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Nov. 12th, 2018 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckIt occurred to me that some of you might be interested in what I wrote as a setting for my UCon game.
Humans no longer live on the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what became of the people still on the planet when it happened, but 314 (Earth standard) years ago, all communication with the surface of the Earth ceased. The silence seems to have started in Antarctica and spread outward. Nobody particularly noticed the silence from researchers there, not immediately, because nobody was expecting to hear from them right then. By the time the silence was noticeable, most of Argentina was also gone, and the unknown threat was still creeping north.
Satellites could no longer photograph the areas gone silent. Planes and boats and cell phones entering the zone simply stopped transmitting, and no one or thing that went in came out. By the time the zone reached the equator, the rest of the world-- and indeed everyone off world but within communication distance-- was panicking. A few packed transports made it to space. Most of them contained children between the ages of ten and sixteen. Three were entirely filled with information storage media.
To the human eye, Earth looks mostly as it used to from space. There aren’t any more points of brightness to indicate artificial lighting at night. All photographs and scans and sensors show the planet as a big, blank spot. A big, blank spot with enough gravitational pull to hold Luna in the same orbit as before.
Ships or probes attempting to land simply disappear, but it’s traditional to try sending a small probe once a year. Some people say that that probe is a waste of resources, that there’s no chance of it ever yielding information. Others say it would be bad luck not to try.
Humans have spread throughout the rest of the solar system. Inner system settlements had been established prior to the Vanishing; everything beyond Jupiter came after. Each settlement faces different hardships, different shortages, and each has something to offer the others. Trade tends to focus on information, seed exchanges, and other things that have high value relative to their mass or that absolutely cannot be manufactured or grown locally. Travel from the inner system to the outermost settlements takes months rather than years, but the trips are long and risky.
The treaties governing commerce require that settlements over a certain size provide a rescue ship. Larger settlements provide more than one. These ships may be owned and operated by the community government or may be hired for the purpose, but they’re all technically considered to be under a unified command.
The Rain Without Clouds has been recently put into service by Novoyakutsk, a settlement on Neptune that has just crossed the population threshold for needing to provide a rescue ship. The Rain Without Clouds was built on Luna roughly thirty years ago and has been refitted twice in that time. She has a crew of six humans and a number of specialized robots. She carries supplies sufficient to accommodate survivors from other vessels long enough to get them to some place equipped to deal with them longer term. She has a moderately well equipped medical bay that can treat most injuries commonly encountered among survivors of interplanetary accidents. The ship and crew have probationary status until after their first successful mission. The ship you are now approaching will be your first mission. The SOS identified the ship as the Snowdrop one week out of Neptune’s tertiary port, Lilthin. The message broadcast for only a few minutes, just long enough for you to pick it up, before going silent in the middle of a syllable. Fortunately the ship’s location beacon continued a steady broadcast so you were still able to find the Snowdrop.
Most rescues involve ships with equipment/maintenance failures. Some involve people fleeing violence or famine or disease in vessels inadequate for the trip. A few involve collisions, mostly in space near settlements. Very few involve acts of piracy or of war between settlements.
That last is because every settlement in the system operates very near the edge of survival. With Earth gone, there is no place where humans can live without a great deal of adaptive technology. Terraforming, as it turns out, is a lot harder than science fiction stories predicted, so war usually means everyone in all involved settlements dying. Internal conflicts are more common, but they generally operate by different rules than histories say they did on Earth. Escalating beyond a certain point usually means that everybody dies.
The Snowdrop is spinning, out of control, and her hull shows signs of recent damage. At this distance, you can’t tell what caused the damage or how deep it goes. You also can’t tell whether or not anyone on board has survived. It’s possible that success for this mission may be defined as ‘hauling everything back to port for salvage, investigation, and burial.’
This is the Rain Without Clouds’ first time out with this crew. None of you have worked with each other before hiring on with the ship. You know each other by reputation and by briefing, and all of you have past experience on other ships. You’ve had roughly three weeks to get used to working together, and none of you currently have any complaints about other crew members’ competence or personal habits.
Humans no longer live on the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what became of the people still on the planet when it happened, but 314 (Earth standard) years ago, all communication with the surface of the Earth ceased. The silence seems to have started in Antarctica and spread outward. Nobody particularly noticed the silence from researchers there, not immediately, because nobody was expecting to hear from them right then. By the time the silence was noticeable, most of Argentina was also gone, and the unknown threat was still creeping north.
Satellites could no longer photograph the areas gone silent. Planes and boats and cell phones entering the zone simply stopped transmitting, and no one or thing that went in came out. By the time the zone reached the equator, the rest of the world-- and indeed everyone off world but within communication distance-- was panicking. A few packed transports made it to space. Most of them contained children between the ages of ten and sixteen. Three were entirely filled with information storage media.
To the human eye, Earth looks mostly as it used to from space. There aren’t any more points of brightness to indicate artificial lighting at night. All photographs and scans and sensors show the planet as a big, blank spot. A big, blank spot with enough gravitational pull to hold Luna in the same orbit as before.
Ships or probes attempting to land simply disappear, but it’s traditional to try sending a small probe once a year. Some people say that that probe is a waste of resources, that there’s no chance of it ever yielding information. Others say it would be bad luck not to try.
Humans have spread throughout the rest of the solar system. Inner system settlements had been established prior to the Vanishing; everything beyond Jupiter came after. Each settlement faces different hardships, different shortages, and each has something to offer the others. Trade tends to focus on information, seed exchanges, and other things that have high value relative to their mass or that absolutely cannot be manufactured or grown locally. Travel from the inner system to the outermost settlements takes months rather than years, but the trips are long and risky.
The treaties governing commerce require that settlements over a certain size provide a rescue ship. Larger settlements provide more than one. These ships may be owned and operated by the community government or may be hired for the purpose, but they’re all technically considered to be under a unified command.
The Rain Without Clouds has been recently put into service by Novoyakutsk, a settlement on Neptune that has just crossed the population threshold for needing to provide a rescue ship. The Rain Without Clouds was built on Luna roughly thirty years ago and has been refitted twice in that time. She has a crew of six humans and a number of specialized robots. She carries supplies sufficient to accommodate survivors from other vessels long enough to get them to some place equipped to deal with them longer term. She has a moderately well equipped medical bay that can treat most injuries commonly encountered among survivors of interplanetary accidents. The ship and crew have probationary status until after their first successful mission. The ship you are now approaching will be your first mission. The SOS identified the ship as the Snowdrop one week out of Neptune’s tertiary port, Lilthin. The message broadcast for only a few minutes, just long enough for you to pick it up, before going silent in the middle of a syllable. Fortunately the ship’s location beacon continued a steady broadcast so you were still able to find the Snowdrop.
Most rescues involve ships with equipment/maintenance failures. Some involve people fleeing violence or famine or disease in vessels inadequate for the trip. A few involve collisions, mostly in space near settlements. Very few involve acts of piracy or of war between settlements.
That last is because every settlement in the system operates very near the edge of survival. With Earth gone, there is no place where humans can live without a great deal of adaptive technology. Terraforming, as it turns out, is a lot harder than science fiction stories predicted, so war usually means everyone in all involved settlements dying. Internal conflicts are more common, but they generally operate by different rules than histories say they did on Earth. Escalating beyond a certain point usually means that everybody dies.
The Snowdrop is spinning, out of control, and her hull shows signs of recent damage. At this distance, you can’t tell what caused the damage or how deep it goes. You also can’t tell whether or not anyone on board has survived. It’s possible that success for this mission may be defined as ‘hauling everything back to port for salvage, investigation, and burial.’
This is the Rain Without Clouds’ first time out with this crew. None of you have worked with each other before hiring on with the ship. You know each other by reputation and by briefing, and all of you have past experience on other ships. You’ve had roughly three weeks to get used to working together, and none of you currently have any complaints about other crew members’ competence or personal habits.
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Date: 2018-11-13 02:06 pm (UTC)