Absalom Insterstellar's Ventured Horizon, part of the Ventured
class of slow-boat generation ships, was launched on a 100 year voyage
to the Epsilon Eridani system. The last message from the vessel was sent
5 ship years prior to its scheduled arrival, and reported no unusual
circumstances. Now, 200 years later, the ship's hyperspace navigation
beacon has activated, enabling Absalom to compute a Jump-1 route to the
system.
The Ship
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The Ventured Horizon, exterior view
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As with all Ventured-class vessels, the Horizon is a
10 mile long cylinder 2.4 miles in diameter, hollow through the middle,
with three additional modules along a center shaft. Each center module
is connected to the outer shell by three spokes. The bridge is located
in the forward center module, the Autarch (primary AI core) in the
middle module, and the engines on the rear module. Several fabrication
units are located in the center modules, including the dedicated fab for
the ship's marine complement. The genebank and terraforming AI (GAIA)
are located in the aft section of the outer shell.
The Mutiny
After 95 years of transit, the ship's third captain, decided to
retain his power by refusing to land, and ordered the ship's AI to cut
communications with Absalom Interstellar and the universe at large. This
provoked a mutiny among the ship's engineering and terraforming staff,
which ended with large sections of the shell depressurized, the engineer
faction in control of the low-gravity center modules, the captain's
loyalists in the front section of the shell, and a prematurely activated
GAIA in control of the rear of the shell. Communication lines from the
Autarch to the shell were cut during the mutiny, leaving the loyalists
unable to formally authorize any succession following the death of the
captain. Conversely, the engineers, while in contact with the AI core
and able to authorize successions and promotions within their
department, lacked the command authority to replace the captain
directly, or to assign any privileged roles outside engineering.
The Spacers
In the two centuries since the mutiny, the descendants of the
engineers, now calling themselves spacers, have lived in the low gravity
of the center modules. Those born and raised in low-grav grew tall and
slender, to a degree impossible under the conditions of gravity. In the
poorly-shielded environment, mutations and cancers have run rife.
The chief example of this is the Oracle, born in the first year after
the mutiny. With a novel form of gigantism and growing unchecked by
gravity, he seemed strangely ageless. By his 70th year, he was a
spiritual leader among the spacer population, but could no longer fit in
airlocks to move between the modules. When his heart finally succumbed
to the square-cube law, his head was removed and placed on life support
so he could guide his people, but he still continued to grow. Now a
grotesque ten feet of skull and brain, his influence has preserved the
belief system of the original engineers, including the understanding of
planets and interstellar travel.
The life of the spacers is based primarily around the limited
low-grav hydroponics racks and the fabrication units they do possess.
Their limited authority prevents them from producing proper military
equipment, but they can still construct vaccsuits and EVA gear,
permitting travel and trade between modules despite the loss of the
Intraship Transit System.
The spacers rarely descend into the shell of the Horizon, and only at
great risk. They remain at war with both the Crewmen and the Gaians,
and are at a severe disadvantage in the unaccustomed gravity. The risk
is worth it, however - the no-mans-land of the algae stacks is home to
catfish and herons, the Crewmen only have loose control over their
hydroponic gardens, and particularly brave and lucky war parties are
occasionally able to poach a goat from Gaian territory.
The Crewmen
Meanwhile, the captain's loyalists ("Crewmen") have regressed into a
semi-medieval culture based around the hereditary ranks of their
ancestors. However, they are unable to formally authorize any transfer
of command authority, leaving their ranks meaningless for interacting
with the ship's systems. While their autofabs are therefore limited to
producing civilian items, they have cobbled together a hand-crafted
material culture that includes a variety of low-tech armor and weapons.
The Crew have lost any understanding of the ship and its journey as
such. Their leaders preach that the journey is only a metaphor for the
progress of man. They consider the Autarch a god, whose intervention can
preserve them from the dangers of the muties.
For food, they rely primarily on their hydroponics banks, which lie
immediately beyond their sealed section of the hull. They supplement
their diet with fish and birds from the algae stack as well sa the odd
goat stolen from GAIA.
GAIA
The prematurely activated terraforming AI, GAIA, has gone insane.
Unable to process the fact that she was not on the destination planet,
and exposed to a summary of Greek and Roman mythology, she has convinced
herself she is in fact the goddess for whom she was named. The
descendants of the original terraforming staff have bought in to the
mythology as well and have formed a cult around her.
The rear section of the ship has been transformed into an
approximation of the Greco-Roman world complete with monsters. Her
people herd goats, produce bronze weapons and armor, and wear togas and
laurel crowns. The Minotaur and satyrs were an easy job for a
superintelligent master of genetic manipulation. While the Medusa never
quite worked as planned, the final research subject escaped into the
hull and is thought to be lurking in the algae stacks.
Where the Players Come In
The Autarch has recently managed to talk itself into the position that the Horizon's
hyperspace beacon doesn't count as communication per se, and as such
has followed its original programming and activated it. It hasn't
mentioned this to the Spacers, since none of them are bridge officers.
Absalom Interstellar has tracked the beacon, and since they retain
formal rights to the colonization of Epsilon Eridani, have computed a
new Jump-1 route to the system. The players are hired for a basic
salvage job - recover as much viable material of lost species from the
genebank as possible. No other mission parameters are specified, and the
PCs will be the first ones arriving in system since the Horizon itself.
Mediography and Acknowledgements
An obvious debt to Arnold K's Axis Mundi.
Some aspects of the Muties and the overall situation are drawn from Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky.
The Oracle is inspired by the music video for the Gorillaz' DARE
From Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun comes the word "Autarch" and some aspects of the Oracle.
