Jump to content

Campaign Setting: The Sundered Stars


Steve

Recommended Posts

The Sundered Stars is a region of space suddenly cut off from the rest of the galaxy after a supernova obliterated the jump points that led out to the rest of the Orion Arm. In the aftermath of that catastrophic event, a bubble of space several dozen light-years across was suddenly left without access to the greater galaxy. Ships could neither get in or out and were limited to the jump points that led to other systems within the Sundered Stars. Of course, vessels could still attempt to traverse the distances between the stars at slower-than-light speeds, but it was deemed impractical.

Dependent on easy interstellar trade to maintain their economies and obtain parts and foodstuffs not available locally, many worlds collapsed into anarchy, some faster than others. In the aftermath, balkanization occurred, eventually leading to the formation of pocket empires controlling one or more star systems.

Nearly a century has passed since the Sundering, and trade and exploration has begun again, sealed within this bubble of stars.

 

 

EDIT: This idea has evolved into being a separate "oubliette" pocket universe filled with stars taken from the main universe. See posts below for more discussion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One option I am considering is a "pocket universe" backdrop. For some unknown reason, this region of space-time has actually been sundered from the rest of the universe and dropped within a self-contained pocket of reality. Part of the panic that could have caused the initial collapse of civilization would have been seeing the stars going out, since only the stars in this bubble would have still been giving off light. People might have thought it was the end.

 

Was it natural? All-powerful aliens performing some sort of test? An act of God? I have some ideas, but a pocket universe has appeal no matter how it came to be.

 

My original inspiration was the Forbidden Borders series by Michael Gear. I read it a long time ago and was recently thinking about combining it with a Firefly setting.

 

A number of planets in the Sundered Stars have reverted to a more primitive lifestyle, and others have retained a higher-tech lifestyle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The advantage of a pocket universe is that you can finitely create the setting. You don't have to worry about what lies beyond because there is nothing beyond. Or maybe it is so difficult to get out of the pocket universe that an entire campaign can be based around the idea of inventing a drive type to get out.

 

This gives me an idea for a new sci-fi campaign of my own. As if I don't already have about two dozen undeveloped campaign concepts. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, people wouldn't see the stars go out immediately; the light that already crossed the border keeps going. The first clue would be that jump points out of the sundered zone stop working. Then people see the stars go out in a wave, starting from the nearest edge of the Sundering and sweeping around to the opposite side; slowest near the edge of the zone (I presume it's spherical) and faster near the center. At the exact center, the stars all seem to go out at once.

 

If the Sundering destroys all the jump points at once, then all people know is that they are trapped in one star system. They have to infer everything else from the pattern of stars going out -- at least until the new jump points form and are discovered.

 

Dean Shomshak

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After some thought, there are three ways I've come up with for the Sundering.

 

1) There is some phenomena (supernova, subspace rift, etc) that destroys jump points leading outside this particular region of stars. It is still possible to escape at slower-than-light speeds, but such a trip is prohibitive due to time and resource requirements.

 

2) For some reason, a sinkhole in the universe suddenly forms and swallows this region of space into a pocket universe. Jump points are disrupted for a time and panic ensues, dropping some worlds into barbarism.

 

3) A variant on #2, only the pocket universe is a form of galactic (or possibly intergalactic) oubliette. Entire star systems are taken in at once, and existing jump points are utterly destroyed. New ones form, possibly taking some time to come into being, leading to the new neighboring systems.

 

While I was originally intending to use version #1, version #3 has immense dramatic potential. Humans suddenly coming into contact with alien races from thousands (or millions) of light-years away. There is also the origin of the cosmic oubliette itself. The Sundered Stars are cut off from the rest of the universe. Is this a natural phenomena? Is a godlike alien amusing itself? Is it a leftover from some progenitor race?

 

If it isn't natural, does someone control it? An AI? An alien race? A demigod? Are they friendly? Neutral? Evil?

 

If they are the latter, the Sundered Stars could be like a form of sci-fi Ravenloft, controlled by shadowy powers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not necessarily going for Ravenloft-like horror, but this is definitely a setting where the creatures from the Aliens franchise might fit. Another inspiration would probably be the "World of Tiers" and its pocket universes.

 

I've been seriously considering including a sci-fi version of Mind Flayers (Illithids) as one of the races ever since reading some of the more recent supplements discussing them. Illithid "ceremorphosis" is a particularly chilling means of reproduction, reminding me of a far nastier form of Stargate's Goa'uld parasites.

 

If this oubliette of the universe has been around for a while, it could contain many pocket empires, some of them quite nasty.

 

Perhaps it is slowly growing. Initially only large enough to hold one star system, it now holds dozens of them, slowly filling the expanding void.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A Gothic-Horror meets Space Opera setting is doable, but you are right in that it would evoke a very specific tone. I meant that you should follow the Ravenloft model only as far as having sections of the current world get sucked into a pocket universe and exist alongside other sections that were not previously neighbors. The "tactile" feel of the setting might follow standard sci-fi tropes with a little bit of foreboding and mystery. The rest of the campaign tone, morality or whatnot is something you get to describe.

 

A setting like that would also allow you to literally pull from any source. Want lightsabers? You got 'em. Want Saberhagen-style Berserkers? Yup. How about a Cylon or Cybermen copycat? Hey look over there in sector A:13!

 

What's potentially worse than a growing oubliette is one that is unstable. It might not affect the campaign much more than being an interesting theory from some eccentric professor. The introduction and end to the discussion could be a simple throw away line about the known area of the pocket universe expanding and collapsing at various intervals. Makes for testing out new or possible mismatching additions safer. The universe could literally be in a collapse stage, so during the course of the campaign, you get to wipe that pesky Star Wars world from the map. An alternate theory might be bubbles of nothingness that randomly pop up and swallow sections of space. Do they send those sections back to their original universe, to another, or are they massive spheres of annihilation?

 

Anyway, some ideas for you to chew on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The "oubliette" premise also reminds me of DC's Mosaic, in which the last Guardian of the Universe, going nuts from loneliness, abducts communities from dozens of worlds to Oa. Including, of course, from Earth. How do all these aliens get along with their new neighbors?

 

It could be that each new star system brought into the pocket universe causes a reshuffling of the jump points. People know it's happened when the old jump points vanish and it takes a few years to find the new ones. Decades may pass between shuffles, but it shapes how alien races interact. Nobody plans on the assumption they'll be neighbors forever.

 

Illithids in the Sundered Stars? Interesting, especially if they aren't the villains. Sure, they have some unpleasant biological requirements, but reasonable people can overcome such difficulties, can't they?

 

Dean Shomshak

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, DC's Mosaic is something I might take a look at for ideas. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Illithids have unpleasant biological requirements? I suppose that's one way to look at one of the more horrific humanoid races in D&D. I am considering having a sci-fi version of them use cloned brain matter for their physical nutritional needs, but it might be that they need to consume sentient brain matter for some psychic craving they have. According to the sources I've read, consuming one humanoid brain per month keeps an illithid healthy. Combining that with their method of reproduction, having an illithid tadpole eating the brain of some poor humanoid and causing ceremorphosis to create a new illithid is getting into Cthulhu levels of horror.

 

Reshuffling the jump points is a possibility. As it stands, jump points tend to link stars of similar class most strongly and more weakly towards those of differing classes. So two G-type suns near each other would have a strong likelihood of having jump links, but a G-type and F-type would have a much smaller chance of forming a link. This causes jump route maps to be very valuable, especially if there is a previously-unknown jump point on it.

 

I'm considering having the star at the center of this pocket universe be a supergiant of some kind, surrounded by a bunch of G-type and maybe F-type stars. If the oubliette takes in star systems due to sentient direction of some kind, it might only select suns of particular types.

 

If I go for a more Pulp feel, there could be an empire of some kind that controls most of the systems, ruled by a Ming the Merciless sort of despot. I'm currently inclined to have several small empires and independent worlds competing with each other.

 

I'm not sure I'll need to have the oubliette pull in star systems from more than one universe. This way I can set up basic physical laws and stick to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea for Sundered Stars continues to evolve.

 

One path I could take would be to have the Sol system fall into this oubliette of stars. I could do it present day, which would probably be somewhat apocalyptic to have most of the stars in the sky suddenly vanish and be replaced by different ones. Then aliens could start visiting earth, bringing star travel tech with them. How would 21st century Earth react?

 

Alternatively would be to have one or more human colony systems fall into the oubliette, although they could have significant populations.

 

I've started reading Tekumel again, and there are some similarities between its idea of Tekumel being in a pocket universe and my Sundered Stars idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I imagine 21st century Earth would act like most cultures would....they'd panic. After the chicken little moment was over and they learned that the missing stars did not mean rapture had come and gone, that some, most or all of the aliens tended towards friendliness, the fervor would die down and business would carry on. Now they'd have the tech to go visit neighbors and you'd get a situation not too different from the Commonwealth of the series of video games. Oh sure, there would be conspiracy theorists and fanatic theologians to dampen the spirits, but for the most part it would simply take a period of adjustment.

 

The colonies idea is also ripe for adventures.

 

Have no idea about Tekumel. Will have to do a web search.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason I mentioned Tekumel (Empire of the Petal Throne) is that it was once a colony world of Earth that fell into a pocket universe, Mankind lost its technology and magic became available.

 

In the case of the Sundered Stars, members of mankind with the right genetics could develop esper abilities due to being in this pocket universe with its somewhat different physical laws. I could either play it as the appearance of "Kazei Five"-style espers or an emergence of actual magic amidst entry into an interstellar society. Having aliens and magic suddenly hit humanity at the same time is a recipe for some serious changes to mankind, especially if the universe used to be like ours.

 

Tekumel actually had a number of gods, which would be a definite change as well. Perhaps these "gods" are the reason why the Sundered Stars exist, as their personal playground.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Super-Collider experiments could be a possible starting point, but if I went that route I could posit that the oubliette was created at that moment and pulled in star systems from across the universe all at once, trapping them there. Some cultures already had star travel before the "Event" and could start visiting their new neighbors. It might also have the effect of drawing in systems that are very similiar to Sol's, each imprisoned system being composed of G-type main sequence stars with at least one world in the life zone.

 

With millions of galaxies to draw from, I should be able to pretty easily draw up a cluster of star systems for the oubliette, maybe forty or fifty systems or maybe more. Some systems might be uninhabited, allowing for colonization. Some cultures might be friendly and others less so, perhaps an even mix to keep things tense.

 

My current (small) list of possible races to include draw from a variety of sources:

 

Andorians (Star Trek)

Edenians (Mortal Kombat)

Eldar (Warhammer 40K-not as grimdark though)

Malvans (Champions Universe)

Mandalorians (Star Wars)

Shokan (Mortal Kombat)

Twi'Leks (Star Wars)

 

Suggestions for races or cultures to include in the oubliette are welcomed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rather than the LHC doing something, it could due to a compact object merger broadcasting strong gravity waves. This would be the only actual detection LIGO made (it hasn't had any detections yet).

 

I'll do a little thinking about what being sucked into a pocket Universe might do for astronomy. In the visible band it's obvious, but the other parts of the spectrum are ... not so clear. The sky might be a lot quieter in all wavebands. Heck, you might have a contracting pocket (instead of the Hubble flow indicating expansion, it indicates contraction). Of course, all that might not even matter to your game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the oubliette pocket universe was created as a single event, I could establish it as a steady state rather than a Big Bang and expansion type of universe. Maybe it exists kind of like a blister on the "skin" of the normal universe, not expanding and not contracting.

 

My current thought is to make the pocket about fifty light years in radius, containing less than a hundred stars (although that is not firm). Most would not be inhabited, allowing for some colonization/exploration efforts.

 

While I listed races that exist in fiction in the Milky Way galaxy, the versions I use would not be exactly like them, since they might come from galaxies billions of light years away. Consider them more description placeholders.

 

I don't know what would weird humanity out more, discovering aliens (like Twi'leks) or discovering aliens that look pretty much like us (Edenians).

 

At least one of the races will be a sentient AI species, but I may give some of them the ability to download into flesh bodies (which would likely doubly weird humanity out to discover real life Cylons, even if they aren't malicious).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quite possibly, humans have the wrong idea about what caused Sol System to fall into the oubliette. It could be a plot point for the PCs to discover that what people thought was causative was actually coincidence, or at least not causative in the way they thought. Like, the LHC doesn't create the oubliette, but creating a short-lived quantum black hole signals the oubliette's creators that humanity is advanced/interesting/potentially dangerous enough to sequester and observe.

 

Dean Shomshak

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quite possibly, humans have the wrong idea about what caused Sol System to fall into the oubliette. It could be a plot point for the PCs to discover that what people thought was causative was actually coincidence, or at least not causative in the way they thought. Like, the LHC doesn't create the oubliette, but creating a short-lived quantum black hole signals the oubliette's creators that humanity is advanced/interesting/potentially dangerous enough to sequester and observe.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

That's an intriguing notion. I'm still playing around with the idea of the oubliette being artificial instead of some kind of natural phenomenon. If artificial, it could be a legacy of a dead race, perhaps controlled by an AI of some kind that is programmed to search the universe for advanced/interesting/potentially dangerous species to add to the collection.

 

If I do something like that, it's kind of a cosmic horror story. Mankind reached too far, called the attention of something far bigger than itself, and now it is imprisoned with other potential malcontent species. Time may not even pass at the same rate as the normal universe, so races culled from the main universe a million years ago may not know that, perhaps thinking they only were brought here decades or maybe only centuries ago.

 

I mentioned a version of Malvans as a possible species held here. Perhaps they are the descendants of the oubliette's creators, spending their days in dissipation and trying to stave off ennui by any means possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like it.

 

Another option is that the AI you speak of is simply mad. We didn't attract its attention by expanding outward or becoming too technologically advanced. We just sort of stumbled upon it, possibly without even knowing it, and it just grabbed use up in a fit of pique. I'm not sure which is more disturbing to tell you the truth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...