Fairhawk

 Summary

Greetings citizen! Are you interested in travelling the galaxy, visiting interesting new cultures and working in a rewarding and enriching environment?

Goodman’s Intersystem Shipping Services is now recruiting crew for its newest acquisition:

The Fairhawk!

We are currently accepting crew for the positions of: Lieutenant, Engineer, Medical Officer, Electronic Warfare Officer, Communications Officer, Security Officer, Cook, Gunnery Officer, Counselor, Able Crewman and many more!

Setting

The United Human Systems

The UHS is a loose alliance of systems that has existed for almost 200 years, centred on humanity’s homeworld, Earth. The inner systems, including Sol, Vesta, New Brazil, Juno and New China, are the most powerful members of the UHS and have the wealth, culture and political clout to reflect this. Further out are the core systems, which make up the majority of the UHS, and include terraformed planets, colonies within biomes, and space stations in orbit around uninhabitable planets. At the fringes of UHS territory are the newly colonised worlds; here, the influence of the UHS is barely felt. Advanced technology is rare, due to the lack of maintenance facilities and the rarity of visits from off-world. Instead, the populations of these planets use more traditional methods – construction is mostly done by hand and supplies are transported by horse and cart. There are also several independent human systems, but these rarely have any significance on a galactic scale since systems that have a degree of significance find it very difficult to secede from the UHS.

First Contact

First contact occurred in the early 22nd century, when envoys from the alien species now called The Keepers arrived in system and introduced themselves. They claimed to have been watching human development for some time and believed we were now ready to leave our solar system and join the galactic community. The Keepers installed warp-gates in Sol and some nearby systems, giving humanity access to several uninhabited systems suitable for colonisation. They also gave humanity universal translation technology to install on their ships, which would allow them to communicate with the other species in the galaxy. Shortly thereafter, the Squidfolk, who were interested in trading for biological resources unique to Earth, made contact with humanity.

Bionics

Bionic modifications are extremely common across the UHS. Ranging from the animated tattoos so popular in high society to the crudely enhanced muscles of a gang enforcer, these are a widespread part of society and it is rare to find a person who doesn’t have at least a few installed.

UHS Systems

Sol is the capital system of the UHS, as well as its financial centre. (Pop. ≈ 40 billion)

Earth is home to the bulk of the UHS government, as well as the head offices of almost all major corporations. It is densely populated, with most citizens living in cities and most manual labour fully automated.

The Moon is notable both for its proximity to Earth and for extremely low property prices resulting from its hazardous conditions; as such, it is a popular base for anyone who wants the prestige of a Sol headquarters but can’t afford the Earth rates.

Mars is fully terraformed and is a popular location for second homes.

New China was the first colony settled and is still the largest in the UHS. It also has the most warp-gates of any known system, resulting in it being a heavily industrialised planet with an economy built on trade and manufacture. (Pop. ≈ 9 billion)

Vesta is somewhat unusual in that it required no terraforming before colonisation and has almost no native wildlife dangerous to humans, resulting in its nickname “New Eden”. It is the galaxy’s only supplier of Vestan wine, a beverage made from the native flora, and has strict laws in place to maintain this situation and protect the local environment. It has a fairly small population, mostly living in comfort surrounded by farms and vineyards. (Pop. ≈ 3 billion)

New Brazil is a heavily militarised system and the home system of most of the defense corporations in the UHS. It has a reasonably relaxed legal system compared to the rest of the inner systems and a more independent populace. (Pop. ≈ 7 billion)

Juno is the youngest of the inner colonies; it has a high concentration of tech corporations and a reputation for being a centre of innovation and learning. (Pop. ≈ 6 billion)

Goodman’s Intersystem Shipping Services

Goodman’s is a small shipping corporation based on the Moon. It operates a fleet of five ships, including the recently acquired Fairhawk (of which the players are the crew).

The Fairhawk

The Fairhawk is a middle-weight cargo transport ship at approximately 550m long. It is equipped with 2 missile racks, a small shuttle and a basic electronic combat suite alongside its transport capabilities.

The Fairhawk has an A.I. installed, also called Fairhawk, who is responsible for such crucial jobs as plotting the course to destinations, regulating the ship’s general processes, and such other things.

Aliens

The UHS interacts with several alien factions in both trade and war; the most notable species humans interact with are the Squidfolk, the Borrowers and the Keepers.

The Squidfolk are an aquatic species, with their multiple prehensile tentacles making them extremely dextrous. They have a reasonably cordial relationship with the UHS, as their underwater lifestyle means humans are rarely in direct competition with them. When on the surface, or in low pressure water, they require pressurised exoskeletons to protect them from the low pressures.

The Borrowers are a species of small humanoids with similar living requirements. This has placed humans in direct conflict with them on several occasions, and we have learned that their courage and sharp intellect make them formidable opponents.

The Keepers operate and maintain the warp-gates. They are of a similar size and form to humans, and are the only species known to have discovered the secrets behind faster-than-light travel, a secret they refuse to share, but relatively little else is known about them.

FTL

Long distance travel is accomplished solely through the use of alien devices known as warp-gates; these are created by the Keepers and the details of their operation are a closely guarded secret. The gates are generally inactive, with the Keepers requiring payment in order to keep them open; exceptions to this being the hub systems – those systems that experience enough traffic to warrant the expenditure of keeping gates constantly open. Warp-gates are usually installed in an outer orbit around a system’s star, and are kept away from any large masses.

Single-use FTL modules are also available at a steep price, and allow a ship to travel from a warp gate to any location within approximately 300 light years before burning out.

Pirates

Pirates are an occupational hazard for shipping; these raiders usually operate out of concealed bases in the outer colonies and target ships travelling to or from warp-gates. Occasionally, they will ‘piggyback’ on another ship’s passage through a warp-gate if they need to relocate their base or raid in a different system.

There are rumours of a so-called pirate conclave somewhere in the outer colonies.

Colonisation

Colonies are usually established as part of a UHS settlement operation in order to secure valuable resources, or in preparation for future population growth (although occasional private ventures by the extremely wealthy have been known). Colonisation is a slow process, with volunteers from other planets travelling to the system using a single-burn FTL module and expecting to spend up to a century almost totally isolated before the colony is considered significant enough to establish a regular route to.

Not all colonies succeed, and there are many stories of colonies being discovered destroyed by all manner of calamities.

Ship Design

The primary weapons used on spaceships are guided missiles due to their accuracy at long ranges, low cost, low weight and lack of recoil. The risk of pirates means most ships built for intersystem travel carry at least a few racks of missiles. Most ships are also equipped with long-range communication lasers that can reasonably easily be repurposed to hack into the systems of other ships.

The primary defences of spaceships are: a sturdy metal hull to absorb impacts; point defence lasers to intercept missiles; and a magnetically charged layer in the hull to deflect harmful radiation.

Ships are usually powered by a nuclear reactor of some form (fission or fusion) mounted near the centre of the vessel.

Space Elevators

Space elevators are the standard method by which goods and people are transported to and from the surface of planets. The tops of these elevators act as ports, with integrated docking facilities, customs offices, and sometimes shipyards.

Robots

Automated labour is common in the UHS and has almost completely replaced manual labour in most of the inner colonies. However, fears of a robot uprising have been ingrained into humanity be centuries of popular culture, and restrictions on artificial intelligence are high. A.I.s are only permitted by UHS regulations to operate under human supervision and strict behavioural controls.

Mechanics

Death and Dying:

A character reduced to 0 hit points is downed: they should fall to the ground, may make no calls, may move no faster than a slow crawl and should role-play being severely injured. When downed, a player should begin counting down from 60 at a rate of 1 per second; if another play role-plays attempting to stabilise the downed player, they should insert the word “and” between each number (effectively halving the rate at which they count down). If a player reaches 0 on their count, they immediately take a SLAY.

Red Armbands:

If an individual is playing a character who is obviously nonhuman, they will be wearing a red armband to signify this. They may then NARRATE their appearance if asked.

Items:

Items are separate from attributes and abilities and as such are unaffected by DRAIN. Furthermore they may be freely traded with other players (including a label or lammy describing what it does, which calls it makes, etc.) and must be physrepped – if you are carrying five guns IC, you must be carrying five guns OC.

Grappling

If you wish to physically drag a resisting person, you should NARRATE your CARRY. If you are resisting someone and their CARRY is greater than your CARRY and equal to or greater than your BULKY, then they are capable of dragging you relatively trivially.

New Call Modifier: FRAG X

FRAG is a modifier call, and is a derivative of ZOC. It should be called immediately before throwing a grenade, and it has the effect of ZOC this grenade on impact. For example, if a call of FRAG BURN 5 preceded the throwing of a grenade, everyone within the ZOC of the grenade when it hit the floor/a target/etc. would take the effect of a BURN 5. For clarity, ZOC is here defined as “an area within a metre, or roughly the length of one’s arm, from the target” for purposes of determining whether one is in a ZOC or not.  

Ship Combat

Whilst the formal mechanics have not yet been finalised (watch this space), ship-to-ship combat will be part of the game and will involve multiple actions and roles. The mechanics of this will be closer to strategy games than hitting each other with foam, and so if you feel you would be interested in this, there are character roles geared towards specialising in this area of game.

Google Drive

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9sYEw55To_ZV2ZwVVNxQWtnMUk – the game’s public documents