Five Worlds for Space Opera

Genres run on tropes (or cliches, if you're less charitable).

Planet of Amazons
Whatever strides the future will have made in terms of gender equality, there still always seems to be some place out there with warrior woman who are either hostile to men, find them fascinating and strange, or both. This is perhaps just a variant of the Woman Dominated Planet (where men are present but second class citizens, and the women aren't necessarily a warrior race) with less cool a name.
Examples: Queen of Space (1958), Star Maidens,  Buck Rogers "Planet of the Amazon Women," Space: 1999 "Devil's Planet," Omega 3 in Starstruck, the Femizons from Marvel Comics, Lyrane II from Second Stage Lensmen.

Casino World
If your space opera setting doesn't have a world like this, where would Lando Calrissian play sabacc? There are probably very few whole planet casinos, but there might be casino cities surrounded by wastelands or casino space stations--bonus points if it's shaped like some sort of gambling device. There may be some overlap with the Pleasure Planet.
Examples: Buck Rogers "Vegas in Space," Cowboy Bebop "Honky Tonk Women," The Wheel from Marvel's Star Wars comic, Ventura the Gambler's World in the Legion of Superheroes.

Forbidding Planet
Some planets have secrets. Dangerous secrets. These worlds are usually desolate and hard to get to. Those who have sought their secrets before may have died for them--or maybe they've somehow become their guardians. If the secret is particularly dangerous, this might be a Hellworld is disguise.
Examples: Forbidden Planet (1956), Planet of Vampires (1965), Miranda in Serenity (2005), LV-426 in Alien (1976), LV-223 from Prometheus (2015); any number of worlds in the Star Trek series fit the bill, but Talos IV is probably the most archetypal; there are a couple of these in the Deathstalker novels.

Hellworld
Some planets just want you dead. Maybe they've got super-hostile sapient inhabitants, a deadly biosphere, or a poisonous atmosphere, the result is the same. It's going to take something of value to attract PCs to a Hellworld; this may be a natural substance or some person stranded there. As mentioned before, there is some overlap with the Forbidding Planet.
Examples: Aliens (1986), Star Trek "Whom Gods Destroy" and "The Way to Eden," Nu-Earth in Rogue Trooper, Lythyl in Legion of Superheroes, Spatterjay in The Skinner by Neal Asher, and of course Deathworld by Harry Harrison.

Pleasure Planet
Everybody needs a little relaxation and recreation, and a Pleasure Planet is it. This may be a fairly tame resort world, a place of supreme decadence and indulgence, or seedy planet with deadly secrets.
Examples: Doctor Who "The Leisure Hive," Wrigley's Pleasure Planet and Risa from Star Trek, Delirius from Lone Sloane, Raggashoon from Omega Men.

Kuznuh Unveiled

Kuznuh is the primary world of the neshekk and a member of the Alliance. The neshekk aren't natives; they arrived there after being displaced by the Great Collapse. The neshekk have made their fortunes primarily through investment banking.They have a reputation for ethical behavior and conservative investment, but are sticklers for the letter of contracts and do not tend to offer easy terms.

Perhaps because of their wealth or perhaps due to a separate cultural quirk, the neshekk are greatly concerned with privacy. They go through the streets wrapped in a shroud of nizara, making them invisible or unrecognizable (depending on their settings) in the metascape of their world, unless they choose otherwise. It is a misdemeanor privacy violation to view public spaces of Kuznuh unfiltered by the metascape. All social interaction on Kuznuh is a process of negotiating the level and setting time parameters for permissions to access personal information. Even among family, neshekk may completely cloak themselves in nizara for privacy’s sake.

Their desire to protect their privacy and wealth (and the wealth of their clients) has led the neshekk to become security experts in both electronic and data security. Neshekk infosecurity firms are noted for their ruthlessness; they have been known to employ basilisk patterns and other forms of deadly intrusion countermeasures.

Neshekk society is divided into clans. The heads of these clans elect a Chief Executive Officer of Kuznuh. When the neshekk clan leaders lose confidence in a CEO, he or she is replaced--and memory-wiped to insure the protection of board secrets. This process is referred to as “beheading.”

Kuznuh City, the capital of their world, has a walled and checkpointed city center full of windowless, unadorned cylinders where the wealthy neshekk reside. Offworlders that work for them reside in partitioned areas around it. All visitors and offworlders are given rudimentary nizara shielding, but don’t have as many options with its use nor are theirs as opaque to legal inquiries as that of citizens.

(For those that are interested, FATE stats for the neshekk and other species can be found in a newly updated file here.)

Charting the Stars

Some reason G+ discussion last week got into resources for real world star maps for science fiction gaming. Not everyone will find this necessary, and still fewer will be concerned with "accurate" habitable systems and planets, but for those that are here are some links I've found useful:

The Internet Stellar Database allows to to search for a star and find out its various catalog names, spectral data, coordinates, and distance from Sol. Very handy.

If you're interested in calculating the habitable zone around a star, this page is a quick and (relatively) easy reference. Sol Station has got that calculated for you for many stars and has some decent online star maps.

Maybe you want someone else to put in a lot of the work for you. Winchell Chung makes great real world star maps and you can purchase in print on demand a few varieties here at the aptly named 3-D Star Maps.

I haven't presented a map of the Strange Stars yet, but I intend to do so eventually. I will reveal a few of the modern designations of some of the locations I've already written about:

• The green ssraad, as mentioned in the post about them live around the white main sequence star Sirius A. The blue ssraad call the white dwarf Sirius B home.
• The Library of Atoz-Theln is in the Lalande 25372 system. Its primary is a red main sequence dwarf (M1.5 Ve).
• Gogmagog, the site of giant robot battles, orbits β Comae Berenices, a yellow main sequence dwarf some 9.13 parsecs from Sol.
• Aygo, the homeworld of the inverterbrate zhmun, and its co-orbital world of Erg are in the 82 Eridani system--which also has 3 super-earths we already know about.

Labyrinths of Shadow

The planet Tenebrae in the Zuran Expanse lives up to its name. In the gloom beneath perpetually darkened skies, the all but lifeless wastes hold the ruins of two civilizations  These ruins draw treasure seekers and archaeologists, but they don’t easily give up their secrets.

Tenebrae was a terraformed world and once home to thousands of colonists. A few large surface craters suggest this civilization was destroyed by meteor impacts and the nuclear winter that followed. This is believed to have been a purposeful assault rather than chance encounters. Most life above the unicellular level was destroyed.

Sometime later, the enigmatic zurr arrived. As on every other world with a zurr presence, only what appear to be ritual sites have been found: Three labyrinthine structures the size of small cities are evenly spaced along the equator. They’re made of a rock-like material with the appearance of basalt not found elsewhere on the planet.

Artifacts are found within the labyrinths, seemingly at random: small, nonrepresentational sculptures, pieces of the elaborate ceramic masks the zurr seem to wear (seen in the holographic images with the appearance of mid-reliefs embedded in the walls), and oddly, personal items the previous human civilization the zurr or someone else must have excavated from older ruins.

These trinkets can bring a few credits in the right markets, but the most valuable of the Tenebraean artifacts are the obsidian pentachorons. These items (or perhaps their 3 dimensional shadows) are found ensconced in rare alcoves in the walls of the labyrinths, where they have the appearance of glassy, black pyramids. When held by a sapient being the pyramid takes on the appearance of a 4-dimensional solid rotating through 3-dimensional space. The rate of rotation of a pentachoron changes in the presence of a hyperspatial node. Psi sensitive individuals holding a pentachoron hear a multitude of whispering voices. The objects are resistant to damage, but they can be destroyed—though only utterly. No one has ever succeeded in fragmenting or shattering one.

The pentachorons and the other treasures are zealously guarded by short humanoids called “skulkers.” Little is known about them, except that they appear to inhabit subterranean warrens beneath the labyrinths, they shun bright lights, and they are utterly hostile to other species.

The Maze

The so-called Apotheosis Maze is an ancient structure of great power. It sits on an all but lifeless world on the seldom-traveled fringe of civilized space, yet still it draws visitors willing to accept it’s wordless challenge: Find the path through and perhaps attain godhood.

The maze covers nearly 20,000 m2. From a distance, it appears to be made of marble. Closer inspection reveals the material has an iridescent, oil-slick sheen when the light hits it right. Scanning reveals it to be much more than simple stone: There are patterns in its structure at the picometer (and possibly smaller) level: circuits repeating. The maze has a psionic presence, too--like faint, whispering voices in an adjacent room.

It’s said that no known weapon can damage the maze’s structure. It is uncertain whether anyone has ever actually tried. The guardians of the maze move quickly to stop any visitor who attempts violence against them or the maze. They wield quantum weapons, that are powerless cubes outside of their hands.

The guardians are tall, robed humanoids with enlarged craniums and skin as black as starless space. There are always three, though perhaps not always the same three. Their primary task seems to be to decide who may walk the maze from the supplicants present. They never allow more than five in, but the number varies; they often select fewer. Those they choose must divest themselves of weapons, equipment, and uplinks, and don simple robes before entering the maze.

Despite the fact that the maze is open to the sky, no one has ever been observed traversing it. It would appear that the maze's interior exists elsewhere. The vast majority of those who enter the maze never emerge. In fact, there is no recorded instance of anyone emerging--but many stories exist. All the stories suggest sophont beings who walk the maze transcend in some way--perhaps even to godhood. The hyehoon faithful believe their Mother Creator, Anat Morao, walked the maze before ascending into heaven where she continues to watch over her children. Some versions of Instrumentality doctrine mention attempts to walk the maze, either praising or condemning them. A conspiracy meme during the Radiant Polity held that the first psi mutant (an immortal being of immense power, supposedly) was born of a pregnant mother who had walked the maze.

The legends keep people trying. Some attempt to hedge their bets by finding a map of the maze. Such maps surface from time to time--and people have killed to get them--but as far as is known, they've all turned out to be fakes. A rumor current among spacers is that there’s a mendicant on a backwater world called Oriax, who carries the map (perhaps unknowingly) in his brain, but few have been able to locate the planet much less any miraculous vagrant.

The Pleasure Domes of Erato

During the time of the Archaic Oikumene, the most famous of the so-called “pleasure worlds” was Erato. Called the “New Venus” (the original Venus having been a much less hospitable planet around Old Sol), it was home to a collection of resorts and parks catering to every imaginable sensual pleasure. The domes were themed by passion or interest and provided a variety of different environments from lush gardens to freefall. The bioroid staff, in a myriad of forms, catered to every taste.

Then came the Great Collapse. For a few generations, the last visitors to Erato and the humanoid administrators lived an end-of-the-world party in high decadence: then the bioroids took over. They developed a society of their own, closed off their world to the rest of space.

Sometime near the end of the Radiant Polity era, Erato was re-contacted, and reemerged as a purveyor of pleasure. As before, it offer a variety of experiences in a discrete setting--but this this time under the control of the bioroids themselves. They’re an eclectic bunch: androids, gynoids, and a number of combinations thereof, with a myriad of modifications to primary and secondary sexual characteristics, sexual performance, and biochemistry. The facilities are less expansive than in days past (as many are given over to expanded living areas, storage, and manufacturing for the bioroids), but current visitors don’t seem disappointed.

Ever seeking to expand their market share, the Eratoans have began to generate members of their race with new uses. Bioroids with idiopathic poison biochemistry or weaponized genitalia command a high price on the black market as assassins.

A Cold War

The moon Boreas is covered by an ocean eternally sheathed in ice. Though this environment is harsh, a blue-skinned humanoid people called uldra have made the mood their own. With few exceptions, the uldra have built their settlements beneath the surface of the insulating ice, exploiting the sunless seas. At some point, the uldra city-states discovered they weren’t alone: there were monsters in the depths. That was when the war began.

Given the average thickness of the planetary ice sheet, the only source of energy in much of the ocean are deep sea volcanic vents. All sorts of life are found in the oases surrounding them, including a life form unique to Boreas: sapient organisms called “cold minds.” The cold minds are vaguely like colonies of coral, sometimes extending for miles. Their intelligence is adapted for their colder, less energetic environment; their thought processes are laboriously slow compared to humans. it took them decades to decide what to do about the invaders on their world and decades more  to formulate their counterstrike.

Decades ago, the uldra city-states warred against each other. They grew bioroid sea beasts as terror weapons. While not all of the warbeasts were accounted for at the end of the conflict, they had been built with a failsafe: They ceased function if they didn’t receive periodic treatments of certain chemicals. It came as a shock then, when warbeasts began attacking again-- and wouldn’t obey any of the emergency halt codes.

Tensions flared and there were accusations that one city-state or another was responsible. Only after after parasitic organisms were found in the nervous systems of the recently dead that rose to attack their horrified fellows, did the uldra suspect they had another enemy.

And so the war goes on. Uldra rangers are vigilant for attacks of war beasts or undead and exotic, weaponized sea life native to the Boreal ocean. They have destroyed cold minds at times, but the oceans are dark and deep, and the their enemies too dispersed and resilient.

Some uldra have suggested attempts at negotiation, but even if they could find a way to communicate with the slow cold minds, it could be generations before they reached any meaningful dialog.

The Emerald City of Smaragdoz

The capital and only city of the world of Smaragdoz is the green crystalline megacity of the same name, which is also the de facto capital of the Alliance and a nexus of trading routes. Smaragdoz has a unique form of government: a psydemocracy group-mind. The captured thoughts and desires of the citizens form a composite psionic entity that makes all the polis’s laws by decree. This civic mind often manifests as a giant disembodied head off-worlders sometimes refer to as “The Wizard.”

The land beyond the capital is divided into four bucolic prefectures: Smalt, Gules, Xanthic, and Purpure. Though pre-industrial in appearance and pace of life, these carefully controlled farmlands, orchards, and forests are more a sanitized, theme-park version than a replication of any historic rural environment. The farms and hamlets are  inhabited by Smaragdines disinclined ito city life, criminals sentenced to labor, and atavism tourists in animal bodies. The convicts aren’t under any restrictions--other than being forbidden from returning to the city until their sentence is up and being followed at all times by conscience wisps. The wisps provide escalating levels of admonishment and finally neurologic lockdown if the convict attempts to commit further offences.

The inhabitants of the prefectures are not part of the civic mind, but the mind monitors the prefectures and interacts with them through avatars. Scarecrows in fields are often criers announcing important events, and quaint clockwork robots help settle disputes among the rural folk.

The outer border of the province is formed by the Waste, or the Deadly Desert: a “no man’s land” made as lifeless and poisonous by the environmental nanites as the prefectures are fertile and inviting. The lands beyond the border are genuine wilderness.  These sparsely populated lands are home to political dissidents, radical nonconformists, and criminals.