Random Interstellar Empires/Star Kingdoms

[taalismn]

Alquis Dominion(Thundercloud)
“They haven’t quite blown up the Dominion icons over One Purpose Square, so the old bloody militocracy hasn’t yet lost its luster for the Alquisans, but the fighting’s getting close.”

The Alqius Dominion was established by one of the first successful colonial efforts in the sector that would later bear the colony’s name; the Algonian Sector(the colonists were unaware at the time of the previous Moredian Imperium, which was waning just as colonists from the Corkscrew and Anvil Galaxies were arriving) . With a head start and a high-tech base, the Alquisans began looking to expand their influence in their region of the frontier. In time, they established a close working relationship with a neighboring system, Debran(which w as part of the same Seljuk-led wave of colonial expeditions into the region of space), to the point that the latter adapted the same government structure as Alquis and the two effectively merged leaderships(this was seen as a ‘Great Reunification’). This made it much easier for the later coup that established the military junta that would start forcibly expanding its influence to other worlds of the sector, economically dominating them.
Enter General Sikaldus Gramnec, who rose to power on Alquis VII, after shouldering aside(or outright assassinating) his rivals, and putting the Masafrem military-corporate junta in charge.
It was General Gramnec who turned the Alquis-Debran alliance into something greater and nastier; the core of the Dominion, which would, with time , flower into his Pan-Algonian Masadrem Economic Consortium, a plan for control of an entire arm of the Thundercloud. As farfetched and unrealistic as such a scheme might seem, General Gramnec would give it a literally bloody try.
Under General Gramnec, the Dominion military would expand almost exponentially, with a mass mobilization of the populace to support the armed forces. At the same time, all important government posts were made open only to active military service personnel, ideally after proving their loyalty to the Masafrem party. The small, but heavily-armed, Dominion Navy would sail forth to explore and visit the other worlds of the sector...with conquest in mind, spearheaded by his elite military ‘contact specialists’, the BloodRagers.
The Dominion was effectively a colonial protection racket; the Alquis would offer their assistance to struggling frontier worlds, then lower the boom on them later, exacting steep fees for their earlier help, and assuming control if their demands weren’t met. In this way, the Dominion took over worlds like Silkra and Crosyar, though both planets would prove more difficult to manage in the long run. Another frontier world, Sakasis, would put up resistance to the less nuanced demands of the Dominion and paid a hideous price for disobedience; the Dominion Navy bombed the planet nearly lifeless.
The Dominion would effectively come to an end when an overconfident General Gramnec took his cabinet of high-rank supporters to view the annexation of the Naibead homeworld, Quin’esh. Perhaps deliberately, Gramnec chose to invade Quin’esh on the day the Naibead regularly celebrated their independence from another conquering empire, the Moredian Imperium, perhaps as a statement that he, Gramnec, would succeed where the sunsetting Vurgash had failed. Ironically, Gramnec would see his last sunrise as his flagship confidentially dipped below Quin’esh’s dusk horizon...and into a fireworks display indistinguishable from a heavy surface-to-space missile barrage.
With their top leadership vaporized and the cream of the Dominion military shot down or blown into deep space, the surviving Dominion fleet fled back to its home bases, a domino effect rapidly overtaking them and rippling through their society. Crosyar, Silkra, and Cyvelt quickly divesting themselves of their Dominion overseers, and a scramble for power starting on Alquis and Debran.
The remnants of the Dominion have consolidated on their two homeworlds, and have effectively forted up, awaiting what they consider to be an inevitable reckoning with their many enemies.

A. Size
5 worlds at the height of its expansion, but was intimidating as many as a dozen other worlds in the region. It has since shrunk to two worlds.
B. History
Offshoot of the mainstream Seljuk
C. Level of Technological Sophistication
Low Galactic; possessed fusion-powered FTL warships)up to heavy cruiser class) and heavy energy weapons.
D. General Attitude/Culture
Militant Expansionists
E. Racial Composition
Seljuk, with satrapy subject populations of humans, ogres, and orcs predominant among their number.
Alquisian Seljuk are distinguished in having a stockier build(+1d4 to P.S., 25% increase in weight) and orange highlights to their scales. The Debran Seljuk are notable for having light blue tinges to their throats and snouts.
F. Government
Was an Autocracy, after General Gramnec seized power, but has since broken down into chaos between pro-democracy forces and the remaining officers of the military-corporate juntas.
G. Administrative Control
---Was Draconian, but has slipped into Anarchy.
H. External Trade
---Was Manufacturing, selling supplies to later waves of colonists in the sector, but later turned to Conquest. Currently the Dominion’s trade is in freefall.
H1. Commodities
Exports: Raw Materials and Heavy Equipment(agricultural equipment, terraforming/environmental adaptation gear)
Imports: Raw materials, biotech equipment.
I. Status
Imperiled---While democratic reforms and pro-democracy revolution are sweeping both coreworlds, enough supporters of the old regime remain to cause trouble.

[SolCannibal]

[

Supposing they really are a splinter sept and not some sort of garrison or expat community dedicated to collecting, guarding or observing something in the system for reasons known only to the locals. Wouldn't be surprising considering how tight-lipped Vurgash seem to be with outsiders in general.

Indeed, the differences could be as great as a greater connection to magic energies, a secret government project, or as mundane as they favor eating their main meals with the spork from the right side of the plate. Keeps that aura of ALIENESS and mystery about them.

A veritable matrioska of unanswered questions, about the moredians as a whole and the Socdar-Vurgash in particular.

All of that said, one simple possible explanation for why the installations in Socdar weren't dismantled and taken back home like those in other systems could be that Socdar's colonization-exploration was an enterprise fully financed by the colonists from the get go, meaning the Moredian authorities have little to no stake on the habitat or their occupants and so left the locals to their own devices. From the moredians' perspective they have been a splinter sect long before the decolonization process started.

[taalismn]

Entirely possible.
Especially if the entire point of the colonization/Imperialism adventure was to vent off social tension in individuals and groups.
And that's the least of the mysteries about the system.

[SolCannibal]

Let's see how long before one of the sides in what remains of the Alquis Dominion gets a leg up on the other - or one or more of the many worlds they military intimidated in the past decide to exploit the window of opportunity to take action.

The remnants of the old leadership might soon find themselves fighting two conflicts for the price of one. Even three if the USA, that already took over in Sakasis, Silkra & Croysar, decides to intervene further.

[taalismn]

*Gremar---(United Systems Alliance member)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“A good raid on Gremar could net a pirate not only enough metal to sell on the black market, but enough food to keep them fed for quite a while. Perhaps the worst incidents were the Valachi Raid of ‘37 and the Tengor Massacre of ‘84. Both times the pirates held the lunar mines hostage and refused to let urgent shipments of food leave the planet to the miners. The worst was the Tengors; even after the necessary ransom was paid, the pirates decided the Gremarians were too slow in paying up and ransacked the moon mines’ life support anyways...over two hundred space personnel either suffocated or starved to death, in spite of measures placed after the first raid. After that, the Gremarians said ‘enough is enough’ and contracted to buy several nuker monitors for system defense...Pirate captain Shad Dmar of the Restillian Corsair would learn to his misfortune that Gremar was no longer a good stopover for pirates.”

“Reading a tide table on Gremar is a good way to quietly go mad. If you’re making landfall on the planet, do take advantage to visit the farmlands; the food’s excellent and walking in the developed zones will do you good. But leave the boating to the locals and if you go camping, pitch camp well up from the beach. ”


Gremar was settled by elven colonists from one of the magic-poorer worlds of the United Worlds of Warlock. Though fairly weak in magic, the settlers still knew enough to make living on a wild world like Gremar more comfortable, and subsequent development of the planet came easier.
Gremar itself is deficient in industrial metals, so agriculture is the focus of its economy. However, a verdant local ecology has yielded a variety of commercially valuable species. Another factor going for Gremar is several mineral-rich moons within easy reach. The combination meant that Gremar was able to secure enough prosperity that they could begin trading with Galactic interests, selling their surpluses on the galaxy’s open markets. Unfortunately, while sales of brye-root tea, cinba-grain, liago-dyes and darva-extract might not have made Gremar an overnight boom-world, it did make the rim-world more attractive to criminal elements.
Gremar long suffered a reputation of being a favorite pirate stopover on the Rim, producing enough valuable material to warrant offworld trade, but not enough to merit protection by the larger polities and megacorps. The planet suffered numerous pirate raids targeting their warehouses, spaceports, and mining colonies. Despite the potential wealth elsewhere in the system, the Gremarians feared venturing far from their world, and word spread through the sector that piracy was rife in the region, so that Belters and other potential investors in space enterprises stayed away from the system.
Gremar bought into the USA in order to protect itself from the growing lawlessness in its sector. The Gremar government had already bought self-defense technology and ships from PS/ASI, and welcomed having additional assistance, both technical and military, that alliance would bring. The elves of Skensi, in particular, were quick to offer their expertise in pirate-hunting. After several pirate ships were either seized in-system by security forces, or outright vaporized by heavily-armed defense monitors, word has gotten out amongst the criminal community that the convenient ‘lunch and ingot’ robbery-stop at Gremar was now a thing of the past.

Note: The elves that settled Gremar have begun to feel the detrimental effects of living and breeding in a low gravity field. Though not yet a variant sept, Gremarians average 2-4 inches taller than their kinfolk on heavier gravity worlds, tend towards more slender and weaker builds, and they feel distinctly uncomfortable under terrestrial( 1 g) gravity fields. Magic and elven genetics have both slowed the deterioration, but many geneticists predict that unless something is done within the next two or three generations, the atrophy-damage will become effectively irreversible without major genetic tweaking or transformation. As the average life span of a Gremarian elf is 700 years, there’s not a great sense of urgency as yet to make any binding decisions on the matter.

Solar System(Halsen)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
- Blue Dwarf(Halsen-A)
-Red Dwarf(Halsen-B)
Number of Planets: 5
-Terrestrial (Gremar )---System Lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Wynsal) ---Jovian-sized Wynsal supports 9 moons of any note.
Follow-up security patrols of Wynsal’s moons discovered the remains of several spacecraft that pirates had brought into the system and scuttled; at least one of the ships was a Belter scout surveying the outer Halsen planets for minerals and colony sites. The same patrols also found a small shrouded automated refueling station that pirates had evidentially set up to facilitate their transits through the system.

-Asteroid Belt--- The rich Talsas Belt would be a boon to any interplanetary society with the ability to mine the ore-rich rocks, but until very recently this resource has gone un-exploited due to pirate activity. With bolder system patrols by the Gremarian space militia forces and more frequent USAJC presence, , exploration and exploitation of the Talsas seems likely.

-Gas Giant (Velsis)---Large gas giant. Its single large planet-sized moon, Thalen, describes a polar, rather than an equatorial, orbit around the planet, which baffles scientists.

-Terrestrial(Koldem) --- This Earth-sized rocky body, shrouded in a thin cloudy methane atmosphere and covered in thick ice, has exhibited several ‘hot spots’ in its crust, suggesting a still-molten core. If so, then the planet would make a good candidate for a deep space colony, tapping its geothermal heat to provide power and crack the local atmosphere for oxygen. Having another colony(and military base) out on the fringes of the system would provide Gremar with additional defense in depth.

Planet(Gremar )
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 9,000 km
Gravity: 0.7 g
Temperature: Temperate, albeit on the cooler side(Roughly equivalent to Canada in terms of overall temperature ranges)
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(10)
* Valon---Site of the Tengor Massacre, Valon is now home to the new Gremar Defense Navy’s orbital base. Valon is some 630 km in diameter
* Tintal---Tintal was discovered to be rich in metals, and quickly became Gremar’s primary source of heavy metals. Tintal is roughly 480 km in diameter.
*Lanchi--- 399 km in diameter. Site of an anti-spacecraft missile battery.
*Balford--- 220 km in diameter. Site of an anti-spacecraft missile battery.
*Tisby--- 122 km in diameter. Site of an anti-spacecraft missile battery.
*Uylan---118 km in diameter. Site of an anti-spacecraft missile battery.
*Scordbry--- 90 km in diameter. The GDN has a sensor array here.
*Hemlan--- 36-km diameter
*Rusbbiry--- 18-km diameter
*Monkord--- 12 km-long captured asteroid. The GDN has a sensor array here.
*Wighd--- Outermost moon and a mere 10 km in diameter. The GDN has a sensor array here.

-Rings----Gremar possesses a set of thin rings, suggesting that it had additional small moons that have since broken up.

-Craters----Gremar possesses further evidence of past moons’ demises in the form of a number of substantially-sized craters dotting the surface.

Atmosphere: Dense, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mix. Native Gremarians have some problems transiting to the lower pressures of other terrestrial worlds, and often must spend a few days or so of rest and acclimation akin to high-altitude climbers doing their run-ups adjusting to the lower pressures/lower oxygen ratios(certain drugs and magicks can speed up or negate the process, but most physicians advise that the more gradual and natural adjustment period works best in the long run).
Terrain: Four+ terrains
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Magnesium
- Mercury
- Copper
- Antimony
- Calcite
- Gypsum
- Emerald
- Talc
Hydrosphere:
73% of the planet’s surface is covered in open water. The many moons cause some rather interesting tides.
Biosphere:
Verdant---- Gremar has a rich and diverse ecosystem with many exploitable species. There’s also a few predators and dangerous creatures, such as the poisonous pantalon centipede and the dirk-tongue nightjabber. The thick atmosphere and low gravity are conducive to giant arthropod development, though there are also a good number of lungfish analogues and amphibians of note. The coastline skies are especially well-patrolled by raptor-adapt flying fish.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
1.8 billion Elves
Technology:
Information Age---The original elven settlers of Gremar wanted a simpler lifestyle, so they eschewed many of the advanced technologies they knew back in their metroworlds. However, they had to acquire a small space capability to mine their moons for needed metals. Trade with Galactics has pushed some parts of their culture up to Stellar Age technology.
Economy:
Agriculture---- Gremar is best known for its large plantation-style farmsteads. The offworld export economy is based on the output of these farms.
Wealth:
Average----Which isn’t bad for a Rim world. The Gremarians can feed themselves and meet their own material needs with a little surplus left over to trade. Still, that puts them head and shoulders over a lot of other fringe worlds. The Gremarians could, if they instituted wholesale large-scale ranching/plantation operations, all-out expanded asteroid and lunar mining operations, and mercantile servicing into a trade hub, push their economic rating to, it’s estimated, Wealthy, but they aren’t interested in changing their way of life THAT much. Now that they’ve blasted the pirate threat out of their backyard, though, the Halsen system is likely to attract more mercantile attention.
Government:
Theocracy---- Gremarians enjoy rule under the liberal and fairly carefree Temple of the Inner Sun, which got the job of running things because nobody else really wanted the job. The priests and priestesses paid homage to the elven gods, counseled people, mediated disputes, lived modestly and transparently, laid down a few commonsense and no-nonsense laws, and encourage self-reliance(together with charity for fellow Gremarians). When the pirate attacks began, the Temple got edgier, recruiting up a zealous militia and saving up enough money to arm them with real weapons and hire somebody to train them to use those weapons effectively.
It helps that the clergy contains over half of the Gremarians’ psychics.
Law Level:
Minimal---- Gremarians pretty much police themselves, with the Inner Sun clergy acting as proctors, occasionally deputizing posses to deal with criminals, and convening courts of judgment. This weak and decentralized authority made pirate raids easier, as the invaders generally encountered only light resistance from regional private security and hastily assembled homeguard. The new joint militia and aerospace force with nuke-armed space monitors has thus come as a shock to many.
Popularity:
Beloved---- Gremarians, even the atheists in the population, generally love their government for respecting their individual rights.
Stability:
Solid. Despite the glaring weaknesses in global management and the administration of authority, the Gremarian government still enjoys the wholehearted support of the populace, who see the government as not using the crisis to claim permanent martial law powers, as have many other Fringe worlds in similar situations.

[taalismn]

Let's see how long before one of the sides in what remains of the Alquis Dominion gets a leg up on the other - or one or more of the many worlds their military intimidated in the past decide to exploit the window of opportunity to take action.

The remnants of the old leadership might soon find themselves fighting two conflicts for the price of one. Even three if the USA, that already took over in Sakasis, Silkra & Croysar, decides to intervene further.

Lot of opportunity for piracy too, if not all those fleeing Dominion ships decided to go back to base/homeport.

[taalismn]

Colherst---(United Systems Alliance Outpost)(Anvil Galaxy)
“The Denevan corp-staters lost a good chunk of their military inventory over Colherst. Our new missiles pretty much smashed their smaller ships and our TW warheads roughed up their bigger units. In addition to outright destroying forty percent of their fleet, we captured about a dozen cruiser-weight vessels that couldn’t flee with the remainder of their taskforce. That’s some serious capital investment gone from their books with no return on the venture, and it should set them back awhile and make them reconsider any future dyk-waving on our borders.
We’ll be high-ground and return any bodies we recover as a matter of courtesy, but we’re keeping the ships we captured. We’ll strip them for parts or refurbish them into something new we can use. They tried to grab some of our territory and got caught in the act, so it’s only right we keep their breaking and entering tools.”

“Cleaning up spacebattles has taken on a new priority since the Minion War. Last thing we want is some Infernal leave-behind raking up the frozen dead and using them in unsavory ways. We don’t want any astro-zombies fetching up against space-habs after all.”

“’Uninhabitable’? I’d argue against Col-Three being classed as tha! It’s got bearable gravity, temperature that’s within the range of almost all space-habs, plenty of water to crack for oxygen and hydrogen and drink with filtration, plenty of chemicals to manufacture air and fuel, geothermal energy to tap, and enough minerals to supply a local industry and high balance of trade! Compared to a lot of other planets out there, Col-Three’s an oasis of habitability to somebody with the right mindset and the right tools!”

A border system of the USA, adjacent to Deneva Comdomate space. The Denevans had been making noises about the system actually belonging to THEM, ever since the USA helped the Tmelain-in-exile take back Lakye to establish their new homeland. Though the Comdomate had been using proxy forces and other indirect tactics to try to inconvenience the USA whenever they could, the Denevans saw the distraction of the MInion War as an opportunity to try to do a more overt landgrab. However, they waited too long to gather a fleet and send it into Colherst and several adjacent systems. By the time the Denevans felt secure enough to make their move, the Alliance was also feeling secure enough with the turnings of the Minion War incursion, and had reorganized their fleet distributions, as well as armed them with new weapons. The Denevan fleet at Colherst was not only expected, they were outgunned. Over half the Comdomate fleet was lost, destroyed or captured, and just about forty percent managed to flee the system and return to their bases. As space battles go, the Battle of Colherst is recognized as a massacre(most comtemporary battles usually costing one side a quarter of their effectives before they retire from the field).
None of the worlds in the Colherst system are habitable, but Col-3 was discovered to have substantial deposits of Psylite. Though the Deneva Comdomate is not known to have any extent psionics programs, it would certainly sell such a mineral resource for a great deal of cash. The USA is sitting on publicly announcing this discovery, for fear of encouraging another move on the system, or at least spoiling runs at the mining operations. Stepped-up military presence in the region is explained away in part as recovery and salvage operations in the battle orbits.

Solar System(Colherst)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 3
-Terrestrial (Col-1)----Large ‘Super-Venus’; hothouse world with a dense poisonous atmosphere and heavy gravity.

-Gas Giant (Col-2)----Large gas giant There’s been some thought given to setting up a gas mining operation eventually, but nothing immediate, given the still-fluid border situation and the relative proximity of more secure refueling facilities in adjacent USA-controlled systems.
The Deneva Comdomate appears to have had more immediate plans to use Col-2 as a refueling station; their fleet not only warped in close to the gas giant, but their support train included several scooper-tankers. With Colherst as a waystation, the Denevans could launch raids with smaller fusion-powered ships deeper into Alliance territory, especially Tmelain space.

-Terrestrial(Col-3)---- Earth-sized ice world with a methane atmosphere. It has substantial quantities of psylite in its crust.

Planet(Col-3)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,000 km
Gravity: 0.7 g
Temperature: Cool; average temperatures hover around -100 degrees F. Occasionally, though, volcanic activity will result in ‘heat storms’ that heat masses of atmosphere up above the melting temperatire of water and unleashing ‘methane monsoons’.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Rings---Col-3 has several thin rings of icy particles
-Craters----Col-3 also has a number of large impact craters roughly corresponding in age to when the rings formed.
Atmosphere:
Substantial(Earth-like densities and pressures), but consisting mainly of methane and ammonia vapor.
Terrain:
Varied. Col-3 is large enough to still have a hot radioactive core, so it has some plate tectonics, volcanism, and internal warming, with resultant surface erosion and deposition by flows of water and ammonia.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Gold/Silver
- Aluminum
- Scheelite
- Colombite
- Quartz
- Emerald
- Arsenic
- Talc
-Psylite
Hydrosphere:
Balanced; about 60% of the planet is covered in thick water ice, albeit laced with ammonia and other chemical compounds.
Biosphere:
None; Col-3 is a lifeless poison-ball, though some planetologists speculate that there MIGHT be the possibility of ammonia-munching extremophile microorganisms existing in any thermal vents they might find on the planet; there are tantalizing traces of organic compounds in some of the atmosphere samples.
Civilization:
Outpost; the United Systems Alliance has since set up a small mining colony on Col-3 and a orbital monitoring station. There are also some ongoing salvage and recovery operations scouring the expanding debris fields from the fleet battle.
Population:
550 + another 700 involved in system security and salvage operations.
Technology:
Galactic
Economy:
Mining
Wealth:
Hard to determine, but based on estimates of the mineral deposit sizes on Col-3, the return profits on the mining operations could be considered Wealthy in a full-blown settled world.
Government:
State-sponsored corporate outpost. In matters of security, the mining colony is expected to listen to the attendant USAJC authorities.
Law Level:
Lawful. Corporate and USAJC regulations are pretty clear and spelled out, and any miner breaking regs/laws will face corporate and possibly civil justice.
Popularity:
Popular---The air outside may be cold, thick, and poisonous, and there’s the stink of ammonia in the hab-air in spite of the filters, but the miners are looking at the survey and assay reports and know that there’s serious bonus money to be made.
Stability:
Rock-steady. The miners are well aware that the Denevans may have had their noses bloodied, but they’re still interested in making trouble, especially since the USA has found something in the Colherst system worth exploiting.

[Borast]

From the sounds of it, Gremar won't have too much in the way of any real tides.
At worst, during a conjunction, they might see 2 metre tides. However, they may see more rogue waves than we do.

Remember, Luna is 1/6th the mass in the Earth/Moon system.

The smallest of Gremar's moons would likely have a G-field somewhere around 0.0025m/s^2
I doubt the largest of Gremar's moons has more than a G-field of 0.2m/s^2, and with the assorted sizes, several would likely be in LGO anyway...unless one or more somehow were captured in a Lagrange point... None of them are likely to be spherical either... Valon is slightly larger than Vestia in our Solar System, and she is a lumpy potato. All the close-in rocks would likely be tidelocked too.
Given the average size, unless one or more have a shockingly high albedo, stargazing will never be crippled by any moons being visible (even when full).
Additionally, they would likely have challenged the inhabitants of the planet...and they would have developed the ability to access said moons faster than we did our own. (Unless their gods forbade it.)

That all being said...I'm operating on low sleep for the last couple weeks, so I'm probably running on far more than normal!

As I've said in the past, keep-up the great work!

[taalismn]

From the sounds of it, Gremar won't have too much in the way of any real tides.
At worst, during a conjunction, they might see 2 metre tides. However, they may see more rogue waves than we do. !

Interesting observations all around.
Your brain work out things like this when sleep-deprived? Lowered levels of resistance to going down obscure paths of thought? I'm impressed and tempted to try achieving the same with more doses of caffeine late at night.

[Borast]

Well... That and Google...and no caffiene...and a crap load of "I wonder..."
Hadn't had any (caffiene) since shortly before noon that day!
...I used to do a lot of system design for Imperial Starfire (from TFG) and GURPS Space, all for the fun of it...and I love Astronomy, even if I haven't done anything with it since grade school!

I still wish I had the mental abberation my sister does.
Hand her a synopsis of a project with 50 unrelated facts, and she can combine them all into a coherent whole showing whether your project will likely succeed or fail (and why).
Somehow she ended up speaking with someone knowlegeable in the Medical field, and she was told that it was a talent that fewer than 1 in a million have.

ME, on the other hand... I can still tell you that a cyberlink costs $16k, weighs 100 pounds, and takes up one space...and I haven't played Car Wars in over 30 years.

[taalismn]

Somehow she ended up speaking with someone knowlegeable in the Medical field, and she was told that it was a talent that fewer than 1 in a million have.

ME, on the other hand... I can still tell you that a cyberlink costs $16k, weighs 100 pounds, and takes up one space...and I haven't played Car Wars in over 30 years.

We forgive you. We can't all be natural mentats.

On the other extreme, I was immediately behind a woman at the supermarket checkout...said woman was SHOCKED because the store wouldn't accept her store account card. Turned out it was the wrong supermarket...the supermarket her card was good at was across the street.
Her excuse? "My (smart) phone gave me the wrong directions."
...made my roll to save against making a wiseass remark like "At one point did you look up from your phone as you entered the supermarket and maybe notice the franchise logo plastered all over EVERYTHING?"

[taalismn]

Using some ideas from both Kitsune and Omegasgundam...

Surface to Space Defense Systems(USA/General)

“Hate to establish new colonies all by ourselves only to have them taken away or worse by other folks coveting the same territory. We also can’t rely on outside sources for all of it, because that just might tip off the wrong sort of people just what we’re planting. Besides, we’re a security company, right? We might want to look at expanding into the colonial defense market as well.”

“Mountain ranges, if you have the resoures to hollow them out, are good places to site surface-to-space weapons. Large arcs of fire, natural fortification, less atmosphere above to punch through, and often natural camouflage. Downsides are that once your guns are detected, your mountain’s going to get hit with everything the enemy has. Another downside that the best colony sites are not always conveniently near mountains and under the defensive range of your guns.”

“The United System Alliance wants to avoid what they refer to, for some reason, as a ‘Maginot mindset’: this is,the belief that a large enough network of fortified planetary defenses will keep your planet safe from attack. It’s easier to lay down reinforced concrete and dig holes than it is to lay down ships for defense, so you can build bigger and with less advanced technology. But that can lead you to become overcondident, and neglect other aspects of defense...and leave you wide open if the enemy decides not to be intimidated by your glorified dugouts and trenches. A fortress mentality can leave you as vulnerable as if you were naked.
However, good strong planetary defenses can buy you time, even if only as a last resort. Properly designed and deployed, they can bleed an enemy attack force bad enough that they may lose any profit from their attack, or tie them up enough that you can evacuate your people or your reinforcements can arrive. Every minute you hold off an enemy can be vital to your survival and the defense of your responsibilities.
The USA is very interested in planetary deenses as part of their overall strategy, so they’re investing in STSD. They’re both learning from others and selling to others, so that their worlds and clients aren’t worth bothering. But they’re not relying on a bunker mentallity to protect them.”

An area of military development that Paladin Steel/Aegis Stellar Industries is only now starting to get involved in is Surface to Space Defense(StSD). As the GNE expands offworld and establishes more and more offworld outposts and colonies, defending those settlements has taken growing priority. Expansion into the United Systems Alliance as only increased the scale and scope of demand for defending settled worlds, member states, and colonies.
The prefered means of defending colonial territories has been mobile orbital units, ideally to keep an attacker as far away from a planet or space colony as possible. However, sometimes this isn’t always possible, or mobile forces have been overwhelmed or bypassed. As PS/ASI and the GNE have always subscribed to an ‘and the kitchen sink’ philosophy of engagng enemies with a variety of weapons at various levels, fighting for every inch of territory, terminal surface defenses have been studied in depth to bleed an enemy at every opportunity.
Surface-based anti-space defenses face a number of challenges. They are located at the bottom of a gravity well, typically shooting up through the obstructing qualities of an atmosphere or planetary magnetosphere. Fixed defensive installations also tend to be large, easily spotted(especially once they start firing) and are immobile, making them static targets for orbital bombardment. Surface-based defenses also suffer from limited arcs of fire, with Line of Sight weaponry severely limited at best to horizon to horizon.
Natural satellites such as moons are excellent secondary positions for similar installations, increases the arcs of fire and scope of engagement, though the installations face many of the same problems and vulnerabilities as the main planetary defenses.
To compensate for their immobility, static defenses are typically heavily armored, hardened against bombardment, often taking advantage of local geology to hide deep inside rock formations, and sport layers of secondary defenses.
On the plus sde, being ground-based, StSDs aren’t limited by the same space and weight constraints as ship-mounted weapons. This means that installations can make use of multiple and massive power systems, cooling networks, and projection hardware. Geothermal, magnetospheric, and ley line networks can provide cheap, convenient, and hard to target and disrupt sources of energy for large-scale weapns and shielding systems.
The prefered weapon for surface to space defense is long range hypervelocity missiles that can be deployed quickly. Missiles can also be aimed ballistically to curve around a planet to strike targets out of LOS. However, to make the best of these systems, special boosters, or high velocity assist systems, such as massdrivers, are ften added, to get missiles up as fast as possible to optimal intercept speed and range.
Beam weapons are the next best weapons, light speed weapons in particular being quick to lay on target, but often suffer from poor range, especially in atmosphere, where energy is dissipated just burning through the gases. Tracking through aymospheric distortion and the ablation pumes burning off targets are also a problem, requiring powerful sensor systems adjusted for a planet’s particular atmospheric conditions.
Some of the more exotic methods of which anecdotes have emerged include magic. PS/ASI has been investigating reports that at least one world in the United Worlds of Warlock have used magic weather control to at least impede and disorganize enemy forces as they attempted to establish beachheads. High-altitude Air Elementals have reportedly been used offensively against landing craft, and weather manipulation used to camouflage surface targets from orbital sensors. However, not all worlds are amenable, either conditionally or culturally, to magic use, and magic tends to be low-powered compared to technology.


Planetary Forcefields
“It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Just project a virtual roof over a territory and let the enemy fire bounce off it. Only you have to make the coverage large enough that the enemy doesn’t get the idea of angling KEWs under the edge of the shields like they did on Gorono, and shake the city to pieces anyway. And expanding the shield means you have to spend more energy. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“Hiding under a force dome ain’t going to help you against any but the weakest or dumbest space-vermin out there. Best it does you is but you some time to get your own gun-sweeps up and running or for any reinforcements you might have called to arrive. Best to have defense in depth, starting with a good far patrol arm and working back to your street-level civil preparedness.”

The state of the art in passive defenses are ground-based forcefields, something that few colonies can afford. Again, powering and cooling massive systems meant to stand up to orbital bombardment requires a huge investment in plant and facility. Constant shield ablation by factors not normally encountered on a regular basis by starship shields, namely weather, are also a constant drain on the efficiency of planetary shields. However, planetary defense shields can take advantage of the same things as weapons emplacements, such as using the planet itself as a cooling system. Some planets tap into their geothermal energy or electromagnetic fields to power their shields. And whereas starship shield generators have to be compact to save on hull space, planetary generators can be quite large and bulky.
Planetary defense forcefields tend to be of the single plane-type; few planetary facilities have the proper sensors to take advantage of the adjustable facing of starship-style variable forcefields. Multiple linked generator-boosters tend to take the place of variable facings for most shield systems. When VFSes are used, the only real facing tends to be ‘up’, creating a protective umbrella, with no balancing ground-field.
In general. planetary forcefields can have 5-10X the protective value of equivalent light, medium, or heavy starship shields. The larger coverage they have to support also means that often networked field projector-boosters have to be installed as well. Depending on the area under the ‘umbrella’, PDF costs can rise steeply from x10 the standard ship type screen cost to several hundred times.
The real (conventional) enemy of PDFs is massdriver attacks. Even on a near-miss, sufficiently powerful kinetic strikes can set loose ground vibrations that can undercut a target site’s forcescreens and affect subterranean support and infrastructure.
While generally only the wealthier worlds or better-sponsored colonies can afford to support high-end planetary defense forcefields, there’s been more than a few colonies that have rigged up protective screens from linked starship(usually military surplus) shield generators.
The United Worlds of Warlock probably has some of the best planetside defense shield systems, thanks to their magic. Accounts of the application of Spells of Legend such as Sanctuary and Metropolis , or of Temporal Magic stasis fields have many outside the UWW looking at the UWW with interest if such systems can be adapted to their own worlds. And, of course, there are rumors of Promethean systems able to take entire communities out of phase with reality and beyond the ability of most weapons to touch.
The USA has been equipping many of its spacestations with battlescreening, and has begun to adapt its starship tech to groundside defense applications. Many of its more extreme environment world outposts and colonies already have protective screening, so it is a relatively small step to upgrade these systems to combat-spec levels. The USAJC has been backing the equipping of many member worlds with at least low-level last-resort shield systems for vital facilities and government centers, and ASI/WZT has been expanding its commercial services to building PDFs for customers.

Sample Weaponry:

“RiMinEx’s abandoned mining tunnels in the Rinmattage Mountains turned out to be just PERFECT for the defense complex.....just close enough to the settled coast to provide protective fire covereage, far enough away to be secret, high up eough to spot trouble over the cities’ horizons, deep enough that the still metal-rich rock of the mountains interfered with orbtal sensors, widespread enough that the ridges could be used as heatsinks, and large enough that we could fit the big paricle accelerators down the shafts with room to spare.
The Ivoians, when they came to conquer, didn’t see the particle sleet coming until they were committed to their atack vectors. After that, well, the colonists got to watch some nice fireworks as the better part of the Ivoian Third Fleet burned up on reentry. “


*HLC(HALC01) Mega-Laser---(aka ;HALC’) Paladin Steel’s first homebrewed Surface to High Atmosphere laser defense system, first deployed on the C-271 Skymaster III Flying Laser platform. Though some rifles and infantry heavy weapons did more damage, few mobile weapons systems had the range of the HLC’s laser. This weapon is designed to start burning through a missile’s or aircraft’s shielding well out beyond the range of standard laser systems. Even so, the range is piddling compared to what some pre-Rifts Golden Age systems were supposedly capable of; hitting ICBMs and IRBMs in their terminal boost phase from hundreds of miles away. Though largely superseded by weapons copied from the Three Galaxies’ techbase, and generally regarded as useless against ‘proper’ warcraft, the HALC01 continues to see deployment on a number of mobile platforms and in static mounts.
Range: 80 miles
Damage: 3d6x10 MD at ranges under 5 miles, 2d4x10 MD out to 20 miles, 6d6 MD out to 40 miles, and 4d6 MD out to 80 miles.
Rate of Fire: Once per melee
Payload: Effectively Unlimited
Systems of Note:
*Long Range Sensors---Long range acquisition and tracking radar with a 200 mile range, laser range finding, thermal, and optical telescopes with a 100 mile effective range. These systems give the mega-laser a +6 to strike at ranges under 5 miles, +4 at ranges out to 80 miles.

*Heavy Laser
Range: 30 miles in atmosphere, 100 miles in space
(Kitsune Values: 100 miles in atmosphere, 100,000 miles in space)
Damage: 3d6x1,000 MD per blast
Rate of Fire: Once per melee
Payload: Effectively Unlimited

*Heavy Particle Beam Cannon
Range: 45 miles in atmosphere, 70 miles in space
(Kitsune Values)70 miles in atmosphere, 70,000 miles in space
Damage: 5d6x100 MD per blast at full offensive power mode.
The particle beam also has a more innocuous mode that does NO damage, but does enhanced EM damage.
EM effects: Used against unshielded power grids(such as cities and towns), the particle blast has a 99% chance of knocking down electrical systems, including vehicles, in an 80-mile radius(30 miles when in full power offensive mode) of the point of aim. Unprotected computers and other hardware not protected by surge protectors, and hooked into the common power grid, may still be affected up to a hundred miles or more away by power surges through the power lines.
The beam is less effective against shielded systems such as those on space structures(25%) and military systems(10% for surface military vehicles), which are hardened against radiation.
Against spacecraft, it acts in the same manner as an Ion Cannon, doing damage as follows:
5d6x100 EMP damage(special) per blast
Shields take 1/4 damage from EM blasts
Does NO PHYSICAL damage to hull, but attacks the electrical systems:
For every 10% of total main body MDC damage inflicted on a target by Disruptor Cannon fire, the target will be -1 to strike, parry(if applicable), and Dodge. Acceleration will be reduced by 15%.
At 60% or more main body damage from disruptor blasts, the ship is disabled completely.
.
Rate of Fire: Once per melee
Payload: Effectively unlimited

*Neutron Cannons---These radiation weapons have the added effect of potentially prematurely detonating fissionable material in nuclear warheads.
Range: 18 miles in atmosphere(36 miles in space)
(Kitsune Values: 36 miles in atmosphere/ 36,000 miles in space)
Damage: 1d4x100 MD per blast and affects a 5-degree-wide swathe
(Neutron Flux) The intense blast of neutrons also causes problems for systems utilizing fissiionable materials like uranium or plutonium. On a Natural 16-20, the neutron flux will cause inadequately shielded fission powerplants to overheat, causing a partial meltdown or force an emergency shutdown by the safety systems, disrupting their power. Fission warheads will be rendered inert(and on a Natural 20 will prematurely go critical, suffering an additional 2d10x10 MD, destroying their casing, and likely spreading radioactive materials around).
Rate of Fire: Twice per melee
Payload: Effectively unlimited

*Kinetic Kill Rail Cannons--- These heavy rail cannons graced Paladin Steel’s first true space warships as the main armament. Though they’re since been superseded as the primary weapon of choice, the KKRCs continue to soldier on as secondary armaments and have begun to appear as colony defense weapons, operating in 1-4 barrel static mounts.
Range: 10 miles in atmosphere(40 miles in space)
(Kitsune Values: 40 miles in atmosphere/ 40,000 miles in space)
Damage:1d4x100 MD per 80 rd burst, 2d4x100 MD double cannon burst, 3d4x100 MD per triple cannon burst
(Fragmentation rounds) Do 4d6 x10 MD to a 100 ft wide area with an 80 rd burst, 6d6x10 MD to a 150 ft wide area double cannon burst, and 8d6x10 MD to a 200 ft wide area per triple cannon burst.
Rate of Fire:ECHH
Payload: 32,000 rds(400 bursts) per cannon before needing reloading, typically. Effectively unlimited for campaigns, as, being part of a surface installation, it can b supplied from quite large magazines.


*Boosted Cruise Missiles----These are regular warfleet cruise missiles adapted for surface launch. A rapid-burn hypersonic booster stage has been added that quickly gets the missile up out of atmosphere and the depths of the gravity well up into space where its regular propulsion takes over. For obvious reasons singularity warheads are not deployed in this role(at least not by sane operators), and antimatter weapons are less common.
Surface-to-orbit massdrivers are another way of lofting heavy missiles into space, saving on propulsion. Single missiles or ‘buses’ carrying anywhere from a couple to dozens of weapons can be sent off in this manner, though the static massdrivers themselves are vulnerable to detection and attack.

*Tachyon Cannon
Better known as ‘spray guns’ in missile defense, tachyon weapons are effective, but expensive defensive weapons. The USAJC has been developing its own range of various power scales of tachyon projectors enough that mass production has brought down cost so that tachyon cannon are beginning to be seen with some planetary defense systems. The advantages of tachyon cannon are that they seem relatively unhindered by atmospheric conditions(though rang is diminished, they shoot as readily in bad weather as in good conditions) and their ability to spread fire allows them to cover large areas of aerospace effectively(though the telltale ‘fan’ of their emissions through atmosphere readily points out their sites). Interference between emitters, which limits the number mounted and power available to starships, is less of a problem, on planets where the weapons can be stationed far enough apart, yet still have overlapping fields of fire.

The most common tachyon weapon so far encountered with USAn planetary defense installations is an adaptation of the standard heavy starship weapon:
Heavy Tachyon ScatterGun
• Range: 5 miles in atmosphere, 10 miles in space w/ 6 mile wide arc*
(Kitsune Values: 5 miles in atmosphere, 5,000 miles in space)
*Width are reduced to 1/4th in atmosphere
• Damage: 1d6x100 MD per blast
• Rate of Fire: EGCHH
• Payload:Effectively Unlimited

Heavier weapons are also under development, as in the case of the following:
*Super Heavy Tachyon Cannon----An experimental weapon scaling up the highly effective PDS ‘sprayer’. It’s believed to be based n the testbed weapon for a more compact heavy starship weapon:
Range: 50 miles (25,000 m) in atmosphere, 100 miles (100,000 m) in space w/ 12 mile wide arc*
(Kitsune Values: 50 miles in atmosphere, 50,000 miles in space)
*Width are reduced to 1/4th in atmosphere
Damage: 1d4x1,000 MD per blast
Rate of Fire: Twice per melee
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.

[Omegasgundam]

Using some ideas from both Kitsune and Omegasgundam...
Surface to Space Defense Systems(USA/General)
Some of the more exotic methods of which anecdotes have emerged include magic. PS/ASI has been investigating reports that at least one world in the United Worlds of Warlock have used magic weather control to at least impede and disorganize enemy forces as they attempted to establish beachheads. High-altitude Air Elementals have reportedly been used offensively against landing craft, and weather manipulation used to camouflage surface targets from orbital sensors. However, not all worlds are amenable, either conditionally or culturally, to magic use, and magic tends to be low-powered compared to technology.

Fighting on the wrong end of a gravity well means that your efforts are going to amount to a delaying action. That can be enough though to make it not worth the effort to bother neutralizing, and if the attackers are substantially inferior in capabilities make them physically unable to do so. Not having to worry about most ship-born engineering challenges does make it easier to built and set up the big guns, but that still run into the perennial problem of cost. There's also 'sitting duck' problem that honestly can't be truly solved, but that's the story of fortifications.

I haven't put much thought into magic applications, but as stated it requires an amiable PPE environment.

Planetary Forcefields
Planetary defense forcefields tend to be of the single plane-type; few planetary facilities have the proper sensors to take advantage of the adjustable facing of starship-style variable forcefields. Multiple linked generator-boosters tend to take the place of variable facings for most shield systems. When VFSes are used, the only real facing tends to be ‘up’, creating a protective umbrella, with no balancing ground-field.
In general. planetary forcefields can have 5-10X the protective value of equivalent light, medium, or heavy starship shields. The larger coverage they have to support also means that often networked field projector-boosters have to be installed as well. Depending on the area under the ‘umbrella’, PDF costs can rise steeply from x10 the standard ship type screen cost to several hundred times.
The real (conventional) enemy of PDFs is massdriver attacks. Even on a near-miss, sufficiently powerful kinetic strikes can set loose ground vibrations that can undercut a target site’s forcescreens and affect subterranean support and infrastructure.

Magic has a lot of advantages here, and I can easily see the USA using it when practical. Doing the general scud work for civil-scale TW systems is likely one of the first tasks rookie technowizards get assigned, and the shear breath and depth of the GNE's out-dimensional efforts has given them a few ways of working around 'permanently loose PE'.

*HLC(HALC01) Mega-Laser

The most important thing about it is its range, particularly when compared to its physical size. I imagine that just about everybody has an equivalent to prevent some ******* from flinging a handful of strat heads and wiping a population center out.

*Heavy Laser

A full BB scale gun in terms of capabilities, I'm willing to bet they added a 0 to the overall mass and volume to get the technical complexity down to something easily manageable. Much more useful on an asteroid/lunar platform than on anything with an atmosphere worth mentioning though.

*Heavy Particle Beam Cannon

The EMP is less of a problem when its going up rather than down, and it can serve as a fly swatter against a horde of low tech raiders if they bunch up. I can see a much smaller and more focused EMP weapon being used for law enforcement at spaceports.

*Neutron Cannons---These radiation weapons have the added effect of potentially prematurely detonating fissionable material in nuclear warheads.

Fission-fusion heads are bone head simple in 3G terms, so any nutcase pirate/neo-barb raider can make their own given time. The USA thus has plenty of reason to seed a few of them into every defense grid, and their not a bad general anti-missile system either.

*Kinetic Kill Rail Cannon

Their big use in atmosphere is to prevent the other guy from dropping right on top of you, which buys you time. Also makes lightly protected platforms evaporate given half a chance, which is the majority of potential raiders.

*Boosted Cruise Missiles

There's a lot of ways to do this, with the primary limitations being how big you want to salvo to be and how often can you fling it. Some methods are more flexible than others, but there's a lot of variables.

*Tachyon Cannon

Tachyons are more mixed in atmosphere than in the void, but they provide burst defense like no other. I'd say the 'cool-down' problem is still fully in play, which leave them vulnerable to repeated/immediate follow up waves. They're great for dealing with nail biters caused by unexpected failures in other sections.

[taalismn]

Plus your boosted missiles can also be sub-launched, which is handy.
A lot of pirates and raiders like to come in over the water if the target planet has enough water coverage, figuring the dirt suckers have limited their defense coverage to the land masses.
Nobody expects the submarine ASAT platform that got enough over-the-horizon sensor warning to pop a salvo or two in the way of the incomings.

[Borast]

Since you're mixing mech and magic...
"What gravity well?"
With a small (comparatively) PPE battery and judicous use of appropriate spells, your missiles will only have to deal with defeating atmospheric friction, which, for all intents, drops off rapidly. Add in an "Immune to Heat" spell effect, and your missiles could be travelling at high Mach numbers as soon as they climb high enough to not "crash" in thin air. (Converslely, an object travelling at M20 will "crash" at about an altitude of just under 7000 metres, when it can no longer push air molecules out of the way fast enough.)
As for the lasers and particle beams, add in a magic projector that creates a temporary column of vacuum, and you won't have to worry about defocusing or EM effects. (Incidentally, while the outgoing energy of the PB could theoretically cause a "pulse" of EM radiation, it won't be 100% outgoing. No one knows what direction the high energy photons from a broken molecule will travel...including directly back at the shooter.)

Oh, incidentally, tachyons pass through normal matter as if it wasn't there. A planetary mass has almost zero impact on the flight path of a tachyon. Outside of degenerate matter, I don't think anything could stop one. The subsurface detectors they are using "find" a handful a year...of the trillions passing though the planet every second.

[taalismn]

Since you're mixing mech and magic...
"What gravity well?"
With a small (comparatively) PPE battery and judicous use of appropriate spells, your missiles will only have to deal with defeating atmospheric friction, which, for all intents, drops off rapidly. Add in an "Immune to Heat" spell effect, and your missiles could be travelling at high Mach numbers as soon as they climb high enough to not "crash" in thin air. (Converslely, an object travelling at M20 will "crash" at about an altitude of just under 7000 metres, when it can no longer push air molecules out of the way fast enough.)
As for the lasers and particle beams, add in a magic projector that creates a temporary column of vacuum, and you won't have to worry about defocusing or EM effects. (Incidentally, while the outgoing energy of the PB could theoretically cause a "pulse" of EM radiation, it won't be 100% outgoing. No one knows what direction the high energy photons from a broken molecule will travel...including directly back at the shooter.

(Begins furiously paging through the magic books and fan-posted spells and taking notes_


And yeah, I though about how the hell tachyons could damage anything, but the original weapon's in the Manhunter book, so...rule of cool I guess, and it's not really tachyons being projected.
Because if that were the case, you could house your projectors deep underground(like the giant detectors) and if you specify the point that the tachyons have a physical impact, you could in effect shoot through your own planet from concealed positions....ouch....

[SolCannibal]

Is there anything like weapons that wield/manipulate gravity in Phaseworld? That is something where a celestial body might potentially provide much greater possibilities to exploit than any spaceship...

[taalismn]

Is there anything like weapons that wield/manipulate gravity in Phaseworld? That is something where a celestial body might potentially provide much greater possibilities to exploit than any spaceship...

The Kittani have granitic 'lances', but those are artificial gravity generators, not using an existing gravity well to create an effect.
Might have to look at Heroes/Powers Unlimited and the fan-powers threads for gravity manipulation powers that could be used as a guide to super-tech systems.

[SolCannibal]

Is there anything like weapons that wield/manipulate gravity in Phaseworld? That is something where a celestial body might potentially provide much greater possibilities to exploit than any spaceship...

The Kittani have granitic 'lances', but those are artificial gravity generators, not using an existing gravity well to create an effect.

Well, for what it's worth that's already a step farther than most polities in the 3Gs toward "gravity weaponization", quite something for certain.

Might have to look at Heroes/Powers Unlimited and the fan-powers threads for gravity manipulation powers that could be used as a guide to super-tech systems.

THAT sounds like a very promising creative venue - incidentally makes me think of the TGE experimenting with such technologies, since they are one of the major 3Gs groups that is infamous for having HU-style stuff in the form of the Imperial Guardsmen.

[taalismn]

[

THAT sounds like a very promising creative venue - incidentally makes me think of the TGE experimenting with such technologies, since they are one of the major 3Gs groups that is infamous for having HU-style stuff in the form of the Imperial Guardsmen.

Adventure hook right there...high-risk/high-level...break into an Imperial Guardsman lab to steal their files on gravity manipulation. Meet the Guardsmen. Meet the almost-were-Giardsmen-but-for-unfortunate-procedural-errors. Meet lots of Legionnaires and fleet personnel. Have fun.

[SolCannibal]

[

THAT sounds like a very promising creative venue - incidentally makes me think of the TGE experimenting with such technologies, since they are one of the major 3Gs groups that is infamous for having HU-style stuff in the form of the Imperial Guardsmen.

Adventure hook right there...high-risk/high-level...break into an Imperial Guardsman lab to steal their files on gravity manipulation. Meet the Guardsmen. Meet the almost-were-Giardsmen-but-for-unfortunate-procedural-errors. Meet lots of Legionnaires and fleet personnel. Have fun.

Maybe meet another group that is facilitating the break-in to cover their own break-in and acquisition of the same or other TGE Top Secret tech.

Like a general rolling with the brand new superweapon across a third of the empire with "recapturing the stolen blueprints" as justification to mobilize without orders.
Just an excess of initiative, absolutely no shenanigans here...

[taalismn]

Sidenote:
Kamian War (Corkscrew Galaxy)
“The Kamian War was one of those nasty little Rim squabbles that got out hand and flared hot and fast, lit by tinpot powermongers looking for fast scores, fueled by arms dealers eager to make credits, fought by cold-blooded mercs and poor schlubes caught up in the moment, and paid for in the lives of people who could care less what the reasons were for going to war. And to top it all off, the rest of galactic society regarded the war as ‘something those Rim neobarbs did to each other’.”

“There were no formal uniforms, no glorious banners, no massive battlefleets or logistical trains. What there was was a lot of blackmarket weaponry, lots of converted Belter ships and equipment, even some fresh construction of war-hacked smallcraft designs, and lots of dirty tricks.”

“Among the assets being fought over by the Allegiance and the Compact were two wormholes. Maybe you’ve heard of them; Tescotrans-Gamma and the Alphoid Low-Road. Not particularly important worm-gates, but transit-time-cutters regardless and worth lots of credits to whoever controlled access. Well, the Allegiance and the Compact wound up losing both of them; the Tescotrans-Gee was destabilized by somebody’s grav-bomb and the Compact lost the Low-Road when a local planet-based star kingdom took it away from them just because. A lot of people lost money thanks to the loss of those two routes and several entire sectors went belly-up because of lost trade. Just that alone has caused a lot of bad blood towards the Allegiance and the Compact, whatever’s left of them, and even a few bounties being posted on their surviving leadership.”

“Reporting on the Kamian War showed an almost criminal bias on the part of the major networks, most of which happened to be lifeworld-based and -oriented. Because the conflict was almost entirely a Belter affair, took place far out in deep space, and never near any lifeworlds where it would have received top attention in the newsfeeds, it was almost entirely ignored and definitely underreported, but it had echoes through the deep-spacer communities and vac-hab systems for decades.”

A Corkscrew Galaxy Rim conflict between the Demion Allegiance and the Moltar Compact, two primarily Belter-led organizations fighting over trade control. At its height, the war involved twenty-two star systems and eighty hab-cities. The war ended the two organizations, disrupted the very trade they coveted, and became a textbook example of a Rim brushwar. Largely ignored by the rest of the Three Galaxies except as a bloody footnote stereotyping ‘barbarian Rimmers’, the Kamian War nevertheless cost hundreds of thousands of lives, not just Allegiance and Compact troops and their mercenary hirelings, but civilian lives as well, which brought the toll up into the millions.
The Kamian War was relatively short and brutal, and ended when most of the involved habitats became appalled at the course of the conflict and elected to drop out rather than continue to bear the costs of supporting the war. Several freespace habitats, in fact, were either effectively depopulated by the manpower demands of the war, or were deliberately destroyed by combatants. The Allegiance and the Compact also lost the support of outside supporters who wished to avoid being tainted by association with the conflict. Withering for lack of financial backing to continue the war, both respective leaderships became discredited and collapsed.
There is still a lot of bad blood about the Kamian War among Belters, and though major hostilities only lasted four years, sporadic diehard actions continued for over a decade, thanks to continuing grudges and ‘eye for eye’ justice reprisals. The economies of several Belter-settled sectors were disrupted, if not outright wrecked, sometimes permanently.
The Kamian War cost some 4 million lives, but as this was mainly in ships and small space stations out on the Rim, and no planets were affected, the war has gone largely un-remarked on by the rest of civilization.

[Omegasgundam]

Its happens in spread out settings. Communications and travel times being what they are, the true fringes may as well be in a separate universe as far as the core is concerned. It also brings some of the scale contrasts into context, and to paraphrase an IRL saying; 'the core thinks a 100 light years is a long distance, and the fringe thinks a 100 million is a massive population.'

[taalismn]

PS/ASI’s presence in the Corkscrew Galaxy is mainly free-space habitats, typically established near commercial trade hubs and routes.

*Vethan Station---(Devton System, -Ammard Sector, Corkscrew Galaxy)
“Routing through the Devton system’s a good safe bet for older and smaller starships wanting to make the transit to the other arms, but lacking the endurance or confidence of the long-haulers that can get above the ecliptic where the FTL’ing’s faster and easier on the long jumps. They can take advantage of the Morlan Gulf’s void mass density, yet still be close enough to convenient star systems if their drives act up and they need to make a pit stop.
With that in mind, getting a presence in the Devton system’s a GOOD deal for getting our brand established in the Corkscrew. We’ll have to compete with some of the ‘screw’s established aerospace corps that have their own offices around Altev, but I think we’re more than capable of handling the competition.”
-Excerpt from site analysis briefing, PS/ASI Marketing, on expansion operations in the Corkscrew Galaxy

“Working the boneyard can be an education of sorts, both sad and surprising. Sad because you see a lot of good ships that have passed their heyday and are now only good for scrap. Surprising because even with a thorough stripdown before they get sent to the breakers, many of these ships still have a lot of surprises left aboard. We could open a thrift market with the stuff we find in closets, holds, and dead spaces aboard the ships hauled in.”

One of PS/ASI’s few footholds in the Corkscrew Galaxy. Based on a WZT-manufactured, but PS/ASI-operated, Pacifica Space City platform, Vethan Station benefits from PS/ASI having acquired license to operate an aerospace salvage yard, and does custom spacecraft work using refurbished parts, in addition to selling PS/ASI designs, especially aerospace fighters and small craft. Vethan Station also has the chore of taking trade-ins for older PS/ASI/WZT hardware and recycling them.

The Devton System is a CCW member. Its location on the edge of the Morlan Gulf and the Skandril Star Bridge(a thin formation of stars bridging the two sides of the Gulf) positions it as part of the regional trade routes(starships can take advantage of the low-obstruction FTL gulf while still remaining within safe distance of star systems by paralleling the Bridge).
Altev, the system lifeworld, is settled predominantly by elves, who make up some 60% of the 169 million residents. The planet sees a fair amount of commerce flowing through it, and a number of enterprises, both franchises and local, have established presences to serve the commercial traffic with travel supplies, repairs, abd even fresh ships.

Solar System ( Devton)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
- Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 9
-Terrestrial (Arnol ) ---Huge ‘super-Venus’. It has five sizable moons, two of which have established mines(mainly automated, because of the high solar radiation).

- Asteroid( Crundalti)---Large asteroid/planetissimal. It is the site of a Propulsagen servicing center. Propulsagen is better known as a metroworld company, but has decided, thanks partially with their backing of Flan’Loure Productions‘ prducts, it has been attempting to expand its markets to the mid-Rim. The Crundalti facility offers CG-drive repairs and engine replacements.

- Terrestrial( Altev) ---System Lifeworld; Altev is a Mars-sized world in the process of being terraformed. It currently has a thin ecosystem, mainly terraforming algae and simple plants, but that has produced a dense but breathable atmosphere, the injection of greenhouse gases has helped raise the planet’s temperature, and the terraformers are beginning to introduce more complex organisms. Altev has an 85% surface water coverage, so the colonists live in island or offshore dome comunities.
The CAF maintains an island base on Altev.

-Gas Giant (Baskazar )---Miniscule gas giant. Its small size makes it favorable for safe gas mining operations, of which there are several. The lack of substantial moons, however, means that there are no surface support facilities, so gas-scooping operations are limited by the size and endurance of what motherships and tenders the gas miners can afford to keep on station.

-Asteroid (Tezmann)---Planetissimal. Site of Vethan Station, which maintains both an orbital scrapyard and surface depots. Vethan Station gtes some of its ice and metal from Tezmann, the rest from scrap, supply runs from other USA companies, or (for the sake of being a good neighbor) purchasing supplies from in-system.
There have been some grumbles that Vethan Station’s location far out from Altev and the heart of business in the system discourages much potential trade and clientele from even being aware of the PS/ASI/WZT facility, but Vethan Station is busy enough with those in the know. Besides commercial spacecraft, Vethan Station also sells lower-tier starfighters(such as various Hesperia sub-types), typically to merchantmen wanting some extra anti-pirate insurance.

- Terrestrial( Nevalt)---Large iceworld. Despite its larger size, Nevalt has a gravitational field well within terrestrial parameters and tolerances, so several domed settlements have been established on the planet to exploit its resources, mainly a thick covering of water ice.

-Gas Giant (Rebador)---Jovian-sized gas giant. It has no moons, but a set of rings testifying that it once did. Currently there is only a few automated scientific probes orbiting Rebador and no commercial facilities.

- Asteroid( Yelva)---Planetissimal. Andisivon Interstellar Messenger maintains a relay station with a half-dozen service slips for ‘hot-swapping’ with any courier ships that come in needing to be serviced/refueled or chaged for fresh vessels. Interestingly, because of their good working relationship elswehere, any more extensive repairs/re-engining that the Andisivon IM depot has, they often send to PS/ASI/WZT’s Vethan Station to have the work done.

-Terrestrial ( Delaar)---Earth-sized ice world. Its distance from the center of the system means that there’s little, as yet, interest in the dark frozen-CO2-covered planet.

*Station 119---( Winthrop System, Corkscrew Galaxy)
“Over here in this crater we’re growing oxipods and seylmatt...that last one’s the organic plastic we’re marketing as a self-repairing sealant. The sugarflowers up on the rim produce caloric sugars that can be processed into foodstuffs, and the nightmelons sequester carbon for industrial use. We still haven’t managed to get the hang of cultivating some of the Jorgumandan exolife that looked so promising, but the Lyman agrostations are confident that a viable vac-apple is just a few growing cycles away from realization.”

If this colony station ever had a more formal name, it’s been misplaced and forgotten, and despite some calls to rename the station, the residents insist on calling the place ‘119’, claiming that it’s their lucky number. The why of this has not been shared with outsiders.
Station 119 was established in the Winthrop star system as a multipurpose facility, acting as residential bloc, waystation, communications relay. Being only a short FTL jump from wormhole connections to the Gosnold Cluster in CCW space and Kaxxion Junction, and being on the galactic facing for jumping off to the Thundercloud Galaxy, the system is regarded as a potential trade lane hotspot despite its lack of habitable planets.
Station 119 is an Expanded Frame Plymouth-class space station that has received the ‘New Hartford treatment’, only under controlled conditions, This means that the station has been successfully integrated with genetically-tailored space-adapted enhanced-growth plantlife that threads throughout and outside the station’s constructed structure. Station 119 has a stacked-torus configuration that has expanded facilities for 18,000 residents and a transitory population of up to 6,000. This latter capacity came in handy during the Minion War when travel nearly ground to a halt, and many GNE/USA travelers were obliged to shelter in place. This included a power armor development team bound for the CTRL, who found themselves stranded on Station 119. However, they put their enforced layover to good use, using the time to work up the PSPA-23 ‘Gryphon’ Infantry Aerial Personal Assault Unit while waiting for the transit lanes to be secured.
The system is best known for the cultivation of engineered exolife, mainly exoflora. Most commercially-cultivated exolife is flora that breaks down rocky bodies or gathers sunlight and radiation, and sequesters valuable materials in their organic structure. Hydropods and oxipods, for instance, collect hydrogen, oxygen, and water. Most cultivated exolife provides feedstocks for spacebased chemical industries, but a few are metabolically consumable, providing valuable foodstuffs for space-dwellers.

Solar System(Winthrop)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
- Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 5
-Gas Giant(Nubrita)---Jupiter-sized gas giant. A thick radiation belt makes approaching Nubrita too closely hazardous. The nearest settlement, Nuyenton, established on its outermost moon, huddles under the protection of a thick roof of rock and metal shielding, and when its elliptical orbit takes the moon into the radiation belt, the settlement goes into lockdown and typically no ships are allowed to dock or leave the shelter for the three-hour duration of the pass-thrus. Nuyenton’s engineers are confident, though, they can use the energy of Nubrita’s radiation belt to power cetain industrial processes and even harvest small amounts of antiparticles.

-Gas Giant(Bristol)---Small gas world. Its three largest moons, Pierson, Lyman, and Averil, are being seeded with tailored exolife, mainly exoflora. Station 119 orbits this planet. Holcomb Station is based on Averil, and is a scientific research facility in charge of the seeding efforts, while Station 119 is the transit point for harvested material.

-Dwarf Planet(Bilton)--- Ice-covered Bilton plays host to a small water-mining operation. Bilton Springs Station claims that its water has special properties for invigoration, but tests have shown nothing conclusive to distinguish its melt-product from other rock-waters, aside from an extra-zealous public relations campaign. Still, Bilton Springs has its buyers willing to shell out extra.

-Dwarf Planet(Goshen)--- This large asteroid plays host to a Belter commune prospecting the mineralogically-promising and very dense Thimble Shoals asteroid belt. There is some controversy and differences of opinion between the more conservative Belters and the bioengineering Stationers over releasing specific strains of exolife into the Shoals to increase the range and productivity of the space farm effort. This is evidenced by the fact that the Goshen Belters refer to the Thimble Belt as ‘Shoals’ and the Stationers refer to them as the ‘Meadows’.

-Gas Giant(Saybrook)---Large gas giant with 11 small moons. Saybrook is next to be developed if the work and traffic in the Winthrop system picks up. The USAJC already has a small military station set up to monitor the system and traffic through it, and maintains slipways for several destroyers and frigates.

[taalismn]

(a musing on large scale magic planetary defenses)

Above the wail of the air raid sirens screaming across the landscape, he heard a different sound, something like the groaning of great timbers, or the sliding of gravel across ice. As it grew, it compelled him to stop his initial panicked rush and look around until he saw the source of the strange noise.
As he watched, great impossibly huge curves of stone rose from the earth, so big that they broke the cloud layer as they arced over the landscape. Like massive clamshells they closed with each other; in the distance he could see them completing their closure, forming giant domes on the horizon. Then the view was cut off as the rock dome above his patch of countryside, and his town, finished its own progression and replaced his skyscape with a seamless ceiling of gray, lit by what looked like glowing veins of quartz threaded through it.
Yet, he wasn’t afraid of this unexpected turn. Instead he felt safe under the vaulted dome of stone; he had a feeling no missile could penetrate that roof while it was in place. The strangers from the sky were good to their word; their workings had insured the safety of his people and country.

High above, the view screens showed the globe below, overlaid with the superimposed glowing arteries and veins of projected information. National borders, vehicular tracks, plotted vessel positions, ley lines and barriers of force. And bloom-like fans of smaller object tracks growing from various locations around the globe. Most of these tracks ended shortly after exiting the lower atmosphere; a few arced over the dark voids of oceans before they stopped. A few ended short of completing their arcs and touching the planet surface again.
“Leakers...have to expect a few will slip through the battlelite net with a lash-up like this.” explained the deck officer as he surveyed the screens. “We could have gotten them all in the boost phase if we’d had more time to set up a full coverage orbital net. Good thing we had your groundside crews arranging for Elemental protection.”
The Warlock next to him watched the same screens. “Air bursts aren’t going to break those domes, and I’m sure the locals weren’t expecting to fit all their missiles with ground penetrators...not that they’d be able to drive through three hundred meters of living Elemental rock with what they have. No, the civilians are quite safe under those domes. We’ll leave them up until they get the picture, quit throwing nukes at each other, and the fallout plumes dissipate. I imagine you have an equally impressive display to scare the leaderships to the negotiating table?”
The Fleet officer smiled in satisfaction as the paths of ICBMs began to dribble away to afterthoughts. “We’re already breaking into their communications channels and both issuing new orders in their names and letting them know adults are on the scene. Then we’re going to hit them between the eyeballs before anybody gets anymore crack-brained ideas. I know the OPO section chief in charge of the ‘diplomatic’ side of operations; she’s got a very creative mean streak when it comes to cutting down egos and tumbling demagogues who think they know better. Gods know she humbled the lot of us chest-pounding command-path cadets back at the Academy. And she’s got a staff of Kendelsonians who despise people who think nuclear wars are winnable.”
The Warlock blinked at that assessment and smiled her own satisfaction. She could almost pity the local idiots who were currently in the sights of the Office of Positive Outcomes. Almost. Lifeworlds were precious enough without idiots turning them into shatterworlds. She returned her attention to the screens of the planet below.
“Oh look, the storm walls have gone up! That will play havoc with the cruise missiles and bombers!”

[Omegasgundam]

When you have a decent planetary ley line network to work with, many things are now practical given enough set up time.

[taalismn]

When you have a decent planetary ley line network to work with, many things are now practical given enough set up time.

Yah, plus I wanted to play wirth TW on a BIG scale...roofing over a contionent with Elemental Earth magic fits the bill. Throwing up literal storm curtains is in the same class. If surface warships and sub,marines are a problem, some supersized version of Direct Currents or spot Whirlpools (maybe using the currents to push warships into whirlpool killzones) covers the marine front....

Certainly the UWW would eb looking into this sort of thing, and if they didn't, finding somebody who did would have them falling over themswelves to find out how the folks could do it economically(PPE-wise).

[taalismn]

*Tarr-Eba Station---( United Systems Alliance Outpost, Veschow System, Amatersu Sector, Corkscrew Galaxy)
(Aka ‘Sceptor-City’, ‘Wand-port’)

“Tarr-Eba, at the least, is notable for showing what can happen if you take two old rusting-out tube-habs and throw enough resources and crazy biotech at them. If for nothing else, it’s created a tourist attraction worth the longliner trip to see.”

“Infection-proofing the station’s biotech components is a chore in itself, but well worth it because of the redundant self-repair capabilities it affords us. And we get lots of wood as a byproduct, too.”

Tarr-Eba Station is actually the consolidation of two freespace habitats, Tarrlton Cohab and Ebbavon City, which had fallen on hard times with changing economic tides and the aftermath of the Kamian War. With a growing loss of population and deteriorating conditions aboard the two tube-cities threatening to leave the Veschow system in the dust, the two stations seemed destined to become ghost towns. The United Systems Alliance, looking for a secure base close to the coreworld economies of the Corkscrew Galaxy, stepped in with a radical rehabilitation program. USAn engineers merged both stations together both technologically and biologically, using advanced biotech in the largest yet application of the ‘New Hartford’ treatment.
The newly rechristened Tarr-Eba Station now serves as a communications relay, waystation for USAn commerce to and from the Corkscrew Galaxy, and showcase of new technologies being developed by the USA. The biological elements of the station help generate extra PPE for powering the TW communications systems linking the station to the USA networks in the Anvil and Thundercloud Galaxies.
Tarr-Eba Station resembles two long O’Neil Cylinders joined end to end by a mass of biotech, with great runners running the lengths of each cylinder to their end-caps, each runner sprouting large solar collector flowers along their lengths. Large solar collector arrays jut from the center mass, and each cylinder end is ringed in multiple diadem-rings of agro- and industrial modules, The new appearance has been likened to a giant royal sceptor or wand, hence the nicknames.
Internally, the layout follows the standard O’Neill configuration of thre linear ‘valleys’ running the length of each tube, separated by three large ‘sky panels’(though centrifugal gravity makes them into large glass-bottomed ‘lakes’ or ‘bays’ with the bottoms lined with selectively wavelength-transparent megaglass(actually a multilayered sandwich of various materials), and in some cases covered by a thin layer of open water. Some thin causeways cross these ‘lakes’ providing access between adjacent ‘valleys’. In the center of the cylinder is a long-axis sky-tram and systems trunk. The conjoining ends of the two cylinders are a mass of techno-systemry and bio-engineered biotech jungle with several sphincter-ways running through and connecting the cylinders’ open areas(daring local aerialists have taken to wing-gliding from one end of Tarr-Eba with a particularly hair-raising zip through the narrower jungle-ways between the cylinders).

Size: 36 miles long, roughly 7 miles in diameter(solar wings stretch out another 9 miles).
Its estimated M-factor is 30 million MDC.
Function: Colony/General Purpose
960,000 residents(rather under-utilized/populated at present, but has plenty of room to grow...in some cases literally).
Power Systems:
Nuclear Fusion plus Solar
An experimental bioreactor capable of generating PPE is also being worked on. For now , the station uses several TW Powerstone PPE generators to power magic systems.
Gravity is generated centrifugally by spinning along the station’s long axis, though it has backup gravity-generation plates(these are generally used only in emergencies because of their energy cost)
Defenses:
Point Defense/Short Range Weapons Stations +Medium Defense sats.
Tarr-Eba Station benefits from having USAJC protection; the station plays host to several starfighter and corvette squadrons , and at least one cruiser is nearby at all times.
Sensors:
Superior Sensors. Tarr-Eba’s sensors have been upgraded to real-time FTL sensors able to spot FTL-transiting spacecraft out 4 light years. This was thought necessary after the breakdown of relations with the prior navigational/sensor center for the system on Veschow’s frmer ‘capitol’, Heddersonport.
Communications:
Stellar Communications. Tarr-Eba acts as a communications relay for the Corokscrew portion of the USA’s intersystem communications network.
Station Maintenance:
Top Priority. with several experimental automated biosystems and magitech systems being trialed,
Supplies:
Self-Sufficient. The ultimate goal is Super-Efficient, once all the bugs with the new systems are worked out. Tarr-Eba depends, food-wise, on a number of ‘valley’ farms, algae and aquatic life grown in the ‘sky lights’, agro-modules, and food substrates synthesized by the biotech core systems. Residents are encouraged to maintain rooftop- or ‘pod’ gardens to supplement their fare(TW food systems are becoming ppular on Tarr-Eba). Manufacturing is taken care of by multiple workshops and industrial bays. Water and material losses are made up for by rock ore and water deliveries from Veschow’s Ort regions.
Internal Security Personnel:
Effectively Private Security Force bordering on Crack -level elites. A good number of the new security staff have done sevice with a Rim military or one of the USAn worlds’ forces.
Security Systems:
Maximum, + Magic(especially around critical sections/systems). There’s aso rumors of experimental biological systems, such as ‘tracking bees’ and ‘hall sniffers’ available to Station security.
Medical Facilities:
Full High Tech Hospital + Magic/Psychic Healing
Environmental Systems:
Advanced Systems, with a multiple redundancy combination of technological and biological systems.
Independent Businesses:
Trading Post: Tarr-Eba is seeing an increase in independent businesses as a result of the (literal) restructuring. While one is not going to see Naruni Enterprises, Hartigal, Galactic Armory, Draygon Industries or General Galaxy represented here, there ‘s a small outlet for Rascallion Stellar Technologies, an office for CosmoRelay Communications Ltd, and franchise branches of GenGenDara Associates, Merzot’s Universal Hearth Bakeries, and VendoPlex. Of course, there’s Aegis Stellar Industries and WZT offfices.
Transients:
Tarr-Eba plays host to a good steady stream of travelers through the sector. Unemployment on the station itself is low, thanks to a GNE-style job-assignment and training system.


Solar System(Veschow)(Amatersu Sector, Corkscrew Galaxy)
Veschow is a binary star system on the edge of CCW space. The lack of lifeworlds did not stop its settlement by Belters, who built four large space colonies in the system and were constructing a fifth when politics intervened and crashed what might have been a promising future for the Belters. Only recently has that potential future prospect been resparked as a result of USA investment.
The habitats of the Veschow system tried to go it alone after the demands of supporting the short, but brutal, Kamian War between the equally short-lived Demion Allegiance and the Moltar Compact proved too much for members. Both Tarrlton Cohab and Ebbavon City survived, but barely, while three other Veschow ‘tubes’ were less lucky.

The completed, but unsettled, Mereson Hab became a weapons testing and proving ground for the Moltar Compact’s ground forces and was abandoned when the war lost steam; the colony cylinder was never properly demilitarized when the Compact pulled out, and the tailored ecology ran rampant. The few curious who have boarded the station report an internal jungle environment, dotted with unsafed munitions and tactical weapons systems, and inhabited by a few crazed tribal squatters and malfunctioning AIs discouraging casual visitation. The USA has considered claiming Mereson and undertaking the arduous task of cleaning the site up, and has launched several studies to determine whether it’s economically worthwhile. Meanwhile, the occasional would-be scavenger, lured by rumors of advanced weaponry to be had for the taking, sneaks past the system patrols and ends up either beating a fast retreat or dead.
Mereson Hab is an O’Neil Cylinder habitat roughly 25 miles long. and 9 miles in diameter. Its estimated M-factor is 19 million MDC.

Hyfhad Station had the misfortune of having substantial numbers of both Allegiance and Compact supporters in its population. Clashes between the two factions escalated into all-out civil war, resulting in enough damage being done to the life support systems that the habitat had to be evacuated and abandoned. Most of the refugees fled to the neighboring Tarrlton Cohab and Ebbavon City, though it seems the fighting on Hyfhad had taken the fire out of survivors, as the Allegiance/Compact violence did not re-ignite. Currently Hyfhad lies derelict but for a few scavengers and diehard eccentrics living on the station.
Hyfhad Station is a ‘Sunflower’ style Bernal Sphere some 8 km in diameter at the hab sphere, 15 km with the reflecting ring, and 23 km long along its long axis. At its height, it housed 850,000 residents. Currently perhaps some 200-400 people still live in what amounts to an abandoned building, in what rooms they can make airtight, and provide heat, power, and air for. Several power sections are too radioactive to enter, having melted down due to sabotage or lack of maintenance.

Heddersonport was a diehard supporter of the Moltar Compact and was, for a time, the effective ‘capitol’ of the Veschow system in terms of local leadership. It was Heddersonport’s wrangling that got Mereson Hab turned into a Compact weapons development center, a move meant to bring much-needed cash into the system(though Heddersonport’s merchant-elite saw most of what did come in). Heddersonport overplayed its support for the Compact, however, in its heavy-handed interference in the Hyfhad Station civil war. Though many of the pro-Compact refugees fled to shelter on Heddersonport, the fiasco of losing a colony ruined the reputation of the station’s ‘leadership’ in the crisis. When both Tarrlton Cohab and Ebbavon City decided to drop out of supporting the Kamian War, Heddersonport was unable to do anything about the defections. For over twenty years, Heddersonport, Tarrlton Cohab and Ebbavon City studiously ignored each other as the Kamian War petered out and slunk into obscurity and the Veschow system sank into economic depression. Heddersonport gained a reputation as something of a darkport with lax customs standards.
The residents of Heddersonport have watched with envy the transformation of Tarrlton and Ebbavon into the United Systems Alliance’s Tarr-Eba Station, and with dismay as the USAJC’s presence has chased away the less-reputable clientele that were increasingly Heddersonport’s customer base. This has led to an increasing rate of immigration from Heddersonport, including a number of legitimate businesses relocating to Tarr-Eba, and has engendered a degree of resentment among entrenched interests on Heddersonport. There have been several attempts to sabotage Tarr-Eba, mainly aimed at the biotech systems, but both station security and robust bioengineering have thwarted such attempts. The government of Heddersonport has denied any connection to the attacks, blaming them on ‘rogue elements’.
Heddersonport is a ‘Sunflower’ style Bernal Sphere some 8 km in diameter at the hab sphere, 15 km with the reflecting ring, and 28 km long along its long axis. At its height, it housed 1,850,000 residents, but that is now down by 30%, Station maintenance, once Top Priority, has dropped to Secondary as the station’s fortunes decline. Its estimated M-factor is 16 million MDC.


Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf(Veschow-A)
-Red Dwarf(Veschow-B)
Number of Planets: 5
-Terrestrial (Delson)---A small rocky world pretty well cooked by proximity to Veschow-A and -B. Heat and radiation keep it from being more thoroughly investigated.

-Terrestrial (Moreson) ---Heddersonport orbits this small rocky Mars-like planet, and in the past used its resources and those of its largish moon Telsdale to leverage its economic domination of the system.Wartime depends have pretty much exhausted the readily accessible ore deposits and the post-war economic situation dried up both the markets for Veschow metals and the funds to upgrade to the technologies to dig out the remaining ores. The mining camp on Telsdale, Hedales, has been having labor problems and civil unrest of its own, as Heddersonport has tried to compensate for the loss of ore revenues by lowering the price, without lowering(and in fact INCREASING) output to remain competitive, while cutting the compensation to the miners.

-Terrestrial (Kadalin) --- This huge rocky world, shrouded in a thick methane atmosphere, is too punishing, gravity-wise, for settlement without elaborate gravity shielding. Nevertheless, its thick atmosphere contains several oxygen-rich layers, making it attractive to gas mining. Tarr-Eba Station orbits it.
Hyfhad Station and Mereson Hab occupy trojan orbit points in Kadalin’s orbit.

-Asteroid (Elshed)---Elshed is the largest asteroid in the Eteron Belt and home to Gorien Finborne’s Astromarket, catering to miners in the Eteron Belt. The Finbornes have managed to keep their business independent of the politics that consumed the rest of Veschow society, but even these wildcatters have felt the economic pinch of the system’s decline. Recently, however, Gorien VII Finborne invested in a PS/ASI TW Rock Convertor mining rig and added an AstroBurger franchise to the ‘market’s marque.

-Terrestrial (Fabius) ---Large frozen Fabius hasn’t yet been exploited due to its distance from Veschow-A and -B, but it is marginally easier and more economical to prospect and mine with gravity shielding than Kadalin. Its thick rings and twenty small moons have also to be properly prospected. It’s just a matter of time before either Heddersonport or Tarr-Eba makes a bid to exploit the planet, and a few wildcatters are talking about getting there first to see if there’s anything worth the effort*.
(*There is; there’s a substantial deposit of Kisenite on one of the Fabusian moons)

[SolCannibal]

This mild swerve from fully formed star polities into developing colonies and smaller scale communities of belters, orbitals and other habitat or ship-based groups with the backdrop of the Kamian War as framing device has been interesting and reminds me of all too many stories of small cities or towns struggling or turned into ghost towns by one major crisis or disaster, beyond their control or sometimes of their own causing.

Also makes me think of how much more vulnerable to the masses of infernal raiders of the Minion War, their attacks and plundering than systems with greater populations and more developed infrastructure such places can be, to only further compound their troubles.

[taalismn]

Sakasis (Vodel System)( United Systems Alliance Protectorate)(Thundercloud Galaxy)

“Sakasis got badly mad-dogged by the Dominion navy at the order of their supremo-lizard. This planet used to have thick lush forests...now it has knocked down toothpick plains, ash fields and grey dead forests. The Alques mixed airbursts with the ground-crackers and did a wide-swath tunguska on the place. Sakasis doesn’t have the surface water coverage for a real deep ice glaciation to cover those broken forests, but the Dominion threw in at least one heavy ocean strike that threw up enough water into the sky for some heavy snows .”

Sakasis was settled by a combination of ogres and orcs, the ogres of Mandsdel having staked settlement rights to the planet (effectively bought from a Vurgash agent) brought along a population of orcs to provide additional labor. This seemed fit to (d)evolve into a feudal-style society, with the more intelligent ogres presiding over a labor population of second-class citizen orcs, but the Sakasisian ogres seemed to thus far avoid abusing their authority. Regardless, there did come fractiousness as the orcs began demanding a greater say and share of the running of the colony.
However, the orcs and ogres were quick to set aside their differences when the Alquis Dominion came a-calling. After several poorly executed attempts to exploit the situation by offering one side or the other in dealing with the other faction, the Dominion just landed troops in the name of ‘enforcing the peace’, despite the fact that legally the Dominion didn’t have any stake in Sakasisian affairs. The hastily reunited Sakasisians repelled the invasion and made it clear that any further attempts at ‘intervention’ in their internal affairs would be too costly for the Dominion to sustain. For a time it seemed as if the Dominion would respect the Sakasisians’ wishes as their ships withdrew from the system.
Sakasis then had the dubious distinction of being the site of the Sakasis Massacre, carried out by personal order of the notorious General Gramnec. supreme leader of the Alquis Dominion, who wanted to send a message to anybody who thought to resist his expansionist campaigns. After suddenly returning to the sysyem, and without prelude or call for surrender, for a month, Dominion warships pounded the colony with massdrivers and KEWs, and used any EM sources they detected on the surface as aim points for orbital energy weapon bombardment. The Massacre left Sakasis almost depopulated, but for a few terrified survivors huddled in hidden sanctuaries. A few Sakasisians who were offworld at the time managed to flee the system ahead of Dominion pursuit, to carry word of the atrocity to other star systems.
Even with the threat of a return of the Alquis removed(explosively, over Quin’esh, by tactical nuclear firework), Sakasis was still not safe, as the planet now lay defenseless and open to other groups roaming the frontier. In fact, it was not until United Systems Alliance frontier forces re-surveyed the system and visited the planet wth the intention of more closely documenting the Massacre scene that it was discovered that there were any survivors at all.
On the strength of the survivors, Sakasis is being reclaimed, though not without considerable issues. The system has been accorded USA protectorate status for the time being.
For now, all the United Systems Alliance can do is search for and aid the survivors, many of who are still too traumatized to come out of hidding, and try to reduce the environmental damage. The USAJC is patroling the system against further attacks by any remaining Dominion forces, pirates, and colony-jackers. Meanwhile, the surviving Sakasisians who are still civilized are debating with their original sponsors on Mandsdel whether the latter should try to resettle the colony planet, or give up/sell development rights to a party like the United Systems Alliance, for open colonization, once environmental issues have stabilized.
The USA has negotiated with Mandsdel for rights to build basing facilities in the Vodel system. It has also brought in planetary shattertecs and undertaken emergency environmental remediation measures, such as seeding the overcast to precipitate the light-blocking dust and debris out of the atmosphere.

Solar System (Vodel)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 6
-Terrestrial (Dokoss)---- Huge hothouse world, ‘Super-Venus’. Its hostile surface conditions, heavy graviy, and high local solar radiation make it unattractive to manned exploration. It possesses eight moons which might merit survey, but again, Vodel’s radiation output makes exploitation or these bodies unlikely without heavy shielding.

-Terrestrial (Armese)---- Mars-sized hothouse world, similar to Venus. The fairly low tech of the Sakasis effort made anything but low sophistication unmanned probe exploration of Armese unlikely.

-Terrestrial (Sakasis)---- System lifeworld

-Gas Giant (Gantdon)---- Jupiter-sized gas giant. The focus on Sakasis meant that there were no plans to establish gas-mining efforts as with other systems.

-Terrestrial (Soldon)---- Mars-sized iceworld. Again, this planet has received only cursory survey, as almost all survey/development effort has focused on Sakasis

-Terrestrial (Megesh)---- Mars-sized iceworld. It possesses a single small moon.

Planet (Sakasis)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 9,500 km
Gravity: 0.8 g
Temperature: Temperate, but on the cool side, similar to Canada/Alaska/Siberia. Thanks to the Dominion bombardment, the temperature has dropped to Ice Age cold.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(8)--- One of the moons was home to Sakasis’s interface/colonial support space station, which was destroyed by the Alquis Dominion. A second smaller facility was located on another moon, but was owned by a private corppration and one of the sponsors from Mandsdel; this station too was destroyed, but before the inhabitants managed to escape. The USA has established its own base on one of the moons from which to conduct shattertec environmental remediation efforts.

-Cave Systems---The Sakasisians had only recently discovered extensive natural cave networks on their planet and had started to explore them in earnest when the Alquis Dominion attacked. Many of the cave systems closest to the larger settlements have collapsed with the fury of the Dominion bombardment that obliterated those communities, but it is hoped that more outlying caverns may have been reached by settlers in time to gain shelter. On the minus side, the uncharted subterranean warrens have made locating survivors who might have sought refuge in them more difficult.

Atmosphere: Thin, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mix
Terrain: Varies; 4+ terrain types
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Manganese
- Amethyst
- Sapphire
- Iron
- Gypsum
- Fluorite
- Diamond
- Salt
Hydrosphere:
Roughly 45% of the planet’s surface is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Dense, with a diverse range of plant and animal species. The planet had developed warm-blooded mammalian lifeforms with dinosauroid characteristics. A high resistance to UV radiation is also a common characteristic of native Sakasisian lifeforms.
However, the Dominion bombardment did considerable damage to the ecosystem and has created a nuclear winter situation, resulting in massive die-offs.
Civilization:
Colonized
Population:
At its height, Sakasis had a population of 1.9 million Ogres(40%) and 2.85 million Orcs(60%)
Getting a current population census is proving difficult: many of the few survivors have taken refuge in deep cave systems and are reluctant to come out of hiding. However, it’s estimated that there are less than 11,000 survivors, mainly orcs, on the surface.
Roughly 7,000 Sakasisians, mainly ogres, survived offworld.
Technology:
Galactic----Low-end. The Mandsdelian-backed colony effort didn’t include higher-end contra-gravity vehicles, robotics, forcefields, or heavy automation and materials synthesis/replication. The orcs provided much, if not most, of the basic labor. Electricity, fuel cells, and synthesized gas provided vehicle power, the main colony sites had municipal power grids powered by fusion powerplants, while smaller communities relied on solar and hydroelectric.
Economy:
Agriculture----As a starting -out colony, Sakasis’s main economic focus was on self-sustainability, and that meant agriculture. They were begnning to export some agricultural surplus in the form of stabilized foodstuffs and prepared animal hides, as well as various grades of timber. Post-Massacre, it is feared that the aromatic and much-prized Sakasisian savalwood may become extinct.
Wealth:
Sakasis had managed to achieve a Kauffin Scale Economic Rating of 5(Average) but with an upgrade looming, which was fairly impressive for a starter world. Post-Massacre, it has bottomed out at 1(Utter Squalor) with survivors living in caves, and recovery requiring every scrap of resources that the offworld survivors have left.
Government:
Sakasis was effectively run as a neofeudal state; with landowners and developers with the greatest shares in the settlement issue being the ruling council.
Law Level:
Was Lawful at the colony’s height, though with some unrest.
Popularity:
Unrest----At the time the Dominion appared on the scene. the ogres and orces were engaged in one of their frequent labor disputes(depsite being grateful for being included in the colonization effort, the orcs felt that they deserved a greater part of the colony’s profits and more say in its governance).
Post-Massacre, many of the surviving orcs blame the ogres for not doing more to protect the colony or evacuate more orcs(the greater portion of offworld survivors were orc spaceworkers and starship crew, as the more intelligent and better-educated ogres pwned their own spacecraft). This is not entirely true of ALL surface-side survivors, though, and a few bands of surviving orcs are extremely grateful to ogres who either led them to safety or sacrificed their own lives so the orcs might live. Still, for the offworld survivors, reconciling with those left behind is but one of the hurtles of any reconstruction.
Stability:
Sakasis is a ruin that needs plenty of work before it regains any degree of viability as a colony.

Quin’esh----Homeworld of the Naibead(United Systems Alliance member)(Thundercloud Galaxy)
“It’s hard to say no to a people who‘d regard a Davy Crocket tactical nuclear mortar to be a holiday salute rocket.”

“Concerns about the Dalscal primary ever going supernova are balanced by the expectation that well before that becomes an issue, the Naibead will have either accidentally or deliberately blasted their world on an outbound trajectory, probably in most SPECTACULAR fashion..”

Quin’esh is the homeworld of the natively-evolved Naibead, a hearty, resilient, insectoid species notable for their underground cities, lush surface parklands and coastal water-farms, and a dotty affection for pyrotechnic displays of all kinds. It is rumored that the Naibead invented cannon simply so they could shoot pretty tracers, starshells, and flash-bangs. They invented rockets so they could commnicate over the high mountain ridges crisscrossing their landscape(before they tunneled through them). They adopted democracy, almost inventing it as a way of thumbing their metaphorical noses at alien overlords. And they get high off electromagnetic pulses.
The Naibead have the distinction of breaking at least two local empires on their shores. First the Naibead drove out the Moredian Imperium using passive resistance, then they more aggressively and explosively decapitated the invading Alquis Dominion.
Though the Naibead exhibit no desire to carve out an interstellar empire or polity of their own, they are not averse to extraterrestrial contact, trade and travel. They have recently joined the United Systems Alliance because the USA offers members good trade benefits and services.
Though the Naibead do not wish to be considered military munitions merchants as such, they are also not so strict on the sales of their ‘fireworks’, as long as the explosives are used ‘in celebration of liberty’. That having been said, the Naibead sell a lot of fireworks offworld, especially to sector ‘neighbor’ Crosyar, where the skylances, fireclouds, and whizzabangahs are enthusiastically used to liberate land from the ferocious local wildlife. Naibead fireworks have also been used by the Free Worlds Council to celebrate the liberation of worlds from Imperial Kreeghor domination.
It’s perhaps telling of the Naibead character that among the first things they acquired as USA members was orbital defense battelites....which they promptly used as orbital fireworks display platforms.

Solar System(Dalscal)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-(Dalscal-A)Blue Giant
-(Dalscal-B) Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 3
-Terrestrial(Quin’esh) -----System lifeworld

-Gas Giant(O’desh)---Jupiter-sized O’desh and its eight moons were the site of a Moredian Imperium gas and mineral mining operation. When the Imperium withdrew from the Dalscal system, they removed any equipment of value from the workings and even tipped the orbital gas skimmer platform into O’desh’s atmosphere. This has required that later Naibead efforts to exploit the same resources essentally have to start from scratch. The Naibead have tentatively established new mines and scoop operations, using equioment bought from outside the system, so thre is now a small refueling station and refinery again in operation on the moons of O’desh

-Exotic(Mal’akana)----- This is a very large and dense asteroid belt or a loose planetary mass(one some nineteen times the mass of Jupiter), depending on how one looks at things. It is a cloud of system debris that hasn’t yet coalesced into a planet or spread out into a thin ring around the central stars. The Moredian Imperium took note of it and tried to explore the cloud, to determine what its gravitational attractor/repulsor was, but lost several probes and two manned ships to the ever-shiftig rocks. The Alquis Dominion were curious enough about it and runors of valuable minerals in the cloud to detach several scoutships to probe it; they lost a scout bfore giving up the effort. The Naibead have named the phenomenon ‘Mal’akana’, or ‘stone cloud’ and have evinced some curiosity abut it, enough to hint that they’re willing to cotemplate a joint-study effort with the USA.

Planet(Quin’esh)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,000 km
Gravity: 0.74 g
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
- Moons(2) Phern‘zad and Hata‘zad
* Phern‘zad - This large moon is the site of an offworld Naibead space colony and spaceport that handles most of the planet’s offworld trade. Phern‘zad is also the site of several industrial farms using imported commercially valuable exoflora.
* Hata‘zad- The Moredian Imperium discovered substantial quantities of Skalsersium on Hata‘zad and were mining it in the latter years of their occupation of Quin’esh, though they were apparently in no hurry to get as much as they could out of the mines. When the Naibead reopened the Vurgash workings, hoping to use them to establish a Naibead burrow-style lunar colony, they found plentiful ore remaining.
Atmosphere: Thin, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mix.
Terrain:
Two terrains dominate the Quin’eshi surface’ large fertile plains(60%) and high rocky mountains.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Scheelite
- Colombite
- Molybdenite
- Cobalt
- Salt
- Sulfur
- Platinum
- Titanium
Hydrosphere:
Roughly 50% of Quin’esh’s surface is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Dense. There’s been some species loss thanks to overexploitation at the hands of both the Naibead and the Vurgash, but the Naibead have been managing an ecological recovery. Most Quin’eshi lifeforms are a combination of mammalian and insectoid characteristics. Plant species include the nitrogen-fixing/sequestering dangmelon, which is used as the basis of a good number of home-hobby explosives on Quin’esh’.
Civilization:
Settled(Native species: Naibead)
Population:
5 billion Naibead
Technology:
Galactic----Though the Naibead downplay it, and favor simpler technologies at home, they’ve acquired a good deal of galactic technology through salvage(the Alquis Dominion left them a hefty amount of abandoned/wrecked equipment, including several shot-up, but restorable, warships) or trade. Commerce through the USA trade network is facilitating the acquisition of a good deal of desirable stuff, including Naibed-owned trader craft.
Economy:
Rich---Now that they’re trading with the rest of the 3G, the Naibead are quickly becoming rich.
Wealth:
Prosperous---The Naibead are waxing wealthy from ‘Three Ms’; Minerals, Munchies, and Munitions. They routinely dig up valuable minerals in the course of expanding their underground communities, their surface and underground farms produce food(notably the highly nutritious Ging-Yam) in abundance with surplus to sell, and their fireworks industry is...booming.
Government:
Peaceful democratic society with a mixed agricultural/manufacturing economy.
Law Level:
Could be considered be Overbearing in some respects, but generally Lawful with a respect for individual rights. Still, given what a deranged individual could do in an underground community, suspectts are held until proven innocent, and other civil rights are curtailed. Depsite this, or because of it, the Naibead are still rather easygoing, and their holidays, when more permissiveness is allowed, are more intense and raccous for the strictness and discipline practiced on workdays.
Popularity:
Fanatical----The Naibead LOVE their government, warts and all.
Stability:
Dynastic/Rocksteady----The current democratic system has been in place for several centuries with a long history of smooth transfers of power.



Here’s the Naibead again, reposted from the Fan Races thread:
NaiBead---Fireworks Masters!

“Wanna see a REALLY big boom?”

The NaiBead are pastoral natives of the planet Quin’esh, and are tough-shelled, insectoids with an ability to sense the higher bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. They are also insanely enthusiastic about explosives....
Early on in their social development, the NaiBead homeworld was conquered and lightly colonized by the Moredian Imperium, a Vurgash-Tuber(See TMNT: Turtles in Space for details of the Tuber empires) political entity, which ran Quin’esh like Victorian India; as a company planet. Though the Vurgash were nowhere near as brutal or uncaring as other imperial powers, like the Kreeghor or Atorans, the NaiBead were generally unhappy, and greatly resented the overlordship of their alien conquerors. Finally, after three hundred years of corporate overseeing of their lives, the NaiBead organized mass strikes and sitdowns that paralyzed the company operations at a time that the Moredian Imperium was undergoing a political collapse. Finally, after a decade of mounting expenses and declining revenue, with no support coming from home, the Moredians left in disgust, leaving a jubiliant NaiBead to celebrate their freedom.
The NaiBead are a peaceful people who enjoy a high standard of life, relatively high technology, and a tight, mutually supportive society. Most of their trade with the outside galaxies comes from the exploitation of their planet’s, and twin moons’, immense mineral and agricultural wealth; in the course of expanding their vast underground cities and communities, they routinely dig up fortunes in exotic minerals. They also export large quantities of vegetables(notably the highly nutritious Ging-Yam) and grains from their surface farms, with the combined incomes from mining and farming giving the Naibead a regular annual profit, which is typically invested in improving their societal infrastructure, with some surplus set aside for lean years, and for public events.
Despite being subterranean dwellers, the NaiBead love the great outdoors, and most of their surface is given over to agriculture and parklands for the hike-hop-happy NaiBead to go wandering, pinicking, and indulging their other great passion---fireworks.
Ever since they discovered nitrate explosive reactions, the NaiBead have been dotty for pyrotechnics...the bigger, louder, and brighter, the better. The Naibead are probably the only species who discovered explosives and went on to create TNT, Amatol, and napalm not as weapons or demolitions, but for peaceful recreational purposes. Not that it didn’t eventually occur to some bloody-minded Naibead that pointing a fireball-projector at a hostile sentient might have a deleterious effect on the health of the latter, but to the average Naibead, explosives were generally meant to be bright and loud, and herald some sort of celebration. It is a rare NaiBead who doesn’t have a little workbench and at least a basic skill in making simple black powder explosives and packing firecrackers. Their keenness to devise new forms of explosive mechanisms is frightening to many offworlders, who may be put off upon visiting a NaiBead household by the casual producing and tossing around of what amount to hand-grenades at the dinnertable, but which the locals consider little more than a birthday noisemaker. Professional pyrotechnicians on Quin’esh would be considered armourers on other planets.
Not surprisingly, NaiBead fireworks and explosive devices are much sought after...if one doesn’t mind the gaudy extra effects(there is no such thing as a ‘low flash’ NaiBead explosive), they’re powerful and inexpensive....and outside the Sector, few customs officials realize that the ‘fireworks’ are equivalent to military ordnance in power. The Naibead either don’t know(or refuse to acknowledge) how popular their fireworks are with mercenaries, militias, adventurers, and criminals.

Alignments: Any, but most(90%) are Good or Selfish
Lifespan: 90 years
Size: 4-5 ft tall, 120-150 lbs
Gender: Heterosexual
Physical Description/Appearance:
Four-legged insectoids with a hunched-over, oversized flea-like build, and spring-jointed legs, The back carapace is partcularly pronounced, covered in heavy armor plates, like a lobster. The head is hornet-like, with a mandibled mouth that looks buck-toothed, with two side mandibles. Eyes are relatively large and dull-metallic in color, with a pair of smaller eyes in between, and two long antennae. The arms are large, lobster-like claws, with a smaller armature with manipulatory appendages recessed in a inner forearm groove, jointed at a mutual elbow. NaiBead are typically steel-gray in coloration, with darker underbellies and limbs, though copper- and gold-tones are not unknown. NaiBead typically decorate their shells and limbs with patterns of metallic paints, or with silver and pastel accents.
Disposition/Attitudes:
Peaceful, friendly people who hold family and friends in high regard. Their enthusiasm for big loud explosives is a little worrying, however....
Physical Attributes:
IQ: 3d6
ME: 3d6
MA: 3d6
PS: 2d6+2
PP: 3d6
PB: 2d6
PE: 3d6
SPD: 4d6
(ISP):----
(PPE): 4d6
Hit Points:-------
SDC:-----
MDC: 2d4x10 MD+3d6 MD per level of experience
Horror Factor: 15 for a NaiBead waving a locally-made ‘Roman Candle’ around.
Natural Abilities:
*Natural Megadamage Beings

*Impact Resistance----The thick carapace of the NaiBead is actually shot through with airspaces and nullspaces, like hardened foam---this acts to absorb shock, so physical/kinetic attacks and impacts(including shockwaves from explosions) do HALF damage.

*Sense Vibrations----Fully extended, NaiBead attennae can pick up on vibrations, such as ground impact from footfalls, and the displaced air from another lifeform moving through the tunnels the NaiBead call home, from as far away as 500 ft.

*Nightvision---500 ft, with natural flash baffling(cannot be blinded by bright lights or quick transition between light and dark).

*See ElectroMagnetic Spectrum---The two tiny eyes between the large oculars, usually UV-sensitive in terrestrial insects, are the NaiBeads’ way of directly seeing electromagnetic activity...alowing them to see active electrical wires and equipment, and even lines of magnetic force. This gives them a +10% to Navigation rolls, and +15% to any repair rolls involving electrical equipment.
Intense EM radiation also acts as a stimulant to the NaiBead....EMP and radio-emission spikes have been known to trigger mild euphoria and erotic stimulation in NaiBead.

Psionics: None
Magic: None; but have the potential; a NaiBead Pyrotechnic Techno-Wizard could be a dangerous thing...
Cybernetics/Bionics: None; haven’t developed them and ain’t interested.
Available OCCs: Tend towards Scholarly professions such as scholars, Operators, farmers, vagabond scouts.
Skills of Note:
Naibead get a +10% to Demolitions and Demolitions Disposal, and a +15% to any application of Chemistry skill that deals with explosives.
Culture:
Peaceful democratic society with a mixed agricultural/manufacturing economy.

Note:
“Do you think it’s a dud?”
“Gee, I dunno! Why don’t you go over there and finagle with it and find out for yourself?!”
NaiBead fireworks are comparable to most military explosives, except that they almost always come with the same effects as a Flash-Bang device, while ‘Screamers’ or ‘Screechers’ have effects comparable to a Thunderclap spell, and flares are comparable to a Blinding Flash or Globe of Daylight spell, only burning for anywhere from 1 melee to five minutes!.
A ‘typical’ NaiBead ‘roman candle’ will shoot a plasma-like fireball doing 3d6 MD, up to 500 ft, and will continually fire up to 2d6 shots per melee for 1d4 melees(once lit, it cannot be turned off/doused without ruining the firework)! Worse yet, that same firework retails on the NaiBead homeworld for a mere 180 credits!

[Borast]

Is there anything like weapons that wield/manipulate gravity in Phaseworld? That is something where a celestial body might potentially provide much greater possibilities to exploit than any spaceship...

Y'mean like the GR guns?
While there is no description, I would say that the weapon likely uses rapidly progressing pulses of extreme gravitation to "pull" the rounds to hypersonic speeds. If true, the plasma discharge from the stripped atmospheric molocules would be truely stupendous!

Outside of that...every space faring race past a certain tech level has 'gravity' weapons... They're called asteroids.
If I recall correctly, even the TGE considers using them ... undesirable. After all, dead planets don't supply slave labou...ah, new citizens and easily accessed resources.

[SolCannibal]

Is there anything like weapons that wield/manipulate gravity in Phaseworld? That is something where a celestial body might potentially provide much greater possibilities to exploit than any spaceship...

Y'mean like the GR guns?
While there is no description, I would say that the weapon likely uses rapidly progressing pulses of extreme gravitation to "pull" the rounds to hypersonic speeds. If true, the plasma discharge from the stripped atmospheric molocules would be truely stupendous!

Must admit it rings no bells. Could you point a book or link where to read on them?

Outside of that...every space faring race past a certain tech level has 'gravity' weapons... They're called asteroids.
If I recall correctly, even the TGE considers using them ... undesirable. After all, dead planets don't supply slave labou...ah, new citizens and easily accessed resources.

Definitely not what i'm looking for, pretty much the contrary in fact i guess, since my desire was to look into weaponizing gravity as a resource to shore up a celestial body's defense or breadth of deterrents at least.

[Borast]

GR Guns - Phase World page 125 "Gravitonic Technology"
GR Guns, Vehicle mounted - same, page 155.

For "weaponising" gravity, closest I can think of would be the so-called black hole gun in the Hammer of the Forge fiction.

The Spacial Mage(?) may have gravitational effects in their spell list.
If they do, used appropriately, you could cause objects to slow for easier targeting, cause weapon attacks to have reduced effectiveness. (Deflecting incoming fire.)

Alternatively, you could weaponise CG equipment by attaching varying size CG emitters to a missile (from lampreys to standard AoE attacks), and have them programmed to overload, which could cause damage to all sorts of ship systems, even to the point of overloading the target's AG/ID fields, and causing *MASSIVE* shear forces, possibly turning the crew into paste against the bulkhead due to a sudden 100G accelleration. (The reason why you NEVER want your ship's SIF/Inertial Dampeners to fail just as you jump from STL to FTL speeds!...ripping the ship to flinders while also instantly eliminating the crew.)

Gravity can also be used as "less than lethal" restraints, pinning your target on the ground/deck...but you'll have to be careful confining it, or you'll cause anything above the target to suddenly accellerate at up to multiples of 10mps^2 onto the puir wee barin! (The power of Gravity Control covers some of this.)

[taalismn]

Remember, folks; heads break before the laws of physics do.

And in zero gee, Newton is one mean *****.

[pad300]

Since you're mixing mech and magic...
"What gravity well?"
With a small (comparatively) PPE battery and judicous use of appropriate spells, your missiles will only have to deal with defeating atmospheric friction, which, for all intents, drops off rapidly. Add in an "Immune to Heat" spell effect, and your missiles could be travelling at high Mach numbers as soon as they climb high enough to not "crash" in thin air. (Converslely, an object travelling at M20 will "crash" at about an altitude of just under 7000 metres, when it can no longer push air molecules out of the way fast enough.)
As for the lasers and particle beams, add in a magic projector that creates a temporary column of vacuum, and you won't have to worry about defocusing or EM effects. (Incidentally, while the outgoing energy of the PB could theoretically cause a "pulse" of EM radiation, it won't be 100% outgoing. No one knows what direction the high energy photons from a broken molecule will travel...including directly back at the shooter.

(Begins furiously paging through the magic books and fan-posted spells and taking notes_


And yeah, I though about how the hell tachyons could damage anything, but the original weapon's in the Manhunter book, so...rule of cool I guess, and it's not really tachyons being projected.
Because if that were the case, you could house your projectors deep underground(like the giant detectors) and if you specify the point that the tachyons have a physical impact, you could in effect shoot through your own planet from concealed positions....ouch....

The term Deep Site Meson Weapon mean anything to you?

[taalismn]

[

The term Deep Site Meson Weapon mean anything to you?

Hmmmm....I remember something from a Traveller/Gate:And Thus the JSDF Fought Here fanfic...It's an Imperial weapon, isn't it, a cannon that can shoot through solid material?

I've also created a few TW weapons using teleport spells that do the same on a lesser scale....Tank cannon that fire shells through teleport rifts to a designated point established by a forward observer with a wand. You can hide the tank in an underground parking garage and still sweet the battlefield(as long as you have forward observers to relay teleport points).

Related was the Thunderbunny revolver which was point and shoot....but what it really did was open up a teleport portal linked to a distant facility that lobbed an eight-inch(or bigger) rocket shell through the portal, so anticipated .357 round is instead battleship caliber mayhem on the receiving end...

[Omegasgundam]

Mesons Weapons (which are missnamed due to the march of science) are from Traveler. They burst into a massive cloud of radiation at a targeted point, unless they are blocked by a shielding method. Traveler Meson Screens (which are the most common defense) don't prevent the burst from happening, but it makes it happen outside of the hull. This still results in potentially lethal doses in the exterior areas, but its far better than it happening in the center of the hull.

[SolCannibal]

GR Guns - Phase World page 125 "Gravitonic Technology"
GR Guns, Vehicle mounted - same, page 155.

Thanks a lot for the reference, let's see if it jumpstarts anything....

For "weaponising" gravity, closest I can think of would be the so-called black hole gun in the Hammer of the Forge fiction.

I think i remember something about a black hole generator as a weapon of the era of the fall of the Dominators, maybe there's connection?

The Spacial Mage(?) may have gravitational effects in their spell list.
If they do, used appropriately, you could cause objects to slow for easier targeting, cause weapon attacks to have reduced effectiveness. (Deflecting incoming fire.)

Are the Space Mages in Mutants in Orbit, one of the Phaseworld dimension books or both?

Alternatively, you could weaponise CG equipment by attaching varying size CG emitters to a missile (from lampreys to standard AoE attacks), and have them programmed to overload, which could cause damage to all sorts of ship systems, even to the point of overloading the target's AG/ID fields, and causing *MASSIVE* shear forces, possibly turning the crew into paste against the bulkhead due to a sudden 100G accelleration. (The reason why you NEVER want your ship's SIF/Inertial Dampeners to fail just as you jump from STL to FTL speeds!...ripping the ship to flinders while also instantly eliminating the crew.)

Gravity can also be used as "less than lethal" restraints, pinning your target on the ground/deck...but you'll have to be careful confining it, or you'll cause anything above the target to suddenly accellerate at up to multiples of 10mps^2 onto the puir wee barin! (The power of Gravity Control covers some of this.)

Certainly a way to go indeed though i'm trying to go in a different direction, mass and the resulting gravity of a celestial body being used as a strategic resource in the defense of a colony world, depending on degree of development, obviously.

[taalismn]

[
Certainly a way to go indeed though I'm trying to go in a different direction, mass and the resulting gravity of a celestial body being used as a strategic resource in the defense of a colony world, depending on degree of development, obviously.

I remember in the Fanon that there was some thought that the 'Grand Canon' in Robotech/Macross was in part powered by Earth's gravity well, if not a core tap. But as it was never stated out and I doubt you're building something on the scale of 'Wipes out everything in a quarter of the sky', that would be much help.


Maybe something like a giant repulser beam that uses the planet/gravity well as a counterbalance? Does 'x'-amount of damage and displaces ships in orbit 'y'-number of thousand km x 'z' amount of gees...with it possible to overcharge the beam, but at the risk of reducing the planet's gravity by ''a-amount and rotational speed by 'b'?

[SolCannibal]

[
Certainly a way to go indeed though I'm trying to go in a different direction, mass and the resulting gravity of a celestial body being used as a strategic resource in the defense of a colony world, depending on degree of development, obviously.

I remember in the Fanon that there was some thought that the 'Grand Canon' in Robotech/Macross was in part powered by Earth's gravity well, if not a core tap. But as it was never stated out and I doubt you're building something on the scale of 'Wipes out everything in a quarter of the sky', that would be much help.

Truth be told, fixed position gun emplacements are not exactly the most awesome of the ideas, even more so when it comes to far from practical superguns. There's always a lot that may find itself a convenient blindspot and bombard you from there, much like happened to the 'Grand Canon' itself, if memory tricks me not.

Maybe something like a giant repulser beam that uses the planet/gravity well as a counterbalance? Does 'x'-amount of damage and displaces ships in orbit 'y'-number of thousand km x 'z' amount of gees...with it possible to overcharge the beam, but at the risk of reducing the planet's gravity by ''a-amount and rotational speed by 'b'?

I wouldn't say reducing planetary gravity as a whole per se, but maybe spots of instability here and there because, truth be told, mass is never whole uniform so neither is gravity, could lead into interesting tables of localized complications.

[taalismn]

[
I wouldn't say reducing planetary gravity as a whole per se, but maybe spots of instability here and there because, truth be told, mass is never whole uniform so neither is gravity, could lead into interesting tables of localized complications.

Earth tremors, temporarily reduced/Increased gravity, weather vortices, inner ear disorientation.

Read David Brin's Earth. It's about a micro black hole that's fallen into the Earth and the effort to get rid of it. Then they discover that sending focused high frequency beams of oscilllation at it causes it to generate amplified gravity beams that shoot spout of the Earth, and the fun REALLY begins.

[Borast]

The Spacial Mage(?) may have gravitational effects in their spell list.
If they do, used appropriately, you could cause objects to slow for easier targeting, cause weapon attacks to have reduced effectiveness. (Deflecting incoming fire.)

Are the Space Mages in Mutants in Orbit, one of the Phaseworld dimension books or both?

RIFTER... Can't remember the issue...

Google says it may be issue #3.

[taalismn]

Vecar VI----(United Systems Alliance Colonial Outpost System)
“Metal-poor Mestos isn’t going to have much infrastructure without industrial metals, and its star system is pyhss-poor in spare rocks that are worth mining. So we either have to ship in metals from across the galaxy, or we look around its stellar neighborhood for sources a little bit closer. Of course, if we set up shop in any of the nearby systems, that further secures our claims in the sector.”

“Give us dust, light, and ice and we’ll make a home of it.”

Neighboring(1.3 light years away) star to Vecar VIII(the home system of inhabited Mestos). It has been speculated that Vecar VI, which displays a relatively high velocity and outbound direction relative to its neighbors, made a near pass to Vecar VIII in the distant past, and stripped that star of much of its planets and accretion material, leaving only Mestos and a low density of free material remaining.
With interest in Mestos on the rise, further attention is being paid to other stars in its vicinity, including Vecar VI.
The worlds of Vecar VI are either too hot or too cold to sustain normal life, but that hasn’t stopped ambitious Belters from making a go at settling the system. While they haven’t hit paydirt like a kisnite or kihvite strike, they have found enough heavy metals and ice to support several settlements. The discovery of an antiparticle-rich plasma tube system around an outer gas giant has only improved the economic forecast for Vecar VI.
While trade is still light through the Vecar VI system, and mainly consisting of regular ore and finished metal runs to Mestos, word has gotten out in the USA of this addition to the Alliance’s network of worlds, and a few free merchants have already stopped in at the system to ply their wares.

Solar System(Vecar VI)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
- Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 8
-Terrestrial(Veceni)--- Earth-sized but sun-scorched and possessing only a thin poisonous atmosphere.

-Terrestrial(Lomori)--- Gargantuan, shrouded in a hot thick poisonous atmosphere. It has a large moon, Longri, which has been settled by 3,000 ‘Rockers’ and mined for its large aluminum and scheelite deposits. Lonhri also shows promise as a source of Helium-3 fuel, so surface rakes are already being deployed from the settlements of Halser and Pittville to comb the surface soil for the valuable isotope.

-Asteroid(Katchgold’s Harbor)---This large asteroid narrowly avoided being named something else by the survey party, but one of the civilian contractors accompanying the government crew rushed ahead and staked claim to it, hanging her name on it. Balily Katchgold currently operates a small settlement on and over the scenic ‘harbor’ of the asteroid’s name; a deep ice-filled inclusion in the rocky crust. The 700-strong settlement is built into a cave system and excavated tunnel system at the top of the ice mass and draws water from the ice.

-Terrestrial(Betos)---Tiny Betos has the advantage of being buried under a layer of dirty ice several dozen miles deep. That’s made it currently the water rservoir of the system, with the communities of Frosterville, Cuberton, and Aqualon making a living cutting ice and transporting it to the other settlements in the system.

-Terrestrial(Harmen)---While Betos is ice-covered, equally tiny Harmen is nearly bone-dry, but being chunky with valuable copper deposits, it still rates a 500-strong mining setttlement.

-Terrestrial(Galdor)---Large, methane fog-shrouded Galdor’s eight moons have yet to be prospected thoroughly. However, one of the smaller moons, Castek, nwas visited by two minor clan Dweelie merchant ships, the Convergence of Interests and the Deep Pockets of Potential, soon after the Vecar VI system was officially settled. The older and more decrepit of the two ships, the Convergence, was deliberately crashlanded on Castek. Half of her crew transferred over to the Deep Pockets , which then left the system. The remaining crew have cannibalized their ship to build a colony habitat and small trading post/stopover station. Some 220 Dweelie maintain the station on Castek, receiving the occasionaly Dweelie ship traveling through the sector and trading with the other colonies in the Vecar VI system. How the Dweelie learned that the system was being colonized remains a mystery, and one the itinerant freespace merchanters haven’t coughed up yet.

-Gas Giant(Nempf)---Large Nempf lacks any moons of significance, making the obvious potential commercial gas mining a bit more difficult. As the surface scrape mines of Lonhri currently satisfactorily supply Vecar VI’s fusion fuel needs, this isn’t considered much of an issue.

-Gas Giant(Demotth)------Of interest of this large gas giant is the fact that it posseses an unusually powerful magnetic field, powerful enough that even far from the system’s primary Demotth’s field interacts with both its five moons and the solar wind to generate a plasma field rich in antimatter particles. Though not as rich as that of Keljek in the Kretig Domain core systems, which was dense enough to fuel the Kretig military space fleet, Demotth still represents an exploitable source of antimatter fuel.
Demotth’s moon Argoth plays host to a USAJC naval station.

[SolCannibal]

The Spacial Mage(?) may have gravitational effects in their spell list.
If they do, used appropriately, you could cause objects to slow for easier targeting, cause weapon attacks to have reduced effectiveness. (Deflecting incoming fire.)

Are the Space Mages in Mutants in Orbit, one of the Phaseworld dimension books or both?

RIFTER... Can't remember the issue...

Google says it may be issue #3.

I think i found it also in Fleets of the 3 Galaxies, but thanks anyway.

[taalismn]

And updating our favorite backwater of Mayberry Mestos:

*Mestos
”What’s wrong with this scene? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it; there’s two LARGE interstellar freighters at the spacefield at the same time, and they’re leaving with FULL cargo holds! And we got a portside warehouse that’s still got FULL storerooms waiting for another freighter scheduled due in soon! This place hasn’t seen this much activity in nearly a century!”

Once a dying-in-its-sleep ex-mining colony, marshy Mestos has become one of the USA’s breakout success stories thanks to several happenings:
-Open Settlement---The opening of Mestos to colonization has attracted more than a few folks wanting to just settle down to enjoy a life of peaceful farming, made even more attractive by:
-Cash Crops---- The discovery that Mestos’ rather bland cash crop, moho fruit, can serve as the basis of a number of tastier foodstuffs and drinks, most profitably a near-universally compatible ale-like beverage. That, and the introduction of several other exploitable crops, such as rice, paintweed and cranberries, has led to the establishment of increasingly larger and profitable farms, which are keeping a greater number of Mestos’ young people on the planet, or else luring them back after getting technical and more cosmopolitan education offworld.
- Introduced Animals---Rabbits and beavers have made an appearance on Mestos, and they are thriving, providing the locals with a new welcome source of meat and pelts. The animals may have been introduced by:
- TW Community----The discovery of a dimensionally transposed d-bee community of technowizards with ‘green’ ideas has bolstered what little local industry existed before on the planet.


Expanded Geological Features of Mestos
-Peat Sea---A massive bog covering some 530,000 sq. kilometers. Besides being ecologically rich(for Mestos) it is also home to some 25,000 ‘newtowners’, d-bee transplants imhabiting a dimensionally-rifted community(previously thought impossoble on leyline-lacking Mestos, until one factored in the fact that the newcomers are technowizards).

-Loten Plateau---One of the few high points on Mestos’ surface, the Loten Plateau rises some 900 ft above local sea level. It is mainly cool and dry and is the site of Mestos’ main(and for the longest time, ONLY) spaceport, not far from Mestos’ effective capital ‘city’. The Loten Plateau is bordered on three sides by the Seeps, zones of large underwater upwelling freshwater springs.

-Gulchen Trench----Deep water is rare on Mestos, but it does exist. The result of a rare tectonic plate fault line-trench, the Gulchen lies under the Gaki Basin, a small saltwater sea. Relatively shallow as oceanic trenches go, the Gilchen is only some 1.1 miles deep, but some five miles wide, and is home to a number of interesting algae types, fed by warm water seeping from hot springs in the canyon walls. The United Systems University(USU) has gamely dropped a few benthic drones into the Gulchen to survey it.

-Trevian Channel---Moonless Mestos’ tides are solar-driven, so this long serpentine waterway(nicknamed variously the ‘Mestosian Amazon’ and ‘the Aota of Mestos’) stretching over nearly a third of the planet develops some rather powerful tidal surges(akin to the Fudian tides and Amazon River surges of Earth). Generally overlooked by Polytectoncorp because it was nowhere near the kihvite deposits, the Trevian has since become an important waterway to development of the planet’s landmasses. It’s also providing a new source of entertainment, as several parties of colonists have already taken to whitewater-running its tidal surges with amphibious vehicles or on surfboards.

Special Considerations for Mestos:
As Mestos is opened to wider colonization, observation of the native-born population has raised some medical concerns about long-term effects of the planet’s low gravity on residents, especially locally born. With issues of the 0.4 g gravity field leading to deterioration of heavier-world physiologies’ muscle mass and bone density, making future offworld excursions more problematic, colonial development officials are looking at solutions to combat the problem. Some community civic and health centers have instituted ‘gee-rooms’ with gravity plating set to higher values, and several dietary drug supplements and biotech treatments are available to combat bone and muscle loss.

Transportation on Mestos
Until fairly recently, transportation on Mestos consisted of what vehicles Polytectoncorp left when they pulled out. With Mestos’ recent economic boom and the expansion of farmlands, there has been a sudden pressing need for more transport, especially utility equipment. Fortunately, the USA has a variety of suppliers perfectly able to meet Mestos’ new needs. To negotiate Mestos’ swampy terrain, most vehicles imported to the planet are amphibious, so craft like PS/ASI’s LGEVU-02 ‘Spritzer’, PS-HC-07 ‘Reliable’ Utility Hovercycle and PS/TVV-MDUKW2 MDUKWIII ‘MegaDuck’ are very popular. The local Mestosians being rather eccentric, though, they’ve kitbashed some unique vehicles of their own, using catelogue components.
One local innovation in particular, the ‘Bobber’ or ‘swampballer’, is catching attention. Looking like a regular commercial groundcar body atop four omni-directional ‘trackballs’ off a PS-APC117 Dancat Armored Personnel Carrier/Urban Security Vehicle, the ‘swampballer’uses ‘smart-tread’ flexible channels on the surface of its ball-wheels to paddle through water and gain traction on solid ground. PS/ASI has also introduced an amphibious harvester-combine for cultivating aquatic plants and clearing water-weeds from canals.
Air transport is provided by a variety of VTOLs and GMR craft.

[SolCannibal]

Nice to see the Peat Sea and its residents being adopted in full. Will try to add a little bit more on them in the future.

[taalismn]

Nice to see the Peat Sea and its residents being adopted in full. Will try to add a little bit more on them in the future.

We need to give them a name at the very least. Name them.

[SolCannibal]

Nice to see the Peat Sea and its residents being adopted in full. Will try to add a little bit more on them in the future.

We need to give them a name at the very least. Name them.

I was considering New Lyonesse, in reference to the backstory context i got the "technodruids" and their green TW from.
The population i'd say is varied: goblins 35%, kobolds 25%, humans 15%, giants (a mixed population of jotuns, gigantes & nimro) 10%, others 15%.
One of the reasons behind the large goblin population is a sort of augmentation method the druids discovered that only works on them, the "Cecrops process", that blends the individual with a worm of Taut in a sort of "serpent-legged" humanoid with stats based on the creature.

But out of curiosity, how familiar to/explored by characters from GNE continuity would be France, Belgium & Netherlands in Rifts Earth?

[taalismn]

Nice to see the Peat Sea and its residents being adopted in full. Will try to add a little bit more on them in the future.

We need to give them a name at the very least. Name them.

I was considering New Lyonesse, in reference to the backstory context i got the "technodruids" and their green TW from.
The population i'd say is varied: goblins 35%, kobolds 25%, humans 15%, giants (a mixed population of jotuns, gigantes & nimro) 10%, others 15%.
One of the reasons behind the large goblin population is a sort of augmentation method the druids discovered that only works on them, the "Cecrops process", that blends the individual with a worm of Taut in a sort of "serpent-legged" humanoid with stats based on the creature.

But out of curiosity, how familiar to/explored by characters from GNE continuity would be France, Belgium & Netherlands in Rifts Earth?

Works for me; I probably woulda named it something like 'Goggshoggabluth'('We're rather divided on whether to shorten it to 'Gogg', 'Shogg', or simply 'Bluth'....a lot of passionate support for all of those.")
Come to think of it, that sounds rather goblinesque...

Ewweww....symbiotes! I was about to bring up that we really haven't abused the symbiote tables in Powers Unlimited two yet!

[taalismn]

World Updates:

*Harrisar

“Wow, just wow....I never thought I’d find work, let alone outside the city! But here I am, on a plastic rake in the middle of the ocean, cleaning up the floating debris of our arrogant and ignorant past. And that’s another thing I never expected; in addition to a bed of my own and regular meals, I’ve been getting a real education too. Planetary management, history, civics. a whole load of other info that was never talked about when I was back in the warrens hustling for calories. I even know what a ‘sea change’ is, and I can appreciate that I’m changing the sea for the better in cleaning it up, and the experience is changing me for the better. We’re both getting better. That’s mutualism, another concept I never thought I’d be talking about and understanding.

“Yeah, I’m first-generation offworld tube-worlder from Harrisar system. My ’rents were just smart enough to be trainable for operating orbital smelter and teleoperations gear, so they got family cubic on one of the first orbit-islands. I could see ol’ Harri from the colony, but never felt any real desire to go there. The parental units had nothing good to say about shoulder-to-shoulder dirty cities and paying for ration crumbs in the street markets. My older sister remembers growing up under open sky; that’s probably why she joined the outworld legion to see trees and wild life on other worlds, and get some acreage on one. Me, I’m proud to be a steelworlder! Up here we’re fitting out the next two asteroid cruisers built in this system and the new spinner facs for the super-molecule cabling for the new skyhooks and the orbital elevator in the works! And the new shipyards! Can’t forget the new shipyards! The dirtball may be the center of attention of this system, but I tell you the real engine of the new economy’s in the orbitals! You’ll see more of the heavy transports in the dee-lanes coming from our construction slips, and I mean to have my fingerprints on a lot of those ships!”

“At least they’re nit the T’zee. Humans may be regarded as the overbreeding vermin of the megaverse, but at least they’re not the T’zee!”

Since implementation of planetary rehabilitation soon after Contact, overpopulated Harrisar has begun to show signs of improvement.
-Immigration----Programs of shifting population offworld have begun to bear fruit in the form of more available living space and reduced demand on human services. There are continuing complaints of locally-administered forced colonist-conscription(including court-ordered exile/deportation) matched by complaints of a ‘brain drain’ of skilled workers to the new colonies. There are also complaints that poorly prepared, technologically-illiterate colonists are ‘dying off in droves’ in the new colonies(the same complaint has been leveled about military units raised on Harrisar for offworld deployments; the poorly-trained and equipped troops being used as cannonfodder in alien wars). And laws forbidding colonists from returning to Harrisar for at least five years rankle some as suspicious. In general, however, Harrisar is making the transition to an outward-bound planetary culture, albeit with some birthing pains.

-Education----Liberal use of psychowarfare media strategies have begin to indoctrinate Harrisar’s population in commonsense stewardship of their planet and the new colonies. Again, there has been some cultural resistance to birth control measures, limited reproductive rights, and ‘manifest destiny’ thinking, and darker conspiracies circulating about mind control and sterility-inducing chemicals dumped in the air and water

-Technology---- Dangerous finite-dependency technologies such as fossil fuel power have been steadily replaced with nuclear fusion and naturally renewable power systems. Petrochemicals are increasingly used for feedstocks for plastics and food synthesis, though even that is trailing off to nuclear synthesis. Synthetic or TW-produced foodstuffs are supplementing naturally grown/raised foods, which have been historically staggering behind demand. More efficient recycling is reclaiming more material, especially from collected industrial pollutants. Private vehicles have been largely replaced by more efficient public transportation systems. GMR systems and two low orbit ‘skyhook’ systems have greatly facilitated moving large numbers of people offworld. Likewise, reliable large-capacity cryostasis systems allow large numbers of colonists to be ‘put on ice’ until ships are available to move them outsystem to new territories.

-Bioremediation---- Liberal use of terraforming tools to fix Harrisar’s overexploited and polluted ecology, especially its oceans, have been effective in reversing the downward ecological spiral. Though offworld mystics have complained about Harrisar’s ‘depleted’ or ‘weakened’ planetary spirit, the shattertecs have made extensive use of TW systems to repair, refresh and refurbish natural process on the planet. The planetary rehabilitationists are predicting that Harrisar’s oceans may be viable for marine life again in as little as another quarter century.

Harrisar still continues to be a source of recruits for the United Systems Alliance Joint Command’s mutual army. Though derided by some as cannonfodder and nicknamed the ‘Hungry Legions’, ‘Ration-Troopers’, and ‘Locust Brigades’ in reference to their joining for extra food and land grants, the Harrisar troops have shown great discipline, restraint, and courage in the campaigns they’ve been engaged in. After experiencing clean air and water, undamaged ecosystems, and free animal life for the first times in their lives, many, if not most, of the Harrisar-raised soldiers become very interested in protecting such things, and many become devout Gaiaists. And few feel any lingering loyalty to the corporate and government interests back on Harrisar.
Though some observers, such as the long-lived Altess, predict that, if current trends continue, the USA’s source of ‘ration-recruits’ will dry up in another few centuries as the Harrisar situation becomes less desperate, the Harrisar Divisions are making their mark on the USA.