Remove ads by subscribing to Kanka or enabling premium features for the campaign.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

⎍⋏⎅⟒⍀ ☊⍜⋏⌇⏁⍀⎍☊⏁⟟⍜⋏!


Character Creation Dashboard

Equipment Dashboard

Click to toggle

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.

METASCAPE

Most 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.


NOOSPHERE

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 CYBERWARE

In 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.


FABBER (MATTER COMPILER)

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

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). 


ARCHAIC & ALIEN TECHNOLOGY

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.

Click to toggle

RECENTLY MODIFIED ARTICLES

Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago
Doctor Talos 2 years ago

Random Sophont Races

The zhmun inhabit a domed city on the small, austere world of Aygo, orbiting a yellow star in the Zuran Expanse. Their famed wealth comes from ancient treasure stores (the contents as much of value as art objects or archaeological finds as anything else) and by their control over the mining rights to three superterrestrial worlds in their home system. Enforcement of these rights and protection from interstellar marauders of the Expanse comes via their alliance with sophont, ship-sized moravecs that have patrolled the system since ancient times.

Zhmun are thought to be bioroids due to their unusual structure. They're invertebrates with ameboid characteristics, despite being multicellular. A zhmu uses the hydrostatic pressure of internal fluids and the ability to quickly alter the rigidity of its tissues to hold itself in a roughly humanoid shape. Zhmun who can’t achieve consistent humanoid appearance are second class citizens—“globs.”  Zhmun are asexual (though sometimes assume gendered titles) and reproduce by pinching off a bit of their substance and tossing it into comunnal vats of doughy proto-zhmu plasm. Zhmun are only allowed to contribute to vats in their living districts, which are rigidly segregated by status. While zhmun don’t need to sleep in the human sense, they do need to relax their hold over their form for a few hours every few standard days. They're also said to re-encode information from ancient brain scans from their sacred stores every week or so, but it is uncertain if this serves a ritual or biologic purpose.

Zhmun perform no manual labor, but insist that their needs be provided for by biologic entities, not robots. Higher status zhmun perform no work at all. They affect an air of nobility and assume lofty, nonsensical titles. They spend their days in artistic pursuits or idle pleasures, as befits their station.  Globs direct zhmu business interests and supervise their myriad of alien employees and servants in the name of a zhmu master. Menial tasks are performed by a slave clade of unknown origin, collectively called yoom. Yoom are low on the sophont-scale and are bred in a variety of function-based forms from brutish, thick-browed laborers and bodyguards to sleek, quadrupedal racers.

The zhmun’s paid employees arrive from the co-orbital planet, Erg. There, a rundown spaceport, mining camps, and shantytowns attract the desperate and down an out of known space. They watch the job listings, hoping to get a lucrative position with the zhmun, either serving them on Aygo, or working in their mining concerns on the neighboring planets. or (dare they hope?) representing zhmu interests on other worlds. While they wait, they pay rent to the zhmun on whatever shabby accommodations they can find, and go in debt buying food and entertainment in zhmu-owned businesses.

Click to toggle

The blue-skinned people of the moon Boreas in the Honopia System.

Physical Characteristics: The Uldra are baseline humans with blue skintones.

Psychological Characteristics: Uldra tend to be viewed as somewhat pessimistic in outlook, and possessing of a odd, fatalistic sense of humor.

Names: Uldra have a given name and a family name.

Examples:

Male given names: Dmitr, Feodr, Kolya, Uloysha, Ygor

Female given names: Eliska, Galya, Ilya, Nadezda, Zlatana

Family names: Bogmolov, Kazlov, Kruptkin, Velkov, Macek, Lanik

Backgrounds: Any.

Classes: Any.

Attributes: Standard.

Click to toggle

Orichalcos is one of the richest worlds in the Strange Stars and certainly the preeminent economic power in the Coreward Reach. Thanks to a well-branched and "high bandwidth" hyperspace node, Orichalcos's spaceport sees visitors from across the known galaxy.

The Orichalcosans are a human subspecies, differing from baseline only in their metallic skin tones, ranging from a dusky brass color to a bright gold. There are two distinct populations of Orichalcosans: the aristocracy (called--ironically--the "Most High") who are dwarfs, and the commoners who have typical human height. The aristocrats and their retinues live in a series of domed habitats on the planet's surface. The environment of Orichalcos is inhospitable to human life, so the rest of the population lives in hundreds of orbital habitats encircling the world.

Other than official ceremonies, the aristocrats spend their time in leisure pursuits. Most play virtually no roll in administering whatever industrial or trade monopoly their title has granted them. Discussions of the business of making money is considered beneath their class, and leaving the Glitter Domes for any extended period risks seeing their social standing suffer. Maintaining a social media presence (often followed obsessively by the lower classes) both brings prestige and keeps interest in their businesses high.

The actually day to day operation of the businesses of Orichalcos is done by a class of capitalists known as the Optimates. Traditionally, this title was bestowed only on the CEOs of the various monopolies, but now is applied to the wealthiest business people, whatever their exact roll. The Optimates collect the profits from  the various monopolies and support the aristocrats (technically their owners) with generous allowances. The rest of the money is theoretically to be held in a trust for the aristocrat, but clever accounting ensures most is reinvested or paid out in bonuses.

How much the classes beneath Optimate reap the rewards of Orichalcosan prosperity depends to a degree on the habitat they live in. However, as whole, Orichalcosans don't enjoy the degree of social support that similarly wealthy and advanced societies provide. Relative austerity and wealth inequality are seen as powerful motivating tools necessary to create future generations of successful Optimates.

Physical Characteristics: Orichalcosans are baseline humans with metallic skin tones, ranging from a dusky brass color to a bright gold. The aristocracy are dwarfs.

Psychological Characteristics: As a culture, Orichalcosans are wealth and achievement focused. Relative austerity and wealth inequality are seen as powerful motivating tools necessary to foster success in future generations.

Names: Variable based on subculture, but the dominant practice uses a given name and a surname, with Optimates and aristocrats often having hyphenated surnames, denoting alliance through marriage.

Examples:

Male given names: Adramo, Blezco, Ilvos, Maro, Vincanto, Yedaro, Selsca,

Female: Agata, Iera, Lura, Matara, Ruandra, Tiareza

Surnames: Andaro, Azuracar, Balarna, Izaraldi, Laranaga, Marza. 

Backgrounds: Any, but Bureaucrat, Businessperson, Noble, Politician, Security, and Technician are most fitting.

Classes: Any, though Experts are most common andPsychics rare.

Attributes: Standard.

Click to toggle

Random Planets, Megastructures, and other Habitats

An ecologically damaged planet that hosts bio-art monsters created in the sky city of Eidolon, which in modern times serves as the headquarters for The Phantasists.


The planet Phobetor is home to monsters: Bandersnatches, kalidahs, cateblopases, and crocotta are among the deadly bio-art horrors released onto the world's surface by the artists living in the dilapiated floating city above it. 

Click to toggle

A yellow class G8(IV) subgiant the same mass, but slightly brighter and larger than Sol of Old Terra.

Pavo is orbited by 2 gas giants, a gas dwarf, and 3 terrestrial planets.

Pavo III, called Varya, serves as the capitol of The Vokun Empire.

Click to toggle

5th body in the Honopia System, and host to hundreds of moons within it ring system, including Boreas, the home and battleground of the Uldra and Coldminds.

Honopia V is a gas giant is roughly 4 times the size of Jupiter, and bright green due to the presence of methane and ammonia in it's upper atmosphere.

Click to toggle

Random Organizatons

The Instrumentality of Aom is a theocracy controlling several systems and providing spiritual guidance for the faithful scattered throughout many more. It aggressively seeks to expand its sphere of influence, primarily by peaceful conversion, but it’s not opposed to violent conquest.

“Aom” can be many things (depending on the context and the audience) but is generally described as both the godhead and the godhead-receptive spiritual being complex. Church liturgy often uses litanies of statements of opposites to analogize the ineffable Aom.

The first version spread rapidly after release into the Polity noosphere. Soon, various permutations of the faith were being practiced in different systems. Conflict between sects followed. The developers were both martyred in the first twenty years of the faith’s existence. The sectarian strife and clashes with other memes intensified over decades and eventually tore the Radiant Polity apart.

The Instrumentality was one of the entities to emerge from the four centuries of chaos that followed. The numerous sects had been winnowed down to a single orthodoxy with a rigid hierarchy. While the Instrumentality’s evangelists revise doctrine to best win converts, on the worlds already under church control it’s rule is uncompromising, even if it’s actual tenets are sometimes vague.

Church hierarchy has both an exoteric and esoteric version of its history--and the exoteric version is carefully crafted for a given audience and prone to revision with each doctrine update. The esoteric version conforms to known history in most respects. The faith had its origins in the early days of the Radiant Polity. Two memetic engineers working for a political action group became interested in ancient forms of spirituality and embarked on a private project. The Church views this as divine inspiration; whatever the case, the engineers set their ais to synthesizing a belief system from the commonalities of the “paleo-faiths” still extant within the human sphere: Trimurtitarianism, Prosperity Wicca, Mantrayana Hubbardism, Santerislam, Metaqabala, Ghost Dance Sufism, the Tao of the Taheb, veneration of the Mahdi Magdalene, various public domain forms of Corporate Confucianism, and others.

Click to toggle

The distinctively armored thrax are famed soldiers of Alliance space. Some thrax form mercenary companies and can be serving wherever there is conflict across the Strange Stars.

The Valor of Faora Ul Legion is one such unit, known by the distinct green claw slashes somewhere on their armor. Their notable actions include storming the crawling dreadnought of Dzaladin Huerto in Circus’s Neurokleptocrat Wars and the capture of cult leader Czerna Zera despite sustaining heavy casualties from suicide attacks by her clones.

Click to toggle

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.

Click to toggle