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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
The Magi are a group of itinerant fortune tellers found throughout the Strange Stars but particularly in The Zuran Expanse. Viewed variously as mystics, cultists, or charlatans, and often treated with suspicion whatever the judgement, the Magi care about the opinions of other sophonts only to the degree it impacts their quest for enlightenment.
While baseline humanoid in appearance, Magi have a modified neural structure: The linkages within the reflexive system are enhanced, as is prefrontal-parietal interconnectivity. The result is enhanced intuitive and lateral thought processes and the ability to utilize controlled dreamlike states of consciousness. Another consequence of this restructuring (not fully appreciated when it was implemented millennia ago) is greatly enhanced precognition.
The Magi use these abilities (or tell customers they use them) for fortune-telling. Like all fortune-tellers before them, they’ve found that discerning what the client wants to hear and telling them that rather than giving vague impressions of the actual future is generally more likely to generate referrals and return business. Magi favor an elaborate cartomancy using a deck they call the Zener Tarot (suits of Circles, Crosses, Waves, Squares, and Stars), a series of questions (many wholly unrelated to the question at hand), and some physiologic biometric assessment of the client. Which parts of this protocol and necessary and which are just for show is a closely guarded secret.
Magi are also sometime gamblers. They enjoy almost any game of chance. They are often accused of cheating and find it prudent to leave the area quickly after any significant win.
What really concerns the Magi and drives their wandering isn’t the future, but the nature of reality. As an order (perhaps as a glitch in their neural arrangement) they are haunted by contemplation of the simulation hypothesis: they fear the world as they perceive it is only a computer simulation. Their hypercognitions and precognitions only fuel this ontological fear. The Magi search for either conclusive proof these fears--the final “tell” that will give away the game--or evidence of the transcendent uncomputability of universe, a concept they hold in awe and fear like unto a god.
Ksaa are an aggressive and expansionist species native to a system on the Rim in the Strange Stars.
The neuter-sexed khii gans (“cold eggs”) are the true powers behind the ksaa. Scornful of outside races, the cold eggs manipulate the female ksaa gynarchs whose territories they administer.
Many consider it a blessing that the ksaa are so myopically focused on their internal power struggles.
Appearance and Biology: Ksaa are oviparous humanoids with some reptile-like characteristics.
They have three sexes with a great deal of phenotypic difference between them.
Females are large, aggressive (particularly after egglaying) and territorial; males are smaller, more brightly colored, and less intelligent.
The neuter sex has pale white coloration and is more intelligent than the others. It is born from eggs incubated at a cooler temperature, hence the name khii gan, meaning "cold egg" literally, but also "eunuch." It is used figuratively to connote something like "cunning bastard."
Psychology: Ksaa society is formed around family groups of related females. They control territory that is administered by cold eggs born of their clutch or another clutch from the same mother.
Cold eggs play games of political intrigue for greater wealth and position. They view themselves as superior to the rest of their species and believe their species to be superior to all others. Cold eggs are plotters and schemers; they’re the chessmaster setting up the board or the spider at the center of the web.
Ksaa are not an organized threat, except in the occasional period where a cold egg manages to unite a significant number of the great families. These periods are generally short-lived, as treachery takes its toll.
Ksaa still retain the predatory instincts of their evolutionary ancestors. They greatly enjoy hunts and take pleasure in toying with prey (and enemies) before killing them.
The kuath are a near baseline human people in the territory of Vokun Space. The kuath live at an essential neolithic level in coastal settlements. What is most interesting about them is the symbiotic relationship they have with marine invertebrate collective intelligences that the kuath know as Naga Ma--Dragon Mothers.
Vokun probes had suggested a primitive planet with little to offer beyond resources to be stripped away. When their attempts to move the small native population to reservations was resisted by humanoid monsters rising out of the seas, they realized their was something more going on. Destructive scanning of the brains of captive kuath revealed the existence of the Dragon Mothers.
Vokun submarine attacks proved unable to bring the Dragon Mothers to heel. Only the threat of mass driver bombardment finally effected their surrender. The terms of their capitulation was to be paid in slave warriors: bio-armored soldier.
Physical Characteristics: The kuath are dark-skinned, typically dark-haired, humans with endosymbiotic projections of the Dragon Mothers. (Among other places, these appear to stimulate areas of the brain associated with religious awe.)
The Dragon Mothers themselves are self-organizing colonies (perhaps superorganisms) of single cellular organisms capable of differentiating into a variety of forms. Colonies may extend for kilometers. Their intelligence is vast, but their thought "slower" than humans', and alien. There are numerous "factories" within their mass where they experiment with independent drones and probes of various morphologies.
Psychological Characteristics: Kuath come from a world at essentially a Stone Age level of technology. They are worshippers of the Dragon-Mothers (aquatic super-organisms native to their homeworld) and bio-armored slave soldiers of the Vokun Empire.
Place in the Empire: The kuath serve as shock troops for the vokun. The Dragon Mothers found adolescents were best both psychologically and neurologically for serving as soldiers in their armored suits. (The Dragon Mothers appear to care for the kuath deeply, if in an alien way, but do not conceptualize human life as much different than their other creations, except that human's are more independent and therefore interesting.) They reluctantly agreed to provide a quota of soldiers to the vokun to save their world and synthesized a mix of psychoative chemicals for the kuath, both to ensure they fulfilled their role and to minimize their physical and psychological suffering
Names: Kuath have a singular, gendered personal name.
Examples: Male: An-Tuani, Cham-Ka, Hulan-Yi, Konaga, Ngata, Sun-goro, Tanathi, Waruahi; Female: An-San, Chanya, Dara-Ja, Miri, Shu-sheng, Susi, Ulathi.
Backgrounds: Priest, Tribesman.
Classes: Any, though Warrior is the most common.
Attributes: Standard.
Special
Connected to the Dragon-Mothers
Kuath have endosymbiotic projections of the Dragon-Mothers within their bodies. Most of the time, this will have no game effect, but it does allow the Dragon-Mothers to manipulate them more easily, and could be used by anyone with access to advanced medical tools to differentiate a Kuath from other baseline humans.
Random Planets, Megastructures, and other Habitats
A gas dwarf in the Ruggedo System. The independent High Lonesome Confederacy habitat orbits the planet at an extremely close distance, essentially sitting in the upper atmosphere.
A myriad of moons and asteroids also orbit the planet, forming a planetary ring system. Nearly all are mining interests of the Gnome mining enterprise of Dzrrn.
Centuries ago an experimental algae was released in the upper atmosphere of the planet to convert native gases to a human-breathable mix. the progress is extremely slow, and while the upper atmosphere has seen substantial shifts in composition, the oxygen levels are barely above 10%.
Orichalcos is one of the richest civilizations and the preeminent economic power of the Reach. Orichalcosans are humanoids with metallic skin tones ranging from dull brass to bright gold.
There are two distinct populations: the dwarf aristocracy, and commoners of more standard height.
The environment of Orichalcos is inhospitable, so the aristocracy and their retinues live in domed habitats, while the rest of the population lives in orbit.
Other than official ceremonies, the aristocrats spend their time in leisure pursuits, entertaining the populace with their escapades broad-cast on social media.
The true rulers and administrators are a class of capitalists called Optimates. They collect the money from the aristocrats’ holdings and theoretically keep it in trust for their masters, but clever ac-counting practices ensure it is all reinvested or paid out in bonuses.
A gas dwarf in the Eridanus system. Zhmun mining interests dot its dozens of moons, such as Erg.
Random Organizatons
A hacker collective that existed during the time of the The Radiant Polity. Believed to be behind the 23 Enigma Virus, though there was never any official statement of responsibility.
Aurogov is a movement or polity based in the Zuran Expanse. It has been described as a quasi-religious voluntary tyranny (though its leaders consitently deny its religious character). Participants advance through levels ("The Protocol") wherein Aurogov teachings take greater and greater control of their lives. Adherents typically begin with a download of Aurogov’s open license self-help software, distributed by parties unknown in the noosphere of most civilized worlds. The seed software slowly evolves into a nonsapient ai mind emulation of the (perhaps mythical) founder of the group ("The Prime"). Its progressive audits and critiques of the thought processes and behavior of the user lead to progressive behavior modification of susceptible individuals. "Advanced" members without public relations duties tend to dress in the same grey uniform like garments and use frequent aphorisms from Aurogov teachings in their speech.
Aurogov is thought to have its origins on Old Earth and is a multi-geneline--even mutli-species--organization, but its primary functionaries are a clade of gray-skinned, long-chinned humanoids who call themselves "Technicians" but are known to those outside the organization as Aurogovans. Defectors from the organization report the Technicians' habitat within the Expanse is also the home of the Ascended Masters of Aurogov: Individuals who have obtained superhuman powers by mastering all stages laid out in their central texts. There are always three Ascended Masters and they always hide their faces behind masks like giant eyes. They are either posthuman masterminds or a bit of theater to provide cover for the real leaders, depending on what defector you ask.
There are allegations or rumors that Aurogov and its Ascended Masters have a hidden agenda: they are actually engaged in a secret, psionic distributed computing project. Every new participant in the Protocol--every new mind they can access--brings them closer to their goal.
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It's commonly accepted that most of the galaxy's sophonts are either descendants or creations of humanity who came into being on the fabled world of Earth. The location of this ur-world of the humanoid phyle is lost.
The original civilization of humanity collapsed (perhaps multiple times) or perhaps it ascended. Whether the end was glorious or tragic, the true history of these times is only fragmented legend.
The Archaics rose with the aid of knowledge recovered from the ruins of the past. They built floating, crystalline cities, constructed the hyperspace travel network (even connecting the noospheres of their core worlds with superluminal relays), and engaged in planetary-scale engineering. Theirs was an age when a noble might rule an entire world populated by her clones and sophont warships fought grand battles for audiences in telepresence.
Something happened — something called the Great Collapse. Galactic civilization fractured into individual worlds, and some of those worlds slid back into savagery. Much of the available historical record of this time appears to have been deliberately altered to obscure events. The time separating the Great Collapse from the present isn’t entirely clear, but may it be 1,000 standard years or more.
The salvager holy grail would be one of the twelve great battleships of the Archaic Oikumene, vessels the size of cities with sophont minds.
Some of these great ships (like Terrible Swift Sword and Leviathan Smiles) are known to have been destroyed. Others (like Achilles’ Last Stand, Fearful Symmetry, and Conspiracy of Ravens) have disappeared completely from history, possibly re-structuring themselves into vessels of different types.
PSI PHENOMENA moved fully from the realm of fringe belief to exploitable technology during the Archaic Oikumene. The hyperspace network is the most prominent example, but not the only one; other psionic devices exist.