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The Origins of the Jedi: an Old Old Republic PbP
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vanir
Jedi


Joined: 11 May 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 3:42 am    Post subject: The Origins of the Jedi: an Old Old Republic PbP Reply with quote

I am seeking interest in a new PbP Star Wars game with a bend of Aliens/Promethus kind of flavour mixed in with early Tales of the Jedi/Golden Age of the Sith. Here is an introduction to and description of the game environment:

Quote:
It is the period approximately 25 millennia prior to the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi do not exist (as we know them), the Republic does not yet exist. Hyperdrives are an exotic technology used by the collapsed Rakatan Empire, which are no more. Nobody understands how they worked. The known galaxy is a very small place, the unknown galaxy a huge one. Humans have explored nearby worlds from their apparent homeworld of Notron (Coruscant) using atomic powered generation ships travelling at sublight speeds. More distant human colonies such as Corellia, Kuat and Alderaan were seeded in times long forgotten, by the Celestials and have had no real contact with other planets except via Rakatan slave ships during the defunct Infinite Empire. Corellia did not have independent contact with distant Alderaan and vice versa, they were mere legends to each other, unreachable within a lifetime by any indigenous technology. Known only by the ancient inscriptions on tomb walls uncovered by archaeologists, a promise simply that no human world was truly alone in the galaxy and that others existed (as did sapient aliens obviously), but there was no easy way to get there.

Using atomic generation ships colonists from Notron took centuries to establish human civilisation on the nearby habitable worlds of Metellos, Alsakan and Axum and there was no guarantee there were no existing indigenous and/or hostile species to wipe them out when they got there. As it so happened, sometimes there was. It took a unique kind of explorer to embark a generation ship, those which departed would never see their destination and whether their children survived it was pure random chance. In turn subsequent generations would never know their homeworld and were effectively stranded, without their consent to colonise possibly dangerous alien worlds in relatively small numbers. It is entirely possible many went insane, others were mutated into near-human species.

The most ambitious journeys were the frontier missions, colonists in whole fleets of generation ships sent towards the most distant worlds astronomers identified as habitable. The Tion Cluster far rimward and Koros deep within the galactic core, both containing the spectral signatures of unknown elements and thus potentially exotic resources. These journeys took half a millennia with strict population control aboard the fleets, there was no telling what kind of community actually reached the destination if at all, or what conditions they lived under along the immense journey, the trials they faced spanning an Age, whether they simply devolved into a pack of caged savages by the time they arrived or perhaps actually evolved to a higher technological proficiency than the world they left.

Then something happened.

Within seemingly random habitable systems there occasioned to be ancient Celestial artefacts (some actually constructed by killiks, whom referred to the designers as "the Architects"), relics of an era predating the Rakatan Empire and ruins which, for all intents and purposes existed as no more than awe inspiring relics of a past civilisation floating uselessly in space or standing like timeless sentinals upon random planets. The Corellian system's Centrepoint Station was one such artefact among interplanetary space within the system and over the course of centuries some of their scientists and archaeologists managed to unlock some of its secrets as a working technology. They created the Hyperspace Cannon using it as a template for reverse-engineering.

Around the same time the colonists of Koros Major returned to Notron using dimension-drives in sleeper ships, powered by antimatter reactors of immense power. These turned centuries of travel into mere decades, and their carbonite chambers allowed crews to arrive at their destinations within their lifetimes.

And coincidentally, as if some part of a galactic conspiracy the Devaronians invented the unpredictable Tumble-drive, also using antimatter reactors.

Each system of faster than light travel had its own severe drawbacks and dangers, but the Age of Information had nevertheless arrived. Travel between distant worlds was now possible within a lifetime, in some cases within just a few years. Occasionally within months. And crews could sleep through longer journeys so it seemed to them to pass simply overnight.

It is a new, exciting Age of galactic exploration, adventure and danger.


Notes about the types of characters to PC and timeline equipment:

A rough guideline is Tales of the Old Republic campaign guide, with a conservative bend and some of my own tailoring.

Laser-actuated (blaster) technology is big, heavy, underpowered and ridiculously expensive. Personal blasters don't really exist in the sense Star Wars fans are familiar. They're much more like something out of Dr Who, with a big, backpack power generator and heavy rifle sized barrel, yet about the power of a blaster pistol. Clearly not worth the expense and trouble. They do start to become effective as vehicle mounted weapons and are starting to appear in well funded militias on armoured vehicles and assault aircraft, but no smaller than this unless an exotic alien technology.

Exotic weapons like concussion rifles, particle beam technology, ion-energy and stun-blaster guns don't exist yet unless alien technology. Yes this makes alien encounters potentially terrifying in this era because yes, some are running around with exotic weapons. If you're lucky you can knock one over the head and take his, if he doesn't eat the club you try to attack him with or give you some weirdly horrific alien disease just for getting too close.

Most spacers and planetbound adventurers alike use firearms. These are highly advanced, using ultramodern construction materials and designs with custom built examples readily available. A Han Solo in this age runs around with a low slung semiauto firearm in the 9mm-13mm category (4D to 6D+1 physical damage plus special- like armour piercing, chem or explosive rounds). The basic low powered home defence sidearm in 7.5mm runs to about 2D+2 physical damage base plus modifiers. I will write a comprehensive listing if the PbP idea takes off and it gets its own forum.

Melee weapons are highly advanced and fairly useful in close combat. Fine alloys, vibroweapons and powerswords are all available and often carried, you can't beat them for dealing with close quarters threats like a mean alien. Some exotic melee weapons have special qualities, many are customised for tailored bonuses. Many adventurers pride themselves as professional duellists, and some of their weapons will cut through an armoured vehicle, they have no problem cleaving through personal armour or thick creature hides. Lightsabres have not been invented yet (they will be invented during game time), but there is something a little special for "Jedi" characters.

For the very wealthy the pulsewave blaster is however available. These are expensive, rare and often restricted, damage is analoguous to basic blaster weapons (4D handgun sized, 5D rifle sized, 6D light character-scale artillery), but have poor beam coherence and about half the range of a comparative blaster weapon. They cannot be modified other than to add features like targeting sights and bipods. And due to short ranges it is not impossible for massed infantry to simply overwhelm emplacements and gain melee range. Did I mention they were expensive?

Personal armour is conventional metal alloys and graphite/textiles like kevlar. They're heavy, encumbering and mostly protect against physical damage. Essentially as link armour and flex armour or variants and similar construction, as in Tales of the Jedi Companion. A +1p vs energy and +1D vs physical armour value will often cost you -1D Dexterity penalty. Not many people wear armour unless dedicated soldiers and professional bounty hunters, and their armour value is mostly against firearms, grenades and melee weapons. That's okay, so few people have ever seen a handheld energy weapon it doesn't matter. More exotic armour does exist, but is usually alien or unique.

Few people own a starship of any kind although some do, their cost is in the realm of corporations and governments or royalty. Conventional hyperdrives are not yet available, starships use dimension drives and carbonite hibernation chambers like in the movies Alien and Pandorum. Travel times are subjective and twofold, PCs may arrive at a destination several years after leaving their home system although they don't age in carbonite. To them the journey seems to take a few days and a deep sleep. This means military missions can be awkward, protecting colonies next to impossible. If war comes, it will probably be over by the time reinforcements arrive from the home system. Regular star travellers can easily outlive their own planetbound children.

The exceptions are Corellians, who use their Hyperspace Cannon to punch vessels at conventional hyperdrive speeds comparable to classic era spacecraft, but these are one-way journeys unless there is another cannon at the destination system for return. And they jealously guard the technology, although there are rumours the nearby Duros have simulated it possibly via industrial espionage. At any rate it makes Corellia a central power in the galaxy, they can send troops to reinforce distant colonies quickly but those sent become new colonists when the battle is over, with little hope of returning home so easily.
The Devaronians are another exception and use an unpredictable ship-based hyperdrive engine with a rough percentile chance of arriving remotely near a plotted destination. There are rumours they are working with an alien civilisation to perfect the system. Unfortunately for the human worlds, to say the Devaronians have cool relations is an understatement, most think humans are some sort of pandemic virus.

Intergalactic communications is via subspace radio networks, obviously the range of transmitters is limited to the local sector so networks only exist between systems in close proximity. Distant colonies are effectively cut off. No hyperwave transceivers or HoloNet communications exist for long range realtime galactic communications. This will eventually lead to the creation of relatively low cost Courier Ships to pass important communications between distant worlds as hyperdrive technology matures, but the current timeline is the very dawning of this era.

The major modifications to available PC templates is of course related to technological and political differences of the era. Jedi characters can be played, but they are largely unknown to the galaxy at large, are exclusively from within the Deep Core (via Koros Major but originating on Tython), lightsiders are known as Ashla and darksiders as Bogans, and they cannot yet have lightsabres or any lightsabre powers or skills. They use Force-tempered alloy swords, similar in general nature to a Sithsword. They do have specialised Force powers enhancing skill with both melee and ranged weapons, bending bullet trajectories, predicting strikes, sensing weaknesses, increasing percussive energy, generating dead movement zones around themselves. Jedi are no less lethal in this era than any other. But they are rare and nobody really knows who or what they are yet. Force users in general are almost never encountered and tend to gain semi-worship when they are...or terrified paranoia.
However and this is important for those wanting to play the first of the Jedi Knights, they are beginning the exodus which creates their role in the galaxy at the start of game time. There is no problem with several players wanting Jedi PC.

Most regular templates such as mercinary, bounty hunter, pilot, etc. are acceptable with era modification for skills (almost nobody will have blaster skill, almost everybody will have firearms skill). Instead of piloting light handy freighters and high powered starfighters a pilot PC will fly either frail, short range starfighters without hyperdrives or large, complex vessels capable of supporting interstellar journeys and owned by some corporation or systems government.

A starting party might be something like 1-3 Ashla (Jedi Knights) given a sleeper-ship at Koros Major, with a 1-2 pilot/copilot, a tech, a conventional strongarm or two and some random passengers considered valuable to the mission. Regular crew will be under the direct authority of the Ashla but legally employed by the systems corporate owner of the starship or local militia. Their mission maybe to explore some threat an Ashla Master has forseen through the Force, or a diplomatic envoy on behalf of the systems government, or to reinforce a distant colony in trouble.

During gametime a number of basic tenants and objectives, either through the PC party or in the background events must occur:
1. The Galactic Republic of Systems is to be established.
2. Several canonical alien and imperial threats are to be encountered and handled.
3. The Jedi Order is to be established with its base at the Adegan system (Ossus).
4. Lightsabres and conventional hyperdrives will be invented, at the early stages characters whom gain these and certain alien artefacts will easily become the most powerful individuals in the galaxy. And some of them will be your enemies.




Please post feedback or interest. If we get enough PCs I'll flesh out more detail, PM Loc Taal and start the PbP forum.
We'll call it..."The Origins of the Jedi"
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Jedi Skyler
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've got some interest in this; perhaps an Ashla...
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Guardian_A
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds interesting, . . . .


. . . . some questions before I commit.

So, the skill sets should be primitive? Pretty much avoiding anything that isnt currently possible with Earth technology? (With the exception of Pulse Wave, and Vibroblade technology.)

What kind of rules would we be using for starting characters? Are there skills that you would like to see the characters take? And are there any skills that you plan to restrict? Are there any additional skills that you will be making available (Possibly in the Aviation or Nautical departments?) I'm guessing that any starship related skills will be off limits with the exception of Astrogation, Communications, Sensors and Archaic Starship Piloting at the start of the game? And no Blasters, Lightsabers, Repulsorlifts, Swoops, or related repair skills? What about skills like Hover Vehicles and Walkers?

You want all of the players to be force users? And what kind(s) of restrictions will there be on force powers?

I'm under the impression (Because of the objectives listed at the end of your post) that the characters will be some form of diplomats or negotiators? And that they may take part in the founding of the Jedi Order?

Thats all I can think of at the moment.
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Quetzacotl
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm intrigued Very Happy

If there are enough people, I'd definitely like to play one of the Ashla.

Not knowing about what can be there is really interesting and, in my opinion, much more fun then knowing everything about the enemies, because this might lead to meta-plotting (e.g. "hm, he has these stats, shouldn't fight with them"), even when trying to avoid that.


Are the PCs supposed to directly be the reason that the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic of Systems come into existence or are we "just" involved in the events that lead to these two very important events in SW History?
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vanir
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some expanded tech description:

The kind of atmosphere I had in mind as the initial player experience is kind of like being on the starship Promethus (exploration vessel) or Nostromo (industrial craft), great examples of a sleeper-ship for our purposes, the vessel in Pandorum is a great example of a colonial sleeper-ship. The movies Aliens, Predator and AVP is a good example of the weapons tech era in theme and flavour at least.

If we take a snapshot of a typical human colonial world like Alderaan in this period:

The major cities have repulsorlifts and groundcars using both clean energy and occasionally combustion engines. The more wealthy roam around in sleek airspeeders and repulsorcraft, public transportation uses clean energy, some private working class citizens still use combustion powered groundcars but heavy emissions regulations restrict their performance (engine capacities above about 2.5 litres are banned so there aren't many hotrodders and diesel trucks around). This makes clean energy vehicles including repulsorlifts preferred by government (and better performing) but they understand not everybody can afford these so "oil burners" aren't completely banned yet.

Swoops essentially began life as conventional speederbikes with booster engines fitted to provide a speed thrust. These are fairly new, the thrust boosters in this era are often chemical engines jury rigged to the basic repulsorcraft, they pollute, are dangerous, noisy and generally outlawed by the authorities. But they exist and you can take this skill no problem, to actually purchase one you need to find a custom outlaw mechanic and pay him to build it, they're not sold in shops. The fastest are rumoured to have broken the sound barrier at knee high altitude, only a spanking new military craft is likely to catch one but fatalities among operators are high (mishap penalties as jury rigged craft). It is only in the later era that swoops are mass produced by repulsor manufacturers with modern ion boosters and nice safe construction. But they aren't as fast later as they once could get and that's saying something. Swoops are insane and hilariously fun, with a questionable survival rate.

The general look and feel of the cities is a bit like "the 5th Element", "Minority Report" and "Demolition Man." Futuristic, but old tech can still be found hidden away in the garages of eccentrics and backyard hacks. Suburban areas feel more classical, city streets more futuristic, there is a duality present which doesn't really clash.

Say you hired a mercinary on the planet, he'd probably have advanced, powerful firearms and an alloy combat knife. He might have a 10mm assault rifle that does 5D physical damage with a 1D autofire bonus (add to either accuracy or damage). A government agent would probably have a pulsewave blaster and vibroblade. Both will probably turn up in a repulsorcraft but there's a reasonable chance the Merc turns up in an AWD APC groundcar powered by a turbodiesel oil burner with a jet engine thrust booster and concealed weaponry. Hovercraft are fairly common, both in combustion and clean energy forms. Sail power is also very popular in recreational vehicles, some water borne but others are just repulsorskiff floaters that use sails for forward motion, sailcraft skill rolls determine how much speed you can get out of a wind and sailskiff races are a public holiday event. In the Alderaanian canyons some get up to 160km/h or so.

Planetary security forces have a troop force, air wing, space corps and navy. The air wing uses conventional airspeeders and the space corps short range starfighters with a flight endurance measured in hours. Troop force will typically use fast hovercraft assault vehicles, repulsor command craft and APC groundcars. Walkers as we think of them don't really exist but there are exoskeletons used as personal assault vehicles, these are speeder scale and use Powersuit Operation skill.

Railguns and warhead launchers/missiles are typical vehicle armament with pulsewave blasters also mounted to starfighters. Some expensive custom craft may have early laser cannon fitted, they have less range than classical SWU versions and poor beam coherence in atmosphere (best used only in space), but have good damage in starfighter scale. Fire control computers and other avionics are recognisable SWU so most starfighter weaponry (even missiles) tends to use Starship Gunnery skill. Most airspeeder weaponry tends to use either Missile Weapons (for concussion missiles and warhead launchers) or Archaic Weapons skill (for gatling type cannon firearms). Among smaller colonies airspeeders are much more common than starfighters and invasion forces usually make use of airspeeder-carriers which are released from their cruisers and make planetfall with the troop transports.

Starfighters use Starfighter piloting skill, but other spacecraft (transports and cruisers) all use Archaic Starship piloting skill. There isn't a huge difference structurally and in avionics between a colony ship and a military cruiser, mostly internal layout and weapons/armour fit, they're even similarly sized. An interplanetary vessel (sleeper ship but uses sublights only) might be about 90m, a star cruiser (sleeper ship with dimension drive) might be 250m. A battleship is a star cruiser fitted for war, a colony ship one fitted for passengers. These capital ships use banks of laser cannon not much more powerful than classical era starfighter blasters, there are no turbolasers so range is poor. Battleships essentially lumber alongside and pound each other into burning hulks at close range with repetitive fire. Vapourising a large ship happens very rarely and most naval battles are won by boarding actions due to the limitations of weapons technology.

Particle shields are essentially movable armour plates (angles to incoming fire is adjustable) designed to deflect ultravelocity warheads like those fired from railguns, so Starship Shields and Capital Ship Shields skills are used but energy/ray shielding is rare and ridiculously expensive. Particle shields are listed separately from hull codes so comparative hull strength is less than classical era vessels, but comparable when combined with successful particle shield deflection. Thus there are two shield codes, one for particle shields and one for energy shields, used separately with the same skill.

One thing I am undecided about is making pulsewave blasters use blaster skill in common with regular blasters (how different could they really be to fire?), and by the same token railguns using firearms skill (both being recoil associated and otherwise projectile weapons). I really don't see why pulsewave blasters should have a separate skill, and I find railguns as a separate skill to be simply uneconomical (although the same could be argued for Bowcaster skill). I do think they should have separate technical repair skills however, pulsewave blaster repair would be different technology and use different parts and tools to blaster repair.

Okay now comes the wild factor.

Aliens. They're just so...alien. You may find a Devaronian with a regular everyday blaster pistol, no different from the classical era weapons but it is considered exotic alien technology and priceless among humans in this Age, a bit like selling a lightsabre in the market on Tatooine. Rare but exist and later will help further technological development in the galaxy at large through reverse-engineering. In the meantime it makes alien civilisations dangerous and powerful in relatively small numbers, but their technologies are jealously guarded. Alien groups with higher technological standards tend to limit their contact with humans for obvious reasons and any alien contact should never be underestimated for other obvious reasons. The regularly encountered alien species are at the same tech level as the human worlds, it's the ones people don't really know about until much later which maybe more advanced, but adventurers in this era may occasionally encounter them. And die screaming.

Mandalorians. These began as the Taung near-humans from Notron which waged a war against the twelve human tribes and many were exiled in generation ships to colonise the distant world of Mandalore, where they've mined a local exotic mineral (mandalorian iron) they now use in starship and armour construction making them a powerful force in the galaxy despite limited numbers. These guys are tough as nails and very dangerous, and recruit from other groups (usually human criminals) to fill out their numbers. Thus we have the various clans.

To put both these groups into perspective, review again the current tech level restrictions. Energy weapons, where available have half the range and double the power requirements of a comparable blaster weapon in the later era. The best modern armours have negligible protection against energy weapons and heavy encumberment proportionate with physical protection. Take a classical era NPC in regular Stormtrooper armour with a standard blaster rifle back to this era and he's like a walking tank with a godgun. That's kind of what the aforementioned groups can sometimes represent, and the streetwise rumours in city cantinas aren't lost on the concept, aliens and mandalorians are infamous and frightening. Mention either on a recruitment drive and you're likely to wind up standing around alone. Face either in battle and the most likely result is a painful death to the sound of laughter.

Lost colonies. Distant colonisation exercises like the Tion Cluster and the DeepCore have been cut off from their homeworlds for centuries or in some cases millennia, and become microcosms, with their own political and technological development completely independent of the galaxy at large. The deepcore colony of Koros Major essentially introduced the dimension drive and carbonite freezing to the rest of the galaxy when explorative scouts returned to the homeworld of Notron millennia after the last generation ships had left for the world.

Nobody has heard from the Tionese expedition since they left Notron, millennia earlier but those generation ships were travelling from the Core to the very edge of the observable galaxy tens of thousands of light-years away. Even at relativistic speeds with the benefit of length contraction they probably still haven't even arrived yet and may have mutated into humanoid salamanders along the way.

In any case given these wild factors, most of the regular skills available in the SWU are among the galaxy at large. Whether your particular PC has gained training in them is a matter of character background which should suit their starting role.

More about PCs next post, this was all about tech overview.
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vanir
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a very rough time in the galaxy. It's like going to the moon and finding dragons so..what then? Most galactic explorers and envoys are diplomats and negotiators sure, they diplomatically shoot first and ask questions later and negotiate how many rounds to put into that scary looking alien thing. It is a dangerous galaxy, seriously.

Something like 97% of all alien encounters end with the galactic explorer on the dinner table. First Contact with an alien civilisation usually winds up in a gunfight because you didn't deficate as a form of greeting. The best possible result is as often as not contracting some exotic plague that wipes out your entire starship crew.

Establishing the Galactic Republic might involve something like starting a war with the Corellians, or paying them half your home system's GDP as a bribe to join and it all comes down to one little courier and whether the King of Corellia or whatever thought he was making fun of his moustache.
Forming the Jedi enclave may involve combating an evil star dragon with a 15D Force Storm that kind of likes the Force shrouded system to you need to use for the temple.
Handling an alien threat is most definitely going to involve boots on the ground combat just to gain an audience and then you may have to marry a "princess" who has three sexes and says something like she wants to turn you out in the bedroom.

Diplomatic roles maybe handled conversationally in the halls of government, but their subject matter is in fact always a description of what grunts are doing with their arms and legs in the real world. A Jedi Diplomat doesn't speak in the Senate, he kills an alien invader and some politician speaks about it in the Senate. These are the kind of roles the PC party will have. They do, others talk. But they do it with authority and sanctioned as representatives of a greater body. Somebody has a problem with the ambassadors doing something, go talk to the politicians that sent them until your ears bleed. In this sense the PC party are "diplomatic envoys". If they did exactly the same thing independently they'd be called mercenaries or psychopaths. But their opponents are not always evil and this is key, sometimes they simply do not recognise their authority. Here is where a code of ethics as individual PCs can help, the battle of Dark Side Points versus Force Points and character temptation will be a theme here as it is in SWU. Does one following a criminal order become a criminal? Where is the line? How do I recognise evil? How do I teach people with greater authority that they had the situation misconceived? Am I wrong in what I do or more wrong if I don't do it? Did I remember to turn the stove off before I left this morning? Why does it hurt when I pee?

The PCs will not be politicians in other words, they will be what the politicians are talking about. In fact a lot of the time the very politicians who send them on these missions have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy where the only thing that matters is how the report looks on paper and whether it was successful.



One thing for the PC environment to consider is interstellar travel times. Whilst the PCs won't experience time in their carbonite chambers the shortest journeys will be weeks or months and distant ones years of relative gametime for the rest of the galaxy...unless using Corellian or Devaronian technology. Corellia itself has become a major galactic power simply because it can undercut anybody else's travel times with its hyperspace cannon.

This tends to mean an adventuring party, crew and passengers aboard a given ship will become a very close unit somewhat seperable from the rest of the galaxy. Your homeworld might look completely different between interstellar journeys, and galactic affairs will continue to evolve of their own accord during travel. Forethought and strategy will always be important factors for any planetary or corporate representatives and even independent adventurers and colonists.

A mission to investigate what has become of the Tionese expedition will be conducted within the Party's lifetime via suspended animation, but a few generations of galactic time may have passed by the time you return to the homeworld to report on what you've found. Your homeworld might've been wiped out by some natural disaster. The conditions of your report might no longer apply by the time you deliver it. Talking apes may have taken over and refer to you incessantly as "bright eyes".

An interesting factor this introduces is a rate of gametime which can span long periods of galactic history within the PC Party's lifetime. Events decades or centuries apart will pass by in relative months as the PCs experience time if travelling between the stars. Also interesting, historical figures the PCs may encounter may seem to live for centuries beyond their natural years due to frequent interstellar travel, because they've been in carbonite hibernation too.



At this stage the PC party will probably be provisionally led by Ashla and depart Koros Major, seeking to return to the original homeworld of Notron and then onto the galaxy at large from there. Thus they will effectively have use of their own starship which is actually owned and registered to the Koros planetary government.

But Ashla do not come from Koros Major. They are from another DeepCore colony on Tython and are departing the world in exodus, having developed a Force using tradition and feeling the tug of a greater calling to the galaxy at large. With limited technology it took them centuries to get to nearby Koros which had by this time invented the dimension drive. This makes Koros Major a natural staging point for returning to the galactic disc, it would take many more centuries using Tythonian starships.

At Koros the government has recognised the opportunity and seen some hint of what exactly the Ashla are capable of. In the hope of maintaining a permanent Ashla presence upon Koros Major the government awards provisional citizenship for visiting Ashla and readily employs them as scouts, explorers, advisors and missionaries. The local ruling council virtually worships them. Amongst the Korosian populace they've become widely reputed mystics, healers, mediums and diplomats. Got a weird disease? Call an Ashla. Suspect your husband is cheating? Call an Ashla. Want to catch a murderer? Call an Ashla.

The Korosians or anybody for that matter, other than the Ashla have no idea about the Bogans. Which is how they like it for the moment. An entire continent upon Tython was ravaged and decimated by no more than a handful of Bogans and the last thing the Ashla want is the rest of the galaxy to understand this potential flipside to their power. What the Ashla foresee is an age of peace and justice in a galaxy of diverse citizenship and equality for alien and human alike.

It is one, possible future.
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Quetzacotl
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, not thats incredibly detailed.

But, just one question.

Did I get this right that "the government" is using the Ashla often for "dirty Jobs" like "going to a planet and if the aliens there are not nice to us, kill them" and the like, while the Ashla are inherently "good guys" who don't really want to harm people (unless necessary) and thus standing often in conflict with their orders which will probably lead to the creation of the "Jedi Order", so that the Ashla are indepentend and can choose to do things their way?
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vanir
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Politicians tend to use "the military" (or any analoguous threat or force) as a tool to suit their individual agendas, yes indeed.

But trying to order the Ashla around is like trying to bully the biggest kid on the block. You're talking about people who can toss starships around a hangar with their mind. Smart politicians will try to use them for mutual benefit, if the Ashla are benevolent and the politician is benevolent then they should find similar goals and similar points of view about public safety and welfare.

But there is one major difference. Bad politicians try to act like good politicians to get elected and stay in office, but secretly do and cause bad things once they have the authority of office.
Theoretically this cannot happen with Ashla because theirs is not a job description, it is a personal philosophy without which they believe their powers would wane.

Ashla are bound to be honourable, politicians are not. Even when both say exactly the same things, the Ashla is far more likely to be telling the truth.
But the way the law works the politician is the one with the authority. When Ashla act on behalf of a government it is with authority granted by politicians, who might be lying about their interests and the situation.

But Ashla are bound to a philosophy as mentioned which is a lot like being religious. It is a higher authority in their eyes than the will of individual politicians even if the law says otherwise. An Ashla would sooner be a criminal according to one politician than commit murder at his command.

And how exactly do you tell a feller who might single handedly wipe out your entire security force that he's under arrest?
Ashla are bound by their Code, never a commander. Not even another Ashla's will has higher authority than their Code.






Note that further discussion is generally moved to the "Origins of the Jedi" PbP area of the forum.
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Jedi Skyler
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Joined: 07 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Plus, he did say the local government kinda worships the Ashla; they're in awe of the tremendous power the Ashla command, and want these powerful beings to work on the government's behalf.

To that end, even the slimy politicians are likely to think twice before trying to deceive an Ashla; they would be afraid of the consequences once the Ashla found out about it.
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Jedi Skyler
Moff
Moff


Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 8440

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Also...it sounds like you're intending our characters to start out a bit more advanced than beginning-level characters. Is that the case? Also, are you going to provide an edited list of Force powers that are going to be available for the Ashla characters to learn, or is the entire list going to be available?
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Frandal
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander


Joined: 06 Feb 2013
Posts: 157
Location: Madrid, Spain

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 9:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am interested!
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vanir
Jedi


Joined: 11 May 2011
Posts: 793

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 5:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anybody else interested please make your way over to the PbP forum marked "Origins of the Jedi".

New PCs are still welcome at this stage. Come on over and browse through the threads for rules, equipment and important information about the setting.


Any questions and don't hesitate to ask. This thread I may not check in on too often because I'm snowed under with a lot of writing and monitoring the PbP game threads. So post over there if interested.
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