The Saga of the Seven Swords 2.0

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Technomancer is a campaign setting that is being designed in the tradition of a classic space opera, with a mixture of elements from planetary romance and traditional fantasy. The setting takes place in a largely explored galaxy that is home to an uncountable number of species and has tens of thousands of years of history. Currently, the setting has no over arching story, one is currently in the works.

Influences
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
The Final Fantasy series of games
The Dune series of novels
Babylon 5
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
The Star Wars Saga
Battlestar Galactica (re-imaged)
 
[ic=Space travel]

[ic=Starships]
There are various classes of space faring vessels that travel the universe. The list below details military style crafts.

Scout
A scout is a small, single man craft outfitted with light arms, armor, and powerful scanning equipment. Scouts are used for intelligence gathering and are designed to jump into a system, scan it, and then jump back out. Scout ships are companion ships for lager attack craft.  

Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship,  with a crew of five to fifteen people.  Corvettes specifically designed to patrol planetary systems and to escort convoys.

Frigate
A Frigate is a fast, medium sized warship that has moderate arms and armor. Frigates are designed for speed and to protect other warships. Frigates support a crews of 250 to 500 indivduals.

Destroyer
A Destroyer is a large, heavly armed and armored watship desigened to escort and larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range but powerful attackers


[ic=FTL Travel]
The various races of the Technomancer universe make use of hyperspace as means of faster then light travel. Hyperspace is a sub-dimension of real space where the distances between spatial bodies are significantly shorter. In order for a ship to make use of hyperspace it must be outfitted with a hyperdrive. The primary function of a hyperdrive is to shift a starship in and out of hyperspace, it does this by generating an intense energy field around the ship. The field warps real space allowing the starship to phase or "jump" into and out of hyperspace. While in hyperspace itself, ships use their normal propulsion systems and interstellar travel is enabled by the shortened distances.

Navigation in Hyperspace

Hyperspace is utterly featureless, with no points of reference. Therefore, ships have to use the hyperspace beacon system - a network of transmitters located in known points in real space (usually inhabited star systems, but other points in space such as non-system star bases also have beacons) - in order to navigate. The ships navigation system locks on to the signal provided by the beacon and follows it to the destination. For extremely long journeys a ship will need to follow a hyperspace route. A route is a series of beacons that lead to a destination. If a ship travels to far off the beacon network, it runs the chance of losing its lock on signal and becoming lost in hyperspace.

Dangers in Hyperspace

Gravity Shadowing
A gravity shadow is a hyperspace phenomenon that is caused by the gravitational field of super massive object in real space. A super massive object, such as planet or star, cause small bends into hyperspace. These bends cause strong gravitational currents in hyperspace. For the most part, the strong currents can be easy over come by conventional propulsion systems, but can cause problems if there are extremely large numbers of super massive object in close proximity to one another. The best example of this is in the Deep Core region of the galaxy, where the gravitational currents are so strong that they can tear ships apart.

Gravity Currents
A side effect of a Gravity Shadow is a strong gravitational current. This current, which permeates hyperspace, can easily be over come by a ships propulsion system. The problem arises when a ships drive system fails. The currents can pull a disabled ship off the beacon network in a relatively short period of time. If the ship doesn't repair its drive system in a short enough time the ship can be come hopelessly lost in hyperspace. A ship that becomes lost in hyperspace can drift forever, and can be rediscovered years if not millennia later.
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Weapons

Melee weapons
While no longer an individual's primary line of defense, melee weapons have not been abandoned. Most individuals carry some sort of melee weapon to supplement their primary one. The type and style of such weapon is depended upon race.

Projectile Weapons
Due to the inherit limitations of gas based projectile weapons, such as range, bullet drop, wind drift, and firing rate; most civilized races abandoned them thousands of years ago. In their place, solid-state kinetic energy weapons were adopted. These weapons use strong magnetic fields to accelerate a projectile to a velocity upwards of ten times the speed of sound.  The destructive force comes from the kinetic energy placed on the projectile.

Types of Projectile Weapons

Needlegun
A Needlegun is the most common type of projectile weapon in use. The weapon fires a small one inch needle at its target. The weapon has a high rate of fire, with almost no recoil. The type of damage that the weapon inflicts is depended upon the type of needle that is fired.  A penetration needle is designed to damage multiple targets, while shatter needles transfer all of their force to a single target.

Energy weapons

Pulse Weapons
Due to the ease and cheapness of their construction, Pulse weapons are the most common personal firearm found in the galaxy, Pulse weapons are plasma based. They operate by vaporizing a small amount of pulse oil, which is then super heated into plasma and focused into a pulse by a strong magnetic field. The pulse is then discharged from the weapon at its target.    

Disruptors
Disruptors cause damage by exciting the atoms in the target and thus breaking the bonds between them.

Hybrid weapons
Hybrid weapons are a cross between melee and ranged energy weapons. Hybrid weapons are designed to be used as range weapons until the user closes to personal combat range, at which point the weapon converts to a melee weapon.

Regions of Space

Deep Core
The Deep Core is the region of space that lies at the very center of the galaxy. The Deep Core is comprised of thousands of extremely dense star clusters in close proximity to each other. The regions composition makes hyperspace travel almost impossible (see Gravity Shadows), which has left it largely unexplored.

Core
The Core region of the galaxy lies between the Deep Core and the Inner Range. The Core is comprised much like the Deep Core, except that the star clusters proximity is distant enough to permit Hyperspace travel. While Hyperspace travel is possible it is extremely dangerous and time consuming (see Gravity Shadows). There are very few habitable worlds in the Core.    

Inner Range
The inner range is located between the core and the mid range.

Mid Range
The Mid Range is located between the inner range and the outer range and is the most densely populated region in the galaxy.  The Mid range is home to some of the most important planets in the galaxy.

Outer Range
The Outer range is located between the mid range and the rim.

The Rim
As the name implies, the rim is the very edge of the galaxy. It is a lawless, sparsely populated region that is largely ignored by the rest of the galaxy.

The Expanse
The Expanse is the space beyond the rim, very little is known about this region as the hyperspace beacon system ends at the rim. There have been efforts by several of the criminal organizations in the rim to expand their influence into the expanse and as such, have added their own beacons. These efforts are few and fair between and of those beacons that are added, most are hidden from the main network.

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[spoiler=World Map] Here is a map of the entire world of Aerrus




Here is a map of the current known (playable) world


 [/spoiler]

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I would like to thank Raelifin for creating a badge for my setting.

[Tybalt]

I see a certain resemblence between the Black Army and the military as depicted in Starship Troopers. Is that deliberate? Actually its more than a certain one--recruitment and the highest ranks for instance are quite the same.

This strikes me as a game that would involve a fair amount of intrigue, militaristic activity and the like--does that seem like a fair assessment?

It seems to me as well that the major factions are still fighting an ancient conflict--do I have that right? Is the history you put down what is generally known or is it known mostly to loremasters and the like? (I often wonder this about world histories)

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