Milieu -300,000: Grandfather's Children

[robject]

On the large list of things I have started but will never finish is setting material for a -300k setting. That Grandfather's Children as a name for the milieu is misleading is the crux of my thesis, when the vast majority of the trillions of sophonts during that era are not the godlike offspring of Yaskoydray but Droyne, Human, and many, many 'other' living comfortably in a cosmopolitan TL-25+ interstellar civilization. Of course, occasionally they are roped into the unfathomable schemes of inscrutable superbeings much as the ancient Greeks wrote that they were subject to the whims of their gods, but that's part of the fun...

Based on a comment once made by Marc Miller that he imagined an Ancients-Era setting to be somewhat Barsoomian, I think this could be a really interesting Milieu if it focused on the transplanted Humans (or possibly proto-Vargr and/or "others" now extinct) of various worlds, with the Droyne as Overlords and the Grandchildren of Yaskoydray as distant godlike figures. I could imagine a setting very much like Jack Vance's Tschai Novels, or something like John Carter of Mars, but with a more grounded and modern technical backdrop.

It could be populated by Humans of varying degrees of technical knowledge (from wild humans in their transplanted enclaves to those who were hand-picked by the Droyne to assist with various servitor tasks). Depending on the particular world setting and focus, it could almost be a swords-and-blasters style of campaign.

Short Backdrop

300,000 years ago, an incredibly intelligent, talented, and ambitious Droyne mutant Yaskoydray -- conquered his world. His genius sons settled thousands of worlds, focused on conquering some aspect of the universe. The sons manipulated existing lifeforms and created new ones, both organic and artificial. They created systems for controlling individuals, small groups, and even large populations.

This is a Skip Culture: colonies form a cluster of worlds supporting a main system, often with hundreds of parsecs separating clusters, due to the transportation properties of the Skip Drive. This culture leaves very few traces between its known enclaves, marked (300,000 years later) only by a high propensity for asteroid belts.

At some time in their travels, Grandfather himself visited Earth and carried away several thousand early Humans. They must have been useful in some obscure way because he carried those humans to hundreds of his worlds.

Those worlds often are simply supports for bases located on other worlds -- perhaps sectors away. Humaniti is a servant race -- one of many assigned to a particular Ancient and his near-single-minded, ruthless pursuit of fantastic technology. A player character's career or skillset could in some cases determine which of Yaskoydray's children the players are ultimately working for. In turn, that may dictate which part of Charted Space they're in -- or if they're anywhere near Charted Space.

Technology

Equipment for most workers ranges from TL18 through TL22, with higher tech available to higher ranks or privileges. Commonly encountered technology includes:

Artificial persons
Antimatter power
Energy taps (planet / star)
Hop and Skip drives (100s of parsecs in one week)
System-wide raw matter transport
Stasis Globes
Ringworlds and rosette worlds. Dyson spheres.
Portals
Planetbreaker bombs, star killers
Reality engineering
Personality transfer
Group personalities
"Site Dwellings" instead of cities.

Careers

Servants of the Children range from Skip Freighter and Gunship Pilots to ranchers on some dusty plain on a remote world. Worlds themselves vary wildly. There are world cities with quadrillions of people. There are resource worlds with ranks of trained technicians and field laborers. There are lush agricultural fields -- some worked by machine, and some worked by man.

Craftsmen work alongside ancient Droyne, hand-building incomprehensible technology.
Scholars do field research and work in Ancient laboratories.
Entertainers help sophonts blow off steam, and form an underground communications network, of sorts.
Citizens are cogs in world systems, keeping things running smoothly.
Scouts are planetary system explorers and new-technology testers.
Merchants move the goods around.
Spacers enforce interstellar laws -- whatever laws they're bound to enforce, anyway.
Soldiers occupy worlds.
Agents are the interfaces between research, industry, economics, agriculture, science, government, politics...
Rogues are the criminal element, an inefficiency in the eyes of the Ancients.
Nobles are the ruling elite, elevated by the Ancients to rule.
Marines occupy starships.
Functionaries are the "middle management" for all of the above.

 

[whulorigan]

@Robject:
BTW, in my post I meant "John Carter" of Mars, not "Howard Carter" (the Egyptologist). If you could fix that in my quote, that would be great.

 

[robject]

@Robject:
BTW, in my post I meant "John Carter" of Mars, not "Howard Carter" (the Egyptologist). If you could fix that in my quote, that would be great.

"Lord Carnarvon of Mars" has a kind of ring to it, though, don't you think?

 

[rancke]

At some time in their travels, Grandfather himself visited Earth and carried away several thousand early Humans. They must have been useful in some obscure way because he carried those humans to hundreds of his worlds.

"More than a hundred", not hundreds, IIRC. He experimented with them to get a better servant race than the Droyne. He also experimented with uplifting proto-wolves. Some of the children and grandchildren managed their own group of humans, either on behalf of Grandfather or on their own.

Equipment for most workers ranges from TL18 through TL22, with higher tech available to higher ranks or privileges.

Infrareds only have access to basic technology, Reds, Oranges, Yellows, Greens, Blues, Indigos, Violets, and Ultraviolets get access to more and more advanced stuff?

There are three or four distinct eras:

a) Grandfather-assigned projects.
b) Grandfather takes a vacation; the children begin projects of their own.
(c) Grandfather returns and starts new projects; the children refuse to abandon their own projects and begin to work for him again.¹)
d) The Final War.

¹ This may or may not be considered the beginning of the Final War rather than an era in its own right.​

I suggest that b) would be the most interesting era to set a game in.


Hans

 

[whulorigan]

"Lord Carnarvon of Mars" has a kind of ring to it, though, don't you think?

Is he the one that excavated the Pyramids on Mars . . .

 

[inexorabletash]

"Special Circumstances" in Banks' Culture setting might be an apt analogy for some adventures. Mostly-baseline humans tasked as problem solving agents of supra-intelligent entities, because sometimes a multi-mile-long FTL ship with a hyperdimensional brain is not the best tool for the job.

 

[tucker2]

"Special Circumstances" in Banks' Culture setting might be an apt analogy for some adventures. Mostly-baseline humans tasked as problem solving agents of supra-intelligent entities, because sometimes a multi-mile-long FTL ship with a hyperdimensional brain is not the best tool for the job.

Banks is where my mind wandered too.

 

[SanDragon]

Infrareds only have access to basic technology, Reds, Oranges, Yellows, Greens, Blues, Indigos, Violets, and Ultraviolets get access to more and more advanced stuff?

Hans

If yellow vapor doesn't shoot back, do yellows?

 

[mike wightman]

There is quite a lot of useful stuff about this era in MgT: Secrets of the Ancients campaign

 

[whulorigan]

There is quite a lot of useful stuff about this era in MgT: Secrets of the Ancients campaign

But I think it is only in the PDF version. My hard-copy version seems to have omitted the entire chapter that had all of the cool insight into the Ancient's Era. I do not know if that is an oversight or intentional (since the PDF came out initially as free individual chapter-downloads prior to the hard-copy version).

 

[mike wightman]

Check again - my hardback copy has exactly the same stuff as the pdf - chapter 6 Secret of the Ancients page 108+

It is still a free download from Mongoose by the way.

 

[whulorigan]

Check again - my hardback copy has exactly the same stuff as the pdf - chapter 6 Secret of the Ancients page 108+

It is still a free download from Mongoose by the way.

Mine doesn't. I must have the first printing; they must have updated it.

My Chapter 6 is "Otherworld", beginning on p.84, followed by "Chapter 7: The Death of Grandfather" on p.102.
P.108 is in the middle of that chapter.


I do have the free PDF version, so I have access to the cool stuff in the Secret of the Ancients chapter; just not in my hardback.

 

[mike wightman]

Very odd indeed, didn't realise there were different printings.