For centuries, the galaxy flourished under the benevolent aegis of the Empire. Yet however great the Empire grew as it spread across the stars, it knew that others had gone that way before: it depended upon a network of interstellar gates, wrought from the fabric of reality with powers beyond any but their vanished Builders.
In time, these Builders came to be revered by some as gods... and as so often before, disputes about their will led to war.
The Guardian sect sought to end use of the Gates. With the forces of interstellar civilization arrayed against them, their cause seemed hopeless. But then the Guardians came to possess bulk antimatter, and they began to use it to collapse the wormholes within Gates, preventing, they supposed, the profanation of heaven. Dozens of systems were cut off from Connected Space with each attack. Galactic commerce and government were shattered.
At last, war even came to the frontiers of the Empire. A long dark age brought ruin to countless inhabited planets. A small group of outlying worlds, their only known link with inhabited space cut by an antimatter attack, allied to rebuild starfairing civilization within their handful of still-linked star systems. Their inhabitants do not know what has transpired outside. Have the Antimatter Wars ended? Were the Guardians defeated, or is the territory of the Alliance all that remains of Connected Space? Perhaps afraid of the answers they might find, they made little attempt to find out.
After many years of uncertainty, an unknown space probe emerged from a wormhole on the Allied frontier, provoking political changes favourable to an investigation. The Assembly has decided to send a grand mission of exploration to survey space through this wormhole, which leads away from what was once the pale of Imperial colonization. The future of the Alliance, and possibly of all that remains of interstellar civilization, hinges on what is to be found beyond the Twelve Worlds...
Primer on the Setting
The player characters will be part of a mission to explore a poorly-known part of the galaxy. For a long time, the government of the planet Dirac blockaded the only wormhole leading away from Allied Space, fearing at any moment the Guardians - or something worse - could emerge and threaten them. However, the first thing to pass the gate since the fall of the Empire was not a war machine at all, but a simple space probe, fuelling hopes that friendly civilizations might exist beyond the Twelve Worlds, and encouraging a pro-exploration movement.
The expedition's goals will be to:
- conduct an scientific survey
- make peaceful contact with civilizations beyond known space
- identify opportunities for trade and cultural exchange
- determine if there is some path of wormhole linkages that goes back to what was once the inhabited galaxy
- ... and if so, to determine the final outcome of the Antimatter Wars - answering the question, "is it safe to come out now?"
A little is known about the area you'll be exploring, from the records of probes and survey missions conducted by Imperial scouts and independent explorers before the collapse. Astronomers in Allied space have catalogued the stars and some of the planets orbiting them, but the Wormhole Builders' network reaches less than one percent of stars - until you traverse an unknown gate, you are unlikely to have any idea to which of many nearby star systems it connects. Some more information about the immediate target of your mission has come from the careful reverse engineering of the space probe, which suggests a human civilization technologically inferior to your own. And of course, there are many rumors and legends told of things that supposedly happened in the dark age.
There are few sentient aliens in this setting. In the Twelve Worlds, there are only Humans and Biran, the latter being coldwater reef-dwellers. Other intelligent species were known during Imperial times, notably the Mu Araen, a hive-minded organism able to colonize the atmospheres of gas planets - bringing back friendly Mu Arean settlers would be a huge boon to the Alliance. Neither of these species has especially human-like psychology, though Biran and Human cultures are to a degree mutually comprehensible.
Player Characters
The party will be travelling on an advanced spacecraft representing a substantial outlay even by a multiplanetary civilization, a mobile embassy, research institute and hospital. However, the campaign is not so much about this ship as it will be about the places it visits - cultures that have developed divergently since contact with them was lost. It's desirable for all major decision makers on the ship to be player characters. However, many of these decision makers would - by policy (e.g. the captain) or common sense (the Ambassador) remain on the ship, at least until any realistic possibility of danger (i.e. unplanned adventure) has passed. Therefore, it's desirable that players should have both a character who occupies one of these decision-maker roles, and a second character who is free for potentially-hazardous planetary missions.
Game System
The game system to be used has not yet been determined. A feature of the system will be character development through the exercise of skills and in-character training/learning activities.