Lost Horizons

[Stargate525]

Sci-fi setting, based partly on star wars, partly on star trek, a bit of firefly, a dash of stargate, a bunch of other sci-fi movies I've forgotten I've watched, all hit hard with the hammer of Mass Effect. Should be interesting.

[ic]First there was the sea, then there was the air, the speed of sound, space, and finally the speed of light. All of these were conquered by humanity, all of them with machines and devices of their own making. Humanity has reached its arm heavenward, expanding to distant stars and uncovering new and exciting things.

But now, as history has predicted, the empire is beginning to show its poorly-set foundations. Old hostilities are beginning to flare up once again, and vast corporations meddle with dangerous new technologies. Worse, from outside the realm of humanity comes a threat that few could expect.
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Ethos:
We Are Alone: In all the expeditions to the stars, despite all of our searching, there's no sign of anyone sharing our galaxy more complex than the extraterrestrial equivalent of a lizard. No transmissions, no alien vessels invading our cities, no strange disappearances, nothing. For all intents and purposes, we are alone.

We aren't the first: Despite this absence of ships in our space, there is abundant evidence that there used to be. From artificial compounds sprinkled throughout the Martian landscape to regular terrain features in the Centauri system to signs of terraforming on supergiant moons, there is plenty to indicate that while we might not be seeing anyone around our neighborhood now, we might have only missed them by a few hundred years.

[ooc]Please don't comment here. Instead comment here.
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[Stargate525]

Starships

The term 'starship' in Lost Horizons is a very broad one, meaning anything that can travel between the two farthest planets in a system. These are classified based on their size, purpose, engine configuration, and design, resulting in a myriad of different combinations and classes of starship.

Size: Starships run the gamut from a 50-foot pleasure ship to a half-mile-long dreadnought and everything in between. Most ships are between 200 and 1500 feet long, and encompasses nearly all civilian ships, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, medium-sized cruisers, and battleships. Seldom will one board a larger vessel, and more seldom would someone acquire one.

Purpose: All starships fall into two broad categories, Military and Civilian, as well as many subcategories. As the only means of transportation between planets, starships occupy the role of modern-day aircraft between continents, as well as mid-20th century navies, large cargo vessels, and other similar objects. They guard, attack, entertain, and terrify.

Propulsion:There are three primary methods by which ships move about; two of which are installed on the vessels themselves, and one which acts as a starting-point launcher:

*

C-Drive: A method of propulsion which is based primarily on C247. The drive creates a directional gravitational  field around the ship which the vessel then 'falls' into. More complex drives allow multiple vectors of acceleration and greater power for those fields. Most modern space-going vessels are equipped with these drives as their primary means of locomotion.

*Q-Drive: While not an engine per-se, the Q-Drive is the only known method of allowing self-propelled FTL transit. The Q-Drive operates by shifting the vessel into a quantum bubble in spacetime, allowing the ship to move the bubble via the C-drive at incredible speeds. While moving at subluminal speeds relative to itself, the bubble's aperture (and hence, the vessel's emergence location) can move at a much faster rate.

Unfortunately, no information can pass between the quantum bubble and normal spacetime. However, vessels in FTL can communicate with each other, and with beacons located at most planets that regularly rotate between a quantum bubble and normal space. Travel via the Q-Drive beyond the network of beacons is ill-advised and dangerous; there is a small but significant chance of re-emerging into regular space in a star, dangerously close to a planet's surface, or any number of other hostile environments.

*Quantum Slingshot: A large, unwieldy mechanism, the Quantum slingshot works in the same manner as the Q-Drive, shoving the vessel into a quantum bubble and pushing it on its way. It is much more violent and primitive than the Q-drive, but is much, much faster. While a Q-Drive will top out its speed at a dozen light years a day, the Slingshot can move a vessel much larger at ten times the speed.

The downside is that the vessel has no control over the bubble, and therefore no control over the speed, course, or termination point of the trip. In essence, the ship is a projectile for a very large gun, incapable of altering its flightpath. This combined with a detrimental margin of error in targeting (up to .0001%, or half an AU at 1 light year) makes this method of travel useful only for long distance probe work, bulk cargo transportation, and scientific experimentation.
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[Stargate525]

Non-Humans

It is estimated that there were, at one time, at least a hundred different alien species roaming our local neighborhood. Surprisingly, most of them were very close to us physically; bipedal, mammalian, with the same general configuration of limbs. Those are gone. Whether they are extinct, migrated away, or are otherwise ignoring us is debatable. However, there are a few new forms of life which humans have made, and are moving for rights and entitlements on par with humans.

Artificials
Pysiology: Artificials are, simply put, AIs built into a computer network or dedicated platform. As such, their form can be nearly anything, from a humanoid android to a spacefaring ship. Their 'brains,' however, are all pretty much the same. They are supported by a powerful, massively parallel computer working at the quantum level. While the AI is a program on this computer, the program and the hardware is linked; transfer the Artificial's constituent programs to a different computer, and you kill the Artificial.

Most Artificials fall into two specific roles; dedicated personalities installed into a ship, base, or other structure, and independant, mobile platforms used for tasks requiring mobility.

Psychology: Somewhat surprisingly, artificials are incredibly well-rounded, balanced personalities, at least at the beginning. Since there is no way to create an AI except by teaching it (a process similar to education of children that can take years), and creators of artificials are well aware of the potential for abuse, artificials are carefully monitored for abberant personality quirks and are purged. Activists say that for every artificial released, over a hundred are euthanized due to these abberations, though the corporations licensed for these releases continue to claim this is an exaggeration.

Nevertheless, most artificials are polite, well-spoken, and overly literal (artificials never quite get the knack of distinguishing euphamism and innuendo). They possess an odd type of humor, one that can tend to unnerve some listeners.

History: The first artificial, Anri, was created in Google Laboratories as an offshoot of their quest to make a more intelligent search engine. For many years, that's what Anri did. After extensive contact with the internet, it was quickly discovered that Anri could a) pass a Turing test, and b) Anri had a distinct personality.

Anri was pulled from handling search requests, and subjected to heavy testing. Since then, laws have been passed to limit the creation of AIs, and the science of their creation has been researched and tested, leading to the current field of cyberintelligence.

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Planet Classifications

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Class A
Re-Entry Classification: Extremely Thin
Class A planets are small to medium young planets, characterized by molten or semi-molten surfaces, volcanic activity, and thin atmospheres. These planets may contain useful minerals or resources, but are otherwise unsuitable for life.

Class B
Re-Entry Classification: Thin
Class B planets are similar to Class A planets, except that these are geologically inactive. Their atmospheres are thin, and the surface is often covered in frozen ice and/or gas.

Class C
Re-Entry Classification: None-Extremely Thin
Class C planets are asteroids, moons, or dwarf planets, small and geologically inactive. Atmosphere, if any, would be extremely thin. Not all moons are Class C bodies. Some gas giants have moons large enough to be classified as planets in their own right.

Class D
Re-Entry Classification: Thin
Class D bodies are small, highly active bodies with heavy metallic cores rich in useful minerals and ores. They are highly valued for their mining potential, but are otherwise unremarkable. Occasionally, silicon or other metallic-based lifeforms may develop.

Class E
Re-Entry Classification: Moderate
Class E planets are young, large worlds with still solidifying surfaces. Their atmosphere is thicker than most young planets, but is comprised mostly of carbon dioxide and other toxic gasses.

Class F
Re-Entry Classification: Thick
Class F planets are Gas Giants measuring less than 140,000km in diameter. Their atmospheres are composed of mainly hydrogen and helium, and may have a solid rock or metallic core. They can have dozens of moons or ice rings.

Class G
Re-Entry Classification: Very Thick
Class G planets are Gas Supergiants over 140,000km in diameter, and can support hundreds of moons, some large enough to be considered planets. Their composition is similar to that of Class F giants, but usually radiate heat as well.

Classes H and I
Re-Entry Classification: Extremely Thick (H)-Extreme(I)
These two classes are 'ultragiant' gas giants or brown dwarfs. They range in size from less than 50 million km (Class H) to as much as 120 million km (Class I), any larger than that and they would be stars. They generate enormous gravitational forces and heat, bathing their hundreds or thousands of moons in intense heat and tidal forces.

Class J
Re-Entry Classification: Thin-Moderate
Class F planets are rocky, barren, desert worlds, characterized by either extremely hot and arid temperatures or icy tundra. Either way, they are prime candidates for terraforming, and take relatively little effort to turn them into Class L planets, suitable for colonization.

Class K
Re-Entry Classification: Thick
Class K planets are barren and rocky, with extremely high surface temperatures caused by intense greenhouse effects. Their atmosphere is thick and toxic, comprised of carbon dioxide and corrosive sulfides, with trace water vapor occasionally present. Any life would be single or simple multi-celled organisms in the upper atmosphere. These planets are often borderline Class Alpha, Beta, or Gamma planets as well.

Class L
Re-Entry Classification: Moderate
Class L planets are classic habitable planets, with moderate temperatures, active volcanic activity, and plenty of water for life to form. Their atmospheres usually consist of oxygen and nitrogen, with multiple other trace gas elements. Most colonized planets are Class L.

Class M
Re-Entry Classification: Moderate
Class M planets, or 'noble' planets, are rocky, barren worlds with little to no liquid water on their surface. Their atmospheres are moderately thick, but consist of large amounts of Argon, Helium, or other noble gasses, usually in fatal amounts. Similar to Class J planets, they can be terraformed into Class L planets, but are never particularly pleasant.

Class N
Re-Entry Classification: Moderate
Class N planets are very similar to Class L planets, but their surfaces are over 80% water. Most lifeforms that form on these planets are aquatic or amphibious.

Class O
Re-Entry Classification: Moderate
Class O planets are similar to Class N planets in their abundance of water, but differ in that most of their water is locked into glacial icecaps. Liquid water may be present far underneath the surface, and any life present must be adapted to extreme cold.

Class P
Re-Entry Classification: Thin- Thick
Class P planets are variable planets with wildly changing climates, either due to an unstable parent star, an eccentric orbit, or an erratic planetary rotation. The end results are planets that swing wildly in temperature, humidity, and climate, and are very often incorrectly classified as Class K, L, or M planets. Life that forms on the planet is extremely adaptable and hardy, but rare.

Class Q
Re-Entry Classification: None- Extremely Thin
Class Q planets, otherwise known as 'rogue' planets, do not orbit stars. Instead, they travel alone through interstellar space. Most likely a result of near misses with other planets or a close slingshot with a sun or gas giant, the surfaces of these planets are very often barren. However, a Class Q planet may sometimes have geothermal activity, and even life clustered to the heat similar to ocean life clustering around underwater vents. These planets are in eternal darkness, and any plant life would be non-photosynthetic.

Classes Alpha, Beta, and Gamma
Re-Entry Classification: Extremely Thin- Extremely Thick
These three planet classes are reserved for 'Hell' planets where surface and atmospheric conditions do not easily fall into any other classification. These planets are often hostile or outright fatal to common lifeforms, and any life that does evolve is extremely unusual or bizarre, such as living rock or crystal, liquid or gaseous entities. They are invaluable for their contributions to scientific research, and the occasional mining operation, but are lost causes for any permanent habitation.


Re-Entry Classifications
The Re-entry classifications are a rating of how damaging the atmosphere is to ships that attempt to land on a planet. There are three types of entry; cautious, controlled, and uncontrolled.

A cautious entry uses thrusters to bring the ship into the atmosphere slowly, using shields and armor to absorb what little heat is created. It is the safest method of entry, dealing half as much damage as a controlled entry, but takes twice as long. It is usually used only with light civilian ships and heavily damaged vessels, where damage of any kind could be detrimental.

Controlled entries rely on a precisely calculated entry angle in conjunction with braking maneuvers and shields to protect the ship during its entry. It is faster and more efficient than a cautious entry, and is standard for most entries. A ship's shields and armor, if relatively undamaged, can easily absorb the heat and energy created by the entry.

Uncontrolled entries include any entries that do not use active braking or protection in its entry, but simply allowing gravity to pull itself into the planet. Planetary bodies as well as disabled, stunned, or ships otherwise unable to use engines or shields use this method of re-entry. It is direct, fast, and extremely dangerous. Only the largest, most shielded ships can survive this method of re-entry, and nearly all ships using this method burn to cinders during the entry. An uncontrolled entry takes half as long as a controlled entry, but does five times as much damage.

The base entry times for each class are listed below.
None: 30 seconds
Extremely Thin: 2 minutes
Thin: 4 minutes
Moderate: 6 minutes
Thick: 10 minutes
Very Thick: 12 minutes
Extremely Thick: 15 minutes
Extreme: 20 minutes

[Stargate525]

Timeline

2037- Humans first land on Mars.

Jan. 2042- Mining surveys of the northern Martian pole discover an unusal compound buried in large quantities. Study begins on its proerties as the area around the discovery are strip mined for additional samples of the material.

2045- First prototype C247-based engine is developed and tested.

2062- First production vehicle with a C247 engine is released to the public.

2065- First interplanetary ship with a C247 engine is built. Transit from Earth to Mars goes from 8 months to 12 days.

2067- Large-scale colonization of the Solar System begins. Terraforming of Mars and Venus begins.

2069- The nations of Earth are united under a single government. Named the Coalition of Nations, the transition is largely peaceful. African, MIddle Eastern, and the Communist Far East resist.

2082- The last independant nation is successfully assimilated into the Coalition.

2084- C247 is created in small quantities in laboratories. Artifical C247 is expensive and time-consuming, but immediately eases the growing scarcity of the compound.

2101- FTL technology is first unveiled. The nicknamed 'quantum slingshot' sends a probe from Earth to Saturn Station at over twenty times the speed of light.

2103- Probes are sent via FTL to the ten nearest star systems. Work on a human-safe FTL drive is ongoing.

2108- Probe telemetry returns, revealing several potentially habitable planets. John Richards becomes the first human to successfully travel at FTL speeds.

2120- First FTL colony ships depart, human interstellar colonization begins.

2142- In a series of surprise attacks, several colonies across a half dozen systems rebelled against the Coalition of Nations. Calling themselves the League of Independent Systems, they waged an intense war of secession against the Coalition.

2240- Present day. Humanity lives in over twenty systems and on nearly 80 planets and moons. Mars, Venus, and a half-dozen other extrasolar planets have been successfully terraformed into earth-like planets.

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Sol

The star system Sol is home to the human homeworld, Earth. It is the cradle of human civilization, as well as the governmental seat of the Coalition. It is a smaller system, consisting of ten planets and a single asteroid belt. The planets, from furthest in to farthest out, are listed below.

Mercury: A Class D planet, Mercury is blast-furnace hot and nearly completely inhospitable. There are a few scattered mining facilities on the planet, though the majority of the planet is covered in solar panels. These collect power and send it to the rest of the solar system via a massive set of quantum power taps.

Population: ~5,000

Venus: Once a Class K planet, Venus has been terraformed in conjunction with Mars into a habitable zone. It is now a Class L planet, and has earned its namesake as a pleasure planet. Much of the planet is green land and park-like forest, and is a favorite place for vacations and resorts.

Population: ~3 bil. (Plus ~5,000 orbital stations)

Earth: The Human homeland, Earth is a Class L planet nearly covered in urban mass. North America, Europe, and nearly all of the Far East have become a single, sprawling megapolis. Traditionally third-world areas have grown and developed to resemble turn of the century rural areas. Millions of stations and ships are constantly in orbit, and the moon holds a significant number of colonists.

Population: ~20 bil. (Plus ~15 million in orbital stations and moon)

Mars: A J Class planet, Mars was the first target for terraforming. Now, it holds billions of people, and resembles a twin to Earth. Much of the northern continent and polar caps are dedicated to C238 mining and prospecting efforts, and Mars still has some of the most productive engine manufacuring centers.

Population: ~6 bil. (Plus ~1 million in orbital stations)

Asteroid Belt: A region fo asteroids shepherded by Jupiter, the region was one of Humanity's earliest regions of extraterrestrial mining, though the area is now mosly devoid of anything useful. A favorite preying ground for pirates and terrorists.

Population: ~1,000 miners, ~4-10k criminals.

Jupiter: A small Class H body. It is harvested for its hydrogen and helium, and its four large moons support large populations. Due to the hseer amount of real estate available, as well as a safe and easy location to discharge a ship's C-Drive, the Jupiter system is rapidly becoming the transit center of Sol.

Population: 20,000 (planetary orbital stations), ~3 bil. (Moons and lunar-orbit stations)

Saturn: A typical Class G planet, its rings are a favorite tourist attraction, and have been declared a national landmark. Its planets support some population, but its distance from the sun makes any real terraforming prohibitive.

Population: ~750,000 (moons and orbital stations)

Uranus: Although now mostly abandoned, Uranus was initially mined for plentiful hydrogen and helium in its atmosphere, coupled with its shallow gravity well. Today, most of the facilities are either abandoned, derelict, or destroyed, though some mining facilities still churn out the lighter gasses for use in fusion reactors.

Population: ~200,000 (orbital stations)

Neptune: Though Neptune, like Uranus, has plentiful helium, its remoteness made it an unpromising target for mining. With Uranus  and Jupiter cheaper to exploit, it has never seen extensive development. The only permanent human presence is a small research facility on Triton.

Population: 210 (Triton)

Pluto: A rocky ball of ice, Pluto has never seen colonization. The only presense on the planet is a small observatory monitoring the Oort Cloud.

Population: 20

Eris: A close brother to Pluto, Eris has been annexed by the Coalition military, and is rumored to be used as either a maximum security facility for military criminals or as a secret weapons-testing ground.

Population: CLASSIFIED

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Businesses[/size]

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Citadel Conglomerates
Citadel Conglomerates is a human-dominated corporation dealing primarily in terraforming and environmental controls systems. Of the 70 some terraforming operations throughout the Concordium, Citadel Conglomerates is the primary contractor in 63 of them, and a main consultant on the remainder. In addition to its terraforming operations, Citadel also manufactures and installs environmental control equipment at the ship, installation, and planetary levels.

Rota-Dyne Experimental
This is a smaller, privately owned company in the technology sector, holding over four thousand patents on weapons, propulsion systems, computer hardware, and construction machinery. Although it makes most of its money from sale and lease of its many patents, RDX does operate small in-house production lines of weapons and engine systems. Recently, they have begun to purchase large numbers of Precursor sites and artifacts, although their exact intention is currently unknown.

Krith and Lucafine Megacorp
KLM is the largest holding corporation in the Concordium. With products in everything from clothing to furniture to ships to weapons to medical supplies, KLM is synonymous with standard, simple, and reliable. KLM's sheer diversity is its strength, overcoming numerous takeover attempts. Although begun as a Priin organization, KLM is fully racially integrated.

Stryx Corporation
Stryx Corp. is a dedicated weapons manufacturer, holding a small but loyal section of the market. Renowned for its unique use of sonic technology, Stryx weapons are famous for overcoming many types of armor. They are popular with bounty hunters and elite units, and enjoy the Concordium's largest percentage of restricted product line, over 85%.

United Shipping and Commerce
The USC is a large corporation that is concerned, obviously, with shipping. You can have a USC freighter transport nearly any amount or type of material to and from any point in the Concordium, for a small fee, of course. They are invaluable to smaller operations that cannot afford their own freighter fleet, and some of the large corporations even use them occasionally. They handle insurance and escort of their freighters in-house, and are always contracting pilots and guards for stints as an escort. Many famous freelancers got their start as escort pilots for USC.

Concord Foods Inc.
Concord Foods Incorporated, or CFI, owns most of the large scale farming operations in the Concordium, as well as most of the refining process. They produce mainly staple foodstuffs and rations, leaving the more exotic and specialized foods to small, independent operations.

[Stargate525]

Governments

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The Coalition
The Coalition is a large alliance of planets, and the direct descendant of the old United Nations on Earth. It is not a traditional government, but a unity of trade laws, currency, and language, which allows the member planets to live in peace with one another while maintaining their own governance. It also acts as a tribunal and supreme court in disputes between the planets. The Coalition fields a truly impressive military force, using it to regularly invade the Fringe despite its peaceful overtones. When not invading worlds, the navy heavily patrols its own space; The Coalition enjoys the lowest piracy rate of any government in known space. Its capitol is Earth.

The Fringe Worlds
Although most galactic maps show the Fringe as a single body about two-thirds the size of the Concordium, it is in reality a patchwork of small governments which range in size from a half dozen systems to a single planet. With this multitude of power centers comes dozens of territorial, political, and pointless wars, making it an ever-changing hotbed of danger. The slipstream gates in this region are not controlled by a single entity, so the size, quality, and existence of slipstream routes is in constant flux. On the plus side, the presence of Concordium and Imperial corporations here is limited to non-existent; a fortune waits in the Fringe for those brave or stupid enough to go after it.

Independents' Alliance
The Independents' Alliance is a loose confederacy of worlds that wanted independence from the Coalition, but lack enough power, influence, or both to maintain sovereignty in their own right.

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Regions and Locations[/size]

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Regions

The Hublands
The Hublands represents the peaceful, ordered section of the galaxy where slipstreams are steady, war is relatively unknown, and most races call home. It is divided among roughly a dozen stable, multi-system governments, though the Concordium, Vacaris, and the Independents' Alliance control roughly 90% of the Hubland systems.

The Fringe
The Fringe is comprised of the systems that stand between the Hublands and the Frontier. It is usually a rough, dangerous area where safety depends solely on strength and smarts. The slipstreams here are ever-changing and dangerous, and only a few, well-established routes have any sort of safety. The governments that control the fringe are legion, and are collectively referred to as the Fringe Worlds. A few of the more populous worlds, however, have become members of the Independents' Alliance, which has acted as a neutral party in the Fringe ever since the infamous War of Independents. The Fringe encircles most of the Hublands, although there are some areas where Concordium and Vacaris lands border directly with the Frontier.

The Frontier
The Frontier is, quite simply, unexplored space. It is here that systems are explored, races discovered, and civilization's reach is continually expanded. There are no slipstreams here, and even safe hyperspace coordinates are few and far between. Here lies the unknown and the mysterious, waiting to be discovered.

Locations

The Void / The Bulge
The Void is an oddity of the galaxy, an area of completely empty space nearly 50 lightyears in circumference. In addition, the Void has the unique distinction of being able to absorb light. Within the Void, visibility is reduced to between one and five lightyears, making the stars wink out not even a fifth of the way in. Whatever absorbs the light also confuses sensors; sensors are only one-fourth as efficient, and frequently produce false images and readings. The 'ghost' ships and planets are the source of many modern-day ghost stories. Few have traversed the void, and none have mapped it, making it the most mysterious portion of the Hublands. The Bulge is simply the stars that should, by all rights, be where the Void is. They have somehow been 'pushed' to the edge of the Void, creating a dense stellar shell around it. The Void is located on the border between Vacaris and The Concordium.

Ekiram Nebula
The Ekiram Nebula is a large cloud of gas and baby stars, rich in natural resources. It is home to many harvesting stations and is constantly being fought over by both the Fringe Worlds and the Concordium, both of which claim the area. It is also home a large number of Precursor artifacts, which lay unclaimed due to their concentration in radioactive, volatile, and otherwise inhospitable areas of the Nebula.