Solar Communes
11-01-2008, 19:54
Outcasts from Earth Chapter II: Unforeseen Consequences
This is my second attempt on pushing forward a roleplay-focused FT thread, this time character-centered, as my first scenario-centered one ended up as its own history on the origins of Solar Communes under the title of Baptism of Fire, which I still intend to expand further as a storytelling practice exercise. The basic premise is below, I'll try to keep some greater details about it as secrets but I guarantee it'll be very interesting and different as it progresses.
In the arctic Super-Earth Glacius, or Gliese 581d, a strange discovery is to be done. This will open a precedent for even more strange discoveries. The events following this discovery are briefed below, while other events that will follow before it will be roleplayed. I'll put more details on the character I'll roleplay and on these discoveries in the IC and in this thread as well, provided enough people become interested.
Story Outline
The Earth year is 2170, still during the first colonization century of the Gliese System, and the civilization of Solar Communes is about to begin its transition from Type 0.9 to a Type I civilization on Kardashev scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) as a new technology was developed which would allow them, in about 20 Earth years, to harness the entire power of their most energy and resources rich planet, Glacius, also known as Gliese 581d, and beyond. This progress is the offspring of the development of advanced high energy chemistry and its applications, of the improvement over existing nanotechnology, telemetry and automation, and of the building of the Planetary Energy Grid over Glacius, a hefty Wonder of the World level construction capable of transmitting power without any loss to every region, inhabited or futurely inhabited of the Planet and to the stars, which resources for its building were diverted from the now canceled building of new colony capital battleships, as it's believed it's wiser to focus on the development of current planets before the future transition to an interstellar civilization. This technology is the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovicic_Discontinuity) Mine and Thermal Borehole, or simply Moho Mine.
The first Moho mine was, with the support of new highly heat resistant nano-materials and systems, dug hundreds of kilometers beneath Glacius surface, at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity which separates the crust and mantle of it, a location which temperatures often reach much above 1000 degrees Celsius, and located at the city of New Tucker. Soon it started to convert the thermal energy into electricity which flowed through superconductors while large quantities of molten ores were being pulled to the surface to be refined and processed, leading to an almost immediate 5% increase in the total planetary output in the first days, while the temperature around New Tucker increased in an 1 degree Celsius average and still continued to increase.
Then something happened...
Suddenly the nano-materials built machines failed to bring more ores, while all repair bots sent to identify the problem and fix it simply stopped transmitting their signals as they reached a certain depth with no logical reason. The situation simply wasn't acceptable. The needed auxiliary infrastructure and building of the Moho Mine required the sacrifice of a new interstellar capable colony ship and had costs which will take at least one year of mining through it to be recovered. Only having them as a power sources wouldn't be enough for making the construction of further mines economically viable. It was necessary to identify the problem, solve it and then use the acquired data to prevent it from happening in other Moho mines.
Fortunately there was a second possibility rather than using repair robots. Advancements on high energy chemistry and nanotechnology gave the development of extremely heat-resistant and thermal insulating suits that could stand even 500 degrees Celsius, which was quite above the temperature where repair bots started to fail, while new rebreathers would give virtually limitless amounts of oxygen to an human being. The only issue for those New Tucker inhabitants who took the responsibility of managing the Moho mine was to find people brave or insane enough for the mission. The offer was 100 millions of gliese credits for each volunteer, but still it took 3 Earth days for the first one to come. His name is Hernan Dracen Mend, a flamboyant young 25 Earth years old amateur stunt with 2.5 meters height, short liss black hair, amber eyes and athletic build which facial features share similarities with several different ethnicities in Earth. He simply claimed he was up to the job, but that he would rather wait a few more days to see if others would come as well and go as deep as 75 kilometers beneath the surface.
Character Data Example
First, the average height of an Homo Sapiens Plumbeus is of 2.2 meters, or in imperial units of 7' 3''. Note that the planetary gravity is of 2.3g, that's the reason of the incredibly high weight, coupled with their improved thicker skeletal, bodily and muscular structure to stand such gravity(sadly I lack skills to make anatomical drawings of them). The average weight for a giant man is 340kg(750 lbs) while the average for a giant woman is 320kg(705 lbs). An easier method to get a sense of it is to make the weight in Earth gravity is multiply it for 2.3, which gives 140kg(309 lbs) for giant women and 148kg(326 lbs) for giant men as average weights. Normal humans simply cannot stand the gravity of the planet without using advanced power armor, which isn't either economical or practical for civilian purposes. Spacemen would simply be smashed by such gravity on the other hand, being adapted to live in low-gravity environments. Equipment will be standard issue for all and I'll put it in a separate list. Obviously the age will be in Earth years as Gliese 581d takes only about 84 days to complete an year, and that would complicate things unnecessarily for timekeeping purposes.
Name: Hernan Dracen Mend
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Height: 2.5m / 8' 2''
Weight: 370 kg / 816 lbs
Hair: Short, liss, black.
Eyes: Amber
Profession Class: Autonomous*
Profession: Freelance Stunt
Rank: Not Applicable
Description: Hernan never liked the seriousness and professionalism of cooperatives or the prospect of running serious business by himself. He is quite flamboyant, good natured and a natural daredevil which makes his gliese credits with several shows where he challenges his own life, with the "trademarked" comment of "In one parallel universe I didn't get out of this one alive". His behavior is also attributed to his belief of quantum immortality, thus justifying him to have such a extreme life. Now with the new challenge of going down the surface, and with his five years experience in exploring extreme environments, which also brought him familiarity with several tools, he has offered his services to the New Tucker Unified Mining Coop.
Extra-sensory Perception: None
*Note: Autonomous, Military or Cooperative Member. There are only three official ranks in the military, which have different names for logistics, Navy and so on, they are: Soldier(Operational/Tactical/Strategic), Captain(Tactical/Operational/Strategic) and General(Strategic/Tactical/Operational) and the last two ones are elective and chosen through voting by the soldiers. The functions in brackets are meant as priorities on what they should ideally do in usual conditions. Meaning a Soldier mostly engage in combat, but still can contribute with tactics and sometimes with strategy, while a Captain is focused on tactics and a General on strategy.
Standard Equipment: HEES-500 Giant-sized High Energy Environment Suit with integrated advanced rebreather and partial life support system; advanced magnetic resonance sight*; 2 high-energy resistant searchlights; 5 auto-deployed suit repair modules; 1 repair autotool; 1 image recording system integrated with magnetic resonance sight.
*Gives as visual input something similar to a 3D wireframe view of the location and its objects.
Rules
Although already implicit, this obviously isn't a roleplay for MacGyverisms or godmodding, like "My character can't die!"(God Mod literally) or in general. The Autotool isn't a magical swiss army knife either, but a mix of high energy laser propelled nanites welder, diagnostic tools and electric rechargers that if well used will repair many broken things, which will obviously take some time, from minutes to an entire hour depending on the size and complexity of the damaged device, but aren't miracle devices their advanced technology makes them appear to be.
Sorry, but no characters from other solar systems on this one, and definitively no non-human characters, as it's an issue of Solar Communes and there is no logical sense why someone or some "good samaritan" alien from outer space would come and waste valuable resoruces simply to help them to fix a Moho mine. And of course the characters are of the sub-race Homo Sapiens Plumbeus of human race, because normal humans aren't adapted to a 2.3g gravity.
Again, on this initial stage of this roleplay characters won't use weapons and will have the standard equipment of that list above.
Just to state it clearly, Solar Communes is mostly a hard sci-fi concept, though there are some creative liberties with given exceptions, like Extra-sensory perception. If you want to make an ESP character to spice things up though, such paranormal phenomena isn't controllable by the will of those who have the "gift", but instead occur randomly and might either help or hinder them, as a vision might distract them from something important that is ongoing or lead them to make the wrong decisions as there is not a deterministic "fate" in Solar Communes "universe", or help them with things. To ensure the well use of it, I'll randomly telegram players who choose to roleplay ESP characters on the way to give them some either false or true forebearing/premonition, based on this site results from a 1 to 100 random number generation (http://www.random.org/). I will ensure the randomness of ESP, now whether a character would trust those visions of its own or of another character or not is up to the players controlling it. And of course, whether to tell other player characters about the visions or not is up to the players.
No Timewarp, it will only make the plot development confusing, and open space to otherwise unnecessary OOC discussions.
Not a rule, but a suggestion: Using this web page (http://www.albireo.ch/bodyconverter/) can be very helpful to switch between metric and imperial units on weight and height.
And that's basically the outline, now if you want to make a character to go deep into the crust of a planet and to discover several surprises later, simply post a character bio following the template of Hernan Dracen Mend character. This will also be the OOC thread for this future roleplay, if it draws enough interest.
This is my second attempt on pushing forward a roleplay-focused FT thread, this time character-centered, as my first scenario-centered one ended up as its own history on the origins of Solar Communes under the title of Baptism of Fire, which I still intend to expand further as a storytelling practice exercise. The basic premise is below, I'll try to keep some greater details about it as secrets but I guarantee it'll be very interesting and different as it progresses.
In the arctic Super-Earth Glacius, or Gliese 581d, a strange discovery is to be done. This will open a precedent for even more strange discoveries. The events following this discovery are briefed below, while other events that will follow before it will be roleplayed. I'll put more details on the character I'll roleplay and on these discoveries in the IC and in this thread as well, provided enough people become interested.
Story Outline
The Earth year is 2170, still during the first colonization century of the Gliese System, and the civilization of Solar Communes is about to begin its transition from Type 0.9 to a Type I civilization on Kardashev scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) as a new technology was developed which would allow them, in about 20 Earth years, to harness the entire power of their most energy and resources rich planet, Glacius, also known as Gliese 581d, and beyond. This progress is the offspring of the development of advanced high energy chemistry and its applications, of the improvement over existing nanotechnology, telemetry and automation, and of the building of the Planetary Energy Grid over Glacius, a hefty Wonder of the World level construction capable of transmitting power without any loss to every region, inhabited or futurely inhabited of the Planet and to the stars, which resources for its building were diverted from the now canceled building of new colony capital battleships, as it's believed it's wiser to focus on the development of current planets before the future transition to an interstellar civilization. This technology is the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovicic_Discontinuity) Mine and Thermal Borehole, or simply Moho Mine.
The first Moho mine was, with the support of new highly heat resistant nano-materials and systems, dug hundreds of kilometers beneath Glacius surface, at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity which separates the crust and mantle of it, a location which temperatures often reach much above 1000 degrees Celsius, and located at the city of New Tucker. Soon it started to convert the thermal energy into electricity which flowed through superconductors while large quantities of molten ores were being pulled to the surface to be refined and processed, leading to an almost immediate 5% increase in the total planetary output in the first days, while the temperature around New Tucker increased in an 1 degree Celsius average and still continued to increase.
Then something happened...
Suddenly the nano-materials built machines failed to bring more ores, while all repair bots sent to identify the problem and fix it simply stopped transmitting their signals as they reached a certain depth with no logical reason. The situation simply wasn't acceptable. The needed auxiliary infrastructure and building of the Moho Mine required the sacrifice of a new interstellar capable colony ship and had costs which will take at least one year of mining through it to be recovered. Only having them as a power sources wouldn't be enough for making the construction of further mines economically viable. It was necessary to identify the problem, solve it and then use the acquired data to prevent it from happening in other Moho mines.
Fortunately there was a second possibility rather than using repair robots. Advancements on high energy chemistry and nanotechnology gave the development of extremely heat-resistant and thermal insulating suits that could stand even 500 degrees Celsius, which was quite above the temperature where repair bots started to fail, while new rebreathers would give virtually limitless amounts of oxygen to an human being. The only issue for those New Tucker inhabitants who took the responsibility of managing the Moho mine was to find people brave or insane enough for the mission. The offer was 100 millions of gliese credits for each volunteer, but still it took 3 Earth days for the first one to come. His name is Hernan Dracen Mend, a flamboyant young 25 Earth years old amateur stunt with 2.5 meters height, short liss black hair, amber eyes and athletic build which facial features share similarities with several different ethnicities in Earth. He simply claimed he was up to the job, but that he would rather wait a few more days to see if others would come as well and go as deep as 75 kilometers beneath the surface.
Character Data Example
First, the average height of an Homo Sapiens Plumbeus is of 2.2 meters, or in imperial units of 7' 3''. Note that the planetary gravity is of 2.3g, that's the reason of the incredibly high weight, coupled with their improved thicker skeletal, bodily and muscular structure to stand such gravity(sadly I lack skills to make anatomical drawings of them). The average weight for a giant man is 340kg(750 lbs) while the average for a giant woman is 320kg(705 lbs). An easier method to get a sense of it is to make the weight in Earth gravity is multiply it for 2.3, which gives 140kg(309 lbs) for giant women and 148kg(326 lbs) for giant men as average weights. Normal humans simply cannot stand the gravity of the planet without using advanced power armor, which isn't either economical or practical for civilian purposes. Spacemen would simply be smashed by such gravity on the other hand, being adapted to live in low-gravity environments. Equipment will be standard issue for all and I'll put it in a separate list. Obviously the age will be in Earth years as Gliese 581d takes only about 84 days to complete an year, and that would complicate things unnecessarily for timekeeping purposes.
Name: Hernan Dracen Mend
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Height: 2.5m / 8' 2''
Weight: 370 kg / 816 lbs
Hair: Short, liss, black.
Eyes: Amber
Profession Class: Autonomous*
Profession: Freelance Stunt
Rank: Not Applicable
Description: Hernan never liked the seriousness and professionalism of cooperatives or the prospect of running serious business by himself. He is quite flamboyant, good natured and a natural daredevil which makes his gliese credits with several shows where he challenges his own life, with the "trademarked" comment of "In one parallel universe I didn't get out of this one alive". His behavior is also attributed to his belief of quantum immortality, thus justifying him to have such a extreme life. Now with the new challenge of going down the surface, and with his five years experience in exploring extreme environments, which also brought him familiarity with several tools, he has offered his services to the New Tucker Unified Mining Coop.
Extra-sensory Perception: None
*Note: Autonomous, Military or Cooperative Member. There are only three official ranks in the military, which have different names for logistics, Navy and so on, they are: Soldier(Operational/Tactical/Strategic), Captain(Tactical/Operational/Strategic) and General(Strategic/Tactical/Operational) and the last two ones are elective and chosen through voting by the soldiers. The functions in brackets are meant as priorities on what they should ideally do in usual conditions. Meaning a Soldier mostly engage in combat, but still can contribute with tactics and sometimes with strategy, while a Captain is focused on tactics and a General on strategy.
Standard Equipment: HEES-500 Giant-sized High Energy Environment Suit with integrated advanced rebreather and partial life support system; advanced magnetic resonance sight*; 2 high-energy resistant searchlights; 5 auto-deployed suit repair modules; 1 repair autotool; 1 image recording system integrated with magnetic resonance sight.
*Gives as visual input something similar to a 3D wireframe view of the location and its objects.
Rules
Although already implicit, this obviously isn't a roleplay for MacGyverisms or godmodding, like "My character can't die!"(God Mod literally) or in general. The Autotool isn't a magical swiss army knife either, but a mix of high energy laser propelled nanites welder, diagnostic tools and electric rechargers that if well used will repair many broken things, which will obviously take some time, from minutes to an entire hour depending on the size and complexity of the damaged device, but aren't miracle devices their advanced technology makes them appear to be.
Sorry, but no characters from other solar systems on this one, and definitively no non-human characters, as it's an issue of Solar Communes and there is no logical sense why someone or some "good samaritan" alien from outer space would come and waste valuable resoruces simply to help them to fix a Moho mine. And of course the characters are of the sub-race Homo Sapiens Plumbeus of human race, because normal humans aren't adapted to a 2.3g gravity.
Again, on this initial stage of this roleplay characters won't use weapons and will have the standard equipment of that list above.
Just to state it clearly, Solar Communes is mostly a hard sci-fi concept, though there are some creative liberties with given exceptions, like Extra-sensory perception. If you want to make an ESP character to spice things up though, such paranormal phenomena isn't controllable by the will of those who have the "gift", but instead occur randomly and might either help or hinder them, as a vision might distract them from something important that is ongoing or lead them to make the wrong decisions as there is not a deterministic "fate" in Solar Communes "universe", or help them with things. To ensure the well use of it, I'll randomly telegram players who choose to roleplay ESP characters on the way to give them some either false or true forebearing/premonition, based on this site results from a 1 to 100 random number generation (http://www.random.org/). I will ensure the randomness of ESP, now whether a character would trust those visions of its own or of another character or not is up to the players controlling it. And of course, whether to tell other player characters about the visions or not is up to the players.
No Timewarp, it will only make the plot development confusing, and open space to otherwise unnecessary OOC discussions.
Not a rule, but a suggestion: Using this web page (http://www.albireo.ch/bodyconverter/) can be very helpful to switch between metric and imperial units on weight and height.
And that's basically the outline, now if you want to make a character to go deep into the crust of a planet and to discover several surprises later, simply post a character bio following the template of Hernan Dracen Mend character. This will also be the OOC thread for this future roleplay, if it draws enough interest.