Strange Stars: A Recent Science Fiction Appendix N

A few weeks ago, Rob Barrett made a request in the comments of this post for "more recent SF" suitable for Strange Stars inspiration. In the section on galactic adventuring, I relied mostly on older, well-known and non-science fiction references because I want to convey the idea that the setting is easily accessible and usable for the sort of stuff people typically use science fiction games too do.

That doesn't mean science fiction from the past twenty years hasn't been an influence on the conception and development of Strange Stars. I mentioned a few of these in the intro of the setting book, but here are a few more:

Hannu Rajaniemi. The Quantum Thief; The Fractal Prince; The Causal Angel. This series is one of the biggest inspirations for Strange Stars, but its influence is diffuse. The interaction of information and physical life that pervades the series is very Strange Stars, as are the exotic societies of Earth, Mars, and the Oort Cloud.

Greg Egan. Diaspora. The conception of moravec, infosophont, and biologic groups was inspired by Diaspora, specifically, w

Alastair Reynolds. The Prefect; Chasm City. The Glitter Band is a great example of the varied polities of the League of Habitats or the Circus. The Ultras have some resemblance to the Star Folk, if not the same style. Chasm City in particular would make a pretty good Strange Stars adventure.

Karl Schroeder. Permanence. The primary inspiration for the metascape is the exoscape of Permanence.

Charles Stross. Glasshouse; Accelerando; the books in the Saturn's Children universe: Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood. The technology and economic considerations in Stross's novels underpin similar concepts in Strange Stars. If you want to really get a feel for how I envision fabbers, read Glasshouse. Neptune's Brood also has a very well-realized "water world."

Scott Westerfield. The Risen Empire (Succession Book 1). Though I haven't written a lot about military matters in Strange Stars material, the planetary assault and space battle in this book greatly informed what I think such things would look like among "modern" powers in the setting.

John C.Wright. The Golden Oecumene  trilogy and related stories. The technology of the Golden Oecumene with the trappings of Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of man gets you a good representation of the Radiant Polity. The novella "The Far End of History: A Tale from the Last Days of the Seventh Mental Structure" is a great example of what sort of things went on in the Archaic Oikumene.

It's Full of Stars

Strange Stars, Weird Adventures, and products by my Hydra Co-op partners Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko are in a Bundle of Holding--along with Gnomes of Levnec, Owl Hoot Trail, Beyond the Wall, and Red & Pleasant Land! Check it out and get some good stuff.

Speaking of Strange Stars, here's a sequel to my post on random adventure idea generation for the setting:

The Hunt: The PCs search for [A] [B] but must contend with [C]
A: 1 A Eden Seeker terrorist cell  2 A bioengineered horror from the surface of Phobetor  3 Convicted megacorp executive 4 A thief with a stolen bioweapon 5 A Wanderer Avatar
B: 1 across the deserts of Deshret  2 in Smaragdoz City  3 through the forests of Woon  4 on the planet Rune  5 during a party in a domed city on Aygo  6 under the ice on Boreas
C: 1 the Pharesmid Syndicate  2 the hellhounds  3 Talosian Moravec supremacists  4 a squad of Thrax  4 a djagga bounty hunter  5 Instrumentality agents  6 a Circean witch

The Challenge: The PCs (or one of them) participates in [A] on [B].
A: 1 A martial arts competition  2 A high-stakes gambling tournament  3 A race  4 A hunt for an exotic animal  5 A deadly game  6 A battle of the bands
B: 1 A vessel circling a hyperspace anomaly  2 a domed area of an asteroid  3 Interzone  4 the wilderness of Smaragdoz  5 Gogmagog  6 the diamond planet Solitaire (Fortuna I)

Fate SF Strange Stars A-D

As a sort of lead up to the release of Strange Stars Fate (soon now!), it's author, John Till has been doing some Strange Stars related posts on his blog. Even if Fate isn't your system of choice, there is some good and gameable stuff, here!

A: Attendants--a moravec clade who provide topnotch service to the wealthiest clients.
B: Bomoth on Boreas!
C: Clades and how you use them.
D: Adding the Deaders from Last Parsec to Strange Stars.

Strange Stars Character Types in SWN

The three broad sophont types in Strange Stars (see the setting book, on sale now) adapt fairly easily to Stars Without Number:

Biologics: These are either humans or aliens (and in the far future of Strange Stars the distinct isn't always clear). They're created using the standard character creation rules in SWN plus the any particular attribute requirements/modifiers that might apply to their particular clade.

The sort of body-swapping described in Mandate Archive: TransTech is much more common in Strange Stars than in the default SWN setting. Many people may start with some sort of genemod upgrade and backups are common for those who can afford them. Unlike Threshold Sector, the Strange Stars are not post scarcity; things still cost credits. Cyberware (like in the core book and Mandate Archive: Polychrome) is also common, though most cultures in known space find overt cyberware tacky and primitive: it's been replace by gengineering. The Zao Pirates do not share this disdain.

Bioroids are biologic androids. Their bodies are essentially built like a hull. Unlike other biologic entities, they can not reproduce naturally; they are built or grown in vats.

Moravecs: Sophont robots. Many moravec types will essentially just be mechanical "species." Other s will be built easier via the AI rules.

Infosophonts: Digital minds. These are AI, essentially. They could be downloaded into a bioroid body (hull) or a mechanical one (armature). The differences between infosophonts are moravecs fuzzy at times, but many moravecs are as attached to their single, physical forms as much as many baseline humans. Infosophonts just say those forms as outfits.

Random Adventures in the Strange Stars

Mike "Wrathofzombie" Evans had suggest a few months ago that I do some sort of adventure inspiration creator for Strange Stars for the setting book. It didn't make it into that book, but I'm going to refine something of that sort for one of the game system books. Here's what I've got so far:

Setups:
 The Heist
 The Gauntlet
 The Unexpected

The Heist: [A] wants the PCs to steal [B] from [C]
A: 1 A neshekk insurance exec  2 Vokun lord  3 A zhmu collector  4 An eccentric Smaragdine celebrity  5 An Orichalcosan optimate  6 The Pharesmid Syndicate
B: 1 A proprietary genetic code  2 An Old Earth artifact  3 A work of art  4 a high-grade mind emulation  5 A weapon from the Archaic Oikumene  6 A mysterious box of alien origin
C: 1 a high security vault station  2 the interior of a Wanderer  3 the isolated asteroid estate of a rival  4 a stateroom safe on a luxury starliner  5 A Zao Pirate stronghold  6 an armored spacehauler

The Guantlet: The PCs must get [A] [B] despite [C]
A: 1 A Deodand hacker  2 An ibglibdishpan defector  3 A diplomate from the League of Habitats  4 A jook band  5 A group of Minga  6 A Wanderer avatar
B: 1 across an Interzone favela  2 off a prison asteroid  3 out of Vokun space  4 to an Alliance cruiser  5 home  6 off Deshret
C: 1 irate smugglers  2 a traitor in their midst  3 pursuing bounty hunters  4 a squad of kuath  5 moravec supremacists  6 a deadly outbreak

The Unexpected: When [A], the PCs unexpectedly stumble onto [B]
A: 1 responding to a distress call  2 exploring a derelict ship  3 on a routine intersystem flight  4 making planetfall for repairs  5 visiting an isolated station for supplies  6 on vacation
B: 1 a dangerous xenospecies  2 a cache of outlawed bioweapons  3 a hidden ssraad raiding vessel  4 a relic of the Archaic Oikumene  5 a new hyperspace node  6 a cabal of psi cultists

More Strange Stars Art

I've shared these on G+, but for the non-Gplussers amongst my readership or those that might have missed them, here's a couple of art pieces from the Strange Stars setting book:

This is a moravec named Lincoln-5 Rhadamanthus-beta-27, a lawyer and judicial duelist in Circus, as rendered by Waclaw Wysocki.

Every sci-fi setting needs its cantina scene, right? This is a rough obviously, but it gives a hint of how great the finished image by David Johnson will be. It showcases a number of different Strange Stars sophonts having a drink somewhere in the Zuran Expanse.

Old Soldier

The military of the Radiant Polity consisted of one soldier, and that man was named Hannibal Tecumseh Early. It was he who held the hyperspace nodes against the tide of 23 Enigma enraged hordes, saving the lives of thousand of moravec citizens; he who smashed the torture gardens of the Algosians and drove them back into the Expanse, and he who was vilified in the noosphere after his heavy handed tactics against the Aomist separatists of Wallach.

Early mostly appears as a steely-eyed, taciturn veteran of late middle years, but when necessary ten of thousands of versions of him were embodied in battleships and war fogs, spy drones and strategic minds. The Early war machine was manufactured to whatever size was needed, but at least one Early was kept in hibernation, as a reserve.

When the Radiant Polity began to disintegrate, Early's military might was turned against himself. Aomist hacks of Early fought to the death against secular ones. He performed interrogations on himself, knowing for certain at what point his resistance would break. In some habitats, memes and conditioned responses extracted from his mind were introduced into the psyches of the populace to ensure unwavering public support for the war effort.

When the Radiant Polity was gone, the Instrumentality of Aom thanked him for his service and requested his seppuku in recompense for his war crimes. Early did as ordered, a soldier to the last.

It's rumored that not all copies of Hannibal Early were destroyed. Balladeers claim that the old solider still hibersleeps in some remote location, his armor and weapons, arrayed around him, waiting.

Man and Machine

Telos is an artificial moon orbitting through the failed planetary dust cloud of a red dwarf in the Coreward Reach. The dust cloud is stalked by vicious hunter-killer satellites that vaporize any ship without the proper codes. Telos's isolation has allowed a strange society to flourish: It's rulers are moravecs ruling over a slave class of baseline humans and hear humans.

The moravecs claim to be followers of an ai prophet called Iskander Null-A who taught that the human clade (and perhaps biosophonts in general) were actually the flawed creation of moravecs in crude imitation of their own creator, the Monad. Human history to the contrary is false and designed to oppress moravecs.

The Telosians rarely interact with the outside world; Telos is largely self-contained. The humans living their are born in artificial wombs to a life of servitude--if they're lucky. The Telosians aren't usually cruel to their slaves, but do enjoy gladiatorial battles where humans are forced to fight--perhaps to the death--for the moravec's entertainment.

Telosians that, for whatever reason, have to spend time among the other sophonts of the Strange Stars often change their perceptual settings, so that they perceive all biosophonts as moravecs to protect their delicate sensibilities.

Welcome to the Machine

“Moravec” is the term generally used among the Strange Stars to refer to self-replicating robot sophonts. They are differentiated from “bots” (manufactured robots, typically low or nonsapient) and von Neumanns (self-replicating robots, low or nonsapient). The appellation comes from the surname of a historical Old Earth scientist-prophet. It apparently came into use through the more flowery “Children of Moravec”--a line from a protest song sang during smartmob events by moravec revolutionaries who regarded the extant term “robot” as a slur. At least, that’s the history as remembered by some moravecs; it all occurred millennia ago, and more than one dark age (major and minor) lies between then and now.

A moravec mercenary from a promotional vid

Today, moravecs are as varied as humanity’s biologic descendants. Many are humanoid in form (or android or gynoid) and inhabit worlds less tolerant of biological life. Others have forms reminiscent of arthopods and crawl over asteroids or comets, sometimes with their intelligences distributed over an entire swarm. Still others have spaceship-sized bodies: The warrior-poets of Eridanus are one militant order in this last group.

A warrior-poet prepares for combat--and composition

Tales from a Spacer's Bar

A Tale from a Spacer's Bar is a two hundred (at least) year-old work of fiction that has appeared in many different media. It's author and the world that it originated on has been lost to history--in fact several variant forms exist, so it is difficult even to determine what the original contents were. The work is an anthology of intertwining short stories and vignettes that the nameless narrator hears (and ultimately participates in) in several different bars catering to star pilots and crew on several different worlds. Here are a sampling of images appearing in various adaptations of  A Tale over the years:

"The Prospector's Tale" involves an encounter on an all but lifeless world between a determined misanthrope and a deva. The prospector is taken to the devas' diamondoid sphere habitat, where ironically, his dislike of his fellow man saves him from a demon sprung from the malfunctioning moon-size brain.

This scene is from a retro-psychedelic sim version of "The Clubber's Story." The club habitué (already high on chroma) takes a large dose of an experimental drug called "Proteus V" (a substance generally thought to be fictional). After a serious of comical mishaps, ve accidentally opens a forgotten spacetime oubliette and frees an angry contingent of amazons. Even worse, the amazon commander takes an amorous interest in ver.

"The Three Grifters and the Almost Aptheosis" involves the mysterious artifact known as the Apotheosis Maze. Two humans and a moravec in possession of a dubious map of the Maze set out in a stolen ship with the plan to walk the path and gain godhood. The ambiguous ending of the tale inspired the "Blue Shift" movement in the Gods and Devils neurosymphony by the composer collective Orm 7 Trang.