Worst places to live in the OTU
- Thread starter captainjack23
- Start date
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Stolen directly from our own Golan, I present a High tech, industrial high population Poor World......
Nevis B5339DC-C
Originally a hardscrabble colonial outpost, half penal colony, half dumping ground for losers and refugees from the collapse of the Vilani Empire, Nevis entered the long night in great obscurity and remained there until recontacted early in the third Imperium. Minimally habitable, and possessed of no great natural or artificial resources, Nevis shuddered along with only occasional contact and no known raids. Population –originally estimated to be in the 6-7 range was dropping (estimated 5 at recontact), and the local government had become quite repressive in encouraging austerity and survival at all costs.
Ironically, recontact by scout service encouraged the government to bankrupt the remaining resources and economy in attempting to find a local resource to export. And find it they did. A life form native to an inner, less pleasant planet in the system was transplanted to Nevis, in the hopes of developing a new source of protein. Unfortunately, it failed to completely adapt; and while it grew modestly, it was unable to reproduce , and additionally required intensive culturing to survive. All in all it would have been written off as yet another disaster in the colonies miserable history; except that final studies found that one result of decay after the life forms death was capable of easy processing into <insert really really cool spice drug or pharmaceutical>, locally referred to as Freem. Attempts to process the product on its native planet failed, and it became clear that the final product was a result of the source life form having initial exposure to its home environment, partial adaptation to Nevis’ ecosystem, and the interaction of native & Terran decay organisms following death; Further, the longer the lifeform was able to survive on Nevis, the greater the yield of Freem.
The local Government petitioned for, and received partial intervention by the scout service, allowing them to control access to the crucial final steps ion the process, and to be able to negotiate iits export from a position of strength; once deals were signed, and bribes finalized, the Government appealed for limited economic contact with its new partners, and the favored megacorps simultaneously turned the screws for access from the other side. *
The result of the discovery,a dn the subsequent development of the processing industry was to either save the planet or doom it, depending on which side of the fence you lived on.
The need to produce the lifeforms on their native planet and then gather and safely move them to Nevis for secondary habituation (and eventually processing) pulled in significant off planet capital, and resulted in a boom to nevis’ previously rudimentary space capacity. Off planet corporations involved in <fill in the blank with the wicked exploitive substance industry> shoved money into the main city, and generously padded the accounts of the the local government and the few wealthy native industrialists Rapidly a huge infrastructure was built on Nevis, absolutely dedicated to the management and production of Freem.
Money and technology rapidly became available, and the only remaining bottleneck was population – the husbandry required on Nevis was highly manpower intensive, and absolutely crucial. Accordingly, as time passed and the credits rolled in, the government moved most of the agricultural and industrial population to producing Freem, and simply purchased the needed food and goods from off planet. Additional labor was obtained by the same means that Nevis was originally settled by, as well as the reintroduction locally of the concept of immigration indentures.
Today, the system is a monument (of sorts) to the company town system of industry and a monoculture economy; almost no-one living in the system is uninvolved with the Freem trade, and the vast bulk of the population is little more than subsistence labor, generally hideously indebted to the government. It also should be noted that most of the rank and file suffer from the addictive nature of Freem, and would have significant problems leaving the system.
Thus, life on Nevis can only be said to have improved for the worse; there have been several investigations of reports of outright slavery on the planet, but the governemnet and corporations involved have always been able to just skirt Imperial intervention. There have also been attempts to “export” the source of Freem, but all have failed – as a result, the “customs” patrol in the Nevis system is extremely large, tough and hardbitten. Similarly, with a huge mass of workers to manage, the police militia is also large, well equipped, and almost entirely composed of off planet advisors. The government is still completely native, but almost all administrative and management positions in the “Nevis General Freem Corporation” are offworld employees of the guest megacorps. The government has not changed except thru death or petty internal intrigues**, and is still highly controlling and repressive, and completely self perpetuating . Indeed, the governing class is essentially hereditary, and, for all intents and purposes, a ruling caste.
* It should be noted that the “Freem Scandal” as the wholesale manipulation of the IISS contact regulations
came to be known, did result in a complete revision of contact and interdiction procedures, as well as not a few retirements in the Scout Administration.
**for instance, the vice minister of economic development being fired and his responsibilities dividied up between the Ag department and the department of trade; not exactly a tanks-in-the-square type of coup.
Nevis B5339DC-C
Originally a hardscrabble colonial outpost, half penal colony, half dumping ground for losers and refugees from the collapse of the Vilani Empire, Nevis entered the long night in great obscurity and remained there until recontacted early in the third Imperium. Minimally habitable, and possessed of no great natural or artificial resources, Nevis shuddered along with only occasional contact and no known raids. Population –originally estimated to be in the 6-7 range was dropping (estimated 5 at recontact), and the local government had become quite repressive in encouraging austerity and survival at all costs.
Ironically, recontact by scout service encouraged the government to bankrupt the remaining resources and economy in attempting to find a local resource to export. And find it they did. A life form native to an inner, less pleasant planet in the system was transplanted to Nevis, in the hopes of developing a new source of protein. Unfortunately, it failed to completely adapt; and while it grew modestly, it was unable to reproduce , and additionally required intensive culturing to survive. All in all it would have been written off as yet another disaster in the colonies miserable history; except that final studies found that one result of decay after the life forms death was capable of easy processing into <insert really really cool spice drug or pharmaceutical>, locally referred to as Freem. Attempts to process the product on its native planet failed, and it became clear that the final product was a result of the source life form having initial exposure to its home environment, partial adaptation to Nevis’ ecosystem, and the interaction of native & Terran decay organisms following death; Further, the longer the lifeform was able to survive on Nevis, the greater the yield of Freem.
The local Government petitioned for, and received partial intervention by the scout service, allowing them to control access to the crucial final steps ion the process, and to be able to negotiate iits export from a position of strength; once deals were signed, and bribes finalized, the Government appealed for limited economic contact with its new partners, and the favored megacorps simultaneously turned the screws for access from the other side. *
The result of the discovery,a dn the subsequent development of the processing industry was to either save the planet or doom it, depending on which side of the fence you lived on.
The need to produce the lifeforms on their native planet and then gather and safely move them to Nevis for secondary habituation (and eventually processing) pulled in significant off planet capital, and resulted in a boom to nevis’ previously rudimentary space capacity. Off planet corporations involved in <fill in the blank with the wicked exploitive substance industry> shoved money into the main city, and generously padded the accounts of the the local government and the few wealthy native industrialists Rapidly a huge infrastructure was built on Nevis, absolutely dedicated to the management and production of Freem.
Money and technology rapidly became available, and the only remaining bottleneck was population – the husbandry required on Nevis was highly manpower intensive, and absolutely crucial. Accordingly, as time passed and the credits rolled in, the government moved most of the agricultural and industrial population to producing Freem, and simply purchased the needed food and goods from off planet. Additional labor was obtained by the same means that Nevis was originally settled by, as well as the reintroduction locally of the concept of immigration indentures.
Today, the system is a monument (of sorts) to the company town system of industry and a monoculture economy; almost no-one living in the system is uninvolved with the Freem trade, and the vast bulk of the population is little more than subsistence labor, generally hideously indebted to the government. It also should be noted that most of the rank and file suffer from the addictive nature of Freem, and would have significant problems leaving the system.
Thus, life on Nevis can only be said to have improved for the worse; there have been several investigations of reports of outright slavery on the planet, but the governemnet and corporations involved have always been able to just skirt Imperial intervention. There have also been attempts to “export” the source of Freem, but all have failed – as a result, the “customs” patrol in the Nevis system is extremely large, tough and hardbitten. Similarly, with a huge mass of workers to manage, the police militia is also large, well equipped, and almost entirely composed of off planet advisors. The government is still completely native, but almost all administrative and management positions in the “Nevis General Freem Corporation” are offworld employees of the guest megacorps. The government has not changed except thru death or petty internal intrigues**, and is still highly controlling and repressive, and completely self perpetuating . Indeed, the governing class is essentially hereditary, and, for all intents and purposes, a ruling caste.
* It should be noted that the “Freem Scandal” as the wholesale manipulation of the IISS contact regulations
came to be known, did result in a complete revision of contact and interdiction procedures, as well as not a few retirements in the Scout Administration.
**for instance, the vice minister of economic development being fired and his responsibilities dividied up between the Ag department and the department of trade; not exactly a tanks-in-the-square type of coup.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Pontifex
D 84A872 -4: Extreme Cold : many competing ideologies
Description
Pontifex is a large ice-covered rockball tidally locked into a 3:2 resonance with an IR brown dwarf. It receives enough heat on closer parts of its inner hemisphere to allow open water to form. The atmosphere is only notationally classified as 4, as it only exists as the inner hemisphere warms up during summer and snows out during most of the year, and on the opposite hemisphere. The resonant orbit keeps the open water slowly moving across the planet as it slowly rotates and keeps the atmosphere from accumulating in one hemisphere, as do convection effects from the slowly moving dawn line. Unsurprisingly, the circulation patterns are often extremely violent and unpredictable. As the companion emits only in the infrared, the planet is perpetually dark, except for vivid aurora effects. The local ecology was responsible for the thin oxygen element in Pontifex's atmosphere; it was essentially a monoculture of an algae analogue using both anaerobic and aerobic pathways, active during the melt periods, existing only as inert, frozen spores otherwise. It has largely been replaced by mobile aquaculture of terran/vilani import.
History
Pontifex (originally Johdl) was originally settled by the first empire as a bridge point across a gap connecting three small mains. As such, it was entirely dedicated to starship support, supply and cargo transshipping. With the collapse of the Vilani Empire, it was largely left on its own in the trade stagnation that occurred during the final years of the empire and teetered on the edge of complete collapse, but managed to survive until trade picked up as the Terran controlled area spread; at this point, although never fully incorporated into the second empire it attracted a second wave of Terran settlers in the form of administrators, and, importantly, starship service entrepreneurs. In this incarnation, it was essentially a semi-independent system, continuing to provide services, but also adding recreation and entertainment for passing crews, as well as taxing all commerce passing thru, officially to support its local system defense forces. For a time, the system boomed, particularly as the bureaux restrictions on trading disappeared, allowing it to become a marketplace serving three distinct mains, as well as a transit support point.
Unfortunately, the collapse of the second imperium took Pontifex by surprise, and with an incursion by local [insert predatory polity or minor raiding race]lost almost all connection to the empire in less than three years. Within five years, ships from the mains had stopped arriving almost entirely. The effect of isolation and an overspecialized economy, coupled with Pontifexes entrepreneurial ethos, was devastating. Within another five years, the bulk of the starship service and mercantile interests ported at pontifex had either failed, or left in search of opportunity taking almost all jump capable ships, and. Pontifex, at that time with a social UWP of 632, lost perhaps 5% of its population to this exodus –but unfortunately, almost all of the professional, technical and administrative members of its society. What it had left was a poorly educated and generally impoverished population of unemployed ex-service economy employees, and a dark and frozen planetscape.
Development Post Second Imperium
Surprisingly, the population did not suffer an immediate die-off; the planet was a long-term habitation, and had basic, if minimal, self-sufficiency. They were nonetheless isolated from all outside contact during the long night, and while population increased, the difficulties of survival on Pontifex ensured that technology would deteriorate to the lowest level possible to support life. Unfortunately, in addition to being lost, it was also largely forgotten – and the area was vaguely recontacted by the third empire late in its expansion, when J3&4 ships were available and in general use. Accordingly, the local trade groups had no overwhelming need to pass thru Pontifex; J1 ships serviced the mains, and higher jump ships connected them. Currently, it is an almost forgotten backwater.
Current Information
Pontifexes’ society is Balkanized into large communal groups following the melt, living off aquaculture, and mining oxygen as needed from the cold areas. Technology is low, education lacking, and illiteracy almost universal. Survival is hard but possible, and there is very little stimuli other than speech. At some point, perhaps unfortunately, they found religion and philosophy, and in the long darkness, found lots of opportunity to discuss it.
While disputation seldom becomes violent on a large scale (due to the harshness of the world and general impoverishment), Pontifexian society is all about argument and debate, either philosophical or religious, and violence on an individual scale is quite common.
While many of the religious or philosophical systems on Pontifex are generally primitive or animistic, quite a few are esoteric and highly structured, apparently drawing from amongst every known Terran religion, as well as many homebrewed theologies, epistemologies, phenomenologies and elaborate conspiracy theories.
Additionally, quite a few societies are dedicated to completely shunning any outside contact, and will determinedly ignore the existence of outsiders; several have religious prohibitions against various types of speech, such as questions, active voice sentences, or puns; others require communication to be in complicated rhyme alliteration, or most incomprehensibly, indirect metaphor. Rituals pervade every aspect of life, and, in cultures that deign to notice outsiders, it is almost impossible to avoid causing religious disgust or insult with the simplest of actions. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Pontifexian society also acts as a huge but slow, distributed think tank, occasionally producing surprisingly sophisticated insights into mathematics, physics, and any science requiring little more than a mind, a pencil, and someone to argue with. It also produces amazingly intricate and elaborate art and music.
Several highly advanced mathematical systems, and advances in theoretical physics have originated here, abeit couched in religous allegory and poetry.
In many ways, pontifex is an idea mine. Fortunes have been made by making such insights into practical applications; and doubtless more could occur, if only the layers of religious elaboration can be penetrated, taboos avoided, and brawls over (for instance) transubstantiation of mind vs epigenesis of soul.
Travel information
A small cultural research scout base in cooperation with several academic groups support travel to and from the planet. Despite its isolation, Pontifex has become a mecca for cultural and comparative theology studies, as well as theoretical physicists and mathematicians; it has also gained a reputation as one of the most mind crushingly boring places for anyone uninterested in these topics to have to endure. It is suggested that Pontifex may become the first planet redzoned due to potentially lethal levels of tedium and toxic pedantry.
_______________
D 84A872 -4: Extreme Cold : many competing ideologies
Description
Pontifex is a large ice-covered rockball tidally locked into a 3:2 resonance with an IR brown dwarf. It receives enough heat on closer parts of its inner hemisphere to allow open water to form. The atmosphere is only notationally classified as 4, as it only exists as the inner hemisphere warms up during summer and snows out during most of the year, and on the opposite hemisphere. The resonant orbit keeps the open water slowly moving across the planet as it slowly rotates and keeps the atmosphere from accumulating in one hemisphere, as do convection effects from the slowly moving dawn line. Unsurprisingly, the circulation patterns are often extremely violent and unpredictable. As the companion emits only in the infrared, the planet is perpetually dark, except for vivid aurora effects. The local ecology was responsible for the thin oxygen element in Pontifex's atmosphere; it was essentially a monoculture of an algae analogue using both anaerobic and aerobic pathways, active during the melt periods, existing only as inert, frozen spores otherwise. It has largely been replaced by mobile aquaculture of terran/vilani import.
History
Pontifex (originally Johdl) was originally settled by the first empire as a bridge point across a gap connecting three small mains. As such, it was entirely dedicated to starship support, supply and cargo transshipping. With the collapse of the Vilani Empire, it was largely left on its own in the trade stagnation that occurred during the final years of the empire and teetered on the edge of complete collapse, but managed to survive until trade picked up as the Terran controlled area spread; at this point, although never fully incorporated into the second empire it attracted a second wave of Terran settlers in the form of administrators, and, importantly, starship service entrepreneurs. In this incarnation, it was essentially a semi-independent system, continuing to provide services, but also adding recreation and entertainment for passing crews, as well as taxing all commerce passing thru, officially to support its local system defense forces. For a time, the system boomed, particularly as the bureaux restrictions on trading disappeared, allowing it to become a marketplace serving three distinct mains, as well as a transit support point.
Unfortunately, the collapse of the second imperium took Pontifex by surprise, and with an incursion by local [insert predatory polity or minor raiding race]lost almost all connection to the empire in less than three years. Within five years, ships from the mains had stopped arriving almost entirely. The effect of isolation and an overspecialized economy, coupled with Pontifexes entrepreneurial ethos, was devastating. Within another five years, the bulk of the starship service and mercantile interests ported at pontifex had either failed, or left in search of opportunity taking almost all jump capable ships, and. Pontifex, at that time with a social UWP of 632, lost perhaps 5% of its population to this exodus –but unfortunately, almost all of the professional, technical and administrative members of its society. What it had left was a poorly educated and generally impoverished population of unemployed ex-service economy employees, and a dark and frozen planetscape.
Development Post Second Imperium
Surprisingly, the population did not suffer an immediate die-off; the planet was a long-term habitation, and had basic, if minimal, self-sufficiency. They were nonetheless isolated from all outside contact during the long night, and while population increased, the difficulties of survival on Pontifex ensured that technology would deteriorate to the lowest level possible to support life. Unfortunately, in addition to being lost, it was also largely forgotten – and the area was vaguely recontacted by the third empire late in its expansion, when J3&4 ships were available and in general use. Accordingly, the local trade groups had no overwhelming need to pass thru Pontifex; J1 ships serviced the mains, and higher jump ships connected them. Currently, it is an almost forgotten backwater.
Current Information
Pontifexes’ society is Balkanized into large communal groups following the melt, living off aquaculture, and mining oxygen as needed from the cold areas. Technology is low, education lacking, and illiteracy almost universal. Survival is hard but possible, and there is very little stimuli other than speech. At some point, perhaps unfortunately, they found religion and philosophy, and in the long darkness, found lots of opportunity to discuss it.
While disputation seldom becomes violent on a large scale (due to the harshness of the world and general impoverishment), Pontifexian society is all about argument and debate, either philosophical or religious, and violence on an individual scale is quite common.
While many of the religious or philosophical systems on Pontifex are generally primitive or animistic, quite a few are esoteric and highly structured, apparently drawing from amongst every known Terran religion, as well as many homebrewed theologies, epistemologies, phenomenologies and elaborate conspiracy theories.
Additionally, quite a few societies are dedicated to completely shunning any outside contact, and will determinedly ignore the existence of outsiders; several have religious prohibitions against various types of speech, such as questions, active voice sentences, or puns; others require communication to be in complicated rhyme alliteration, or most incomprehensibly, indirect metaphor. Rituals pervade every aspect of life, and, in cultures that deign to notice outsiders, it is almost impossible to avoid causing religious disgust or insult with the simplest of actions. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Pontifexian society also acts as a huge but slow, distributed think tank, occasionally producing surprisingly sophisticated insights into mathematics, physics, and any science requiring little more than a mind, a pencil, and someone to argue with. It also produces amazingly intricate and elaborate art and music.
Several highly advanced mathematical systems, and advances in theoretical physics have originated here, abeit couched in religous allegory and poetry.
In many ways, pontifex is an idea mine. Fortunes have been made by making such insights into practical applications; and doubtless more could occur, if only the layers of religious elaboration can be penetrated, taboos avoided, and brawls over (for instance) transubstantiation of mind vs epigenesis of soul.
Travel information
A small cultural research scout base in cooperation with several academic groups support travel to and from the planet. Despite its isolation, Pontifex has become a mecca for cultural and comparative theology studies, as well as theoretical physicists and mathematicians; it has also gained a reputation as one of the most mind crushingly boring places for anyone uninterested in these topics to have to endure. It is suggested that Pontifex may become the first planet redzoned due to potentially lethal levels of tedium and toxic pedantry.
_______________
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
kristof65 said:
Heh. Not quite. The players aren't there yet. But feel free to guess....
I remember a cadence from basic training in the US Army about Captain Jack. 
"Captain Jack
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that rifle in my hand
I'm gonna be a shootin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that knife in my hand
I'm gonna be a cuttin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that grenade in my hand
I'm gonna be a killin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that bottle in my hand
I'm gonna be a drinkin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that book in my hand
I'm gonna be a studyin' man
A studyin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam"
http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/cadence/journal.cgi?folder=journal&next=28
"Captain Jack
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that rifle in my hand
I'm gonna be a shootin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that knife in my hand
I'm gonna be a cuttin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that grenade in my hand
I'm gonna be a killin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that bottle in my hand
I'm gonna be a drinkin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that book in my hand
I'm gonna be a studyin' man
A studyin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam"
http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/cadence/journal.cgi?folder=journal&next=28
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
cbrunish said:I remember a cadence from basic training in the US Army about Captain Jack.
"Captain Jack
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that rifle in my hand
I'm gonna be a shootin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
....I am actually speechless.......
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
<Quickly glances at watch and notes date and time on calendar>
:twisted:
:twisted:
cbrunish said:I remember a cadence from basic training in the US Army about Captain Jack.
"Captain Jack
[...]
http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/cadence/journal.cgi?folder=journal&next=28
That's missing a few non-politically-correct verses...
Hooker : F*ing
Woman : loving
Child : family
Bible : praying
And at Dix, in 87, no "Best I Can" line.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Fair enough. I noted it too...... :mrgreen:
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
What is that? Gang signs? :wink:
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Well, they dress alike, carry weapons, have an rigid hierarchy and apparently once joined, you're one for life......
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
The following was inspired by a UWP posted by tycho brahe (Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:23 am ) I forgot about it until now, and have decided to move it to this intermittently updated thread......
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 and take nourishment from a liquid environment, they have little or no skeleton, few tendons, and grossly distended "tasty bits". With artificially forced maturity, generations are perhaps three to four years long, and they have been bred for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. suspended in nutrient vats hundreds of feet deep, stacked in layers thousands deep, and tended by robotic machines who have long since lost their masters but not their purpose, they are simply a resource to be harvested as each new generation reaches maturity and creates the next.
Great factories efficiently and regularly slaughter them, and then process the the remains for biological resources, recycled nutrients, and most importantly, as food for a long extinct race; the products of the vast industrial system are either placed back into the vats as nutrients, or shipped to a storage point now forgotten , never to be picked up where they are retained until past expiration date 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 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 complete and intimate mental contact with each other, a forum of trillions. And all are harvested, slaughtered and processed after three years, converted into nutrition for long dead consumers, 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 survival 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 ?
tycho brahe said:
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 and take nourishment from a liquid environment, they have little or no skeleton, few tendons, and grossly distended "tasty bits". With artificially forced maturity, generations are perhaps three to four years long, and they have been bred for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. suspended in nutrient vats hundreds of feet deep, stacked in layers thousands deep, and tended by robotic machines who have long since lost their masters but not their purpose, they are simply a resource to be harvested as each new generation reaches maturity and creates the next.
Great factories efficiently and regularly slaughter them, and then process the the remains for biological resources, recycled nutrients, and most importantly, as food for a long extinct race; the products of the vast industrial system are either placed back into the vats as nutrients, or shipped to a storage point now forgotten , never to be picked up where they are retained until past expiration date 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 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 complete and intimate mental contact with each other, a forum of trillions. And all are harvested, slaughtered and processed after three years, converted into nutrition for long dead consumers, 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 survival 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 ?
captainjack23 said:
This is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever heard of. It dwarfs the hospital episode of Doctor Who for nausea.
I love the moral quandry this would put the players in.
Good work, captainjack23, well done. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
khazwind said:
Glad to have disgusted you ! I look forward to my killing with baited breath and loaded shotgun. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
captainjack23 said:
<sniff, sniff>
Dude. Anchovies AND garlic?
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
GypsyComet said:
I said I was delighted to have disgusted him, didn't I ?
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
You could even make the scenario more morally gray for the players by having the food NOT be human, but another intelligent race. Having it be a different race than the players might make them more willing to let the situation continue... or not depending on personal morality.
I like the idea that a famine is averted by discovering the food storage facility first.
Soylent Green all over again...
I like the idea that a famine is averted by discovering the food storage facility first.
Soylent Green all over again...
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