Star Ship Gear!

[Jkeown]

Optional Starship Gear

You don't have to take this stuff for your ship, but if you do, you get to say "zeroid" a lot. 

Aphasic Spatial Zeroid Interface

By injecting zero-like virtual particles into a negative thermal energy array, power can be drawn from space itself as the virtual particles pop in and out of existence. We think.

Aphasic Spatial Zeroid Interface: Endurance Reserve (10 END, 10 REC) Reserve: (11 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 9

Chronotronic Static Field Generator

This fine example of Union technobabble disperses Chronotronic Static into the volume occupied by your ship, and some distance away. While powered up (which happens after a Chrono-Psi attack, or sometimes before, which sometimes is also during) the perceived flow of time is greatly inhibited. Things seem to happen at random and stuff is remembered in the wrong order.

Chronotronic Static Field Generator: (Total: 224 Active Cost, 80 Real Cost) Drain Chrono-Psi 5d6, Area Of Effect (2m Radius; +¼), Constant (+½), MegaScale (1m = 1 km; +1) (137 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (No Sense of Time Passage; -½) (Real Cost: 55) plus Barrier 30 Mental Defense, 0 BODY (up to 2m long, 2m tall, and½m thick), MegaScale (1m = 1 km; +1), Cannot alter scale (-¼) (87 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Only Works Against Chrono-Psi (-1), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (No Sense of Time Passage; -½) (Real Cost: 25) Real Cost: 80

Condensed Hyperspatial Vectors

By storing tired hyperspatial vectors in a solution of liquid math and non-zeroid Bayesian sorting schemes, you can preserve motion in hyperspatial domains.

When injected into the drive, the solution suffuses into the hyperspatial stress bubble, making navigation easier.

Condensed Hyperspatial Vectors: +2 with Navigation (4 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 2

High-Energy Lasing Cycler

By-passing the usual Intervention-imposed safety interlocks on your laser turrets voids the warranty, but some zervoids do it anyway.

High-Energy Lasing Cycler: Rapid Attack (10 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 5

Hyperspatial Oscillation Clamper

The strange contracting realm of hyperspace provides Psions with power to enact the weird changes they force on the material realm. You can lessen the effect of these bastards with a Hyperspatial Oscillation Clamper, which reduces the active frequencies of incoming telerons. Cool, huh?

Hyperspatial Oscillation Clamper: Damage Negation (-4 DCs Mental) (20 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Requires A Roll (Systems Operation roll; Psychotronics; -½) Real Cost: 8

Mechnoid Guide Couplings

Semi-sentient Mechnoids live inside your drive, landing gear and other clanky bits of your ship, and assist with repairs via instructions transmitted by interface devices. They look like sand, oddly enough.

Mechnoid Guide Couplings: +1 with Mechanics (2 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 1

Multisynaptic Epsilon Cluster

Injecting a healthy dose of charged quarzon particles into a functioning sophont brain increases mental fortitude and imparts a love of romance novels. The effect is refreshingly brief. Many ships carry a stack of recovered Harlequin Romance novels and some of the newer books published by Nudar the Indecent.

Multisynaptic Epsilon Cluster: Aid EGO 3d6 (18 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 9

Nano-Metal Hull

A Nano-Metal Hull contains, not surprisingly, trillions of dormant Nanobots held in “aware-stasis mode.” When something happens to break the network, such as a pulson beam ripping the ship a new one, the bots go to work sealing the breach. This can take time, but is great for small repairs. Nothing ever goes wrong. Ever.

Nano-Metal Hull: Regeneration (3 BODY per 6 Hours) (18 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 9

Paraphased Psion Inhibitor

Negative telerons (which smell wonderful, incidentally.) can be emitted by a Paraphased Psion Inhibitor. This really interferes with psionic techniques. Many high-end Union ships are equipped with multiples of these situated around the ship, if only to provide the comfy bacon smell.

Paraphased Psion Inhibitor: Dispel Psionics 10d6, Area Of Effect (2m Radius; +¼), Expanded Effect (Psionic Powers) (+1½) (82 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Requires A Roll (Systems Operation roll; Psychotronics; -½) Real Cost: 33

Positive Teleron Projection Array

Positive telerons have an indistinct smell to non-psionics. Some describe it as “friggin' annoying.” To Psions, the nerve interactions are more defined and easily incorporated into telepathic intrusion matrices. Or something like that.

Positive Teleron Projection Array: +2 with Telepathy (6 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 3

Psi-Echo Trace Isolator

You can totally trap bothersome psi-echoes in this projected Trace Isolator. Damned things can keep you awake at night with their howling and loud creepy music.

Psi-Echo Trace Isolator: Barrier 1 PD/1 ED/15 Mental Defense/10 Flash Defense: Mental Group, 6 BODY (up to 6m long, 2m tall, and½m thick), Opaque Mental Group (77 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 38

Ship's Cat

The Ship’s Cat (which needn’t actually be a cat, could be a hoosh, or one of those pingars I’ve read about) chases down and kills all those annoying pesky critters that show up on your ship during small cargo runs. This prevents bites and the spread of weird space diseases.

Ship's Cat: Life Support (Immunity: Zootoxins and Disease) Real Cost: 10

Wide-Band Psychotronic Wave Guide

Wave guides act to constrain telerons, concentrating them into little easy to mentate packets, or quanta. This allows your psyker to ‘see’ better.

Wide-Band Psychotronic Wave Guide: +3 PER with Mental Group (6 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 3

[Jkeown]

Clone Sauce

Clone Sauce is a biomedical soup of active, unprogrammed nano and raw organics. Contact with exposed skin can lead to immune disorders and digestion problems. Improperly stored and unattended clone sauce can result in accidental replicates reproduced from fingerprints.

Clone Sauce: Drain CON 3d6, Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Life Support (Sealed Suit or Not Being Organic); All Or Nothing; +0), Constant (+½), Uncontrolled (+½), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Day; +2 ¼) (127 Active Points); OAF (-1), Range Based On Strength (-¼) Real Cost: 56

Feldercarb

Feldercarb builds up on hyperspace and White Radio equipment and must be steam-cleaned or Nano’d away. Contact causes nervous disorders and coordination troubles. The symptoms have been classified under Starbuck’s Syndrome.

Feldercarb: Drain DEX 3d6, Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Life Support (Sealed Suit or Not Being Organic); All Or Nothing; +0), Constant (+½), Uncontrolled (+½), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per 20 Minutes; +1½) (105 Active Points); OAF (-1), Range Based On Strength (-¼) Real Cost: 47

Reactor Coolant

Reactor Coolant is dangerous stuff. It acts as a corrosive to organic materials. During use, it is exposed to hyperspace itself and can pick up dangerous emotional vectors such as anger, resentment, and that mood you get in when you’ve gotten home and sat down and opened the bag to discover two of your chicken planks have gone missing. That Long John Silver’s on Emerson and Churchman sucks.

Reactor Coolant: RKA 1d6, Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Life Support (Sealed Suit or Not Being Organic; All Or Nothing; +0), Does BODY (+1) (30 Active Points) Real Cost: 30

Reactor Juice

Reactor Juice is the term for coolant that has gone through the reactor but has not been clarified. It is a mixture of toxic chems, radioactive nuclei and feldercarb.

Reactor Juice: Drain STR, CON, END, STUN, and BODY 3d6, Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Life Support (Safe Environment: High Radiation); +½), Expanded Effect (x5 Characteristics or Powers simultaneously) (+2), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Day; +2¼) (172 Active Points) Real Cost: 172

Cold Sleep Unit

They still call them Cold Sleep Units even after all this time. Why do they do that? It's like when you call Square.Soda "Coke" it’s not Coke...it's Square.Soda. Anyway... this thing can be set for 2 minutes to 200 years. It requires a Medical Systems Operation roll to bring a person out of it.

Nano-Sleep Unit: Life Support (Eating: Character does not eat; Longevity: 200 Years; Safe in High Pressure; Safe in High Radiation; Safe in Intense Cold; Safe in Intense Heat; Safe in Low Pressure/Vacuum; Self-Contained Breathing) (23 Active Points); OAF Immobile (-2), Side Effects (Side Effect always occurs whenever the Operator fails a Medical SysOps Roll; Amnesia, Physical Defects, Function Loss; -¾), Requires A Roll (System Operations (Medical) roll; -½)

Telekinophilic Material

It was discovered that certain materials (notably kinetium, flarbulax and jub-jub feathers) were easier to lift with telekinesis. They were “lighter” to a Teek than they were to a person lifting them physically. It is conjectured that such materials have teleron reception cavities intrinsic to their substance.

Telekinophilic: Telekinesis (5 STR) (9 Active Points); OAF (-1), Usable By Other (Only To Aid Lifting/Moving Object; -¼), Grantor can only grant the power to others)

Telepathophilic Material

Similarly, some materials allow for a deeper connection to a psion’s limbic system. When machines are fabricated from one-oid doped aluminum or buellerium, or even just smeared with emo-grease telepathy works better.

Androids and flight systems have benefited from this. In the case of androids, psi-therapists are better able to penetrate the cingulate-gyroid and get at what’s troubling the unit. It is not suspected that this will ever go horribly wrong.

Telepathophilic: Telepathy 3d6 (Machine class of minds) (15 Active Points); OAF (-1), Usable By Other (Only To Aid Reading Object; -¼), Grantor can only grant the power to others

Teleportophobic

Within the past 50 standard years or so, chemical compounds have been uncovered (literally in the case of hyper-active carbonoid matrices. Somebody left it under a mattress) that interact oddly with psionic powers. A particularly useful class of these substances is Teleportophobic matter. Armor, weapons, and containers made with materials like pragmatium, expedium, and logic dust are quite anchored to reality itself, and don’t put up with being zipped across space-time.

Teleportophobic: Change Environment (-10 to Teleport Power Roll) (30 Active Points); OAF (-1)

Psi-Active Neurotransmitters

Imagine removing your brain. Then, get a bucket (or get someone else to do it because, you got no brain). Fill that bucket with free-floating cellular response couplers. Pour in a vial of G-positive Telerons and stir. That’s what this is like. Now put your brain back in.

Psi-Active Neurotransmitters: Aid Psi MP + 1 Slot 4d6, Expanded Effect (MP +1 Slot simultaneously) (+½) (36 Active Points); 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-4), OAF (-1), One Use At A Time (-1), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Addiction Roll; -½), Extra Time (Delayed Phase, Only to Activate, -¼)

Emotional Hologram (Emogram)

Tapping the Astral Plane has been a popular pastime for about 12 minutes now. Almost immediately, cloud banks of emotion, reefs of feels and leftover left inferior parietal lobule recepto-tron connections suspended in moonbeams were experienced.

This very rapidly (like seven minutes ago) led to the development of the Emogram. Captured and distilled emotional expressions and memories are released into the local atmosphere and “breathed in” by the amygdaloid nuclear complex, leading to a release of factoids from the hypothalamus. These factoids then suffuse through the brain resulting in cascade of emotional responses.

That is, it makes you feel stuff.

Emotional Hologram: Mental Illusions 10d6 (Human class of minds), Area Of Effect (1m Radius; +¼), Constant (+½), Transdimensional (Single Dimension; +½), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (137 Active Points); OAF (-1), Set Effect (Choose One) (-1), No Range (-½), Damage Shield (-¼), Limited By Senses Mental Group (-¼)

[Jkeown]

Teleron Drive

A fundamental aspect of life in the galaxy is faster than light travel. Races that lack the capability to fling themselves across the vast emptiness between stars are at a great disadvantage militarily, economically, and tend to suffer humiliating giggling from more advanced species or polities. Civilizations that find themselves isolated from the galactic community find novel ways to overcome this issue and avoid having to reverse-engineer FTL drives from visiting traders, diplomats, and Player Characters.

One such advancement is the Teleron Drive.  With it, even the most backward low-tech low-brows can reach the stars. In the process of development, a good many Psions find themselves in the hard vacuum of space, having miscalculated their jump. More than a few primitives have been found drifting between the stars with rather shocked expressions on their desiccated faces. Eventually, they get this worked out and their ships actually move with the Psyker.  

We encountered one just outside a quaint paleotekno populated by hybrid Xenohumans (possessed of a great deal of reptile DNA, "Lizard Tits" was a popular phrase for several weeks). The ship appeared out of nowhere, the usually bright precipitation pulse was not seen or detected on the hyper-ripple inferometers. Our Anticipator wet himself. 

Once we'd matched radio frequencies and established a basic hand-waving form of communication, we began an exchange of ideas. As it happens, the time saved in developing a psionic star drive had been employed developing weapons of astonishing accuracy and effectiveness in puncturing starship hulls. We quickly set our calculoid to working out a hyperspace solution and jumped the Zerv out of there. 

Qwes only knows what sort of horrors awaited us on either their ship or home world. Diplomacy should resume once we find a negotiator lacking a middle finger.

Teleron Drive:  Teleportation 10m, x16,384 Increased Mass, MegaScale (1m = 1 lightyear; +4 1/4) (420 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Week, -4 1/2), OIF Bulky (Star Drive; -1), Requires A Roll (Power roll; Burnout; -1/2) Real Cost: 60

No pun intended, but your mileage may vary with this. Does the Psyker pay the cost of the drive, or it is part of the ship, and the Psyker is just the operator? 

[DShomshak]

I am amused, amazed, and envious.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Jkeown]

7 hours ago, DShomshak said:

I am amused, amazed, and envious.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

It was just a matter of finding my voice and writing for myself. My writing became funny as a result. 

[tkdguy]

7 hours ago, Jkeown said:

 

It was just a matter of finding my voice and writing for myself. My writing became funny as a result. 

 

Keep it up; it's great!

[shadowcat1313]

these are wonderful... have you found a use for Quantum Ducks yet?

 

[dmjalund]

1 minute ago, shadowcat1313 said:

these are wonderful... have you found a use for Quantum Ducks yet?

 

are they adhesive Quantum ducks?

[Jkeown]

3 hours ago, shadowcat1313 said:

these are wonderful... have you found a use for Quantum Ducks yet?

 

I just wrote this... just for you. 

 

Vaguerons

You might have encountered a Vagueron. Most folks do not remember them. In fact, it’s a minor miracle I’m able to talk about them at all.

They follow a strict code referred to as the Uncertainty Principles. Violation of this code results in exile which might or might not bring them into conflict in areas far away from their un-guessable home world (or near… I don’t know).

Many people only realize they’ve been attacked by Vaguerons when they discover wounds, weird alien bodies,  and drained power packs that hint at a very recent conflict.

I may have encountered these weirdos before. I have notes from the event, but my hand writing is smeared with some sort of alcoholic beverage and what appears to be biological process by-products.

A possible method of detection may have recently (or not) been discovered by the Cooperative Operative, Haar Malgot. By tossing two ducks into a Finite Potential Well and fishing one out, you create a sort of Vagueron Alert System.

If a Vagueron lurks nearby both ducks, despite their separation, will sound off.

Essentially, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a Vagueron.  

[drunkonduty]

You write awesome techno-babble. Love it!

[Jkeown]

17 minutes ago, drunkonduty said:

You write awesome techno-babble. Love it!

Thanks! I try to be this weird in real life, but you can't edit as it as easily. 

[Cancer]

Polymerized thiotimolene -- and other chemical substances where some of the interatomic bonds operate through hyperspace -- is another rich source of special materials for starship components.  Producing such things has some strange barriers, however.  Fabrication of specially shaped pieces of such materials requires careful selection of workers, as any sort of latent psionic resonance in the worker shaping the piece can have unpredictable and catastrophic temporal effects, and robotic manipulation of such materials is confounded by imposition of race conditions in the robot computer CPUs, usually resulting in destruction of robot, materials, factory, and (sometimes) planet.

 

Consequently, at this time such starship components have to worked by hand by the stupidest, least imaginative workers in civilization, riveting together generic regularly-shaped pieces under horrifically drab circumstances.  Electromechanical automatons have been tried but they too fail destructively for reasons not yet fully understood.  Steam-driven thermodynamic control mechanisms have shown real promise in avoiding the electropsionic-temporal instabilities limiting other hyperspatial fabrication processes.

[Jkeown]

Telerons are fickle little bastards, are they not? Well done!

[Jkeown]

A certain hi-tek culture coreward of the Union (but not so far that you are tripping over Aurorans), the Kellis, have a dirty habit of removing dead soldier's brains and putting them in weird ceramic modules. These modules have life support and neuro-interface sockets. They build robots with compatible hardware (they built some others that weren't compatible. I can get those for you cheap). Now, a Kellian warrior doesn't just die for his world once... but over and over as maintenance schedules allow.  When not actually hooked up to a battle-bot, hover-tank, or neuro-fighter, Kellian Warrior Modules live in a semi-simulated world with just enough bad news to keep their minds busy. When needed, they're transferred to a new robo-form and sent out to inflict as much harm as possible before getting snuffed again. 

 

A Mostly Dead Kellian is very like a creature with the Possession Power. He has EGO, INT, PRE, OMCV, DMCV and some Skills. Everything else is sitting on the Battle-Bot's hard drive. To upgrade, he or she (or eir, for that matter) need only plug into another cyber-shell. 

 

Is this an abuse of the Possession power? I think with the right Limitations on the Possession Power (Limited Power - Only With Compatible Hardware), this could work very well. Especially in a military or espionage thing.  

 

My apologies if this has been discussed before and I've missed it. How does this compare with just having characters use sleeves as vehicles?