Alien Environments

[ChalkLine]

One of the regrets I've had about my long traveller experience is that it's I've had few experiences of truly alien worlds. In the main it's been spaceship gaming interspersed with bar-hopping. The few on-world adventures have often been 'sunny Tuesday afternoon on earth with odd critters' worlds.

So this is the thread to give GMs ideas on some variants on worlds to add to that alien feeling.

- The world has a very high oxygen ratio.
While humans can breathe the atmosphere normally, this means fires burn far hotter than normal and humans have fire extinguishing equipment everywhere. Alien life moves *very* fast as they oxidise quickly. However they need heat radiator or heat purging systems in their bodies or they over heat quickly, meaning large fins or maybe super-cold glands.

- Massive radio noise from a nearby astral body such as a super-Jovian body.
No radios work and instead a system of laser-communicators are used instead. Overhead are dedicated satellites for surface communicators but any light-blocking object blocks communications.

- Due to volcanic activity it rains *all* the time.
The rain varies from squally showers to massive monsoon-like downpours. There is *never* any clear skies.

- The planet is tidally-locked and does not spin on its axis.
As the players have landed in the shady habitable band this means the light level outside is a permanent almost-darkness. The light level is equivalent to the time on earth as it is getting dark. Note that this planet has two 'Star Wars-like' mono-environments as well as the Habitable Band; the hot, desert 'hot pole' and the icy, polar 'cold pole'.

- There is almost no magnetosphere on this planet resulting in it being bathed in harmful radiation.
While there is normal atmosphere vacc suits must be worn outside. Note that all vacc suits are equipped for this sort of planet, a small breathing unit is standard and the life support system can be removed for comfort. Animal life might have heavy shield that acts like armour to survive on the surface.

Add some more!

 

[Anonymous]

laser communications and the sky is never clear?

 

[ChalkLine]

laser communications and the sky is never clear?

Oh, they were supposed to be separate environments and not one weird-ass one (although looking at it that'd make an interesting planet)

 

[paltrysum]

Bullet points three and four may be put to use in the upcoming Naval Adventure 3: Fire on the Sindalian Main. A tidally locked world with one half very volcanically active is featured as part of the adventure. While the particulars of the environment are only briefly described, there's no reason you couldn't run with it and make its physical properties more of a key to the story there.

 

[Anonymous]

I just noticed that one about tidal lockiing. Tidally locked planets do rotate. They just do it in the same time as they complete an orbit.

 

[Saladman]

6. Small planet or large moon, but a strong magnetosphere and thick atmosphere keep it livable. Every step is like walking on the moon. With a smaller globe you can get anywhere on the world in an air-raft or light jet surprising quickly.

7. Heavy planet. Visitors commonly use exoskeletons just to get around. Founding population engineered for strength and high gravity, rarely travel. Mega-Corporations hire locals to mine for rare metals and radioactives; locals jealously guard their labor rights from outside workers.

8. Venus, despite the sulfuric rain and the crushing pressure and heat at surface level, is almost habitable at the right altitude. At a little less than Earth sea level pressure you get temperatures between 0 and 50 Celsius, you're above most of the acid rain, and you've still got radiation shielding from the atmosphere above. A blimp-like habitat with earth atmosphere as a lifting gas inside would float a little lower, but still be manageable as a sealed habitat.

Make it not-Venus to take the sulfur off the table if you want and you could have open-air anti-grav habitats interacting with a variety of native life built as floaters and flyers. Maybe some of it has life cycles that take it deeper down in the atmosphere, but those depths are poorly understood, and research teams go missing more often than they should. Maybe something intelligent but deeply alien down there.

 

[Saladman]

Necroing this for personal interest. And I'd love to see others add their own.

9. Hot, wet, oxygen atmosphere world where the equator boils and only the poles are comfortable for humans. Poles have had earth flora introduced and qualify it as a shirt-sleeves garden world, though population and habitable area are limited compared to most. Middle latitudes are occupied by alien rain forests and sauroids native to the planet. Suited expeditions in for rare biologicals are dangerous but lucrative. The poles have long since split politically, with each claiming to be the real legitimate world government, but with most of the planet in the way the only real fighting has been orbital skirmishes. Two competing downports provide excellent and cheap services to merchants and visitors, as long as conflict doesn't flare up.

10. Water world whose human inhabitants live in giant ship-cities. Earth-compatible native biochemistry lead to the introduction of uplifted dolphins, whales, and human-dna-derived genetically engineered "mermaids." (Who look more like deep sea manatees with flipper-arms really. Most notable as one of the first experiences with different environments and body plans producing different minds. They were wired for human brains, the designers thought we'd all be one family, but they've turned out to be harder to talk to than the dolphins, on par with the whales). The escaped, feral, partially uplifted earth octopi were in hindsight a mistake, but there's no getting rid of them now. At least one of the native mega-fauna predators seems to be intelligent though non-civilized. Without continents or significant mountains the oxygen atmosphere has constant high winds, and most traders dock at the highport, although streamlined small starships can get somewhat better prices by landing directly on a ship-city.

11. Originally a rocky iceball planet on the outside of the habitable zone, early terraformers installed giant solar mirrors in equatorial orbit to warm the place up. It mostly worked, although introducing a Terran biosphere has gone slower than projected. The equator has the most Terran flora and fauna, but most of the rest is still being seeded with lichen or plankton.

Much of planetary GDP goes to ongoing flora seeding and maintaining the mirrors, retarding its economic progress more than expected. Local asteroid belt is claimed and patrolled by the planetary government but mostly worked by out-system belters who have the ships and expertise; tax rates are an ongoing bone of contention.

On the bright side they've got a few herds of genetically engineered mammoths which bring in the galactic elite for safaris, and the sauroids left the place alone entirely in the last war (too cold for their blood), so they've got a few things going for them.

 

[Zapgun]

There's a tv series on Netflix called "Alien Worlds' that has some interesting ideas for ecologies and alien environments. Might be worth a watch if you're looking for some inspiration.

 

[Jet_Black]

I suggest reading the Polity-novels by British writer Neal Asher. He is a master when it comes to describing weird planets and their even weirder inhabitants - especially the planet Masada with its gabbleducks and hooders...