Looking to do some worldbuilding for a low-tech dark sci-fi setting (think Alien) where career spacers take the role of Age of Exploration sailors and have similar superstitions, rituals, stories of monsters, etc.
One of the core superstitions is hearing a knock at the outer airlock door during FTL travel, a phenomenon known as "The Knocker."
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Every career spacer knows to carry a small amulet containing either the dirt of their home planet or metal scrapings from the ship they were born on. Should their body ever be spaced, the dirt they carry will guide them home.
building off of this, there's rumors and story's of space graveyards, where the bodies of spacers that don't heed these warnings are said to end up.
just hundreds of thousands of corpses and derelict ships in a loosely formed ball.
some explorers and scientists desire to find them for rumors of treasure and allegedly corpses of other species.
This is way more terrifying than 40ks “thousands of years of ships lost i. FTL ships turning into a planet-sized iceberg
While brave pirates use hide in gaseous nebilas, Spacers carefully plot their courses to avoid nebulas, for that is the realm of those antediluvian beings whose trail of stardust created the heavens themselves. Their hunger is insatiable and even humanity's largest flagships are merely ants to them.
Antediluvian refers to something specific it doesn't just mean old
>cosmic entities like the nebulae belong in an era when the universe wasn’t flooded with dark fluid
>with the rapid introduction of dark fluid, densities that allowed the reproduction of such beings no longer became possible, leaving them as dying remnants of an antediluvian universe
>not too much is known about "the cosmic flood," and its occurrence has not been suggested by any scientific theories
>the only records of it have been found etched on a tetrahedral planetoid made of an indestructible material, aimed directly towards orbiting a nearby star system's human-colonized planet
>while allegedly created by a species preceding the flood, its contents are inscribed in 12 contemporary languages
>according to its contents, the flood could be likened to an inverse of vacuum decay, where the fabric of spacetime enters a higher energy state
>that phenomenon changed the physical laws of the universe for the worse, at least for the creators of the planetoid
>for one, densities possible in a vacuum have been considerably lowered, destroying all of chemistry available at the time
>that and many other changes left them huddling in a slowly "submerging" divot of spacetime
>the tetrahedron was made of what it is because it was theorized to be a metastable material in our current high-energy vacuum
I don't understand anything that you said but I beleive it, 10/10 technobabble
Building on this one. For the apocalypse vibes, the nebula ghosts could be the oldest "lifeform" in the universe and basically knock out planets like Mass Effect reapers? There doesn't need to be a why behind it. They are ancient sentient gas clouds the size of a solar system who leave trail of cosmic dust behind them that causes the creation of suns. And for some reason, they decided to scour 70-90% of inhabited worlds across the galaxy.
And to add to this one, any ship that experiences this disease is basically a pariah. You'd never feel safe docking at an anchorpoint station because you might spread your disease to the station and all the other ships that pass through it. Presumably, this is how it happens in the first place.
Looks like shit, OP.
When a ship runs out of fuel or seems otherwise hopeless, it is said a gargantuan ship marked "MSS Charon" lurches from FTL within shuttle distance. The ship cannot be hailed, but opens its landing bay.
Hopeful and desperate spacers board their escape craft and make haste for the ship, only for it (and its new crew) to make another FTL jump shortly after they land. The spacers are never heard from again.
I accept your Flying Dutchman re-skin.
There are stories of the Dutchmen - the Celeste - and Bonham's Pride...
There are stories of the Horseman and the Lady at his side...
But the tale that chills my spirit, more because I know it's true-
Is the tale of Jayme Dawson and his crew.
First thing I thought of after seeing the thread
OP your thread kinda stinks, so let me give you some musical inspo so you can suck less:
?list=PLZ3GeijUxGio1EGIDFHpN-k7HrWVR5OHM
Though many planets are habitable and full of life, intelligent alien life is exceedingly rare. On a distant star was a habitable world dotted with the unmistakable layout of city streets, though the structures had long since been eroded by harsh winds.
Archeological investigation uncovered caverns beneath the city proper and in those a chamber whose walls were carved with the unmistakable continental arrangements of humanity's homeworld.
In rare cases, spacers that get too enamored with gazing at the stars start developing multiple pupils. They see quite a lot.
That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard
Decades before FTL travel, thousands of colony ships spread across the galaxy like spores, only to find when they finally reached their destination generations later that their new homeworld had already been settled by FTL travelers hundreds of years before their arrival.
I remember when this happened in Starfield and it was shit. It's an interesting idea though and someone should do it in games that aren't shit. Don't let your campaign be shit OP
Oh I never played starfield. I didn't know that was a thing.
The ship has on it the last practicing israelite and one ending to the mission is to destroy the ship and everyone on it.
You can at last finish what the Austrian painter started.
... I remember an old sci-fi book with that premise.
Sub-FTL exploration ship, without cryosleep but instead some sleeping drug with strong metabolic-slowing effect (success not guaranteed).
At some point the ship wake up the crew because it spotted something weird passing by, but they can't figure out what it was and get back to sleep.
When they reach their destination, not only has it been fully colonized already, but it happened so long ago mankind even deviated enough that the crew feel like "missing link"-style cavemen to modern humans.
The state get semi-pity on them and throw them a stipend so they don't have to actually interact much with society.
Most of the crew fell into depression and apathy because that wasn't what they signed for at all, and one of them dive autistically into whatever progress science made since then.
He find out modern mankind calculated time-travel as possible by flinging yourself into a black hole with a perfect trajectory, but the math on that were dubious so no one actually volunteered to try.
They pool their neetbucks together to buy a modern spaceship, and YOLO themselves into whatever their mathematician calculated would bring them just to the date of the earliest planetary colonization.
Can't remember if they succeed of if the book end on a cliffhanger.
Can't remember the title nor author either.
Are you really trying to pretend "creepy space illustration" isn't a saturated category for freely accessible online illustrations? I cordially invite you to have a nice day.
A momentary flash of screaming, tormented ghosts sometimes appears standing on deck or melded into the hull.
Only few know that teleportation technology was abandoned for travel when the failure rate was deemed unsafe and the process was found to kill participants.
Those victims of the failure rate now haunt all of space forever as a concious cloud of atoms that can neither be created nor destroyed, able to materialize themselves for an instant to plead for help before they disappear into the aether again.
>teleportation
Mandatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-ZcdO5fe8
Teleporter problem, ship of Theseus, etc.
Combine teleport stuff with the galactic apocalypse. Teleporter ghosts are frequent because they used to be common practice. Through billions of people being teleported, maybe tens of thousands were trapped as a cloud of sentient atoms forever.
There's what you say and what you MEAN you autistic idiot.
I'll help you out OP. If you're doing sailor superstitions in space, you need space whales. Like big enough to eat ships.
You can do something like the pale from Disco Elysium. A tiny black hole that appears on a planet and very slowly (hundreds or thousands of years) gets so big it consumes the planet
On rare explorations, an unidentified radio signal overwhelms the comms systems. No two are alike and each seems to have its own personality and cadence ranging from angry, rhythmic static to something like a glass harp.
Several of these have been tracked to their source, both in the void and on land. Each time, the answer is the same: A carved stone obelisk of unknown origin. There is no switch or button to disable the signal, but once found the signal seems to calm like ocean waves.
I accept your concession. You have the self-awareness of a turtle and the social abilities of a neglected infant.
You are genuinely too stupid to talk to. I can't imagine you are enjoying your life or how catastrophically alone your behavior makes you. Everyone can tell what your stupid pun was. What you don't get is that almost everyone, which remarkably isn't a category that seems to include you, could tell the motive for the fit you tried to throw.
Being denied access to port and their services, there are those who turn to scavenging to make ends meet and care little for the vague stories and legends of superstitious Spacers.
One such taboo that some are more reluctant to break than others is the blasphemous act of scavenging a Spacer's coffin to repair their own ship finding value in the hermetic seals and other parts used as well as the occasional trinkets left with the deceased.
In spite of their value, if it is ever discovered that ones ship has been repaired in such a way the ship is often towed and left adrift and, at best, the reputation of it's crew may be tarnished least a thorough investigate find whose coffin they scavenged and the family and acquatinces have their say in the matter.
Even for those who do not fear the superstitions, even they admit that such ships leave a negative and foreboding feeling about them that is hard to explain and harder still to ignore for very long.
Neat!
Ty for the contribution
Bah! Hornswaggle! Ye ninnies!
No self respectin' spacer would begrudge another a shot at having they life saved by the accountrements of their mortal coil! In fact, some groups intentionally affix beacons, and intentionally top off life support tanks in their coffins in case the a wayward spacer finds themselves in a desperate situation.
Klaxon Corp caskets, in fact, are built with one of the most powerful beacon sets known to man. Their signal is capable of being picked up *in FTL* 3 systems away.
The less enlightened may ignore the calls, but it's not uncommon for the bravee to find a casket keeping a live one alive.
Some caskets have even saved lives multiple times. Each time, the rescuers top up the life support again, and it's tradition for the rescued to leave something of value for the departed who saved them.
Tomb robbers of these caskets, however, are not tolerated. One of the quickest ways to get yourself consigned to the vacuum is to be caught desecratin' these sites.
whoever puts on a clown mask or honks a horn gets spaced
fun to hear a casket beeping three systems away on your radio, you accidentally tune on in the beacon channel and hear dozens of signals overlapping and guess what could it be. a group of coffins floating in a binary system, some big ship hoarding caskets for some reason, a family or member of the same crew being sent together to drift along each other
The radio/beacon only goes off if there's someone alive using the casket as a lifeboat. It isn't always screaming. Think of it like the bells they used to install at the end of strings back in the Victorian era in case they buried someone not sufficiently dead.
Now if you suddenly heard an entire gravesite going off at once, one could hardly blame someone for considering noping the hell out...
What's this from?
fired on mars
kind of a navel gazer series. a corp set up a colony on mars but instead of doing anything fantastic they literally just set up a crushing corporate business that they literally could've set up on earth.
the MC gets let go from his job as an artist office drone. it's basically about him trying to be important without doing any work while he deludes himself that he is a big mover and shaker. all while he actively tries to avoid any character development. it would be almost unwatchable if not for the fact everyone is very open about how little they value him and mostly are just trying to make some use of the fact they are stuck with him.
basically it's a decent background noise but not what I call a "must watch". the gnome looking dude in the clip is one of the weirder people they try to foist him on.
Even spaceships can become diseased through an alien phenomenon known as “The Rusting”
A small portion of the ship spontaneously rusts and it spreads to the rest of the craft like a tumor. It can only be removed by fully cutting out the affected metal. Spacers who wait too long to treat The Rusting may find it spreads to the superstructure and threatens the integrity of their entire ship.
>ftl travel involves "surfacing" beyond the ocean of dark fluid
>doing so exposes the ship to the innate physical laws of the universe, causing odd chemical reactions that carry over to stl-space
>rust is only one of such reactions
If a spacer dies in a binary star system, it is considered good luck for his remains to be launched on a course that takes him to the space between the system's stars. It is considered such a good fortuned send-off, that a crew will expend considerable time in navigation and calculation to ensure their deceased has an accurate trajectory between the stars' orbits.
Thats a really good one. I like that.
Something of an initiation ritual among spacers is their first space walk. A young voidsman (either a new hire or a voidborn) puts on his suit and stands in the airlock. The air is sucked out and the spacer shot into the void. It is their responsibility to find their way back.
Every fleet of spacers has their own ritual for this. Most use a simple line the newbie uses to pull themself back. Others use a propulsion jet pack. The extreme spacers are given a small pack of equipment and must determine the chemical processes needed to push themselves back to the airlock.
Let's get the basics together.
>The stars were not meant for man.
Rather than being crowded, the galaxy is largely empty. There may be one or two major alien species, but they are alien in biology and mindset. Though not evil.
This is because most species got "filtered" and never escaped their own solar system before dying, either through misuse of science we know, or esoteric science they bumbled into and killed themselves with.
The galaxy isn't a dark forest full of hunters and prey, it's a forest of accidental suicides, where bones of previous species crunch under foot.
>Man was not meant for the stars
Human biology, outside terraformed worlds and ships with certain styles is NOT meant to be beyond earth, let alone it's own solar system. The galaxy is cruel to both mind and body, and humans, thus, have adapted to compensate. Physical evolution takes millions of years, but instead humans develop cultural practices and social norms that protect them. Just as they build tools. This is where superstitions and religious practices come from.
>But we're going there anyways
Humanity, and what other alien species exist (let's keep it less than 4 other known species in the milky way) got where they are because they've made it past the filter, and had to adapt to the cruel reality of the cosmos.
Rather than a unified government of earth, humanity's a bunch of federations of colonies and terraformed worlds linked to a sort of scion superpower back on earth.
Think of them as akin to european empires. With all the self righteousness that you'd expect. Maybe with a gate system between fully colonized worlds.
It's not that let's say, the American Armada deployed from one of their 20 core worlds couldn't bring down a space-horror.
It's that when you run to the Captian of a Marshal Class destroyer in orbit screaming about how Tenta-demons ate the mining colony of Voss. At best he brushes you off, at worst throws you in the psych ward, and rings up the space-CIA.
I like this approach. Aliens should be rare and kinda distant. Maybe they trade near borders, but for most folks space is big enough that aliens are a legend.
The colonies aspect also fits the age of exploration vibe. Basically a bunch of independent colonized islands in a sea of stars.
Also, the great filter is a fun explanation. Imagine how many colonized planets were somewhat recently inhabited by a species that wiped itself out or succumbed to a natural disaster
Instead of alien species offering some vast enlightenment with superior technology or psychic understanding of the cosmos. They're just as confused and fricked up as humanity is, but were smart/diplomatic enough to not nuke themselves, and ambitious enough to keep going till they escaped their home system.
There are colonies out there sure. But think more New World/age of sail/ rather than imperial age/age of vanity. The Americans wouldn't be akin to The British Empire, so much as akin to the Spanish Empire. In that they got to space first, overexpanded, probably have a ton of corporate merchant fleets, pirate hunters, and are probably going to make questionable economic decisions. While the other great powers are trying to undercut them, and catch up.
Of course The Great Game has it's own horrors. With each power looking to exploit every strange thing it can get it's hands on. Rather than bringing prosperity to humanity, sure enough humanity started fighting over who could get their mitts on the best colonial systems. While nobody's waging war on earth itself, you sure as frick bet India or China's got privateers hitting American corporate interests, and all.... let's say 5 powers... are doing horrific and unethical shit where nobody can see.
The human power-blocs of "civilization" I see are, in descending order of power.
>America
Fricking Duh.
>China
The france to america's spain.
>India
Think of them as the 16th century British, ironically. Throw in a Roanoke, and colonial problems.
>Europe
Dutch ancapistan, high profits, low morals
>Africa
Has the resources, the location, but late due to the guys higher up the list doing great game frickery. Aka they're HRE/Germany.
Look up the effects of long term space living on the human body. Those without artificial gravity would look weird as frick. I'm no expert, but I'd say mutants are a thing.
Then there's what FTL might cause, and spacers go off the beaten track.
Sounds like firefly.
>I'm no expert, but I'd say mutants are a thing.
Early space travel issues have collected into some odd traits overtime. Before artificial gravity became more available/reliable space born humans would have a lot of issues and probably low life expectancy, and astronauts in general suffered hard. But probably by current time through both a use of minor genetic modification and reliable artificial gravity these issues are relatively rare. But one far harder to treat is that those who grow up on starships and space stations tend to have weaker immune systems due to their childhood years being in very sterile environments. Thus proper quarantine procedures are kept for people coming from terrestrial areas, and many born in space typically keep stocks of antibiotics and even rebreathers when traveling onto planets. This gives a stigma of those born on planets among those who live their lives among the stars as many a space station has seen its population die from a rogue pathogen.
Oh as well a thought on dietary habits. I'd imagine those who grew up in space probably have far different pallets, used to more processed and easily packed stuff(think airforce nutrient paste) which is not as palatable to those from planet who can see more fresh foods. Now this can be somewhat mitigated by hydroponics but how likely a space station is to have such things would probably depend on purpose and who built it.
This could also flow in reverse, as spacers may harbor pathogens that have been mutated to become far more virulent/deadly/treatment-resistant than they otherwise would be. This could lead to many planets establishing spacer only infra in spaceports to keep things like plasmids conferring anti-biotic/anti-fungal/rad resistance seperate from planet bound microfauna.
Mutants, drones, the unemployable working poor... These poor men would unfortunately be equivocal to another memory of the sea. That of chains, the ol' Guineamen that once prowled the sea lanes between the old world and the new as they traded the black gold. During the great colonial rush, the great powers of the world needed a cheap and expendable workforce to rapidly build up their Empires and with the rather... Disappointing lack of exploitable species, they turned to their fellow man. Though mostly taken with false promises and dreams of grandeur instead of chains and blackpowder, the end result is the same.
Taking the more 'genetically divergent' of the under cities in North America, starving diseased invalids from the blasted remains of Korea, unemployed miners from the Martian Rust Belt and the failed planet cracking of Titan, hell they even take students from poorer Kenyan Universities, they cram these men into blocky ships where they quickly find themselves at the mercy of corporate mercenaries. They learn very quickly as the barcodes are stamped on their foreheads that they are no longer men but property, mere numbers to be traded in between the numerous planetary mining companies dotting the stars. And those are the ones who were fooled, those that failed to read the microscopic fine print sitting deep in some E-Document. Some, particularly from the warring states of Africa or the irradiated sectors of Eurasia, were just slapped in chains and sent off to space.
While most of the New Empires are smart enough to use terms without a negative connotation, 'volunteer Rating 0 Colonial' and 'transitory university debtor recipient' do little to hide their true identity. That... Of the slave.
>Physical evolution takes millions of years, but instead humans develop cultural practices and social norms that protect them. Just as they build tools. This is where superstitions and religious practices come from.
I feel you'd get a few distinct ideas too, as the first post mentioned some aren't all born on solid ground. Someone born in space who's lived on space stations and ships all their life should have a different perspective of the stars than one who lived on solid ground. Different feels and ideas. Being used to the shutter of bulkheads and humming of engines makes being on any planet feel off, the air doesn't taste right, and natural gravity also feels wrong. But being used to a planet the cold feel of space is always there, you are used to real UV rays not lights, and miss things like the wind or blue sky instead of the constant open void.
Both groups I would imagine view the others are a bit odd and superstitious in the wrong way. Spaceborn seem almost too ok with airlocks, always seem to know when their suit is good never double check, spend an unhealthy time enjoying the view of the void. Meanwhile groundborn have a habit of treating tools poorly, and seem to have no concept of proper rationing, and love to leave lights on wherever they go.
Ships probably need to come from a handful or specialized origin points and controlled by spacers. Not like dune, but it should be difficult for group of normal folks to buy a starship. This isn’t star wars. No fighter pilots or dog fights in space. Ships are big and boxy.
There is a pirate ship so notorious nearly every planet has a bounty for bringing it back alive. Every so often the captain of this vessel changes, but all revel in taunting their adversarys.
Adventurers who attempt to claim this bounty will find an empty ship. Making their way to the bridge, they find an inviting command chair. Once seated and paired with the ship's neurolink device, the shp's computer takes control of another host and uses them as a flesh puppet bound to the chair as the new captain until their usefulness runs out and they need a new captain.
Voidborn have an innate understanding that the ship their lives, and everyone they've ever knowns lives, all depend on very many very complex and fragile system operating smoothly. They look down on any worldborn that do not treat their ship properly, slamming doors, kicking walls when angry or stressed due to claustrophobia, pressing just a bit too hard on the buttons to open doors. God forbid you actually damage the ship. Even thought worldborn know a few dents on the inside panel of a several metre thick solid steel wall means nothing, voidborn see such damage as an attack upon their lives. As the ship is as much a member of their family as they themselves are, its the original family member, a patriarchal and matriarchal figure in one giving life to all onboard, its a person as much as they themselves are people in their mind. They're known to make such people who dissrepect the ship dissappear during the night shifts, never seen again, the worst part is they aren't voided since since airlocks are always monitored, they do something else to destroy the body.
Of course this hatred and murderous attitude also counts to the unlucky ones. A light goes out when you enter a room, doors are stiff, electrics fail or act out of character a few times in your presence. Well clearly the ship does not like you, you are a threat to the ship and all onboard and must also be dealt with.
>spacer superstitions thread
>look inside
>80% is just thinly reskinned sailor stories
Honestly just google about astronaut superstitions and bust out the NASA Systems Engineering handbook and some space program memoirs, whatever you come up with is bound to be more interesting than "le white whale,,,,, in space :000??" shit this thread is full of. Here's something to get you started:
https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/the-losing-hand-tradition-and-superstition-in-spaceflight.20043/
Look, I think some of the repurposed sailor stuff is fun, there's good stuff in this thread, and it's hard to imagine something truly, truly alien throwing that far into the future. That being said, that's an absolutely incredible article, and could definitely serve as inspiration for some "younger days" traditions pre-space births. Thanks for sharing that, at least.
Spacers know the lock the doors to their quarters. For occasionally they may hear the metallic clang of boots shuffling through the corridors.
Brave spacers who open the door to catch the sound find only an empty EVA suit on the ground nearby.
I have a better idea, how about you take your slopspam shit somewhere else? And then you can have a nice day there.
Many a spacer has gone mad searching for legendary planets that give off unique readings on the radio spectrum. Story goes they were created by some species that is long gone, legend tells if finding them all will point the way to something great. But most likely just old tales, no record of such planets exist as far as any official records are concerned.
This is good because it creates a hardline between the weird stuff in space and mundane life on the ground while still allowing for anomalies on individual planets. It puts the focus on space travel.
The question is what else do you do with it? Is it just dark, low-tech star trek? Are there battleships? What is the great conflict of the era? We've established 16th-18th colonies on planets. Now what? What do they do?
It's kind of an all tomorrows question of "I have all these creatures, now what?" There's not much you can do with it, IMO which is why this thread has been much less popular than similar worldbuilding threads.
I had the same thought. I homebrewed a full 1700s nautical setting with shanty and curse magic, islands, and superstitions etc and that was easy because you can lean into weird sea life and islands tied to 1700s things, superstitions and such.
This thread takes away the emphasis on islands and sea life and puts it all on space travel itself. It's very niche.
First thing that came to mind was a similar idea to Sunless Sea, a spacers job is simple, your exploring with all the issues that entails. This would involve doing work for your chosen power and your exploits could lead into other other jobs that you are able to do by being one with access to a ship. The hard part is more how you make exploration worth while not just from a rewards sense but also from an interest sense due to to space being a lot of empty balls of rock and ice.
Sunless seas fits with the age of exploration theme. Problem is, as you said, every island in Sunless has something going on. Low tech space travel makes that difficult. Especially if we’re leaning into the “great filter, many planets suicide.”
Could be some minor alien factions in civilization stage or remains for previous empires, or something to justify exploration.
During extremely long voyages in remote sectors of the galaxy away from inhabited planets, stations or outposts, the crew must always remember to maintain a positive attitude with their ship. It is still unknown if it is the systems being exposed to cosmic radiation for too long or the crew developing some form of isolation-fueled hysteria. When you notice a crew member beginning to interact with your vessel as more than your ship, remember to include the rest of your crew. Start verbalizing your logs before you sleep, include her in mess hall conversation, express gratitude for her keeping your crew safe for the journey. You don't want her to feel as if there are only a few members of her crew who appreciates her. Keep her company as she keeps you, and pray that you can go home quickly for a routine maintenance and system reboot before your company simply isn't enough anymore.
>I remember some weirdness on the CS Galatea
>Pretty sure the old freighter was haunted
>Weird whispers and the lights would go out suddenly
>You'd leave a tool in one place and a few minutes later it was gone
>Search everywhere for it
>At the end of your shift you'd find it where you left it originally
>Find moving cold spots when doing a thermal scan...they'd make you chase them and then disappear
>At the end of my tether so I ask my senior spacer to do a walk of my level
>Leaves these little plastic spacemen in the areas where I've had problems
>They're them old timey spacers with their ray guns and fishbowl domes
>I think he's gone senile but I keep my mouth shut
>"Trust me it works" he tells me
>Sure as shit it stops
>When I transfer to another freighter, Senior gives me a bag of those old vintage toys to go with me
>"You take care of these boys and they'll take care of you."
FYI this is just an adapted story from a US Airman during WWII just applied to a sci-fi setting.
What's the original story? Green army men in old boats, I presume?
I believe it was mechanics working on a bomber using toy soldiers to stop the weird activity
>a knock at the outer airlock door during FTL travel, a phenomenon known as "The Knocker."
I am 99% sure this was taken from another similar thread a few years ago and that thread had much better ideas than this one.
It's literally from a Doctor Who episode like a decade ago, at least. It's a spooky/fun but not nearly unique concept.
Less spooky than some others.
This is really good
If I live long enough for space travel to be normalized, I will spam that fricking hymn until it becomes standard practice of humanity.
Cool stuff OP. Obligatory Spacewreck post, I remember finding this book for 5 bucks at a yard sale as a kid and it was such an amazing source of inspiration and fantastical wonder. I don't remember how old I was when I got it, but I remember I was young enough that there were parts that seemed totally real and factual to my adolescent brain. Cool stuff. Wild to see it going for hundreds of dollars when I got it for 5 bucks.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/454389
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU GOD BLESS YOUR SOUL I FOUND THIS IN A SHITTY SCHOOL'S SHITTY LIBRARY AND COULD NEVER FIND IT ON GOOGLE SINSE
"Would you like to learn more?"
sendspace.com/
filegroup/xfDSlvRC8E35d82zXIpdug
I would think doing a setting post "galactic apocalypse" similar to the 40k one or similar would lead to some cool possibilities. humanity retaking the stars armed with only scraps of prior knowledge that survived, things all spacers know you must do but no one knows why, just not doing them is asking for troubles. trying to scavenge old golden age tech ages beyond their understanding without dieing to the horror that the same tech can create. planets being places that no amount of galactic drift can account for on the charts, and other planets missing entirely.
I think tidally locked planets could provide a lot of cool things. the idea of the day or nights never ending. it's known you never stay long as things get weird the longer you stay, much less you never land on the dark side, doesn't matter if you have to trek for hours to get to the place your going.
I think this is the answer to
and
You can have new "colonial" powers rising and scouring the stars for technology as well as an explanation of what happened. It doesn't need to be a full on warp storm, but something happened that scoured human colonies and left many of them in ruins.
The trick is figuring out how to do that without an All Tomorrows Q entitity just wiping out humans. Back to the theme of "Not a dark forest, but a forest full of suicide victims."
Because every setting needs a Roman Empire. Seriously though, if you're looking for a post-apocalyptic galaxy, you might take some inspiration from Endless Space 2.
There was a race called the Endless who basically enslaved everyone and then disappeared. But as you explore, you'll find the galaxy is absolutely packed with relics from their time.
Some of the lore planets include:
>A completely lifeless ecumenopolis
>An ice planet with underground research station catacombs studying the foundations of creating life
>A desert planet covered in server farms researching seamlessly virtualizing people
>An escape room as an entire planet
>A barren planet impacted by a nanobot plauge
>Humanity's homeworld, now unrecognizable
>An entire planet of crop circles
>A planet that was completely destroyed and now looks like the astral plane in D&D.
You can have humans be super advanced and then thing happened where they lost progress and are now crawling their way back with old ships.
Spacers always leave the lights on in the hangars/landing bays, based on the common line of "Leave the lights on for me".
Once fuel costs and lost time became less serious concerns, it became common practice for ships crossing paths to meet and dock for no other reason than seeing a different human face. Piracy has done relatively little to damage the culture of trust, and some ships include invitations to come in from the cold with every change of watch.
This combined with the
idea of spacers not being able to make planetfall in most systems is both sad and really impactful.
If I'm a salvager cruising around nebulas and looking for derelicts and I find an empty ship with an android going about its daily tasks, I'm gonna shit my EVA suit and blast it.
I'd say an android surviving is very bad luck. But because of galactic apocalypse
they are rare and expensive enough that salvagers and hucksters try to pawn them off and essentially "launder" their history so nobody knows where they came from.
I think I could understand why. I like the idea of an android being considered lucky as opposed to unlucky. Maybe if it has saved a shipmate or had some lucky number associated with it.
What do you think the attitudes would be towards an android that survives a disaster and is reassigned to another ship? Good luck charm or cursed item?
How do we feel about robots in this setting?
For , my feeling is androids were around before the galactic apocalypse and maybe still inhabit some worlds. Might be cool to find a cyberpunk city inhabited by a handful of surviving androids, either who aren't aware they are androids *or* who have Frankenstein'd themselves new bodies as their component parts break down but maintain their heads so they're more "human" and personable.
On ships themselves, robots might be maintenance drones like mouse droids or simple repair things. They probably also look like mall robots because I don't think most spacers would like a bi-pedal robot stomping around. Plus the wheels and R2D2 look make them both more friendly and make sense for ships, where the terrain is known.
I imagine most colonies use robots for farming and automation but not for daily tasks (no chore robots unless they are unitaskers). A high technology "core world" might use robots more frequently, as a server for example. But again, probably not bipedal.
>"Gather 'round lads. Gather 'round."
>"Any of you look out the viewscreens recently? Then you saw it; The Kraken's Eye."
>"Gleamin' Blue and Red, and staring right at us. Won't be long now. 'Till we get the distress signal."
>"How many of ye believe in Aliens? Aye, the good doctor says they're just spacer superstition. He's a man of science, after all. But I tell you know, God strike me down if I'm lying, there's something inhuman about the eye."
>"You notice the captain ordered radio silence? He's no superstitious man himself, but he knows better than to tempt the fates."
>"It starts with a distress signal, all garbled and indecipherable. If ye respond, it gets louder. They say if ye decode it, you'll be met with no human language. It's something unpronounceable, makes ye sick to listen to it."
>"Should ye not respond, they try to break into our personal comms. If you hear a strange static, don't answer it, else the Kraken's eye is on you."
>"What we do is we sit in silence for a few days, ignore the signal, convince *them* that we're space debris. After a few days, they'll send a craft of some sort."
>"Aye, some sort. Should ye look at it ye'll go mad. We'll keep the viewscreens shut, and if ye have good sense you'll close your eyes and pray to your God for salvation."
>"The ship will rumble and creak. Ye might think it's collapsing. Ye'll hear an awful sound, like talons on metal. They're testing us, is all. And if we try to make an emergency jump, they'll have us then and there."
>"Now if we're lucky, they'll leave then and there. If we aren't... then go to your quarters. Seal the doors. Plug your ears. Because they'll be on us then like a pack of demons. And they aren't leaving 'till they find a soul to drag back to hell."
One element of 'realistic sci-fi' is that most space things (e.g. nebulae) are either white, grey/brownish, or black/invisible. Your pic is an infrared (i.e. not visible spectrum) false-colour (i.e. deliberately exaggerated) image of the Helix Nebula; Hubble's famous visible-spectrum image (right of pic related) isn't what a human eye would see either on Earth or in space, since Hubble has lots of filters to focus in on the pretty colours. And the Helix Nebula is already *famous* for its colour!
I don't mind it for the fantasy, but it's just an amusing point that you often see outlandishly colourful objects in sci-fi, even those that try to take themselves seriously.
>/tg/ tries to reinvent 40gay again
40k is sword and sorcery in space. This is clearly 1700s sailors in space.
Well, if psionics are not a known fact (regardless if they even exist), there certainly would be urban legends among spacers about them.
If FTL tech exists, it's possibly a common conspiracy theory is that the hyper drives and/or jump gates are derived from and powered by psychic powers in some respect.
If FTL tech does NOT exist, the conspiracy theorists believe that it does, and that psionics are used to make and power it.
And that psychic powers are somehow linked to horrors from beyond.
Very rarely at night, on any planet, Earthlings might see the Moon for a few seconds.
Officially it's just a poetic "Your brain *expect* it to be there" homesickness thing, but there are always a few colony-born people claiming they see it too.
That's really good. Very interesting form of homesickness.
I see old luna is still watching over her younger siblings, protecting them from what horrors she can.
If Earth is a distant memory or otherwise lost, it might be interesting if this is ancestral to all humans. Like sometimes you just think you see a moon as though you were on earth. But if earth is lost, nobody knows why.
"The last pellet of FTL fuel at the bottom of the tank will power the engine for 5 time longer than normal, because that's where all the unused protons from the other pellets end up."
It's complete bullshit, but it's still responsible for a good half of all overestimated-my-fuel-reserve-and-got-stranded accidents.
Of course, all shaddy spaceship shops have some "proton collection funnel" to slap inside your tank or some additive allowing you to "maximize the effect"... and anyone telling you it doesn't work and might even damage your propulsion is a shill from big FTL fuel corpos.
while the size of the ship is an unspoken but vaguely agreed upon subject, coming across a big enough ship adrift that only has one or two survivors, can cause even diehard spacers pause.
while most cases would have spacers saving those adrift without question, bringing on the castaways can be seen as an omen of bringing the fate of that ship to yours. whether it be the thought that being alone on the ships surrounded by the dead does something to those people, or wondering what they did to be the final survivors on such a large ship can worry some. though some might whisper in the dark corners that those aren't people but something worse that preys on ships acting as saviors.
admittedly I like the idea of "space wendigo" the most.
Years ago I read a short panelled comic about a ship making an FTL jump, they take a drug before the jump. While in hyperspace they're tormented by demons, and I think the implication was the drug didn't actually put them into hypersleep or anything like that it just prevented their brains from making memories of what happened. It was all black and white and I don't think it had any text, it told the story through pictures. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have it?
Do not hum, tap or stomp in short bursts when you're traveling somewhere new. You don't know who's listening and what kind of binary or morse code you're inadvertently sending to whoever's out there.
Can't go wrong with a good old poltergeist with a sense of humor.
Just to recap before the thread dies:
>Galactic Apocalypse
Humanity once seeded the stars far and wide. In the course of this, they found abundant life through the galaxy, but many planets whose inhabitants did not make it through the Great Filter, resulting in only two or three spacefaring alien races. These races are so alien and vice versa that they try to avoid each other altogether aside from some scientific cultural exchange (think Arrival). In other cases, entities are so far beyond comprehension, all races adopt a policy of avoidance (Ghost Nebulas)
In the early days, this was done by slow moving colony ships, some of which are still on their way to distant stars. Eventually FTL travel was created, but proved dangerous as it literally breaks the laws of physics, resulting in unusual phenomenon such as ships becoming diseased with rust, teleporter ghosts, and the knocker.
At some point, a thing happened that wiped out 70-90% of colonized planets. The exact nature of this is unknown. FTL communication is not a thing, you have to send messages through traditional FTL travel. As worlds died, it happened in silence. Some planets are destroyed others are lifeless cities waiting for new colonists.
>Reclaiming the Stars
Shaken by the mass destruction of their people, there was a new space race of colonists spreading out on spaceships and living in the void, believing they would be safer in the void than on land. The fear of being wiped out again created a number of superstitions, which seemed to have an actual effect on safe void travel.
In this way, luck can be physically stored.
Colonial empires emerged to reclaim fallen worlds. In pursuit of this, new trade routes emerged and humanity shifted from a single unified race to land-grabbing fiefdoms seeking to reclaim technology, gain more land, and amass resources. At the same time, adventurers, pirates, and seasoned spacers are seeking star maps, technology, and new worlds to claim.
If the factions were cool enough, this could be an interesting foundation for a skirmish wargame.
Off the top of my head:
>The Coalition of Allied Republics (Spain): In the polluted dust ridden lands of the former American southwest, the Byzantine remains of the former American Union emerged from their bunkers as the toxic ice sheets receded. They're infamous for exporting sla-uh 'transitory extrasolar laborers.' Recolonized Centauri and... Well, gave Mars democracy. As a protectorate. They love democracy and FREEDOM unliked those fricktard Cantonese. Their ships are out of date compared to their rivals but pack a shitload of firepower.
>The Canton Security Alliance (France): the Earthbound CSA finds similar origins to the Coalition only they hid at the bottom of the ocean. The rad zones receded and the toxic ice retreated, the CSA recolonized the toxic Highlands of former China with drones. And by 'drone,' I'm not referring to machines but the disposable human kind of drone. Astronauts tend to dislike working with the CSA due to heavy presence of state unions that take a huge cut out of space business. They play up their communal origins, the superior ideology compared to those dipshit coalitionists. Fancy ships with extreme range but fragile.
>The Southern Union (Britain): formed out of what was India, the Southern Union was largely depopulated by the time the orbital sleeper pods touched down. The Indian oligarchs only had a limited number of private security so they found themselves facing a long and bloody period of confused fighting with the insane savage humans. They've only just entered the colonial game. Ships are expensive, but boy howdy are they powerful.
>The Jazad Caliphate (Ottomans): yeah, the Muslims united and took over Europe... And lost it. Toxic ice and waste and radiation and God knows what made their Empire enter a never-ending cycle of decay. Extremely poor, overly reliant on geodomes on the equator but a very diverse variety of ships. Weak as frick though.
>The Northern Federation (Dutch): Russia had a prolonged recovery due to most of the oligarchs dying before they reached the Ural bunkers. The Federation emerged from the Megarail metros constructed during the golden age of the Eastern Coalition. These stations united as one singular republic, albeit one with a heavy oligarchic slant with the 'Hub' station economically dominating the polity. Ships specialize in abilities and can spam evasive maneuvers. They have a small Empire, but they just found a Gaia world... The question is now holding it and keeping the Southron's dirty hands off it.
>Nautilus Republic (Portugal): best described as a Astralo-Polynesian-Kiwi-Jamaican-Dominican-Inuit(!)-Icelandic-Federal-Allied-Republic... THING that united into a singular polity in the face of international pressures. It's a republic constantly rubbing elbows against it's neighbors. They entered the colonial race super early and colonized Eros with the help of peon-er 'Economic laborers.' Their ships are extremely fast but fragile.
>Free Drones (escaped slaves, Bacon's Rebellion, think of those early colonial revolts that dotted the age of exploration): drones tired of getting kicked around by stuck up astronauts and butthole earthers. Their revolts end in disaster and act as a NPC faction for vidya.
That's all I got.
>The Sharif Corsairs (Barbary Corsairs): the descendants of Arabs, Somalis, and... Floridians. These pirates are loosely tied with the Caliphate and fight for the highest bidder. Weak ships, but high evasion. They have a distinctive madness about them due to interbreeding with Floridamen. Their ships are, like the Caliphate's, shitty. Actually, downright KND tier in shittiness, but they're explosive and can suicide-ram enemy vessels due to insane speed. Batshit insane, players need to make willpower rolls.
>Turanic Raiders (Cossacks): the Turan descend from various Slavs deported by the Caliph, Kazahks who pissed off the autocrat of the year, rogue Chechen spetznaz, Mongols tired of Earth, Uighurs who somehow survived the 21st, Chinese prisoners, hell even Texans and American gun nuts. Mercenaries by trade. Their ships are mostly surplus gear from their Drakonis employers with extensive weapon modifications.
>The Drakonis Corporate Empire (Tzarist Russia): the Drakonis descend from Anglo-Hispanic Icelander German Peruvians who lost all contact with Earth centuries ago. Technically it's a republic with politicians who just happen to own or be related to the CEO of a megacorp. In practice? Hardcore feudalism. A swarm faction with ships that look vaguely insect like, like the Taiidan from Homeworld.
>The Commonwealth of Free Worlds (Poland-Lithuania): these are Americans from the eastern seaboard who intermarried with Japanese exiles fleeing the Chinese occupation who then allied with Austrian and various South Pacific colonies. Now they're an alliance of multiple ethnic groups surrounded by enemies. On one end, the Africans view their territories enviously. On the other, the Drakonis scumbags salivate over their gas giants and then there's the Caliph laying claim to the Austrian planets. Powerful ships but immensely overstretched and undersupplied. 'Hussar' ships take the form of immensely powerful ships that look almost Star Trekish.
Frick it.
The Lake Victoria countries and Brazil should have more presence, they're ideal places to throw up a space elevator
I’d like to offer as a suggestion that before FTL travel was finalize, it caused wicked time dilation, so they used AI to pilot the initial ships.
You can work this into the lost technology angle as well. Might be cool if somewhere in space there is one central processor collecting/integrating other AI supercomputers to make itself more intelligent. Like a mixture of AM from IHNMAIMS and overclocked Bender
The origins of FTL technology are not well known.
There was a "trade" of sorts between humanity and an as of yet unnamed group of aliens. Humanity calls them Jovians but that isn't their name, they might not have one.
Humanity by this point had only colonized a few extra-solar sites using ancient STL sleeper ships loaded up with tinned food, banks of daring and insane colonists in cryo-coffins and flat packed IKEA colony structures. The Jovians slide into Sol and start orbiting Luna causing considerable worry to the locals. They start blaring messages using some sort of analogue system across a wide band of radio waves that people still haven't discovered the meaning of ( or even if it was just a byproduct of their ship systems).
They orbited Luna for months untill a joint mission of the larger nations went to examine the ship in person. They all came back with brain damage. The least damaged members of the crew reported images of Mars and Jupiter, Mars being sparsley populated at this time. The felt a second hand desire when thinking f Mars and Jupiter but only a specific far of uninhabited Martian wasteland.
One of the crew was sent back to communicate agreement with the Jovians.
The ship goes to Mars and lays out metal ores, then refined mental, then simple machinery and tools and machinery increasing in complexity culminating at a strange device that, whilst not a working FTL engine, demonstrated the working principles that eventually lead to the first FTL engine.
The Jovians then went to Jupiter and sank their ship deep into it's unknown depths where they presumably still dwell. Some chemical changes have been noted in the atmosphere since, it's assumed that they set up a colony and are tinkering with the environment to be more like home.
No further contact has been had with them.
The "Jovians" might not even have been aliens, or even intelligent creatures in their own right. It's possible that it was some sort of sub-sapient automated terraforming drone programed with the ability to barter for possession of workable worlds with whoever probably owned them.
It's also possible that they are aliens but not sapient in any way. They just react to external stimulation in complex ways with brains so stramlined and full of pre-programmed knowlage that they don't think anymore. They have the answers they need, thinking is a waste of time.
It could also have been a prank. If something is millions of years beyond the silly creatures barely out of their first gravity well then giving them the most basic toys from your own infancy is possibly just done for ammusment.
Or they were totally on the level and value thier privicy.
Nobody is ever going to know untill they climb out of the Jovian clouds and talk to someone. They don't seem to want to do that. They also seem to have no interest in thier moons, which is good for the people living on them despite being told that settling there was a very stupid idea.
Actually… a race who is physically incompatible with another humans (due to breathable atmosphere, gravity, etc) is really interesting. Leads to a strange tradeoff where the races might be willing to trade star systems if one planet was more habitable
Every once and awhile some crazy scientist attempts another contact mission, but even now the ability to traverse that deep into a gas giant isn't feasible with current technology. And any attempt to send signals in are met with silence. Some have taken to scanning other gas giants of similar composition to Jupiter for signs of other "Jovians" but so far none have been found.
More than one government has started projects on survival in gas giants but due to poor economic projections none are major priorities.
Still stories come out occasionally of some wayward ship falling past crush depth on Jupiter.
guy who first posted the apocalypse idea here. been working on an idea here myself. there wasn't any one big thing it was more like the lead up to WW2 where it was age old treaties, grudges, and random happenstance that wrecked everything. basically dominos from small stuff.
in universe it's all very murky but it all goes back to a meeting of local system lords. this was during the unshackled ai age and one of the lords was having a revolt on his hands due to his poor treatment of his AIs. a neighboring lord he hated was the one to bring up assisting him put down the revolt and did so with a smug tone. so he instinctively turned down the offer for help because he hated the other guy.
turns out he had needed assistance and once the writing was on the wall he decided to get revenge on the other lord who he blamed for the situation. so he released his space wmds mostly aimed at the Lord's system in a final act of spite. think nano swarms, synthetic super plagues, etc etc.
so a renegade ai force and wmds hit the neighboring systems which starts a sort of chain reaction as people start going after the weakened systems who then in turn wmd in a last ditch effort to survive. this expands exponentially as everyone tried to settle petty grudges and the such.
anyone who came out on top locally just made it so the more intelligent weapons would target them as the ones who were king of the hill. this more or less knocked everyone back to at best colonized moons and neighboring planets and the associated travel abilities.
humanity was able to retake to the stars simply by outlasting the dangers. plagues run their course, intelligent super weapons break down, even the AI fell off in the devastation.
so the end of the galaxy was because one guy was an butthole who hated another guy was an butthole and couldn't accept help.
Reverse uno. Spacer kids are seen as omens. Particularly superstitous adults will back away from kids trying to talk to them, with a near-prayer that's to the effect of "you only talk to me when you are of age". This happens even in massive, old cities.
The fates of those who are talked to by Spacer kids vary, ranging from the ever-present and ever-boring "we never saw them again" to being turned inside out and into shapes you can't look at, because causality drains out of the unfortunate adult.
They haven't lived their life yet. They need yours.
The shipbound are a group of people who are incapable of leaving their ships. Depending on the nature of their connection it might be wired or wireless. The Wired are physically bound to advanced cybernetics which in turn connect directly to the ship core. The Wireless in turn don't have any direct physical connection with their ship core they still require a constant feed of information between them and their ship.
This is caused by a condition known as soulspill. Soulspill occures when a pilot spends too much time connected to their ship core, effectively making the ship core a integral part of their brain. Disconnecting a shipbound from their ship core could cause at best EXTREME psychological damage and death at worst.
Due to this and their ability to run massive ships on their own people distrust them and mistake their vessels as ghost ships. Even then there are things in the void that scare them. The soulshreded are those who had something happen to them to push them over the brink of reason. Any attempt to be contacted will either be ignored or responded with violence, and considering some of their ships may be both on the larger side and heavilly armed, they can be a massive problem for anyone in their direct proximity. Soulshreded ship cores are destroyed on the spot as they will carry the insanity of its last user.
This pairs really well with
The ship in question is a "wired" ship that requires a neural connection in the captains chair and once you take a seat, the ship's computer hijacks your body.
If, there are intelligent aliens...
And if, FTL is possible...
I'd expect multi-species systems to be the norm. Why bother terraforming Venus when you can trade it for a human habitable planet currently held by a species that can breathe on Venus? Leaving few multi-star empires but lots of multi-species single star federations of planets.
I agree with this, for another setting. Like it makes perfect sense. If Mass Effect Volus need high gravity, high air pressure planets, just let them have them.
But for this, a lot of what's going on here has either alien ruins, aliens who recently caused a mass extinction (great filtered), and like 2 alien races that are incomprehensible (think the hectapods from Arrival). I agree that this kind of thing could happen on the frontier where those races have more crossover, but probably not for the general setting.
Astronaut kids, particularly those of the first and second generations, tend to be rather erratic and stir crazy. Humans are not meant to be trapped in cramped little spaces surrounded by dozens of others with the never ending hum of machinery echoing in the distance. Indeed. HVAC systems, oxygenators, fans, holotapes, and a never-ending barrage of what's practically Walmart Radio playing never ending glorified elevator music have made most astronaut kids antsy. School fights are very, very common as are mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.
There is hope. The third generation of Astronauts are used to space and find life on a planet just as disconcerting as that of one on a station or ship. Psychological studies have found similarities between the first Martian generations and the children of Astronauts and there are treatment plans in store for wealthier families. Debt peons- sorry, 'Class 0 Economic Migratory Settlers,' with non-existent insurance and possible mutation, have to just make do.
It also tends to differ wildly between colonies. The molten stations of Centauri III are fairly bleak with violent youth gangs being recruitment grounds for pirates whereas the icy oceans of Eros have spawned a new era of winter sports and have high rates of athletic intelligence. Then there's the asteroids of Barnards where there's a disturbingly high number of orphans.
>Silence is death.
A ship is a living thing, fluids running through pipes, air circulating through vents, even the hum of electricity through wiring all produce a soft murmur of sound. When a ship is silent, a ship is dead, and those within are like the gut bacteria inside a corpse, slowly consuming what resources remain until they drown in their own waste. As such, crews tend to be very quiet themselves, so they can always hear the background noise of their thin shell against the endless silence outside. It is considered a breach of etiquette and tempting fate to speak loud enough to drown out these background noises.
>Leave only footprints
Life is a very fragile thing, and the life from Earth has endured a dozen mass extinctions. This has made Earth life incredibly durable when compared to life that is just getting a foothold. When exploring new worlds, explorers must ensure they pack everything they bring out, including their waste products. It only takes a few flecks of cream filling from that twinkie to introduce alien life to a new world, and throw the entire ecological process out of whack, robbing the life on that world a chance to flourish. Also, that bag of shit should be thrown into the recycler and fed through the aquaponics system, so it can be returned to the ship to feed the crew.
>Every ship needs a pet
From the smallest tug to the largest colony ship, every vessel to journey through the deep dark needs to have a pet onboard for the crew to care for. It can be anything, even a roomba with googly eyes, but no voider willingly travels on a vessel without a designated ship's pet. They bring good luck, good moods, and a general indicator for the wellbeing of the ship. More than one electrical fire was averted because the ship's cat came bolting out of the maintenance halls with singed fur and a cry of protest.
There is a rare breed of spacer who believes in absolute freedom, spiritually and physically. These spacers primarily life in zero gravity, resulting in greater control over their bodies and granting them greater awareness of the world around them. These spacers are especially cautious and have a superstition about dropping things in artificial gravity (like how actual astronaut are always dropping things), seeing it as a lack of awareness and a lack of control.
I love all three of these, especially the pet one. Especially since IRL we left a bunch of trash on the moon. But weight budget isn't a concern (high tech drop ships) this is less of an issue.
This thread reminds me of an old website that used to be on the darkweb, and mirrored on cleanet. You would make a post on the message board as if you were a space captain posting a log and you would just write whatever fiction you wanted. I bet if anyone can find the site it would be full of good stories for OP
Do not look directly at the power generator's reaction chamber. Only fuel is supposed to see it, and you aren't fuel, right?
What are some specific enemies we end up fighting in this setting.
Superstiona are coolnfor mood and inspiration, but we actually need some meat.
Couple of answers to that:
>Native xenobiology: Life is abundant and some more advanced planets can be terraformed with existing animals. Some of these can be spacefaring as well. The ALIEN RPG, for example, has space tartigrades.
>Automated defense systems: Intelligent alien life may have set defenses that outlived them. Same for human planets that fell in the galactic apocalypse. Every treasure hunt on a planet has the potential to be an Indiana jones dungeon (good for TTRPGs or even a roguelite) You might also get something like a shoggoth on "low tech" planets like
Though many planets are habitable and full of life, intelligent alien life is exceedingly rare. On a distant star was a habitable world dotted with the unmistakable layout of city streets, though the structures had long since been eroded by harsh winds.
Archeological investigation uncovered caverns beneath the city proper and in those a chamber whose walls were carved with the unmistakable continental arrangements of humanity's homeworld. or
>AI Hives: Ship computers constantly growing themselves like a 40k space hulk. Competing with spacers for technology on planets as well as attacking spacers for their fuel.
You can work this into the lost technology angle as well. Might be cool if somewhere in space there is one central processor collecting/integrating other AI supercomputers to make itself more intelligent. Like a mixture of AM from IHNMAIMS and overclocked Bender
>Ghost Nebulas:
While brave pirates use hide in gaseous nebilas, Spacers carefully plot their courses to avoid nebulas, for that is the realm of those antediluvian beings whose trail of stardust created the heavens themselves. Their hunger is insatiable and even humanity's largest flagships are merely ants to them. existential threat so big and powerful they can wipe out planets if they get hungry or you piss them off.
>Space Cryptids: The Knocker from OP and similar entity-based anomolies. Gives an opportunity for 1-shot style ship adventures.
>Pirates: Independent spacers working for colonies or as free agents.
>Colony Powers: The various surviving colonies putting out their tendrils. They fight Age of Sail battles in space. They also fight ground wars over resources, access to new worlds, etc. They can't just nuke the planet because the lost technology and manufacturing on the surface is more valuable than winning the war.
>Mutants: Spacers/colonists who are changed either by the reality-breaking FTL
, waste, medical experimentation, or conditions on other worlds. They are resentful of "normal" humans and are often treated as pariahs on the outskirts of society. This leads to them becoming pirates or forming factions/colonies of mutants, but they are much less powerful and are easily defeated if a colony power decides to exterminate them (Think Futurama sewer mutants combined with Native Americans)
Taking one from ME1.
>Machine cultists: Occasionally some mining crew unearths some ancient tech. It drives them crazy and they end up replacing limbs and other parts with mechanical bits until they're all borged out and insane. Advisories for this sort of thing exist but it happens more often than people would like.
>They also fight ground wars over resources, access to new worlds, etc. They can't just nuke the planet because the lost technology and manufacturing on the surface is more valuable than winning the war.
Genuinely, this is a good reason to lean even harder into the Age of Sail IN SPAAAAACE motif. Because if you're terrified that artillery will damage your profits or lose technology forever, then you're probably going to send your men in with melee weapons and small arms.
One I thought of.
>Spacers Maritime Guild(Caribbean pirates): Not so much a political body as a loose collection of space stations and ships that form a large and dedicated group that is more heavily armed than people might expect. Typically made up of various people from other nations, former military men, adventure seekers, escaped slaves, and various other rabble. While officially labeled as criminals by most groups they are invaluable as deniable assets, and because these groups abide by a strict code of conduct that details many situations there is rarely cases of them taking money and running. Culturally they love telling stories and run on a loose democracy/almost total anarchy depending on ship. Ships tend to be out dated but lack of military regs means they can get away with improvements that many would call insane.
Meant to reply to
Anon, we in the future don't use such crass and charged terms like 'slave' anymore. They're merely Transitional Level 9 Worker Drones dash 02s. While they're certainly not Sedentary Office Level 7 Comfort Drones, we at Astrotech take strides to eliminate the gap between rich and poor as we pursue a more equitable future.
Astrotech, a brief overview: Astrotech has a unique origin. Unlike most of their contemporaries who were forcibly united by autocrats and military juntas, Astrotech peacefully united their world when they bought out the last major competitors during a much misaligned period known as the 'Corporate Wars' which we refer to as the Astro-Economic Realignment Plan designed and implemented by our founder, Carlos Hill. After his ingenious plan, Astro- formerly named Macragge- entered a period of untold prosperity as we took to the stars and brought humanitarian aid to the more economically disadvantaged star systems with the help of our sponsors in the Union. With growing profits, Astrotech looks to a bright green future!
MegaMart, a great place to shop: MegaMart from the moment of it's founding, has always striven for maximum customer satisfaction which has transformed MegaMart from a mere brick and mortar store to a system wide corporate enterprise that bought out mismanaged competitors during the Great Crash that eliminated 90% of all rival companies save for us and our sister company, Taco Planet. With the help of our sponsors from the Coalition, MegaMart and its sister company builds new homes on distant planets, supporting the economically disadvantaged as we search for better tomorrows. But we don't do it for us, we do it for you! Remember, working wagies are happy wagies!
Beatrice & Sterling Enterprises, new worlds: B&S is a united consumerate that owns several systems in the outer expanse. We at B&S specialize in helping workers from Earth build new lives... build... EVERYTHING YOU JUST HEARD IS A LIE. LIFE HERE IS LIKE LIVING IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP. PEOPLE DIE LIKE FLIES. THEY DON'T WANT US HERE, WE ROB THEM. AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DEPRIVED OF THE CORPORATION'S WEALTH, TAKE DESPERATE MEASURES... Thanks for coming. We hope to hear from you soon! TILL NEXT TIME.
Ok, I'll toss a supertition into the ring: If you die in open space, your ghost gets stuck there. At least, that's the ghist of it.
The general idea is, if you die on a planet, you go to heaven/hell/nondemoniational afterlife. Whatever usually happens to you after you die, happens to you. The same is true if you die on a spaceship, the idea being that there's enough of your world, or a world, to drag your soul to the afterlife. In open space though, all you have is your space suit, which isn't enough of an anchor. So, your soul doesn't go anywhere. Depending on the superstition, your soul either stays stuck in your body until it can be destroyed, at which point you're through to the afterlife (if it's destroyed on a ship or planet at least), or it floats free in the void, until it can get to an inhabited planet. And given that no one assumes a soul can move faster than light, that assumedly takes a long time.
As a result, spacers often deck their suits out with little trinkets, things to tie them to home in case they die and their body can't be recovered, as they think it might be enough to help them move on.They also believe that the souls of lost spacers tend to travel towards stars - as those are the most obvious landmarks - and that you can hear the voices of those spacers in the background radiation from stars. Some soothsayers make a killing "decoding" these messages to give to grieving families.
This is somewhat related to
in that the spacer's ultimate goal is to drift home to an afterlife.
But if they get lost out there,
they can become what I'm going to call a "Golgotha" a ball of dead astronauts and ship debris.
Chucking this in since it’s sorta relevant, from another thread:
>400ish years or so in the future at least, possibly longer.
>Humanity has entered a post-human age. Transhumanism and genetic alterations have become the norm.
>Human-centric, syncretic religious system. Theocratic society is run by biologically immortal post-human freaks called the Divinity.
>Sol system has more or less been fully colonized, a few missions out of the system have been launched but noting widespread.
>Main event of the setting is essentially the Rapture. Without warning around 70 - 80% of the population instantaneously vanishes without a trace. No indications as to where or why.
>Collapse of solar society, mass catastrophes as ships crash, cities burn, and planetary communications collapse. All AI above a certain intelligence threshold have vanished as well, the remaining ones are either completely unresponsive or largely delusional.
> About a century has passed since then, the survivors believing themselves to be damned souls left behind.
>Big focus on melancholy, isolation, mystery, and emptiness in the ruins of the Divinity.
I'm halfway tempted to have the 'Qing China' as a Unitologist theocracy straight from Dead Space. The populace is locked in a screwed-up pyramid scheme based upon income. At first glance, the state looks pretty normal. Most people live pretty normal lives but in order to move up in the government, not necessarily the corporate world, you need to join the cult. This is similar to Qing China's Imperial Examinations but extremely religious in nature and as the candidates go along, they get indoctrinated and brainwashed to serve the divines.
After all... Unity means harmony, apotheosis means enlightenment, to be whole we must be one for God crafted man from flesh.
The East India Companies, the Royal Africa Company, the Moorish slave trade, those blood stains on the wall of human history are no longer dry... But wetter than ever.
>"Take our hands that we may feed you, take our eyes that we may see you, take our minds that we may serve you; we will live forever..."
you know they could do a cool dead space game where instead of a action horror shooter its a stealth game where cultists have taken over a ship after a fake S.O.S call and you gotta avoid them until the end where you discover that the marker they worship and the flesh change they pray for are all real.
On topic, going 'space mad' like these guys did would be something other groups would build superstitions around to prevent, I can see a culture that fears signs of mental instability and madness and would cull it beofre it spread
night vision is how you see demons
Two questions:
1. I think we need more planet agnostic space horrors like the knocker or the nebula ghosts. Does anyone have ideas for entity cryptid creatures?
2. What's the general visual motif? Like if Warhammer is catholic space nazis, what does this world look like? I imagine even with the colonial theme; colonists are not wearing powdered wigs and ruffled shirts. I imagine the spaceships are generally big and boxy and not aerodynamic.
Visual motiff is what you want it to be, we will not agree on a unified look. But 40k is a very specific kind of look in a universe that has technoglically regressed for ten thousand years.
Something like urban dead space, star wars or Star sector is what I've got in my head for this thread. If ships have a onboard bred slave class, like 40k ships do, I can see themw wearing rags when not in uniforms/ space suits to do thier jobs.
>I think we need more planet agnostic space horrors
I agree! The obvious one is the Wendigo, but that has become pretty cliche kind of santized by zoomer americans and a bastardisation to just 'tall deer skull head flesh eating monster in the woods'. Rather than a warning about what (you) can become by being greedy stealing food from others in winter for yourself and eating others, turning you into a gaunt, long limbed rabid animal. Until Dawn does a good job showing that kind of wendigo, Warhammer Fantasy has Mournguls which I think are a very creative spin on the wendigo. They have long unhinged jaws and they are torn apart at the torso and get around on two very long arms. The massive maw and no lower body shows that they are always starving since they can never physically fill theirs mouths or stomachs.
Running out of food and fear of starvation would be an ever present worry for ships on multiyear/generation journeys. So I can easily see a superstition forming around someone gorging themselves on food supplies being turned into a Wendigo/Mourngul. And its a monster that comes from within the ship rather than the outside, so you're trapped inside with this monster. The Feeders from Dead Space 3 are also based on this kind of idea, really skeletal creatures that should be dead but have an never ending hunger
Yeah. For a lot of this I’m imaging a visual cross between dead space and alien
Maybe some Starcraft? These are frontier planets in the backend of nowhere so some Rednecks are to be expected.
Why do I get the feeling nobody can agree on just what the hell happened. Earth is still around, and apparently suffered through something completely different and much earlier than their stellar neighbors. 'Toxic Ice,' 'mutants,' 'disappeared people,' 'robot planets,' 'feeders,' sounds like multiple things building up towards a nasty conclusion. Maybe the Divines know... Have fun in the UnitScientology Empire!
Could also go with a Hyperion Kantos scenario for what happened to Earth, make it appear to the more primitive sensors that it got sucked into a black hole due to an experimental but it instead just got moved via accidental worrmhole.
As an aside anyone think some of the stuff from Titan AE could be used in this?
Maybe the survivors in space were a mix of authoritarian governments, backwoods hill people, hardcore libertarian survivalist types, Amish 'back to nature' communities? Mutants and Androids may have been too divergent for the Fall so it ignored them. Maybe if we asked the Divines*... Surely they know as befitting the holy!
*OOC here for a moment, but surviving AIs probably lose their shit whenever you mention them.
We've all heard about Ghost Ships. But what about Ghost Colonies? Happens sometimes. A planet goes dark and a ship pops in a few years later, hell sometimes a decade or two later, and they find a empty planet. Usually you can find the human remains that can give up the cause of death in these dead colonies: suffocation because the HVAC system broke, starvation because the pigs or the hydroponics farm died, hell usually bullets and cuts showing that a bunch of fricking pirates razed the place to the ground.
But Ghost Colonies are different. No remains, it's like the people right up disappeared. This one time we found a planet where it's as if the people walked straight up into a blizzard and were never seen again. It was as if everyone decided to end it all one day, and nobody knows why.
I really like that idea anon. I think you can make it spookier if it seems like the ship crew missed everyone by mere minutes or seconds. Someone is on the cooms for landing but once they do theres no ground crew, walking around the colony the food i still warm, lights still humming, everything clean, but the people are just gone.
Or the colonists are all dead but none of them have realised that.
Reverse also work.
>Area with corpses in casual/work clothing spread around, no sign of trauma nor fighting - just asphyxiation
>Not a single building or man-made structure anywhere on the planet, despite it being recently recorded as a budding colony
These would be fantastic for frontier colonies or alien rpg colonies where you might have 50 people on the whole planet living in pre-fab buildings (also like a lot of science outposts on frontiers in ME1).
This can also contribute to the Galactic Apocalypse. At some point much larger colonies started disappearing.
Might even be fun if as a single extreme case, *everyone* on an ecumenopolis disappeared
50 billion people used to live here. Now its a ghost town.
so Roanoke basically. for those unaware, early American colony that when a resupply/trade ship came over from Europe was found entirely abandoned with no signs of attack/sickness/etc. basically looked like everyone just got up and left one day with no preparation. all that was found was a name of the local tribe carved into a tree. historians say they just joined that tribe but no one has ever confirmed it.
honestly if we are looking for ideas just go steal from Star Trek and the love letter to trek that is the Orville. considering it's a soft space opera about exploring. much more than a handful of episodes have them coming into contact with weird old abandoned alien tech, strange space creatures, and planets with more going on than it seems. plenty of things you could scrape the serial numbers off of and fit into a re expanding humanity rediscovering the universe
I have an idea, but it might be too high tech for this setting. I think there should be an all female sisterhood of fortunetellers and lore keepers of all these space horrors call the "laser witches." They all have cybernetic eyes with holographic projectors built into them and as they tell your future, their eyes generate images of what they are describing.
This is a cool enough idea that I'll ignore the slop you posted.
Are their predictions in any way accurate? Or are they just space gypsies?
Tell me what you guys think about this
To mitigate the propagation of bacteria and viruses and limit their mutation, each planet has a 5 to 10 years containment cycle where no ship is allowed in or out. It is to give time to the study of current, past or new sickness, and more importantly to monitor the migration of diseases.
I know it's cliche between The Thing and Amog Us, but a shapeshifter entity that changes shape based on how much biomass it eats is perfect for an isolated space setting.
I'll take the bait on this one. This can be the space whale equivalent. Little clump of protoplasmic cells picked up by spacers violating quarantine on some backwater uninhabited planet.
It climbed inside a ship, ate few bugs, then rats, then the ship's dog, killed the owner and ate it, took human form, and then after killing 2-3 people, became a monstrous flesh monster. After eating enough biomass, it gradually gets bigger and more intelligent. Eventually, it becomes the size of an elephant and its final form is a spacefaring creature that looks like Azathoth.
The spacefaring version subsists on stardust and consumes asteroids and entire ships, able to synthesize nutrients from the minerals and discard the rest. At this point, its growth is very slow because they need biomass to grow efficiently.
The twist to this shapeshifter is that it can only get bigger the more it eats. So there is a limited range when it can impersonate humans. At some point, it gets the size of an elephant or the size of a t-rex and is able to eat people without subterfuge.
It could be their method of learning and communication.
Each time they eat someone or something with a recognizable and complex brain they absorb what it knows. The personality and emotions are not preserved beyond a memory in the creatures mind, one it possibly doesn't really understand.
They turn into the Azathoth looking things eventually if they can't at a smaller scale find an Azathoth. If they can they merge into it and the knowlage is assimilated into it's mind and the absorbed genetic information is archived.
Possibly this was the main method of communication back in some previous era of the universe between such beings that were far more common.
The Azathoths can spawn new entities that range anywhere from microscopic to the size of a small mouse. Once they reach the larger sizes they can develop organs and systems of greater sophistication resulting in an increase in efficiency for the organism as a whole.
The final state of these beings are the "meat planets". These are Azathoths that have grown in size to the point of total or near immobility and are considered astronomical bodies. At this size they are efficient enough to survive on sunlight and the miniscule trickle of space dust and rocks that rain down on them as any other planet.
The estimated age of these creatures indicates that they were if not the oldest space faring species then possibly old enough to have met them. Most if not all of the currently alive meat world entities are in systems guarded jealously by various elder races who do not suffer tresspassers.
Despite their vast accumilations of knowlage the overall intelligence of the larger entities is questionable. The relationship between them and the lder races is unknown.
Love the leap to meat planet. IMO the most important thing about this one is that it is each is a single entity rather than a disease that spreads as quickly as possible (the thing/necromorphs).
Do meat planets eat anything that lands on them? Can life flourish on meat planets?
The thing is that each meat planet represents an archive of whole civilizations of creatures. There is some direction to what they do. They don't go after species that haven't managed space travel or the potential to achive it. They'll absorb other animals if it helps them towards the goal of getting to worthy peoples but it's not what they are after. Planets without sapient life on them? Fine and ignored. Planets with bronze age people on them? Ignored. Signs of tamed fission power? Time to consume.
They may be under the protection of the elder races because each of them is a monument and a preservation of something of the peoples that they have consumed and destroying them as the dangerous civilization killing hazards that they are would be a desecration of that.
They aren't fully contained as the Azathoths are still floating around collecting and sending samples to the meat planets even if their numbers are being curtailed somewhat. This maybe intentional. Each meat planet is in it's way an ark for what it consumes.
Nobody knows if it's possible to live on one, assuming a breathable atmosphere whichthere probably isn't. It probably absorbs most forms of traditional life that touch it much as the creatures it sends forth do. If there is any life it would be the equivelent of a skin infection existing untill an imune response deals with it.
The elder races have no interest in meat worlds already dead, so there are some very old corpses to examine.
Jesus Christ. It's like mindflayers meet ME reapers meet Necromorphs.
I was thinking more Pattern Jugglers meets TheThing burt with a reason more than the default being..
"Beautiful. The Divine made us from His Body, His Flesh, His Blood, the Spark of Divinity that underlies all living things. These harbingers of the rapture, ascension for all, foretell our destinies. Praise be the Divine, praise be the path, never let one fall astray."
I know its a sci-fi cliche, but I think it fits for this setting: Void Storms
Swirling anomalies of stardust that simultaneously appear at two places in space, sometimes 10s of lightyears apart, sometimes thousands of lightyears part.
Anything that is sucked up into one, comes out the other (like portals). They can be predicted at short range with instruments, so its never a surprise that they are coming but just how big they are and where they go is a different question.
So this gives you your Lost In Spae or Voyager situation where Spacers are thrown adrift and need to rely on their superstitions and stored luck to bring them home.
All space suit helmet must be stored with the visor open, in case "something" hide in it.
There is no actual reason nor even spooky event behind it, it's just a dumb superstition.
Quantum weapons
Scientists will tell you they are nothing but snake oil, propaganda, unsuccessful experiments and fancy names for nuclear and antimatter weaponry
Spacers know better.
Sites of old battles, odd craters instead of treasure troves and wrecks of highly unfamiliar ships often bring a certain apprehension to any crew that happened to come across. Laws of probability randomly act strange. Dices will roll all sixes, coins alternate between heads and tails with precision of a pulsar, hell, even humans make odd decisions there. However, those effects appear and pass suddenly, without any pattern. Planet born intellectuals laugh at thst kind of talk, considering it a myth just like Orion Demon, Kek and Twin Stars
But GRU-KGB-O, Sword of Islam, Royal Draconis Council, Great Khan Round Table aren't so sure
What they are sure of is that dead god orbiting sr-ok12 wasn't slain with mere legends
>Dawson's Christian
A small space destroyer, named Dawson's Christian, is ambushed by pirates and completely destroyed.
Ever since, it is talked about as a ghost ship, and is seen as mere legend.
Some claim there is some truth to it.
Occasionally, when spacers are beset by pirates an unknown destroyer joins the fray, rescuing the spacers before disappearing into void again
When Earth took to the stars once more, they encountered many strange faiths. These faiths are believed to be the end result of Space Madness, Star Dementia, and extreme mutation. Among them:
>The Church of the Divine Unity: the followers of the Divines. Unlike most of the various Void cults, the Diviners had carved a massive Empire centuries before the rise of the Empires. They believe that God was as a space entity and that the Divines, the heads of the Unity Church, are close to him. Some say that the Divines can even hear them speak. But most Priests, and indeed the heads of state, are normal human beings. Infact, the Church is something of an investment scheme: you advance based upon how much income you provide to the institution.
>The Children of Oblivion: a nihilistic cult that believes there is nothing. For the void is nothing and everything must return to whence it came. Everything is pointless. Nothing matters. Life is a fluke, an abomination. And the Children kill the unenlightened because they can. They lurk within the deep confines of the out expanse* and are hated by all. The Diviners, however, have an alliance of convenience with the Children- often pointing them towards the Commonwealth and the Southern Union and the Draconis... Even as they attack the Believers imperiously.
>Nosferatis Brotherhood: there are many variations of mutation out there. From humans that naturally evolved on extrasolar planets, to the descendants of genetically engineered colonists from the golden age to men warped by toxins and radiations on old Earth. But these mutants have diverged just far enough from humans to be considered their own specie. Some call them Necrophages, others Necroids, a rare few names them Vampires after the archaic mythological creature of old Earth. They believe that old humanity was eaten by wrathful Gods only known as the 'Ancients.'
*might be one of the many, many reasons why colonies go dark.
Aliens exist.
They don't do anything.
Their ships are just there, doing nothing, be it right above a human capital city or randomly in the middle of bumfrick nowhere in empty space.
They can't be destroyed, pushed, talked to, scanned or anything: the hull is just beyond anything humans can interact with.
At some point they leave, going at random speed between "grandma taking a walk" and "pretty sure that's above c" toward another random position.
Their trajectory never collide with anything, they even deviate or wait a bit if some human purposely get in the way, so clearly they *know* we are here.
Nothing happen to anyone encountering an alien ship.
There is no pattern to their travels.
They don't even particularly hang out around anything interesting.
Normal people just go "ah, neat" when they see one, but there is always some crazy hobbo claiming "they figured it out!!§§".
I propose that Color Out of Space / Annihilation meteors are semi-common and typically spell the doom of a colonized world as they turn into uniquely refracted parodies.
This would be okay for a specific race. Its very much like Arrival. We established earlier there are some aliens but they’re so strange that they only intermingle on the overlap between territories and aren’t interested in humanity outside science trade.
Music help stabilizing your neural implants.
All ships and space stations *always* have some low-volume background music playing in every corner that can be reached by a human, and spacers get actual anguish attacks when in complete silence.
Planet-born people are seen as freaks for wanting to "turn it off, that playlist has been on a loop for the past 12hours ffs".
It's actually a myth from the previous space war, spread by one side to hide the fact that they had partially infiltrated the enemy's cyber-warfare group and always knew in advance of any neural-implant-targeting virus they would use. They made public a whole bunch of bullshit justifications as to why their side's neural implants rarely failed under cyber-attack, but since the war ended soon after it was never really "debunked" and some of those randomly stuck around in the mind of the general populace.
Klean Audial, Radio Access Technology
KARAT, listen up kiddie or your implant'll go on the fritz
Every ship has on it somewhere a can of WD40, a flat headed screwdriver and a roll of duct tape.