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Strange Stars Setting Overview
The Strange Stars is the sphere of the human phyle in the far future, a
time millennia after the first human expansion and the rise (and fall)
of builders of the hyperspace nodes, the Archaic Oikumene. In the current era, the Strange Stars are fragmented into smaller cultures and civilizations.
The former cradle of the Archaic Oikumene is a depopulated area without a
central authority known as The Zuran Expanse. The Expanse is home to
dangers like the inhuman Ssraad (in three colors), and ruined worlds that entice treasure-seekers like Tenebrae and the Library of Atoz-Theln. It’s also home to unusual cultures like the invertebrate Zhmun of Aygo and the self-improvement cult of Aurogov.
Spinward from the Expanse is the Alliance , a union of species allied for
protection and trade. Members of the Alliance include the green-skinned
psionicists of Smaragdoz, the privacy obsessed Neshekk of Kuznuh, the avian-humanoid splice Hyehoon of Omu, the human-alien blended cyborg Blesh, the Gnomes of Dzrrn and the angel-like Deva of Altair.
Bordering the Alliance is the expansionistic and theocratic Instrumentality of Aom.
On the other side of the Expanse is The Vokun Empire. Besides the decadent vokun, the empire contains several client species. The cybernetic crustacean-like Engineers build much of Vokun technology. The yellow-skinned Ibglibdishpan are
their biologic computers. The Kuath are bioarmored child-soldiers.
There are a number of other interesting cultures and worlds: the oneirochemist Phantasist, the ancient mind excavators of Deshret, and the warrior-poet Moravecs of
Eridanus, among others. The major galactic powers are at least
openingly cordial (whatever may go on behind the scenes) and trade takes
place between the two “civilized” portions of the galaxy that must pass
through hyperspace nodes in the “wilder” areas (not just the Expanse,
but the Rim and Coreward Reach, as well). New cultures, lost since the
Great Collapse are discovered from time to time, and their are number of
ruined worlds with treasures to loot.
Strange Stars Setting Assumptions
There are a set of underlying premises to the Strange Stars setting which might affect the play of the game.
Post-Apocalyptic. The technology level of civilization in the
past was higher than today. This provides the rationale for some
“sufficiently advanced” Clark level technology, the “points of light”
nature of civilization, and also for lost world exploration and space
scavenging.
Big But Bounded, and Subdivided. Strange Stars exists within one
galaxy--and only a relatively small part of that one, but still there’s
plenty of room for new clades, cultures, even minor empires to be
introduced without much disruption. The use of hyperspace means that
there are “clusters” that can serve as smaller sandboxes if the whole
area is too daunting. The game can be as focused as a single world or
station.
Harder than Average. While Strange Stars is in no sense a
“hard science fiction setting,” there are a number of details I tried to
keep “semi-hard” and realistic. Earthlike worlds are most often the
result of engineering and there are seldom multiple earth-like planets
in a system. Most people will live in orbital habitats. FTL exists but
works in such a way that it couldn’t violate causality. There are very
few “single biome” planets, and those there are tend to have an
explanation for why they exist. The aliens aren't very alien, but that’s
because they’re most likely the descendants of humans or human
creations.
Intersystem, Fast. Intrasystem, Slow. Related to the last point
is the way FTL works. Hyperspace nodes tend to go to one place in a
system (and may well dump out somewhere other than directly at the
planet of interest). In system travel is most likely non-FTL and takes a
while. This allows both zipping around the galaxy (at least a part of
it) and “realistic” distribution of clades, but with a hard science
fiction scale to a solar system, allowing the full array of grizzled
asteroid prospectors, fringe religious communities on gas giant moons,
or isolated research bases. The planets highlighted in the setting book
are just the “major feature” of their respective systems, not the whole
story. Of course, the way space travel works also has implications for
how and where space battles are fought.
A Post-Internet Conception. Most classic space opera doesn’t take
into account the internet in general, much less ubiquitous social
media, but these things are present in Strange Stars. As a rule of thumb, imagining “how would that work in the Strange Stars?” involves more extrapolation from the present that looking back to how it was done in Star Wars or Star Trek.
There’s Always Belief. The future doesn’t mean belief systems go
away. The best of space opera (Dune, for instance) deals with this, but
it was something I didn’t want to leave out or to portray
one-dimensionally. From the arbitrary taboos of the Kosmoniks to the
realpolitik theocracy of the Instrumentality, it’s an important part of
what makes cultures in the setting distinct.
Technology In The Strange Stars
The level of technology is more advanced in the Strange Stars setting than the default assumptions of Stars Without Number or most old school science fiction roleplaying games. A Game Master may choose to ignore some or all of these elements to make the setting more in keeping with the preferences of their group. For those wishing to use the setting as written, here is a brief discussion of the basic technologies of the setting, with suggestions on how to implement them. Remember that the tech level varies across worlds and habitats: some places are at a Stone Age level, while others border on post-scarcity.
METASCAPEMost people experience the world through an augmented reality overlay referred to as the metascape. Each world (or world plus its satellites) contains useful information for travel, social media messages, and lots and lots of spam. Nobody walks through a public square without their filters on, lest they be bombarded by all sorts of unsolicited virtual messages. Clothing is enhanced — or even sometimes completely generated — in the metascape. Some jurisdictions make it a crime to view the world unfiltered by the metascape, as this is seen as an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
The metascape primarily comes into play in how the GM describes the world and how the players approach it; it doesn’t require a lot of rules changes. When entering a new location, the GM will need to describe both the physical (people, equipment, structures) and the virtual (animations, signage, notes/tags, etc.) elements that the characters will see. Characters can leave messages for other specific people in locations or call up publicly available building floorplans. They can also hack or falsify the metascape using the standard Hacking rules.
The noosphere is essentially the cyberspace of the far future, encompassing traditional internet activities, the metascape, and the living environment of Infosophonts. Think of it as the nervous system of a civilization. In gameplay, again, this is more a matter of presentation. GMs and players should just keep in mind the availability of information in the real world, via a standard smartphone, and use this as a model to extrapolate from rather than looking to most cinematic space opera.
Noospheric messages or queries that must travel between worlds or between star systems do so no faster than the speed of light or the Hyperspace Network, if available. The noosphere isn’t real-time or continuous; it’s like a collection of networks between which information can be passed.
IMPLANTED CYBERWAREIn the Strange Stars, brain-computer interfaces are as common as smartphones are today and are used for similar purposes. The typical pre-programmed software package allows metascape interface, noospheric connectivity, communication
(where messages can either be read or heard as read by an avatar or the sender or anyone else), chronometry, basic calculation, and interface with most modern devices. Most individuals don’t navigate their own apps, but use a daemon or “mook” (a nonsophont artificial intelligence) as a personal assistant and answering service. Some cultures (like the Vokun) find implanted devices distasteful, as do some individuals. These groups use wearable devices instead, for the most part.
The only mechanical impact of this sort of cyberware is in the (dis)use of the SWN Computer skill. Like on Star Trek, most characters will simply ask their personal assistants for things and never need to make a Computer skill check. Hacking or deep searches of ancient or restricted data records will be the only time these skills come into play — unless characters are on a pre-noosphere world.
A fabber is a nanofabrication unit (essentially an advanced 3D printer) that assembles finished products from raw materials at a molecular level. These aren’t easily portable, but they are near ubiquitous household and shipboard items, and public units can be used for a fee, generally figured on total mass of the item(s) fabricated. For portable items this can be approximated via encumbrance: Every unit of encumbrance fabricated after 1 carries an additional 5% charge to the standard price based on item cost per fabber user per day. (Example: Faizura Deyr fabbers lowlight goggles, a pressure tent, and 6 days rations on a public fabber. This will cost her 200 credits for the goggles, 120 for the pressure tent, and 5.25 for the rations). Anything from food-stuffs (though this would only be done on long space voyages) to starship parts can be made given enough substrate and the necessary “blueprints.” Commercially available models can be “jailbroken” to make illicit drugs or weapons, but it’s generally easier just to buy or steal such common items.
In rules terms, these function like the personal matter compilers described in Mandate Archive: Transhuman Tech. There are also larger units like the stationary matter compilers found on polities or the largest vessels, as well. As a rule of thumb, making one item will cost about the same as the list price in the Stars Without Number core book given the matter required, licensing fees for software, etc. Additional items will only cost half the listed price.
Programmable matter is able to change its properties or functions on the basis of user input or trigger stimuli. Programmable matter (or smart matter) is used to make exoskins (vacc suits that form around the wearer as they pass through a membrane aperture on an airlock) and smart-tools (similar to Unknown, but with multiple uses, able to become any tool that would part of a toolkit).
The above describes the technologies of the most advanced civilizations of the Strange Stars, but some societies have more specialized areas of expertise, and there is remnant technology of the Archaic Oikumene that falls into the category of Clarke’s Third Law. The most common example of the latter is the Hyperspace Node Network discussed in the next chapter, but there are the other, more classically Space Opera technological aspects of the setting: the sky city of Eidolon, the Circus megastructure, and mysterious things like the Tenebrae Labyrinths and the Apotheosis Maze. Any examples of Pretech given in SWN books not already present in basic Strange Stars technology would be appropriate as examples of Archaitech.
The Smaragdines are the only culture described in the SSGSB that makes a concerted effort to develop psitech, and they do not tend to exploit it for military purposes. The psitech items described in the SWN core rules would be within their ability to create, however.
RECENTLY MODIFIED ARTICLES
Random Sophont Races
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Slavers (yssgalahl is an approximate rendering of their autonym) are aquatic sophonts who look vaguely like 4 m long mucus-covered catfish with tentacles. They are a psionic species who use their abilities to stun prey in their native oceans. The Slavers never developed more than rudimentary tool use until human explorers visited their world, and they discovered that off-world organisms have little resistance to their abilities.
Only the sheer size of galactic civilization, their aquatic nature, and the resistance of other psi-capable species kept them from establishing a vast empire. Instead, they became slave traders.
They keep a number of personal servants and sell the rest on the galactic market-places where “naturally” grown sophonts are preferable to Bioroids or robots. The Slavers are the primary suppliers of Minga slaves.
The official Vokun assessment of Yantra was that it had little to offer the Empire. It's natives were primitive (at best they had mastered iron) and demonstrated a pervasive culture of nonviolence so ingrained that they were insuitable for military conscription. The Ibglibdishpan analysts verified that there had once by an advanced civilization on Yantra: the environment had been finely tuned, nanotechnology (though dormant) still permeated the biosphere, and seemingly primitive stone structures (shrines, mostly, for the superstitious Yantrans) actually showed complex femto-level engineering.
Obviously, the primitives had no knowledge of these technologies, and there was no indication they ever did. The vokun are an incurious species. They assumed some great pre-Collapse civilization had left its mark and moved on. Yantra was only usefully as a pleasure world; it's mostly tropical clime and pliant, simpleminded, and exotically attractive populace provided an ideal place of relaxation for vokun nobility.
The Ibglibdishpan were vexed by the anomalies. It only took a few in the continuing series of seemingly random network and equipment failures that have plagued the Imperial conquest of Yantra for them to deduce the truth. They were not at all surprised when vokun junior officers began to disappear or have unusal accidents--never frequently enough to arouse suspicion on the part of the vokun, but a detectable statistical signal, nonetheless. For reasons known only to them, the ibglibdishpan have kept their conclusions to themselves.
Physical Characteristics: Yantrans are attractive, lithe humans with yellow skin tones and short antennae emerging from their foreheads.
Psychological Characteristics: Yantran culture tends to emphasize nonviolence, the importance of the “now,” and the interconnectedness of all things.
Names: Yantrans use a personal name and a family name. The family name is typically given first.
Examples:
Surnames: Aranun, Haunahi, Hokuni, Kamata, Nohoka, Pomaku, Tutani
Female: Ahilani, Aonami, Elaheli, Hani, Ko’ana, Mululani, Poma, Uku
Male: Atamu, Aonga, Hukono, Isako, Kamaki, Rano, Tuati, Yano, Uko.
Backgrounds: Peasant, Priest, Tribesman.
Classes: Expert most commonly, followed by Warrior. Psychics are rare.
Attributes: Standard.
Special
Nanites
Yantran have nanotechnology through their nervous system, allowing integration with the extensive (though hidden) engineering of their Vokun-occupied homeworld, Yantra . This is not generally of use elsewhere, though it can be detected with the appropriate equipment.
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Shortly after the incorporation of The Radiant Polity, haphazard thievery on Deshret coalesced into a business supporting a new society. The tall, jade-skinned, ectomorphic Ogüptans control the exploitation of the past from their capital, the spaceport Moph. Some are sandminers, sifting the red dust for fragments of code and the rare whole artifact left from the Great Collapse. Others are tomb-robbers, wresting the minds of the long dead to sell into slavery, to toil in the infospheres of today.
Random Planets, Megastructures, and other Habitats
The so-called Apotheosis Maze is an ancient structure of great power.
It sits on an all but lifeless world on the seldom-traveled fringe of civilized space, yet still it draws visitors willing to accept it’s wordless challenge: Find the path through and perhaps attain godhood.
The maze covers nearly 20,000 m2. From a distance, it appears to be made of marble. Closer inspection reveals the material has an iridescent, oil-slick sheen when the light hits it right. Scanning reveals it to be much more than simple stone: There are patterns in its structure at the picometer (and possibly smaller) level: circuits repeating. The maze has a psionic presence, too--like faint, whispering voices in an adjacent room.
It’s said that no known weapon can damage the maze’s structure. It is uncertain whether anyone has ever actually tried. The guardians of the maze move quickly to stop any visitor who attempts violence against them or the maze. They wield quantum weapons, that are powerless cubes outside of their hands.
The Maze’s guardians are tall, robed humanoids with enlarged craniums and skin as black as starless space. There are always three present, though perhaps not always the same three. Their primary task seems to be to decide who may walk the maze from the supplicants present. They never allow more than five in, but the number varies; they often select fewer. Those they choose must divest themselves of weapons, equipment, and uplinks, and don simple robes before entering the maze.
Despite the fact that the maze is open to the sky, no one has ever been observed traversing it. It would appear that the maze's interior exists elsewhere. The vast majority of those who enter the maze never emerge. In fact, there is no recorded instance of anyone emerging--but many stories exist. All the stories suggest sophont beings who walk the maze transcend in some way--perhaps even to godhood. The hyehoon faithful believe their Mother Creator, Anat Morao, walked the maze before ascending into heaven where she continues to watch over her children. Some versions of Instrumentality doctrine mention attempts to walk the maze, either praising or condemning them. A conspiracy meme during the Radiant Polity held that the first psi mutant (an immortal being of immense power, supposedly) was born of a pregnant mother who had walked the maze.
The most famous area of Circus is a free city--actually a megapolis or ecumenopolis--without a single name. It's most often called Interzone, though it's vast spaceport-adjacent tourist area is known as the Strip. Interzone's boundaries are vague, but including all of it's favelas and industrial parks, it covers an an area only a little less than the surface area of Sol IV (Mars).
Located in The Coreward Reach, Rune is a world at a medieval level of technology, ruled by wizards and bedeviled by monsters--or so it appears. Though few visit due to the xenophobic nature of its inhabitants and its remote location (there is no reliable local gate), tales report that it bears an uncanny resemblance to fantasy sims, including the existence of what appears to be magic.
It's surmised
that Rune was either modified as a pleasure world or as a work of art
(ancient posthumans had both the technology and whimsy to accomplish
such things). There are hints of this artificiality, though its
biosphere is not as well-managed as it once was. Still, human diseases
are fewer than on wild worlds and clerical authorities provide advanced
healing through "relics" (actually well-disguised medical devices).
The magical
powers of its ruling class of wizards are thought to be psi-talents,
though they seem to exhibit some abilities uncommon (if not unknown) in
the rest of the galaxy. Most of their power seems to lie in the ability
to generate illusions. They also make use of allies like the fairy--who
seem to be nothing more than local tribes of quicklings.
The most fearsome foes of the wizards and their people are the dragons. The dragons are large bipeds (about 3 m tall, with tails roughly as long), vaguely reptilian in appearance with psi abilities of their own. They are theorized to be the degenerate descendants of the stranded crew of either an exploratory vessel or a military scoutship. The adolescent dragons of today are social creatures most numerous in equatorial areas, but older adults are mostly solitary and establish large territories. They are aware of humans' intelligence, but view them as animals and potential (though not preferred) prey. Periodically (Perhaps it relates to ancient mating cycles?) dragons become extremely acquisitive, gathering or stealing items of value, particularly shiny objects, and lining their lairs with them.
The humans of
Rune try to kill or drive away any dragon near a civilized area. Despite
the dragon's size and intelligence, the more populace humans might have
driven them to extinction if not for the fact the wizard's value them
for other reasons: Certain neuroendocrine glands of the dragons contain
chemicals that they believe enhance their "magic"
Random Organizatons
The Eden Seekers are a group of antignostic sapience-rejectionists among the avian humanoid hyehoon, who sometimes engage in terrorist activities. Contrary to the beliefs of the majority of their species, they view their fabled creator, the genetic engineer Anat Marao as a satanic figure. Their ultimate goal is the purging of the hominid influence in their genome to return their descendants to the “pure” avian genetics of their presumed ancestors.
There is a wide range of expression of Eden Seeker beliefs. Some merely choose to engage in atavistic rituals where their minds are downloaded into bird-like bioroid bodies. Others actually actually have temporary (or permanent) nanosurgically restructuring. Still others are fanatic terrorists seeking to acquire and use weapons of mass gene restructuring.
Though their primary focus is on overthrowing the social structure of the hyehoon homeworld Omu, Eden Seeker extremists sometimes hide in Expanse or smuggle weapons through its hyperspace nodes.
The Phantasists are renown throughout the galaxy as dream merchants. No purveyors of mere sims or other mass produced neural trickery, the Phantasists use ancient arts to craft neurochemical mixtures that deliver an individualized, specific, and vivid oneiric experience.
The Phantasists inhabit the sky city of Eidolon (believed to be a folly constructed by a prelapsarian plutocrat), floating above an environmentally damaged world populated by nightmare horrors. They generally appear as baseline humanoids with pale complexions and blue eyes, though they are a creative people and sometimes wear other more varied bodies. Phantasist society is a syndicate subdivided by guild and class. At least when dealing with the public, all Phantasists affect an air of ancient nobility. Though their own official history is perhaps purposefully obscure on their origins, historians believe the Phantasists are descended from an artists’ colony that took up residence in the city during the age of decline before the Great Collapse.
Phantasists have made extensive study of dreams. Their technicians (or “oneironauts” in their advertising copy) delve into simulations constructed from centuries of dream log data gathered in their sleep laboratories from a myriad of sophonts. Comparing the subjective experience with real-time neurologic data they have been able to isolate dream elements and experiences. All this knowledge goes into the synthesis of their oneiric neuronanochemical cocktails for high paying clientele.
Phantasists don’t seek to create crude and causality-bound simulations of physical reality; Their aim is the crafting of experiences with the particular sensation of a dream. There are rumored to be rogue oneirochemists who are willing to create jamais vu traps and unwaking nightmares for special clients, but the Phantasists vigorously deny that any of their number would participate in those practices.
The Alliance is a union of species allied for protection and trade. Members of The Alliance include the green-skinned psionicists of Smaragdoz, the privacy obsessed Neshekk of Kuznuh, the avian-humanoid splice Hyehoon of Omu, the human-alien blended cyborg Blesh, the Gnomes of Dzrrn, and the angel-like Deva of the Altair System.