On lost colonies

[rfmcdpei]

I'm speculating in this post about something different from what I talked about in Virgle, about one sort of a group or another establishing a small-scale colony with the intent of serving as a backup, lost colony or otherwise.

There may well be a least one or two secret outposts or even colonies hidden who knows where on the Near Star Map, and/or--as anyone familiar with Santa Maria can arrest--at least one or two colonies which have failed and been absorbed into another surviving one. I'm thinking more along the lines of something happening to some sort of interstellar vessel with the ability to plant a surviving colony that removes it from contact with the Core. Such a colony can't exist among the known stars of the space of the Near Star Map, at least not in the area stretching from from Vega to Procyon to Eta Bootis, so it would have to exist elsewhere.

How? A Star Trek "spatial anomaly," maybe, or perhaps more likely and somewhat less clichéd a drive malfunction that leaves the vessel stranded near a planetary system with an inhabitable planet, or a one-way colonizing vessel traveling to a new planetary system with a garden world via a brown dwarf (or in orbit of a brown dwarf) that they thought the Core had to have catalogued already. These long-range missions would be viable early on: The Manchurians were able to travel 49.5 light years to explore Chengdu in 2182, and from 2167 colony ships were able to travel the 28.9 ly to Beowulf. Someone (the Pentapods?) could intentionally ship (transplant) the colony ship to another environment far from the Core for unknown reasons (backup?).

One amusing possibility akin to a lost colony might be to have a starfaring government early in its history discover a convenient brown dwarf connecting Sol to some area of space otherwise unaccessible to stutterwarp drive, perhaps to the 61 Cygni Cluster. (Hey, it happened before.) Secretly, and carefully, a large and self-sufficient exploration/colonization mission was sent to find and settle the garden world closest to the brown dwarf. Sooner or later, when the brown dwarf's existence was discovered the government in question would already have a functioning colony on the other side that would be ready to support further efforts. Unfortunately, some sort of political change happened and the "destroy the evidence, silence the witnesses" protocol was activated. (And on the new world, people wonder ...)

The isolated population wouldn't be large without any follow up immigration. If we assume that a colony vessel was stranded with 1000 people in 2180, assuming population growth of 2% per annum the colony would host one hundred thousand people by 2300 and 160 thousand by 2320. This total would of course vary if we assume higher or lower rates of population increase, or better or worse preparations. In terms of playability, there could be everything from a situation like that of the low-tech tens of thousands living on Blue Planet's Poseidon and communing with the mysterious yet visible native biosphere after eighty years' isolation to, at the other end of the scale, a quarter-million angry people at TL 8 asking why they never heard anything from Terra while your science officers point out that their vintage corvettes might be old but still good.*

The lost colony could also fail. Cut off from civilization with only a minimum of supplies in an environment of dubious attractiveness, it would probably be more likely to fail than not. This could also be quite playable. Did they discover anything, or at least know what killed them? Who sent them all this way? Were they looking for anything in particular? Are the discoverers at any risk themselves?

The final set of adventure possibilities would relate to the colony's reintegration into the human community. Whether discovered by blind chance or by somehow overcoming stutterwarp's 7.7 light year limit, a sizable human population inhabiting a shirtsleeves-habitable garden world has been found. Everyone will want in: anthropologists and sociologists interesting in examining an isolate population, traders who'd want to take advantage of the local[strike]s[/strike] trade goods, scientists interested in examining the world and discovering how they got so far, politicians and military types who might try to claim the colony and mollify its inhabitants ("We tried to get in touch with you, see, but ..."), people of any profession who'd like to take advantage of a crack somewhere ...

Thoughts?

* The problem with a high-tech lost colony that retained radio technology is that they would know where Sol was and could conceivably start sending radio transmissions back. This could be a problem if they wanted to be heard. Then again, they might make for interesting background news. ("The Texans at Austin's World have sent their latest news compendium of transmissions from the Stalo colony at Pi 3 Orionis planetary system . . ." "The Staloites have discovered a lovable new pet land cephalopod." "They've stopped transmitting." "Oh, they're back online." "Oh, the Land Cephalopods--the X!!t1--have gotten the vote after they were discovered to, in fact, be sentient." ...)

 

[Colin]

Avalon has one. They fled the gene riots, and landed on Avalon. They have a city of sorts underground, and get their power from a hidden nuclear-powered lander. The anomalies discovered by the Nigerian oceanography ship were from their mining and sea-floor cultivation efforts. The entire population is DNAM enhanced, most of them a variant adapted for underwater life, one of the more radical DNA mods attempted before the moratorium. The others are the so-called super-soldier DNAM. The two groups are not interfertile with each other, but they are with regular humans.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Avalon has one. They fled the gene riots, and landed on Avalon. They have a city of sorts underground, and get their power from a hidden nuclear-powered lander. The anomalies discovered by the Nigerian oceanography ship were from their mining and sea-floor cultivation efforts. The entire population is DNAM enhanced, most of them a variant adapted for underwater life, one of the more radical DNA mods attempted before the moratorium. The others are the so-called super-soldier DNAM. The two groups are not interfertile with each other, but they are with regular humans.

Does this exclude the existence of any other lost colonies?

 

[Colin]

Nope. At this point, nothing I say is canonical in any case. Given that humanity has a 200-year history of star travel, there is liable to be many "lost" (or hiding) colonies, many beyond the 50-ly sphere of known space. Transhumanists, survivalists, libertine traders, Outbound corporations, fringe religious, cultural and ethnic groups. There are (well, IMHO), also space-based colonies, whether in asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects. Some of the Libertine trade families have been in space for nearly 200 years, and they may have a secret network of deep-space discharge masses (DSDMs), rogue planets or other objects that allow them access to otherwise inaccessible systems, or quicker access to inhabited systems. Who knows what is going on in hidden places?

 

[Anders]

Especially the possibility of largely self-supporting asteroid outposts allows for a lot of hidden and forgotten colonies.

Imagine that a smuggling network sets up an outpost on a minor body nobody would look twice at, but which makes a convenient stopover along a Core-Arm route. It develops to a well equipped and largely self-supporting base, inhabited by the families and friends of the smugglers. They maintain it during the long waits for new loads. Then the smuggling network unravels - the chief smuggler and his ship are blown up by police, the remaining smugglers either defect to other organizations or go somewhere else. The outpost remains, cut-off from everybody. The inhabitants do not have any stutterwarp capable ships and are suspicious of outsiders anyway. So they persist, and make do with what little they have. Over the years they develop their own little world with its own peculiar culture, almost forgetting about the greater world outside. Until the PCs stumble upon them.

 

[oletheros]

A spinoff of Anders' scenario would be the story of how these kinds of asteroid colonies in the French Arm survived the Kafer War. For every prominent Kolonie Zwei, there could have been any number of "on the sly" habitats. Some where built during the War of German Reunification, some were something else. How many survived? How many haven't?

A solar system is huge. If a habitat was built with minimal signal leakage in mind, there could easily be a dozen of these floating around in any given system and no one would know. It's highly unlikely, of course - given the amount of space to choose from - but these could be anywhere. Which is a great story hook.

 

[epicenter00]

A solar system is huge. If a habitat was built with minimal signal leakage in mind, there could easily be a dozen of these floating around in any given system and no one would know. It's highly unlikely, of course - given the amount of space to choose from - but these could be anywhere. Which is a great story hook.

I would imagine colonies like this are actually pretty common in all solar systems, especially the more settled ones like Sol or Alpha Centauri of all things. Most people prefer to live and work on habitable planets. If you set up a habitat in the inner system floating in space, you're often more remote than living on a garden world in another system, yet you're close enough to occasionally visit the mainworld for supplies you simply can't make for yourself, and perhaps they do some small-scale building and so on. It would be the sort of thing that everyone knows about on some unconscious level but nobody really cares enough to do anything about, even governments. Stories about them probably get dusted off every few years by the local "in depth" news shows.

"Good evening, this is Claire Laval, bringing you another installment of In the Stream. Tonight's story is about the so-called 'Free Orbitals.' From the popular children's movie by Matsuhiro Masamune, Howl's Floating Asteroid, since childhood we've known about deep space habitats that often sit astride major trade routes between the stars. While his treatment of the topic was romantic, it doesn't even begin to really probe the depths of the Undocumented. For instance, in the night sky of Terra, anyone with a reasonably powerful telescope can see millions of things that look like stars. How shocked would you be if you were told that at least 50% of the objects you see are not stars but are man-made. Not shocked at all? What if I were to tell that of those objects 25% of them of them belong to no known corporation, government, or living individual?"

"Here are some numbers to whet your appetite. In 2318, His Imperial Highness Emperor Rufin the First asked the Imperial Navy to list for him all such habitats in the Sol system. According to the Imperial Navy report, within the inner solar system, there are 4,317 known objects that are listed under the heading of "abandoned but not deconstructed." The numbers for the solar system beyond the asteroid belt are even more staggering. The OQC tracks 11,290 installations under the categories of "abadononed but not deconstructed", "owner insolvent", and "owner unknown." Combining the Imperial Navy report and the OQC's deep system survey together, there is an estimated 3.3 million persons dwelling in these stations. Similar numbers are thought to live in the less-well documented Alpha Centauri system, while tiny but still significant numbers are thought to live in almost every human-colonized solar system, and some beyond. Some estimates say that the total number of Undocumented persons in the universe may reach over 250 million persons."

"But who are these people? They pay no taxes, they often hold no citizenship having been born and raised on their undocumented colonies. They are truly the Undocumented and they like their privacy. How do these people survive? What do they do for a living? What kind of threat do they pose? Over the last six months I have been traveling to these stations to find out and tonight I'll present these findings. We'll begin with my visit to the inner system station referred to by the inhabitants as "Bakunin" ..."

 

[shanksow]

"But who are these people? They pay no taxes, they often hold no citizenship having been born and raised on their undocumented colonies. They are truly the Undocumented and they like their privacy. How do these people survive? What do they do for a living? What kind of threat do they pose? Over the last six months I have been traveling to these stations to find out and tonight I'll present these findings. We'll begin with my visit to the inner system station referred to by the inhabitants as "Bakunin" ..."

Personally, I would like to see you flesh this out as a actual adventure module. Sounds great and you could use this reporter's trip as the hook.

 

[epicenter00]

Personally, I would like to see you flesh this out as a actual adventure module. Sounds great and you could use this reporter's trip as the hook.

Heh heh, it's funny you mention that...

If the name Claire Laval doesn't ring a bell, she's a reporter you meet in Station Arcturus as a member of the USMC. She basically was deep in the throes of Stockholm Syndrome when the players meet her. In the module it states she's very mentally flexible and therefore while seeming the most hopeless she'd bounce back in short order and could make a huge name for herself writing about her experiences on the station under the Kafers.

Being a cruel and capricious god, I decided that was just a bit too neat and clean for my tastes. I decided that after 2300-era psychotherapy, they do ... mostly ... fix her up again. She doesn't have recurring nightmares, she's not going to go stalking people with an axe, and she's not going to do unmentionable things to puppies and kittens and she released because she is basically a fully-functional adult. Only not totally right. In my 2300 campaign the players (who subsequently left the USMC and became freelancers) kept running into her. She did go on to fame and fortune writing her experiences, spending weeks on 2300's version of the New York Times bestseller list, winning various awards and so on. But like all fame like that, after a while, it faded and Claire found herself looking for work again as a reporter. She was basically picked up by a major news network as their war correspondent and person who investigates seedy and dangerous stuff (exactly the kind of thing that'd bring her into contact with the players either as a foil or a patron).

Claire's problem is that she has something of a death-wish. She's like Jeff Bridge's character in Fearless - outwardly, she's perfectly sane and normal, but she has this need to continually risk her life and beat the odds. She also has this profound guilt that while she's "recovered" many of the other survivors did not and some are still in mental hospitals while others have committed suicide. While outwardly functional, she has problems of her own - in 2306 (in my campaign) she's had a string of disastrously broken marriages and failed relationships simply because she refuses to consider living her life with a safety chute.

You can imagine the thrills of working for a brilliant reporter like this. Her research is impeccable, she's a skilled judge of character, she's good at reading situations. Then...she'll do something quite random. For instance, once in a game, she was interviewing a prominent crime boss on Dunkelheim that she'd worked months to get an interview with and hired the players as security. Both sides to go nightmarish lengths to ensure the safety of their side and choose a neutral ground. Clare does her interview brilliantly, asking tough, edgy questions and the crime boss answers them truthfully. The interview goes on for an hour, then it's over and everyone is beginning to relax as it went without a hitch. Then, Clare decides everything is too safe, and asks the second-in-command a few questions, specifically his alleged sexual proclivities towards children and how a rival criminal syndicate was using him to get information thereby...

So to get the story on these Undocumented you can imagine it'd be very hazardous for the players...but you know, most players despite claiming to despise action...aren't all that far from that already...