Wormhole Campaign in Solomani Rim

[Tom Kalbfus]

What if we put a wormhole here?

These are the stats, goes into a bit more detail and I added my own stellar and system detail.

I plan on placing different wormholes in different locations throughoutt the Solomani Rim
all leading to the same sector but in different locations one million years in the future. Giving the
Characters someplace interesting to explore.

 

[-Daniel-]

So all worm holes lead to the same place?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

So all worm holes lead to the same place?

Same Subsector See the map below, a wormhole in a Solomani Rim Hex leads to the corresponding hex in the Unknown Sector, the wormholes are in the same positions with respect to each other in the Unknown Sector as they are in the Solomani Rim. Explorers can determine whether there is a gas giant in the system before jumping there, but otherwise in this player's map I leave an X where the world will eventually be placed once the system is investigated.

There are multiple wormholes, the Solomani Confederation has some in its territory and so does the Imperium. So I'm setting up a competition of sorts to make things interesting.

 

[-Daniel-]

Ah, cool idea. I like where you are taking this. Should be quite fun. I look forward to reading more as this moves forward. :mrgreen:

 

[Condottiere]

Since we're in Harrington territory, wormholes don't respect borders, so you can expect large garrisoned space stations and minefields squatting on each.

 

[Hopeless]

Wouldn't that mean they're interconnected so they could pick and choose which wormhole they exited from provided they know how they work that is? :twisted:

 

[Condottiere]

If an Ancient ship turns up, that's a technological treasure trove to capture and exploit.

If an battlefleet from some long ago civilization transits through, they'll be in for a surprise.

If the Imperium figures out how to control passage, it's a safeguard.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Ah, cool idea. I like where you are taking this. Should be quite fun. I look forward to reading more as this moves forward. :mrgreen:

The wormhole stretches a span of one million years, it originated in the Big Bang, and was expanded, by the descendents of Humanity. The past end is in the classic Traveller era, the future end is one million years in the future in a parallel timeline created by the time difference of the wormhole. The Traveller timeline is the created timeline, the one in the future is the original, and in the original.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Wouldn't that mean they're interconnected so they could pick and choose which wormhole they exited from provided they know how they work that is? :twisted:

Exactly, a few other things. The natives on the other side don't have Jump Drives, they don't have grav plating. If their ships accelerate, they feel the acceleration. They have the equivalent of maneuver drives but they don't work by emitting gravity fields, they also have air/rafts, but again they are propelled by maneuver drives. The main type of starship in use is the Interstellar ramjet, which typically takes years to travel between the stars, and people live on these starships, grow their own food, regenerate atmosphere, and occasionally stop off at planets, it never occured to them that FTl travel was possible, so they didn't investigate it. The wormholes were built by an ancient civiliation that has long since been forgotten about except in legend, and the wormholes themselves were build away from inhabited systems, because of their massive gravitational fields required to bend space and produce these wormholes. (The gravitational fields might disrupt the orbits of planets) So they typically are in interstellar space far from any inhabited object or star, and from a distance share many properties of a black hole, it emits no light, and can be detected only gravitationally, but from a parsec away or more, it is very hard to detect unless their is an artifact indicating their location, or some starship stumbles upon it by accident.

The other side has one million years of additional history, although it is clear that this is still in the Milky Way Galaxy, the Sun is in this sector, even though in one million years the stars have shifted position so that many of them are not recognizable.
The history of this sector differs in the following respect:
1. There are no ancients, or at least not the reptilian ancients of classic Traveller, instead humans are or were the Ancients.

2. In this timeline humans colonized space in their Solar System, and build slower than light starships, because their science told them that faster than light travel was impossible, people who investigated FTL drives were not treated seriously and were treated as crackpots, and did not receive the funding they needed to make the Jump Drive a reality.

3. Some humans uploaded into machines, they became super intelligent, and no longer needed garden world to live on. One of these discovered a primordial wormhole from the Big Bang, they expanded it and split it into several wormholes that are spread throughout the sector.

4. Originally these wormholes went further back in time, they spread life through out the past end of the wormhole, and brought some life from their through the wormhole. (The Ancients we know were descended from dinosaurs that were saved from the extinction that wiped them out on Earth)

5. The machine races are out of the picture except for the wormholes they left behind, their are other post-human races, one an extremely long lived one called the Eldar which specializes in space travel, for them the long travel times of STL space travel are no big deal, and they live on their starships.

a. Standard Humans are called "Throw backs" most of these come from slower that light starships which have traveled hundreds of thousands of light years near light speed.

b. Another sort are the "Halflings" they resemble standard humans only they are half as tall. they resemble children and stand 1 meter tall, but that is their adult size, their children are proportionally smaller

c. There are dwarves, which are basic human stock that have evolved for a higher gravity environment, hence their stocky frame and shorter build.

d. There are Orcs, which are derived from uplifted gorillas and mixed with human DNA, these often make a living through piracy and maurauding.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the Suleiman Subsector B with my wormhole location.

And this is the player's map to which it leads.

These are my stats for Suleiman, the basic stats are from the classic Solomani rim, I added the Stellar and System Data myself. If you want, you could submit mainworld data or system data to the various Xs in the Player's map. I will add revisions to that map if you submit them here. As you can see the systems are more sparsely spread on the other side of this wormhole, this gives a slight advantage to the natives on this side since they rely on slower than light interstellar ramjets which do not have range limits like the Jump capable starships do.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is my Concord Subsector with wormholes:

These are the stats for the mainworlds and systems of Concord Subsector.

And this is the subsector that these wormholes lead to As always if you wish to detail any of these systems, you can post it right here:

This is Subsector D Harlequin.

and the unknown Subsector D it connects to:

Here is the Sol Subsector:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is Subsector Es

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here's the corrected Sol Subsector with wormhole:

Here is what's on the other side of the wormhole:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here's how I map the ringworld. I break it up into sections, and each hex is treated as a different world with UWP codes and so forth:

All the starports are on the north wall. The climate simulated just inside the wall is a mountanous Temperate zone at about 45 degrees latitude North, the Climate along the South Wall is simulating 90 degrees South with arctic conditions. The builders of the Ringworld decided to include only one Polar environment along the South Rim Wall, the North has an extended Temperate Zone. This ringworld unlike a certain other has seasons and variable length days at different locations and at different times during a 365 day year. Each day is 24 hours long divided into day and night according to the time of year, location on the ringworld and the season.

I will post the stats, hydrographic percentage, Population, Government type around the Starport later. I am just out of time now.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here are the stats for the various starport areas on the ringworld. I think you will agree that the best way to get around on this ringworld is by spaceship.
Most of the places on the ringworld are rather primitive, typically it is tech level 0 or tech level 1 without metals. The main exception to this are the spill mountains along the north rimwall of this ringworld, here their are enough metals to build a technological civilization upon. The rest of the ringworld is about 10 meters of soil and rock upon the impentatrable ringworld floor material. This floor material is super strong. There is nothing the Imperium of any tech level 15 civilization has that can put a dent in it. The Imperium and the Solomani Confedertion have established bases along this rimwall. The wall is also lined with ancient starports designed to handle interstellar fusion ramjets. The Imperium and the Solomani have modified some of these starports to handle FTL starships and their unique requirements, there are even shipyards in some of them that can build Jump capable starships. Of course everything is under Earth gravity. Starships approaching the ringworld need to approach slowly enough so as not to trigger the ringworld's automatic defense system, which can vaporize anything with its x-ray lasers, even black globes become quickly overloaded when struck by these x-ray lasers, so the Imperium and everyone else have learned to obey all the traffic rules so as not to trigger this defense system, that means basically matching the ringworld's spin velocity within a few thousand kph when coming within 1 hex (1,760,000 km) of the ringworld's surface. By the way, if you have better names for these Starport civilizations, I am open to suggestions, these are just preliminary random speech sounds I threw together, and I have not put them on the map. We need to call them something until we get more permanent names for them. A world about the UWP I am using. The first digit is the starport, same as any world, the size digit that comes next uses the reserved Z digit, that is because each hex is 1,760,000 wide, the ringworld itself is 1,600,000 km wide, so it is almost as wide as a hex. The thickness of the ring world is 1 km, the height of the rimwalls is 1600 km and they are also 1 km thick. (So there is plenty of room to land a starship on, the starports themselves have ledges on top of these walls that are 10 km wide and overhang empty space. Anything dropped from them will be flung right out of the Solar System, as the ringworld is spinning far in excess of the Solar escape velocity. It completely rotates in 9 days, the ringworld is 6.28 AU in circumference as it is 1 AU in radius, so it rotates 6.28 AU in 9 days, that is almost 0.7 AU per day, that is 1,212 km/sec, about one third of one percent of the speed of light.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the Esperance subsector with the wormhole location.
I've made some GM copies of the unknown Subsector with world data in it.

This subsector has an Eldar colonized world on it, that would be hex 0509 , it is a Earth clone world A867668-G
Starport A
Size 8 = approx 12,800 km in diameter
Atmosphere 6 = Standard
Hydrographic 7 = 70% water surface
Population 6 = Millions of inhabitants Eldar
Goverment 6 = Captive Government (Colony)
Law Level 8
Tech Level G

Government is by a Psion with the telepathy talent, in this case she can telepathically communicate with the homeworld over 30 parsecs away. All Eldar have psionics to one degree or another.

Eldar have notable Dexterity (+2), notable intelligence (+2), and weak endurance (-2), they have an additional characteristic called comeliness in which they are notable (+2) that can be used in social interactions in place of Social Standing in many circumstances. The Eldar are a genetically engineered race, close enough to humans that the two may breed and produce offspring. To get height and weight, simply roll for a human and roll for an Eldar and average the two sets of stats together.

These are the height and weight tables of the major races in this sector.
Aging Effects
Species ---- Middle Age ---- Old ---- Venerable ---- Maximum Age
Human ---- 35 years ---- 53 years ---- 70 years ---- 70 + 2d40 years
Dwarf ---- 125 years ---- 188 years ---- 250 years ---- 250 + 2d100 years
Eldar ----175 years ---- 263 years ---- 350 years ---- 350 + 4d100 years
Human-Eldar offspring ---- 62 years ---- 93 years ---- 125 years ---- 125 + 3d20 years
Halfling ---- 50 years ---- 75 years ---- 100 years ---- 100 + 5d20 years
Orc ---- 30 years ---- 45 years ---- 60 years ---- 60 + 2d20 years

Random Height and Weight
------------------- Base --- Base ---------------- Weight*
------------------- Height --- Weight -------------- Modifier X Multiplier
Human, male --- 1.47 m --- 54.43 kg --- 2d10 X 2.27 kg
Human, female --- 1.35 m --- 38.56 kg --- 2d10 X 2.27 kg
Dwarf, male --- 1.14 m --- 68.04 kg --- 2d4 X 3.18 kg
Dwarf, female --- 1.09 m --- 54.43 kg --- 2d4 X 3.18 kg
Eldar, male --- 1.63 m --- 45.36 kg --- 2d8 X 1.36 kg
Eldar, female --- 1.63 m --- 40.82 kg --- 2d6 X 1.36 kg
Halfling, male --- 0.81 m --- 13.61 kg --- 2d4 X 0.45 kg
Halfling, female --- 0.76 m --- 11.34 kg --- 2d4 X 0.45 kg
Orc, male --------- 1.47 m --- 68.04 kg --- 2d12 X 3.18 kg
Orc, female -------- 1.35 m --- 49.9 kg --- 2d12 X 3.18 kg
*Multiply the weight modifier rolled by 0.0254 m and add it to base height to get the character's actual height in meters.

Eldar appear as human except taller and thinner on average, they are a subrace of humans genetically engineered for longevity, and as there has not been any Jump Drives until the wormholes connecting the Solomani Rim to this sector were discovered, star travel was by sublight relativistic starships the average cruise velocities are broken down by tech level in this table.

Slower than light tech levels -----c = 299792458 m/sec
Tech Level Speed -----% of speed of light -----γ
0 -------0.000625 km/sec 0.00% -----1
1 -------0.0025 km/sec 0.00% -----1
2 -------0.01 km/sec ------0.00% -----1
3 -------0.04 km/sec ------0.00% -----1
4 -------0.16 km/sec ------0.00% -----1
5 -------0.64 km/sec ------0.00% -----1
6 -------2.56 km/sec ------0.00% -----1
7 -------10.24 km/sec ----0.00% -----1.000000001
8 -------40.96 km/sec ----0.01% -----1.000000009
9 -------163.84 km/sec ----0.05% -----1.000000149
10(A) -------655.36 km/sec ----0.22% -----1.000002389
11(B) -------2,621.36 km/sec ----0.87% -----1.00003823
12(C) -------10,480.63 km/sec ----3.50% -----1.000611648
13(D) -------41,618.07 km/sec ----13.88% -----1.009777455
14(E) -------149,774.30 km/sec ----49.96% -----1.154387706
15(F) -------285,737.82 km/sec ----95.31% -----3.304731592
16(G) -------299,752.39 km/sec ----99.99% -----61.16588226

The last column is the gamma factor as you can see the gamma factor for Tech Level G starships is 61.16588226, so basically that is how many seconds tick for the rest of the universe for each second of experienced travel time for the crew and passengers. Even at such high rates of travel, travel times between the stars are still measured in years. Since Eldar can have a maximum lifespan of 750 without agathics, the long travel times are only a minor concern for this race. The Eldar possess a number of planets and inhabit much of the ringworld itself, but a visit to an Eldar World hardly reveals its technological nature. For one thing Eldar like low population densities, they don't live in cities, even their starport on the surface is carefully designed to blend in with the surrounding terrain. Eldar grow their houses out of trees, and prefer to live in forest villages, of not more than a few thousand, and their is lots of empty wilderness inbetween. Some key technologies they possess are disintergrators and matter transporters of the Star Trek variety, basically colliminated micro-tractor beams which assemble atoms into molecules and molecules into objects being replicated. Pretty much any object can be replicated including living creatures, which the Eldar are loathe to do. The Eldar value life above all things, and consider the disassembly of a living creature atom by atom to be murder, even if that same creature is then reassembled later in another location. Eldar do not consider machines, no matter how intelligent to be alive, so they don't have problems transporting those. Balancing out the advantages Eldar have, they are set in their ways, they don't like to risk their lives, and take a long time making decisions of any sort, relying heavily on their advanced technology for defense. They don't have FTL travel but through their long range telepaths, they do have a Psionic form of FTL communication, and some are rumored to possess other powers that they can project over long distances.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the Unknown Subsector B with GM information:

Here is the GM version of Subsector C in the unknown Subsector

Remember that these Systems didn't have FTL drives when the Imperium and Solomani Rim discovered them through their wormholes so pretty much each system has its own government and is not part of a larger nation, the main exception would be systems with government type 6, these are Eldar ruled worlds, some Psionic individual with telepathic communication with the rest of the far flung Eldar Empire is in charge here!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is Subsector G, the Vega Subsector with the wormhole location:

Here is Subsector H, the Banasdan Subsector

Here is Subsector I, the Albadawi Subsector with two wormholes:

This is subsector J, the Dingir Subsector, there are no wormholes here.

And here is Subsector K, the Sol Subsector with its wormhole.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

And now we have Subsector L the Arcturus Subsector. With this my maps of the Solomani Rim is 75% complete.

When I'm done with these, I'll start to flesh out the Unknown Sector on the other side of these wormholes a bit more. You agree that this would change the setting once the wormholes are discovered by somebody? Should the Solomani discover theirs first, give them a bit of a head start over the Imperium? You know what these wormholes could be used for? Smuggling Solomani Confederation starships deep into Imperium space in this sector without their knowledge. the Wormholes are difficult to detect from a parsec away, you have to know where they are within that hex before you can jump towards them. I'd say some Solomani Rebels discovered some ancient ruins on Pluto which indicated the locations of each wormhole. The wormholes have maintained their positions with respect to each other over time and with respect to the Sun, but the stars other than the Sun have shifted their positions relative to them, this indicates they have been sheparded over time by some intelligent force. Each wormhole has mass comparable to the Sun, the actual size of the wormhole is about 1600 km in diameter, so most starships that the Imperium or the Confederation could conceivably build would be able to travel through it.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is Subsector M, the Jardin Subsector with two wormholes: