The Pre Core Four

jedion357's picture
jedion357
June 21, 2011 - 5:56am
This is a brainstorming thread so spout off what comes to mind

I only have a vague idea yet for what I'd like to do with this, so as with any brainstorming session things could change radically with one person having a good idea.

Talk about the Klikk and the tetrarchs got me thinking about races that overlap in time

We have hard dates for the sathar being space faring 900PF and the klikk being space faring 600PF
The heliopes are a client species (possibly slaves) of the klikk so they are also space faring @ 600PF
We also know that the eorna were space faring @ 900PF and accidently led the sathar to their homeworld.

To be sure all of the AD and ZEbs races exist (except the mechanons) at the above time periods but they are not anyway near being space faring.

So what I'm proposing is an alternate SF setting set 1000 PF with the sathar and Klikk

Need a core 4 or at least a core 3 for this setting- possible candidates are:

The eorna: known to be space faring with SF level of tech, maybe a little bit higher tech in medical sciences

Zuraqqor: these will be a definet client/ally in 900 years time but could be just on the verge of becoming space faring at this point.

heliopes- could be just on the verge of becoming clients/slaves of the klikk at this period.

sessu- the sathar looking ferrengi like Dragon mag race; can assume they are space faring at this time being an off shoot of the same stock that the sathar evolved from.

probably need to toss in humans somehow to satisfy those who dont like to play an alien they dont understand. time warped colony expedition from earth that ends up in this mess?

Location: a sector just east of the present Frontier; lets you paint with a fresh brush and material written for this will provide depth for using it with a regular Frontier game doing exploration of the area 1000 years latter. I would also extend the great expanse from the Frontier sector's southern border to the southern border of this klikk/sathar sector.

Storylines: cold be the war between the klikk and the sathar
could be the seeking of and enslavement of client species by both the klikk and that sathar
could be the PCs are members of races undergoing enslavement and are part of the resistence
Perhaps a bit of a David Brinn "Uplift" series though his material brings in "ancients" heavily and would require some work on the tetrarchs to fill the role of the ancients
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!
Comments:

Anonymous's picture
w00t (not verified)
June 21, 2011 - 11:15am
Don't forget the Zethra. They haven't forgotten you!

I envision the eorna sending out scouting parties but their primary concern is the development of Volturnus. Where did the eorna originate from.... 

Anonymous's picture
w00t (not verified)
June 21, 2011 - 11:19am
Oh... you are considering these races as player-characters.
Won't work unless the party is all of the same race.
However, you could introduce humans into this setting/environment as the PC's stuck in the middle of heck.

jedion357's picture
jedion357
June 21, 2011 - 11:50am
Works evolved on Volturnus. Could simply make the pcs all human from an exploration ship and stuck in the middle then it would only feel like a three module campaign. But it could also work as two slave owning races battling each other and an interstellar civilization based on the slaves. Captured eorna would work for a player character race that way. Not sure any one would want to play a heliope though.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

thespiritcoyote's picture
thespiritcoyote
June 21, 2011 - 11:15pm
I really like this idea; some spouted not-all-that-radical thoughts:
   Somewhere in the materials I had gathered the following information (no-canonisity ensured) about the surrounding sectors... Though I have questions about the exact orientation of the map...
   roughly:
   East (counter spin-ward): Past the White Light/Xygyg Gap there is a region of "relatively" empty space, I think described as being about a sector and a half wide (nearly 200ly or more)... something near a week to cross in a straight shot, and therefore not traversable by Frontier FTL. 
   West (spin-ward): The Coalition Rim runs from Yazirian space to the end of the Xygyg Run (North) but isn't more than a sector wide, likely only 60LY, beyond that I call the rest of the sector the Capellan Trade Periphery (If CFM supporter), or the Far Trade Stretch (If TT supporter), and just Far-Rim Periphery for everyone else... I got the impression that this region has it's own local cluster of stars, several unmentioned trade-partnerships with the CFM, and some leap-frogging outposts by Frontier Authorities and Corporations.
   South (rim-ward): The PanGal corporation was supposedly heavily exploring this area with near exclusive charter for awhile, having friendly competition with only the Yazirians, until it opened (or became impossible to prevent claim jumping) to independent explorers...  while the Pan Gal has more influence over the Vast Expanse than any other organization, the side beyond liberty is heavier in Star-Law influence and independent Expanse Explorers... (Sometimes derogatorily referenced as Vast Exploiters), this sector (perhaps two sectors) is not home to a cluster but still more populous than the counter spin-ward Dark Gap. Like the Dark Gap, the gal-political reference of the name Vast Expanse Region (or just Vast Expanse) may actually cover several Physical Sectors of Measurement*, in size and scope.
   North (core-ward): The most unexplored sector known to the frontier, only recently opened to exploration by frontier organizations under tight restrictions in the last half-century or so, even the Ifshnit have had few routes charted across this sector over the last couple centuries or more (they still had a large head start on the frontier)

*I base this statement on the idea of 60 to 120LY standard measurement sectors, such as the 100LY sector grid map, or the hex maps in the library meant to be used in parsecs...

The Frontier Sector Region should have well over 2000 stars, The areas Southwest and West at least that many each, Southeast and East no more than half that in total between them, North might have about as many... a total around nine or ten thousand stellar systems.
A Comparison: Crowded Cluster, Sparse Association
For F, G, K, stars (quick math here) would make up about 900 stars within the Frontier Reach Region (all the combined sectors within the Frontier Civilization's Influence Sphere, aprox. 400LY centered on Prenglar), a few hundred of those would be in the inner nebula of the Frontier Sector itself.
   I base all this off the assumption that even the flat map left unaltered, exists in a three dimensional universe.

  All of this means that it could be laid directly on top of the frontier circa 1k years previous to the Core Four Appearance, and still use a completely different map, with only the nebulae, black holes, and neutrons keeping some relative similarity of positioning...

  As far as adding humans, I wouldn't make it a viable colony of 'true human', as I am not that humanocentric with my rpg's, near-human would be adequate to satisfy a baseline benchmark race for me...  I like all alien game settings, personally. 
  I can understand if others would want the option, and wouldn't have a problem with a small unimportant population of uninfluential humans, 9 to 10 feet (2.7 to 3.0 m) tall, having pairs of large orange, purple or dark-green eyes, pointed and mobile ears, arms, legs four fingered hands and feet, three six foot prehensile tails extending from the nape of their neck, and a pair of two foot long antenna sprouted from the temples, as well as a feline nose, a mouth, red and black, orange and brown, or blue and black striped hair, simple recognizable expressions, three ethnic skin pigmentation's yellow, green, and blue, two gamete genders, and a basic male-provider and female-brooder reproduction strategy.
  Game system mechanic is identical to Human in all respects. They even have only three languages, Auslish, Amerilish, and Brilish...
Oh humans!! Innocent We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".
~ anymoose, somewhere on the net...

so...
if you square a square it becomes a cube...
if you square a cube does it become an octoid?