Just started making my first sub-sector and...

[captainjack23]

sorry i didn't make it clearer earlier but after rolling up Paradise I decided that it was a penal colony relying on hand me down technology from a much larger more powerful world which was how several billion people could live on an asteroid at TL 8 the larger world had a much smaller population and much higher TL and they decided to ship there undesirables off to a small rock orbiting a near by star.

So, then, the thing to remember is that this is for a gaming setting. Which means either that the population size is simply for atmosphere (uncountable hordes in a termite-like hive) and thus the logisitics are less important in that kind of a game or encounter....or the anomaly is the plot hook.

"How...many.... people live there ? How is...that...possible ?"

"Unclear captain. Logic suggests that there is more than is explained by the profile. Further information is required."

"dear god, it must be hell down there; we have to do something"

"Further evidence will be needed, Doctor, before we are able to intervene"

"you soulless monster ! "

"Gen-tle-men, we have a survey team down on the planet that is out... of.... communication. Plot a course, Helmsman."

"Veddy Guud, Kepten !"

Which is to illustrate the point that not all anomalies should be treated as simple errors and inconsistencies to pick apart - as they would IRL science or copyediting or playtesting. Perhaps the players will discover that this is a horrible hive mind; or a lie; a slave breeding pit, alien symbionts living off of solar energy and CHON; or hell itself. Or perhaps they'll never find out, and die trying. It's story fuel.

 

[captainjack23]

Plus, well, once there, they breed. How long have they been there ?

Uncontrollably, apparently.

That's OK, they also have a surplus of Soylent Green for export.

A large asteroid hollowed out by an alien race, turned into a food factory, in which megatons of humans, captured from a forgotten world, are raised for food. Genetically engineered to live in microgravity, take nourishment from a liquid enviroment, and to have little or no skeleton, few tendons, and grossly distended "tasty bits", with generations perhaps three to four years long. They are force grown in nutrient vats hundreds of feet deep, stacked in layers thousands deep, and harvested by robotic machines who have long since lost their masters but not their purpose. .

Now as processed food, intended to feed a long extinct race, the remains are either placed back into the system, or shipped to a storage point now forgotten , never to be picked up; retained until past expiration and then dumped into the sun.
The subjects, raised like brine shrimp to be helpless blobs of delicate flesh, are, horribly, sentient -human brains were a delicacy, and in maximizing the delicate flesh of the frontal lobes and the Amygdala accidently produced a race of genius telepaths, able to communicate with each other, but with no access to the outside world, or any ability to physically alter their environment.

The inhabitants know no other universe or way of living. They think great and profound thoughts; develop astonishingly brilliant hypothetical systems of mathematics physics and philosophy. They have contact with each other, a forum of trillions. And all are harvested, slaughtered and processed after three years, converted into nutrition for long dead aliens, and thrown away as waste.

Into this, the players arrive. Perhaps they discover the storage site first, with its vast reserves of free, unidentifiable foodstuffs for the taking......who looks a gift horse in the mouth ? Load and ship, and back again for more. Perhaps there is a famine on a nearby world...perhaps there isn;t a famine because and only because the storage point was discovered years ago, and is now crucial to the survical of another world -and the deepest secret imaginable.

Or a scout ship, discovering the world, and its inhabitants...what to do ?
What to do with a race needing 100% life support in unimaginable numbers ? Stop the system and cause them to die of neglect ? Stop the slaughter and have them die of the inevitable population explosion ? Evacuate more people than a dozen subsectors could support ?

Contact them and let them know of their fate and the futility of their existence ?
Leave it as is and collaborate with an unimaginable and ultimately futile slaughter dwarfing any known genocide - with no end in sight, ever ?

 

[Jeff Hopper]

Oh, that's good...I mean really good...

I'm going to steal this one for future use, captainjack23!

 

[hhawk]

the larger world had a much smaller population and much higher TL and they decided to ship there undesirables off to a small rock orbiting a near by star.

They have trillions of undesirables?!

Maybe they are a colony of uplifted rats ;-p