 April 5, 2014 - 5:43pm | I've been wondering what inspired the TSR staff to mention prison asteroids in the cannon (not sure where at the moment but I remember thinking an asteroid was not a good idea for a prison when I read it. Anyhow it seems that Space 1999 had an episode where an asteroid was drifting toward the moon and it turned out to be a prison for a powerful malovent creature that had been banished to the depth of space by his own civilization and Star Trek had Rura Pente which IIRC which was suppose to be an asteroid but it seemed to have plenty of gravity Might be interesting to allow a scout ship discover a dead civilization (nuclear war or some other apocalypse) and one episode in the scouting of that system is the discovery of a somewhat intact station on a moon, any internal atmosphere was vented and thus no oxidation has gone on so the PCs would be able to possibly power up a computer or find hard copy of the location of "something" in the asteroid belt. Asteroid is a prison for a highly dangerous criminal from the dead civilization, naturally the PCs release him and things get dicey. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 6, 2014 - 4:30pm | prison asteroids: Beldrerone, Outer Rim Territories, Star Wars setting http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Belderone_sector_prison_asteroid Oovo IV asteroid site of the maximum security federal prison known as Desolation Alley, Star Wars setting http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Oovo_asteroid_belt Prison Asteroid K-37: Disney's Lilo and Stitch The autobots had a prison asteroid where they imprison Decepticon and Predacons they had defeated. Asteroid M: asteroid converted by Magneto into a lair in X-men universe 1959 Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely" involved a prisoner banished to a prison asteroid for 50 years. Melchior prison asteroid in Jack L Chalker's Rings of the Master series The Brave Command Dagwon- Japan animae had a prison asteroid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_Command_Dagwon 1094 Siberia, an escape proof prison in John Varley's "Rolling Thunder" asteroid prison in DC comics where Queen Bee freed The General in exchange for a % of Earth's population to become her drones A rogue member of the Q continum named Quinn is inadvertantly released from his prison asteroid by the crew of Star Trek Voyager, episode "Death Wish" Starlag Prison asteroid where Garryn Brek of L.E.G.I.O.N. fame was imprisoned. I was hoping to track down more references from literature but got most from popular culture, TV and comics. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 7, 2014 - 10:58am | The idea of a prison on an asteriod has to do with control. Those in control of a prison want to control every aspect of it to lessen the chance of prisoners escaping. If the prison is on an asteriod then it can be the only thing there and allowing the jailers to control even the environment. Jed are you going to include prison space stations or prison ships? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 8, 2014 - 5:41am | The idea of a prison on an asteriod has to do with control. Those in control of a prison want to control every aspect of it to lessen the chance of prisoners escaping. If the prison is on an asteriod then it can be the only thing there and allowing the jailers to control even the environment. Jed are you going to include prison space stations or prison ships? I didn't intend to but sure. Its not like this thread is burning up with discussion. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 8, 2014 - 2:06pm | The idea of a prison asteroid conjures up some interesting adventure seeds for SF: - a prison asteroid is found devoid of inmates and staff. An investigation reveals evidence of some sort of pitched battle taking place... (plot: pirate-organised prison break? Sathar harvesting expedition?) - contact is lost with a prison asteroid manned by robot controllers. A final message seems to come from a vrusk, calling for help... (plot: the robots have been hacked but have gone haywire. Many prisoners have been killed, but the players must gain access to the site and then co-operate with the surviving inmates in order to regain control). I'm sure I could think of some others... |
April 8, 2014 - 4:26pm | The idea of a prison asteroid conjures up some interesting adventure seeds for SF:
- contact is lost with a prison asteroid manned by robot controllers. Domo arogato Mr. Roboto Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 8, 2014 - 5:01pm | Maybe a member of the Silver Death Cult is amongst the prisoners in that particular adventure, but their hacking goes awry... |
April 8, 2014 - 5:27pm | dragging in an cult or cadre is a plus, great suggestion KRingway. I like the idea of the PCs having to cut a deal with the inmates as well. Side note: I was just at a friends house sitting and doing something and happened to be checking out his bathroom reading which happened to be Stephen Kings "Different Seasons" where the first short story (only 101 pages in hard cover) Was 'Hope Springs Eternal- Rita Heyworth and Shawshank Redemption'. I had never read a Stephen King book but had a great admiration for Shawshank Redemption, the movie, and in the time that I was occupied with what I was doing noticed that in the book Red's narration was quite a bit more than what was in the movie and needless to say that book went home with me and I've just finished the first story. So..... my brain is preoccupied with Shawshank Redemption and naturally I want to draw that story into this discussion but havent had time to process what I read. I can say that the book has quite a few differences fromt he movie. I dont think Red is actually black in the book (he's described with red hair- perhaps the source of the name Red) There were also 3 different Wardens in the book not just the guy who gets arrested at the end and events happen slightly differently. I enjoyed the book but the movie is a really good story perhaps in some ways a much better story than the book though there are some composite characters and things play out in the movie slightly differently and yet the end result is the same. I have to think further. but prison breaks are clearly a major theme in stories about prisons so I guess that theme should be explored. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 8, 2014 - 9:39pm | Here is a twist. The asteroid is apparently baren except for some robots roaming the halls half dismantaled and acting deranged. Many other robots are in pieces throughout the station. There are mumified bodies of aliens in a back room that are later found. With them are the missing parts of the roaming robots. Any PCs that decide to put one of the wandering robots back together will discover that the robots were the inmates and the jailers dismantled them to survive a prison uprising. A robot mastermind used the other robots to fight and provide its chance to get free. But the uprising caused the prison to be quarantined and the few remaining aliens were overlooked and presumed dead. They succeeded in dismantling the robot mastermind and dispersing his parts around the station. The fist repaired robot will restart it's mission to reassemble the mastermind and it's companions then destroy the new biologicals and steal their ship to get away. -iggy |
April 9, 2014 - 2:59am | Some other points to ponder: Is the asteroid big enough to have a small amount of gravity? If not, is it artificially spun to create gravity? Or is the prison complex attached to a spinning asteroid by arms, which creates gravity (i.e. similar to spin habitats)? If not either of the above, is everyone living under zero-G and what difference does that make? |
April 9, 2014 - 6:01am | There are a lot of real world health problems with living in 0 G for long periods. Which is why asteroid prisons dont make much sense in the real world unless one intends for the consequence of a "rehabilitated" inmate to be unable to return to a planet based society after serving 10-20 year sentence. If the inmates were put into a cold storage freeze field this would not be the case. Enter shades of Demolitian Man but skip the knitting please. If there is artificial gravity in the setting then asteroid prisons become practical for purposes of isolation or control. I like the robots as inmates idea. plus the robot master mind being a mega-tron sort of bigger more dangerous robot works for me. Of course it hinges on the PCs actually putting a robot back together so you might need some other action to trigger the master plan. Other ways this might happen are: 1. PCs have a robot with a chronocom installed (not all that unusual of an occurance IMO) and the newly powered up facility's computer hacks the robot through its chronocom (PCs have a reason to restore power- need for lights and life support so they can do what they came her for) 2. facility's computer tells the PCs to reactivate a disabled robot to accomplish somehting they desire but the computer is only doing this to get its own goals met. Perhaps the robot master mind exists in the computer as an AI? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 9, 2014 - 6:12am | What if Planaron Station in the White Light system became a prison asteroid for Star Law? The Crown has turned it over to Star Law and the worst of the worst are banished there as a gulag. Perhaps its big enough to have a flywheel deck with simulated gravity inside the rock. Most of the being made structure that you see in its picture is automated defenses and storage and docking facilities.  It could then become a Return to Planaron mission for the Royal Marines because something has happened and an assault scout is dispatched to investigate. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 9, 2014 - 6:27am | I imagined more that the robots were the warders, controlled by a central computer which has been hacked but subsequently goes haywire. Maybe also the survivors are working against time as they have limited vacc-suit oxygen supplies and the life support has been switched off. Perhaps also the central computer has disabled the spin thrusters for the whole asteroid, putting everyone in zero-g - but maybe the robots aren't fazed by a zero-g environment. The cards are all in their favour, unless the player and the surviving inmates can turn the tide. I envisage an asteroid that's being spun artificially, whose interior has been hollowed out to form concentric levels and the central computer sits right at the centre. Hmm, this is all starting to sound like a fun adventure. I'm planning to run Star Frontiers soonish (after a break of 20+ years) with some of my old RPG gang... |
April 9, 2014 - 10:57am | Here's a slightly different prison scenario. The players go to a prison asteriod to drop off supplies and to make the return trip profitable they are taking released prisoners back. They receive a grabled message that one of the released prisoners is not who they should be (criminal mastermind, serial killer, super spy, political agitator etc) and was released by mistake, forgery or escaped. The message does not say which one needs to be returned/turned over to authorities and the players must figure it out before they can dock at the next space port or risk letting a dangerous criminal back into society (assuming the criminal is good enough to get away once the group is near a station) This one would have less shooting and more detective work and ethical delimeas. Locking everyone up may not work with a very cleaver criminal and this would also violate the rights of the released prisoners since they are now full citizens again. Also the players may not want to tip their hands that they know about the escapee. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 9, 2014 - 5:26pm | This one would have less shooting and more detective work and ethical delimeas. Locking everyone up may not work with a very cleaver criminal and this would also violate the rights of the released prisoners since they are now full citizens again. Also the players may not want to tip their hands that they know about the escapee. Professor Vrusk, in the engine room with the lase power torch. EDIT: Almost any ship with a compliment or crew and passengers and one of them is a killer. PCs must unravel the clues and reveal the guilty. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 10, 2014 - 1:04am | I'm still scratching my head as to how there would be gravity. I don't know enough about physics to know whether concentric layers inside a spinning asteroid would work. I think various arms mounted to a spinning asteroid would work better. |
April 10, 2014 - 8:38am | Ugh - sorry for the double post. This site seems to either not work or be amazingly slow in the mornings (here in the UK, at least)... |
 April 21, 2014 - 1:55pm | late post here, and it may have been mentioned above, but a neat twist would be prison ships ... . The ship could travel around the frontier totally at random - perhaps it is run by Star Law. No system would want mega-mass murderers to be hosted in their system indefinitely, but perhaps they must allow their space to be used for a certain number of days per year (which then opens up interesting dynamics for the corruptable side of frontier governments -- "we'll host the prison ship for an extra month this year if you fast track our application produce atomic drives for Starfleet's new line of destroyers..."). Prison ships would be harder to track and could hide in plain sight (a large, worn but serviceable freighter which never seems to unload much in the way of cargo but always takes on a new load of foodstuffs for its next delivery). It spends a while in system but pretty much remains in high orbit. Just a thought... |
April 24, 2014 - 5:04am | I think that prison ships are better suited to political prisoners and other leader types that have followers that would seek their freedom. They also have the stigma of being desired by their followers and others may be sympathetic to them and their persuasions about the injustice of the imprisonment. This stigma makes it that no government wants to bare the social burden of imprisoning these beings. Thus the use of a prison ship that can be anywhere and no one is sure where it is. The common mass murderer lacks any credible social following or sympathy for the jailing authority to have any political risk to imprisoning the being. I like the concept that these prison ships are functioning freighters where one obscure hold it the prison level. The crew is all star law enforcers and the jump schedule is very haphazard and last minute like a struggling independent freighter. No one would be able to predict where the ship will be next. Larger, publically visible, prison ships would likely be associated with deep space hard labor tasks like asteroid mining. The prisoners would be most likely ship bound for the mineral processing for the highest security types. The others would be out mining in vac suits. No real chance to run if you only have a few hours of air and nowhere to go. The remote location would mean that anyone approaching who is not invited is going to get stopped far away. The sites chosen for work would be for rare minerals found in small quantities that require constant moving to collect the ore. Any one site is mined out in just a matter of weeks. I need to ponder on what this resource might be that is so rare and of remote locations, requiring hard labor. -iggy |
April 24, 2014 - 6:32am | There is a problem with prison ships. That is the maintenance requirements. Since drydocks are required, what to do with these highly dangerous prisoners during the time the ship is undergoing maintenance. 1) Transfer them to another ship? Two ships might be a little beyond budget not to metion life support and alot more dangerous prisoners grouped together. 2) transfer them to a ground facility? Kinda defeats the purpose of keeping them in deep space. 3) Cold storage the prisoners? If you are going to do that for maintenance why not just keep them there for the long term? 4) Keep them aboard and have them assist? Do you really want your prisoners in the bowels of your ship fiddling with it? 5) Keep them aboard away from the maintenance team. The security risks go way way up and the maintenace teams will all need to be vetted but still leads to greater hostage situation chances. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 24, 2014 - 1:20pm | Maybe it would necessitate a ship design whereby the overall design is modular. This would make sense for freighters anyway. By this I mean that the cargo carrying part(s) of the ship could be detached and kept somewhere else (i.e. in orbit) whilst the rest of the ship is being maintained. Failing that, maybe cold storage is an option, but perhaps not a long term one because it has an adverse physical effect on lifeforms. |
April 24, 2014 - 4:46pm | There is a problem with prison ships. That is the maintenance requirements. Since drydocks are required, what to do with these highly dangerous prisoners during the time the ship is undergoing maintenance. 1) Transfer them to another ship? Two ships might be a little beyond budget not to metion life support and alot more dangerous prisoners grouped together. 2) transfer them to a ground facility? Kinda defeats the purpose of keeping them in deep space. 3) Cold storage the prisoners? If you are going to do that for maintenance why not just keep them there for the long term? 4) Keep them aboard and have them assist? Do you really want your prisoners in the bowels of your ship fiddling with it? 5) Keep them aboard away from the maintenance team. The security risks go way way up and the maintenace teams will all need to be vetted but still leads to greater hostage situation chances. I think prison ships are a fun trope that should be used for RPG adventures if a GM so desires but... one should not try to ask to many inconvient questions about the logistics and practicallity of them :) Pretty tough to visit a family member on one, unless of course they are a Gitmo where you disappear certain prisoners into a legal limbo where you can hold them indeffinetly, torture them for intel and not bother with things like habeus corpus then a prison ship makes sense, though it might be neccessary to keep them out of the territorial limit of a soverign planet especially if that planet is not in favor to such things. I like the idea of a mining ship or ag ship as a work release program or sort of a mobile half way house.Ag ship is attached to an asteroid or moon prison and provides its food. instead of bots certain prisoners (low risk/low security) provide labor and learn useful skills I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 25, 2014 - 3:37am | Logistics and things making sense are just the sort of things players will pick holes in, especially if they're called in to clean up and situation  I don't think it would be economically viable to have low-risk prisoners on a ship. Ships are expensive to maintain and run and so it would make more sense to use one to confine more dangerous prisoners. After all, if you're going to spend the money you might as well make sure that your taxpayer credits are being spent making sure that such criminals won't be anywhere near civilian centres. As for visits, I guess that would be a no-no, but technology would allow remote communications. Visits would be tricky even if the prison was on a planet somewhere, as you'd have to pay to get there and back. |
April 25, 2014 - 4:24am | I'm guessing that if you go to the trouble of establishing a prison ship or asteroid prison its really in the class of gulag or gitmo. Thus we're talking about the absolute worst and most feared criminals in the frontier: the dreaded sathar agent, which due to the nature of the mind controll involved means no rehab for them, thus the gulag measures. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 25, 2014 - 8:56am | Remember, the frontier beings chose to space Hazak-nar the pirate. (Hope I got the name right) I see them using these asteroid and ship prisons for beings that they politically can't execute. Think faction heroes, political leaders, conquered government heads of state. -iggy |
April 25, 2014 - 3:24pm | I don't see such places as being one of what is more less a form of torture (as is the case for Gulags and Guantanamo). Rather, it's more do with keeping certain undesirable persons away from society. Star Law doesn't execute them nor does it torture them, it just keeps them completely seperate from everyone else. There could be lower-level prison ships - or spaced-based facilities - that are more like regular prisons, which could be geared towards hard labour. There could, for example, be a prison on an asteroid where the inmates are involved in mining. |
April 25, 2014 - 5:40pm | Remember, the frontier beings chose to space Hazak-nar the pirate. (Hope I got the name right) I see them using these asteroid and ship prisons for beings that they politically can't execute. Think faction heroes, political leaders, conquered government heads of state. This is pre UPF. It was done by the First Common Muster which was a call to bnd together and put down a scourge of th spaceways. The Execution was undoubtably on the authority of Admiral Morgaine. Naval crews have historically detested pirated especially when they get to confront the aftermath of pirate attacks first hand which is clearly the case here. In addition Zebs would lead us to believe that Hatzk Naar had brutally atacked several planets and this could be the source of the extreme prohibition in the UPF over orbital bombardment of planets that is in KHs I beleive. In this atmosphere I'm not surprised that the naval crews under the direction Morgaine were willing to execute a little high justice. Was it legal? that's perhaps a gray area but certainly no one was going to complain especially on the planets that got raided. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 25, 2014 - 6:37pm | I don't see the frontier as quick to execute prisoners. I am just pointing out that they do use execution. As for the prison ship I don't see a terrorist who succeeded in killing 2,000 by blowing up a skyscraper getting a prison ship. This terrorist gets the prison asteroid and maybe the mining ship. The leader of said terrorist group who has millions revearing him as the hero fighting the government(s) and who has killed many thousands through his terrorists is the one who gets the prison ship. Too risky to put him in one spot where his followers will go get him. Can't kill him or he becomes a martyr. No one wants to be the government that is holding him. -iggy |
April 25, 2014 - 6:59pm | Too risky to put him in one spot where his followers will go get him. Can't kill him or he becomes a martyr. No one wants to be the government that is holding him. Possibly the best arguement so far for having prison ships. Most planets dont want these prisoners dumped on them thus the rise of a system of prison ships. However, Devco system which was founded with refugees of the Blue Plague has welcomed a Star Law prison facility since it brought investment and money with it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 26, 2014 - 1:54am | Yep, this is why I suggested that such ships are used to seperate any such individuals completely from the rest of society. It's sort of like quarantine If the inmate containment part of the ship can be seperated and tugged into orbit, or just away to one side, the rest of the ship could be maintained. The containment part cannot manouvre as it has no means to do so, but does have life-support. If need be, the inmates can be made to sleep or immobilised in some other way whenever it's seperated. That way various bases are covered |
April 26, 2014 - 6:43am | Just for funsies, anyone remember Spandau prison and its only prisoner Rudolph Hess? If not look it up on that internet thing. Crib notes you have three countries rotating guards through a prison holding one guy. There were others but they were released or died. What secrets does this one prisoner hold that he can never be released or allowed to see anyone but cannot killed? Maybe prisoner 001 on that constanly moving prison ship is that Sathar traitor they say or maybe he is a famous pirate who really wasn't thrown out an airlock. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
