JohnDeHope3
01-06-2002, 01:15 AM
OK thanks to everyone for posting comments about the original Yellowmen ideas in a prior thread. I don't think I did a good job conveying it all, so here is my new attempt. I've dumped the Yellowmen part for now, focusing instead on free traders, who are far less restricted in the setting, and added some new information about the nature of space.
Places
The Caucus – Humanity’s core government, old-Earth’s Western culture taken to interstellar extremes, most of known space is to some degree aligned with the Caucus, it is a socialist utopia on some planets, a communist labor camp on others, but always beauracracy and government management are the rule
Solera – the very center area of the Caucus government, early human civilized space, very old and very developed, heart of human civilization, a gigantic socialist regime, this is the most polarized part of the Caucus, they are very unforgiving of the other free traders, metastates, and even border-dwellers who still are part of the Caucus
The Borders – Edges of civilized space, outposts, cut off from Solera by distance and culture but still within the Caucus’ rule, politics are looser here, rules less stringent, lawlessness a bit more common, but the general sentiment of the Caucus government remains
Metastates – Pockets of space that are not aligned to the Caucus, wide range of varying cultures, different reasons for not operating within the Caucus, sometimes at war with each other or in civil conflicts, some operate as corporate states, others as military dictatorships, others as communes of like-minded people
People
Free Traders – Unaligned travelers, merchants, basically people with ships who don’t really settle down all that much, they are free in the sense that they don’t belong to the Caucus or any particular metastate, they are traders in the sense that they have no way of surviving except to trade or work for others
The Yellowmen – subset of free traders, they are the most recognizable group of free traders, they posess a philosophy that sets them apart from the rest of humanity
Pirates – interstellar rogues and thieves, outcast villains with starships, a sort of anti-yellowman, depending on your politics they may or may not seem like free traders, Solera definitely sees them as such, but the borders see them as a distinct criminal class
Caucus Marines – The biggest threat to pirates, and to any free trader in Solera too, is the marine force of the central Sol government, very powerful and advanced tech, far beyong what is available to most free traders or even pirates, their power is absolute within Solera and tapers down to very little at the edge of the borders, sometimes military actions are carried out against metastates too
Caucus Government – Depending on the location this can range from very limited taxation and beauracracy in the borders, to stifiling socialist domination in Solera, backed up by the marines, there are countless cabinets, departments, branches, etc. each with differing areas of authority and overlapping responsibility
Adventure Hooks
In general, the free traders are deliberate outcasts, they do not wish to live within the confines of secular human society, this isn’t because they are fanatics, but more because they refuse to live under the rules imposed by all of the dominant cultures. Yellowmen are even more extreme in this regard.
Players – The players are free traders, unaligned wanderers who make a living by trading and taking odd jobs, they serve as interstellar adventurers for hire, they could be less philosophical free traders, or even priates, or even Caucus marines, if the GM wants to run his game that way
Trade – free traders have to support themselves and trade is a great way of doing it, even non-free traders will spend a lot of time dealing with traders as NPCs
Adventure – Since free traders don’t have “jobs” per se they have time to go off wandering around looking for excitement, the more successful and independently wealthy a free trader group is the more time it can spend adventuring
Mercenary – military or clandestine operations sometimes require non-aligned operatives, free traders can perform light combat duty too, some free traders specialize in military ops and are really more like mercenaries than traders
Exploration – sometimes free traders are hired to go places and find things that others can’t or won’t, sometimes they do it just for fun or profit, this usually requires a large bankroll or an establish free-trader team because it is an expensive and time consuming process
Defense – The deeper into Solera one travels, the more hostile the Caucus is to free traders in general and Yellowmen in specific, some metastates are dangerous too, yellowmen often team up to help each other out and back each other up, free traders are in general less organized
Heroism – The yellowmen are definitely heroes, hated by some, loved by others, imagined and dreamed of by children everywhere, they are larger than life, they are the epitome of the “free trader” spirit
Mediation – People all over the galaxy trust yellowmen, they may not like them but they can trust them to act a certain way and to generally be honest, thus they get a lot of work as negotiators, mediators, etc. Even bodyguard work isn’t beyond them so long as the people being defended aren’t obviously at odds with the general culture of yellowmen
History Of Free Traders (and Yellowmen in particular)
Modern time in the game is circa 2400 AD.
In the early days of interplanetary merchant shipping (about 300 years ago, the 2100s) issues with pirates and aggressive governments/colonies cause merchants trouble, some merchants were willing to sacrifice cargo capacity for armaments and defenses against these groups. Some merchants even had ships that could go toe-to-toe with military vessels and crews.
A loose practice formed of painting such well-armed ships with yellow markings to identify them, both to identify themselves to friendly units (we’re here to save/help you) and to warn enemies (we’re not just another merchant trawler). Less scrupulous individuals took the practice of also painting unarmed ships that way too. The practice lost popularity when it began to be used as a ploy by aggressive military groups to lure unsuspecting merchants into traps and generally thwart the custom. This occurred in the 2200s.
As the Caucus was formed and then grew in power it became more clear who was who, and the practice dwindled (the 2300s). Fewer merchants bothered with it anymore, and the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” usage likewise dried up. Some holdout merchants, clinging to an older and nobler time when self defense and self preservation were more vital, stuck with it. Those still adhering to the custom solidified into modern-day “yellowmen”. The former usage is almost forgotten, today only yellowmen paint their ships in yellow, and most people associate the custom with them.
Yellowmen Culture
The yellowmen are free traders who tend to stick together because they aspire to a more stringent way of living that the rank and file merchants. They are not an organized society, much less a government. Instead they are a social circle, a diffuse culture of like-minded people who work together because they trust and look out for each other.
Occasionally yellowmen “go bad”. This is more of a fairy tale told by Caucus parents to excite children than a real-world problem. As with any other social group, outcasts tend to get pushed away and out from the group. When such outcasts continue to claim themselves as “yellowmen” steps are sometime taken to stop this. Depending on who you ask, this can be as benign as galaxy-wide advertisements about a person’s outcast status, or as devious as entire starship crews “disappearing”.
Yellowmen adorn themselves to stand out as much as they can. So in the borders they’ll often wear yellow hats or other clothing with yellow colors. Armor, ships, weapns, and equipment often have a yellow insignia or color representation somewhere. Ships are almost always painted with some kind of yellow pattern or graphic. Generally the safer and more protected the yellowman is, the more bold the statement will be.
Space Travel & Communication
Starships have been around for hundreds of years. They function by dipping the ship into the realm of “dark matter”. Dark matter is invisible to the normal world, but is not restricted by speed-of-light issues, yet has a friction element unknown in normal space. The dip into dark matter begins at the front of the ship and moves towards the back, so that it looks like the ship is being dipped into a colorful energy soup, disappearing as it goes. More powerful drives can get this done faster, 10 seconds would be considered very fast, whereas older drives can take as long as 10 minutes to get it done.
Once the ship is in dark matter it no longer interacts like it normally would. The ship is effectively “not there”, normal sensors cannot see it and it doesn’t interact with the normal world. Powerful, expensive, and delicate “dark matter sensors” allow low-quality pictures to be painted from both directions though. These appear grainy and monochromatic, similar to nightvision or thermal vision in quality.
Time is unaffected with the field. A ship can travel as fast as it likes and not have any unusual time effects.
Dark matter is constantly moving, and so ships and signals within it cannot be accurately tracked since they are carriend along and mixed up in the mess. Thus only large guided missiles (with onboard dark matter sensors and drives) can be used in ship-to-ship combat that happens between or within dark matter. Radio and other “wireless” mediums cannot work.
Propulsion is the same within the field as without, except that dark matter slows down the ship via friction. There is no “coasting” as in regular space, so constant acceleration is required. The same drive a ship uses in one place can be used in the other. Drives in regular space that push a ship about 0.1g will give the ships a dark space speed of about 1 parsec per week. The trick is that while in dark matter space a ship can travel faster than light! Speeds of up to a few parsecs per day (about 1.5g in normal space) are common for fast military ships, a few parsecs per week is about the slowest a ship would run (0.2g in normal space). Getting from Solera to the outermost limits of the Borders (about 15 parsecs) would take about a month of travel time in a fast courier, as many as 6 months or more on a very slow ship. Due to the swirling nature of dark matter travel times are not constant, and can be affected by as much as +/- 20% or more.
Navigation within dark matter is pretty easy, and simply requires powerful computers and dark matter sensors. If you know where you are and where you want to go, there isn’t usually a problem getting there. If your navigation systems fail though, the swirly nature of dark matter can put you off course very quickly. Lost ships are a reality, as are ships that become lost and then turn up years later, or in places far distant from their intended destination.
Communication between ships in dark matter is not possible. The constantly swirling nature of the medium means that signals within it never make it to a receiver correctly. The only way to send a message through dark matter is to send a ship with navigation and sensors. Specially designed courier ships, only big enough to house fast drives and dark matter sensors, plus a very small crew, are used.
Technology
The feel of technology is intended to be industrial and expansive. Characters should know that there exists technologies that are fantastic, but well beyond their reach. Antigrav, nanotech, and extremely advanced biotech exist, but only the elite of the Caucus (and perhaps a few metastates) command the resources needed to access it.
Spaceships use mass drivers and lasers, ground untis (soldiers and vehicles) use advanced firearms (caseless, electric discharge, extremely reliable) and maybe railguns (heavy, slow, but super dangerous). Only truly exceptional infantry units are equipped with lasers (fast, deadly, armor penetrating, but require lots of ammo) or plasma weapons (shock value, armor penetrating, short range, also lots of ammo). Grenades and other explosives are usfull against less armored foes.
Medicine is advanced, but not super science. Stem Cell injections are the adventurers choice for first aid, healing light wounds very quickly. Serious wounds take perhaps a few days to heal, mortal wounds maybe a week or two. Overall the feel is heroic here: if you survive the encounter you’ll be fine. Weapons are dangerous though, and death from combat is always possible. I’d like to say 2-3 good hits from a rifle would definitely put a person down, and 1-2 really excellent criticals might kill them.
Light vehicles use hydrogen fuel cells. Powerhungry things (starships, heavy vehicles) use hydrogen-burning fusion plants. Basically hydrogen is the fuel for everything.
Places
The Caucus – Humanity’s core government, old-Earth’s Western culture taken to interstellar extremes, most of known space is to some degree aligned with the Caucus, it is a socialist utopia on some planets, a communist labor camp on others, but always beauracracy and government management are the rule
Solera – the very center area of the Caucus government, early human civilized space, very old and very developed, heart of human civilization, a gigantic socialist regime, this is the most polarized part of the Caucus, they are very unforgiving of the other free traders, metastates, and even border-dwellers who still are part of the Caucus
The Borders – Edges of civilized space, outposts, cut off from Solera by distance and culture but still within the Caucus’ rule, politics are looser here, rules less stringent, lawlessness a bit more common, but the general sentiment of the Caucus government remains
Metastates – Pockets of space that are not aligned to the Caucus, wide range of varying cultures, different reasons for not operating within the Caucus, sometimes at war with each other or in civil conflicts, some operate as corporate states, others as military dictatorships, others as communes of like-minded people
People
Free Traders – Unaligned travelers, merchants, basically people with ships who don’t really settle down all that much, they are free in the sense that they don’t belong to the Caucus or any particular metastate, they are traders in the sense that they have no way of surviving except to trade or work for others
The Yellowmen – subset of free traders, they are the most recognizable group of free traders, they posess a philosophy that sets them apart from the rest of humanity
Pirates – interstellar rogues and thieves, outcast villains with starships, a sort of anti-yellowman, depending on your politics they may or may not seem like free traders, Solera definitely sees them as such, but the borders see them as a distinct criminal class
Caucus Marines – The biggest threat to pirates, and to any free trader in Solera too, is the marine force of the central Sol government, very powerful and advanced tech, far beyong what is available to most free traders or even pirates, their power is absolute within Solera and tapers down to very little at the edge of the borders, sometimes military actions are carried out against metastates too
Caucus Government – Depending on the location this can range from very limited taxation and beauracracy in the borders, to stifiling socialist domination in Solera, backed up by the marines, there are countless cabinets, departments, branches, etc. each with differing areas of authority and overlapping responsibility
Adventure Hooks
In general, the free traders are deliberate outcasts, they do not wish to live within the confines of secular human society, this isn’t because they are fanatics, but more because they refuse to live under the rules imposed by all of the dominant cultures. Yellowmen are even more extreme in this regard.
Players – The players are free traders, unaligned wanderers who make a living by trading and taking odd jobs, they serve as interstellar adventurers for hire, they could be less philosophical free traders, or even priates, or even Caucus marines, if the GM wants to run his game that way
Trade – free traders have to support themselves and trade is a great way of doing it, even non-free traders will spend a lot of time dealing with traders as NPCs
Adventure – Since free traders don’t have “jobs” per se they have time to go off wandering around looking for excitement, the more successful and independently wealthy a free trader group is the more time it can spend adventuring
Mercenary – military or clandestine operations sometimes require non-aligned operatives, free traders can perform light combat duty too, some free traders specialize in military ops and are really more like mercenaries than traders
Exploration – sometimes free traders are hired to go places and find things that others can’t or won’t, sometimes they do it just for fun or profit, this usually requires a large bankroll or an establish free-trader team because it is an expensive and time consuming process
Defense – The deeper into Solera one travels, the more hostile the Caucus is to free traders in general and Yellowmen in specific, some metastates are dangerous too, yellowmen often team up to help each other out and back each other up, free traders are in general less organized
Heroism – The yellowmen are definitely heroes, hated by some, loved by others, imagined and dreamed of by children everywhere, they are larger than life, they are the epitome of the “free trader” spirit
Mediation – People all over the galaxy trust yellowmen, they may not like them but they can trust them to act a certain way and to generally be honest, thus they get a lot of work as negotiators, mediators, etc. Even bodyguard work isn’t beyond them so long as the people being defended aren’t obviously at odds with the general culture of yellowmen
History Of Free Traders (and Yellowmen in particular)
Modern time in the game is circa 2400 AD.
In the early days of interplanetary merchant shipping (about 300 years ago, the 2100s) issues with pirates and aggressive governments/colonies cause merchants trouble, some merchants were willing to sacrifice cargo capacity for armaments and defenses against these groups. Some merchants even had ships that could go toe-to-toe with military vessels and crews.
A loose practice formed of painting such well-armed ships with yellow markings to identify them, both to identify themselves to friendly units (we’re here to save/help you) and to warn enemies (we’re not just another merchant trawler). Less scrupulous individuals took the practice of also painting unarmed ships that way too. The practice lost popularity when it began to be used as a ploy by aggressive military groups to lure unsuspecting merchants into traps and generally thwart the custom. This occurred in the 2200s.
As the Caucus was formed and then grew in power it became more clear who was who, and the practice dwindled (the 2300s). Fewer merchants bothered with it anymore, and the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” usage likewise dried up. Some holdout merchants, clinging to an older and nobler time when self defense and self preservation were more vital, stuck with it. Those still adhering to the custom solidified into modern-day “yellowmen”. The former usage is almost forgotten, today only yellowmen paint their ships in yellow, and most people associate the custom with them.
Yellowmen Culture
The yellowmen are free traders who tend to stick together because they aspire to a more stringent way of living that the rank and file merchants. They are not an organized society, much less a government. Instead they are a social circle, a diffuse culture of like-minded people who work together because they trust and look out for each other.
Occasionally yellowmen “go bad”. This is more of a fairy tale told by Caucus parents to excite children than a real-world problem. As with any other social group, outcasts tend to get pushed away and out from the group. When such outcasts continue to claim themselves as “yellowmen” steps are sometime taken to stop this. Depending on who you ask, this can be as benign as galaxy-wide advertisements about a person’s outcast status, or as devious as entire starship crews “disappearing”.
Yellowmen adorn themselves to stand out as much as they can. So in the borders they’ll often wear yellow hats or other clothing with yellow colors. Armor, ships, weapns, and equipment often have a yellow insignia or color representation somewhere. Ships are almost always painted with some kind of yellow pattern or graphic. Generally the safer and more protected the yellowman is, the more bold the statement will be.
Space Travel & Communication
Starships have been around for hundreds of years. They function by dipping the ship into the realm of “dark matter”. Dark matter is invisible to the normal world, but is not restricted by speed-of-light issues, yet has a friction element unknown in normal space. The dip into dark matter begins at the front of the ship and moves towards the back, so that it looks like the ship is being dipped into a colorful energy soup, disappearing as it goes. More powerful drives can get this done faster, 10 seconds would be considered very fast, whereas older drives can take as long as 10 minutes to get it done.
Once the ship is in dark matter it no longer interacts like it normally would. The ship is effectively “not there”, normal sensors cannot see it and it doesn’t interact with the normal world. Powerful, expensive, and delicate “dark matter sensors” allow low-quality pictures to be painted from both directions though. These appear grainy and monochromatic, similar to nightvision or thermal vision in quality.
Time is unaffected with the field. A ship can travel as fast as it likes and not have any unusual time effects.
Dark matter is constantly moving, and so ships and signals within it cannot be accurately tracked since they are carriend along and mixed up in the mess. Thus only large guided missiles (with onboard dark matter sensors and drives) can be used in ship-to-ship combat that happens between or within dark matter. Radio and other “wireless” mediums cannot work.
Propulsion is the same within the field as without, except that dark matter slows down the ship via friction. There is no “coasting” as in regular space, so constant acceleration is required. The same drive a ship uses in one place can be used in the other. Drives in regular space that push a ship about 0.1g will give the ships a dark space speed of about 1 parsec per week. The trick is that while in dark matter space a ship can travel faster than light! Speeds of up to a few parsecs per day (about 1.5g in normal space) are common for fast military ships, a few parsecs per week is about the slowest a ship would run (0.2g in normal space). Getting from Solera to the outermost limits of the Borders (about 15 parsecs) would take about a month of travel time in a fast courier, as many as 6 months or more on a very slow ship. Due to the swirling nature of dark matter travel times are not constant, and can be affected by as much as +/- 20% or more.
Navigation within dark matter is pretty easy, and simply requires powerful computers and dark matter sensors. If you know where you are and where you want to go, there isn’t usually a problem getting there. If your navigation systems fail though, the swirly nature of dark matter can put you off course very quickly. Lost ships are a reality, as are ships that become lost and then turn up years later, or in places far distant from their intended destination.
Communication between ships in dark matter is not possible. The constantly swirling nature of the medium means that signals within it never make it to a receiver correctly. The only way to send a message through dark matter is to send a ship with navigation and sensors. Specially designed courier ships, only big enough to house fast drives and dark matter sensors, plus a very small crew, are used.
Technology
The feel of technology is intended to be industrial and expansive. Characters should know that there exists technologies that are fantastic, but well beyond their reach. Antigrav, nanotech, and extremely advanced biotech exist, but only the elite of the Caucus (and perhaps a few metastates) command the resources needed to access it.
Spaceships use mass drivers and lasers, ground untis (soldiers and vehicles) use advanced firearms (caseless, electric discharge, extremely reliable) and maybe railguns (heavy, slow, but super dangerous). Only truly exceptional infantry units are equipped with lasers (fast, deadly, armor penetrating, but require lots of ammo) or plasma weapons (shock value, armor penetrating, short range, also lots of ammo). Grenades and other explosives are usfull against less armored foes.
Medicine is advanced, but not super science. Stem Cell injections are the adventurers choice for first aid, healing light wounds very quickly. Serious wounds take perhaps a few days to heal, mortal wounds maybe a week or two. Overall the feel is heroic here: if you survive the encounter you’ll be fine. Weapons are dangerous though, and death from combat is always possible. I’d like to say 2-3 good hits from a rifle would definitely put a person down, and 1-2 really excellent criticals might kill them.
Light vehicles use hydrogen fuel cells. Powerhungry things (starships, heavy vehicles) use hydrogen-burning fusion plants. Basically hydrogen is the fuel for everything.