Wormholes in the Terran Empire

[Hermit]

As far as I know, there aren't any Star Trek type Wormholes in the Terran Empire setting, but...

has anyone put them in anyways? And , how did they work out?

[BobGreenwade]

This is an interesting thought, and actually hadn't occurred to me. It certainly could make for some interesting complications for a TES or pirate group. I might even be able to fit the idea into a story or two for my group.

 

Since wormholes weren't mentioned in the main Terran Empire book, they'd have to be a rare phenomenon in the galaxy. That's OK by my book; the GM can drop one where it's needed.

 

Hopefully if there's an expansion to the setting (the two books on next year's schedule expand the people rather than the places) this idea can be touched on. Or maybe it can be touched on in Galactic Champions and/or Galactic Federation.

[Ghost who Walks]

If the exist, they should be naturally occuring or uncontrolled.

 

The Farscape series developed fairly well what would happen if someone could "Make" wormholes.

[Hermit]

Thanks for the input guys, for a bit I was afraid this thread was going to die before it got a response

 

I agree that Wormholes should be naturally occuring and rare.

 

The uncontrolled is an interesting idea. The less predictable a wormhole is, the less use it is. Indeed, the idea of an area of space with a roaming wormhole that snatches you in one part of the galaxy and spits you out in another random section makes for a good excuse for a "lost in space" sort of story.

 

If it is predictable and stable, then obviously it becomes a valued trade route or top security pathway. Suddenly Empires that don't interact much can deal, or threaten another. If the Mon Dobi find a wormhole that leads to the Varanyi, well, they've suddenly got a reason to be VERY nervous.

 

With so many possiblities, I'm not sure how best to utilize them

[Ben Seeman]

While I haven't used wormholes in a game, in the scifi that I've written with my online group we had a whole planetary system that was surrounded by a wormhole field... a bubble around the entire system that was made up of unstable time/space. At any moment a wormhole could open within the field and any vessel unfortunate enough to be caught in it would be unceremoniously warped to a different area within the wormhole field. These wormholes were not only unpredicatble but also very unstable... after travelling through just one of them most vessels would lose sensors and propulsion... and since the wormholes take them somewhere else within the field, the vessel was still vulnerable to yet another randomly appearing wormhole and the process would start all over again. After three or four forced jumps through wormholes, most ships would be destroyed.

 

Suffice it to say that after losing a considerable number of vessels, the Kriosian Wormhole Field was marked as off-limits, and a research station was setup on its borders in order to study it and understand it.

 

The most instersting part of the whole story is that one of the planets in the system inside the wormhole field has intelligent and highly advanced life... but that's a whole different story for a different thread.

 

So yeah, wormholes can be fun.

[Hermit]

Thanks Ben, I might rip some of those ideas off, if'n you don't mind

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Ghost who Walks

If the exist, they should be naturally occuring or uncontrolled.

 

The Farscape series developed fairly well what would happen if someone could "Make" wormholes.

I never watched this show (not from disinterest, but more from an already overly full plate of TV programming). Did it develop what would happen in this circumstance (the politics and economic ramifications, or established facts of physics), or what could happen (speculative science)?

[Monolith]

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

I never watched this show (not from disinterest, but more from an already overly full plate of TV programming). Did it develop what would happen in this circumstance (the politics and economic ramifications, or established facts of physics), or what could happen (speculative science)?

The series never got quiet the far, though the crew who had the technology did understand the ramifications of it. Basically what you had was the two major "powers" of the universe trying to capture the crew so that they could use the technology to conquer the other.

 

I miss Farscape very much. It had many interesing dynamics and balanced drama and humor quite well most of the time. John Crighton was just a funny guy.

[Monolith]

My original idea for wormholes was that there was one in Xenovore space which exited close to Terran space. This was the reason that the Xenovore attacked earth so quickly instead of conquering the rest of the entire galaxy in-between Xenovore and Terran space. But I have not read Alien Wars yet, so it is quite possible that they did conquer all the area in between now.

 

The idea was that the Xenovores had kept it secret and no one from the Terran worlds realized the wormhole was how they traveled here so quickly. So while the Terrans were trying to build better hyper and displacer drives the Xenovores just kept appearing. I just liked the idea that Xenovores had no more superior technology, just access to the wormhole and more expendable soldiers. I also liked the idea that it was the Terran's ability to create newer and better technology which led to them being able to defeat the Xenovores.

[chaos_engineer]

don't forget the time travel aspect of wormholes, which the write-ups in Star HERO (pg. 235) take it into account.

 

Stephen Baxter's novels Timelike Infinity & Ring are good hard-sf dramatizations of the wormhole concept.

[Ghost who Walks]

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

I never watched this show (not from disinterest, but more from an already overly full plate of TV programming). Did it develop what would happen in this circumstance (the politics and economic ramifications, or established facts of physics), or what could happen (speculative science)?

In the later episodes, they did touch on some of the potential military aspects. Basicly, if you could create/control wormholes, you could move your opponents ships around at will (used as a weapon). As a transportation device, you could move a battlefleet into orbit around your opponents homeworld, or just give them a new moon to play with.

 

In a univerese where they didn't have star trek transporters, or replicators, they developed what the technology would mean pretty well.

 

It was the galactic equivalent of a na atomic bomb, it gave one side the potential to destroy the other. They also had a couple episodes where the wormholes moved them around through time.

 

I ran a wormhole plotline recently in my Champs campaign. Basicly, the characters got ahold of an alien ship that had a "Wormhole drive". What it did was open up prexhisting wormholes that had been built using ubertech millenia ago. This meant they could only travel to the worlds along the route.