Black Curtain UPP effects

[jfetters]

Forgive me if I am going over old ground here, but I couldn't find anything in the archives.

Here is something I was thinking about the other day when looking at some old Core sector data: We have procedures for changing original (1130) UPPs to adjust for the Collapse. But how do we change UPPs for worlds in the Curtain?

We know the Research Station Omicron was in Core, therefore Core sector would have been ground zero with regards to the first (and most unstable) wave of virus release. This should have had the effect of the Max Sustainable Population - zeroing out the population of uninhabitable worlds and initially wreaking havoc on the Tech level, starport and government.

But the Black Curtain is a special place. By the New Era, it is assumed that the tech level has recovered to at least 12 (and the 1248 stuff intimates that it is probably higher). But what about the rest?

I think we can probably assume that the population modifiers and recovery info is probably valid. But has tech level recovered completely? Is there one government across the board (Totalitarian, of course) or is there a bizarre "Feudal Virus Nobility" in place where all planets/subsectors are ruled by a virus ala Promise, but everyone reports to the Emperor?

Anyway, that is just some food for thought. Has anyone actually generated any BC stats? Are there plans for that in 1248?

-Jim

 

[mike wightman]

Jim, have you looked at this thread in the 1248 playtest forum?

And here's another.

 

[mike wightman]

And did you read Dave Nilsen's version?

Q: What's inside the Black Curtain?

A nasty, creepy, sharp, spiky, cyber-icky civilization involving Virus and K’kree. If any of you bought the TNE T-shirt, those beetly-looking things with six legs are cyborged K’kree. Imagine the K’kree just as pissed-off as they’ve always been, but now they’re even more pissed off because they’ve been wired and chopped and channeled. These K’kree would not be contiguous to the old 2000 Worlds government, but their native militance, manifest destiny, and general grouchiness would be similar, although in the service of a different ethos. (And just as tasty to Ithklur. Oops, I’ve just pissed you off.)

The “Black Curtain” is a figurative phenomenon, not a physical one. It’s like a Black Hole where there is an event horizon which is the point/curve/radius at which no information (light) escapes. The “Black Curtain” simply means, “beyond this line, no one has ever come back to tell us what the heck is on the other side.”

The reason no one ever comes back is that the area controlled by this civilization is just so technically superior to anyone around that anyone who goes in is killed or captured. The ships are high-technology, and run by sentient computers/cyborged organic minds, as are the weapons, troops, etc. They just outclass anything they come up against. They would have the benefits of the research of the various weapons research projects that Lucan was always reported to be working on, which would include psionics, chemical/biological warfare, large-scale socio-psychological control, whatever. One of the weapons they would have is a logical application of the “meta identity” concept in which a consciousness can move from one host to another. They can implant a processing unit in an enemy, say by a projectile, which would allow a viral host to move itself or a copy of itself into a processing center that could control the target through rapidly-penetrating biochemical, bioelectrical, or simple coercive means (injectable poisons and a speaker system: “if you don’t do as I say, I’ll inject you again,” or “detonate this warhead in your chest”). Such persons could be rescued and surgically restored, but otherwise would be added to the Lucan labor pool.

Within the Black Curtain is a civilization completely run by intelligent machines, and which has made free use of a variety of cyborged concepts. Their shock troops are the cyborged K’kree, but they’ve also got cyborged humans and whatever else. Lucan is still there, cyborged and wired into the main control system on Capital. Why? Because everyone would want to know, “where’s Lucan? What happened to Lucan?” Easiest answer is he’s still there. If you don’t have him in there in some fashion it’s just sort of anticlimactic, and it’s another piece of continuity. I believe he was going to be so corrupted by being sliced and diced and/or anagathics that it might not even be possible to tell if it was really him or a virus intelligence taking on his persona, and I think he was going to have had multiple presences in multiple bodies that could move from one locus to the next, and take over new bodies as described above.

Bear in mind that the concept of the Black Curtain requires someone to be trying to look inside. Before the RC and Regency meet each other nearby, there are precious few trying, so the only notion of the Black Curtain is rumor from Guild ships, free traders, pocket empires, etc. Then as the Regency and RC come up against it, they start to see ships disappearing. Eventually they try harder and trigger a response from the Black Curtain, and the forces behind that “event horizon” burst out and attack the Regency and RC forces.

It is the RC’s “tame” virus ships and Ithklur allies that enable them to withstand this onslaught, along with new, improved, psionic weapons and powers from the Regency, plus the usual good old desperate fights.

Somewhere in here, in order to defeat the virus Lucan force, the “Star Vikings” end up having to commit some big atrocity, I don’t remember what. While this does end the Black Curtain threat, it so destroys their ability to work productively with other human factions that the remaining leaders and those identified closely with the acts choose to join with Avery’s forces and head for the galactic core. I say “Star Vikings” because that doesn’t mean every inhabitant of the RC worlds, or all of the members of the RCES, just those who got branded with the act, and had to bear the guilt away to allow those left behind to reconcile and build a future.

I seem to recall writing some “Why didn’t Maggart tell us it was going to end like this?” soundbites, but don’t know if they ever got published. I suspect they did not, but I can’t prove it.

And again, by the time we got there, we would have maybe gone a different direction. So you gotta write those soundbites kinda open-ended.

 

[jfetters]

Ah! Thanks, Sigg!! Just what I was looking for!

This basically confirms what I was thinking - use the population modifiers, but otherwise do what you want to make it an incredibly nasty place.

I think I have the Dave Nilsen thread committed to memory now.

The only thing I think I may have some level of disagreement on would be the Tech level. I think a case could be made for an overall TL 14-15 society. TL 16-17 would be ONLY in the AI/Computer category.

 

[mike wightman]

You are most welcome

Should I delete the Dave quote?

Nah, any excuse to read it again

 

[kafka47]

I rather like the idea of the curtain still remaining in 1248 (which I am given to understand that it doesn't)**. But, instead of being the singularity that it exists as a curtain swaying in the wind. Sometimes parting and other times shutting out the light.

**I am unfortunately not part of the playtest and don't want to have the secrets spoiled, as 1248 is what I am eagerly saving my pennies for.

 

[jfetters]

Kafka,

Yeah, I totally understand. I have looked at the materials, and while I think that they are outstanding, I think when it becomes official, I am going to make my own subtle changes.

I am not going to spill any beans here on this thread, but there are SOME decisions I don't like WRT the "beta" 1248, but they are relatively minor in the grand scheme, so if I ever get to that point, I will probably change what I don't like.

You know, what most of us end up doing.