology 84%
*Tracking(Animals) 88%
*Animal Husbandry 65%
*Lore: Cattle & Animals 92%
*General Repair and Maintenance 90%


Agricultural ‘Farmworlds’ of the United Systems Alliance:
“A lot of soldiers in the AJC speak of ‘buying the farm’ when their tours end ...it’s not a euphemism, it’s a reality; a lot of ex-service personnel get preferential treatment for land grants and agro-startup funding when they muster out. A surprising number of them actually do go ahead and go into farming and ranching, though they also remain in the Reserves, so the USA’s farmworlds are rather well-defended. More than a few would-be invaders have ended up fertilizing the fields when they tried knocking off the ‘helpless’ dirt-tillers.”

“You should know this; usan worlds may not be hives like the metroworlds, but if you decide to attack them, you’re more than likely going to discover that the militias are surprisingly well-armed, the civilians are surprisingly well-armed, the farm animals will likely attack you, and if you’re REALLY unlucky, the crops and the soil will attack you. I kid you not on that last one; I watched my brother’s dropship landing right as a chasm opened up under it, then swallowed it up, no survivors. Meanwhile, I was too busy fighting a patch of very aggressive jungle that wasn’t there a minute ago. Never did get revenge, which in retrospect was probably a good idea...my brother would have kicked my ass in hell for getting myself killed not learning from his death, and the lesson is this; don’t #### with Usan farmworlds.”

The following are worlds where agriculture and biotech account for 50% or more of their offworld revenue and which have an Economic Rating on the Kauffin Scale of 4+ or better(Mestos is listed because of a currently surging rise in prosperity).

Member Worlds:
Abelon(Member)--Biotech. ER: 5+
Anduv(Member)--Livestock/Foodstuffs, Vehicles. ER: 6
Balsar(Member)--Livestock/Foodstuffs. ER: 6+
Gevadan(Member)--Livestock/Foodstuffs. ER: 7+
Gremar(Member)--Agriculture ER: 5+
Gwyer/Api-NorDwyri (Member) --Biotech. ER: 8+
Jovenis(Probationary Member) --Agriculture(Cave Crabs, Steak Mushrooms). ER: 8+
Kellest(Member)--Agriculture/Aquaculture/Foodstuffs. ER: 5+
Kestra(Member)---Agriculture. ER: 6+
Manticus(Member)--Biotech. ER: 6+ )
Mestos(Member)--Agriculture/Foodstuffs(Moho fruit, Unity Ales). ER: 4+
Mynu(Member)--Agriculture ER: 7+
Paloii(Member)---Agriculture(Glennriver Vingreen wines). ER: 8+
Repti: (Member)---Agriculture. ER: 5+
Quin’esh(Member)---Agriculture. ER: 6+
Silkra(Member)-- Agriculture/Foodstuffs. ER: 6+
Skensi(Member)--Livestock/Foodstuffs. ER: 6+
Vanderlund(Member)-- Foodstuffs, Tourism. ER: 7
Venhest IV(Member)-- Agriculture/Foodstuffs. ER: 8+

Felson(Colony)--- Seafood. ER: 7+
Gerundi(Colony)--- Seafood. ER: 8+
Kampadow(Colony)---Agriculture, Manufacturing(military vehicles). ER: 6+
Metha----Agricultural Colony. Agriculture/Aquaculture/Foodstuffs. ER: 4+
Nuegarten(Colony)---Agriculture. ER: 5+

Davasgar(Protectorate) --Seafood. ER: 5
New Vita---Colonial Protectorate--Livestock, timber. ER: 6+
Styx(Protectorate)--Agriculture/Aquaculture/Foodstuffs(Styxian Tea). ER: 5+

-GNE territories(by extension USA-affiliated)

Atium---Agricultural Colony--Agriculture/Aquaculture/Foodstuffs. ER: 6+
Giland---Agricultural Colony(Extradimensionally located)--Foodstuffs. ER: 7+
Kaxion Station----Transit Colony(Extradimensionally located)--Agriculture. ER: 6+
Tennison---Agricultural Colony. ER: 5+

Some Notable USA-sourced Foodstuffs/Products:
Gremar:
*Brye-root tea,--- A thin tea with medicinal qualities.
*Cinba-grain --- Striking in its prismatic colors, cinba-grain is also highly nutritious.
*Liago-dyes --- Natural dye-stuffs that create a prismatic effect in fabrics they are impregnated into.
* Darva-extract --- A taste-enhancer, described as having a flavor akin to pepper-infused chocolate or mocha. Often added to sauces.

Kamasaugh:
*Vrilsah, a potent alcoholic drink brewed from a cranberry-like fruit grown only in the KSC.
*Tsaokola is another beverage that has caught Galactic attention; the mead-like, but non-alcoholic, drink being commended for its refreshing taste and mild stimulant properties.

Kaxion:
*Kaxil(or Kaxilian Ginger)----A ginger-like root, natve to Kaxion, that is quite tasty and has some uniquely beneficial phytochemicals.

Mestos:
*Moho Fruit---A ground-growing tuber-like fruit native to Mestos, and the planet’s primary export/cash crop. Moho fruit is nutritious, fast growing, easily digestible and utterly without redeeming taste. However, agronomists in the United Systems Alliance have discovered that fermenting moho with a secret blend of other ingredients(though it’s rumored that Skenzian hops are involved) yields the fine Syngy(or Synergy as it is sometimes known) Ale.
Heavily processed and flavored, moho-paste also serves as the base of a number of nutrition supplements and famine-relief rations.

*Gimro-Tails----Cattail-like marsh weed with a large seed-head that can be roasted and eaten.

Silkra:
*Melvec Caviar(sand-newt roe)------Actually the marble-sized eggs of a local newt-like amphibian native to Silkra, Melvec Caviar is acquiring a following, especially on Altess tables(which explains why the Altess have invested in efforts to commercially raise and cultivate the Melveca sand-newts).

*SpiceFern----A local Silkran plant that produces large edible spores, prized for their zesty taste. SpiceFern is still harvested wild, but there are some beginner efforts to cultivate the plant commercially.

*Krartree----Krartree is a thin, reddish and lightly carbonated liquor from Silkra. Again, universal metabolic compatibility make it a pan-USA distributable commodity, sociable intoxication levels, and side effects that include creative fugues and an ‘aura effect’ that increases the drinkers’ charisma to others(+1d6 to MA, +1d4 to PB, for 2d4x10 minutes). Considered the ‘artist’s drink’ by many on Silkra who drink it to boost their creative energies, it has the unfortunate side effects of being mildly toxic and inducing painful hangovers(regarded as the ‘price one pays for prompting the inner muses’). Still, Krartree is gaining its share of imbibers across the United Systems Alliance and beyond, similar to Terran absinthe.

Tennison:
*Tannim Moss----A thick nutrient-rich moss that dries well into a stable form and is compatible with a number of physiologies.

*Agrain Spagna---A lichen that grows prolifically on rock slopes. It has been shown to be a rich source of anti-bacterial chemicals.

*Tema Vella---A thick lichen that forms peat-like layers. Though slower-growing than Tannim Moss, Tema Vella is just as nutritious and viable as a food crop.

Paloii:
*Glennriver Vingreen Wines---Fine alcoholic drinks from Paloii

-TemsenSkoya:
*Beetle Fur--- A non-allergenic fluff shed by the insect life on TemsenSkoya. It can be chemically stabilized and made into light fluffy water-resistant fabric.


-Kalipsis:
*Kalipsian Kotton-----Brought by the refugees from now-destroyed Memphis-Sudar, the seeds of this plant have thrived in Kalipsis’s soil. The fiber is considered exceptionally silky yet strong, and is beginning to command good prices in offworld markets.

*Thoughtstone----A clay-like material, laced with granulated psylite, thoughtstone can be reshaped with thought. Though too soft to make tools from, thoughtstone is currently sold as a novelty item, though some researchers are exploring the possibilities of creating regenerating stonework or amorphic golems from the material.

*Aeroroc----Pumice-like stone that attracts and traps airborne contaminants. Raw aeroroc is sold as air fresheners, while processed sheets of it are part of air filtration systems.

*Ril-Stones---Ril-stones are billardball-sized spheres of polished stone that have proven useful as meditation aides for Earth Elemental Warlocks and Earth-oriented Elemental-Fusionists. Holding one in hand while meditating gives a +1d4 PPE per hour(yes, holding two will give a +2d4 per hour, but holding a third in your lap will not add additional PPE recovery). Ril-stones will also begin quivering in the presence of Earth Elemental magic within a 500 ft radius.


-Pikta:
*Thermaskin---Leather from a native Piktan herbivore; it is completely impervious to normal fire, and takes only HALF damage from magic heat and fire.

*Sternofruit---Natural wax candle. Lighting the stem of this apple-like fruit, it can be used like a candle or small heat source, an average sternofruit burning for 1d4 hours.

*Oxoo---A bamboo-like plant saturated with oxygen-rich compounds. If ignited, it actually gives off breathable oxygen, seemingly in reverse of normal combustion chemistry. An average foot-long piece of oxoo can burn for 30 minutes and produce enough oxygen to supply a small room.

*Cindeye Drops---The extract from a native plant; when squeezed into the eyes, the drops protect the eyes from the irritant effects of smoke and chemical agents such as acid vapors ad tear gas. Effects last for 45+4d6 minutes.

*Scorklaw---Talon or claw from a native predator. When infused with 2 PPE or 4 ISP, the claw glows white hot, doing 4d6 SDC touch damage. Effect lasts 3 minutes before the claw cools down.

*Piktan Blue Ginger----A locally harvested spice-root that causes consumers’ breath to sparkle. In high enough concentrations, it can also cause Blinding Flash breath, though this has the unfortunate side effect of also blinding the consumer(unless they’re prepared, by shutting their eyes or donning eye protection beforehand) and temporarily knocking out their tastebuds for 2d4 hours. The active ingredient in the recently-introduced Pikta-Plazi Sparkla Na-Ale soft drink.

*Doslor Joss-Sticks---Made from the dust of aromatic Piktan woods, these incense-sticks are growing in popularity as meditation aides with Fire Warlocks and Fire-Elemental Fusionists(they gain an extra +1d6 PPE per hour of meditation with these burning around them), and they seem to have a calming effect on Fire Elementals(GM’s prerogative as to the extent of the effect; maybe the Fire Elemental only does HALF damage to whoever is blowing joss-stick smoke at them, or may ignore them completely). Altess claim the smoke adds a tangible sense of ‘zing’ to negotiations or other social activities, and others are following their lead in buying these things.

*Gantina Fire-Blossom Rum----A beverage made from the fermented sap of a plant found on the Gantina sub-continent of Pikta. Said to contain life-tapped essence of the Elemental Plane of Fire, Gantina Fire-Rum is available in several grades of ‘fire’, from sweet and warm, to ghost-pepper hot and spicy. The highly potent (even the Splugorth have reportedly developed a taste for the high-grade stuff) and flammable drink tends to explode in its undiluted state if not handled gently and with care....Careless sap-jug handling is the leading cause of death and instant cremation among Gantineze harvest-hands....

*Piktan Flare-Silk---A fabric derived from a Piktan plant, properly-woven flare-silk exudes an energy field that resembles dancing flames that are warm to the touch, but are harmless and have the benefit of keeping the wearer warm even in a raging cold gale(normal cold/exposure does NO damage). However, the effect is readily visible to PPE-sensitives and the spectral glow-flames can be distracting and are impossible to conceal. Flare-silk is sold as a luxury textile, with a yard of the cloth going for 300 credits to start.

Jovenis:
*Jovenian mushroom-steak----A popular Jovenian dish made of large fungi found on the roots of Jovenian mangrove analogues.

*Jovenian Cave-Crab--A Jovenian crustacean, large and blind, found dwelling in the ‘spongey’ limestone cave networks underlying the globe-spanning mangrove-analogue swamps of the planet. Cave-Crabs live off other small animals in the cave complexes, and off the rotting roots of trees on the surface above. Cave-crab meat is considered a delicacy, reaching, it is rumored, as far as Altess Dynasty tables.

Anduv:
*Fering root extract---A peppery distillate said to have medicinal properties, at last for elves.
*Marsh-figs----Actually a plant/fungus symbiote that produces large tasty fruiting bodies similar to truffles.
*Swampig-----A largish amphibian with succulent flesh.

*Febosh---A softwood native to Anduv. It has a fibrous bark that can be harvested to yield a strong, but soft and flexible hemp-like fiber that can be braided into rope. Febosh has a (non-allergenic) scent like cedar, and its wood and fibers release aromatic oils that drive off native insects, but have a mild euphoric effect on humans through both skin contact and inhalation. Once the fetishists learned of it, febosh fiber became VERY popular, especially in the Paradise Federation.
The theocratic Seljuk of Anduv are frankly bemused that a ‘trash wood’ has turned out to be a lucractive cash crop that caters to human sexual rituals.

Atium:
*Atuna---A genetically-modified fish raised in quantity on Atium. Its flesh is considered quite succulent(the Altess import a good quantity of it, and by association this is leading to other metroworlds taking an interest in Atium’s exports).

Harrisar:
*Harrisar Scarlet Tuna ---A foodstock fish native to Harrisar. Global overfishing and oceanic pollution devastated its numbers until the only examples left were a few degenerately-inbred aquarium specimens and some preserved DNA in museum drawers. The USA has launched, in parallel with efforts to restore Harrisar’s ocean ecologies, a program to clone back the Harrisar Scarlet Tuna, with the ultimate goal of reintroducing them into the wild when Harrisar’s oceans are clean again. A population of the fish exists on Manticus’s genetic engineering moons, and the species, or genetically-tweaked variants thereof, have been introduced to several other terraformed worlds. Cloned or offworld-farmed Harrisar Scarlet Tuna is gaining a following among seafood lovers.

Repti:
*Krag-melon, a round, tough cactus-like pod whose moist and nutritious contents are very stable and long shelf-lived stored at room temperature (Qoulkarg traditionally use their forearm spines to break open the pods).

*Sanhawg, a large fat worm-like animal that is easily digestible, especially after cooking.

Vivasanda:
*Johaghem Pearls--Though not a mineral resource as such, native Vivasandans were discovered to wear strings of these pearls harvested from their home’s waters. The prismatic pearls have caused a sensation amongst merchants who have examined them, and not just for their beauty; the pearls radiate an energy field that fights infections and accelerates healing(the strength and power of the healing apparently related to the size, gestation period of the pearl, and the age of the pseudo-oyster). The harvest and sale of these pearls, if well-managed by a smart fishery, would net whoever holds Vivisanda a very nice profit. While PS/ASI and their Sapphian allies have become aware of them(the Vivisandans have offered some in payment for weapons, not realizing just how potentially valuable they are), the Golgans have just recently become aware of something about the pearls, and so may be even less inclined to give up their claim.

Panmandu:
*dahooz---A potent liquor distilled from a Panmanduan cactus. It is rarely available off Panmandu.

Klavia:
* Thesleen-----A drink produced on Klavia from a combination of fermented fruits flavored with corol secretions. It is best served chilled in glass. It is reddish in color, beer-watery in consistency, is lightly carbonated, tastes fairly good, and has a tremendous alcoholic kick, while being utterly nontoxic, It also causes humans to have psychedelic artistic fugues, On Klavia it costs 10 credits a bottle, while offworld it can bring 50 credits or more a bottle, especially from artists.

Malatrax:
*Gargan, a thick dark high-calorie yeasty beer-like drink. It has begun to be exported, and is acquiring a following among ogres, orcs, Kai-Shem minotaurs and Haranasya Vadyra.
* Shalbec, a fatty bratwurst-style sausage made from a mix of Shellback and local sauroid meats.

Styx:
*Styxian Black Tea--- A potent stimulant drink derived from a coastal marsh plant native to the Styx colony, and growing in popularity in the USA and beyond.

Tavaza:
*Brovta----A fermented beverage from the Tavaza protectorate. It is a mix of various berry squeezings, but ideally is served heated like sake.

*Amazon Moonshine---Another fermented and distilled whisky-like drink from Tavaza.

*G-Force Coffee---Nobody knows how it’s made, but since it doesn’t show necromantic properties(like being the squeezed-out lifeforce of babies), nobody cares to inquire too deeply as long as it’s proven safe to drink. It’s pretty much the official working beverage of the GNE, USAJC, and USA government functionaries and has begun acquiring a following outside the Alliance as well. Tankers of GFC concentrate sail regularly from the USA to foreign ports, and port workers have been specially trained to handle the loading and unloading safely.

*Rockwheat---A genetically-engineered grain developed by Cambridge Jungle biotechs, rockwheat is a symbiotic hybrid of grass and lichens that can take hold on and subsist on rocky soils, breaking them down to leach out the nutrients the plant subsists on. Extremely hardy, it can even survive percholate-laced soils, arid conditions, and cold weather. Yields tend to be modest, the grain nutritionally weak, but rockwheat is a mainstay of terraforming programs, because it takes hold on undeveloped ground and still produces edible crops on what other plants would consider barren, even toxic, soil. The plant breaks down stony soils and its own stalks and chaff prepare the ground for later crops. Rockwheat produces a coarse flour and can be made into pumpernickel-like bread(variously called ‘Colonial biscuit’, ‘hard-crop hardtack’, and ‘rock--bread’), but it is also used as the feedstock for distillation into grain alcohol, and the basis of a variety of colonial intoxicant beverages.

Agrotechture---Growing Living Buildings and Structures
(aka ‘Botanotechture’)
“We’re literally growing new homes out here. The future is looking really green.”

“A lot of asteroids in Usan space are turning green and fuzzy with exogrowth. A lot of spacers I’m familiar with look at that with suspicion, but a lot more like the idea of more places to get fresh food and water that doesn’t taste chemically reprocessed a hundred or more times.”

“Ideally we set up self-contained structures on normally inhospitable worlds, with the agrotech able to thrive off the reducing or otherwise toxic atmosphere, and able to live off the geology, growing and expanding, while producing potable water, air, power and food as byproducts usable to the inhabitants.”

“The symbol most often associated with Greater New England is a spreading tree...it seems they decided to make that a more literal part of their culture.”

Agrotechture is the latest craze in the United Systems Alliance, and it is largely the result of the collision of the Streleg gene-smiths of Manticus and Greater New England’s Splicer tribes of the Cambridge Jungle. Agrotechture can be broadly described as the process of using genetically-engineered plant life to create building structures and infrastructure, utilizing local materials to ‘grow’ them on site. Magic and psionic enhancement of the growth process came later in yet another synergistic effect. Agrotechture has encompassed such structures as colonial buildings on terraforming worlds, ‘green’ space stations and asteroid colonies, and self-repairing arcology communities.
Though many critics fear the vulnerability of biotech to various environmental hazards and deliberate sabotage, the gene-techs of the USA have tended to choose hardy extremophiles as the basis of their agrotechture toolkits. This has included plants such as the Manticean span-trees, massive skyscraping trees that have thrived in Manticus’s staggering gravity field(over four times Earth’s), though this required permission from the Streleg religious authorities to use span-tree DNA. Exolife and extremophile organisms provide additional inspiration and base genetic material for the creations of agrotechture genengineers.
Agrotechture typically uses macro-organisms to lay down megadamage support structures using material synthesized from the local ground. These structure are then sealed in using more conventional construction materials and methods, along with electrical wiring, plumbing, and accessories. Additional biotech is then layered on that, providing additional resilience and redundancy. Other processes simply use tailored organisms to lay down layers of composite materials in various shapes, before the layering organisms die off, leaving behind coral-like ‘skeletons’ to be outfitted for occupancy.
Though initial growth can be tightly controlled by nutrient feed and inhibitors, agrotechture is best used when one doesn’t mind a bit of randomness in a structure. Test-growths on worlds like Saveoresc showed excellent results when the macro-growths could spread freely(one Altess investor in an agrotechture venture described a new building complex ‘bubbling out of wasteland sands’). The science(some describe it as an art) is (literally)spreading, as more venues for experimentation and implementation are approved.
Agrotechture is proving useful on borderline shatterworlds where ‘green’ structures are proving useful in reducing airborne pollutants and lowering energy demands for keeping habitable indoor environments maintained. Worlds like Harrisar and Khaldar have seen greentech factor in their planetary recovery, and it is hoped that similar success will be achieved with worlds like Tenlen.


Biotech and the United Systems Alliance
“It was bad enough when it was just those Earthers who were getting ‘juiced-up; now they’ve expanded the candidate pool, the Rim is seeing a lot more of their supersoldier types and meta-talent operatives in the field.”

Though originally regarded as a Human(and in particular Rifts Earth Greater New England Humans), biotech augmentation is becoming more prevalent on the United Systems Alliance and more available to non-(baseline) humans and other species.

Together with the Agrotechture Revolution, bio-modding is gaining more and more acceptance among USA members and affiliates. Not everybody, but an increasing number.

-Kellestans(Human variant)---Already marked by an ancient plague, the Kellestans are of an ambivalent mind when it comes to genetic modification, though individuals are free to make the choice to be bio-modded.

-Besorans(Human variant)---Survivors of the aftermath of a nearby supernova that left their genepool heavily damaged, the Besorana are enthusiastically all over any genetic medicine that can repair their chromosomes, restore fertility to their people, and reduce infant mortality.

-Zolann(Human variant)---The Zolann are already heavily altered enough by their environment that they don’t contemplate anything more than mild augmentation(and that for medical reasons).

-Tavazan Amazons(Human variant)--- Those courageous enough to go offworld in search of employment and adventure are often open-minded enough to accept bio-modding. Of course, what many of the Tavazan Amazon tribes want is a means of restoring their people to the physiological prime of the Amazons of Atlantean yore, even if it means breeding with others to acquire that state of what they regard as blood-power.

-Casserine(Human variant)---An engineered ‘servant’-class liberated(in part) and adopted by the USA, Casserines refuse cybernetics and bionics for anything other than medical reasons. They also refuse bio-modding for ‘power-ups’, though travel-oriented and work-assistance mods such as FROST DOZE, DUST ANGLER, MANILA ADJUTANT and CORAL SNOW are increasingly common, and those on the waterworld of Atium have taken to mild bio-modding and aquatic adaptation packages such as TURQUOISE ECHELON and AQUA PHOTON

-Elves---Elves generally do not go for augmentation, even bio-modding, unless there is a mystic element involved. ZINC FAHRENHEIT, OBLIQUE NARCISSUS, CEDAR PROPHET, WHITE PLUTO and HUMBLE STAR are among the more popular bio-mod packages among those elves who make the jump.

-Ogres---These close relatives of humanity are easily bio-modded and many see no problem with the procedures.

-Dwarves----Dwarves prefer cybernetic and bionic augmentation, but a few are warming to bio-modding, especially those that involve a heavy technologically-oriented component, such as GRIZZLY HURRICANE, CELESTE DYNE, COBALT EPIC, BLUE RIOT, PEARL LIGHTNING and NEON GLACIER.

-Orcs---Orcs, even the arguably more reasonable ones in the USA, are game for just about any form of power-up. Those in United Systems Alliance service see it as a way to keep up with their comrades.

-Minotaurs---The USA encompasses several Minotaur cultures. While their cultures as a whole frown on augmentation, they leave the ultimate decision to individuals. Most take up cybernetics and bionics to replace lost limbs and rehabilitate injured bodies, while bio-modding is generally of the environmentally-adaptive or protective variety.

-Chai-Chuks---- The GNE already had come up with compatible biotech body-mods to power up the descendants of these high-grav worlders on Rifts Earth that the idea caught on with their rootstock when the GNE made contact with the Chai-Chuk homeworld.

-Smallkin---The GNE already had a number of bio-mod packages for ther Smallkin citizens, the mere mention of which sends shivers of terror through the rest of the Three Galaxies’ espionage co mmunities.

-Wynaro----The GNE has begun to develop a few bio-augs, such as subcutaneous bio-armor) for their Wynaro citizenry, but most Wynaro balk at anything radical.

-Pinarii---Pinarii will only accept regenerative biotech to heal what their already impressive regenerative abilities cannot fix, and they do not accept more radical bio-mods that would interfere with their natural abilities. Likewise, they reject cybernetic and bionic enhancements.

-Wolfen-----The Wolfen generally distrust bio-modding(despite the GNE having proven they CAN adapt their bio-mod packages to Wolfen/canine physiologies) , but have no problems with cybernetic and bionic enhancements.

-Coyle----- The positions of the Tme in relation to the great galactic powers means that more than a few Tmelain are willing to undergo bio-modding, with the joke being that the coyle are benefitting from what the wolfen passed up.

-Klia----Generally dismissive of or unable to accept most bio-modding, except for the MAGMA DEVA heat-tolerance package.

-Squilb---The Squilb are more accepting of Bio-Mods than of cybernetics and bionics, as long as the process doesn’t interfere with their natural abilities. If they can, they will go for bio-packages that allow them to more effectively fight supernatural forces and other great threats.

-Vintex----The Vintex are open to cybernetics and bionics and are simply agog about biomodding, due to the sheer audacity, creativity and expertise shown in it. The few bio-mods that have so far been made available to the Vintex have proven immensely popular with this warrior people.

Other USA-member or affiliated species either have refused bio-modding, cannot accept it for various physical reasons, or else have not had enough research done on adapting the technology to them that it is an issue.

[taalismn]

Ex-Slave Species in the United Systems Alliance
“The Servitors? They’re not so much conscientious objectors as subconsciously-engineered pacifists. Sometime in their ancestry somebody else diddled their genes so these folks’ descendants couldn’t rise up against abusive masters. Sometimes they can’t even conceive of the idea of personal freedom, which makes liberating them all that much harder. But when they do, chances are, most of them will gravitate towards settling around military bases or service communities where they work to keep supplies flowing, equipment repaired, the families of service personnel in good shape. They may never pick up a weapon, but...how does the saying about amateurs studying tactics and professionals studying logistics go?....these people are weapons in themselves.”

“I’m not saying that you’re going to see Sensuans in the general officers’ corps of the Usan Joint Command leading charges on the front, but some of the ones raised in Usan space seem to take their civic responsibilities a lot more seriously than the bedhoppers and lap-riders you see in the Paradise pleasure-pits. Some of them have even signed up to join planetary militias and the community guards, I hear. Of course, it may be because the Usan Sensuans find that taking up a laser rifle while wearing nothing but a mono-film bikini g-string ensemble is a real turn-on for some people, but I suspect there’s more to it than that.”

“The Freedbeings Bureau of the Usa is one of the busier civil organizations they have, When it comes to rescued slaves or emancipated post-capture generation slave slaves, the Consortium typically tries to send them back to their homeworlds, relatives, or divvies them up by species and tries to get them assimilated into their species’ main culture. That doesn’t always work out right. But the folk of the Fringe, and the Usans in particular, are generally so whacked out...they have COMBAT PSYCHIATRISTS for yorgah’s sake!.... they’re a lot more accepting and ready-equipped to handle emancipatees with lingering issues. They welcome the opportunity to establish new colonies and create new cultures from scratch it seems, so a lot of refugees head to them for help getting resettled.”

“Casserines? A gentle and easy-going folk. They do what they’re told and they take direction well,. Most of the time all you have to do is show them once how to do something and they pick up on it in no time. The ones on Atium learned how to aquadome-farm and fish-herd right quick enough to even impress the Vivisandans we brought in to teach. Most everybody in the USPPC agree that the Casserines have earned title to Atium as a homeworld.”

Interestingly, the United Systems Alliance’s population has some of the highest concentrations of ex-slaves and members of engineered ‘servitor’ species(not including AI ‘free-bots’) such as Casserines, Vinobes, Klia, Calians, and Sensuans. Most of these are liberated ex-slaves and refugees seeking sanctuary in the territories of those who rescued them. Though not contributing force of arms to the militaries of the USA, these passive peoples instead have found their own ways to assist their hosts, neighbors, and protectors in support roles.
Both the Free Beings’ Bureau and the GNE’s Human Resources work together in overtime to place refugees and ex-slaves in appropriately accepting communities with host families and employers. Sometimes, as in the cases of Atium and Masumi Station, this has resulted in new ethnic communes dominated by particular servitor species or groups.

The Vinobes are establishing themselves strongly in the United Systems Alliance, with the Cult of Hathor proving especially prominent in healthcare and domestics. Vinobe-owned ‘Hathor’s Hearth’ bakeshops are becoming a popular and spreading franchise in the Fringe. Enclaves of Vinobes are popping up around the USA, but the medical colony of Cybolyte seems to attract them where they are a common sight among the nursing staff of the medical establishments there.

The Klia are a slave species from another universe, were originally part of an invasion force intent on conquering the ‘warm’ before defecting to the material plane, and most have given up most of their cryo-elemental powers to assume more mundane existences. They are less passive than other servitor species, so the USA employs a good number of them in military operations in cold environments and in developing colonies on ice worlds. Already second-generation offspring born of the union of Klia and Warm-humanoids have begun entering society and adding their talents to the workforce.

Though very passive in nature, Casserines are another growing presence, making their contribution as support personnel where they can. Their refuge ‘homeworld’ of Atium is developing as a surprisingly exuberant culture under the waves of the waterworld.

Though generally regarded with disdain or dismay by most Elves, Calians have found acceptance in the USA. They often assist in magic enterprises and businesses. The gentle and generally guileless elven Calians require some special handling with regards to privacy and security issues, but treated well, the Calians show great loyalty to their employers.

Sensuans, a human variant sept, are generally regarded as self-absorbed, oversexed, hedonistic dilettantes. Those that live in the United Systems Alliance typically find employment in the entertainment sector where they continue lives in pursuit of sexual gratification and personal pleasure, but it’s been noted that that second-generation Sensuans born and raised in the USA show a more serious side than their parents. Circulating cheesecake and beefcake videos of Sensuans carrying weaponry in the USA have caused no small amount of titillated discussion in some circles.

The Myatel, a species of humanoid AI, have also found refuge in the USA, especially since they often face refusal elsewhere.

Cenax and Masumi Station seem destined to be big draws for ex-slave resettlement, with Masumi Station already hosting the bio-modified victims of an unnamed alien species encountered by the EShemarrians.
Kaxxion Junction has become a similar refuge for mind-enslaved and body-altered victims of particularly nasty organized crime cartels found on an alternate Earth accessable from the Junction.
Many bio-borged victims of the Splugorth find life much more comfortable in the USA than many other places. Usan biotech can often reverse or remove most, if not all, of the implants and alterations done to the unwilling, or provide bionic conversion alternatives. Even when cures are not possible, or are refused for various reasons, ex-slave bioborgs and cyborgs find usan society much more accepting of their altered nature.

There are also growing numbers of Squilb and Vintex cropping up in the USA, following the call to adventure(or, in the case of the Squilb, Righteousness) and lending muscle to the Alliance.

[taalismn]

Ultor -----Aboroc Homeworld(Potential United Systems Alliance member)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“Jestavee was one of the harder and larger campaigns we saw directly pitched against the Infernals. If we hadn’t been incorporating technowizardry into our ships, though, the outcome would have been a lot more different. But between our TW-protected and armed ships, and the Aborocs’ robotic defense barges kamikazing on those demonic bastards, we managed to get the job done.”

“We’re not entirely sure why the Infernals invaded the Aboroc at a time when their forces had to be stretched pretty thin. Did they have, or thought they had, some means of corrupting or transforming the Abors into full-blown demonic minions? Were they looking for something else? We know the Aboroc are magpies when it comes to picking up stuff that catches their fancy and trucking it back home to show off. Maybe they collected some Ancient stuff the Infernals wanted badly.”

“It may have been just loot that the Infernals were after; pre-invasion Ultor was a magpie -pirates’ dream; the Aboroc are such collectors of stuff when abroad, and they haul a lot of it back home to pretty up their cities and show off. The Abor might have grabbed a few things that the Infernals wanted. We know that the demon-general in charge was sending looting raids into the cities and the mansions of the well-travelled, so they may have had leads on specific treasures.”

“Dueling’s a major thing on Ultor; the Abor LOVE personal fisticuffs even more than the Kai-Shem, and they have a mandatory citizen militia to back up their regular armed forces....and that’s in addition to the robots they have. The infernals had to use magic-teleport hit-and-run tactics to get the most mileage out of their regular nastiness, and even then it was a dice roll whether they’d jump into a crowded public space or a well-armed mob perfectly able to fill them full of holes.“

The Ultor -based Aboroc Continga has long been an independent polity pursuing their own programs of exploration and expansion. They are also an industrial powerhouse that has dominated their sector. A long-standing paramilitary regime has lent discipline and backbone to their society and afforded its citizenry comfortable lives.
The demonic-visaged Aboroc have long suspected that they had less than saintly origins in the Infernal Planes, so it hardly came as a surprise when, late in the Minion War incursion in the Three Galaxies, a Demonic fleet arrived in the Aboroc home-system of Jestavee to ‘recruit’. The invasion force bypassed the other worlds of the Continga, and struck directly at the Aboroc coreworld.
Despite the demons’ superior position and the number of supernatural threats they dangled over the locals’ heads to motivate cooperation, the high-tech Aboroc would have none of the demons’ pitch and immediately implemented their defiance. With a strong planetary military and a sizable spacefleet, both reinforced with robotics, the Aboroc were going to put up a stiff resistance. However, the fighting was not going to be easy, the Infernals’ magic being a key factor in the invaders’ favor, and indeed it looked like it could go either way, despite Aboroc reinforcements summoned from several other worlds in their Continga. However, a hastily-assembled United Systems Alliance Joint Command fleet also arrived, and their combined arms philosophy which included technowizardry and more traditional magics, helped turn the tide of the systemwide battle into a victory for the Aboroc.
The battle of Ultor saw a partial reconciliation of sorts; the USAJC fleet brought a number of CoraBrok, a fundamentalist sept of Aboroc who split off from the mainstream culture to pursue a low/no-tech lifestyle and focus on magic, to assist in the fighting. The CoraBroks’ knowledge of magic and demonic natures helped turn the tide in a number of smaller battles, and the two related cultures at least did not fight with each other as they usually did when encountering each other.
The aftermath left the Aboroc more than willing to consider joining the United Systems Alliance, and membership seems likely.

Solar System(Jestavee)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 9
-Terrestrial(Bodkay)----Earth-sized but rendered intolerably(for most species) hot by its proximity to Jestavee, Bodkay features both volcanic activity and acidic bodies of water covering its surface. The Aboroc have established several heavily robotized mining complexes to tap molten metals surging up from the planet’s interior.

-Terrestrial(Ultor)---- System Lifeworld

-Terrestrial(Schyy)---- Pretty much an asteroid in size, ‘microscopic’ Schyy has still managed to acquire a thick covering of dust, insulating an even thicker covering of water ice, and at its bottom, an interior liquid ocean. There is an Aboroc colony on Schyy, and this attracted the attention of a part of the Infernal fleet. Though outnumbered, the Schyyians put up a fierce fight and managed to endure a nearly month-long siege until relieved by the arriving Alliance fleet.

-Terrestrial(Niaz)----Huge Niaz possesses crushing gravity and a dense toxic atmosphere, so it has not seen any development aside from a few robotic probes sent to its storm-wracked surface. These deep probes have discovered a thin chemotropic bacterial ecology powered by deep volcanic activity and core heat.

-Gas Giant(Morchek)----Huge Morchek and its large (17) moon system are the main offworld space infrastructure industrial site for the Jestavee system.
The moons of Morchek are the site of the assembly yards and frequent launch point for the Aborocs’ robot explorer probes. Fueled with anti-hydrogen produced from Morchek’s strong plasma tube belt, the sophisticated robot barges set off into the megaverse to gather data and samples to return home.
One of Morchek’s moons, Chalmers, exploitable deposits of Nekirite( Rifter #0-1). The Aboroc have been finding ways to utilize the material in various applications, and so there is a mining and refining complex.

-Gas Giant(Chormban)----Saturn-sized Chormban is a secondary gas-mining site exploited by Aboroc space industry.
One of Chormban’s eight moons, Kaltros, has deposits of Nekrite similar to the moon Chalmers, Given similar geochemistry between the two bodies, it is speculated that both moons had the same origin, but ended up being snapped up by different gas giants, an anomaly that puzzles scientists.

-Gas Giant(Gaersh)----Smallish for a gas giant, Gaersh does possess an unusually strong electromagnetic field that has trapped solar wind particles from Jestavee, producing glowing auras in the planet’s atmosphere.

-Terrestrial (Rololodan)----Huge Rololodan is high-gravity and shrouded in toxic atmosphere. It is occasionally skimmed for exotic gases, but has little else to attract commercial exploitation.

-Terrestrial (Syvose)----Roughly Earth-sized like Bodkay, distant Syvose is at the other end of the temperature spectrum, being ice-covered and cold. The Aboroc have established a far-system communications base on Syvose for supporting their robot probe efforts and monitoring interstellar traffic. Also, recently Syvosan pure water ice has become a popular novelty back on Ultor, with blocks of it being harvested and shipped back to the homeworld.


Planet(Ultor )
“The Ultoran Aboroc may be civilized, but you’d be hardpressed to remember that if you accompany one of their frequent desert hunting club outings looking for sand-squid or sucker-fang. It often culminates in a group blood-drinking of the prey, but that’s one of the survival adaptations on a badlands world like Ultor.”

The Aboroc admit that they didn’t evolve on Ultor; their ancient legends tell of them being transported from ‘somewhere else’, but don’t know exactly where. But with the most common names assigned to that point of origin sharing a common theme of it being very unpleasant(and quite the opposite of other species’ Gardens of Edens and primordial paradises), few Aboroc are particularly interested in finding out.
Regardless of their origins, the Aboroc have carved out and created a technological society for themselves. In time, they bootstrapped themselves into being a spacefaring culture and eventually starfarers, making contact with other polities and establishing interstellar trade.
Once they got beyond hardscrabble-living and used their technology to secure water and food supplies, the Aboroc used that same technology to create a culture of relative leisure, while probing the cosmos with manned and robotic expedotions to bring back knowledge and curiosities for the folks back home to enjoy looking at.
Aboroc-Ultorian culture is somewhat controversial because of the casual attitudes of the Aborac towards ‘weaker’ species; the popular museums of otherworldly life often display stasis-frozen aboriginal life effectively abducted from their homeworlds, as well as artifacts arguably looted from ‘lesser’ cultures. The most infamous publicized case involved Human visitors to one of these museums coming face to face with several paleolithic-stage human beings and their domesticated animals frozen in chrono-cryst suspension and put on display. There are several ongoing efforts by various outside organizations to liberate and repatriate sophont specimens(and no small number of sighs of relief that the Aboroc go to the trouble of stasis-suspending them and not simply stuffed and mounted them), but as some of the ‘displays’ are several centuries-old, repatriation back to their home envionments may be problematic. The Aboroc for their part often claim that many of the specimens in question are in better condition and circumstances than they were originally found in.

Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 13,000 km
Gravity: 1.2 g
Temperature: Temperate, but on the cool side, with global averages of 65 degrees F.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(8)---Prodenjay, Tegnin, Marathos, Polac, Orhum, Regialus, Acknori, and Gorban are all small moons with convoluted orbital periods. They cast constantly shifting reflected light on Ultor’s surface. Most of the moons have technological installations of one purpose or other on them, and during the MInion invasion, were the site of heavy fighting.
-Craters---Ultor is pockmarked with craters and iridium strata telling of past asteroid bombardments.
Atmosphere:
Dense breathable nitrox mix
Terrain:
Unusual Geology; large regions of Ultor are covered by ‘stone forests’, either tall pillars of hard rock rising into the sky(and somehow havig resisted being knocked down by the meteoric bombardments that have scarred the landscape in the past) that suggest a past massive period of wet erosion, or vast petrified forests, similarly suggesting earlier greener and moister eras.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Antimony
- Cobalt
- Magnesium
- Scheelite
- Emerald
- Titanium
- Ruby
- Talc

Hydrosphere:
Badlands---Most water on Ultor is locked in deep aquifers, only occasionally coming to the surface in sheltered caves or open air oasis clusters.
Aboroc communities thus tend to be built around oasis patches, deep cavern reservoir sites, or deep drill-well establishments, and are laid out and constructed architecturally to conserve water as much as possible. Water-retaining indoor farming is practiced extensively.

Biosphere:
Cornucopia. Despite being arid, Ultor is TEEMING with prolific life, many of who have come up with ingenious water-conserving means(or predate on those species who do). Dominant life is insectoid and reptilian in nature, ranging up to quite large ‘sand-grazers’ and dog-sized predators(including the spider-like ‘fangol’).
Three’s also a dense jungle-mat of tough moisture-retaining vegetation that acts as a giant symbiotic aqueduct system, drawing moisture and transporting it to more distant (and mineral-rich) parts of the land to feed growth. The horizontal vines and trunks are as tough as metal wire and require considerable effort to breach to tap the water being transported within. This lends a ‘Mars-canal’ look to the landscape during the dry season when observed from orbit, and when spring sweeps over a hemisphere, gives the planet an unexpected green look for an arid world.

Civilization:
Settled

Population:
6.8 Billion Aboroc

Technology:
Galactic; the Aboroc developed much of their technology on their own, such as global travel, fusion reactors, megadamage materials, and electronics. The rest they traded for with star-travellers who were following up sensor readings of interstellar fusion drives in the vicinity of the Jestavee star system. Ultor also produces and sells some fairly advanced heavy robotics systems, especially their famed ‘explorer ‘bots’.

Economy:
Industrial; Ultor produces and exports electronics, solar power elements, consumer goods, and cheap commercial robotics to neighboring worlds. They also produce high-efficiency ion and fusion drive systems that they sell to other worlds in their sector.

Wealth:
Rich; the average Aboroc is very comfortable with life, thanks to share-the-wealth programs, extensive civic works, and a paramilitary order that finds purpose for the indolent. Industrial automation has also contributed to an easy lifestyle on Ultor.

Government:
Militocracy. The Aboroc version is known as the Quarno, or ‘Generals’ Council’. Generations ago, the military took over from earlier autocratic regimes, and figured that if the people couldn’t select good leadership, they couldn’t be trusted with governance, so the more disciplined military remained in charge. While the modern-day Aboroc military mainly controls armies of robots and engages in armchair generalling and country-club maneuvers, military service is still mandatory for one to enter government. The Aboroc claim that the discipline-training is good for inculcating a civic-mindedness, responsibility, and sense of purpose.

Law Level:
Moderate. Though want has been largely eliminated from Ultorian society, the Aboric still find reason to fight over things, so visitors are advised to be cautious, lest they be caught between feuding locals.

Popularity:
Ambivalent. There’s been some unrest about whether the Quarno is still relevant. While the military leaders acquitted themselves well in the recent Infernal invasion, there’s been some talk about experiments with democracy again, or at least a change of general staff to acknowledge a younger generation of officers who distinguished themselves in resistance against the Infernals. There’s also a remnant legacy subculture who delusionally miss the ‘good old days’ when Ultor was ruled by strongmen autocrats before the military took over; as a noticeable number of these were willing to cooperate with the Infernals, their days may finally be numbered as their less-amused neighbors take ‘community action’.

Stability:
Stable; there’s currently no real danger of a societal upset, but various people are talking change. The Quarno are hoping this will blow over but are prepared to make some reforms and break some heads if necessary to restore order. There’s some hope that membership in the USA may help defuse some of the tensions and distract folks with the anticipated increase in trade and opportunities abroad.

[taalismn]

Brudheinn ----Independent Polity(Anvil Galaxy)
“Brudheinnites dress and act like something out of the Middle Ages, but next to the sword scabbard is holstered a blaster, and under the chainmail sleeve is a compband with wireless broadband access. The aristos use drones to keep eyes on their lands and they’re constantly checking their online stock ratings. The peasants drive groundcars and hover lorries and pay tithe electronically to their local steadholders. They got trade guilds and knighthoods too, and they follow Houses, Clans, and aristocratic titles like other cultures watch sports brackets.”

“Actually, when you consider it, the Brudheinnite tradition of bladed weapons makes a certain amount of sense considering they live in domes. Modern blasters could punch a hole in their environmental protection with stray fire, but up-close-and-personal melee weaponry is a lot safer on the surroundings. As a result Brudheinnites are arguably as nasty with edged weapons as Skenzian swordsmen, and the usan marines I’ve spoken to all agree that they’d hate to tango with Brudhees in close quarters combat. The stead-lords got personal trainers growing up and the peonage likes personal knives as part of their dress.”

“It’s vaguely technically illegal for Brudheinnites to take up arms in the service of the Usans, but nobody complains when a thane’s middle son returns from a tour with an Usan free company with a sack of loot, stories to tell, and a handful of business contacts.”

“The Brudheinnites have been buying transports and a few light combat craft from the USA, typically through third parties but increasingly direct from Amberjin. At the same time, we know they’ve been copying and selling knockoffs of some of our lower end weapons, like the Pisser-Seventy-four, the Star-Rifle, the Fletcher, and the Gunther. So, yeah, you could say our relationship with them is complicated.”

Brudheinn is an anachrotechnic Human-settled system some fifty light years away from Amberjin and Susoda, systems of the United Systems Alliance. Though they claim independence, they are well within the fold of the Human Alliance that originally sponsored them and provides them with the bulk of their trade.
Brudheinn was settled from the HA, but chose to ‘take a break’ from techno-society and adopt a neofeudal lifestyle and system of government in an attempt to ‘return to simpler times’(even though they needed high-tech just to survive on the planet’s surface), but that experiment only lasted a century before they decided to climb back up the tech-ladder. The ‘Iron Century’, however, left its mark, and hasn’t wholly gone away in its effect on Brudheinnite style and society. A form of feudalism still exists on Brudheinn, and many medieval conventions remain strong in the culture. However, the Brudheinnites have re-embraced technology and industry, and were, for a time, the major industrial power in their sector...at last until PS/ASI came to the neighboring(56 light years) Ambercirn system.
Due to a diplomatic incident early on after the establishment of PS/ASI in the Ambercirn system, Brudheinn’s relations with Amberjin tend to swing widely between warm support and cool animosity. The formation of the United Systems Alliance has only further complicated things, with Brudheinn several times edging towards applying for membership, before demurring at the last moment. Several times elements of the Brudheinn armed services have come perilously close to initiating hostilities and possibly kicking off a war. To defuse tensions and head off misunderstandings, the USA maintains a sizable staff of on-call diplomats and a watchful contingent of warships in the sector. At the same time, more than a few Brudheinnites have signed up with USA Irregular formations and organizations, seeking adventure, glory, and pay, though technically Brudheinn has no military aid treaties with the United Systems Alliance.
Part of the problem is the complicated nature of Brudheinn politics; the planet is high-tech, but governed by a complex feudal aristocracy. Political alliances can be, and often are, secured by arranged marriages and adoptions between noble houses. Today’s ally can be tomorrow’s court nemesis and vice-versa. Aristocratic and upper society courtships are conducted as carefully as racebeast-breeding and the court politics can be just as intricate. The result is that Brudheinnite attitudes towards the USA can change very rapidly with the fluctuating party politics of the Council of Lords.
For now the two polities just slow-dance around each other, watching and waiting to see what happens next.

Solar System(Hildegar)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Hildegar-A/Ohther(Yellow Dwarf)
-Hildegar-B/Ethbert(Yellow Dwarf)
Number of Planets: 4
-Gas Giant(Nordum)----Large ‘hot’ gas giant. Ramscoops occasionally fly by Nordum, gathering up free gas blown off it by the Hildegars’ combined solar wind, but quality and quantity vary. Still, a good ‘blow’ of solar-ionized gas can make a tidy profit for those scoop-crews willing to risk the radiation accompanying a solar flare/storm evenet.

-Terrestrial(Brudheinn)---- System Lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Grutsen)----Large Grutsen’s moons would make it a good place to establish an industrial system, except that the gas giant’s magnetic field picks up radiation from the twin Hildegar suns, All but two of Grutsen’s seven major moons pass through the powerful radiation belts, rendering them unsafe for colonization. It’s been speculated that with more advanced galactic technology, the moons of Grutsen could be all commercially exploitable, but the functuations and recent downturn in Brudheinn’s economy have put any such plans on hold for the foreseeable future. As it is, the mining outposts on the two remaining ‘safe’ moons have to compete economically with the output from the demesne-holdings on Helgar’s moons.

-Gas Giant(Helgar)----Large Helgar is what Grutsen might have been, lacking the radiation belt that keeps the inner gas giant from being more fully exploited. Helgar’s five major moons have been colonized as separate space-fiefdoms and they provide most of Brudheinn’s offworld minerals and metals.

Planet(Brudheinn)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,200 km
Gravity: 0.98 g.
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons( 8 ) ----Brudheinn has eight small moons; Halta, Merz, Dacal, Ridalt, Tomen, Arem, Vaol, and Kiditz. All of the moons are used in the ongoing terraforming effort, as well as being stations in the planet’s space infrastructure.

Atmosphere:
Dense, reducing atmosphere. Brudheinn is in the process of being terraformed, but its governance and economic ups and downs have led to the process being slow. Going out requires a light envirosuit and decompression when coming back in. The population lives in domed communities.

Terrain: Three terrains; coastal beach, flood plains, and highlands.

Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Copper
- Cobalt
- Lead
- Colombite
- Thorium
- Samarskite
- Fluorite
- Barite

Hydrosphere:
88% of Brudheinn‘s surface is covered in open water, but it is heavily laced with dissolved fluorite compounds and requires extensive filtering and denaturing to render potable.

Biosphere:
Thin, consisting of terraforming organisms, mainly algae, lichens, grasses and other oxygen producers/atmosphere convertors and soil preppers. Agriculture on Brudheinn is conducted under domes.

Civilization:
Settled

Population:
1.3 Billion humans

Technology:
Galactic, roughly equal to the Golgan Republik
The Brudheinnites maintain a small professional military that has a handful of larger warships sourced second-hand from the Human Alliance and other Human-sphere manufacturers, while the stronger fiefdoms can rally up militia plus aerospace forces to back the national Navy.

Economy:
Service; Brudheinn provides local interstellar communications, banking, and shipping facilitation. They are also a low-end weapons manufacturer and arms market broker.
Wealth:
Depressed, leaning towards Poor----Despite being a service hub for trade in the sector, Brudheinn’s fortunes have waned with the emergence of the United Systems Alliance. Though the system is well-positioned to benefit from increased trade traffic to and from the Ambercirn system, its fluctuating relationship with regards to the USA system has affected its trade. With PS/ASI taking over much, if not most, of the arms trade in the sector, those Brudheinn nobles in the arms business(which constituted a substantial amount of the planet’s offworld income) have lost most of their livelihoods.

Government:
Aristocracy, with both neofeudal and socialist aspects. There is a Council of Lords that represent the major planetary districts/Steads and vote on major issues. In event of planetary emergencies such as outbreak of war, the Council elects a dictator to direct the nation for a limited period of time.

Law Level:
Moderate; the ailing economy has brought strain to the normally Lawful society. Thre’s been mostly crimes of economic desperation among the lower classes as mass-layoffs and general unemployment surge ahead of the fiefdoms’ efforts to find people new jobs and provide them with essentials. However, many of the lesser houses and guilds that had beome dependent on galactic trade are feeling the pinch of the continued downturn and are running out of resources.

Popularity:
Popular---The aristos typically buy the support of their peons by providing services and amenities such as community-pool vehicles and healthcare. With less revenue to spend, however, the Stead-Lords may soon be facing problems retaining the confidence and cooperation of the peons.

Stability:
Stable---Which is about as good as anybody can expect. There’s been some reshuffling of house/stead alliances as the Brudheinnites attempt to maintain ther standards of living with less to spend, and there’s a growing degree of belt-tightening as a result. Whether this will result in a leaner and more efficient economy or revolution remains uncertain.

[taalismn]

Silydge(United Systems Alliance Colony)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“For such a small star, Cholden’s gathered quite the collection of interesting marbles.”

“Cholden’s not a particularly attractive colonization prospect unless you like domes and tunnels, but it’s a good working prospect and resource system that will encourage trade through that part of the sector. Belters and rockhounds will like it, since they can build their own encvironments to taste.”

“Silydge’s location so close to the losing Comdomate means the system’s currently crawling with survey ships looking for useful minerals to justify a large presence in-system and to look for any more anomalies the slapdash Comdomate initial surveys missed. That, and they’re looking for good locations to establish listening posts to make sure the Comdams don’t try anything again. ”

Silydge is a new USA-sponsored colony established to take claim of one of the border systems seized from the Deneva Comdomate in the aftermath of the Pounce War. Ironically, while the Comdomate initiated the Pounce War to expand its holdings by taking worlds away from its neighbors, systems that it already laid claim to, like Silydge/Cholden, were under-explored and under-exploited, and it fell to their new owners/claimants, the United Systems Alliance, to thoroughly invest in them. The USA has established a small colony on Silydge to enforce its presence and serve as a base for prospecting and exploration of the rest of the system.
There is evidence that the Cholden-34 system has been visited by at last one, possibly two, different ancient cultures in the past. The Beltraad anomaly and the Geots Plains activity are two mysteries that would draw the attention of the USA’s scientists even if Cholden-34 wasn’t already being colonized for realpolitik reasons.
A cold world, Silydge has been offered as an offworld colony to the Freymos. Currently it is home to a small mining colony and science base. Quality of life is fairly basic and luxuries in short supply, so the colonists are eager to trade for extra sundries and entertainment, with government permission, so even small-time traders could make some money catering to the colony.
Because of its location and colony-purpose, Silydge and the Cholden-34 system are regularly visited and patrolled by the United Systems Alliance JOint Command, so at any given time there’s 1d4 warships(typically destroyers or frigates) in-system.

Solar System(Cholden-34)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
Red Dwarf
Number of Planets: 20
-Terrestrial(Emun)----Gargantuan Emun is so massive that despite an estimated two billion years of being cooked by its primary, the planet still hasn’t finished outgassing all its volatiles and thus has a thin atmosphere. Part of the reason may be because the planet is tidally locked, with one side permanently facing the red dwarf Emun orbits. The planet’s intense gravity precludes any manned exploration or colonization.

-Asteroid(Ras)---- Though heavily covered in loose dust, large asteroid Ras contains a large core of water ice insulated from Cholden-34’s solar output. The minor planetisimal seems a likely Belter colony site prospect.

-Asteroid(Formon)----Planetisimal Formon contains a surprising amount of amethyst crystals, making it a likely mineral resource in the Crystal Trade.

-Gas Giant(Rolard)----Saturn-sized Rolard seems likely to be developed as a gas-mining location serving any anticipated Silydge colony expansions.

-Terrestrial(Silydge)---- Colonized system ‘lifeworld’.

-Exotic(Beltraad)---- A cluster of several dozen moons/asteroids/planetisimals, ranging from Phobos-sized up to Titan-sized, orbiting a common body, a moonlet itself encircled by a set of clearly artificial metal rings. Beltraad was apparently somehow overlooked by the Deneva Comdomate, though this can be blamed partially on a sensor-scrambling energy field that surrounds the assemblage, giving readings more suggestive of a gas cloud than solid matter. The discovery of Beltraad placed new emphasis on securing the Cholden-34 system while research teams are scrambled to study the assembly.
The ring system is clearly a space station-like construct. Sections of its interior are accessible and show signs of accommodations, though for what specific species is uncertain.
The ring system is inhabited by plasmoids----amorphous masses of energized plasma that apparently patrol some portions of the rings, sweeping them free of invasive exolife and attacking trespassers. It is not known if the plasmoids are some sort of automatic defense system generated by the rings themselves, or some naturally-evolved energy-being species that has colonized the rings, as all attempts to communicate with the entities have thus far failed. The USA explorers have not attempted to fight or destroy the plasmoids, preferring to observe them from a distance.
Some of the assemblage’s ‘moonlets’ are themselves worthy of notice; several ‘pint-sized’ moonlets are gas giants in miniature, apparently held together by some artificial process not immediately discernible.
The ultimate purpose of Beltraad remains unknown; some scientists speculate that it may be a giant cosmic orrery or even some sort of starship(perhaps even from another universe with differing physical laws) that has become becalmed in the Cholden system. What it is doing in such an out of the way system as Cholden only deepens the mystery. Efforts to link Beltraad to the Geots Plains constructs have proven inconclusive, and it is the opinion of many scientists that the two may represent two entirely different cultures that visited the system in the past.
Current policy is to stand back and scan Beltraad from a distance or remotely. As psychic scying has not indicated anything supernaturally sinister about the construct, Beltraad is regarded as benign and not as a threat to colonization efforts elsewhere in the system. The USU and USA scientific community are establishing a semi-permanent watch-station to study Beltraad.

-Asteroid(Tilg)----Another large rocky body, Tilg has been found to have an unusual amount of tin in its composition.

-Gas Giant(Modyt)----Large Modyt sports impressively large rings of gas and dust swept up from the outer system. Aside from the micro-meteor problem, Modyt would be attractive to development by Belters.

-Gas Giant(Lacqon)---Average in size, Lacqon possesses a number of small moons. Like Modyt, it would be an attractive Belter habitat.

-Terrestrial(Tarse)----Average-sized Tarse is wrapped in a thick and poisonous mixture of gases, and is considered ill-suited for colonization, especially as it has been surveyed and found metal-poor.

-Terrestrial(Yebudi)----Miniscule Yebudi is rocky, water-deficient, and lacking in industrial metals and minerals. Again, not an attractive colonization prospect.

-Terrestrial(Voyt)----Enormous Voyt’s atmosphere has mainly frozen out along with its scant surface water -ice deposits. Its high gravity precludes economic development.

-Gas Giant(Ual)----Middle-sized Ual has three moons of note, being water-rich and thus possible candidates for colonization.

-Terrestrial(Hogd)----Average-sized Hogd lacks much in the way of water, but has a dense ammonium atmosphere, tolerable gravity, and an appreciable and potentially exploitable amount of metals in its crust. A possible candidate for dome-based colonization, provided it can be supplied with water.

-Gas Giant(Shhi)----Large Shhi possesses several rings of what turned out to strangely regularly-sized crystal-glass spheres resembling marbles. It is not known what process may have naturally created them, so there’s growing speculation that they are an artificial formation and yet another mystery among many in the Cholden system. The United Systems University has evinced an interest in studying the particles and their possible origin.

-Gas Giant(Clax)----Middling-sized has an unusual set of off-set polar-aligned rings in defiance of commonly-known orbital physics. This may be attributable to a lacing of exotic matter detected in the rings’ composition. The USU has already applied to set up science platforms to study the phenomenon.

-Terrestrial(Rewr)----Small, arid and rocky, with little in the way of exploitable minerals, Rewr is low on the list of colonization prospects.

-Gas Giant(Ioa)----Small Ioa lacks moons but has a few scant dust rings. Its relatively low gravitation would make it easy for gas-skimming, bu its atmospheric composition is of poor quality for economical gas harvesting. Furthermore, the planet’s atmosphere is unexpectedly violent for a small gas giant, suggesting a very active core powering storm cells above.

-Gas Giant(Xdu)----Saturn-sized Xdu possesses three large moons of note, especially Swyde, which is completely covered in water ice, but possesses a liquid inner ocean. This would make it an attractive colonization prospect, but the colony survey board has yet to determine if Swyde possesses any sort of ecosystem that colonial exploitation might put at risk.

-Terrestrial(Zeder)----Terra-sized iceball, and the most likely site for a USAJC listening post given its slow orbit above the plane of the system, in the general direction of neighboring Comdomate space(its current arc will take it 85 years to complete half an orbit).

Planet(Silydge)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 10,800km
Gravity: 0.3 g
Temperature: Cold; average temperature is -200 F.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(5)----Silydge possesses five small moons, providing the colony effort with convenient orbital sites for sensor platforms and communications relays.

-(Special)Geots Plains---- Ancient metal frames describing various geometric shapes on a wide frozen plain . The metal making up the frames is unknown to USA science and defies analysis, but has been tentatively dated as being some 2 million years old. At various times, the frames light up with low energy plasma light, accompanied by similar geometric plasma projections appearing seemingly at random across the frozen terrain. It is not entirely understood how the plasma is generated or projected, and the activity does not seem in any way affected by the presence or actions of observers in the area. There seems to be no discernible pattern to the plasma projections, though some sequences do occasionally repeat themselves, and instruments have detected a slight increase in ambient PPE at the height of the most energetic ‘performances’.

Atmosphere:
Thin; consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, argon and nitrogen
Terrain:
Exotic Terrain-----Silydge is dotted with curious geological upthrustings, many of them laced with valuable minerals.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Gold/Silver
- Mercury
- Pitchblende
- Scheelite
- Nickel
- Platinum
- Salt
- Arsenic
Hydrosphere:
Moist: roughly 72% of the planet’s surface is covered in open(if frozen) water.
Biosphere:
Sparse---Silydge has a few extremophile species, mainly variant exolife flora that show signs of having been seeded on the planet in the distant past. Most of the life clusters around the warmer fumaroles and dense pitchblende deposits.
Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
Currently about 10,000 colonists have settled on Silydge. The population is a fairly balanced mix of common USA species(mainly Human, Wolfen, and Coyle).
Technology:
Galactic----Silydge has the basic domer-world tech-colonization package, with on-site fabrication and materials synthesis capabilities for the mining and refining equipment. Basic food and water production is standard, and the colony also boasts a small refueling and repair station to service the many small survey craft and probes operating in the system.
Economy:
Mining
Wealth:
Can be considered to be Average; the USA is under some pains to make good on their claim to the systems they took away from the Deneva Comdomate, so colony failure is unacceptable. The mining operations have yet to show any great profitability, and are at just about break-even for the ongoing investment.

Government:
Colonial; there’s an appointed governor(Director Kuldreck) who answers to the USA’s United Systems Planetary Protection Council(USPPC) in charge of colonial affairs. Kuldreck had previous experience as a middle-level labor management executive for Hallman Stellar Harvestors, and Silydge is considered an advancement position for him.

Law Level:
Lawful---Silydge is too new a colony to have acquired much criminal activity, and the colonists are too busy establishing themselves to have time for lawlessness.

Popularity:
Popular--So far, Director Kuldreck has made the right decisions(or at least managed to avoid making any really bad ones), and nobody wants to break in a newer and unknown de facto governor, so Kuldreck stays in. As the colony is still small and young, there’s little in the way of social tension, even with the arrival of USU scientists come poking around and setting up shop to study the various phenomena in the Cholden-34 system(in fact, they’re a welcome bit of entertainment to the colonists).

Stability:
Stable---Any troublemakers are all too aware that in such a small(relatively speaking) settlement, they’re all too likely to be found out, and there’s the very visible presence of the military nearby in-system patrolling against any squirrelly moves by the Deneva Comdomate, and keeping an eye on the Beltraad anomaly and the Geots Plains activity.

[SolCannibal]

One person's trash is another's treasure indeed, might be said. Looks like the Comdomate needs some more effective and better funded survey operations department, for their own good.

As an aside, i'm guessing Silydge's current population of about 10,000 colonists does not yet count any of the Freymos to whom it was offered as an offworld colony, since they are not mentioned in the population species balance. I can see settling a number of Klia as a promising alternative too.

[taalismn]

One person's trash is another's treasure indeed, might be said. Looks like the Comdomate needs some more effective and better funded survey operations department, for their own good.

As an aside, i'm guessing Silydge's current population of about 10,000 colonists does not yet count any of the Freymos to whom it was offered as an offworld colony, since they are not mentioned in the population species balance. I can see settling a number of Klia as a promising alternative too.

Indeed, the Freymos have not yet been formally contacted nor have they yet made an evaluation of the planet for colonization purposes. Once and if they do, however, they have the ships to transport colonists.
Likewise, the Klia are going to be included in cold weather world exploitation/colonization.

[SolCannibal]

One person's trash is another's treasure indeed, might be said. Looks like the Comdomate needs some more effective and better funded survey operations department, for their own good.

As an aside, i'm guessing Silydge's current population of about 10,000 colonists does not yet count any of the Freymos to whom it was offered as an offworld colony, since they are not mentioned in the population species balance. I can see settling a number of Klia as a promising alternative too.

Indeed, the Freymos have not yet been formally contacted nor have they yet made an evaluation of the planet for colonization purposes. Once and if they do, however, they have the ships to transport colonists.
Likewise, the Klia are going to be included in cold weather world exploitation/colonization.

Something that once done, if their evaluation comes positive, is bound to considerably change the colony's profile and scale.

[taalismn]

Something that once done, if their evaluation comes positive, is bound to considerably change the colony's profile and scale.

And further entrench the Freymos as core members of the USA(they already contribute shipyards and starship designs).
Having enclaves of population scattered about the Galaxies will do that.
And, hey, Frost Giants in Space, how (forgive me( cool is that?

[taalismn]

(made mention of this 'outpost' in an equipment post, but realized that the location was a throwaway location name that really deserved more attention. A few random rolls and it became much more than a simple outpost, and a few dips into the archives allowed me to tie it in to some other past posts for extra fun)

Parias Seven---( Aegis Stellar Industries/United Systems Alliance Colony)( Thundercloud Galaxy)
“While not a ‘mall world’ like Center or the markets of Splynn, Parias-Seven has proven a convenient source of equipment for the worlds of the Tor Sector. When Talsire failed to get armaments assistance from the CCW thanks to that vindictive senator, they went to Parias instead and got want they needed. That didn’t make the USA any friends with Senator Mallon, but unlike Ballabin system, there’s little Mallon can do to bully the usans, and it might even cost him politically, if the Talsirans withdraw their petition to join the CCW and instead apply for usan membership.”

“Parias Seven is not the most pleasant world environmentally, but a prosperous economy has made it attractive to a good number of prospective colonists. And it’s definitely helped change the dynamics of the surrounding sectors. That prosperity and growing importance is probably why the system’s endured at least two major pirate attacks...but a wormhole that can pass ‘only’ frigate-sized vessels doesn’t mean ‘under-defended’. If there’s any polity that knows how to make best use of welter-weight combatant units, it’s the usan Joint Command; they’re meanass destroyer-drivers and crazy corvetters ...those pirates got run off quite handily, those few that survived.”

Parias Seven is an outpost depot world of Paladin Steel/Aegis Stellar Industries. It was initially a lifeless world, but mild terraforming has transformed it into a habitable planet. Its proximity to both a wormhole(connecting to the Kaxxion Junction) and a hyperlane have made it a convenient stopover site and shopping/shipping outlet for worlds along the hyperlane. The system is also conveniently located near the Archises Gulf and the worlds lining that region, including CCW-Sanctua IV, which the GNE visited prior to the formation of the USA, and thus the USA has good relations with the Deneeva System. Parias-7 also served as a conduit for outside aide to the embattled Aldarans in their campaign against the extradimensional gender-cidal Lydists of Gaya.
Parias is a binary star system, with two stars orbiting in a stable configuration. The Parias system has several large and distinct asteroid belts, thought to be the result of the combined gravitational interaction of the system’s binary stars constantly churning the accretion disk of material. Parias Seven orbited outside this ‘rock grinder’ effect and thus was spared being ground down. The four distinct asteroid belts have provided ample prospecting for a growing Belter community, with nearby Parias-7 and its factories being the biggest customer for metallic ores to feed the planet’s growing industry.
Parias-7’s location allowed PS/ASI to introduce itself to a whole new sector of potential customers, both the hyperlane and the wrmhole junction connection making it convenient for worlds in the sector to stop over and buy materials and goods through the Parias-7 facilities. PS/ASI also established several factories for basic equipment, taking advantage of the available resources in the system to supply the factories with needed materials.
During the Minion War, interdimensional gate travel was locked as a precaution, forcing Parias Seven to make due on orders from its existing stock, and to adapt its industries to continue to match most orders for equipment. Acting as the ‘neighborhood arsenal’ for its neighbors during troubled times has further increased Parias-7’s reputation and prosperity.

Solar System(Parias-Helios)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf(Parias-H-Alpha)
-Yellow Dwarf(Parias-H-Beta)
Number of Planets: 10
-Terrestrial(Malnath)----Gargantuan ‘hot Venus’ world covered in dense acidic vapors, Parias-One was named ‘Malnath’ by a Squilb crewmember in the first system charting expedition, after a Squilb-lore monster of legend. It is uninhabitable and too radiation-bathed(its orbit takes it close to both Parias stars) to be worth exploiting, so little attention has been paid to it.

-Asteroid(Parias-2/Nanth’s Knee(Rest))----Largest body in the Alphard Belt. So named because one of the first EVA explorers to set foot on it, Midshipman Arvo Nanth, used the opportunity to go down on bent knee and propose marriage to the expedition geologist. She accepted.

-Asteroid(Parias-3/Gosho)----Largest body in the Betos Belt. A layer of deep-buried fossil ice makes it attractive as an asteroid colony site.

-Asteroid(Parias-4/Laven)----Largest body in the Cetan Belt. It possesses large amounts of chromium and thus a small mining operation has been placed on it.

-Asteroid(Parias-5/Obon)----Largest body in the Deltos Belt and a Belter base station(Obonville) for mining operations.

-Terrestrial(Parias-6/Tastel)----Tiny Tastel possesses a scant atmosphere, but is covered in water, with a vast under-ice liquid ocean, though mineral-laced and lifeless. Secondary colony sites are being prepared to exploit this world and its liquid assets, with sea-farming(once sufficient power sources have been set up) being a likely development. Currently, Belter ships traveling from the asteroid belts out to Parias-7 use the planet as as a stopover to shave off ice for water mass.

-Terrestrial(Parias 7/Parias)----System ‘lifeworld’ and site of the PS/ASI colony-outpost and factory-world.

-Exotic( Parias Hole)----Wormhole
The Parias Hole(sometimes called the ‘Pie Hole’) connects to the Kaxxion Junction. It is thus a convenient supply route for PS/ASI/WZT/USA-sourced goods. A large Frontier-class space station follows the wormhole, serving as traffic control and way-station. While the size of the wormhole prevents the larger freighters from transiting, Parias makes up for it by sending through large convoys of smaller transports.

A.) Location: Free space, orbiting between planets.
B.) Size: Modest----Vessels up to frigate size can travel through the ‘hole
C.) Frequency: Regular---6 times per day for an hour each time. Typically, incoming and outgoing travel is scheduled sequentially.
D.) Direction: Conditionally Two-Way---Travel can go back and forth, but limited to one direction at a time; so vessels cannot be traveling in opposite directions at the same time. To do so courts disaster; the vessels may simply disappear, may emerge as debris, or the wormhole may temporarily destabilize(and the ships never seen again)
E.) Range:
Extradimensional; connects to the Kaxxion Junction
F.) Transit Initiation:
Direction---The starship has to enter the wormhole at a specific angle
G.) Duration: Instantaneous
H.) Special: None

-Gas Giant(Parias 8/Revias)----Miniscule gas giant, with six moons(one of which turned out to have exploitable deposits of radiation-resistant Regium( Rifter #0-1). P-8’s small size makes it easier to gas-skim, making it a useful source of fuel for operations in the system and for passing starships to tank up at.

-Terrestrial(Parias 9/Gahrent)----Large, cold and lifeless. However, mineralogy scans have detected large deposits of Colal Crystals( Rifter #0-1) very useful in making high-quality optical and laser systems. During the Minion War incursion, PS/ASI-Parias began mining these deposits to produce additional laser systems and extend their supply of laser equipment.

Planet(Parias 7)
Often times simply referred to as ‘Parias’, Parias-7 is essentially a corporate colony. The terraforming and colonization of a world in a system that in the past was bypassed by other starfaring cultures introduced a profitable stopover and supply source along that same hyperlane, allowing the Parias-7 ‘trading post’ to quickly prosper beyond initial expectations. Several large PS/ASI factory complexes produce a number of vehicles and quantities of equipment for sale offworld.
Parias-7 is ringed by multiple space platforms, engaged in the terraforming efforts and acting as transit stations for star travel through the system. A dozen or more starships are in port at any given time. The USAJC’s Merchant Defense Force maintains a base, shared with a small contingent of PS/ASI security vessels attached to the Colonial Homeguard Force, to provide security for the colony, system, and visiting traders.
Parias-7 is expected to be one of the worlds slated for a ‘Green Makeover’ using the UDA’s new generations of biotech terraforming organisms.

Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 12,750 km
Gravity: 0.8 g
Temperature:
Cool; average temperatures are -40 degree C, with an equatorial belt average 45 degrees F. Raising the planetary temperature through the use of greenhouse gases and orbital mirrors is part of the terraforming effort.

Unusual/Special Features:
-Craters----Parias is speckled with evidence of past meteoric impacts. Large craters dot the planet’s surface.

Atmosphere:
Dense reducing atmosphere that is being converted to a breathable terrestrial nitrox mix through the use of introduced extremophile plants and atmospheric scrubbing towers. Parias-7’s atmosphere is breathable, albeit with mask assistance.
Terrain:
Three+ terrains; mountains, hills, and plains.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Chromium
- Antimony
- Molybdenite
- Sapphire
- Samarskite
- Arsenic
- Emerald
- Titanium
Hydrosphere:
69% surface coverage in open water
Biosphere:
Was Lifeless, but terraforming efforts have covered it with a light layer of engineered oxygen-producing plant life, assisted by atmosphere-production towers.

Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
1.2 million( 70% human, 30% other)
A large percentage of the population is also engaged in the terraforming effort, monitoring atmospheric composition and density, checking the tailored organisms and their health, and running the atmosphere plants.

Technology:
Galactic---PS/ASI brought state of the art terraforming technologies to Parias. Though much of the equipment manufactured in the PS/ASI factories would not be out of place in Information and Stellar Age cultures, it is Galactic-quality.

Economy:
Industrial and Commerce----Parias-7 has several PS/ASI factories, mainly producing simple vehicles(including combat equipment), spare parts, armor plate, various EBA, munitions and laser systems.
Among other items, the PS/ASI factories on Parias-7 produce the following:
-PS-APC(T)118 Linden Armored Personnel Carrier, Tracked(and its Minion War derivative, the locally-developed ‘Braxton’ missile tank)
-PS-S-ATV17Colter Rover
-LVTP700 AAAV/AAV7A1 ‘Platypus’ Amphibious Armored Vehicle(and a Minion War kludge variant with extra armor and an 80mm rail cannon)
-PS-MBT-05C ’Lynx’ Medium Tank
-PS-MBT-07 Black Bear Medium Tank
-PS-LRV-ACV(LGERV)-03 Asateague Light Ground Effect Scout Vehicle
-PS-HBT4A3 Shaw Medium Hover Tank
-PS-GEV-MMBT-20 Chandar Chandar Medium Hovertank
-PS-GEV-APC-113 ‘Grenser’ Armored Personnel Carrier, Ground Effect Vehicle
-PS-GNE-RS-RV-01 ‘Megabago’ Heavy Utility Vehicle, Hover

During the Minion War, Paria-7 also went into the production of vehicle laser systems, especially using locally-sourced Colal Crystals.

Wealth:
Prosperous---Parias-7 edged up from Average on account of PS/ASI managing to keep up with customer orders, even during the depressive times of the Minion War incursion. This has led to much spirited discussion about how best to spend the economic windfalls (after the PS/ASI home offices get their cut of the profits) on cultural enhancement projects to make Pariss-7 more attractive.

Government:
Corporate---The regional head of the PS/ASI-Parias also acts as colonial governor, though she also listens to a democratically-elected civilian council representing the colonists’ interests, and a ‘senate’ of various PS/ASI sub-divison officers involved in the Parias-7 effort.

Law Level:
Lawful--Up from Moderate when there was some panic about being cut off from the rest of the GNE /PS/ASI network.

Popularity:
Fanatical---The Parians are PROUD of having stood strong and kept their neighbors supplied with equipment and materials during the Minion War incursion.

Stability:
Stable, and rock-certain stable for the foreseeable future.



Cassedy Lightway---Hyperlane( Thundercloud Galaxy)
The Cassedy Lightway runs through part of Tor Sector, not far from the Archises Gulf and the Aldara system.

a) Length: 67 light years
b) Speed Factor: Quick Dash---10% increase in speed
c) Polity Boundaries: Modest Neighborhood---The hyperlane is bordered by 6 small system political entities, inncluding the planet Talsire in the Ballabin system.
d) Navigation Factor:Marked, but Spotty Coverage---This is frequently the case with hyperlanes that cross through the territories of many minor polities and backwater regions. There has been an effort to mark out the best travel routes, but it is intermittent and casually maintained, and it is easy to lose the marked path and go off course. One of PS/ASI’s goals is to provide a beacon system for the entire Cassedy Lightway. Roll a Navigation roll for every 25 light years covered.

e) (Optional) Anomalies
Sensor Phantoms----The Lightway is notably plagued with phantom gravity anomalies. On average, there’s a 15% chance of encountering 1d6 gravitic anomalies that pop up on mass sensors. Attempts to avoid them are at -20% to piloting rolls, but even if the ship collides with one, nothing happens, and the anomalies disappear as soon as they pass the ship. There’s no explanation for them, as systems diagnostics will show no problems with the ship systems. The USA is looking into what causes the phantoms, but so far has proven no more successful than others’ efforts at solving the mystery.

[taalismn]

Ditak-----(United Systems Alliance Colony World)(Anvil Galaxy)
“The social dynamics of any refugee world in the usa are going to be interesting. There tends to be a lot of back and forth between wanting to go back to familiar and comfortable ways and getting a fresh start with new ideas. Sometimes it divides communities and other times it unites them like nothing else before. But the USA has enough members from all manner of shatterworlds who can provide examples and guidance to the newcomers....or to kick heads in if the latter don’t behave themselves ”

“The Abadalans are starting to rebel against the modular prefabs they’ve been provided with, and are starting to experiment with building new structures in styles familiar to their old homeworld. That’s spurred the rest of the colonists to start bringing up old architecture styles of their own and sometimes mixing them up. There’s been some arguments in the adjacent and mixed communities about aesthetics and proper structure placement...the Abads are sticklers for geomantic geometries and that sometimes differs with the geo-pragmatists and the fengshuiers among the other colony groups. We’re seeing some compromise and mixing of styles, however, which means that Ditak’s already beginning to evolve its own unique look.”

Ditak is a red-sun colony world of the United Systems Alliance, settled mainly to secure territory along the Anvil Galaxy’s edge-clusters. Though Earth-habitable planets tend to be rare around red dwarf stars, the USA has had very good luck in finding quite a few, in addition to snapping up what they can of worlds around the long-burning stars. As it is, Ditak has required some terraforming work, but that has proceeded remarkably well. A number of colonial communities have been established on the planet.
Dresu-35’s retinue of gas giants have done a good job of sweeping up stray debris, so there’s very little inner system comet or asteroid activity. Recent finds of valuable minerals in the outer worlds of the Dresu-35 system have only increased the value of the system and encouraged its development.
Ditak is also being used as a resettlement world for refugees from the planet Abadal on the Tijike/Tihan-307 star system. There, millenia ago, a rogue planet sent the Tihan system’s lifeworld spinning out of the Goldilocks zone. Fortunately, the Abadalans had enough warning and the means to make preparations, and were able to get several hundred million of their population into stasis in deep shelters against the time their world would be too cold to sustain life. GNE dimensional scouts discovered rich mineral deposits on the former eighth planet of the solar system, Tijike, and follow-up waves of miners, prospecting the rest of the system were very much surprised to discover ruins on the seemingly lifeless eighth (once the second) world. They were even more surprised to discover viable stasis chambers in deep bunkers on the planet.
The United System Alliance is working to recover, revive, and resettle as many of the suspended Abadalans as they can find. Though red-dwarf Dresu is a dimmer sun than the Abadalans are used to, the general cleanliness of the system, cosmically speaking, and a lack of rogue planets appeals to the refugees.
The Abadalans very considerately packed as many people from a broad spectrum of their culture into the deep sleep shelters, against just such a day that they would be discovered and revived, when the Abadalans could rebuild their society. And there wherein lies a problem....Abadalan society had several laborer and servant castes that were effectively slaves, and the upper-class Abadalans have come out of stasis expecting things to revert to the traditional way of things. They expect the revived lower classes to assume their subservient roles and wait on their masters just like before. The egalitarian Greater New Englanders and usans, on the other hand, abhor slavery and have objected to how, while the Abadalans may treat their alien rescuers as social equals, they are much less courteous to their laborers. This has led to an increasing amount of friction between segments of both cultures, with the cultural liaison officials taking on more work smoothing out tensions. The more progressive Abadalans have allowed a number of disaffected lower caste members to ‘defect’ to the usan side of the cultural divide, as a ‘safety valve’ to reduce tensions, but this has raised objections from the more conservative caste-members about ‘permissiveness’ and ‘corruption’, especially when they feel that abolition-minded usan activists are actively talking up the Abadalan labor-classes on egalitarian rights and ideals.

Solar System( Dresu-35)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Red Dwarf
Number of Planets: 5
-Terrestrial(Ditak)----System Lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Huth)---- Gargantuan. Huth is just shy of being a brown dwarf. It has two Titan-like moons of significance, Balamn and Pertass, which show promise of being potential future chemical sources.

-Gas Giant(Odarm)---- Saturn-sized Odarm has eight moons, two of which have been discovered to have deposits of Kihvite, a sapphire-like crystalline material with applications in the manufacture of superconductors.

-Gas Giant(Gaynath)---- Tiny Gaynath has several light dust rings, but not much else to attract the casual traveler.

-Gas Giant(Teska)---- Enormous Teska has swept up an impressive amount of stray debris in the form of a large(22) moon system and large dust rings. At least one of the moons has been discovered to have deposits of exadianium, a new mineral with possible organic origins, possibly the mineralized remains of some large form of exolife. A scientific research station has been established to study the deposit and survey the rest of the moons for other possible anomalies.

Planet(Ditak)
Type:Terrestrial
Diameter: 17,000 km
Gravity: 1.1 g
Temperature: Temperate, on the warm and balmy end. Average temperature of 80 degrees F.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Odd Orbit---Ditak orbits its primary in a progressively inclining fashion that takes it out of the system ecliptic as much as 53 degrees over a 15-year period before it starts back.

-Moons(10)---Ten small moons orbit Ditak. Being not much larger than asteroids, the moons have been shifted into regular orbits and used as part of the terraforming effort, either gathering sunlight and converting it into power that is beamed to settlements below, or reflecting the light on specific areas.

-Craters--- Ditak is dotted with impact craters. Some of the smaller and more intact ones have been roofed over to provide atmosphere-shelter for communities and greenhouse crops.

Atmosphere:
Thin terrestrial nitrox mixture, but breathable with assistance. Terraforming efforts have been aimed at increasing the density of the atmosphere. Until the atmosphere is denser and better at shielding more of Dresu’s more harmful solar radiation, especially during solar flares, light reflective robes, cloaks, and skinsuits, in addition to supplemental breathers, are the fashion on Ditak.

Terrain:
Unusual Seismology; Ditak doesn’t have earthquakes or volcanos; its tectonic rift zones instead OOZE hot rock to the surface. Geothermal power is an attractive technology on Ditak.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Mercury
- Colombite
- Zinc
- Gold/Silver
- Fluorite
- Gypsum
- Titanium
- Barite
Hydrosphere:
65% surface coverage in open water
Biosphere:
Dense; terraforming packages have taken off VERY well on Ditak, and the eco-engineers have been able to actually accelerate the schedule of staged plant and animal introduction.
Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
7 million (predominately Human; 70%, with the remaining 30% being a mix of species common to the USA). The human population is roughly divided between usans and Abadalans. There is a slow, but steady, trickle in of new Abadalans as more of their survival vaults are discovered and opened.
Technology:
Galactic--The USA provides its colonists with good equipment and access to Galactic-level technologies. Though higher-end tech such as contra-gravity and FTL drives are beyond the ability of the colonists to replicate, they can produce their own hovercraft engines, high-capacity batteries, megadamage materials, and superconductors using modular factory fabbers.
The Abadalans are more accustomed to an early Space Age/Late Information Age level of technology, but are acclimating to the galactech used by the USA co-colonists.
Economy:
Agriculture--Ditak’s already started mass-cultivation of commercially-viable plants, starting with hardy soil-generating species such as breaker-lichen and rock-wheat. A few Abadalan crops, raised from salvaged seedbanks, are being greenhouse-tested and to give the revived and relocated refugees familiar tastes of home. This has led to some cross-colony culinary experimentation and promising efforts at fusion cusine.
Wealth:
Average; not bad for a starter colony; early harvests of extremophile crops and dome-grown specialty species have done well.
Government:
The Usan colonies are governed by a colonial governor, who listens to colonial representative councils. The Abadalans have their own ranked aristocratic caste-society.
Law Level:
Moderate; there’s some friction between the usans and the Abadalans on the matter of labor relations; the more liberal Usans keep trying to educate and liberate the lower castes, and the upper-caste Abadalans keep trying to order around Usan technicians and laborers as if they were vassals. Several incidents have led to Abadalans clashing with Usan labor unions. And the Abadalans are still trying to figure out what to make of Free A.I.s.
Popularity:
Popular; breaking in a new world is a collective endeavor, and both the usans and the Abadalans are dedicated to making the most of their new world.
Stability:
Stable, despite the tension between the usans and the Abadalans on a number of issues. The Abadalans recognize that they’re lucky that anybody discovered and woke them up,and gave them a fresh start, so they’re not eager to antagonize their benefactors. That having been said, there are a few Abadalan upper-castes who are willing to let a few serfs and servitor-class under-castes ‘defect’ to the other side of the colonies if it will defuse tensions. And a number of usan businesses on Ditak ‘rent’ serfs from the Abadalans for various work projects...as long as the serfs get a fair cut of the fees.

[taalismn]

(saw a recent description of Kepler-2b and knew I just HAD to do a similar world...Am I padding the USA’s nest? Yes, yes I am.)

GemRane/Dallan ---United Systems Alliance Colony (Extradimensional)
(aka ‘Crystal-Trove’, ‘Glass-Bonanza’)
“It’s a hellworld, but it’s a potentially very profitable hellworld, and profit has driven even more foolhardy ventures.”

“If GemRane’s crystal snow were gemstone quality, a single scoopship-load could knock the bottom out of the gem market for a dozen sectors. As it is, most of what we’re able to pull in is flawed enough to not be showroom quality, but just good enough for industrial use. However, the occasional ‘snowflakes’ we do get intact...well, those tend to be pretty damn spectacular and arguably too good to sell; I hear there’s a nice little museum of crystals on Dallan.”

“The scoop-ships we use on Gem are expensive and very specialized. Only AIs or VR-links are allowed to fly them down in that surging murk, and we don’t allow anything sophont to go down there in person, because even with all the special gear and protective fields the ships got, we lose one out of every six flights, which is better than the old ratio of one out of three. But a good run-load more than covers the attrition.”

GemRane is an anomalous world located off the Galian Flow interdimensional transit sequence. It’s also considered a mineral bonanza for the United Systems Alliance. In fact, the whole Davers-18 star system is consdiered to be a prize for the Alliance; besides GemRane, the star system sports a habitable lifeworld(Dallan) and several exploitable exotic mineral sites on a peaceful commercial hyperlane. But GemRane stands out as the jewel oddity.
GemRane resembles early speculation of Kepler-2b, a world in the Milky Way galaxy. Early spectrographic studies of the planet found enormous amounts of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere, leading to speculation that the planet’s atmosphere might snow not water crystals, but rubies and sapphires.
This is indeed the case with GemRane; its extreme tmperatues, high atmospheric pressures, and exotic atmosphere encouraging the formation of crystals of aluminum oxide. It has been discovered that these atmosphere-formed crystals have the same exploitable mystic properties as those formed underground in the more common manner.
The United Systems Alliance has begun harvesting the crystal rain using specialized robot heavy shuttles fitted with heavy shields and scoop-fields to dare the treacherous stormwinds of the planet to collect the ‘snow’. Occasionally the catch-fields scoop up traces of other valuable minerals(such as platinum, gold and silver dust) sandblasted off the planet’s surface and carried aloft by the planet’s howling supersonic winds.
Neighboring Dallan is both a habitable lifeworld and a colonial site, providing a convenient support headquarters for operations for the GemRanemining operations. The rest of the system as well is proving to be an embarrassment of riches and promise to make the Davers system one of the Alliance’s great resource systems, though they have tried to remain quiet about it.
Outside the USA, the Davers-18 system is little known, but rumors of a ‘gemstone world’ have leaked out, and a few freelancers have sought to find the planet through the USA’s free/discounted extrdimensional access, check to see if the rumors are true, and make use of the information. Of passing note, the Altess have begun shying away from investing too heavily in gemstone/crystallography enterprises competing with USA efforts.

Solar System(Davers-18)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 4
-Terrestrial(GemRane)----Planet with a corundum-rich atmosphere and howling winds. Lifless, but orbited by several science and industrial stations involved in atmospheric mining operations.

-Terrestrial(Dallan)----System Lifeworld and colony site.

-Asteroid(Castans)---- Largest asteroid in the dense Cevenses Belt. Castans is being developed as a Belter colony headquarters for exploiting the various rocks of the Cevenses. A major activity is finding enough asteroid ice to send to Dallan.

-Terrestrial(Vadril)----A gargantuan world with a gravity twice that of Earth’s and an exotic atmosphere(a trait it seems is common in the Davers-18 worlds). It is thus just about viably exploitable with common gravity-compensation methods. This is important because large deposits of an exotic new mineral crystal---dubbed Carellite--- have been found on Vadril. is believed to be a form of Colal ( Rifter #0-1), a crystal useful in the creation of hgh quality optical lenses. Carellite exhibits similar properties, but also appears to be able to absorb and amplify coherent light energy by as much as 30%(so a laser doing 3d6 damage could now do 4d6 damage instead). If mining operations can be conducted on Vadril, Dallan stands to make an even bigger profit as the support colony for a motherlode in the Crystal Trade.

Planet( GemRane)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 25,660 km
Gravity: 15 gs
Temperature:
Extreme; GemRane’s slow rotation leads to its day side being extremely hot (1,000 degres F) and its nightside extremely cold(-300 degrees F). Mega-hurricane winds blow across the planet in excess of 1,000 MPH.
Unusual/Special Features:
*Odd Rotation----GemRane rotates very slowy, its average ‘day’ being 4 months long.
*Energy Field---A barely detectable ambient PPE field has been discovered on GemRane; it has been speculated that this field is partially, if not wholly, responsible for GemRane’s crystal rain being mystically usable.

Atmosphere:
*Dense/Exotic----GemRane’s atmosphere is heavily laced with corundum/aluminum oxide, which crystallizes out on the cold nightside of the planet as hard crystals. Thousand mile-per-hour storm winds are a constant as atmosphere circulates between the superheated dayside and the deathly cold nightside.
Terrain:
Not that anybody wants to set foot on the surface of this hell-planet, but radar scans of GemRane’s surface reveal a surface of broad wind-scoured plains and eroding mountain chains.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Aluminum
- Sapphire
- Ruby
- Chromium
- Gold/Silver
- Amethyst
- Platinum
- Barite
Hydrosphere:
GemRane has little standing surface water(traces of ice on the nightside), but its atmosphere contains traces of water vapor.
Biosphere:
Lifeless
Civilization:
None
Population:
None. There is a Plymouth-class orbital station that is the base camp for the scoop operations
Technology:
Galactic; the scoop operations use cutting edge technology to send specially-equipped drone shuttles down into GemRane’s violent atmosphere to scoop up aluminum oxide crystals.
Economy:
Atmospheric crystal mining
Wealth:
Early predictions are that the GemRane operations will make the Dallan colony quite Wealthy as they get into higher gear.

Planet(Dallan)
Dallan is the colonized lifeworld in the Davers-18 star system. Its location makes it a convenient location from which to support the GemRane scoop operations. The planet itself also has a number of valuable mineral deposits and an exploitable ecosystem. The Dallan colonization effort has begun some limited terraforming, aimed mainly at introducing more water and higher global temperatures. Local industry is geared towards producing orbital solletes and water transport systems, but also includes small craft/shuttle construction lines for producing the drones used on GemRane.

Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 14,000 km
Gravity: 0.7 g
Temperature: Cool; average temperature is -80 degrees F. There’s a broad equatorial belt where temperatures average 45 degrees F and open water exists.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(8)---Dallan possesses a number of small moons that collectively exert mild tidal pulls on the planet.
Atmosphere:
Dense and Exotic--Breathable nitrox mixture, but higher in oxygen than Earth-normal. Colonists can adapt to breathing the richer mix, but visitors may require supplemental gases to ‘cut’ the air and keep lightheadedness down. The atmosphere is also rich in water vapor, making dense morning fogs common. The atmosphere also supports an airborne ecology of micro-aerophytoplankton that reacts to heat and carbon dioxide with bioluminescence---thus people walking outside can be seen to be haloed by ‘auras’ of glowing vapor from airborne organisms reacting to the colonists’ exhalations and bodyheat.
Terrain:
-Unusual Seismology---Dallan’s tectonic activity is unusually stable; it has slowly growing, but rarely violent, volcanic fields and hotspring regions.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Iron
- Copper
- Wolframite
- Aluminum
- Calcite
- Emerald
- Platinum
- Sulfur
Hydrosphere:
Badlands----About 30% of Dallan’s surface is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Moderate; the cold temperatures, limited surface water, and low solar output have stymied rapid evolution of life, but somehow life did spark into existance around volcanic hot springs and underwater fumaroles and slowly evolve and spread. Dallen is covered by mats of hearty lichens, algae, and fern analogues, and has even evolved animals in the form of various invertebrates, mainly small worms.

Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
1.2 million(10% Human, 90% a mix of other USA species)

Technology:
Galactic----It requires Galactic-level technology to harvest Gemrane, so Dallen doubles as an industrial-tech production/research and development site.

Economy:
Industrial---Dallan produces small craft, mainly modified PS-AAST-6 ‘Gannet’ heavy shuttle hulls outfitted as drones piloted either by onboard AI drones or remotely via VRRDS-style FT:/quantum radio links.

Wealth:
Statistically Depressed, but only because all economic surpluses are pumped into the support services and terraforming efforts. The colony’s needs are effectively met by the sponsoring USA. Economic prospects are that Dallan’s fortunes will improve in rapid order as operations in the system ramp up.

Government:
Limited Democracy----Colonial Governor appointed by the USA, though from a PS/ASI-approved pool of candidates with executive experience. The governor listens to a local colonial council elected by the colonists.

Law Level:
Lawful---There’s been (predictably) some attempted jewel heists from the scoop-banks, but these were mainly outsiders. There’s also been the occasional VRRDS-jockey running impromptu aerobatics with scoop drones. Otherwise, Dallan runs under the USA legal guidelines and constitution protecting the Rights of Sophontsm though enforced by corporate security.

Popularity:
Popular---There are worse places to live than a corporate colony like Dallan, and people are working towards a better future and seeing tangible results.

Stability:
Stable--The majority of the colonists don’t want to be impatient and spoil the rosy growth curve predicted for Dallan.

[SolCannibal]

And, hey, Frost Giants in Space, how (forgive me( cool is that?

Ok, chill bro, chill...

[taalismn]

Ok, chill bro, chill...

Well, given how comets are essentially great big space snowballs, can you imagine a Frost Giant/Freymos Space Mage controlling one?
Or turning one into their personal interplanetary ice fortress?

[SolCannibal]

Ok, chill bro, chill...

Well, given how comets are essentially great big space snowballs, can you imagine a Frost Giant/Freymos Space Mage controlling one?
Or turning one into their personal interplanetary ice fortress?

That could jumpstart some interesting techno-wizardry focused shipyards or more, if one manages to set up the right arcane education infrastructure among the Freymos or other cold-manipulating supernatural races.

[taalismn]

That could jumpstart some interesting techno-wizardry focused shipyards or more, if one manages to set up the right arcane education infrastructure among the Freymos or other cold-manipulating supernatural races.

Indeed. The synergy effect is very strong in the United Systems Alliance. As omegasgundam has had his characters(or versions of canon ones) declare, the USA doesn't simply use magic to -replace- technological systems, it -enhances- them and creates wholly new effects.
And I haven't gone into detail about the experimental shipyard using both technology and magic near Felson(mainly because I had at the time no real ideas about what could happen)...that's a possible place experimentation could take place...and of course in the Freymos' own shipyards as the technowizardry culture and resources diffuses through the USA members.

[taalismn]

Pirates of the Three Galaxies Gazetteer:Mandoc Pirates(Defunct)
A scanty outfit of mirror-chromed metal plates, spiked shoulder and forearm guards, connected by black strapping adorned a mannequin in a case in the corner of the office. The visitor looked at it curiously, trying to relate it to the red-clad bountyhunter watching their interest.
“That? Got it off the body of the last Mandoc middie outlaw still standing when we hunted them down. The spikes and the bikini are rather over the top so I thought they’d make a good conversation piece. Veck, not even some of OUR corsairs are crazy enough to wear something like that in combat, though a few come close.”
The visitor looked a little queasy. “A trophy-?”
Seeing her guest’s reaction and guessing their chain of thought, the Livian warrior laughed. “Oh, don’t worry; in the end it was quick and painless and I gave her what she wanted. I cornered her in a hold full of medical supplies her gang was trying to steal. After I pinned her down I borrowed a cylinder of somonite anesthetic and gassed her unconscious, stripped her and shoved her into a body-pack. She’s down in the ice-holds sleeping soundly in stasis, while I keep her...well, I guess you could call it a ‘uniform’....up here for kicks. She may have been just a dumb middle-zoner with some meta-talent, looking for adventure, but she had rather interesting style.”

The Mandoc were an interstellar brigand gang that has its origins with the Dydarals, and originally were made up of members of that successful criminal gang that did NOT want to retire to colonize a backwater world. Instead, a small group split off to become high-powered mercenaries in their own right.
The Mandoc were never as entirely successful as the Dydarals were, but some part of the Dydarals’ fantastic luck must have rubbed off on the Mandocs, because they somehow managed to survive, usually by the skin of their teeth, being destroyed on numerous occasions. Operating from a variety of darkports over the centuries, the Mandoc brigands were often forced to move after a few years in one place, sometimes after being so successful that they stirred up the authorities to come after them, other times because other gangs tried to assimilate or destroy them. The Mandocs never grew beyond having a few hundred members and two dozen ships in their pirate fleet, but they had enough talent to have an effect beyond their numbers when fortune was running their way. Ultimately, however, the Mandocs’ only claim to their original founders was the name only, attrition having claimed all the original members. This made the original Dydaral scheme of superpowered space pirates harder to maintain, but the Mandocs still managed to find and recruited some meta-talents over the centuries the group managed to straggle on, preserving some little part of the original Dydaral meta-’aura’.
While dabbling in a variety of criminal behaviors, such as smuggling, slaving, colony extortion, and sellswording in a number of Rim conflicts, the Mandocs mainly worked as tried and true commerce raiders, This activity netted them their few spectacular successes, such as the burglary of Wicknoyer Station and its specie vaults, the simultaneous hijacking of three HomoyaKorp payroll couriers, the emptying of an arsenal-carrying As-Thanan military transport and the theft of crimelord Balspr ‘The Nose-cutter’s private yacht(supposedly in retribution for backing out on paying them for a job). Finally, they were responsible for the crippling and robbery-ransom of the Yalek Galtrane-class armored liner -Pommerlane-.
Finally, recently, their luck ran out. Aided by the United Systems Alliance, the Livian Corsairs, the descendants of the Dydarals, launched a long-range expedition to hunt down the Mandocs. Outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered, the Mandocs were finally ended as an organization. Those that weren’t killed in combat, were turned over to the authorities of their most recent victims(the Yalek especially posted bounties for their capture) for trial, aside from a few who reportedly wound up in custody of the Livians. A few individuals may have escaped the dragnet, and supposedly not all their equipment caches and ships were accounted for, but it seems unlikely they will be willing or able to resurrect the Mandocs.

a) Size---
-Wing; never more than twenty-four ships (Flotilla) at the height of their powers, but typically had only 8-10 ships.

b) Sponsorship---
-Freelancers for the most part. They had a number of criminal sponsorships, but these usually ended in falling-outs, requiring the Mandoc to get up and flee to safer pastures.

b2) Background---
-Splitoff of the Dydarals over the ultimate fate of the famed pirate group. The core wanted to retire, the original Mandocs didn’t. Interestingly, the Dydarals somehow kept or persuaded the dissidents from using the Dydaral name in their continued piratical activities.

c)Alignment---
-Anarchist and Miscreant for the most part, but over the centuries they occasionally styled themselves as Aberrant ‘knights of the spaceways’ and sometimes produced Diabolical mad-dogs.

d) Technology Level---
-Generally Old; a generation or two behind the Golgan state of the art for example. The Human Alliance Corister-class corvette can be considered of this lineage.

e) Weapons and Equipment---
-Good Gear---The Mandocs managed to get military-surplus , initially from some of the original Dydaral black market contacts. Though over their centuries-long run they occasionally dropped to Basic Equipment, on average the Mandocs managed to acquire(mainly illegally) fairly good gear.

f) Ships---
-Generall corvettes and frigate-sized vessels. Twice, the Mandocs managed to acquire a light cruiser, but wound up losing the vessels in one of their all-too-frequent hurried evacuations.

g) Communications---
-The Mandocs relied on shipboard communications, but occasionally tapped into galactic comnets to send encoded messages to detached squadrons.

h) Headquarters--
-None permanent; the Mandocs generally operated out of asteroid bases and small space stations provided by their sponsors.

i) Intelligence---
-The Mandocs relied heavily on stool pigeons and bribed port authorities to feed them sector shipping manifests and traffic logs for whatever sector they were then operating in, which would be double-checked by meta-talents such as clairvoyance and far-sight. This backfired on several occasions when their informants were turned or their employers decided to sell them out.

j) Internal Security ---
- Tight----The Mandocs were small and exclusive enough that most everybody knew everybody else, and even if it were not for meta-talent screening, infiltrators would have a hard time getting at vital parts of the ships.

k) Criminal Activity---
-The Mandocs managed, over the centuries, to dabble in just about everything, but ultimately focused on high-space larceny.

l) Level of Experience
-Generally Expeienced; Levels 5-10.

m) Contacts---
- Multiple Agents---The Mandoc initially ‘inherited’ a number of Dydaral-organization contacts, and managed to continue using them and their descendants for a number of decades. In the end, though, thy had to go it alone, relying on personal contacts of individual crewmembers.

n) Resources---
-Small Potatoes---The Mandocs rarely rose above being able to scrounge up much for extra activities, usually 1d10 x 10,000 credits. Occasionally, though, a big score or generous employer would allow them to spend Large Loans(1d6x100,000 credits).

o) Pay--
-Fair---Roughly 50% of any profit is shared amongst the officers, and the rest paid out to the crew, with extra shares/bonuses paid to exceptional performers.

p) Reputation--
-Known---The Mandocs never rose to Dydaral-levels of infamy, but they still managed to be known, generally either as hard-hitting outlaws or desperate desperados who would do just about anything for a buck. Some of their more charismatic members even posed for media-shots(‘Genuine Pirate Beef/Cheesecake’)...which wound up as part of the ‘wanted’ poster media issued on them.

q) Special Quirks---
-Meta-Talents----The Mandocs sold themselves as a ‘superpowered’ pirate gang in the mold of the original Dydaral organization and managed to attract some talent banking on that. Psionics, superpowers, and some magic found their way into the Mandoc organization.

-Longevity---Though not evident at the time, the Mandocs seemed to have a surprising longevity as a group, with relatively clean transitions of power and retention of purpose. Though coming close on occasion to breaking apart, and with a group reputation/name that was more ignoble than feared, the Mandocs still managed to survive as a group for several centuries, though they had to move their operations more or less at random about the Three Galaxies.

r) Preferred Targets
-Cargo ships, payroll couriers, executive yachts and high-value carriers.


s)Species Composition
-Generally Human, but they would ultimately accept anybody.

[taalismn]

(The ‘Horde’ is the creation of Kitsune for his website)
Tegan------Pirate Slave World(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“The Trayge come from a planet that’s just shy of being a hellworld. They’re tough and they’re intelligent. They’d be a hard nut for the average pirate group to intimidate, especially if the Trays had managed to get ahold of Galactic weapons. Problem is, the Trayge didn’t encounter average pirates; they got the bloody planet-reaping -Horde-.”

“It’s considered good sport to hunt the locals; the novice pirates get practice, the dumb ones get wedded out, and the Horde leadership gets an updated idea on how the local resistance is brewing and how much farther the Horde has to cull the Trayge to keep them subservient. It’s a bloody, emphasis on the ‘bloody’, rotten business that’s especially hard on the Trayge. No wonder the Trayge are so high-strung.”

“-The first shipments of Partisan laser rifles and grenade launchers got through okay, but the Tray are strong enough to handle much heavier weapons and Brodkil and power armor take a lot of killing. What’s the schedule on our next unbespoken production run of Comet Rifles? Or fanblasters for that matter?”

Trayge RCC
The Trayge are a species of intelligent humanoid omnivorous insectoids, native to the planet Tegan in the Gemal system, who currently suffer under the oppressive rule of the Brodkil-led Horde, a massive galactic pirate organization that has paralyzed dozens of sectors and ravaged hundreds of worlds. A part of the immense Horde has taken a particular liking to Tegan and has settled into the Gemal system as one of their ‘farm worlds’. The Horde regularly raids the Trayge homeworld for resources and terrorize the natives for practice and sport. Many Trayge are taken as slaves and forced to work in factories producing equipment for the Horde. Still-standing Trayge cities are held for ransom until the natives pay tribute to the alien oppressors. A once vibrant and prosperous global society has been disrupted, its leadership forced (literally) underground to wage a resistance campaign against technologically more advanced barbarians from the stars.
Though attribute-wise physically slighter superior to their opponents, the Trayge are trumped by the Brodkils’ supernatural nature and superior technology, as well as the neo-demons’ sheer brutality and ability to motivate other Horde members to equal depravity. The Trayge, however, believe that given enough time and opportunity, they can match their alien oppressors technologically, but they also realize that those two factors are in terribly short supply for them.
The Trayge have managed to sneak a number of agents offworld to seek help in ousting the Horde. They’ve had many disappointments; the CCW and UWW are currently too preoccupied with other matters, such as recovering from the Minion War, the Golgans want terms for their help that are just as extortive as the Horde, and those agents sent to the TGE have yet to be heard from again. They’ve at least found sympathetic ears in the pirate-hating United Systems Alliance.
While the United Systems Alliance is not yet in a position to launch all-out assaults on the Horde strongholds in the Gemal system, they have been able to supply the Trayge resistance with advanced weaponry, delivered by various stealth platforms to Tegan. In return the USA is getting a steady stream of information on the Horde and its operations in the Gemal-Tolson Sector, data invaluable in formulating an overall strategy to deal with the organized pirate threat.
Besides a few groups of Trayge slaves who have managed to escape their captors, a few other colonial groups have been smuggled offworld to establish fallback enclaves elsewhere in the Three Galaxies.

Alignments: Any
Life Span: 160 years
Size: 6-7 ft tall, 140-220 lbs
Gender: Heterosexual and produce 1-2 young at a time, who are delivered in semi-rigid egg sacs, incubated externally for several weeks, then hatch. They are raised by their parents and reach sexual maturity in 12 years.
Physical Description/Appearance:
Tall, gangly humanoids with thin limbs, and a skeletal appearance, resembling a more muscular and hard-skinned version of the traditional ‘Grays’ of human legend. Their heads are hairless and bulbous, with large dark wide-set eyes and hard-set mouths that appear inflexible, but actually open up to reveal several mandibles. Their noses are a set of slits set between the eyes. They are covered in grayish chitinous metallic-seeming skin. Ethnic variations include different heights and skin colors ranging from ivory white to dark gray-black, and skin speckling.

Disposition/Attitudes:
Tend to be cool, calm, and collect...almost terrifyingly so. Trayge can come across as coldly patient, logical, and dispassionate, though they are anything but as a culture that values/valued family, comradeship, and community. A generation of laboring under the yoke of alien overlords have made the Trayge a coldly pragmatic people able to sacrifice a few(including companions and allies) against a greater future goal benefiting many.
The Trayge are generally distrusting of non-Trayge, having acquired a measure of xenophobia from dealing with several alien species serving with the Horde, but they are realistic enough to realize that the Horde does not represent the greater number of species in the cosmos and that the Trayge people are going to need help to drive the Horde from their world. Trayge are willing to work to overcome their prejudice and work with other alien species towards a common goal, but it takes them some work to overcome their generational distrust of aliens. The Trayge especially hate Brodkil and their closest allies, such as gargoyles and Infernals.

Physical Attributes:
IQ: 3d6
ME: 2d6+10
MA: 2d6+6
PS: 4d6+20
PP: 2d6+13
PB: 1d4+2
PE: 2d6+12
SPD: 5d6+30
(ISP):-----
(PPE): 1d4
Hit Points: 2d4x10
SDC: 3d6x10+130
Armor Rating: 13
MDC:----
Horror Factor: 10...This has worked against the Trayge on occasion, especially when trying to solicit help; many other species are reluctant to help a people who are as fear-inducing as the pirates they claim to be fighting.

Natural Abilities:
----Resistant to Heat and Energy(Thermal World)----Lasers and energy blasts(especially lightning strikes and electricity) do HALF damage.

----Strong-Willed: +1 save vs Psionics, +7 save vs Insanity, +2 save vs Horror Factor, +2 save vs Possession.

----Low Light and Peripheral Vision---Trayge possess excellent low light(800 ft range) and 120-degree peripheral vision allowing them to see in their planet’s foggy atmosphere(+1 to Perception rolls and +1 to Initiative when being ambushed).

---Eyes of Extra-Perception: About 30% of Trayge have a mutant ability to See the Invisible, thus seeing through Brodkil invisibility.

Psionics:
None, Trayge lack any psychic potential.

Magic:
None. Though the Trayge believe in magic, having seen the Brodkil perform supernatural feats without any sign of underlying technology making it possible, the Trayge lack any ability to learn and use magic.

Cybernetics/Bionics:
Familiar enough with seeing Brodkil with implants. Though they hate things associated with their closest enemies, the Trayge recognize the usefulness of cybernetics, though they have not developed them themselves. If cybernetics and bionics compatible with Trayge physiology were made available from a trustworthy source, Trayge might consider getting them, especially to compensate for war injuries and medical problems.

Available OCCs:
Any high-tech profession. No magic-users or psychics
RCC Skills:
Math: Basic(+10%)
Skills of Note:
Language: Demongogian(the language of their Brodkil oppressors)(+10%)
Culture:
The Trayge were at an Information Age level of technology when the Horde arrived and dashed any romantic notions the Trayge had about First Contact with extraterrestrials. Democracies typified their pre-Horde governments, but they have since effectively become a collection of dominated police-states. Family is important to Trayge, especially the protection of the unhatched young, and threatening their nest-creches is a sure way to bring a reaction from an expectant Trayge.


*Lord Treldash Gnawer--Pirate Overlord
Lord Gnawer is the Brodkil pirate lord in charge of the Gemal system. A sadistic but smart neo-barbarian, Gnawer hasn’t stripped Tegan down to the bedrock already because he sees it as a long-term exploitable resource in supporting his control of the Gemal Way wormhole. He commands a pirate fleet of some seventy-four ships of the line, of which half are in the Gemal system at any given time while the rest are out raiding. In addition, he provides services to other pirate groups, albeit mostly of the worse kinds that share similar codes of misconduct to the Horde’s.
As a reward for service or for practice, Lord Gnawer lets bands of pirates, especially his fellow Brodkil, descend to the surface of Tegan and hunt the locals for sport. Gnawer considers those pirates that get killed by the resistance to be failures who were weeded from his ranks, though when the Trayge prove TOO successful in ambushing his raiders, he finds this a ready excuse to inflict ‘lessons’, such as decimating nearby communities.
Among the many torments Lord Gnawer is fond of inflicting on prisoners and slaves is using them as living planetary probes, dropping prisoners with limited life support on a planet and demanding they provide a steady stream of reports on what they find in return for being rescued before their life support runs out. The promise is, of course, empty, and very few are ever recovered( with the prospect of being sent down again or face crueler torments in captivity). Though the Horde has acquired some knowledge of unexplored planets in this manner, it’s really mostly done for sadistic entertainment, especially as the strandees near the end of their air and power and many begin begging to be picked up.
Lord Gnawer sees the Gemal system as keystone to his own power and position in the Horde; he will not give it up easily. However, if Gnawer were to be killed, his subordinates, those that wouldn’t immediately start fighting each other for his position, might be much more tractable into abandoning the system.

Solar System(Gemal)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Yellow Dwarf(Gemal-A/Gemal)
-Orange Dwarf (Gemal-B/Doirth)
Number of Planets: 8
-Terrestrial(Mantric)---- Large hot Venus-style planet shrouded in acidic clouds. The Horde has been known to pitch hostages in old spacesuits into Mantric’s atmosphere and record their screams. As the Trayge are particularly hear-resistant, they suffer longer than other species.

-Terrestrial(Tegan)----System lifeworld

-Terrestrial(Radolf)----A tiny, but dense-atmosphered world possessing a Dense ecosystem. The Trayge have long regarded nearby Radolf as a draw to cross interplanetary space. Early primitive Trayge cultures almost worshipped it, later more modern ones saw the planet as potential real estate to be claimed in the name of science and manifest destiny. Thus, when the Horde decided to claim it for themselves, it came as a shock to the Trayge. The Horde has added to the insult by savaging the Radolfan ecosystem, clearcutting forests and slaughtering the local wildlife. Of particular concern is the fate of the giant and beautiful Radolfan cloudbrowser, a large and peaceful aerial flier in the form of a massive flying wing. Early Trayge interplanetary probes caught pictures of the sedate fliers and fired Tray interest in them. However, since the Horde took over Radolf, the future survival of the cloudbrowsers is very much in doubt.
Lord Gnawer maintains repair yards on Radolf’s moon Paskel, are worked for the most part by slave technicians who service the pirate fleet and assembly new craft from salvaged prizes.

-Asteroid(Gyak)----Gyak is a Ceres-sized planetisimal. One of Lord Gnawer ‘s sub-officers was supposedly exiled to Gyak for insubordination, while others claim that Gnawer’s predecessor and/or sire, crippled in a trial of leadership and left alive, albeit in helpless condition, was the one stranded in a propulsion-less hulk with barely functional life support.

-Terrestrial(Suscup)----Earth-sized but thin-atmosphered Suscup is too frigid to support life, but its relatively low gravity makes access easy. It would be attractive as a closed-environment colony and mining base, but the Horde is less interested in developing its own mining and refinement facility(prefers to take over existing ones and work them with slave labor). Currently, aside from a few strandees, Suscup is not inhabited nor is being developed.

-Exotic(Gemal Way)---- Wormhole--Part of the attraction of the Gemal system is the Gemal Way, a wormhole that connects to another system some 200 light years away.
A.) Location: Interplanetary
B.) Size: Modest----Vessels up to frigate size can travel through the ‘hole.
C.) Frequency: Regular---1d6 times per day
D.) Direction:Two-Way---Traffic may proceed freely in both directions, at the same time
E.) Range: IntraGalactic---Connects systems within a galaxy(-5% to Duration)
F.) Transit Initiation: FTL Drive---The starship has to have an existing FTL drive or specific type, usually contragaivity, which must be adjusted to special settings, and engaged as the ship enters the wormhole.
G.) Duration: 1d6 minutes`
H.) Special: Radiation----Starships transiting the wormhole are exposed to potentially dangerous levels of radiation; perhaps stray cosmic matter is pulverized to radiation by the gravitational forces of the wormhole walls, or accelerated to destruction, or the wormhole transits through radioactive realms, but without proper precautions, the ship’s crew may be subjected to radiation. This isn’t normally a problem for the robust Brodkil who can make the transit without much in the way of special measures, though the radiation short-circuits their ability to turn invisible for 2d4x10 hours after transit.

-Terrestrial(Tanth)---- Cold and possessing only a thin poisonous atmosphere, smallish Ranth does have a 0.9 surface gravity and 78% surface coverage in water ice. The Horde sometimes lands slave labor in spacesuits to mine ice. Few are recovered. There are rumors that some of the strandees were killed by elusive local lifeforms lurking under the ice.

-Gas Giant(Eorgo)----Large gas giant with ten moons and a ring system, Eorgo would make a good Belter-style resource-world with gas-skimming and moon-mining. Indeed, one of the moons has quantities of kardinium, useful in creating megadamage alloys. The Horde, however, has little interest in deep-geosurveying, setting up outer world industry, nor possesses the means to utilize the valuable ore, so the exploitation of Eorgo must wait a future time.

Planet(Tegan)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: : 14,700 km
Gravity: 3g
Temperature: Warm; average temperature is 130 degrees F.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(2)----Tegan’s twin moons, Detrella and Trinexxa, were visited pre-Horde by Trayge astronauts and seen as stepping stones to exploration of the rest of the star system. Now they’re Horde bases and staging areas for slave raids and transshipment.

Atmosphere:
Breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture. Dense fogs and violent solar-fueled storm cells are common on Tegan.
Terrain:
Varied; four+ terrain types
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Chromium
- Molybdenite
- Magnesium
- Gold/Silver
- Diamond
- Borax
- Platinum
- Sulfur
Hydrosphere:
Moist; 72% surface coverage in open water.
Biosphere:
Moderate; was Dense shading on Verdant, but Horde predation has led to the destruction of much of the ecology. The Trayge are forced to rely on only a few cultivated crops and domesticated species for sustenance, while the Horde regularly defoliates or hunts the rest. On occasion, Lord Gnawer has used the threat of starvation or ecological devastation to draw a response from the Trayge resistance.

Civilization:
Settled(Trayge homeworld)
Population:
5 billion Trayge(was once 8 billion)

Technology:
Was Information Age beginning to explore local space; the Horde has bombarded Tegan back to Industrial Age for the most part. Certain industrial sites, such as steel mills, metal works, and chemical plants, are allowed to continue working, to produce tribute for the Horde. Secretly, the Trayge resistance has been maintaining certain technologies such as buried fiber optics communications to coordinate their actions undetected by the Horde.
Like the Skensians, the Trayge have learned galactic technology from observing their pirate overlords; slaves working in Lord Gnawer’s shipyards have smuggled information and equipment back to the resistance organizations.

Economy:
Industrial, slipping to Subsistence Agriculture. The Horde allows certain industries to continue existing, but takes the lion’s share of what is produced.

Wealth:
Effectively Impoverished. The Trayge struggle to produce enough to keep the Horde satisfied and still have enough left over to feed their own population. Scraping up enough of value to smuggle out to bribe and buy offworld help is a major undertaking for the Trayge.

Government:
On the surface, the Tragye have broken up into numerous city-states that ultimately take their orders from the Horde. However, a secret world government, effectively a militocracy, is running a resistance campaign.

Law Level:
Effectively overall Minimal outside the cities and communities, while effectively Authoritarian in the communities. Officially, resistance to Lord Gnawer’s rule is illegal, and the local authorities, sometimes supported by pirate air support, cracks down on anybody threatening the status quo(and bringing down the Horde on the Trayges’ heads), while the underground government tries to keep the people in line, on focus, and isolates or weeds out quislings willing to work with the pirate overlords.

Popularity:
Hated; the Trayge HATE their alien overlords and many are angry at aliens in general, the weakling Trayge governments, and/or the Resistance that either doesn’t do enough, or incites the pirates to rain death on the people. A few Trayge actively consort with and willingly support the Horde, in return for privileges(though some of these turncoats are actually infiltrators working for the resistance).

Stability:
Unstable. The Trayge are unified in their desire to drive the Horde off and away, but haven’t given much thought to what comes afterwards. The resistance militocracy claims that they will restore civilian rule, but others aren’t so sure of that.

[taalismn]

Metha---USA Colony World(Thundercloud Galaxy)

“With its temperate climate, breathable air, abundant water, rich ecolosystem, and access to a solar system rich in resources, Metha should have been a moneymaker for its colonial sponsors right from the start, but the system seems to have been a curse upon them. The series of navigational errors and accidents that crippled their spacelift efforts was just one of many upsets that set the domino cascade that resulted in the Kalinthos development cartel collapsing and the colony hurriedly looking for new sponsors. ”

“The KDC(*Kalinthos Development Cooperative) might have come out on top if they hadn’t turned over chairmanship to Darol Tirum, whose political ambitions on his homeworld of Lynos sadly proved more of a temptation to immediate power than waiting long-term to develop a prosperous new colony. Frankly the man saw the effort as his personal slush fund to finance his campaigns and pay off his legal costs, as well as those of his cronies who got caught. Between the legitimate expenses of colonial development, the unexpected losses from the accidents that bloodstained the colonization, and the embezzlement going on at the home offices, the KDC just tanked, especially when the banks and insurance companies quit putting money in. Now more than a few former shareholders are cursing the Tirum name, and a lot who pulled out and are now seeing what the usans are doing with the place are extra irate at the profits they could have made if they’d stayed in.”

“While every world is different, Metha proved that the USA had a well-practiced methodology to rehabbing worlds without upsetting their existing culture. The planet’s already started showing a turn-around and is considered one of the better places to live in several sectors around. ”

“Well, if the growing presence of that magic energy juice is what’s played havoc with the colonization effort, then the United Systems Alliance moving in was the next best thing that could happen for the Methans; the usans seem to work well with handling the paranormal juu-juu stuff.”

“While there’s an increasing amount of trade traffic and immigration transits to Metha, there’s also an increase in usan military presence in the system; like they’re expecting trouble...Hopefully it’s just piracy and not something linked to the meta-energies leaking into the system, but my sources in the Methan constabulary have noticed a lot more yu-jac land forces coming down and canvasing the territories. You don’t need ground-pounders for space pirates and there isn’t much of a problem with squatters yet on Metha, so it has to be something else. ”

*(‘Yu-Jac’----Moniker for USAJC--United Systems Alliance Joint Command, the combined military organization of the USA)

Metha is a vibrant new addition to the United Systems Alliance, a green world with great potential and a stepping stone between its dispersed enclaves. It also has a checkered history and a potentially -interesting- future, given recent discoveries.
Metha is actually an ‘inherited’ colony, a former CCW colony world that ran into financial trouble(linked to its main sponsor world of Lynos, a neighbor system of the Paradise Federation), despite its many attractions and assets, and turned to the United Systems Alliance to bail them out, after what seeing what the USA had done with other down-on-their-luck worlds. In return, the already-established colonists of the Kalinthos system would welcome additional colonization, provided the existing land rights would be respected. The USA readily agreed to the terms and began a colonial renewal program that has resulted in an upward-trending turnaround of Metha’s fortunes. Metha officially separated from any remaining obligation to former sponsor Lynos, with the help of the Alliance’s InterworldTrade Commission(ITC), and became a recognized satellite-state of the USA..

The USA now suspects that some of Metha’s early problems may have been in part due to a growing ambient PPE field, and they believe that the Kalinthos system is passing into a region of weakened space/time subject to a higher probability of space-folding and dimensional ‘leakage’ similar to than in many regions of the United Worlds of Warlock. The changing nature of space/time around the Kalinthos system may have been responsible for several tragic space accidents that mared the development of the system’s space infrastructure( though it had little to do with the mismanagement and internal corporate embezzlement scandals that put the nail in the coffin of the Kalinthos Development Cooperative).

While no magic incursions have yet occurred, early warning systems in place DID detect a series of smaller dimensional anomalies on the planet, Investigations turned up the presence of a previously unknown pattern of extradimensional visitation by an alt-dimensional human-sept polity, the Waldruga, who had been for over a year infiltrating the colony in preparation for an invasion. The alerted USA has begun to move military assets into the system to counter any cross-dimensional aggression. While the USA hopes that the Waldrugan threat turns out to be only a minor nuisance, they are also taking no chances and preparing for contingencies.

On the plus side, the higher ambient PPE field has made possible dimensional pyramid transport; the USA is establishing several D-port outposts in the system to facilitate cmmunications and transportation.

Solar System(Kalinthos)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Sub-Dwarf(Kalos-a)
-Orange Dwarf(Kalos-b)
Number of Planets: 8
-Gas Giant(Ridinar)----Enormous Ridinar is a ‘hot gas’ planet. It likely lost any satellites it might have gathered to the influence of nearby Kalos-a and -b.

-Gas Giant(Vidosa)----Small Vidosa would normally escape notice but for evidence of a growing ambient PPE field similar to Metha’s. This puzzles planetologists who normally associate heightened PPE activity with life worlds.

-Gas Giant(Orand)----Small Orand possesses a set of dust rings and a spike in PPE activity similar to Vidosa and Metha. USA scientists are scrambling to discover why the two minor gas giants are showing such behavior and what it may portend for the future.

-Terrestrial(Delsor)----Enormous and shrouded in a warm and toxic reducing atmosphere, Delsor might have been considered a terraforming prospect but for its heavy gravity. Long-term, Delsor may be offered to the Botwhin CarChugga as a prospective colony site.

-Gas Giant(Adylos)----Metha is a moon(one of 13) of this gargantuan gas giant, which is practically a solar system unto itself. It is suspected that Adylos swept up most, if not all, the loose material from Kalinthos’ outer orbits. With so many neighboring moons, Metha can serve as a hub for mineral exploitation.
Other Notable Moons:
*Cheldah--This moon possesses a form of exolife lichen that colors the surface of the satellite green. Che-ja, as it has been called, has been found to have certain medicinal qualities that make it a potential high-profit cash-crop if properly farmed and harvested.
*Dalvos---Dalvos seems to at one time possessed a moderate, advanced ecology of its own, but something failed, and the moon-life died out, leaving clouds of organic dust to blow across its surface, and fossilized tree trunks to hint at the glory that was.
*Varthos---This neighboring moon has been chosen as the site of a large USA Joint Command military base, in part to provide security for vessels transiting the sector, but its ground forces component has been expanded against any crossdimensional aggression against the settlements on Metha. In the event Metha gets invaded, troop transports stationed at Varthos are only hours away from landing a reinforcement counterattack force.

-Exotic(Dravos Radiant)---- A weakness in the fabric of space/time, discovered by USA survey. The DimCorps have already probed the anomaly and found isn’t a dimensional gate or nexus-point as such as much as it is a ‘flush-point’ radiating theron radiation and PPE. While not the only source of the rising PPE levels in the Kalinthos system, it is of interest and concern, and the USA is studying its fluctuating periods of PPE radiation emission in relation to other PPE-events in the star system. Several free space platforms have been established to study the anomaly and assess its threat or potential value.

-Terrestrial(Palsos)----Huge and possessing serious hard gravity plus a toxic atmosphere heavy in ammonia, Palsos is too hostile an environment for colonization.

-Gas Giant(Quamih)----Enormous Quamih sits on the edge of the Kalinthos system and has accumulated an impressive set of dust rings. Crushing gravity makes it difficult, if not impossible, for normal beings to set foot on it without extensive gravity insulation, and without any clear incentive to do so, nobody has gone to the effort.

Planet(Metha)
Metha is actually an Earth-sized inhabitable moon of the gas giant Adylos. It is a very biologically active place, and there is some evidence that the moon, and several of its neighbors, may have been deliberately seeded with engineered life sometime in the distant past, though by who is unknown.
Metha started out as a very attractive prospect, despite some early problems coping with the local ecology, but Metha seemed destined for quick returns on the investment. However, series of bad space accidents, including the loss of some 37,000 prospective colonists in a tragic accident, then later the loss of another 2,000 more, including colonial officials, when a space platform and an arriving transport collided, seemed to curse the effort. Then emerged revelations that the chairman of the KDC development organization was embezzling funds for his own purposes, and the Methas venture was beginning to look less appealing. Rather than let the effort fall victim to opportunistic colony-flippers looking to vulture the effort, the colonists sought United Systems Alliance help in keeping the colonization going and safe.
With the local economy starting to bloom, Metha is attracting a growing number of immigrants from the Rim and the metroworlds.

Type:Terrestrial
Diameter: 12,800 km
Gravity: 1.03 g
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Growing Ambient PPE Field----USA scientists have noted a growing level of ambient PPE in the Kalinthos system. While still lower than that of the Palladium FRPG world, and not enough to power sustained spells as yet, the trend is still enough to concern USA authorities, who have begun instructing local agencies in identifying related paranormal phenomena.
Atmosphere:
Breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture
Terrain:
Varied; four+
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Scheelite
- Iron
- Aluminum
- Amethyst
- Emerald
- Gypsum
- Nickel
- Samarskite

Hydrosphere:
Wet world; with 80% surface coverage in open water. Sea-farming looks to be a promising part of the planetary economy.

Biosphere:
Ecological Cornucopia, which the initial colonization effort led by the KDC hoped to exploit. Early on, the colonists were beset by a number of pest species and various exotic illnesses linked to the local ecology, but these problems have largely been dealt with. Local life seems to combine aspects of insects, reptiles, and mammals to telling effect. The predatory tsnorn, for example, is a dog-sized egg-laying aerial carnivore that has an insect-like four-part mouth and multi-faceted eyes, and beetle-like wing arrangement of two muscular folding propulsion wings and two stiff shell-like wings that act as gliding lift surfaces...yet the creature is warm-blooded.
For the biotech engineers of the USA, Metha has provided them with the opportunity to experiment with using native biota DNA in their creations, though this has also yielded a number of awkward lessons, as when one initially promising form of agrotechture proved also irresistibly appetizing to a large number of local fungi and animal species.

Civilization:
Colonial, entering Settled.

Population:
324 million. (82% Human, 18% other)

Technology:
Galactic, especially after the USA moved in with its tech-assistance packages.

Economy:
Agriculture---Currently traditional agriculture and developing aquaculture are the main economic drivers.
Support of mining operations on the other Adylosian moons, as well as supplying transiting trade starships, are secondary business growing in importance.

Wealth:
Average, climbing out of Depressed. Recently introduced cash crops, identification of lucrative gene-species in the local ecology, and USA-introduced technologies have led to a building boom and an upsurge in the local economy.

Government:
Democracy---The Methans voted in a new local President to replace the Kalinthos Development Cooperative-selected colonial administrator/chief operating officer. Of course, the new President and his cabinet operate under the auspices of a USA-selected colonial advisory council with veto powers, but there’s been little of no cause for them to exercise that power, and the Methan democracy has so far little reason to distrust or ignore the advice they’ve gotten from the USA.

Law Level:
Moderate; there is still some elevated levels of crime from the recent long period of depression, but crime rates have been dropping steadily since the USA stepped in.

Popularity:
Popular; the Methans LIKE their new prosperity under the USA banner, and projections of further prosperity only encourage them.

Stability:
Solid; the current turnaround of fortunes has the populace solidly backing the new administration.

New Threat----The Waldrugans
The view from the apartment windows was definitely fascinating, the severe-contenanced man admitted to himself. “I can almost see what you see in this world. It certainly is a contrast to the home State. More open...less -restrained- ”
A moan came from behind the man.
“It suggests, however, rampant thought, undisciplined and unregulated waste of resources. It calls for a firm and reasoned hand to keep it in order. Given your experiences here, it seems a shame to waste your no doubt considerable insights on how this society works and what its critical operating points are,”
The man thought he could just make out struggling movement in the reflection in the window in front of him.
“Still, I have heard the Governess has been asking if the Department had any Recalitrants we were willing to give her. Seems she has come up with some new ideas to implement in the next generation of Implacables she’s devising. Given our plans for expansion, we can never have too many Implacables, so every contribution helps the cause.”
Another strangled moan came, a note of panic in it.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Like the Travesdeen, the Waldrugans are a conquest-oriented expansionist high-tech human society, without space travel, but limited dimensional-transit capabilities. Little is still known about them, because of limited available intelligence(and that mainly from defectors who were themselves largely in the dark about all the details of their society), but what is known paints a depressing picture of a tyrannical all-controlling culture intent on aggressive territorial acquisition with little, if any, concern for the civil rights of sophont beings.
The Waldrugans are an ultimate police state; everything is policed and regulated by the State. Reproduction, medical care, access to food, water, and essential services are all regulated by the State, and regulations are draconically enforced. Information is strictly controlled, and free expression media extinct under State control. It is unknown whether Waldruga is a world-state, if other similar Orwellian police states exist on their world in competition with them, or if Waldruga is holding out against other nation states resisting them, and thus are looking for any advantage they can acquire.
The Waldrugan homeworld is described, in what few broad brushstrokes from interrogated agents, as habitable, but dystopian, with travel between communities closely regulated and resources, including access to the outside, rationed. Most interrogated Waldrugans describe living in arcology-style communities with little access or opportunity to go outside unregulated and artificial environments.
The Waldrugans have been experimenting with extradimensional travel technologies, though it is not known if they developed it wholly on their own or from discovered artifacts and knowledge. They had previously accessed a few other dimensions, bit none attractive for the sort of expansion and exploitation the Waldrugan State wanted...until they lucked into accessing Metha.
Still, there seems to be some spark of individuality still glowing in the subjects of Waldruga. It is telling that the first waves of infiltrators virtually to a person defected, sending back increasingly infrequent and misleading reports, or going silent altogether. It is also telling that when the Waldrugan State sent through a second wave of infiltrators, their first priority was to track down and capture or kill the first-wavers for their treasonous conduct.
Though the Waldrugans’ cross-dimensional ‘worm-path’ apparatus is technological, rather than magical, in nature, their opening on Metha still registered with the USA sensor nets put in place to monitor the space/time fabric in the region.

It is not known how many of the original infiltrators are still at large on Metha, hiding from both their Waldrugan superiors and Methan authorities, though it’s suspected that a number took advantage of access to starships to flee offworld before the USA began clamping down and checking faces.

What is known of the Waldrugans:
-Megadamage Weaponry---The Waldrugans possess low-end M-factor weaponry. The few Waldrugan agents captured who had weaponry provided examples of explosive pellet guns. Energy weaponry was discovered to be one technology the Waldrugan infiltrators were fascinated by and at pains to acquire. The agents also possessed light M-factor body armors.
-Cybernetics and Bionics---Many of the infiltrators had cybernetic implants. Several of the enforcers sent after them had more extensive augmentation and even partial cyborg conversion.
-They have full -conversion cyborg capabilities. The State has slave-cyborg shocktroops that are known as -Implacables-, using human brains and nervous systems as neural circuitry.
-Magic and psionics are unknown to them; the Waldrugans seem genuinely flummoxed by mention of both, and regard them as ‘fantasies’ cooked up by local media.
-Certain figures in the government are known by ominous-sounding titles rather than names. The ‘Governess’ in particular seems to be a much-feared figure in their intelligence community, apparently in charge of indoctrinating/torturing agents. A ‘Chancellor’ and a ‘High Committee’ are also mentioned as distant, but iron-fisted in their rulings.
-The extradeimensional gate used to infiltrate Metha does not seem to be large enough to accommodate vehicles, as the Waldrugans have not deployed any to Metha. Whether this is deliberate as part of their reconnaissance operations or a limitation of their technology is as yet unknown. Defectors do confirm, however, that the Waldrugan military possesses substantial numbers of military vehicles comparable, from descriptions, to early Earth Golden Age weaponry.

[taalismn]

(Expanding on the ‘soft power’ food-post)

Paladin Steel Greentech Agricultural Supply and Services
(aka ‘The Green Machine’)
“Greentech’s putting a crimp in the economic balance of power where farm gear is concerned; used to be it was the big coreworld agrocorps and Mid-Rim factories that supplied the Far Rim with the heavy equipment, but now the Rim’s building its own. Advanced stuff, too, the sort of gear that’s opening up a lot more worlds to cultivation on a lower budget. For example, a lot of desert worlds used to be toxic with chlorine perchlorlates, but the usans introduced a number of soil-scrubbing techniques...some of them magical in nature....that clean the stuff right up, break it down, and enrich the end product for regular cultivators. That’s led to a whole slew of previously un-farmable planets becoming viable crop-property real estate.”

“Our advice is to construct several small pyramids at these locations to reroute the local leylines for less seasonal weather disturbances and optimize crop growth. Plant evergreens and shade-dome along the borders of the dribben-root fields. Rotate the crops on a three season basis and use the fallow fields for raising free-range picca-beaks and squealer-slugs. Your pest problem is somewhat more difficult to deal with; we’d recommend you speak to our military division and get yourself , even on a rental basis, a company of gun-bots to fend off the mongasaur hordes.”

Paladin Steel Advanced Biological Technologies Studies (ABTechS ), Paladin Steel Resource(PSR), and PS Heavy Machine Assembly(PSHMA) have combined efforts under the Paladin Steel Greentech label to manufacture and distribute a wide range of agricultural products for growing colonies and refurbished shatterworlds.
As one of the biggest manufacturers of agricultural technology and technowizardry on the Rim, Greentech is generally regarded as the ‘go-to’ people for a colony’s agro-machinery needs. Working with local industries, Greentech has established hundreds of small factories around the Rim to churn out affordable and durable equipment for cultivating crops. Annually, Greentech turns out tens of thousands of tractors, harvesters, agrobots, planter golems, and food processing gear.
Most colonial farm equipment runs off bio-fuel or solar-electrical powerplants to keep down costs and live off locally-available resources. Durable m-factor parts and housings are common to reduce constant replacement and repair on hardworking equipment(dry lubricant surfacing originally developed for firearms has since been extensively applied to civilian equipment).
Greentech also sells modular urban-style crop-towers and prefab greenhouses for hothouse and contained crop cultivation, especially useful on worlds not yet fully terraformed and compatible for more environmentally-sensitive crops. Greentech also provides warehouse units and stasis systems for storing foodstuffs and agricultural products until ready for sale and distribution.
Another service that Greentech provides is agricultural consultancies; the division maintains a pool of expert agronomists, biotechs, shattertechs, and environmentally-oriented mages who can be hired out to study a community’s needs and provide advice and strategy plans for cultivation campaigns. As some of the consultants can be considered valuable assets in themselves, and the worlds they visit can be dangerous, they often are accompanied by security contingents(PC adventure opportunity) to insure their personal safety.

“Greentech sold us a nice neat combined hydroponics and carniculture facility with power systems, filtration and environmental controls, and attached packing, packaging, and expandable storage space. They even threw in some advice on the best crops to grow given our planetary resources. The whole complex cost less than half of what we’d originally budgeted for buying from the mid-Rim agrocorp we were originally looking at. That sandwich factory paid for itself in three seasons. Best deal we ever made on equipment.”

“Ghost Farms”----Automated Farms
“The Zero-Zero-Dees are good neighbors; they’re quiet, they’re always willing to lend a hand when asked, especially when it comes to repairing farm equipment, and they’re willing to share any extra their spread produces. Of course, it gets a little awkward sometimes, when trying to find common ground for casual conversation, and especially whe my youngest developed an affection for one of their tractors....”

“This is sure to send the anti-AI crowd on the road with pitchforks and torches, if we don’t underplay how much autonomy the new farms have. Better ask GROW-BEC if it’s willing to host a few residents to give the appearance of living oversight on its property. ”

“’Comp-Udder Apple Farms’....somebody has a sense of humor.”

‘Ghost Farms’ are wholly automated(or nearly so) farm plantations run by artificial intelligences and maintained by robot labor. Greentech has established a number of these ‘handsfree’ farm facilities, mainly on worlds borderline habitable or in the process of being terraformed, in preparation for more extensive colonization later. Greentech often uses these farms to field-test new farmbots and long-run AI systems, but a number reportedly are staffed with free-willed robots , either new businessbeings or refugees. A few ‘bot-farms’ are maintained as house-arrest or protective custody facilities for persons who are either sentenced to or require isolation from the general population(these farms are usually located in remote areas far from any neighbors or are even the sole outposts on planets or asteroids).
A more common and often overlooked variant on this concept are the urban farm-towers in many developed communities ad cities.
Not everybody agrees that ‘bot-farm produce is the best, or any good, supposedly because machines cannot have a proper feel for growing/living things, and cannot spot-taste the quality of their farm produce. Others disagree, and are appreciative of the extra food produced by these automated farm-spreads.

Exolife Farming---Asteroid Planting on the Fringe
“Care for an astro-nut? Rich in nutrients! We grow them on our rock. Little Prince Farms. None finer!”

“I expect in the next few centuries the zodiacal dust haloes of a good number of stars are going to turn chlorophyll green with Belter exo-plantings, While many galactic historians have claimed that previous cultures may have tried this course in the past and failed, I think this time around there’s a very good chance of it taking hold with this epoch.”

The new age of biotech on the Rim isn’t just limited to temperate lifeworlds; adaptation of space-dwelling exolife has led to a literally growing number of ‘green asteroids’ or ‘green comets’ seeded with tailored exolife that can live under extreme conditions. While most such exolife is used to extract and sequester water, oxygen, hydrogen, chemicals and metals from asteroid rock, some forms synthesize usable proteins, sugars, and other food feedstocks...some strains even produce ready-to-eat fruiting bodies. And then there are biotechture space-habitats that grow out of the rock and provide their own atmosphere and water systems.
While many traditional Belters bristle at the new ways of doing things, most have embraced the ‘astro-greenimg’ as another step in Belters gaining more and more independence from planet-based technologies and economies. While some have been resistant to buying starter-stock from a planet-based corporation like Greentech, as more and more branches are staffed with Belters with regional offices offworld, that resistance is shrinking.


“Green Raiders”
(aka ‘Agro-jackers’, ‘Crop-pirates’, ‘Sky-Rustlers’, ‘Sandwich -Snatchers’)
“Damn reavers came down at night and vacuumed up several dozen hectares of fulson-grain. What they didn’t clear-cut, they trampled into useless ground-pulp. We lost pretty much most of the crop before we could bring it in. Without that extra to sell, we’re going to be thin on income this winter season, and we’ll have to juggle our remaining harvest to leave enough if we want to re-seed next planting season. Damn space-rats.”

“A full silo’s worth of harvested and milled braccha-corn can fetch a small fortune to worlds further out on the Arm. That’s why we armor the farm towers and post armed patrols to dissuade crop-jacking.”

“Problem with pillagers has gotten so bad we’ve had to set up ‘scarecrow’ protocols and set comat-bot sentries on some of the fields. Sometimes it works and we find a few dead or injured offworlders in the fields the next day, other times it doesn’t, and we have burned fields, destroyed ‘bots, and sometimes a destroyed barn or farmhouse.”

“The new space traffic tracking system spotted several anomalous sensor platforms in orbit right off. We didn’t put them up there, and they were stealthy enough in construction that it was obvious somebody didn’t want us to see them. Well, once we began deliberately monitoring them, we figured out they were tracking the progression of the gelsic-herds. When the satellites began squawking in code-stream just as the gelsic were reaching maturity, we knew we had an upcoming appointment with some poachers.
When those snatch-ships came down, they sure were surprised to find our rangers weapons-hot and waiting for them.”

‘Green Raiders’ are a growing problem on the Rim where new colonies are building up larger-scale agricultural infrastructure. Typically, many pirate groups, short of resources, would engage in remote backwater world quick ‘egg and pig’ raids to supplement their supplies(at the risk of alerting local authorities of the presence of pirates in the area). More desperate spaceborne refugees might raid agricultural communities to feed their number. Some more focused operations are effectively industrial espionage; mercenaries out to steal patented or exclusive crop strains, animal breeds, and genetic material for sale elsewhere. However, the larger and more troublesome large-scale agro-raiders are in it for profit from stealing from one colony, and selling the food elsewhere to more food-desperate communities at steep gouging prices.
The majority of agro-jacker pirates go after concentrations of already-harvested/processed foodstuffs. However, the fixed locations of reefer(refrigerated) warehouses and storage silos makes them defendable choke points for planetary militia to protect(though in the past, before they could acquire the firepower to fight back, many colonies allowed their food storage areas to be quickly ‘sacrificed’ to raiders, rather than put up a fight and invite needless casualties). However, more sophisticated pirate operations have been known to take a less efficient, but more difficult to defend against, route in landing their own harvesting gear in dispersed and undefended croplands or chasing down livestock herds on the range and poaching them(sometimes butchering then in the field if they have the time). These raids generally do not involve confrontations with locals, but some of the more aggressive raiders have been known to take hostages against the authorities intervening, while the raiders go about their business.

As such tactics require advanced knowledge of which crops are harvest-ready, stepped -up colonial security and local-space monitoring capabilities have been cutting down in such raids, after detecting suspicious spacecraft or satellites lingering in orbit, or catching infiltrator scouts in the field. The ‘Greened Frontier’ is seeing an increase in the hiring of private military companies and security organizations to protect farmlands and food stocks.

With its expanding trade network and increasingly efficient agro-worlds and colonies, the United Systems Alliance has had to contend with a growing green raider problem, especially as its advanced biotech has come into demand on the galactic black markets. ‘Green militias’ equipped with military-grade equipment to patrol and protect croplands are increasingly common in the USA worlds, but the best line of defense remains the spaceborne anti-piracy units.

“Standing watch on a stockyard or a cheese cave may seem like a boring low-paying job, but it can become unexpectedly exciting when somebody decides to do some shoplifting at the source. That’s when you learn just how far some people are willing to go to get their hands on a few barrels of Trechan wine or sides of smoke-seasoned geccer. One good firefight can make you wish you’d stuck to watching paint dry for a living.”

[taalismn]

Vykuun---Seat of the Dessholt Polast(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“The Emperor’s Ships have kept the peace out here as long as anybody living here can remember, but they’ve gotten long in the tooth over the decades. When the Nebular Pride was nearly gutted in an encounter with the Savergun’s Blades gang, everybody knew the days of the Emperor’s Peace were over. Something drastic had to be done. ”

“Vykuunians can be real easy on the eyes, but when they begin extending their...appendages...it can be right freaky. I’ve seen more than a few people unfamiliar with them take off screaming about ‘splug-spawn’ and bioborgs when they’re nothing of the sort. I’ve worked with usan OPAL BOA bio-mods, so I guess I’m not put off by ectoplasmic limb extensions.”

“If Empress Dalynn gets a deal with the usans that results in her navy getting proper warships, or at least gets the shipyards modernized, the future if the Dessholt dynasty is all but guaranteed for the next century or more. So, yes, there’s no small amount of pressure to get a deal done.”

Vykuun is the capital of the ‘Emperor of the Outer Nebulae’(otherwise known as the Dessholt Polast), a cluster of sparsely-settled worlds strung along a trio of nebulae(the result of a rare sequential chain of large stars dying violently). They are nominally members of the Badlands Confederation, but as with many members of that group, the Polast has no strong loyalties to it.
The worlds of the Polast were settled in hasty fashion during the first wave of freelance ‘sooner’ settlers in the Thundercloud Rush. Under-equipped and sponsored by low-end backers, these new colonies struggled and suffered from pirate raids(ironically, many from what would later be members of the Badlands Confederation) until a retired mercenary, Gaidred Dessholt, established a junta on Vykuun, gathered up enough firepower to drive off the local pirates, and united the smaller world-settlements under his self-proclaimed imperial banner. Though this pocket-imperium has sometimes been heavy-handed in its demands (virtually acting like a protection racket), for the most part the Vykuun regime has acted more or less benevolently towards its subjects and in recent decades has moderated and mellowed its behavior. The current Emperor(really Empress) Dalynn Dessholt Charlemagne-IV, has been enacting a number of reforms, though some claim that these long-overdue actions are an effort to prop up a deteriorating regime and its grip on power both at home and abroad.
The Polast has its own shipbuilding capabilities, but the technology is long out of date and at best can produce large merchantman designs. The Polast’s military force was dependent on up-armed commercial hulls and merchant-cruiser conversions. This has still been enough to keep the peace for over a hundred years, but developments in the Three Galaxies have caught up with the Badlands, and increasingly the Emperor’s Ships have been outgunned by newer pirate groups armed with increasingly more sophisticated firepower. This has put the squeeze on the Polast as to how to address this growing disparity and threat to the peace. While most powers in the region have reached out to, or fallen in temptation to, arms suppliers such as Naruni Enterprises or Hartigal Combine, the Vykuun Empress has instead opened up tentative talks with the United Systems Alliance. Alignment with the Alliance would mean USAJoint Command bases in the Polast, stepped up anti-pirate patrols by dedicated warships of modern design, and both economic and technological uplift programs made available to the worlds of the Polast.
The Polast negotiations with the USA have elicited a mixed reaction from the rest of the Badlands Confederation. Though the Badlands union can at best be described as ‘loose’, many of the other members have reacted with dismay at what they regard as a betrayal of Badlands solidarity. Many see the presence of a larger star-polity, even a younger and Rim-based one such as the USA, as an unwelcome encroachment on the sovereignty and independence of the traditionally nonconformist Badlands, It’s especially galling to some, as the shipyards of the Polast have also provided a good chunk of local trade and war hulls. Other members see possible Polast-USA alignment as the beginning of the end of the Confederation as more and more worlds split off to join the Alliance or go their own way. Other Confederation members are simply glad that the Polast joining the USA would curb, if not altogether remove, what they see as the Polast’s economic dominance over a good chunk of the Badlands(though the reality would more likely be the opposite).

Vykuunians(or Vykuunists) are a variant human sept. They are typified by having leaner low-grav physiques, but their most distinctive difference is the ability to manifest ectoplasmic tentacles(called ‘elasen’ locally). This ability has been variously attributed to psychic mutations caused by residual radiations persistent in the nearby nebulae or to symbiotic ectoplasmic lifeforms native to Vykuun. This ability is most prominent among Vykuunist women(80%), and less common among the men (20%). It has led to Vykuunians getting such nicknames as ‘Medusirens’ and ‘Medusamen’.
+1d6 P.B.
Superpower(Major): Tentacles
-Gains one pair of tentacles per level of experience
-Tentacle PS is HALF that of the person’s normal PS(but multiple tentacle PS is cumulative).
-Each tentacle has 50 SDC, but losing a tentacle takes 2d4 SDC/HP from the person’s normal reserves. It will be 2d6 hours before the person can regenerate a lost tentacle.
-Tentacles take NO damage from strictly physical attacks, take HALF damage from energy attacks, and FULL damage from magic/psionics.
-Each pair of tentacles adds +1 APM
-Tentacle length is 6 ft +1 ft per level of experience
-Tentacles do 1d6 SDC each in damage. Note, however, that being ectoplasmic, they WILL do damage to beings normally invulnerable to physical attacks, such as astral projections(ists), ghosts and entities, and the tentacles do HP damage to vampires.
-Tentacles are not adept enough to work complex mechanisms like firearms, unless they are designed to work with tentacles, and even then, they get a -1 to strike.
-Tentacles can work through clothing and partial body armor but NOT through EBA or spacesuits. The USA has, however, reported success with magic/psionc-selectively permeable suits such as their VEBA-12CLTW ‘Magex’ Environmental Body Armor.

Solar System(Norvenest)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf(Ada/Norvenest-a)33
-Orange Dwarf(Bhar/Norvenest-b)57
Number of Planets: 7
-Terrestrial(Pazaki)----Small and shrouded in a hot toxic atmosphere, Pazaki is irradiated by both Norvenest suns, in addition to heavy volcanic activity due to gravitic churning of its core.

-Asteroid(Higec)----Higec is a ‘sun-grazer’ named for its close approach to the binary stars. A heavily-shielded automated solar observatory has been implaced on the asteroid to study the solar weather and interactions between the two suns when the asteroid makes its closest approach.

-Gas Giant(Domeral)----Huge and solitary(it’s been theorized that Domeral lost its moons to the pull of Ada and Bhar), Domeral is nearly unapproachable due to its magnetic field capturing large quantities of solar wind particles. A strong and dangerous plasma field surrounds the gas giant, giving it a distinctive glowing halo easily visible with the naked eye.

-Gas Giant(Thaygur)----Gargantuan Thaygur arguably dominates the Norvenest planets. It has eight moons of substantial size.
Vykuun is Thaygur’s largest moon and is the lifeworld of the system, seat of the Dessholt Polast. Several neighboring moons are mined for resources. Pentagar is a particularly mineral-rich moon, while Morgron, Eshan, Farat, and Deloran sport smaller settlements and mining operations.

-Gas Giant(Armolod)----Enormous Armolod isn’t as diversely moon-attended or populated, but it does play host to several Belter communities that make a living plumbing the gas giant’s thirteen small moons for resources.

-Gas Giant(Jessher)----Large and ringed, Jessher’s atmosphere is exceptionally high in helium isotopes, making skim-harvesting operations worthwhile profitable, despite the distance out from the more populated Thaygur and Armolod moon systems. A lack of satellites of its own means that an orbiter station had to be built, in part from ring debris.

-Asteroid(Kemec)----Remote and frigid Kemec is more rock than ice, but supports a small hermitage colony.

Planet(Vykuun)
Vykuun is actually a moon of the gas giant Thaygur. Vykuun-colony was founded by a private group out of the Human Alliance, looking, like so many private ventures, for open skies and room to do their own thing. Of the bodies in the Norvenest system, Vykuun was the most suitable and most easily adjusted with the limited terraforming packages available to the colonists. The Vykuun colonization expeditions soon afterwards cut off contact with the Human Alliance metroworlds, preferring to go their own way without constant outside influences aside from some scant trade.
Despite a number of technological advantages, Vykuun was on the verge of economic and political failure when Gaidred Dessholt, a veteran mercenary with experience soldiering among the other worlds of the Badlands Confederation, returned home and organized the coup that replaced the corrupt ‘democracy’ then governing the planet, with the imperial junta that would raise him to emperor. Instating military discipline on his homeworld and using its resources to build a fleet, Dessholt then used his contacts in the mercenary-military communities of other Badlands worlds to establish a more comprehensive relationship with the Confederation. In return for mutually beneficial trade agreements and access to the Vykuun ship production, the other Badlands worlds recognized the imperial junta as the legitimate government(easy enough to do, since several of the other Confed worlds also, and sometimes regularly, changed regimes in similar fashion).

Type: Terrestrial/Moon
Diameter: 10,119 km
Gravity: 0.6 g
Regular exercise, dietary supplements, and extensive use of grav-plating is encouraged to maintain muscle tone, but some 40% of the planetside population exhibit signs of low-gravity atrophy; -1d4 to P.S. and reduce speed by 30% when under 1.0 g.
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Energy Field----Vykuun possesses a strange, but measurable, energy field that seems harmless to life and technology, though the source remains unknown. Some claim it is responsible for the ectoplasmic abilities of native-born Vykuunists.
Atmosphere:
Thin, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mix. Most people will require oxygen gear and concentrators to get around outside the dome-habs. Increasing the density of the atmosphere is the main goal of the ongoing terraforming effort.
Terrain:
Two terranes; highland ridges and large plains
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Antimony
- Pitchblende
- Sapphire
- Molybdenite
- Salt
- Samarskite
- Borax
- Ruby
Hydrosphere:
71% surface coverage in open water.
Biosphere:
Thin, consisting mainly of microorganisms and algae.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
-2.7 billion Humans(variant-sept)
Technology:
-Low Galactic. The Polast can produce its own M-factor materials and weapons(low-end HI-lasers), spacecraft, and FTL drives up to Class-D.
Economy:
-Commercial---Vykuun makes its money catering to trade in the Badlands. As one of the safer (if not THE safest) port hubs in the Badlands, thanks to its resident shipyards and armed merchantmen.
The Polast also has the Mander Shipyards, arguably the single largest shipyard complex in the Badlands Confederation, and one of the real treasure-assets of the Polast. The Mander yards have the highest production rate of spaceworthy hulls in the entire Badlands Confed. The largest vessels produced are the Novaset-C heavy haulers, roughly three times the size of the standard Merchantman, and it is these hulls that are the basis of the Emperor’s Ships---armed merchant warcruisers---that keep the peace near the Polast’s end of the Badlands. The Mander yards also produce a variety of shuttles, light- and medium-class transports, Class-D(4 light years per hour) FTL drives, and Medium-class starship weaponry. However, the shipyards, though extensive, are dated in their technology and design output.
Wealth:
-Prosperous, for the region.
Government:
-Monarchy. The current Empress is Dalynn Dessholt Charlemagne-IV, a forward-looking autocrat who has instituted a number of reforms, both to preserve her regime and to make the Polast more attractive as an ally and trade partner to powers outside the Badlands.

Law Level:
-Overbearing----Law in the Empire of the Outer Nebulae is a little imposing(with a definite military discipline bent to it), with internal passports required to move about the worlds of the Polast and even some regions on Vykuun itself, regular curfews, and military police. Private ownership of firearms, especially megadamage types, is strictly regulated, as is ownership and operation of other advanced technologies. And penalties for using one’s ectoplasmic tentacles/elasen in the commission of crimes are severe. Most citizenry put up with the strictness, believing it necessary for planetary security in a sector rife with pirates and outlaws. Laws are enforced by special police from the planetary militia, known as the Emperor’s/Empress’s Men(regardless of gender). Empress Dalynn had relaxed some of the more dated laws and regulations, affording her people more ability to move freely and express themselves openly, but the law on Vykuun is still fairly strict.

Popularity:
-Fanatical---Even when they disagree with the Imperial rule, the Polast citizenry LOVE the person of their leadership. Towards their own people at least, the Dessholt lords and ladies have been fair-minded and generous in their rule.

Stability:
-Dynastic, though there’s been some rumbles that the original imperial organization has outlived its usefulness and it’s time for a return to a more democratic government. However, Empress Dalynn’s popular reforms have led to a very strong show of support for her and moves to establish a constitutional monarchy in place of a more drastic reorganization.


Badlands Confederation(Thundercloud)
“When they can get their act together, the Badlanders can mount quite an effective fighting force, even with their limited resources and scrounged assets. The problem is they can rarely get their act together given their members’ own internal problems and domestic issues.”

“A shambling chaos barely definable in shape as a ‘government’.”

The Badlands Confed is an outlier cluster of sparsely-populated worlds along the edge of the Thundercloud Galaxy, that have banded together under a succession of either charismatic or forceful leaders in an effort to create a mutual defense union. Their region of space is called the ‘Badlands’ because it constitutes the remains of a micro-galaxy that has been parasitized/ripped apart gravitationally by the larger Thundercloud, and because several supernovae events that ravaged the sector in the past.
The Confederation recognizes 35 members of any organization, and several dozen smaller settlements, varying in technological level and economic status, though most fall below the Low Galactic level of technology, and only less than a handful can claim anything greater than Prosperous on the Kauffin Scale.
Long associated with being a haven for outlaws, settlement zone for neobarbs and monster races, and hideout for pirates, the Badlands Confed actually has been fighting a lopsided war to RID itself of pirate activity. However, in this it has been hampered by a lack of infrastructure, military power, and political will, as the various member worlds have struggled with their own internal problems. Coordinated joint action can thus be spotty at best.
For the most part, the worlds of the Badlands are dependent on outside sources for modern military equipment, most of their defense forces equipped with third- or fourth-hand gear bought from elsewhere. Naruni Enterprises finds the Badlands to be a steady, but low-batch/return customer good for the occasional sale, but the Confed are not big spenders overall.

A. Size
35 member planets, + 36 ‘protectorates’
B. History
Offshoots of various other cultures.
C. Level of Technological Sophistication
Varies; average is low-Galactic. Several members can produce energy weapons and spacecraft, mainly to older technological standards and common domain patterns.
D. General Attitude/Culture
Isolationist for the most part; the Badlanders want to be left alone to pursue their own interests and not get involved in the power games of other polities.
E. Racial Composition
Varied. Has a high percentage(75%) of lower-tier ‘monster’ races such as Larhold, orcs, goblins, and the like. 25% Human/Human variant septs.
F. Government
Confederation---Most Badlander members are governed by regional strongmen or tribal orders. The Confederation Congress meets regularly to hammer out mutual trade and assistance agreements, and come to some general policy decisions.
G. Administrative Control
Lax---There’s no real federal enforcement of the Confederation Congress’s agreements, so members pretty much do their own thing for the most part.
H. External Trade
Trade---The Badlands trade among themselves primarily, as well as with outsiders on a case-by-case basis; there is no one great trade authority or regulation aside from general advisories such as not trading with the TransGalactic Empire or making sweeping deals with Naruni Enterprises.
H1. Commodities
Exports: Raw Materials, Foodstuffs
Imports: Weapons, Spacecraft
I. Status
Can be considered Imperiled on occasion, Troubled on average. Many members are on the verge of economic collapse or splitting off, or not meeting their agreed-upon obligations, though none has engaged in war on other Confederation members since its formation.

[taalismn]

Talsire---- CCW, Ballabin System, Tor Sector, Thundercloud Galaxy
“Like cosmological puzzles and astrophysics jargon? Then settling on Talsire might be the the thing for you. The daily streetside arguments about cosmic constants and gravitational warping can get pretty intense and often more interesting than professional grappling, especially when the writing styluses and eye gouges come out.”

“Ballabin’s very attractive as a development project; several worlds suitable for terrestrial settlement, several gas giants with moon systems begging for a Belters’ touch, some potentially exploitable cosmic phenomena, and a technically skilled local population...no wonder the usans want to grow a relationship with these people.”

“Senator Mallon’s seriously torqued that he can’t do squat about the Talsirens talking with the usans, as Mallon can’t restrict trade from the usan sectors without running into opposition from their Consortium allies. It’s become something of a game among other senators to work the matter into casual conversation when around the man and watch him come to a boil.”

Talsire is a Human-colonized world, originally settled from the Human Alliance to study the anomalous and potentially rich Ballabin star system. The initial settlement phase went well, and eventual evolution to a major sector world was predicted in time.
Several years ago, Talsire made application to the Consortium of Civilized Worlds to join as a (junior) member. However, the ‘Mallon Incident’ led to prominent CCW Senator Arrod Mallon becoming adversarial to the new world joining. Though Talsire effectively squeaked in, subsequently the new junior member has faced constant opposition from Mallon-organized obstructionism when it comes to receiving aid, technical assistance, and even fair trade agreements, negating most of those membership advantages Talsire sought to avail itself of with application to the CCW.
This has led to Talsire turning to a neighbor, the United Systems Alliance, for assistance. Though formerly in a backwater system, Talsire benefitted when the USA discovered a navigable wormhole near a hyperlane in the Tor Sector, allowing the new star-polity a more viable presence (and the worlds of the Tor Sector trade access) in the region. Dual CCW/USA membership has been discussed and seems likely, especially with the economic and technological advantages that USA membership offers.

Besides having a rather unique and quite strict ‘eye for an eye’ justice system, Talsire is known for its Archives of Lives, large mausoleum-style complexes that collect mementos and data (gathered by family, friends, or community Life Tabulators) on each deceased citizen and store them, primarily in digital form, supposedly for eternity. These complexes are controversial for a number of reasons, such as the cost of construction and maintenance, the space they take up(although they are set up on generally otherwise unusable real estate), matters of privacy(not everybody wants anything of their private lives open to others’ scrutiny), and matters of inheritance/value(the Archives are often the target of souvenir- or relic-hunting thieves). Thus the contents of the Archives are selected and judged by a Council of Tabulators and relatives, and even then, the Talsiren legal community has a perpetual field-day processing and pursuing claims. Many outsiders believe the Archives of Lives to be a passing fad, bound to collapse under its own delusional expectations and logistical hurdles.

Solar System(Ballabin)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 19
-Terrestrial(Edz)----Tiny rocky Edz serves as a solar observatory base for monitoring Ballabin’s solar weather. The facility is robotic and only rarely visited for maintenance and upgrade purposes.

-Exotic(Gaderson’s Whorl)---- This anomaly is a stable pocket of collected solar plasma, forming what some call a ‘solar ghost’ roughly Saturn-sized. It is unknown how the Whorl originally formed, but it seems to be sustained by trapped solar wind particles.

-Terrestrial(Talsire)----System lifeworld

-Exotic(Dadren Eclipse)----Another of the cosmic phenomena that attracted researchers to the Ballabin system, the Dadren Eclipse is often described as a ‘shadow planet’, a Pluto-sized body composed of light-absorbing exotic matter. Light bends around the black body, giving it a ‘halo’ when viewed against a starry background. Though Dadren exhibits little in the way of gravitational mass on mass-sensors, objects that traverse a 1 mile altitude boundary layer around the object suddenly become subjected to an intense gravitational field more akin to a neutron star’s or black holes’ event horizon and are destroyed, yet Dadren exerts no gravitational influence beyond that of a much smaller body beyond that ‘point of no return’. From what can be discerned of Dadren’s surface, it is utterly smooth, featureless, and light-absorbing. It also possesses a perfectly circular and stable orbit around Ballabin. Many theories have been put forward as to its origin; it is a remnant of a previous universe, an alternate universe, an earlier phase of development of THIS universe, or an artificial construct; none of these theories show any signs of being proven any time soon.

-Asteroid(Toldz)---- A rocky worldlet liberally marbled with ice, Toldz has been suggested as a Belter site.

-Gas Giant(Brodie)----Enormous Brodie supports a moon system of 16 bodies, making it an obvious choice for Belter development; already one of the moons, Hedrez, has been settled a Belter commune that discovered quantities of Datatorium and has started mining it for sale. It has been suggested that the deposits of Datatorium on Hedrz may be evidence of an Ancient presence using ‘smart matter’ manipulation.

-Terrestrial(Andalar)----Average-sized, Andalar possesses a thin atmosphere and 65% coverage in water ice. It is an attractive prospect for a second terrestrial colony world in the Ballabin system.

-Terrestrial(Minslar)----Average-sized, with a little less water-ice, but a thicker atmosphere, cold Minslar is another attractive prospect for terraforming and colonization.

-Asteroid(Magaram)---- At some point in the past Magaram was hit by a high speed collider that almost destroyed the asteroid. Instead, it almost punched entirely through the rocky body, leaving it virtually donut-shaped with a large cavity in its center. Though centrifugal force should have torn the asteroid apart, instead Magaram seems stable. Passing spacecraft have sometimes stopped to explore the ‘Hollow Worldlet’.

-Asteroid(Jeldo)----Jeldo is 82% ‘dirty ice’ by mass, making it a good source of water.

-Gas Giant(Howdlan)----Enormous Howdlan supports a large moon system of some 14 moons of significant size. It also has a large ring system where several moons shattered into small fragments.

-Gas Giant(Jentz)----Tiny Jentz can almost be considered a moon of Howdlan; it orbits behind the larger planet at almost a constant distance, and its annual orbit takes it regularly inside and outside Howdlan’s path.

-Terrestrial(Rodo)----Small Rodo is rocky, lacking in surface ice/water, and possesses a thing atmosphere. Sizable deposits of quartz, nickel, and wolframite, however, make it attractive to mining, and a few automated extraction operations have been established. The mining stations also double as life-stations.

-Exotic(Rallendian Ringlet)----A roughly circular mass of exotic matter, 20,000 kilometers in diameter, believed by some cosmologists to be a ‘smoke ring’ blown off the Dadren Eclipse, others to be a cosmic string that ‘went ouroboros’ and joined its own ends. Several sensor platforms shadow the Ringlet to study its interactions with its surroundings; so far the Ringlet seems to be largely inert, though it does disrupt contragravity systems in its immediate(10,000 mile radius) vicinity. Talsiren scientists have only recently sent probes through the Ringlet’s center, with varying results(some have been destroyed by gravitic effects, others have sent back unusual readings).

-Gas Giant(Kamdis)----Tiny Kamdis barely qualifies as a gas ‘giant’, but has proven useful as a gas source, being easily skimmed without special equipment. A small orbiter station provides collection support, though ‘Kamdis Kommons’ is regarded by its staff as a boring dead-end assignment, even with regular visits from the science crews studying the ‘nearby’ Rallendian Ringlet.

-Gas Giant(Troven)----Miniscule Troven lacks much in the way of satellites, but has unusual atmospheric convection currents that give it the appearance of teeth-like striations stretching from its equator towards its poles. One theory advanced for this strange weather pattern is that a cosmic string(possibly the Rallendian Ringlet) collided with Troven and carved so neatly through the planet that it almost immediately reformed, rather than burst apart), leaving only a permanently disturbed atmospheric ‘scar’ as a reminder of the encounter.

-Terrestrial(Almonec)----Earth-sized Almonec has a modest coverage of water ice and a substantial ammonia-methane atmosphere. It also possesses a temperate climate and heat-driven weather, courtesy of a molten core and volcanic out-gassing. It would be a potential colony site but for an unusually heavy gravity field of 3.6 g, suggesting an exceptionally dense core.

-Terrestrial(Dezus)----Enormous Dezus is covered in a dense poisonous atmosphere, has violent weather, a gravity field that exerts 9.8 gs, and a very powerful electromagnetic field that has been known to fry low-orbiting probes. Its single moon, Alodec, is much more approachable and is the site of a scientific outpost.

-Terrestrial(Maluk)----Little bigger than an asteroid, Maluk more resembles an oversized cometary nucleus, covered in ice and rock. The Talsirens have erected a deep space scanning array on the planet(oid) to monitor incoming FTL traffic and study surrounding deep space.

Planet(Talsire)
Talsire can be regarded as a ‘wet Mars’ with a still active core and more water/ice. It is actively being terraformed.
Originally started as a scientific research outpost, Talsire has bloomed into a well-educated professionals colony engaged in ‘thinking’ services.
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 10,860 kn km
Gravity: 0.7 g. A steady regimen of exercise/use of grav-plating is recommended to maintain muscle-tone.
Temperature:
Cool, but warming, thanks to orbiting solettes and greenhouse gas production.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moon---Talsire has one small moon, Patrec, which has been colonized and serves as a microgravity manufactory complex and scientific research facility.
-Strong Electromagnetic Field---Talsire has a strong planetary electromagnetic field that generates bright auroral activity visible even at the equator.
Atmosphere:
Dense, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mixture.
Terrain:
Varied, but dominated by fields of ‘sky-spires’, columns of dense, mineral-rich rock that were left behind when softer ground around the former extrusions was eroded away. Talsire also has massive beaches/dunes of iron-rich red sand.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Molybdenite
- Tin
- Iron
- Colombite
- Calcite
- Titanium
- Barite
- Talc
Hydrosphere:
69% surface coverage in open water/ice
Biosphere:
Sparse, mainly terraforming flora(algae and land grasses)
Civilization:
-Settled
Population:
132 million humans
Technology:
Low Galactic, with some areas of higher sophistication, such as cybernetic neurological linkage and electronics. The Talsirens manufacture excellent Datatorium-based computer systems, but overall production is small and mostly used for domestic consumption.
Economy:
-Services; the research labs of Talsire, though originally set up to study the Ballabin anomalies, have branched out into scientific consultancy services. Improvements in fields such as communications, electronics(especially Datatorium-based), software, terraforming biotech, and others, even if only incremental, are still valuable, as is the time of thinktanks contracted to study problems brought to them.

Wealth:
-Prosperous, up from Average as a result of trade with the United Systems Alliance.

Government:
Technocracy----Talsire began as a research colony and continues to operate along scientific and academic lines. Those with the best grip on a subject tend to dominate and direct the government divisions dedicated to them, so nuclear physicists run the power grid, hydrologists and engineers run the water utilities, psychologists run the judiciary, and so on.

Law Level:
Can be considered Authoritarian in a particularly notable way. Talsire believes in ‘making the punishment fit the crime’ or ‘eye for an eye’ justice. They are most infamous for the practice of implanting ‘life links’ in criminals and their victims, allowing the criminal to literally feel the pain of their injured victims, and tying the lives of other criminals to the outcome of the critically wounded. This is what triggered the infamous ‘Mallon Incident’ where the son of a prominent CCW politician assaulted a Talsiren local and wound up technologically fate-bound to the critically-injured victim. The victim eventually recovered, but only after several close calls, and even recovery rehab left the attacker mentally traumatized. Senator Mallon has sought damages in turn from the Talsirens, but failing that, has sworn justice/revenge on the ‘savages’ who effectively broke his son and heir.

Popularity:
Popular---While there are enough political scientists in the population to espouse alternate political systems, in general the Talsiren technocracy has worked out well, and most people support it.

Stability:
Stable. There’s even a bit of ‘us against them’ social glue with regards to Talsire’s treatment by Senator Mallon.

[SolCannibal]

Random Roll Tables:(United Systems Alliance Character Origins)

Reasons for Joining the United Systems Alliance Military

01-10% Escape-- You want off the mudball, suffocating society or festering hive of a homeworld you were born on to escape being dragged back down into it. You may be escaping legal trouble, or maybe a bad domestic situation, or some serious boredom, but the prospect of getting shot at on the galactic marches looks a lot more inviting than getting stuck back home.

11-20% Economic/Environmental Refugee----Your homeworld’s overcrowded, or in economic collapse, or resources or scant; joining the offworld military gets you off and out, gets you employed, and either allows you to seek greener pastures or acquire money and resources to help the folks back home.

21-30% Idealist---You believe in something greater than yourself. It might be spreading the word of your planet’s god(s) or it may be that you subscribe to the United Systems Alliance’s credos of helping others, unity in action, and freeing the enslaved. You’re going to carry the torch of enlightenment to the cosmos, spearhead the crusade, and herald the arrival of civilization.

31-35% Drafted---You really don’t want to leave your comfy homeworld, but your government/leadership sez otherwise. You signed a contract or made a deal and the other party exercised a clause or condition that allowed themto send you offworld. Maybe you’re already part of your homeland’s military, and you just got assigned to an offworld tour of duty with the Allies. Or maybe you’re doing penance or serving out a sentence for a crime that allowed you to pay the penalty in service. You’re hoping to serve your time unevent

Ain't that table missing some text - and a lot of percentages? Kind of baffled that i only noticed this now....

[taalismn]

Random Roll Tables:(United Systems Alliance Character Origins)

Reasons for Joining the United Systems Alliance Military

01-10% Escape-- You want off the mudball, suffocating society or festering hive of a homeworld you were born on to escape being dragged back down into it. You may be escaping legal trouble, or maybe a bad domestic situation, or some serious boredom, but the prospect of getting shot at on the galactic marches looks a lot more inviting than getting stuck back home.

11-20% Economic/Environmental Refugee----Your homeworld’s overcrowded, or in economic collapse, or resources or scant; joining the offworld military gets you off and out, gets you employed, and either allows you to seek greener pastures or acquire money and resources to help the folks back home.

21-30% Idealist---You believe in something greater than yourself. It might be spreading the word of your planet’s god(s) or it may be that you subscribe to the United Systems Alliance’s credos of helping others, unity in action, and freeing the enslaved. You’re going to carry the torch of enlightenment to the cosmos, spearhead the crusade, and herald the arrival of civilization.

31-35% Drafted---You really don’t want to leave your comfy homeworld, but your government/leadership sez otherwise. You signed a contract or made a deal and the other party exercised a clause or condition that allowed themto send you offworld. Maybe you’re already part of your homeland’s military, and you just got assigned to an offworld tour of duty with the Allies. Or maybe you’re doing penance or serving out a sentence for a crime that allowed you to pay the penalty in service. You’re hoping to serve your time uneventfully before returning home, but you’re afraid that the universe might not be so accommodating.

36-40% Honor Debt--You or your people were saved or helped by the United Systems Alliance or one of its members at some point in the past. You and your people believe in paying back that debt with service. Maybe all your people have to pay with is their blood and sweat, but the debt will be paid.

41-50% Born for Service----You were born or bred for a specific purpose, perhaps as an experiment or as a production-line caste. Whether you escaped a life of servitude or were assigned to duty, you find yourself falling back on what you were created to do...at least until you find new purpose.

51-60% Warrior Tradition--Your family, culture, or species prides themselves on being warriors, and the USAJC offers opportunities for service and glory. This may require you to work with different Others, perhaps even species and cultures you might otherwise have considered enemies or targets, but your discipline will not be found wanting.

61-70% It’s the Money, Stupid---You’re in the USAJC for the pay, and the potential of acquiring loot. Though the USA isn’t about plundering, it is a little loose on disposing of captured assets of enemy states, and a little free about distributing land on new worlds, so there’s a good chance you could get a piece of that. Of course, if you’re of a less scrupulous alignment, you may be looking for an opportunity to do a little unauthorized acquisition of your own on the side, sc ore some trade contacts, and make a few lucrative deals.

71-80% Glory and Adventure----You don’t seek material wealth as much as you seek attention, excitement, and achievement. You want to stand tall and victorious and be able to boast of being one of the best. If you’re of a more selfish bent, you look to martial prowess as a tangible stepping stone or clout to high political or social standing.

81-90% Revenge---You or your people were done dirt by somebody or something; maybe it was the Splugorth, or pirates, or the CCW that abandoned your colony, but joining the Armies of the Fringe seems the best way of paying back that debt of blood, by hunting your former oppressors down or humiliating those high-pockets that left you behind.

91-00% Personal Quest---You’re looking for something in the cosmos and the USA’s legions give you a better chance of finding it. Maybe it’s lost tribes of your people, family you lost when you were a slave, ancient artifacts of your culture, your dimensionally-lost homeland, or maybe you’re seeking meaning, but it’s always on your mind alongside your assigned duties.

Ain't that table missing some text - and a lot of percentages? Kind of baffled that i only noticed this now....

There. Fixed in both places.

Thanks for the catch.

[taalismn]

Jennifer/Helia-Algis----(Badlands Confederation)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“That world started out as one of the more promising in the Badlands, but it fell under a series of increasingly corrupt governments. The last coalition government splintered and somebody hired mercenaries to restore order. Big mistake; Ignasus Helgard decided to stay and set himself up as Evil Overlord. Maybe now that he’s gone, the planet can get a fresh start; because it really deserves one.”

“Aljer-Helias is something of a fixe-upper. You don’t just undo several centuries of corruption topped by open despotism overnight. There’s long suppressed clan feuds and grudges boiling up, an economy to rebuild, a techbase to revamp, a police force and militia to re-certify and update, a government to reorganize, popular opinion to reorient, an ecology to repair, and a moon to terraform. on top of alliances to mend or make. The fact that such progress has been made already shows that with the right person in charge, a lot of other things can start falling into place and start a wave of positive change.”

“It’s nt just a name change and a new face in the Big Seat; the planet’s undergone a whole change of attitude. There’s still problems to be sure, but people are seeing a brighter future ahead.”

“With the discoveries of both stenthamine and xanthine to lure in investment from the usans and the uwwies, the Jennifens are in a good negotiating position to get what they want of both star nations. Naturally some of Queen Gerrith’s Badlands neighbors are a little nervous about having the Warlock Marines and the USAJC making visits to what seemed a previously safely-ignored stellar neighborhood, especially after the Vykunnians began cuddling up with them too.”

“The Lazon Academy’s already turning out a promising class of well-educated and self-assertive young females of several different species. The ethics courses alone are a torch of enlightenment in the Badlands. The swordsmanship classes may seem a little dotty, but nobody who’s seen the ladies wield their blades firsthand has complained about the skill being useless.”

“We’re having to go over the armed forces and security apparati rolls very carefully; we urgently need both up quickly running reliably, but we don’t want any holdovers from Gelgard’s bully-boys. Though he did have a habit of drafting a lot of locals into his cannonfodder legions and forced them to break enough heads to pressure them into loyalty to him and his, so if we can weed out the true loyalists and those too traumatized by their time spent in the ranks, we might just have a disciplined core cadre to work with.
Then, too, we have to see about re-equipping them; Helgard’s core guard kept the best toys for themselves and the local auxiliaries got the leftovers. Fortunately I hear the Queen’s got so negotiations going that will help us out there. Because once we start making money in this system, we’re going to see an increase in trouble, mark my words.”

“The Badlands are hardly strategic, but if we can acquire friendly ports in at least one of the systems there, it greatly reduces our logistical problems in rooting out the piracy problem in the galactic shoal regions. The signals the Pollast have given us are positive, and if the negotiations with Jennifer pan out, that gives us another anchor point in the sector. Both systems seem stable and economically sound, and our aid packages are only reinforcing that, but we will remain on our best behavior dealing with them. They may be small now, but so were we when we started out, and a little good will with them will pay large dividends down the road.”
---Vaydove Lairod, United Systems Alliance Foreign Affairs Minister, Thundercloud Galaxy Theta Octant Office.

“Queen Gerrith’s not afraid to use force where appropriate, and subtle force when needed. When she leaned that some of the late Helgard’s cronies had absconded with some national treasures, she contacted some...quote; ‘old friends’. Sometime later, the loot was mysteriously back in Jen’s capitol museum, nobody having seen who returned it. And what of the original thieves? Rumors of the sort that make either good campfire scare stories or just-jump-to-the-summary file reports.”

Jennifer is a world in the Badlands Confederation, though, until fairly recently, it was only marginally involved with that association.
Jennifer was formerly named and colonized as Helia-Algis, with sponsorship being a private colonial venture out of the ever-active Human Alliance looking to expand its presence in the Thundercloud Galaxy. Other groups, especially a ship of refugee starfaring goblins, arrived later. Each group negotiating a landhold on the developing world. For over a century, the colony struggled with local conditions, tensions between the various groups of colonists, inadequate support, changing political administration and policies, and increasing government corruption(a condition seemingly endemic to settlements in the Badlands). It became Helgard’s Haven when Ignasus Helgard and his monstrous mercenary legion took over the planet in the course of applying ‘peacekeeping measures’. Unlike (exceptional) worlds like Nettavan, Helgard’s mercenaries set up shop as overlords over the existing native colonists, ruling with heavy hands and ready violence in service to themselves Though nominally a member of the Badlands Confederation and thus obliged to help with anti-piracy actions, Helgard paid lip service to the Confederation treaties, going only far enough to eliminate the local pirate competition and secure his own immediate space. Otherwise, Helgard ruled his new world with an iron fist, practically daring other Confederation members to interfere with ‘internal affairs’. None did and it seemed a set thing that Helgard’s regime would rule for a long time.
That all changed when a wandering champion appeared. Gerrith Lazon arrived on a tramp starship and quickly determined that Helgard’s Haven needed a serious change.

Many claims are made of Lady Gerrith Lazon, some by the Lady herself;
-She is an impossible ‘half-elf’, either a human-elf crossbreed or even an Atlantean- or Amazon-elf hybrid.
-She is a centuries-old dimensional adventurer.
-She started out on a primitive low-tech world as a daughter of low nobility.
-She has trained as many things but most recently as a cyberknight(18th level), and has even mentored and sponsored several younger knights and champions.
-She was part of a notorious group of interdimensional adventurers(which few people have heard of).
-She’s a (Fallen) Cosmo-Knight, though she gave up the power to focus on more local and domestic issues and causes.
-She once sang a dragon to sleep.
-She once sang for the gods(pantheon not identified).
-She owns a collection of magic swords and armors of various kinds.
-She has connections to Rifts Earth and the United Worlds of Warlock.
-She once slapped Thraxus when he tried to seduce her. Thraxus reportedly found her candor and courage charming and refreshing, and respected her dismissal of him.
-She once SAVED Thraxus(though whether before or after he attempted to seduce her is unknown); that earned his respect even more.

Regardless of her past, newcomer Gerrith slew the despot Helgard and rallied the people to throw off centuries of corruption and despair. The fight was bloody(one city was destroyed by a WMD set off by a panicked Helgardian), but the cause was just, and in the end, the planet was freed, and Helgard’s mercenary army either all killed or sent fleeing offworld.
The grateful Algissians named Gerrith their new queen-ruler. They also renamed their planet Jennifer for a long-ago social activist and advocate for social reform, pre-Helgard. Queen Gerrith quickly set about working to live up to the high bar of morality and ethics set by that long-ago social advocate.
Contrary to expectations, Gerrith did NOT drive all non-humans, especially the monster races(many of who supported Helgard), off Jennifer. Instead, she invited all to the planet. She made available education to all residents, regardless of social background. In particular she endowed an academy for girls, regardless of family background, to be educated in the ways of chivalry, nobility, and knighthood.
Though she claims to have retired from adventuring, Lady Gerrith has been known to take up arms time and again and go out personally to take action in various crisises. During the Minion War she was an active member of the Knights Vaccinator, and personally slew the pestilence demon-lord Kanzer with Kemos, the Blade of Purification.

Under Queen-Lady Lazon’s rule, Jennifer has become the second world of the Badlands Confederation to invite in the United Systems Alliance and the United Worlds of Warlock as trade partners, with formal membership in the former being suspected as an eventual goal.

Solar System(Aljer-Helias)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars: Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 7
-Asteroid(Trochel)----Trochel is a ‘sun-grazer’ asteroid, making very close passes near Aljer-Helias in an almost cometary orbit. Ignasus Helgard reportedly liked to strand personal enemies and prisoners on Trochel with minimal life support during the asteroid’s close approach to the sun, with bets taken on whether there would be anybody left alive on the other side of the orbit. Upon assuming power, one of Queen Gerrrith’s first orders was to dispatch a ship to Trochel to free any prisoners there and decommission any such prison. While not all the Trochel prisoners were exactly nice people who everybody would want freed, Gerrith offered then amnesty(and exile to the real troublemakers). However, it’s rumored that at least one of the freed prisoners/pirates has sworn a blood-debt to Queen Gerrith.

-Asteroid(Amina)---- The largest ‘rock’ in the Adoros Belt, believed to be the remains of several protoplanets that broke up and formed a ring around Aljer-Helias. Amina has been colonized by the followers of Dalgar Olvus, a former Helgard mercenary who wanted out of the Haven regime and justified his leaving as developing an asteroid-mining operation that would ultimately benefit Haven. Surprisingly, the normally obsessively-possessive Helgard let him, but kept an eye on him nevertheless, against the possibility of Olvus marshaling forces for a coup attempt. However, true to his word, Olvus remained out of Haven politics and was allowed to conduct some small smuggling through his Amina settlement as long as he wasn’t smuggling contraband detrimental to Helgard’s regime, and that Helgard’s watchers got a cut of the profits. Queen Gerrith has allowed Olvus to continue his operations, provided he does not offer sanctuary to pirates or endanger system security.

-Terrestrial(Rhodius)----Small, possessing light gravity, warm, arid and possessing a thin, unbreathable atmosphere, Rhodius has been discovered to have large deposits of Stenthamine, a damage-resistant material that is becoming very much in demand in the Three Galaxies. This discovery has triggered something of a ‘gold rush’, with Queen Gerrith having to accelerate her space infrastructure and naval redevelopment plans get ahead of the miners and outside poachers that will be drawn to the stenthamine strikes. Rhodius has been proposed as a possible site for a joint USA/UWW naval base as part of negotiations with Queen Gerrith(the moons of Ghasten are another possible site-offering).

-Exotic(‘Pearl’)-------Brilliantly white reflective ice and snow cover this small world, splashed with patches of green, purple, and blue from mineral-laden and exolife-heavy waters from a deep ice world-ocean. Furthermore, ‘Pearl’ is veiled in ring-clouds of very fine dust and gas. Starships passing through the system often divert to allow passengers to view this beautiful planet directly. Even more miraculous is that nobody, not even Helgard, has thought to exploit and despoil the singularly beautiful planet. Some attribute the lack of colonization to an aura of serenity surrounding the planet, or the presence of a planetary spirit that keeps evil at bay via subtle psychic emissions(indeed, some parapsychics report getting feelings of a strong planetary aura, while others are less certain about what they sense). There is a small religious movement on Jennifer that regards Pearl with spiritual reverence. They even, given that Lady Gerrith’s first appearance in the Aljer-Helias system was near Pearl, believe her to be a champion summoned by the planetary spirit to save Helia-Algis from itself.
Aside from a few scientific enclaves, Pearl remains uninhabited.

-Terrestrial(Jennifer)---- System Lifeworld

-Terrestrial(Nalan)---- Nearly a gas giant with its dense atmosphere and crushing gravity(x9 Earth-standard), large Nalan is a poor prospect for exploitation, though there have been several proposals to establish gas-skimming operations.

-Terrestrial(Ghasten)----A large cold planet with comfortable gravity, Ghasten can be visited using minimal gravity-buffering. This is useful because scans have shown substantial deposits of manganese, colombite, sapphire, molybdenite, and ruby in its crust, worth mining. Ghasten also possesses 8 small moons, one of which has been discovered to have exploitable amounts of Xanthine. With the right high-tech equipment and some investment, Ghasten could become the mineral mine/warehouse of the system. Ghasten’s moons have also been suggested as possible naval bases for UWW/USAJC vessels.

Planet(Jennifer)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 14,000 km
Gravity: 1.1 g
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moon----Starzy---Jennifer has a large lunar satellite, Starzy, which has its own substantial and breathable atmosphere. Starzy also plays host to a scant ecosystem of hearty extremophiles similar in biochemistry to organisms found on Pearl, suggesting a connection. Currently some 80,000 residents live in small dome-communities on Starzy. It’s long been speculated and proposed that with a little effort, the introduction of more water, and some terraforming to stabilize a renewable atmosphere, Starzy could become shirtsleeve-habitable. However, past initiatives have quickly fallen by the wayside due to corrupt politicking getting in the way. With Queen Gerrith’s enlightened rule, the Starzy-terraforming project may finally get underway. If successful, some claim that will make Jennifer effectively a twin planet.

-Craters---The Jennifen surface shows the marks of previous meteoric bombardment encounters. Crater lakes and bays are common, as are circular mountain ranges.

Atmosphere:
- Breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture
Terrain:
-Unusual Seismology--Jennifer is unusually seismically quiet, except in certain regions, where regular tectonic movement creates distinct subsonic ‘singing’ caves and canyons, including ‘white noise’ regions that effectively mute all but the loudest or most modulated noises, the opposite of ‘echo’ canyons. Other areas are the reverse; long canyons and cave systems that channel noise for dozens, even hundreds, of miles.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Gold/Silver
- Pitchblende
- Aluminum
- Chromium
- Thorium
- Borax
- Calcite
- Talc
Hydrosphere:
48% open water surface coverage.
Biosphere:
Dense; it’s been more verdant in the past, but poor management and over-exploiting under the previous regimes has led to ecological damage, the extinction of some species, and the near-extinction of others. One of the items on Queen Gerrith’s long-term agenda is repairing some of that damage and using outside biotech to bring some of the lost species back.
Jennifer’s ecosystem is at pseudo-Cretaceous stage of development, with flowering trees, well-developed sauroid species, and a minor, but still competitive, mammal element. Despite abundant evidence of past meteoric bombardments, there does not appear to be a single large ‘dinosaur killer’ collision event that triggered mass extinction.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
920 million(30% Human, 30% Goblins, 40% other)
Technology:
Stellar Age, roughly equivalent to Rifts Earth. Local industry can produce M-factor materials, energy weapons, e-clips, fusion power systems, and near-space capable spacecraft, but cannot produce starships. For more advanced technology, Jennifens are reliant on foreign imports(until fairly recently they were heavily dependent on commercial hulls purchased from the Vykunn-based Deshold Pollast/Empire of the Outer Nebulae ), while Helgard purchased military equipment from Naruni Enterprises. Queen Gerrith has since been in negotiations with the United Systems Alliance and United Worlds of Warlock to upgrade her planet’s technology and help build a proper space navy.
Current;y the Jennifen Navy consists mainly of legacy vessels left over from the Helgard regime; a handful of patrol ships, several armed merchantmen, eight corvettes, four destroyers, two armed tenders and an aging light carrier. all of older vintages. Several space stations provide orbital coverage and near-space traffic control, though two of them were badly damaged in the overthrow of Helgard’s regime; the stations are still in the process of being rebuilt, Jennifen technicians taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade the sensors and other capabilities of the stations.
Recently, Jennifer has negotiated the acquisition of three ASI-built Blackjack Frigates and an older UWW-built Gryphon-class monitor. The Jennifen Navy has also taken delivery of several wings of -F-350 Draken II aerospace fighters to replace the aging HA-vintage fighters and expired-warranty Naruni ships left from the Helgard regime.
The Jennifen Armed Services are undergoing a similar modernization, retiring their aging Helgard-bought Naruni gear for surplus UWW equipment, and a factory-fresh supply of new Skaggerite weaponry. Aegis Stellar Industries/Paladin Steel has reportedly also been in negotiations with Jennifen officials about acquiring other gear and services from the ASI/PS inventory.

Economy:
Agricultural, but Lady Gerrith has encouraged Commerce and Industry.
Helgard previously exported fissionables, using slave labor to mine them. Queen Gerrith has disbanded the mining camps and has throttled back on fissionable exports in favor of more environmentally-friendly economic development.

Wealth:
Prosperous---This is little short of astonishing, given the planet’s recent past, where most of the wealth was in the hands of Helgard and his minions. However, massive government reforms and confiscation of the Helgard swag-hoards, redistribution of recovered moneys, and an open trade policy have wrought what many consider a miraculous economy recovery and boom.

Government:
Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliament. Queen Gerrith’s current prime minister is a goblin and former political prisoner of the late Helgard regime.

Law Level:
Moderate; this being the Badlands there are still some patches of lawlessness as the new Jennifens adjust to the new regime. Jennifen law enforcement is still re-vetting itself and shaking off the corruption and despotism that plagued the planet pre-Gerrith.
Remaining problems facing the Jennifen authorities are goblin family feuds, hard feelings left over from the Helgard days(revenge slayings), and piracy(some of it originating from Helgard associates who escaped into space and have come back to exact revenge or to attempt to steal back assets they were forced to abandon).

Popularity:
Beloved; the Jennifens love their new Queen and the stability, nobility, and prosperity she has brought to their world. Queen Gerrith razed Helgard’s fortress, turned the old government complex into a civic center, and has authorized a new wave of building to reflect the planet’s fresh start. However, her loyal subjects have insisted that she have a castle of her own, and construction financed by popular subscription, has begun on a modest palace.

Stability:
Solid; Queen Gerrith has ruled with a firm, but very fair, hand. She has also done much to mend fences with her interstellar neighbors in the Badlands, and invite trade with outside powers. The only real issue of concern is that of a successor; Gerrith has shown no real hurry to marry and produce blood-heirs. Though it’s rumored that Lady Gerrith Lazon is immortal, or at least very long-lived, there are some in her cabinet who worry that the knightly and hands-on queen may come to an accidental end, leaving succession up in the air(though the government would continue running under a parliamentary system).

[SolCannibal]

So, counting Jennifer, Vykuun & Novo BownKrak, that makes about 3 member worlds of the Badlands Confederation's 15 member systems.

Oh no, wait, the (very recent) profile on Vykuun is also followed by one fully fleshing out the Badlands Confederation and it seems to have expanded to 35 member planets, + 36 ‘protectorates'.
Impressive, though considering the situation of Vykuun and Jennifer, i'd say debatable if not outright questionable how many of those actually are anything like involved participating members x pirate/warlord holdings paying lip service to membership for expediency...

(Also, guessing some of the "protectorates" might be part of the Outer Nebulae/Dessholt Polast cluster)

[taalismn]

Yep.....the BC's pretty back of nowhere linked by tramp-traders and borderline pirates. Probably some borderline shatterworlds. It's still very wild and wholly(aching for PCs to travel to and meddle in if they're not looking to take part in galactic-changing events)

The original 15 figure likely covers the most advanced member worlds(those who can maintain their own spacecraft reasonably well and keep up interstellar travel.trade and communication.
If they were located in the Anvil, they'd be the sort to be members of the Central Alliance....or eyeballed as the next to be challenged for membership, given how Noldek would want to stamp out the local piracy problem.

[SolCannibal]

Yep.....the BC's pretty back of nowhere linked by tramp-traders and borderline pirates. Probably some borderline shatterworlds. It's still very wild and wholly(aching for PCs to travel to and meddle in if they're not looking to take part in galactic-changing events)

The original 15 figure likely covers the most advanced member worlds(those who can maintain their own spacecraft reasonably well and keep up interstellar travel.trade and communication.
If they were located in the Anvil, they'd be the sort to be members of the Central Alliance....or eyeballed as the next to be challenged for membership, given how Noldek would want to stamp out the local piracy problem.

To be honest, some fragments on Pollast and their profiles seem to paint an image of the confederation that seems unbecoming, not to say outright hypocritical or even farsical.

In return for mutually beneficial trade agreements and access to the Vykuun ship production, the other Badlands worlds recognized the imperial junta as the legitimate government (easy enough to do, since several of the other Confed worlds also, and sometimes regularly, changed regimes in similar fashion).

And then there's this:

these new colonies struggled and suffered from pirate raids (ironically, many from what would later be members of the Badlands Confederation)

Not making a great case for mutual defense treaties if one accepts yesterday's pirate/raider as today's member-world & equal.... No wonder even what is seen as a major local power within the group such as Vykuun is looking for deals with other Rim polities.

[taalismn]

Not everybody is able to create a perfect and harmonious star nation, let alone one from members with no/few common roots, from scratch. I'll admit the United Systems Alliance is a munchkin exception, even more than the original American Thirteen Colonies that the USA would seem based on. Maybe that's why it's doing so well, because it runs contrary to everybody else's expectations.

But it's the 'Badlands', after all. Full of corrupt pseudo-democracies, strongman and even tribal nations, and honor-among-thieves enclaves. A bit more rudely honest in their self-interest than the Paradise Foundation and a lot more violent. But occasionally you get the 'I raided you last week, you raided me last Tuesday; I'll trade you some of what I got from you for some of what you took from me' vibe. CCW diplomats would either have to have steel nerves or a Warshield at their backs to negotiate anything meaningful in the region, if the CCW ever found reason to bother with it.

And pirates die or move on.....An unpopular local bandit or obstacle to a trade treaty with an interstellar neighbor might find themselves removed one way or another, so there's that too.

[SolCannibal]

Not everybody is able to create a perfect and harmonious star nation, let alone one from members with no/few common roots, from scratch. I'll admit the United Systems Alliance is a munchkin exception, even more than the original American Thirteen Colonies that the USA would seem based on. Maybe that's why it's doing so well, because it runs contrary to everybody else's expectations.

But it's the 'Badlands', after all. Full of corrupt pseudo-democracies, strongman and even tribal nations, and honor-among-thieves enclaves. A bit more rudely honest in their self-interest than the Paradise Foundation and a lot more violent. But occasionally you get the 'I raided you last week, you raided me last Tuesday; I'll trade you some of what I got from you for some of what you took from me' vibe. CCW diplomats would either have to have steel nerves or a Warshield at their backs to negotiate anything meaningful in the region, if the CCW ever found reason to bother with it.

And pirates die or move on.....An unpopular local bandit or obstacle to a trade treaty with an interstellar neighbor might find themselves removed one way or another, so there's that too.

Oh, i have no problem with some dirt and grit here and there - in my own group a son of Dunscon become a pirate warlord and from there turned himself into some sort of folk hero by targeting Splugorth raiders (that have the best gear AND had collected so much loot for them) and then relocating the enslaved people to somewhat safer locales, where he made river ports to serve as hideouts and trade redoubts. Ended up setting a bunch of towns and city-states in what would be the atlantic coast of France, Low Countries and some of the Iberian peninsula through that. The NGR and the polish weren't quite as welcoming, but still got some under the table deals with the right/wrong people from time to time.

It's just that letting pirates that raid the members of your self-defense confederation become new member states makes a great example of self-sabotage at work. Well, the Confederation made its bed, now it must accept the very real possibility of tired key members joining the USA - or making use separate deals with Paladin Steel & co to prop themselves in a stronger position from which to cajole or arm-wrestle the rest of the Confederation in the direction theywant. Either way some ne'er-do-wells are going to suffer.

[taalismn]

Of course.
Currently none of the members are really in a position to invade their neighbors(no nascent TGEs in the making), though with the generally low planetary populations, even raids can be serious business. But a thwarted raid can also effectively cut the raiders' numbers, available resources, and in turn their own defenses back home. A lot of the 'outlaw' members of the BC got tired of this back and forth game, and then losing to outside parties that started coming in. So they started signing non-aggression treaties and tentative assistance treaties. Many of them were still savage at home with each other, they just didn't poke their neighbors into doing something that could weaken them at home. Though, what keeps the BC from being stronger and more notable is that as noted, many members pay lip service to the Confed treaties or just aren't able to keep their own people from engaging in piracy or at least providing dark ports for outsider groups.

Will, as you suggest, those that make profitable deals with outsiders like the USA/PS/ASI feel emboldened to flex some muscle and indeed contemplate such drastic actions like invading a neighboring tyranny that abuses its own people? Or at least meddle in other worlds' internal affairs? Will this divide the BC, or strengthen it as the remaining members awaken to a larger and more tangible outside threat to their respective sovereignties? And will the USA's interest in the Badlands draw the attention of other larger polities that previously ignored them?

Ah, there PCs might have a role in determining the future....

See? Already what might otherwise be a forgettable corner of the Three Galaxies suddenly becomes a complicated issue rife with possibilities.

[taalismn]

Dalanthas----(United Systems Alliance Member)(Thundercloud Galaxy)

“Atium’s got the corner on prime seafood in the Alliance, Paloii makes wine, Mestos makes the ale and Dalanthas’ got the beef.”

“Heard you usan folks got a thing about pirates? Well, we got a pirate problem what with poachers violating our aerospace and zapping and grabbing a few head of cattle or raiding a town to vacuum up some dressed meat from the freezers and maybe taking some townsfolk. Now, if the cowardly bastards would stay long enough for us to gun them, it would be a more even fight, but we don’t have the hardware for interdiction or pursuit, which I understand you do have and are willing to sell without strings attached. So let’s talk about sharecropping.”

“Had my grav-car break down right in front of one of those big mega-herds. That’s like having your skid-engine conk out in the path of an avalanche. There’s hardly any way of diverting those big grazers when they get a good momentum going. Fortunately the local herders had gunships watching the herd and they caught sight of me just as I was about to try making a run for it on foot and swooped in to pick me up. But not before those big beefers were close enough to make my life flash before my eyes and make me regret having steak for breakfast.”

“For a fee and a waiver, the Dalanthans will let predatory sophonts hunt live feral megacows and local sauroids. Surprisingly, they’ve had a number of license-applicants from Crosyar, which I understand has an even more hellish ecology than Dalanthas, and which is developing its own local safari trade. Can’t figure out why they’d be traveling all the way over to a whole other galactic arm to do what they can do at home; maybe the Crosyarans are evaluating the competition.”

Dalanthas is a human-sept colony world settled third generation from the CCW. They are predominately an agricul tural colony raising crops and livestock, increasingly for export and sale. Their growing prosperity has afforded them comfortable livings,, but has also made them an attractive target for pirates and eco-poachers. They have recently turned to the United Systems Alliance to promote and protect their livelihoods.

Dalanthas was settled by humans looking to establish a pastoral lifestyle based on large-scale agriculture. They soon discovered that Dalanthas’ native ecology would take more than a little taming, as it found the alien biochemistry of the settlers and their farm plants and animals metabolically compatible with their own. In an effort to preserve their traditional imported cattle stock in a hostile predator-ridden environment, the Dalanthan colonists resorted to genetic engineering, splicing local sauroid DNA into their cattle. The result was much larger cattle able to feed off the local plant life, but also more aggressive against both the sauroid predators AND the ranchers. In order to safely handle their oversized cattle, the colonists have to use energy rifles and armored vehicles to herd them along. The ‘dalkows’ are a major source of meat, skins, and bones, the export of which is becoming the planet’s primary moneymaker, especially after Dalantha acquired a fleet of USA-sourced interstellar refer-transports to move product into the intergalactic market.

The colony decided to join the USA because it offered better commercial opportunities, transport, and marketing for the colony’s agricultural output. Dalanthas retains a dual membership in the CCW, but is leaning increasingly towards the USA given the VAST improvement in their fortunes since joining. Dalanthas’s growing prosperity has also attracted outlawry as well, a growing pirate problem in the sector has had the Dalanthans looking to improve their space defenses and harden their system against the bold poachers and commerce raiders that have been hitting trade in the region.

The Dalanthan colonists themselves are the subject of mild genetic engineering,
with adjustments made to better acclimate them to their planet’s higher gravity. While retaining the same overall build of normal humans, Dalanthans have a denser musculature, reinforced bones(especially in the legs and ankles), improved circulatory systems, and faster reflexes . They prefer high protein diets.
+1d6 P.S.
+1d4 P.E.
+1d4 Roll
+1 to save vs Horror Factor when facing oversized(10 ft + tall ) monsters.

Solar System(Kipson)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars: Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 4
-Gas Giant(Hodgson)----Tiny ‘hot gas giant’ being eroded away by radiation from Kipson.

-Terrestrial (Dalanthas)---- System lifeworld

-Gas Giant (Pertwe)----Miniscule gas giant with nine small moons. Pertwe is effectively owned by the Diglan-Arnald Group, the CCW-based energy company that provides the Dalanthas colony with its energy needs. DAG harvests helium and hydrogen from Pertwe and refines it on the moons, before shipping fusionable isotopes to Dalanthas and elsewhere. The USAJC has established a patrol/escort base on one of the moons, Reglis.

-Terrestrial(Gabol)----Earth-sized, possessing tolerable gravity, but arid, frigid, and thin-atmosphered, Gabol is the outlier world of the Kipson system. It has been suggested that Kipson would make a good ‘cold colony’ or ‘domeworld’ for USA development.

Planet(Dalanthas )
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 14,000 km
Gravity: 1.4 g
Temperature:
Temperate, on the tropical side (average temperature is 56 degrees F).
Unusual/Special Features:
-Odd Orbit----Dalanthas describes an orbit almost perpendicular to the mean ecliptic plane of the rest of the system: it’s at 83 degrees deviation. It’s been suggested that at some time in the distant past the young planet was clipped by a collision with another body and its orbit radically altered.

-Craters----Dalanthas ‘s surface is littered with the pockmarks of frequent meteor strikes. It was proposed at one time that it may have been a meteor shower, evidence of which still existed, that pushed the planet into its high polar orbit, but subsequent studies proved this wrong. Also, none of the impacts appear ‘dinosaur killer’ large enough(evidenced by the planet’s dense sauroid-heavy ecology) to do the job. Many of the younger craters have proven useful as ranch pens for the Dalanthan livestock industry.

Atmosphere:
Breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture, notably high in oxygen.
Terrain:
Unusual Geology---Dalanthas’ geography features strange rolling serpentine hills that plate tectonics have cut up as the continental plates have drifted, but the continuous lines are still easily visible. Subsurface, these features show signs of impact folding and minerals normally associated with sudden massive shocks and overpressures. This has been taken as further evidence of the planet having an encounter with a large impactor, the collision of such magnitude that it didn’t shatter the planet outright, but left giant shockwave ‘ripples’ geologically frozen in the planet’s crust.

Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Amethyst
- Zinc
- Tin
- Lead
- Barite
- Samarskite
- Thorium
- Quartz
Hydrosphere:
Balanced; roughly 54% of the planet is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Dense. Plant life is dense, favoring tropical types. Cretaceous-equivalent sauroid life predominates and provides a constant threat to unwary colonists. The largest land predator is the massive darcmaw, a fast two-legged beast with a massive mouth filled with sharp teeth, able to swallow a hovercar and its occupants in one bite. Smaller velociraptor-like qwiklaws move in packs and hunt in coordinated actions. The oceans are similarly densely inhabited; wandering predatory packs of amphibious seal-like kralfins pose a danger to unwary beachcombers. Dalanthas lacks the high ambient PPE field that turns large creatures into high M-factor creatures, as on Rifts Earth, but the larger sauroids, including the bigger predators, are megadamage organisms(generally 30-50% less MDC than their Rifts Earth Dinosaur Swamp equivalents).
Some of the plant and animal species are commercially exploitable; in addition to their dalkows, the Dalanthans raise, among other local animals, ostrich-like endus and daggabeks as poultry and for hides.

Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
12 million (70% Human, 30% other)

Technology:
Low Galactic. They notably run several low-key, but high-profit potential, genetic engineering programs aimed at increasing livestock health and crop yields. They also produce their own line of side- and long-arms, as well as light armored vehicles, most based on open domain designs, but lack the wherewithal to produce heavier equipment and starships.

Economy:
Agricultural, primarily livestock.

Wealth:
Rich, up from an already satisfactory Average. The Dalanthans accredit this to the better transport and market access afforded them by USA membership.

Government:
Syndicracy---The original colony was established by a coalition of businesses, with power supply handled by a CCW-based energy firm, medical support handled by a pharmaceutical corporation, and agriculture by an agrocorp. A common colonial commission council rules on matters of judiciary, infrastructure and everyday governance concerns.

Law Level:
Moderate; there’s a fair bit of frontier lawlessness, mainly on the big ranches. Poaching and rustling are common problems where there isn’t a comprehensive implant-tagging and remote-tracking system set up. Frankly, though, the Dalanthans seem to cultivate a little roguishness to liven things up, and most criminals are taking their lives into their own hands, as the ranchers(and farmers for that matter) tend to apply rather aggressive onsite justice to those they catch.

Popularity:
Beloved; the Dalanthans see themselves as living the ideal of being hardy bull-busting, sod-breaking, business-running, frontiersmen. They like the freedom their government affords them and don’t intend to jeopardize a good thing.

Stability:
Solid; there’s no real internal threats to the Dalanthan government, though there is the occasional rumble about land disputes, livestock poaching, and corrupt law enforcement. Piracy is an increasing problem, but is an external issue that is actually helping solidify the government, as the Dalanthans rally behind a common cause.

‘Megacows’(aka ‘Dalkows’)
“Damn mean critters...but damn good eatin’!”
Megacows are the massive genetically-enhanced cattle the Dalanthans created to better handle their colony’s heavier gravity, near-compatible biological resources and aggressive local wildlife. Of course, being able to graze on the hearty local plant life and fend off the nasty local predators also made the cattle rather hard for the colonists to manage without the use of military-grade equipment.
One extraworldly dimensional traveler compared dalkows to Cape Buffalo in terms of their aggressiveness.
Dalkow meat is high in protein and uniquely flavorful; it’s the planet’s primary profit export. Asked if the great effort that goes into ranching the monstrous cattle is worth it, almost all Dalanthans agree that the meat is worth working up the appetite for.
There are various breeds of Dalkows, ranging in size and overall temperament, and favored browse environments, but the largest and best-known, the one most often referenced as a ‘dalkow’ as the Bovus Maxius- breed, Megakow.
There is no dairy version of the dalkow. Several of the smaller breeds can be domesticated as riding animals and draft-beasts(such the ‘megox’). Larger ‘kaiju-kow’ breeds are rumored to be developed on isolated ranches, but reportedly the larger sizes produce less succulent meat.

Alignments: (Animal) Effectively anarchist
Lifespan: 30 years(most are harvested for their meat at 10 years)
Size: Roughly 9-15 ft at the shoulder and about 25-50 ft long. Weight 60 tons
Gender: Male and Female. Typically mate once a year, and the female subsequently gives birth to 1-2 calves. Young attain sexual maturity at 4 years of age.

Physical Attributes:
IQ: 9 (animal intelligence)
ME: ----
MA: ----
PS: 45
PP: 10
PE: 45
PB: ----
SPD: At a full gallop, a megakow can hit speeds of 55 MPH. They are, however, poor leapers( 20-30 ft across, and 15 ft up, even with a running start) and at best mediocre swimmers( skill equivalent of 45%)
(PPE): 4d6

MDC: 2d6x10
Horror Factor: 12
Natural Abilities:
*Sense/Smell Water----80%, and can sense water up to 7 miles away.

*Thick Hides---Take HALF damage from kinetic attacks, such as kicks, punches, rail gun and cannon strikes.

*Toxin Resistance---Megakows are +5 to save vs toxins/poisons, in addition to any bonuses from high P.E.

Psionics: None
Magic: None
Combat: 3 attacks per melee
Damage:
Kick 1d4x10 MD
Stomp/Trample 4d6 MD
Head Butt 2d4 MD
Horn Gore 4d4 MD to head butt damage, +3 to parry
Body Block/Ram 2d4x10 MD(2 attacks)

Value:
Megakow meat can bring as much as 75 credits per pound(though it’s considerably cheaper on/near Dalantha). A full-grown prime-health steer can bring 550,000 credits or more for its meat, hide, and bones.

[taalismn]

A Simple Guide to the Political Geography of the Three Galaxies.

“You’ve heard of the Halo, the Threshold and the Core? Good, we’re going to talk here about the Coreworlds, the Mid-Rim, the Rim, and the Fringe.

The Coreworlds are a misnomer with regards to the more common galactic geography; they aren’t anywhere near the Core in most cases, they’re in the Halo for the most part. They’re often distinguished by being called the Metroworlds, though not all of them are covered in cities as many media would lead you to believe. They’re the most heavily populated and industrialized worlds of the big polities in the Three Galaxies, the declared homeworlds and older first generation colonies they’ve spawned. By their very dense populations and industrial might they wield considerable power and typically dominate the weaker worlds for that reason. The best and cutting-edge technologies traditionally come from the factories and laboratories of the metroworlds because they can throw considerable resources into the effort and get mass production up and running. The metroworlds are where one finds a polity’s biggest industrial organization and concerns, administrative hubs, the banking houses, and centers of commerce and culture.
All that industrial power requires supply, and even though it’s hard to completely play out a solar system’s resources, the metroworlds typically use their economic clout to buy or extort cheap resources from the outer worlds. That’s often a source of contention between the metroworlds and the outer worlds. It’s also tradition that the metroworlds are regarded as having a superiority complex with regards to younger worlds, and metroworlders hold themselves snobbishly as a cut above the less-cultured Rim and Fringe bumpkins.
Besides big money and industry, metroworlds also have history and culture on their side; as the oldest worlds they have established social hierarchy, especially in the case of a species’ homeworlds. That counts a lot in societies that value their history, as much as many would like to forget it and claim a desire for a 'fresh start'.

The Mid-Rim is where you see most populated worlds; the second-rate powers, newcomers, and second- or third-, sometimes fourth- or fifth-, generation colonies. They’re the Frontier after the frontier has moved out farther, leaving spaces to be filled and civilized by the mainstream cultures’ less adventurous, but still seeking fresh starts. Many coreworld polities establish Mid-Rim colonies as a buffer zone to provide security, on the theory that most rival powers will first chew up the outer worlds before striking directly at the metroworlds. They have industries and cultures of their own, but not anywhere on the scale and history as the coreworlds. The Mid-Rim usually takes its economic and social cues from the metroworlds, or rebels against them from time to time, just to assert their ‘independence’ and self-identity.

The Rim, or Far Rim, or often just the Frontier, is where the newer colonies and barely-emergent local powers are. Rim worlds are widespread and scattered. The Rim’s traditionally seen as fairly lawless and unsophisticated, backwards and backwater in most cases, and weak fiscally, industrially, and militarily. Most Rim colonies are still beholding to their Metroworld and Mid-Rim sponsors and backers, but a few have genuinely established independence(often scoffed at by the greater powers).
‘Rimmers’ are seen as uncouth, wild, and wooly, without the cultured nuanced manners of the metroworlds. Rimmers see themselves as strong, self-reliant, and free of the stifling politics and societal baggage of the metroworlds and the Mid-Rim.

The Fringe is the far out edge of exploration and population. It’s where the great unknown begins and ‘here be dragons’(literally in some cases) takes over. There’s a few scattered outposts and colonies scratching for a living, but generally nothing big enough to call itself a star-polity. Fringers are seen as even more out of it than the Rimmers. While the Rim is regarded as generally lawless, the Fringe is seen as outright dangerous.

Beyond the Fringe is what’s considered to be the Deep Black, the Great Unknown in truth, Out There and the Vastnesses. While long range astronomical surveys know where most stars are, and have a pretty good idea of the concentrations of planets, so very little is known in detail about those systems until probes can make close-up scans and boots landed. Encountering anything even remotely familiar from the Coreworlds, the Rim, or the Fringe is exceedingly rare, and travelers out into the Deep Black are painfully on their own with scant chance of rescue if they come to grief.”

[taalismn]

More Conflict Zones

Odina Cluster
“The Odina Cluster; small enough to fight over, large enough to get into capacious amounts of trouble in.”

Landrush in Odina Sector

The virtually overnight collapse of the Cynoceran Republic caused an unprecedented subsequent landrush on the part of the neighboring Odinans. With the perceived threat and interference of the Central Party’s expansionist warmachine blocking them from the rest of the Odina Cluster lifted, many private groups in the Odindan Federation set out either skirting Cynoceran-claomd space, or brazenly cutting through it, to reach virgin territories. Whereas the Odinan federal government and Navy had previously carefully overseen exploration, now corporate and private groups stepped forward to sponsor expeditions with less official oversight and cautionary preparation.
Wherein lay the problem. The territory already occupied by Odina and Cynocera was sparely populated with habitable planets, while the rest of the cluster was hardly explored. Now groups of explorers and colonists were optimistically, enthusiastically, and naively rushing outwards...and often into trouble. The expeditions would be truly going into unknown territory, meeting other groups encroaching on the Cluster, and encountering previously unknown and unsuspected alien life.
The incident at Nales, where Odinan colonists clashed with the BhaDresh, an ancient species long thought extinct(but discovered to have been merely hibernating), could have escalated into something far more widespread and serious had not a hastily-dispatched USA diplomatic team arrived to talk down the angered Elder Race. The mystery of the disappearance of the colony ship Windseed, as well as that of eveal smaller freelance expeditions, have not been so easily solved. Furthermore, encounters with pirates and other aggressive factions moving in the region have increased.
In response to these incidents, the Odinan Navy has attempted to step up armed escort missions of its own, but often finds its available numbers inadequate to the task, despite crash shipbuilding programs and expanded naval training to provide crews.

While Odina Cluster shipbuilding works to catch up technologically to the rest of the Three Galaxies, similarly their ground forces are also modernizing. Pre-Cynoceran Collapse, general tech levels were roughly equivalent to Rifts Earth’s Northern Gun with a number of good designs, but falling short of what was being deployed by the CCW and TGE.
Since reunification with the rest of the 3G, the Odinan Federation has made some steps to upgrade its military, starting with open sourced High Intensity Lasers, forceshielding, and similar systems, but these efforts have a lower priority(and funding) than their ship modernization.
Fortunately, the remaining Cynoceran Loyalist Central Party worlds, despite having previously had arguably the better-armed ground forces, have since not been in a position to pursue similar upgrade efforts. Despite attempts to acquire more advanced technologies and reverse-engineer them, the increasingly isolated Central Party worlds are on a backfoot without the resources of their old dominion and their inability to attract interstellar trade.
Those ex-Cynoceran worlds that joined the United Systems Alliance face similar problems along with disruptions to their own economies. They also face the very real threat of Loyalist reprisals, so upgrading their defenses cannot be ignored. Fortunately, however, membership in the USA has meant that Thelheim, Saveoresc, Tarkulaam , Vanderlund and Orsessn are all benefitting from technology exchange programs, including assistance in modernizing their militaries. Still, however, the ex-Cynoceran worlds are still dependent on large stocks of Central Party-era military hardware to cover all their bases.

Ironically, several Odinan colonies wound up buying Cynoceran Republic-surplus weaponry to defend themselves with, a good deal of the cold war era equipment winding up on the galactic market. Much was stolen/misdirected from Cynoceran Republic stockpiles as the police state collapsed, but many of ex-Republic planets have been liquidating their inventories of dated equipment in order to acquire funds to update their arsenals.

Badlands Confederation.
“It’s odd that a monarchy that rose to power by literally decapitating the previous regime is now proving a hotbed of zealous political reform. That’s the problem; if they’d just settled into abusing each other and grumbling about the new leadership, nobody on the outside would really care or notice. But they got the spread-the-joy-of-regime-change bug something bad. Even though it may be individual troublemakers off on their own, the fact that the new government has made efforts to bail many of them out rather than leave them to their own consequences shows that at least the Jennifens actually care about their citizens...but other Badlanders of a more suspicious mindset see it as a virtual admission that they’re aware of the trouble they’re exporting.”

Revolution Talk on the Rise

Ironically, despite her rule only being three years old, Queen Gerrith’s Jennifen republic is now the most likely to start any inter-Confederation war...in least inadvertently. The speed with which the champion and queen has uplifted the spirits of the former Aljer-Helias/Helgardians and inculcated them with the ideals of chivalry and knighthood has also conveyed to them the concept of the -knight errant-. Though the Lazon Academy for Young Women has yet to graduate its first class, other young people in the Jennifen realm have caught the spirit of revolution and have launched their own personal campaigns on other Confederation worlds to undermine long-established police states and strongman tyrannies elsewhere. Not officially sanctioned by Gerrith’s government, which is focusing on domestic issues at home, these private ventures receive little or no support, but are ongoing nevertheless. On some BC worlds, these rabble-rousers have become annoying enough that the local governments have complained to the Jennifer government, even accusing them of deliberately exporting revolution and fomenting trouble.
Unable to rein in these firebrands, the Jennifens have denied any official responsibility for them, but have, of necessity and humanitarian interest, taken a strong interest when it has become evident that its citizens abroad have been wrongly accused, abused, unlawfully detained, or openly subjected to maltreatment in custody. A number of incidents have occurred that have strained diplomatic relations between Jennifer and its neighbors.
It’s been rumored that some of these incidents have only been resolved because Queen Gerrith has tapped her former connections to the adventuring community to engage the services of irregulars to spring wayward patriots from foreign custody.
Still, as the Jennifen military modernizes and a fervor of active reform pervades the planet’s culture, there are many in the Badlands who fear that some of that military force may be used to exert undue influence on their neighbors. Despite assurances that recent activity is only to build up Aljer-Helias’s defenses, the recent acquisition of several USA- and UWW-built warships(including at least one secondhand Talisman-class light cruiser) has done little to ease the concerns of some Confederation members(perhaps remembering that in the not-so-distant past, their own nations were responsible for the sort of pirate threats the Jennifens are arming against..and might still be nursing grudges about).

Queen Gerrith has also been rumored to be cultivating relations with the EShemarrians, quietly holding audiences with the IronHearts and Clan Immensis. Though not the most powerful or influential of the known EShemarrian Tribes(they’re actually NeShemarrian cyborg fringe-tribes), if either group were to establish /be granted bases in Jennifen territory, it would constitute the presence of yet another powerful outside polity in Badlands space.

Although the discovery of large amounts of Stenthamine and Xanthine in the system was initially hushed up, word leaked out. The discovery of exploitable quantiies of such exotic and valuable minerals in a galactic region long thought deficient in such minerals, has caused other nations in the Badlands Confederation to take second looks at their and adjacent star systems, hoping to find similar lodes of mineral treasure. This has led to the hiring of better geosurveying technology and crews and a certain amount of ‘wildcatting’ has begun to pervade many systems. However, this being the Badlands, not everybody respects the terms of contracts, stake claims, or declared territory, and there have already been a number of accusations of illegal trespass and unlicensed prospecting in systems already claimed.

[taalismn]

”(Okay, let's wrap up a war)
Conflict Resolutions:

The Travesdeen War(Balanite Structure)
“The Travesdeen prided themselves on being a superior warrior culture of conquest, taking what they wanted and destroying all else in a campaign of unbroken victories ordained by destiny. Then they ran into ex-farmhands and shatterworld-borns with augments and attitude who taught them otherwise. The average Travie soldier-goon just didn’t stand a chance against an Alliance trooper, and the Travie elites just attracted heavier firepower. The bigger the Travie, the bigger the beating they were going to get."

“The nature of the Balanite Structure and its dimensional walls meant that the Alliance controlled the few known access points between it and the wider megaverse. That made the Balanite War an Usan affair that few outsiders were aware of, or could interfere with even if they were. Also means the whole damn business is the Alliance’s responsibility to clean up.”

“War was almost easier than peace; we’ve got a lot of angry Travesdeen under the gun watching us dismantle their society and everything they’ve ever known. Some of them might have come around to a more enlightened world view but now we’re shoving one down their throats at bayonet-point, so they feel obliged to rebel. Probably a lot of people we should be hanging hiding among the crowds too, but can’t for risk of appearing just as nasty as their old regime. Battlefield justice was a lot easier than administering occupation law and order.
There’s the slaves; many of them just kids with mental wounds bigger than a battleship. Babies born in factories meant to increase population. Slave-borgs with hardly much left of their original brains to work with. People teetering on the edge of total breakdown. Some wanted to go full-vengeance on their old masters, while others just wanted to curl up to anybody who would protect them.
There’s our allies, some of who don’t trust us because armored up we look too much like the Travies for them to be comfortable. Some hate us because we showed up late and haven’t shed blood like they did. Some of them don’t like us because we don’t let them string up every Travie soldier and civie like they want to. Some of them despise us because we’re men. It’s hilarious when they encounter non-humans for the first time, though, and you can almost see their minds slipping the clutch.
And on top of all that, we’ve just opened up their brains to the fact that there’s an infinite universe, full of wonders and terrors, beyond their little kingdoms and roofed skies.
Yeah, I’m really glad I’m among the troopers transferring out for reassignment. I don’t envy the peacekeepers or war-psychs going in to manage that mess.”

The good news is this bitter out-dimension conflict has officially come to an end. The problem is the messy aftermath.

The ‘Balanite War’ was largely a ground war affair, fought with infantry, vehicles, power armor and mecha, with aerospace assets taking a hand in the conflict only late in the game(and arguably when its course was pretty much decided). The Travesdeen had a few interesting war machines, heavily armored mecha, elite units with some specialized and extreme abilities largely based on reverse-engineered Ancient technologies laced throughout the Balanites, and a number of psycho-WMDs that were dependent on the peculiar physics of the Structure, all of which gave the Alliance pause, but not demoralizing abandonment of purpose. What was more concerning was the Travesdeen use of human shields on occasion, a practice which only hardened Alliance resolve to destroy the Travesdeen.

After what amounted to room-to-room fighting in the peculiar bubble-cavern-space of the pocket-universe Balanite Structure, the United Systems Alliance Joint Command finally cracked the walls of the Travesdeen Empire’s homeland and attacked them directly, bringing such a force of arms to bear on the Texas-sized nation that it collapsed, despite a hard defense, the aforementioned use of psycho-weapons, and the interference of unstable allies on the side of the USAJC. The Travesdeens’ High Commander-Emperor was slain, the high command echelons almost totally annihilated, and the Travesdeen war machine’s support infrastructure has been either destroyed or captured.

The problem is now how to manage the victory. An occupation force must now sort out the irredeemable(those who willingly and enthusiastically took part in the empire’s rapine campaigns) from the redeemable(those Travedeenites who didn’t know any better). There are tens of thousands of slaves who need medical and psychological treatment. There is a war machine to be dismantled and an entire society to be demilitarized. There are reparations to be calculated and served.

The USA would LOVE to repatriate the ex-slaves to their original homelands, but in many cases, their homelands have long ceased to exist, savaged by the Travesdeens’ conquest waves. Many of the ex-slaves came of age under the yoke of Travesdeen slavers and have little memory of their original cultures, and more were born into the slave-culture and know nothing else. While resettlement within the Balanite Structure may be possible(and preferred), there are too many other factors to make it ideal for every liberated ex-slave.

Then too are the other societies of the Balanite Structure, many of who were engaged in fighting the Travesdeen (and losing) when the United Systems Alliance came on the scene. While many are grateful to the USA and perfectly willing to cooperate with them, others are suspicious of the outsiders, fearful that the USA, which didn’t suffer as they did at the hands of the Travesdeen, may decide to impose their own hegemony on the Balanite cultures. Some of the allied Balanites also have very extreme views on what should be done with the conquered Travesdeen; some of the resistance-nations and soldiers want nothing less than a complete extermination of the Travesdeen and obliteration of their homeland. Many of those nations also want to expand their holdings to occupy the realms left depopulated by the Empire’s campaigns. There are demands for larger shares of reparations. Some reparation demands amount to enslaving all the surviving Travesdeen, even those who acted against their tyrannical government, and eliminating all traces of their culture.

There’s also lone wolves and holdouts, field units of the Travesdeen military who fled to hole up in other cavern-realms to wage guerilla-revenge campaigns and try to preserve their rapine-oriented culture. Fighting still continues in some regions of the Structure, and it is speculated that hostilities may take months, possibly years, to fully end.

For now the USAJC occupies the former Travesdeen homelands, destroying military equipment and infrastructure, deepdiving remaining government records for evidence and to locate where slaves originated from, scouring the cities, hunting down war criminals, and reeducating the surviving locals, while fending off Balanite allies intent on taking the law into their own hands. Meanwhile, the USAJC has been occupying several Balanite bubble-realms where they think they can reestablish communities for liberated slaves to try to reconnect with others from their homelands and rebuild under the wing of the new Balanite Protectorates However, a good number of emancipated slaves have had to be resettled outside the Balanite Structure where they are not constantly reminded of their ordeals, or where they can learn to be free.

The USA has come out of the Travesdeen War with a few interesting pieces of technology, Ancient sciences and artifacts to study, several new mecha and hardware designs developed from field kitbashes, and several new enclaves in a pocket universe. It has also inherited the problems of making and keeping peace in a post-war zone, an estimated several million displaced persons, and an ongoing commitment to rebuild another shattered world-line.

For now, it is predicted, the most prominent symbols of the USA presence in the Balanite Structure will continue to be the vigilant armored trooper and the battle-ready hovertank.

[SolCannibal]

So some of the USA's outdimension allies in the Balanite Campaign seem intent on going "Versailles reparations" if not outright ethnic-cultural cleansing on the Travesdeen now things are over. Troublesome. Good thing the USAJC have the bigger numbers & guns, for the moment at least.

[taalismn]

So some of the USA's outdimension allies in the Balanite Campaign seem intent on going "Versailles reparations" if not outright ethnic-cultural cleansing on the Travesdeen now things are over. Troublesome. Good thing the USAJC have the bigger numbers & guns, for the moment at least.

And they've had prior experience cleaning up after regional wars, some of them outright apocalyptic(some of thouse shatter worlds). Yeah, it ain't pretty, but experience has given the USAJC a good tool kit for handling such messes. The use of non-human personnel, for instance, tends to give even vengeance-blinkered human zealots pause. The giant spiders? The big lizards? The talking vehicles? The horned demons? Trying to guilt-trip them into looking the other way while some righteous slaughter is worked might not go as planned.
But the Travesdeen are going to pay heavily for past transgressions. Their old culture is going to go extinct and their cultural identity, which was tied into conquest, is effectively at an end. What emerges has yet to be determined, if they'll be divvied up into the rest of the Balanite states or be absorbed wholly into the USA remains to be seen.

(Broke up the wall of text on a re-edit)