DShomshak

Next: Vesta, capital of Asteroid County. VESTA (Sol 4½ #4) Distance: 0 LY Primary: G2 Luminosity: 1 sol Orbit Radius: 353.4 x 106 km Illumination: 0.18 sols Revolution: 3.63 Earth years 5960.2 local days Eccentricity: 9% Rotation: 5.34 hours Axial Tilt: ? Mass: 2.7 x 1020 kg Radius: 260 km Gravity: 0.26 m/sec2 (0.027 g, locally variable) Density: 3.3 Atmosphere: None (local Oxygen-Nitrogen, standard pressure) Hydrosphere: None Population: 70,000 Satellites: None Astrography: 4 Vesta is the second-largest of the asteroids orbiting Sol. It orbits in the main asteroid belt. Geography: Unlike other asteroids, 4 Vesta formed with sufficient internal heat to melt, causing its interior to segregate before freezing again. 4 Vesta has a small iron core surrounded by a mantle of olivine and other minerals — just like those in Earth’s mantle — and a crust of basaltic lava flows. A collision with another asteroid knocked the basalt crust off a section of 4 Vesta, leaving an enormous crater with a central peak 8 km high. Vesta has two permanent towns, Vestagrad and Peak. The former is mostly subterranean, a city of tunnels and chambers. The latter is the Asteromo Group’s headquarters, built on top of and within the great crater’s peak, that grew into a small town. Where Vestagrad is drab and utilitarian, Peak is an architectural showpiece dedicated to corporate glory. Peak has the only parkland on Vesta, held within bubble-domes affixed to the mountainside. Vesta also hosts several small mining camps, none with more than 50 people and most of them temporary. Ecology: Like most asteroid settlements, Vesta has no real ecology. For food, Vestans use yeast/algae synthetics or cloned-tissue factories. The parklands of Peak form the lone exception, but these are entirely ornamental and not self-sustaining. History: The astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovered 4 Vesta by telescope in 1807. The first mineral exploration of 4 Vesta actually took place in the 20th century, decades before any person or probe landed on the asteroid, when astronomers identified a certain rare type of meteorite as chips knocked off the minor planet. 4 Vesta’s unusual geology made it an early target for exploration in the 21st century. A resurgent Russia planted a mining colony on 4 Vesta in the 2040s, as part of that decade’s “Great Powers” competition in space industrialization. Although 4 Vesta turned out to be a poor source of iron, the Russians extracted calcium, magnesium, aluminum and other light metals using massive, brute-force nuclear furnaces. A surprising deposit of high-quality serpentine made 4 Vesta the first source of ornamental stone from another world. The Russians also steered small nickel-iron asteroids to Vesta’s refineries. The colony limped along on subsidies until the Conglomerate War of the 2090s. Unlike the Ceres and Juno colonies, the Vestan Russians refused to accept the new World Governance Board. They turned to China for help and gave them an asteroid base in return for continued subsidies and military protection. Two years later, the Chinese took over Vesta completely. The Vestan Russians did not roll over as hoped; 18% of Vesta’s population died in the months of fighting that followed. China used Vesta as a military base and a station for locating and processing other asteroidal material. Vesta remained a Chinese colony until the 2160s, when the WGB finally dissolved the People’s Republic of China. The WGB used Vesta in exactly the same way as the Chinese. In 2187, a Vestan Chinese cartel merged with another asteroid mining company to form the Asteromo Group, still the largest company to exploit Sol Belt’s minerals. Vesta suffered attacks in both Cladist Wars. The Second Cladist War severely damaged Vesta’s military base. It was rebuilt but JUNO (q.v.) became the Belt’s largest astral base. Vesta is now the third-largest settlement in the asteroid belt, and the city of Vestagrad became Asteroid County’s capital. Society: Vesta still shows strong Chinese and Russian influences; the WGB did not actively suppress local culture as long as people did not resist corporate control. Indeed, the Russian minority briefly welcomed the WGB as liberators from Chinese dominance, and the WGB used the Russians to counterbalance the Chinese establishment. Although English is the official language of modern Vesta (just like the rest of Sol Belt), the asteroid has associations devoted to Russian and Chinese language and culture. Asteroid County has a Director and governmental service companies appointed by the WGB. Naturally, Belt-oriented megacorporations such as Brosong-Tedesco and the Asteromo Group exert the greatest influence on the Director’s choices. Belt residents hold the same rights as anyone else if they own stock in WGB member corporations, but Belters have no direct voice in their governance unless their asteroid has its own municipal government. The nine largest asteroid colonies (excluding CERES — q.v.) are all municipalities. Ideology/Religion: The most popular religions are the Russian Orthodox Church and an “unsuperstitious” version of Buddhism developed by the People’s Republic of China. Some wags call it “Buddhist Calvinism.” Like all Belters, the Vestans tend toward Manager sentiments, since careless actions are deadly dangerous in space. Technology: Vesta has lots of heavy machinery but no cutting-edge technology or scientific research. It’s the Rust Belt of the Solar System. Economy: The Asteromo Group accounts for more than half the Vestan economy. Vestan miners not only delve into Vesta itself, they push small, iron-rich asteroids into its orbital docks where they are broken up using explosives and lasers, and melted down in large nuclear furnaces. Vesta’s own olivine-rich mantle rock is unique among the asteroids in its utility as building stone. (Not that space colonies use much quarried stone, but it does happen as the colonies mature.) Asteromo also owns numerous heavy-industry companies that turn metal and asteroid rock into boring, low-tech stuff such as girders and concrete. Military: Vesta has a small WGB Astral base. Most of the ships that use it as a home port are sublight cutters. Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, does anyone know why the font keeps changing in the posts? It's all the same in the text before I paste it into the post. Dean Shomshak

And another one of the major asteroid settlements. Note that these were all written before the recent probe visits to Ceres and other asteroids; I'd need to re-research them If I began a new Star Hero game. JUNO (Sol 4½ #3) Distance: 0 LY Primary: G2 Luminosity: 1 sol Orbit Radius: 399.6 x 106 km Illumination: 0.14 sols Revolution: 4.37 standard years 5,314.7 local days Eccentricity: 25% Rotation: 7.2 hours Axial Tilt: ? Mass: 3.34 x 1019 kg Radius: 121 km Gravity: 0.15 m/sec2 (0.016 g, locally variable) Density: 4.5 Atmosphere: None (local Oxygen-Nitrogen, standard pressure) Hydrosphere: None Population: 80,000 Satellites: None Astrography: The 14th-largest asteroid in Sol Belt has an unusually elliptical orbit but stays within the main asteroid belt. Geography: 3 Juno is a ball of rock and nickel-iron alloy, like a stony-metal meteor. Four orbital towers rise 215 km from 4 Juno’s surface to large space stations. These stations include drydocks for building and servicing spacecraft, and habitation zones 3 km in diameter and 1 km wide. The habitat wheels spin around the orbital tower ‘axle’ for artificial gravity. (Three habitats spin for Earth-normal gravity, one for Martian gravity.) Mountain-sized chunks of slag — the remains of small, captured asteroids that supplied material for the towers — hang at the end of each orbital tower as counterweights. Each orbital habitat holds about 20 square kilometers of living space: a bit over 9 square kilometers of surface area, but built on two levels. Each habitat’s top level holds equal proportions of urban area, parkland and real, honest-to-God farmland, all lit by a tubular fusion lamp. The habitats are large enough that they generate weather. Most people live in the habitats, and commute to work in the shipyards, factories and mines. Ecology: Juno has about 50 square kilometers of farmland and parkland with real soil and simplified ecologies of Earthly plants, insects, birds and other small critters. Somehow, rats and cockroaches reached the habitats without invitation. The farmland is not sufficient to feed Juno: The colony needs industrial food production, both yeast/algae synthetics and cloned-tissue farms, but the “natural” farms give the colony some slack in case a disaster wrecks the food factories. History: German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding discovered 3 Juno in 1804. Telescopic and other long-distance observations suggested that 3 Juno had a stony-metal composition. This, and its stable rotation, made 3 Juno an early target for exploration and exploitation. Greater California sponsored the Juno mining venture in the 2040s. When the surellans attacked, they took over the colony and used the miners as slave labor; on the other hand, they introduced superior mining technology. After the First Surellan War, Juno became the first asteroid colony to pay for its own operation, through metal sent back to Earth. Not only did the Junoans mine their own asteroid, other miners used Juno as a base from which to prospect, slice up small asteroids, and refine them or redirect them to Earth or Mars. Since Juno already offered fusion power plants and lots of metal, the asteroid became a center of heavy industry along with mining and refining. The volume of material passing to and from Juno’s surface became great enough that orbital towers became economical. Empyrean Associates completed Juno’s first orbital tower in 2236. When a Daedalan fleet destroyed Earth’s L4 military shipyards early in the First Cladist War, the World Governance Board expanded Juno’s small shipyards as quickly as possible to replace them. Juno eventually took over as the Solar System’s largest military shipbuilder (though the Jupiter Industrial Zone and the rebuilt L4 surpass it at building civilian craft). Today, Juno is the second-largest settlement in Sol’s asteroid belt, after Ceres. In addition to manufacturing and mining, Juno hosts a large base for the WGB Astry. After all, the shipyards need protection, and the Astry needs facilities for repairs and maintainance. Society: Juno is a municipality within Asteroid County. The Junoans think of themselves as WGB loyalists through and through. Juno is very much a company town, dominated by the Astry and three industrial megacorporations. Juno has a popularly elected Mayor as chief executive, and four elected aldermen in its Council (one from each orbital tower and station). The WGB Astry, the Juno Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Empyrean Associates, Brosong-Tedesco Inc. and the Asteromo Group each appoint one alderman. Juno hires private companies to provide government bureaucratic functions. It also hires its judiciary, but the contract always goes to the Astry’s Office of the Judge-Advocate General. With so many astral personnel around, and so many jobs dependent on defense, patriotism naturally runs high among Junoans. They proudly call their little world “Sol’s Arsenal.” Many young Junoans join the Astry. Ideology/Religion: Juno holds small communities of every major human religion, but few people feel their religion strongly. Patriotism dominates Junoan ideology, making them fervent Manager and Coccooner advocates. Junoans like a strong government and a strong defense against other states. Most Junoans view aliens as a distant threat. To the extent that they think about the Galactics, Junoans advocate developing weapons powerful enough to defeat even star-spanning Elder Race demigods — or at least trying. Technology: Juno has technology in quantity more than in quality, focused upon heavy industry rather than cutting-edge research and development. If it’s big, Juno can build it. Economy: The shipyards dominate Juno’s economy. The Junoans export some of the metal they extract, but factories within played-out mines turn much of the metal into components and parts of spaceship hulls. (Since some of these factories lie beneath 30 km of rock, they are well defended.) The parts go up the orbital towers to the shipyards, where the Junoans assemble them into spaceships and modules for space stations. The Astry accounts for another large part of Juno’s economy. The small businesses on Juno depend on the spill-over from miner’s and astral personnel salaries. Military: In addition to visiting warships, Juno has six massive bunkers equipped with nuclear missiles, mass drivers and heavy lasers. Each orbital tower and habitat also carries lasers, particle beams and stranger energy weapons. In the Second Cladist War, Juno successfully repulsed an assault by a cladist fleet all by itself. Notes: Juno never produced any sort of noteworthy art or culture. Clothing often imitates astral fatigues. Point ‘n’ shoot VR games and live-action laser tag games are popular recreations.

And here's a bit of background on my treatment of Sol Belt as a whole, including explanations for my players who are not up on their astronomy. SOL BELTThe asteroid belt divides the inner and outer Solar System. It consists of thousands of sub-planetary objects that orbit between Mars and Jupiter. The largest are hundreds of kilometers in diameter. The smallest are gravel. The total mass is not enough to make even a small planet: When the Solar System formed, Jupiter sucked up most of the proto-planetary material in this region, and Jupiter’s tidal influence prevented the leftovers from coalescing into a single object. Most asteroid orbits are rather elliptical. Not only does the gravity from the planets tug them this way and that, their gravitational interactions with each other tend to bend their orbits away from tidy circles. Asteroids vary in composition. Most asteroids are made of a soft, crumbly black rock called carbonaceous chondrite — the primordial material of the middle Solar System. It’s blacker than coal. As its name says, this rock contains a lot of carbon. It also tends to include a lot of water, carbon dioxide and other volatiles in chemical combination. Other asteroids are made of various sorts of rock, nickel-iron alloy, or combinations thereof. A few asteroids have stranger compositions: For instance, a few asteroids have a surface layer rich in hydrocarbons, as if a bit of tar were mixed in with the chondritic material. Not all asteroids orbit within the Asteroid Belt itself. Two large clusters of asteroids share Jupiter’s orbit, caught in the giant planet’s Lagrange points. These are called the Trojan asteroids. Other asteroids pass inside Mars’ orbit or even cross Earth’s orbit — a group that Sol’s astronomers monitor closely indeed. A few asteroids never go further from the Sun than Earth’s orbit. All of these asteroids with peculiar orbits are quite small. Major asteroids have both a proper name and a catalog number that tells the order in which it was discovered. Minor asteroids just have the catalog number. People who live in the Belt don’t say the catalog number in ordinary speech — as Belters say, the number is silent — but it is always written when referring to the asteroid as a physical object. The number isn’t needed when referring to an inhabited asteroid as a community. Thus, “1 Ceres” is the asteroid itself; “Ceres,” without the number, is the community that lives on the asteroid. Before Earth’s devastation, Sol Belt formed a county within the Earth Commune (and Ceres formed a county of its own). Since the World Governance Board abandoned Earth, Asteroid County has become an autonomous state. Single corporations own many asteroid communities.

Years ago, I did some work on a homebrew Star Hero setting. Most of it never got used or developed in detail because my players wanted Planetary Romance instead of Space Opera. Discussion of Sy/fy's new series The Expanse reminded me of it because the "Star Horizon" setting included Belters -- including a treatment of Ceres, which is one of the important locations on the show. So, what the heck, here's my version of /Ceres. Maybe someone will find it amusing. You might try seeing how much of the wider setting you can extrapolate from this one location. CERES (Sol 4½ #1) Distance: 0 LY Primary: G2 Luminosity: 1 sol Orbit Radius: 413.9 x 106 km Illumination: 0.13 sols Revolution: 4.6 Earth years 4440.9 local days Eccentricity: 8% Rotation: 9.08 hours Axial Tilt: ? Mass: 1.2 x 1021 kg Radius: 465 km Gravity: 0.37 m/sec2 (0.038 g) Density: 2.8 Atmosphere: None (local Oxygen-Nitrogen, standard pressure) Hydrosphere: None Population: 110,000 Satellites: None Astrography: 1 Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Solar System. Like most asteroids, it orbits between Mars and Jupiter in the “main belt” dividing the inner and outer Solar System. Geography: 1 Ceres is a cratered ball of carbonaceous chondrite. The outer hundred meters of 1 Ceres contain permafrost of water with carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane mixed in. Three refineries orbit the asteroid. These facilities slice small asteroids into chunks and extract metal from them for further processing on Ceres’ surface. Ceres’ colonists live in underground cities and large domed habitats covered by rock shells, creating kilometer-high round bumps on the planetoid. High-speed magnetic rail lines connect the cities and domes. Few regions use artificial gravity. Ceres has 10 intact habitat domes, and the nuked remains of four others. Fusion lamps at the apex of each dome light the interiors. Ecology: Blessed with abundant volatiles and rock rich in simple organic molecules, the Cereans decided to make soil, air and water. Cerean researchers worked for centuries to adapt plant and animal species to thrive in very low gravity. As a result, the habitat domes boast diverse and stable biospheres, with several species of trees (all of them bearing fruit or nuts and producing other useful products), dozens of insect species, and numerous birds and small mammals. (The rats and roaches came by themselves.) Seven domes hold actual forests. Ceres holds more nonhuman biomass than any other human space colony. History: Humans settled 1 Ceres because it was the largest asteroid, and because it made a good source of carbon and volatiles for other asteroid and space colonies. The European Union sponsored initial colonization after the First Surellan War as a way to match Greater California’s mining station on Juno. Extracting metal from carbonaceous chondrites turned out to be less cost-effective than hard-rock mining from metallic or stony-metal asteroids, so Ceres needed subsidies from the EU up until the 2080s. Ceres, like the EU, readily accepted the new World Governance Board. As the Cerean colony expanded, it became a center for research on turning carbonaceous chondrite rock into actual soil: O’Neill space habitats had become large enough that colonists wanted to create the Earthlike environments envisioned by early space advocates. Synthetic soil finally made Ceres a viable colony. Establishing Earthlike habitats on the low-gravity asteroids became a natural extension of this program. The genetic techniques developed to adapt plants and animals to low gravity were eventually applied to humans. The ‘Belter’ genotype deliberately avoided any external alterations to the human form and remains interfertile with baseline humans: Public opinion back on Earth firmly said that space-dwelling humans should still look human. The geneticists restricted the modifications to preventing bone loss and other unpleasant side effects of prolonged life in low gravity. This genetic research, however, made the cladist experiments possible. (90% of all Cereans are now of the ‘Belter’ genotype.) The extensive biological research on Ceres made it a center for other education, too. In 2146, a variety of small technical schools consolidated into the Ceres Technion. The Technion added liberal arts and social science courses in the 2160s, becoming a fully-rounded university. In the First Cladist War, a cladist fleet captured Ceres after a fierce battle and held it for 17 months. They wanted the colony’s biological and industrial resources. The battle to retake Ceres featured incredibly bloody tunnel-fighting. Cladist deep-cover agents seized Ceres again at the start of the Second Cladist War, and turned it into a major base for attacks throughout the Solar System. WGB forces nuked several habitat domes to open the way for a ground assault. Since then, nothing very exciting has happened on Ceres, which is how the Cereans like it. Society: Ceres is a self-governing polity, distinct from Sol Belt, though subject to the World Governance Board. Ceres offers full adult suffrage and enjoys high voter participation. Its government sends ombudsmen to Mars, Jupiter and Sol Belt. The asteroid remains a center for astro-biological and genetic research. Cerean society awards great prestige to scientists and engineers — the basis for strong political and cultural ties to Mars. Technicians receive no explicit legal privilege as individuals, but Ceres’ three largest biotech companies and the Ceres Technion appoint aldermen to the Ceres Council. These four delegates can veto decisions made by the ten habitat aldermen and Mayor, but only if they act unanimously. (This rarely happens.) In many ways, Ceres is a university town in space. The research institutes dominate life economically and culturally, as well as politically. Cereans boast a high education level even by spacer standards, and the cultural level is even higher. The mood is relaxed and Bohemian, even if the student bio-engineers play weird pranks now and then. A favorite highjink is to get a fellow student drunk and graft a tissue-engineered body part onto an embarrassing location. A number of student groups agitate for secession from the WGB, but everyone knows that’s just post-adolescent bluster. Nothing ever comes of it. Ideology/Religion: Cerean society is highly secular. About 10% of the population consists of practicing Roman Catholics, various Protestants, Sunni Muslims or Buddhists. Like all Belters, Cereans hold firm Manager opinions: In space, any failure in planning or systems operation tends to leave everyone in mortal peril. Cereans bridle at any suggestion that the Belter genotype constitutes cladism. Nevertheless, some Cereans hold mild cladist sympathies, no matter how strongly they reject the label. Some Cereans want further genetic ‘adjustments’ to improve their adaptation to low gravity. Technology: The Ceres Technion is in the top tier of scientific research institutes within human space. The Technion and the three biotech companies lead humanity in genetic research (since the Prometheans no longer count as human). Most high-tech industries on Ceres are specialized, but up to Solar System standards: The Cereans can draw upon all the technological resources of Luna, Mars and Jupiter. Low gravity and high tech lead to a few unusual specific technologies. Many Cereans live in treehouse “lofts” in the forest domes. Miniaturized, self-contained and portable appliances make life in a loft quite as technologically comfortable as any bedroom community. Indeed, the forest domes are towns of treehouses. The low gravity of 1 Ceres makes man-powered flight easier than walking. Cereans have long worn “flight vests” incorporating fold-out wings of fabric and smart plastics that turn rigid at an electrical signal. The person grabs handles on the unfolded wings, and flaps. Of course, all the popular sports are aerial. Flight vests and wings are a fashion accessory as well as a means of transportation. Feathered wings colored to imitate Earthly birds (most, alas, now extinct) are currently fashionable. Cereans who travel to other worlds often buy or rent a grav belt so they can keep flying. The height of fashion, however, consists of bionic wing implants. Such wings are far more maneuverable, besides leaving the person’s hands free, but they are a major purchase comparable to a speedboat or other recreational vehicle. Some flight fanatics obtain bioengineered wings that become a permanent, living part of their body. They claim this is a “purer,” more complete embrace of aerial life. Bionic wings, however, can be unplugged so a person can fit within a standard space suit or other garb. Economy: Ceres has a managed market economy as far as the biotech institutes are concerned, and a largely free market for other businesses. Either the companies are too small for the WGB to annex, or their parent companies give them a loose leash. Cereans know they pay high taxes, but citizens receive universal health care and all the education they want at public expense. Ceres’ chief exports remain soil, air, water and biological products to other asteroids; and refined metal to Jupiter, Mars and Luna. Military: On Ceres, it’s bad manners to talk about the six heavy weapon emplacements that guard the minor planet from attack. Ceres also has a small contingent of light WGB Astry vessels as its “coast guard.” Notes: Because the domes and tunnel-cities have controlled climates, Cereans need clothes only for protection, modesty or style. The growing popularity of the “Bird” lifestyle leads to clothing both scant and skintight, at least for younger folk: Clothing caught in a tree branch is no fun. This also leads to an emphasis on physical culture and body ornamentation such as skin and hair dye jobs to match one’s “plumage,” and adhesive or piercing-attached jewelry. Vanity becomes less flamboyant with age but does not disappear. Elderly Cereans generally wear bodysuits that hide wrinkles and correct sagging, not that many people really let themselves go. Dean Shomshak

It's too early to say whether I really like the show, but I do appreciate the attempt to do SF on TV without blatantly "magical plot device" technology (FTL, artificial gravity, etc.) It may also prompt me to post the Belter societies I devised as part of the background for my SF setting. (Though I never got to use them or develop them in depth. My players said firmly they wanted Planetary Romance. Fortunately, I had a suitable planet ready.) Dean Shomshak

Hm. I've never done Multiple Alternate Earth Supers as such, but if anyone's interested I could repost an idea I had several years ago for a Super Fantasy World created in response for a request for an alternate Earth in which the Roman Empire fell during the life of Jesus. Other people discussing the topic suggested working in an Arthurian angle, IIRC, so I went with that as well. My current campaign setting has alternate futures but no alternate presents. The PCs all come from various futures in which humanity is doomed to destruction by the triumph of one megavillain or another. (Vide Destroyer World, mentioned above.) Doctor Future rescued each of them and brought them back to form a team called Avant Guard and thwart the villains before they can doom the world. I think they are some nicely dark futures, but that's not what the OP asked for. Dean Shomshak

Oh, I don't know. The Dragon does not insist that all Its servants get a union card. Or even that they know they serve. Dean Shomshak

Really!? I knew they'd been hit hard by the capture of Pablo Escobar and his flamboyant ilk, but I didn't know the cartels had actually disintegrated. Wow. (And thanks for letting me know!) Ah well, Rasgador works as well as the operative of some other Latin American group. From what I've heard, El Salvador's Mara-13 shows his sort of psychotic ultra-violence, but I have the impression it's also rather disorganized. Mexican gangs have the money and look increasingly bloodthirsty and psychotic, so I guess I'll substitute one of those. It's probably best not to name a specific gang, though, because they seem to come and go fairly quickly. (Or invent one.) Dean Shomshak

I’ve enjoyed Steve Long’s new Martial Enemies supplements so much they inspired me to take another look at some of the martial artist villains I’ve written up for my own campaigns. Here’s El Rasgador, the Ripper, one of the more vicious residents of the Martial Arts World. (Regarding the reference to “Aran training”: In my new campaign world, the Arans are an alien race that developed incredibly advanced martial arts. Humans have learned and published some of their simpler training techniques for strengthening both body and Qi. Self-training isn’t as reliable or effective as learning from an Aran sifu, but with persistence and a little luck a determined student can develop nigh-superhuman physical and martial arts prowess, producing a wave of martial arts origins — while people who already have great natural talent and a strong Qi push their skills to wuxia extremes. For other settings, Rasgador simply began with unusual natural talent but squandered it turning down his dark and bloody path.) Rasgador Val Char Cost Roll Notes 25 STR 15 14- Lift 800 kg; 5d6 HTH damage [2] 24 DEX 28 14- 25 CON 15 14- 10 INT — 11- PER Roll 11- 8 EGO -2 11- 20 PRE 10 13- PRE Attack: 4d6 8 OCV 25 8 DCV 25 3 OMCV — 3 DMCV — 6 SPD 40 Phases: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 25 PD 23 Total: 25 PD (5 rPD) 25 ED 23 Total: 25 ED (5 rED) 12 REC 8 50 END 6 14 BODY 4 40 STUN 10 Characteristics Cost: 230 Movement: Running: 24m Swinging: 24m Cost Powers END Martial Arts: Eagle Claw Kung Fu Maneuver OCV DCV Notes 4 Block +2 +2 Block, Abort 5 Defensive Strike +1 +3 5d6/1d6 AP KA Strike 4 Eagle Claw +0 +0 9d6/1½d6 AP KA Crush, Must Follow Grab (13d6 normal/4d6 AP KA with STR and Deadly Blow) 3 Joint Lock/Grab -1 -1 Grab 2 Limbs, 35 STR Hold 3 Legsweep +2 -1 6d6, Target Falls 1 Use Art with Claws 26 Steel Claw Implants: HKA 1d6 (2d6+1 with STR) 0 Armor Piercing (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) 5 Subdermal Ballistic Cloth: Resistant (+1/2) on 5 PD, 5 ED 0 5 Synthetic Eye Lens: Sight Group Flash Defense (5 points) 0 5 Synthetic Eye Lens: UV Perception 0 12 Fleetfoot: Running +12m (total 24m) 2 8 Swingline Bracer: Swinging 24m 2 OIF (-1/2) 5 Another Swingline Bracer Perks 15 Contacts: 3 Narco-Barons, 11- each (Contact has very useful resources, access to major institutions, &/or significant Contacts of his own) 3 Membership: Medellin Cartel Talents 16 Deadly Blow: +8 levels with Kung Fu Only to add damage to Eagle Claw (+4 DC normal damage, +3 DC AP KA damage) Skills 6 +2 with Eagle Claw Kung Fu 4 +2 OCV with Joint Lock/Grab 3 Acrobatics 14- 3 Breakfall 14- 3 Climbing 14- 3 Interrogation 13- 2 KS: Aran Training 11- 2 KS: Kung Fu 11- 2 KS: Latin American Organized Crime 11- 2 KS: Martial World 11- 1 L: English (Basic Conversation; Spanish is native) 1 L: Mandarin (Basic Conversation) 3 Stealth 14- 3 Streetwise 13- Total Powers & Skills Cost: 161 Total Cost: 388 400 Matching Complications (75) 10 Distinctive Features: Metal Claws (Concealable; Noticed and Recognizable) 10 Distinctive Features: Style (Not Concealable, Noticed and Recognizable, Detectable By Large Group) 20 Hunted: Various Governments (Infrequently, More Pow, NCI, Capture/Kill) 10 Negative Reputation: Murderous Disgrace (Infrequently, Extreme) 20 Psychological Complication: Bloodthirsty (Very Common, Strong) 15 Psychological Complication: Gunslinger Mentality (Common, Strong) Total Complications Points: 75 Background/History: Leandro Bardem comes from an upper middle class Mestizo family in Cali, Colombia. His family worked hard to be respectable; Leandro found it stifling. His passions were kung fu and getting in trouble with street kids. Leandro was still a teenager when Aran martial arts teachings reached the Internet, and his dojo. Leandro excelled. He combined his interests by becoming the youngest leg-breaker for a small gang affiliated with the city’s drug cartel. His sifu saw Leandro’s growing brutality and expelled him, but by then Leandro didn’t care. Eager to build his gang reputation, Leandro adopted claw-tipped gloves to make his Eagle Claw attacks deadlier and more intimidating. Then a fight went further than expected and Leandro ripped open a man’s belly. First Leandro threw up. Then he whooped and laughed in wild exultation at his own lethal power. The cartel leaders dubbed him El Rasgador, “The Ripper,” and he graduated to the higher tiers of gang enforcement. Leandro reveled in the violence and the fear he inspired, as well as the women, wealth and drugs the cartel gave him. On the other hand, Leandro found that he faced stiffer competition from other elite enforcers as well as the occasional hero. He was no longer getting better at kung fu, either. So Leandro paid a shady doctor to cyborg him: ballistic cloth under his skin to make him bullet-resistant, artificial lenses in his eyes to shield them from flash/bang grenades, and diamond-coated, case-hardened steel claws on his fingertips. As a living weapon, the Ripper was now ready to kill at any time. Personality/Motivation: Leandro is utterly psychotic. He loves killing up close and personal: The spurt of blood, the stink of guts ripped from a man’s belly, and the shock and horror on the face of a dying victim. El Rasgador believes he can take anything he wants and kill anyone who gets in his way. So far, it’s worked pretty well for him. Leandro particularly wants to fight other skilled martial artists for the glory of killing them. Quote: “I will rip out your guts and show you your heart as you die. Ha!” Powers/Tactics: The Ripper’s claws are exceptionally hard and sharp, and Leandro’s martial arts skill enables him to rip through stronger materials and inflict greater wounds than would seem possible for such small blades. The combination of martial training and subdermal kevlar also make El Rasgador tougher than should be humanly possible. The artificial lenses in his eyes incidentally let him see ultraviolet light. Bracers that shoot grapnel-tipped lines enhance his mobility. Most importantly, though, Leandro is superhumanly strong, fast and agile. Apart from that, his martial arts skill is… not that great. A true master can tell that while Leandro’s Qi is strong, his technique is sloppy and his range of maneuvers is limited. He could have been a great fighter, if he cared more about perfecting his skills than killing people. Getting cyborged also interferes with the natural flow of his Qi and prevents him from ever developing the more refined, mystical aspects of kung fu. El Rasgador begins a fight with Defensive Strikes while he feels out his opponent’s skill… or to toy with a victim by inflicting minor wounds. If an opponent can fight back effectively, Leandro uses Blocks to act first on subsequent Phases, and Legsweeps in hopes of putting his foe on the ground and at a disadvantage. This is to set up his foe for a Joint Lock. Once Leandro his target Grabbed he uses his Eagle Claw maneuver, trying to rip his enemy’s guts out. El Rasgador always fights to kill unless his employer pays him extra to leave someone alive. Campaign Use: If you need a homicidal and utterly vile Mob enforcer for a scenario, El Rasgador can fill the bill. To make the Ripper more powerful, increase his Dexterity and Speed, expand his Skill Levels to All HTH, and add Damage Classes to his Eagle Claw King Fu. (Don’t add maneuvers; the Ripper is supposed to be a one-trick pony.) To make him less powerful, remove his Flash Defense and Skill Levels, and reduce his Deadly Blow bonus damage. El Rasgador Hunts people when his employer pays him to. He might also Hunt another martial artial out of rivalry; he won’t fight fair. Associates, Allies, and Adversaries: The Ripper specificially works for the Medellin Cartel in Colombia, but the cartel rents his services to the Cali Cartel, the Mexican Mafia, and other narco-traffickers. In this way he might turn up far from Colombia and working with other Mob super-enforcers. He has no genuine allies, though — and many people in the Martial Arts World despise him for killing respected, though not superhuman, athletes, fighters and teachers (including his own teacher). It wouldn’t take much for this Negative Reputation to flip into a second Hunted. Appearance: El Rasgador is a young man with bronzed skin, short, spiky black hair and dark brown eyes. He wears tight black vinyl pants and boots, with black enameled bracers on his forearms. Leandro goes shirtless to flaunt his ultra-ripped, Aran-trained physique, just as he makes no effort to hide the half-inch, hooked claws of gleaming steel that replace his fingernails. Rasgador Facts Here are some facts that characters and NPCs might know about El Rasgador if they succeed with an appropriate Skill Roll: K/R: Colombian drug cartels have an enforcer who is called the Ripper because he rips people’s guts out with his bare hands. -1: El Rasgador has metal claws on his fingers. His strength and speed place him at the limit of human athletic potential, or beyond. He’s been active throughout Latin America and occasionally further afield. -2: The Ripper’s name is Leandro Bardem. He practices some form of kung fu and has been surgically altered. Bardem doesn’t just kill for money: He seeks out and kills other martial artists just to show that he can. -4: Leandro Bardem practices Eagle Claw kung fu. His remarkable strength and speed come from Aran training techniques, but his actual skill is not great. ----------- Dean Shomshak

You'll notice how the Mystic World passage says mystics "think" or "believe," and how microversal visitors "tell stories." I took care to offer suggestions about what might be found in Microverses but without nailing anything down as Official Truth. Incidentally, the Quantum Casino, talking bacteria, etc. were inspired in part by the excellent "Mr. Tompkins" stories that physicist George Gamow wrote to introduce laymen t scientific concepts. Mr. Tompkins, a banker, likes to attend public science lectures but tends to doze off in the middle of them. In his dreams he visits places such as the town where the speed of light is 20 miles per hour so people live with relativistic warps of space and time, a Quantum Pool Hall where the billiard balls behave like subatomic particles, and an atom where talking electrons explain energy levels and Pauli exclusion. The most complete collection is probably Mr. Tompkins in Paperback. I recommend it. (The Frank and Ernest comic strip also may have played a role.) Dean Shomshak

I use only my own settings. My previous Champs setting for my Seattle Sentinels and Keystone Konjurors campaigns had many mystical elements in common with the CU because I ported them into Ultimate Supermage, Ultimate Mystic, Mystic World and /arcane Adversaries. Ah, the megalomaniac joys of a writer's life! My current-but-on-hiatus campaign uses an all-new setting I've dubbed the Millennium Universe because supers first appeared in 2000. While I'm sorry to lose a Mystic World developed through 20+ years of play, other parts of the Sentinel U showed their age and I thought it was best to make a clean break. It's the implied background for my Hero Plus .pdfs, though I'm trying to make them easy to port into any other setting. Dean Shomshak

My local PBS station is currently showing a series called Earth's Natural Wonders. It's about the people who live around various unusual and/or extreme locations from Mount Everest to the Camargue, and how they interact with their environments. Apart from the spectacular scenery, every segment of the show I've seen so far suggested a cool Fantasy setting, culture, or scenario. It's also available through Comcast's On Demand service, and no doubt can be found somewhere on the Interwebs. (Personal favorite: The people fishing on the lip of Victoria Falls, for sheer visual splendor.) Dean Shomshak

I'd also like to see the Death Dragon written up in a hypothetical Tournament of the Dragon update pdf. It emphasizes the metaphysical quality of the Dragon -- that any manifestation PCs encounter is just that, a manifestation, not the real Dragon at all. Even the Dragon chained under Faerie is just a sort of mask for something that has no physical existence at all. The Death Dragon is an especially interesting manifestation because although it seems to give the Dragon an avenue of freedom, it is also a means of binding. The Tournament can be seen as a working that lures the Dragon with a chance to break a chain -- but by channeling the manifestation into a form that can be defeated by the courage, skill and determination of one person, tricks the Dragon into assisting in its own binding. Assuming the champion wins, at least! But when dealing with such transcendent and malign entities, every path of action carries risks. Dean Shomshak

Some of this is preempted by recent posts, but whatever. (I compose long posts offline, then post when I get the chance.) Ragitsu's original post leaves some ambiguity about what is meant by “creation.” It could mean “making stuff,” but the example seems to mean, “primordial.” I’ll follow the latter trail. First off, AFAIK the only primordial, “unforged” iron accessible on the Earth’s surface is meteoric. All the iron from the Earth’s formation either sank into the core or combined chemically (mostly oxides or sulfides) – iron is quite reactive. Iron in the core is not going to make it back up to the surface. Nobody’s going to obtain it excapt by magic (there are thousands of kilometers of magma in the way), which perhaps defeats the idea of it as a magic-quelling substance. Meteoric iron, however, has many symbolic attributes that make it an excellent supernatural material. Before people figured out how to smelt it, iron was very rare and precious. One ancient piece of jewelry consists of a bit of meteoric iron set in gold like a jewel. Ancient peoples also knew perfectly well that it fell from the sky, associating it with the gods: The Sumerian word for iron translates as “Star Stone.” The Greek word, sideros, likewise encodes the association with the stars. As a sacred and otherworldly material, you could have meteoric iron be anti-magical as easily as magical: It’s too pure and powerful, and so disrupts the lesser magic of mortals. Even forged iron is an emblem of power, both mortal and supernatural. For a long time, the smelting process never actually melted the iron: The ore slowly became a spongy mass called a “bloom,” still contaminated with slag that had to be hammered out. Iron-smelting cultures saw the furnace as a magical womb in which the generative process of nature was accelerated by human art, the dead stone of the ore growing into the “live” bloom of the iron. Iron is the metal of war and raw, brutal power. Homer contrasted “democratic iron” with the bronze of the aristocracy, but armies equipped with iron weapons and armor defeated the lordly heroes armed with bronze. It is the metal of Will and the ultimate dominance of killing those who stand against you. Modern science adds to the metaphysical symbolism. Once nuclear fusion reaches iron, it consumes energy instead of producing it. Most stars never reach this stage, but iron is the absolute limit. When massive stars accumulate too much iron in their cores, they collaps and explode as supernovas. One such supernova triggered the collapse of the nebula that birthed the Solar System, while seeding it with iron: From destruction comes new creation. That iron, molten and churning in the Earth’s core, creates the magnetic field that protects the Earth’s atmosphere. So iron is the death of stars, the foundation of the world, and the shield against the excessive power of the Sun. Back in the late Renaissance/early Enlightenment, early economists argued about the true nature of wealth and value. Traditionalists argued for gold. Their arguments ranged from the practical (as a malleable and chemically inert substance of limited supply, it had the right properties for money) to the explicitly magical (it attracts beneficial Solar energies). Others argued that value came from utility and used iron, the metal of industry, as their exemplar. The value of gold, they said, was an illusion. [This argument got tangled up with other arguments, notably including geocentrism vs. heliocentrism. If you’re interested, see Eileen Reeves, “As Good As Gold: The Mobile Earth and Early Modern Economics,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 62 (1999).] You might incorporate this opposition into a magical system. You could make magic an act of deceit, a way of tricking or finessing the world into conforming to mortal will. Gold is the material expression of this illusion and can be used to power spells. Iron is the metal of hard reality. It reifies the primordial power that orders the world, from the cosmic cycles or creation and destruction to the direct, kill-or-be-killed reality of war. If you don’t want to get quite so symbolic, or get a bit less obvious, the First Material of the Solar System – the first solid material, anyway – is still meteoric. Carbonaceous chondrites are compacted space dust, not yet smelted into other rocks. Until a magus obtains a sample of a comet, it’s the closest you can get to the unprocessed raw material of the Earth and other worlds. Dean Shomshak

And yellow is the Imperial color, that only the Emperor and his immediate family could wear. (With certain exceptions -- in a culture as vast as China, there are always exceptions.) So while "Yellow Flame" evokes pulp-era tropes of Western bigotry, it also suggests that YF fancies himself a latter-day Emperor. Suitably megalomaniac, I think. Dean Shomshak

I'd like a Cult of the Red Banner supplement as well. I'd say Doctor Yin Wu has a lot of Fu Manchu in him. Ol' Fu might be "The Devil Doctor of the Orient" and "All the Yellow Peril incarnate in one man," but he had a code of honor and was even occasionally on the right side -- one of the books was about his attempt to forestall World War Two -- though his methods and motives could be, um, questionable. I always had the impression Yin Wu was the same, or at least that he could make an argument for his goals that sometimes would make you think, "Huh, he's got a point there." At least when you aren't shuddering in fear. Dean Shomshak

The Milky Way Galaxy has a magnetic field. (Or at least, a magnetic field pervades interstellar space.) What makes it? (Wikipedia lacks an article on "Galactic Magnetic Field," and searching on the phrase chiefly seems to turn up plasma cosmology fringe science.) Dean Shomshak

Or conversely, construction debris. What would be worth building that close to a white dwarf star? If the star has a strong magnetic field, maybe... a power station. Back in my misspent youth, I wondered how much current you could generate by running a loop of wire around low Earth orbit, as the coil of a generator with the Earth as the magnet. Weak magnetic field, but very big coil, moving very fast. The results were, um, impressive. Dunno how intense a magnetic field white dwarf stars have. (You'd prefer a pulsar for this, but maybe they're all taken.) But if it's still at Sun-comparable intensity, only squeezed in because the star is so small, it still might make the core for a pretty good generator. So, what's known about the magnetic fields of white dwarf stars? Dean Shomshak

November's Scientific American has an article about the Dark Energy Survey, a program to map hundreds of millions of galaxies in hopes of measuring cosmic expansion more precisely and maybe ruling out some of the possible explanations. The article summary goes: "Something is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up--but what? Scientists have proposed that a force called dark energy is behind the acceleration or, alternatively, that current understanding of gravity must be modified. If dark energy is the culprit, at least two explanations are possible. "A new project called the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will aim to solve this mystery by studying the history of cosmic expansion and the extent to which dark energy may have stymied the clumping together of galaxies throughout space. "It will tackle these questions in four ways--through observing supernovae, the signatures of primordial sound waves, gravitational lensing (the bending of light by matter in the universe) and clusters of galaxies." There's also a short article about a search for stars collapsing directly into black holes in nearby galaxies. The astronomers are watching for red supergiant stars that just vanish, without going supernova. They already have a few candidates. Dean Shomshak

Watch a few episodes of Judge Judy (or similar programs). Yes, there are women with such bad judgment in men, and the Biffs of the world have a manipulative dark genius at finding and exploiting them. (You'll also see the occasional Biffette who's just as bad.) Dean Shomshak

It sounds like a good project. I've noticed a tendency for HERO that I might call, "If you can do it, it has to be on the character sheet," as if the world characters inhabit is a blank slate with no properties of its own. Which tends to sell skills short. For another example of what you describe, Exalted had a pretty good treatment of the "Magical Materials" used for magical weapons, armor and miscellaneous artifacts. The craft rules were pretty rudimentary (not that I think everything needs six skill rolls), but the game did pretty well at making the Magical Materials and other substances of power part of the setting. (Typical White Wolf: Brilliant fluff, weak rules. I say this as someone who worked on several Exalted projects.) Dean Shomshak

I've seen supplements that included magical herbs and natural wonders; Exalted did this a bit. (See the last chapter of Oadenol's Codex for examples.) Decades before that, some Middle Earth Role Playing supplements had charts of herbs with various game-defined properties. (It's the Rolemaster system and design crew. Must have more charts.) IIRC, World of Synnabarr had some stuff like this as well. Off hand I don't recall an entire supplement devoted to the topic, though. Dean Shomshak

Some of these design flaws come from the limits of television. Like, it makes sense that starships would have manual overrides that are actually manual – but every set and every shot takes time and costs money, both of which are tightly budgeted. So when the plot requires the computer to crash or the normal controls to be blocked by an alien force, it makes sense for Captain Kirk to call for manual override -- but are they going to spend five seconds of precious broadcast time showing an extra somewhere throwing a switch or turning a big wheel, wait a beat, and then say, “It’s not working, sir”? Not when they can spend two seconds showing Sulu, still on the bridge, punch a button and deliver the line. No seatbelts on the bridge is less excusable. People staggering and lurching around the bridge as the camera shakes looks more exciting on screen than people swaying in their seats, but after a while it does start to seem silly. (If you need to show people lurching about as the ship is hit, do a quick cut to stock footage of extras staggering about the halls while they hurry to their posts -- as they did several times, so there’s even less excuse for bridge crew falling about.) But not having an emergency exit from the bridge when the turboshaft is out of ourder is just sloppy storytelling. It’s one thing if a powerful, enigmatic alien force traps the bridge in a force field, but a broken elevator? That’s just ridiculous. And some design flaws would be okay if the circumstance happened only once, but lazy writers keep using it over again. This is how the holodeck became silly. One story in which the holodeck goes out of control can be exciting and, after all, no technology is perfect. When it happens once or twice every season, you start to wonder why a supposedly competent government wouldn’t ban such a dangerously erratic technology. Then again, in J. J. Abrams’ recent movies, it’s clear that the entire Federation is run by drooling idiots. Star Trek: Into Darkness repeatedly relies on large institutions picking up the Idiot Ball and not letting go. Like, how does the rogue admiral in charge of Star Fleet acquire the Botany Bay and thaw out Khan without anyone else knowing? And then build a whole prototype dreadnaught without anyone knowing? Doesn’t Star Fleet have civilian oversight and basic accounting? Later in the movie, a starship is falling out of the sky onto San Francisco. Doesn’t Earth have deflector screens and tractor beams to protect major cities? I know, you can come up with explanations. But these issues are too big, and too central to the story, to be brushed aside. At least, I found them so. In drama, sometimes you can get away with shortcuts if they don’t materially affect the plot. (Like, the alien force that takes over the ship can also block the manual override. Though it would be nice now and then to show a manual override that worked.) But if you need to swallow huge gaps in common sense and basic information to make the story work, you are telling the wrong story. (This is also why I have become deeply impatient with Steven Moffat’s stewardship of Doctor Who, btw. Moffat has said flat-out that he doesn’t do science fiction: He’s telling fables. But even fables must observe certain constraints of story logic if they are to be meaningful, and Moffat’s fables don’t.) Dean Shomshak

Barbie is a focus of strange obsessions. It's why I made Barbie one of the stranger menaces in my second Supermage playtest campaign. PC Artifex magically created a living Barbie as housekeeper/ahem, let's not talk about it for his apartment in Babylon. It got very out of hand. He unwittingly created a reality vampire, turning people into living plastic mannikins like herself. And it was contagious. The PCs narrowly averted Barbie's ascension to cosmic entity dimension lord of a new dimension of plastic people. "I'm a Barbie Girl "In a Barbie Wor-rld. "Life in plastic: "It's fantastic!" Dean Shomshak