How would your group of Travellers prevent worlds colliding?
Visualization; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKXX6Fwxk1Y&feature=fvst
Visualization; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKXX6Fwxk1Y&feature=fvst
If a meteor was fast approaching, I'd email it and tell it to land squarely in downtown LA. That would eliminate the source of 'reality TV' at least for a while. :rofl:
What if the worldlette was intentionally hurled at Efate or Regina? Would your characters have the obligation to unearth the perpetrators, or merely stop the threat?![]()
OR...If it was intentionally shoved towards a inhabited planet, I doubt the characters would have any obligation to find out who, and would be quickly 'crowded out' - every single intelligence service and military organisation would be out to hunt down those responsible. If the PC's did insist on sticking their noses in - said noses would tend to be cut off very fast by either the criminals or the law.
Unless they were part of that "whatever they could". There was a great and long running play by post a while back where an entir biosystem was poisened. One ship got out and one crew on that ship survived uninfected. When the word was raised, that ship was decontamed and that one survivor became a PC in the campaign. But all the ships in port suddenly found themselves commandered by orders of the local Port, Marquis and Imperial Naval Brass. So the PC's became part of the relief effort.As for stopping it - it depends a lot on the 'target' world. In a A,B or C port the port authority would probably commandeer whatever they could, and they wouldn't take kindly to some freebooters cruising in and trying to help out on their own
Now that's more like it!If it was a Class D, E or X port the PC's ship may be the only thing available and it is very likely that the local government would bribe, coerce or press gang the PC's (if they have a ship).
IIRC - there have been one or two adventures about comet hit the planet scenario. In one case it was an asteroid ship out of control and the other was a comet but with valuable archaeological artifacts on it.
Commander gets a starOR...
While all official channels are madly charging down investigating every direction, somone in autority who has dealt with the PC's before might have a bit more to go on, or suspect that the energy needed to carry this out can only be in the hands of someone with fleet rank...
So they may just need a hardy and proven band of independants...
Mind you, the simple fact this happens does not obligate the PC's to dig into it. They just need to either help, appear to be helping or not be seen as hindering the rescue efforts.
To say that independants would be blasted for getting involved shows a limit to how this could be gone about. And igonres the wonderful fun the GM can have when the PC's make a mistake and are noticed...
Keep in mind, any friction induced heat/light is going to radiate nearly globally, which means only half the energy comes down (the other half radiates into space), AND the KE gains of the last 50km don't get added if it burns up in atmosphere; further still, lots of small impacts are unlikely to reveal the mantle while a single moderate one will do so spectacularly, releasing lots of greenhouse gasses and toxic fumes.
There's a quite vocal minority who insist that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by a Tunguska-like event.The Tunguska object was only ~20m and exploded several km up, but it still flattened an area of 2000km2. Over a major population centre, that could kill millions.
More like being hit with a cluster of grapeshot rather than a cannon ball (roundshot).Hitting it is a bad idea - if it shatters we get hit by a shotgun rather than a rifle...
Rocks bigger than 50m will reach the surface - smaller blast radius, but they'll flatten a city, cause earthquakes/tsunamis, and kick up a lot of dust. 100m+ could destroy a civilization. The dinosaur-killer was 10km. Anything over 1km is game over for most people.