The Lords of Creation Mini-campaign

[Laryssa]

This is based on the two books written by S.M.Stirling which are The Sky People and the recently published In The Courts of the Crimson Kings.
To give a brief synopsis of this setting, these books mix two generes, basically a Pulpish Venus and Mars mixed into a hard science background, using the filter of an alternate history persective. The explaination is that in this alternate universe aliens called "the Lords of Creation" terraformed the planets Venus and Mars using Earth Lifeforms, and their presence has been more or less continous up until about 10,000 BC. These aliens have left very few artifacts of themselves other than the planets they terraformed. These planets have been terraformed such that their new statistics are as follows:

VENUS: Parameters
ORBIT: 0.723 AU
ORBITAL PERIOD: 224.7 days
ROTATION: 30hrs. 6mins. (retrograde)
MASS: 0.815 * Earth
AVERAGE DENSITY: 5.2 g/cc
SURFACE GRAVITY: 0.91 * Earth
DIAMETER: 7,520 miles (equatoral; 94.7% * Earth)
SURFACE: land 20%, water 80%
ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION:
NITROGEN 76.2%
OXYGEN 22.7%
CARBON DIOXIDE 0.088%
TRACE ELEMENTS: Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Hydrogen
ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE: 17.7 psi average at sea level

MARS: Parameters
ORBIT: 1.5237 AU
ORBITAL PERIOD: 668.6 Martian solar days (Sols)
ROTATION: 24 hrs 34 min.
MASS: 0.1075 * Earth
AVERAGE DENSITY: 3.93 g/cc
SURFACE GRAVITY: 0.377 * Earth
DIAMETER: 4,217 miles (equatorial; 53.3% that of Earth)
SURFACE: 75% land, 24% water (incl. pack ice)
ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION:
NITROGEN 76.51%
OXYGEN 20.23%
CARBON DIOXIDE 0.11%
TRACE ELEMENTS: Argon, neon, krypton
ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE: 10.7 psi average at northern sea level

Venus in typical Pulpish fashion is a Jungle World filled with dinosaurs and "cave people", basically of two varieties Homo Sapiens, and Neandertals. The Dinosaurs are the usual menagerie you would expect beginning with the ones found on Earth in 200 million BC through the late Cretaceous (65 million BC), there are other prehistoric animals here as well, mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers, Pterodons, giant carnivourous birds etc. There is a US and Soviet Base on the planet. The US is accompanied by other smaller bases in its immediate vicinity consisting of its allies in the Westbloc, while the Soviets have their Allies/Subjects of the Eastbloc near their base on the other side of the equatorial continent. The inhabitants of Venus are primitive, with their most advanced nation being the equivalent of Earth's bronze age.

Mars in typical Pulpish fashion has the flavor of E.R. Burroughs Princess of Mars series or Barsoom novellas. Mars is composed of many warring states with various assortments of near-humans, humans, and intelligent non-humans. Mars once had a global Empire ruled by the Ancient "Crimson Kings", that Empire is no more, but a fragment of it still exists under the shadow of the great shield volcano Olympus Mons, there its leaders plot their comeback, and they have a plan to regain their past glory, with the help of some unwitting Earth Humans from the Soviet Union Circa 2000 AD.

The Martian's technology is a bit unusual, they rely on biotech - "living machine" devices. All of their advanced technology above the medeaval relies on a "living machine" device, their guns are animals shaped like guns which they feed a bullet and some food, the creature expells methane in a chamber behind the bullet and when the trigger is pulled a spark ignites the methane propelling the bullet at lethal high velocities out the muzzel. Since the gun is a living creature, it reproduces and heals itself instead of requiring manufacture and maintenance. Similarly the Martians have a "Land Boat" which is a sailing ship on wheels, the wind pushes the boat around, which can tack into the wind much like a water craft can, its wheeled suspention system is controlled by a series of muscles which dip the wheels into pits and over boulders, providing a relatively smooth ride for those on the deck of the boat. The ship has sails and its living suspention system is fed regularly. Another nifty item the Martians have is a set of binoculars which attaches to the user's head and drinks some of the person's blood, in return it connects to the user's optic nerve, feeding enhanced vision directly to the person's visual cortex. There are undoubtably versons that have night vision or thermal imaging capabilities, but as in the above, all this technology is grown rather than made. Also it seems, the Martians didn't invent this technology, but simply use it, whoever gave it to them or taught them to use it is unknown, it goes all the way to the beginning of the Martian recorded history, which stretches back for about 30,000 years. Martians have been building cities while Earth humans were still hunter-gathers living in caves.

The rest of the Solar System, is otherwise like our own Solar System. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos which are in their usual orbits and appear much as we see them.

On Earth, historical events departed significanly from our own most significanly in 1947, when Astronomers discovered that Mars and Venus had oxygen in their atmospheres. Otherwise Venus is covered in a layer or perpetual clouds, in this case water clouds. Most significantly is an upper layer of cirrus clouds composed of ice crystals. Unlike Earth where the cirrus clouds consist of thin wisps in an otherwise clear blue sky, the Venusian cirrus clouds cover the whole sky, obscuring surface features from space and diffusing and reflecting half the sunlight away from Venus's surface, keeping it cooler that what it would otherwise be. What maintains this perpetual cloud layer is somewhat perplexing to Earth meterologists who have yet to come up with a satisfying explaination. Venus looks otherwise like a bland white disk when seen from Earth.

In the case of Mars, the canals are real, there is an ocean in the Northern Hemisphere called the Northern Ocean , and a smaller Southern Sea called the Antartic Ocean in the Hellas Basin, otherwise 75% of Mars is land, its atmosphere is thinning and its surface is drying and getting more arid, leaving the deserts dotted with abandoned cities along dry canals. The United States and Allies maintian their Embassies on Mars, consisting of a total of 100 people, all shipped very expensively from Earth via nuclear rockets, the Soviets and Eastbloc nations have a simular embassy. For the US and Western Alliance the U.S.A. Space Force provides most of the transportation services, this fifth branch of the Defense Department was established in the 1950s shortly after it was discovered that there was life on Mars, and particularly after the canals were confirmed and cities were imaged by US and Soviet Space probes, in a race to get to Mars first, rocket development was accelerated and the space age began early in the 1950s as opposed to 1957 in our timeline. The Cold War still rages, but it is much calmer, mostly involving spies and espionage, rather than brush fire wars breaking out. The Superpowers have mostly turned their attention to the two planets rather than in fomenting and suppressing revolution and rebellion in the Third World.

 

[Trouble]

I thought the first book was good and pre-ordered the second. I am reading it now. Thank you.

 

[Laryssa]

I am reading it now also. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I'll just talk about the setting. No ultimate revelations will be revealed here. As established in the first book though, Mars and Venus were terraformed by some alien race at around 200,000,000 BC, and not only that but they kept adding Earth life to Venus and Mars up until just before the dawn of human civilization on Earth. There are some fully modern human beings on Venus. Mars has different races of humans who are not quite Homo Sapiens Sapiens, that is they have adapted to the different environment on Mars, and quite alot of genetic manipulation of creature also occured there, producing all sorts of weird monsters. Civilization fell on Mars, while on Venus, it is just dawning.

Lets get into the gaming aspects of it. The main Traveller Races in this setting are Human, Martian, and Neandertal. Neandertals are every bit as brutish as you might think. Of humans there are two categories, Terran and Venusian. The Martian race is further divided into castes. A Martian is an offshoot of homo sapiens, it is not clear whether they can interbreed with an Earth human, although Venusians and Earth humans can interbreed. (No one has tried it with a neandertal)

Of Martians, it has been said that their average intelligence IQ quotiant is 125, but they have no more geniues than Earth Humans do, one way to simulate this is that Martian characters role twice (3d6) for Intelligence and keep only the higher result for their intelligence score. (that is for average Martian) Martians also role twice (3d6) for strength keeping the lowest score, and a further 2 point reduction is applied to that result, (so the range in strength is from 1 to 16 with a bias towards the lower end) this simulates the lower gravity conditions they typical Martian grows up under. Another thing about Martians is they live about twice as long as humans do, so when determining their ages, use they Human table but apply it towards Martian years. (Which are twice as long) The only thing to keep in mind is that Martians reach adulthood at "age 9" in Martian years.

Venusians are identical to Earth humans in all but appearances, some Venusians have unusual eye color, and hair color, but they are otherwise normal humans. The average Neandertal roles 4d6 and picks the best 3 of the 4 die rolls to add to their strength and to the final result they add 2 to their strength role, giving them a range of 5 to 20 with a bias toward higher scores. Neandertals also use the Orc column in the D&D Players handbook to determine the effect of aging. Neandertals are brutes and they live short brutish lives.

Of the Earth Humans, the ones we are concerned about are those that belong to the elite astronaut corps. The selection process for becoming an astronaut is very compedative, and one must have "the right stuff" to make the final selection in order to travel in space and visit Venus and Mars. For most instances governments pay for these interplanetary excusions, those of the United States, Canada, Europe, the Soviet Union and the Eastbloc, as well as China towards the end of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Japan is also a major player as is Australia and New Zealand on a number of occasions.

Much of the attention worldwide has been turned towards Interplanetary space with the troubles and conflicts of the Third World being much ignored. OPEC - the Organization of Petrolieum Exporting Countries collapsed in the early 1980s, largely as a result of bioorganisms brought in from Mars that could easily produce gasoline and other petrolieum byproducts without drilling for crude oil in the middle east. The Soviets never invaded Afghanistan as they considered it to be a diversion or resources from the true effort of aqcuiring advantages on Mars and Venus, the Communist government there simply collapsed, and no one paid any further attention to the place.

The Organization know as NASA never came into being, as the space age began early in the 1950s and the concept of a civilian space agency was never thought of, instead the the US Air Force (USAF) became the US Aero-Space Force (USASF) and it subsumed the responsibilities of the old Air Force so there are now still four military services, the Army, the Navy, the Aero-Space Force, and the Marines. The Aero-Space Force is in charge of the Strategic Missile bases on land, the bomber squadrons (Stealths, B1s, and B52s), fighter squadrons (F16s, F22s etc) and so forth, but the Aero-space force also operates the launch center in Cape Canaveral, there is also one in California, and a third one in Hawaii, The Soviets have a Launch Center in Star City. The Europeans also have a launch center in French Guyana near the equator, which they also rent to commerical launches and other countries. Japan has a Launch center in Okinowa, the Chinese have theirs south of Bejing. The amount of traffic going into space is more numerous than in our world, but space travel is still rate, most people on Earth only see it on television or read about it rather than go into space themselves.

Concentrating on USASF, they have both space shuttles and heavy launch vehicles of the Saturn Class and the Nova Class. Nova Class rockets are super heavy versions of the Saturn rocket augmented with solid rocket boosters on the side so that it can lift a total of 1,000 tons into low Earth Orbit, the residents of Cocoa Beach Florida have had to install heavy plate glass windows to prevent theirs from shattering every time a Nova rocket lifts off the pad. Also Space Shuttles have been tried, there are about a dozen space shuttles in service at the USASF, and the Soviets operate about 20 of the Buran class, but the cost savings in their "reusability" have proven elusive. There are 4 main launch pads at Cape Canaveral, pads 39-A, 39-B, 39-C, and 39-D. Two of them are used for shuttles, and the other two for heavy lift vehicles.

In Traveller terms an "Astronaut" can be considered of the Navy class. Those astronauts that are trained to explore a planetary surface also have levels in the scout class. All pilots of the Aero-Space Force are also Navy characters as are the carrier pilots of the US "wet" Navy, but a regular "seaman" is not a Navy character in the traveller sense. Of all the service classes Earth humans who travel in space belong to the Navy Class, the Marines, or the Scouts. Typically, US Army soldiers are not sent to other planets, thus an Army character in the Lords of Creation campaign is likely to be a Venusian or a Martian. None of the major powers on Earth can really afford to send large numbers of Army soldiers to other planets, those military personell that are sent tend to belong to elite light-infantry and thus typically the Marines if fighting has to be done. The local planetary forces tend to out number Earth humans anyway since they are already there.

 

[Laryssa]

Lets now look at the other Traveller classes and see what role they might play.

Academics
Academics are routinely sent to Mars and Venus, while Scouts are skilled in survival in rugged frontier conditions and in strange planetary environments, the ones that are really trained in science are the Academics, they are the true reason manned expeditions are sent to the planets, the scouts and navy characters get them there and the marines defend them from the various threats they face, but the people who are trained to do the actual science once there are the academics, so their role in this setting is obvious.

Army
Army characters belong to local armies, in the case of Venus, they are bronze age warriors, in the case of Mars, the are the armies of the local city states and nations on Mars, and tend to use organic living weapons and dart throwers using darts dipped in neurotoxins and so forth.

Barbarians
Barbarians are the primitive natives found on both Venus and Mars, they tend to be hunter-gathers or practice rudimentary agriculture, but they are all fierce warriors using their primitive hunting weapons in their conflicts.

Belter
There is really no belter class, most of the space ships are built on Earth or their pieces are built on Earth and assembled in orbit, but very little asteroid material has every been mined for commercial purposes, so this character class does not exist.

Marines
Marines are the ground troops that are sent into space by Earth's nations when there is fighting to be done. Since it is very expensive to move heavy equipment to other planets, these troops are mainly infantry, they carry an assault rifle, perhaps a tripod mounted machine gun for squads, and may have at most a truck or ruggen ATV to travel around it. grenade and rocket launchers are also common, as are hand-held anti aircraft rockets such as the stinger.

Mercenaries are native warriors for hire on both Mars and Venus, The USASF and other similar organizations may hire them, but because of the agreement not to hand over Earth weapons to the natives, they tend to be locally armed. The USASF will still use them as the number of personell they can send over interplanetary distances is quite limited, and if they need local muscle, they will hire the natives of the more advanced nations on Mars and Venus which are mercenaries.

Merchants: it has been said that the two planets Mars and Venus are scientific frontiers, but they are not commerical ones. Private citizens do not typically travel in space and there is very little that can be shipped over interplanetary distances profitably, hence there are no merchants from Earth. The Merchants that are encountered are the locals that are encountered that have things they want to sell which Earth humans and others may want.

Navy
Navy characters are basically the pilots which operate the space ships that get the other characters over to Mars and Venus, they may fly other vehicles once they get to those planets, so they can make themselves useful once there. Combat in space, due to the space treaty does not typically occuy between the space powers, so there is no space combat to speak of an the space ships are not armed.

Noble
Of all the private citizens who might make it into space, the only ones who may possibly afford to go are the Nobles, which in this case usually means any one with the means or the wealth to go into space. The Russians sometimes may be hired to take a really rich person to Mars or Venus if the right amount of money is offered. The other kind of Noble are the local aristocrats of Mars and Venus, Mars has more of them and they are literally bred to fill their positions.

Professionals are the engineers of the spaceships and equipment and often are sent to bases on Venus and Mars to help maintain the equipment and keep it operable, other professionals are of course the locals of whom the Earth humans often purchase services from.

Rogues are almost always native out to steal someones valuables, on Mars they are sometime maurauders and often travel with mercenaries and pirates in pursuit of plunder, or they skulk in the alley ways of major cities to steal someone's valuables.

Scouts are basically astronauts sent over from Earth, they may also be local native explorers, and since they know the lay of the land, the USASF may sometimes hire them as guides.

Traveller this class has not yet developed among Earthlings, any leisurly travelling that is done is done on a single planet by local native travellers. Travelling on Mars is very dangerous and is not done lightly. On Venus there is the ever present danger of becoming a snack for some carnivourous dinosaur.

 

[jwdh71]

This is great stuff, you should post some more of this!