F is for Finn MacCool

Finn MacCool, or Fionn mac Cumhail, was a really big, really tough Irish hero who did too many marvellous things to recount here, in Known Space he is a bloody great Irish robot and he lives on the planet Nua Domhan.

Nua Domhan

286 Aquila X 8B1 110 3

Ireland in 2313 is still part of the European Union, and Irish settlers can be found all over Known Space wherever the EU has stuck its starry circle flag. But for one Irish patriot and freelance star-scout, David Delaney, that wasn't good enough, he wanted a bit of outer space that was forever Ireland, and so the unclaimed world of Nua Domhan was officially colonised in 2278. This was rather against the Irish government's wishes. Nua Domhan had gone a begging since it was one of the most useless hunks of junk in Known Space, a large Venusian type world with boiling temperatures, sulphuric atmosphere and more volcanoes than you could shake a stick at. What attracted Delaney was its rather pretty version of the Giant’s Causeway, a plain of hexagonal basalt columns larger in land area than Ireland itself, lapped by an emerald green sea of sulphuric acid and dissolved copper sulphate.

When the Irish Navy took absolutely no interest in guarding the place, a popular charity appeal raised enough money to by a second hand picket vessel to be despatched to guard Ireland's new interstellar empire.

Colonisation was a dead letter. Delaney's Irish Imperial Exploits company went broke, but not before purchasing, at a knock down price, Fionn MacCumhail, a giant construction robot. This was a failed project of Nakamura Industries to create a passenger carrying walker that could take tourists across the Pacific sea floor. Now it would stride across Nua Domhan planting atmosphere reduction machines that in a mere 30,000 years (at the current work rate) would make the planet a sizzlingly hot but just about inhabitable paradise!

This quixotic project is currently funded by the son of a former Saudi Prince who retired to his horse stud in Waterford county after the Arabian revolution, an Irish-American software baron, a national lottery and the occasional grant from the ever complaining Irish Dail. There are four personnel on the planet itself, living in extremely cramped quarters in Fionn's torso and going quietly mad from cabin fever and the stress caused by Fionn's frequent break downs and many niggling malfunctions. Another two guys mind the orbital picket ship and storage facility. They spend up to a year on duty at a time, with next to no visitors. The current owners keep making vague promises about buying another robot, or making a proper orbital station with enough room to swing a cat, or finding a way round the communications problems that mean Fionn can't be controlled from orbit, but nothing ever seems to get done. The low TL does not reflect the technology of Fionn (actually about TL10, TL11 for the self-repairing acid resistant smart material kilt), but the local capacity for manufacture, ie pretty damn poor. They can bang out a few very crude machine parts in the engineering section of the picket ship and that's it.

Adventure Hooks

• Fionn has had it. He fell into a crevasse and broke and the crew need rescuing.
• Nua Domhan has been invaded! Well, a gang of hard up belt miners took over the orbital station and stripped it for scrap metal. Quite how the Irish government will react no one knows, the speed of communication means they probably haven't even heard about it yet, but anyone in the area could defend Irish national honour and nab the varmints if they felt so inclined.
• The guys on the ground are going off the rails. They say there's a monster following them, but the whole system is only a billion years old, there's no way bacteria could have evolved on the planet, even if a living system could ever cope with the bitterly acidic atmosphere and boiling temperatures, which the planetologists doubt. Lay off the Jameson's guys.
• There's good money to earned on Nua Domhan for the right kind of people. The Fionn Mac Cumhail co want experienced spacers used to spending a long time in a cabin to run the robot. They go broke about a month into the PCs contract, and the picket ship is out of action.
• Fionn's got a new brain! PCs deliver and possibly install an up to date AI unit. Thing is the provenance is a bit dubious, it looks a bit second hand really, and you had to pick it up on Annabel's Grave…
• The new terraforming bot has arrived, CuCuhlainn, an updated version of Fionn. The old soldier has been stoically plodding the sulphurous wastes for years. He's an old bot with no true AI, but could he have actually got a bit territorial? Anyway he's not responding to commands and heading for the new bot in what might be interpreted as a menacing and deliberate air.

E is for Eagle's Nest

Back in the early 22^nd century warp drive vessels became cheap enough for all kinds of small companies and political fringe groups to go of into space and found colonies. Some very nasty racist and sectarian groups took the chance to set up their own warped ideas of utopia, including some neo-Nazis. Most people on Earth at the time thought 'good riddance', and most of the colonies didn't do well, collapsing into faction fighting and pissing off their neighbours and getting invaded and broken up. But there are persistent rumours of the existence of 'Eagle's Nest', a Nazi planet that has remained stable and prospered in isolation for 200 years and now allegedly constitutes a major threat to Known World security.

No one knows where it is. Sightings of alleged Nazi starships come from all over the rimward end of Known Space, conspiracy theorists are sure that they ply well known space lanes in disguise.

One well known world with a neo-Nazi presence is Orpheus, their colony here is small, but it does provide some insight as to how the fabled Eagle's Nest might work.

Orpheus

463 Aquila E 757 64A 7 Agricultural, Garden

Orpheus has a population of 7 million in four colonies. The oldest is Asgard, founded early in the expansion period by American white supremacists. The planet has a thin oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, a well developed ecosystem with a full range of native animals and plants with plenty of Terran imports doing well, but it is a bit on the cold side.

The Asgardians have only 750,000 people and a small subcontinent left. They successfully captured and enslaved the occupants of a number of colony ships from a diverse range of nations in their early decades, but eventually a large contingent from Vietnam landed far enough away from them and were sufficiently well armed and warned about their presence to fight them off. The Asgardians had not managed to maintain a very high tech level – crucial minerals on Asgard are not as accessible as they are on Earth and they had a habit of ideologically purging educated personnel – and their outdated weaponry failed to make an impact

The Vietnamese were soon joined by Khazaks, Egyptians and French Canadians. Thirty years ago the Asgardians attempted to take over the planet and made great inroads thanks to an unexpected nuclear strike, but an alliance of all three colonies, plus forces from neighbouring planets, the European Union – the Asgardians had captured a ship load of Italian colonists early in their history – and a foreign legion of anti-fascist activists and adventurers from across Known Space counter invaded. The war eventually bogged down into a stalemate, and an armistice signed.

The current major power, with 4 million inhabitants, is the Orphean League, a rather grim but multi-racial police state which controls the bulk of the former Asgardian territories. They are subject to frequent uprisings and rebellions from ex-Asgardian citizens, 'forcing' the government to impose serious limits on local freedoms. They have resorted to forced internal migration and outright off-planet deportation to control them, and re-education camps allegedly exist in the boondocks of the world. A fair proportion of the younger ex Asgardians have become normal enough, but the population was subjected to a century and a half of vehemently racist propaganda and the erosion of this mindset has been slow.

The Asgardians live behind a massively fortified frontier, and can only maintain a tech level of 5 due to massive destruction of industrial capacity and trade restrictions. They can manage TL 7 genetics though, and a corps of certified 'Purifiers' have everyone's DNA on record. Those who carry what they define as 'impure genes' are given the choice of sterilisation or deportation, and encourage those the regime deems fittest to have numerous children. There are known to be barracks like boarding schools where hundreds of children are 'educated'. The many small farming communities are given a lot of independence, but sadly they just compete to be more hard line than the next lot, with councils of wilfully ignorant and brutal farmworkers monitoring each other's every utterance for deviation from the ideological norm. The one remaining town is, on the surface, quite pleasant. The Asgardians are desperate for foreign currency, technology and trade and go out of their way to give a good impression to outsiders. The model town is of course inhabited by an army of informers and secret police, and has many foreign infiltrators equipped with cybernetic implants from a variety of secret police forces on the look out for evidence of links with Eagle's Nest.

Adventure Hooks

• PCs offered a mission to be dropped in a deserted area inside Asgardian territory to spy on a military testing range where they appear to have a suspiciously high tech artillery system.
• An Asgardian exile met on a different world claims that his DNA changed between the mandatory test at birth and a later update. He claims the Orpheans are releasing a retro virus into Asgardian airspace infecting people with mutant genes, a blatant crime against humanity. The Asgardians are bastards but do they deserve this? Or is the guy a raving paranoiac?
• The Orphean police have a standing list of wanted Nazis whose location is unknown. Fancy some bounty hunting? Maybe some have fled to Eagle's Nest if you follow the trail long and hard enough...
• A shipload of diehard rebels have been deported from Orpheus and taken in by the Adelbert Corporation on Epsilon. What the hell do they want with these racist lunatics? Load the fools with cybernetic implants and use them as 'special security' when the war against the New Canaanites comes?
• What really happens in those Asgardian schools? The rumours are lurid to say the least, but hard data would be nice – might even enable the Orpheans to get enough military aid to restart the war.
• Reformed Odinism has become popular among the New Age set on a rich and heavily populated world. The usual moral panic and rumours of a cult are going about, but a local reporter thinks the leader is in fact an exiled Asgardian, which puts a different complexion on things.

D is for Dim

There are stars of all sizes and colours, white, yellow, orange, red and brown. There are quite a lot of brown dwarfs dotted around, dimly illuminating star systems consisting of interstellar dreck and slurry, particles of dirty ice too small for a beetle to colonise. Most don't appear on any but the most detailed star maps, space is big, it is very rare one even rates as a navigational hazard, space is big and they rarely impinge on the direct routes between more interesting inhabited systems. The exception is...

Brandy

Aquila 473 B 100542 C Non Agricultural, Non Industrial, Vacuum

Brandy lies in the middle of a dark nebula made of a mix of organic molecules most notably ethanol (well methanol actually exists out there so why not?).

Four different colonies compete, run by British Petroleum, New Standard Oil from the US, Lukoil from Russia and a gang of mainly Scandinavian freelance belters called the Berusadine Brotherhood.

Each of these has a base (BP have bagged the only orbiting body big enough to be a planet and built a starport called New Milford Haven) and a number of refineries and mining vessels trundling round the system, grabbing the oil/ice asteroids and sucking in the denser strands of gas. 

From the main world Brandy gives about as much light as a 40 watt bulb, a dull purplish brown star about 20% covered in black sunspots edged in dull red. Every few hours a cloud of ethanol gets close enough to be caught up in one of the sluggish solar flares, making it burn with a dim blue flame. Residents say its looks a bit like a Christmas pudding, if you squint and are three sheets to the wind.

The main product of the system is a variety of interstellar light mineral oil, but inevitably various bored engineers have found a way of distilling off the booze to make 'Starshine' - various kinds of 90+% proof liquor dosed with food colouring and flavourings cooked up by organic chemists from the heavier fractions. Most people find it vile, but it is popular among the growing number of semi-feral spacebums who work asteroid belts and Oort clouds throughout Known Space, especially with a couple of ice cubes freshly chipped off a comet and shot of Ultra-Bee venom.

Adventure Hooks

• New Standard Oil are trying a new venture, the 'booze cruise', taking college students out into deep space in a gas scooper on a fun filled holiday of liver damage and high jinks. If a given batch of dipsomaniacs drink an entire asteroid they get their money back.
• British Petroleum Health and Safety have had it with the 'Starshiners' running illegal cracking plants in unoccupied craters, they want undercover agents to infiltrate their organisation.
• Clive Lam of the infamous Clive's Bar wants a hundred gallons of top quality interstellar liquid brain damage, and he has heard the Berusadine boys are the ones to get it from. Don't screw it up, if they don't chuck you out of an airlock, Clive will.
• One of the Lukoil mining vessels, the St Valdimir, has not been heard from in some time. Find it and find out what the hell they have been drinking, last known location has massive cyrillic swearwords, crafted from frozen poop from the vacuum toilets, doing a three body orbit round each other.
• The New Canaan temperance society are in town with a US Navy surplus frigate and a hold full of tracts. Tread carefully around the Standard Oil stations.
• Astro-chemists have wondrered where the millions of tons of ethanol has been coming from, things of that molecular weight shouldn't be possible to build out of drifiting carbon dust,hydrogen gas and radiation. Professor Stella Artois has made a shocking announcement – it is made by a bacterium-like thingy that evolved in deep space! Wonder if it any are still floating in that Starshine gunk that has got so popular? And what effect will they have if ingested?

C is for Cybernetics

Most people in Known Space don't like cybernetics and regard those sporting them as freaks and wierdos or worse. The interfaces available for use with computers at higher tech levels are pretty good, holographic controls, data gloves, display visors, and having chips wired into your brain looks like a very nerdy affectation for little actual gain. Trying to hide cybernetic devices is also frowned upon by most governments. The only reason you would want to do so was because you were up to no good, and security forces tend to assume anyone with implants is a spy or terrorist until they prove otherwise. Cybernetics are also expensive, dangerous and and frequently lead to mental illness.

Prejudice

'eff off tinface!

As well as the modifiers by tech level on p38 of the Monggose Traveller Cybernetics books, add a -1d3 DM for degree of cultural bias against cybernetics and a further -1d3 if there has been a recent incident on the world involving a cybernetically enhanced criminal, spy or terrorist. Then give a -1 DM for every 3 Law Levels the society has – the higher the law level the greater the paranoia about crime and subversion and the more dangerous a cyborg is in the popular imagination.

Prejudice at its mildest level to a flat refusal to allow the individual to enter a business premises or home due to fears of covert surveillance and people assuming that a cyborg is mentally ill. More serious negative reactions may involve local toughs offering to fight the cyborg in order to prove that real men are tougher than half a man, local police forces taking a more violent than usual line with cyborgs committing misdemeanours (That metal oaf is littering – wait is he dropping a nanobot spy thingamajig? Shoot him!) and concerned citizens calling the cops on the spot.

On most worlds a special ID can be granted for those who have had implants for legitimate medical reasons, which can defuse most cases of prejudice. Others demand that cyborgs who have had elective enhancements have a day-glo orange tattoo, especially those who have concealable enhancements, so the public know that they are under serious danger of being 'gargoyled', recorded and monitored against their will.

Side Effects

'Ah, the anaesthetic is wearing off. You may feel the urge to scream...'

As well as the survival roll on p35, make a second roll at -2 to see if there are side effects, with an extra -1 per implant/improvement already possessed.

These may be constant pain from badly joined nerve endings, infection, feedback from a new implant disabling another, Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome, outright implant rejection resulting in failure within 1d6 months, losses to INT, EDU and DEX due to general brain and nerve damage. Each operation and type of enhancement will have its own particular pitfalls.

The Law

'I am afraid your legs are illegal in this colony. Please report to the special customs agent, the guy over there with the oily overalls and the hammer drill...'

Plenty of states outright ban elective cybernetics and put severe limits on the capabilities of medical cybernetic implants. Weapons as part of a cybernetic implant are treated as one category higher with regard to laws relating to arms. It might be OK in a jurisdiction to have a concealable handgun, but not if it is so concealable that it springs out of your thigh or shoots from your wrist. Concealable cavities are also frowned upon, and many jurisdictions will insist on them being welded shut. Higher law levels will have strict laws about recording devices and dmand that memory chips be removed from enhanced eyes and ears and their wi fi blocked. Really nasty ones will wave these things through, but put hackers on the job of putting viruses in the software to monitor the cyborg and shut down the implant if law enforcement deems it necessary. And what goes for entering a state goes double for entering a corporate enclave and quadruple for government and military offices. (Yes sir, you may come onto our airbase, but only if you unscrew your head and legs).

Mental Illness

Bow puny meat-things! I am Mechanisto the Great!

This is the big bugbear. Any talent beyond the human norm seems to result in some eccentricity as a side effect, and gaining that talent through messing around with the brain and nervous system just makes those eccentricities more extreme.

All PCs have basic sanity of 11+1d6. Modify this using the table below

For each 10% body mass replaced by cybernetics -1

For each extra skill level gained by cybernetic means -1

For each stat point gained -2

For each moderately superhuman ability (high speed, UV vision, armour) -1

Modification directly affects brain -1d3

Major deviation from human body plan (weapon, wheels instead of legs, grav units etc) -3

A roll under sanity must be made after every additional cybernetic modification, and at the GMs discretion after every traumatic experience the PC meets during play.

Failure results in the acquisition of a behavioural quirk. Roll d10 on the table below +1 per existing quirk, and repeats make an existing quirk worse.

1 Mild megalomania. I am just better at this than you thanks to my machine parts. -1 on all social skill rolls.

2 OCD. Any failed task must be repeated again and again until it is done right to achieve machine like repeatability and perfection.

3 Clean freak. Must keep cybernetic bits clean and in working order. Roll vs Sanity on exposure to dirt or freak out about malfunctions and infection.

4 Paranoia. THEY don't like cyborgs. They ARE out to get me. -1 social rolls.

5 Paranoia II. The computer is jealous of my humanity, the robots feel threatened by me.

6 Depression. Oh why did I do this to myself. I am a freak. -1 on all social rolls.

7 Mania. I can do things a million times faster and more efficiently than ordinary meat people. Look! -1 on all skill rolls, -2 on social skills, roll vs sanity or become aggressive if fail in a task of contradicted.

8 Existential paralysis. Is this real, or just an input from my machinery? Roll vs sanity in any crisis situation or dither unable to work out what is actually going on.

9 Schizophrenia. Temporarily lose touch with reality. Roll vs Sanity every hour to get back online.

10 Schizophrenia II. Lose all emotional affect, cannot feel or express emotion. -2 on all social skills.

11 Mild psychopathy. Total lack of empathy, see people as machines to be used and manipulated with appropriate social inputs, feel no embarrassment of fear. +1 social skills.

12 Major psychopathy. Who or what the hell are these gibbering meat puppets? -3 social skills, save vs sanity if opposed or become homicidally violent.

13 Megalomania. Who the hell are these sacks of slime? I am great! Automatically fail all social rolls, save vs sanity at -2 or use violence on anyone who fails to agree with your godlike superiority at everything.

14 Extreme Paranoia. Get the bastards before they get you. Fail all social skills, kill all humans in sight if fail sanity check at -3 (and robots, and let's chuck in the cyborgs just to make sure).

15 Catatonia. Endless paradoxes, feedback loops, depression and weltschmerz. Totally useless, cannot move or think.

Removing augments gives a repeat sanity check to lose a quirk, but not all reverse operations will increase the sanity score – you can't put back brain cells that have been flushed away to make room for a microprocessor.

B is for Bees!

As yet no-one has discovered any indisputably intelligent aliens in Known Space, but there are a few species that come tantalisingly close like the Ultra-Bees of Myrmidia.

Myrmidia

Aquila Sector 375 Myrmidia D 578210 7 Low Population, Garden

Myrmidia ought to be the ideal colony world, warm climate, oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, developed ecosystem etc. but unfortunately the local lifeforms are a bit unfriendly.

The single land mass is overrun with Ultra-Bees. Bees stand for Bee-like Endoskeletoned Exocranial Semi-sapients, they are vertebrates, mostly in the 12-25kg range, with a brain outside their skulls, a small knot of nervous tissue covered in sensory hairs. They have two small eyes on stalks, a rounded furry body with eight spindly legs and a gas sac and small wings that function very well in the low G.

The taint in the atmosphere is entirely due to their many varieties of pheromone. These have some effect on humans, making them dizzy, inducing panic and euphoria, aggressive outbursts and depressive misery or a very uncomfortable combination of all of these depending on what kinds happen to be floating by at the time. Trying to breathe the stuff without a gas mask results in a bad effect on a roll of 10+ (End and Int mods) in the first round, 9+ the second, 8+ the third etc. and each fail requires a d6 roll on the table below

1 Dizzy – lose 1d3 Dex, roll vs Dex or fall over

2 Panic – roll vs Int or lose -1 on all skill rolls. Second result gives a -2 modifier, then -3 etc. and run away

3 Euphoria – as above, but tendency to drop equipment and strip naked

4 Aggression - +1 Str and End, save vs Int or attack colleagues. Each repeat gives -2 to the save

5 Depression - -1 to all skill rolls automatically, each repeat add 1 to this, Euphoria effect above counteracts it.

6 Two of the above.

The beasts themselves have a nasty bite and though they rarely attack immediately they will summon more ultra-bees (1d6 in the first round, 2d6 in the second, 3d6 in the third etc.) until they outnumber the party at least 5 to one. Use the attack/flee rolls below until the total mass of bees outweighs the mass of the party or the vehicle they are in, then attack is automatic and flee is 2-. Attacking them first will just make them mad, doubling the number flying in and adding two to the caste table roll below.

The little bastards do seem to have worked out that humans don't like their air. Any attack has a 1 in 6 chance of being on the characters breathing equipment.

They come in a variety of castes from the typical flyer/worker bee to diggers, transporters and soldier bees. They have eliminated all other animals on the planet and changed the plant ecosystem to a variety of fruits, flowers and brassica like species grown in neat gardens. They don't eat this stuff, they take into their hive for purposes unknown. Their hive is made more like a termite mound, dug into the ground and built up into vast twisted spires made of dirt and tree-trunks bound together with concrete like tree-sap/sand amalgam. And it is vast, covering the entire surface of the one continent and tunnelled up to two miles or more under the surface.

No one has seen the Queen Ultra-Bee or Bees; 'take me to your leader' type speeches just result in a typical massive bee attack, trying to get inside their hives is suicidal, the little wretches wall off the tunnels and tunnellers dig holes under the attackers dropping them down pits hundreds of meters deep and often ending in lava pools or subterranean lakes.

Bee caste roll d8

1-4 Worker Flyer 12kg Scavenger/Reducer 39612 Teeth+1, 0AP 1d6 dam A9+ F7-

5-6 Transporter 50kg Herbivore/Intermittent BAA01 Teeth and Claws 2AP 2d6 dam A10+ F4-

7 Tuneller 200kg Herbivore/Filter DAF01 Claws 3AP 2d6 dam A10+ F5-

8-10 Soldier Flyer 50kg Carnivore/Chaser BG923 Thrasher 3AP 2d6 dam A* F5-

For each soldier in a group reduce A and F scores of the rest by one, for each five soldiers give +1 attack to a max of +3

The human colonists live on an artificial island/oil rig kind of affair way out in the deepest, most distant part of the ocean where the stink of the pheromones is weakest. Originally an EU scientific outpost it is now a communist aquafarming collective barely scraping by on kelp, oyster beds and lobster herding. The locals do not visit the mainland, it just isn't worth the hassle, and only half-heartedly searching for the artificial pheromone mix that will enable them to do so safely. In fact they are working to emulate the bees, researching powerful enough human pheromones to ensure a harmonious and cooperative society.

Adventure Hooks

• Some people will get high on anything. Drug barons are offering good money for Ultra-Bee aggression glands.
• A lobster herder got attacked by some strange fish-thing. He reckons it had a fuzzy external brain. Have the Ultra-Bees learned how to swim?
• The Ultra-Bees are at war! Who the hell knows how it happened but the southern and northern halves of the continent are having at each other in billion strong assaults featuring artillery bees never before recorded by science.
• Bees in spaace! Some silly sod has managed to trap a couple of dozen bees and has them in a freighter hold, hoping to take them to a zoo. No one has heard from him for a while and there is a suspiciously termite mound looking asteroid floating through space near the PCs ship, heading for somewhere civilised.
• At the hive's core. A really really determined scientist, Professor Jules Vernon, has built a hopefully bee proof tunnelling machine, want to try looking for those queens?
• Crews of visiting starships have been joining the local colony, becoming happy communards toiling for the greater good of all.
• For shits and giggles a couple of spoilt rich kids dropped a load of marijuana seed on the bee-lands from a high altitude grav speeder. The stuff took root, the bees are actively farming it and are apparently going a bit weird. Time for friendly contact? Or to take an armoured combine harvester and get as much dope as you can before the bees sober up and kill you?

A is for Annabel's Grave

I have always been a bit lackadaisical about posting to this blog, so I am going to try A-Z April posting thing, for my own benefit more than anyone else’s. I used to be a very productive writer, but that was when I did it for a living and if I didn't write I didn't eat. Self-discipline, that's what I need, and though this A-Z thing is pretty cheesy it's as good a place to start as any. So, 26 things, gameable things, and they are going to be about the Known Space Traveller setting I never really got anywhere with (see previous posts), but nickable for anything sci-fi.

Annabel's Grave

472 Aquila E334113 9 Low Pop

Annabel Wozniak is the poster girl for the anti-cybernetic movement. A hotel manager from Warsaw, Poland, she was run down and nearly killed in a grav-car pile up in 2253 and what little was left of her was left paralysed. Cebus Cybernetic Corporation offered her a new lease of life as the living control computer for the staff of a luxury space liner. The on-board stewardbots were efficient enough on their own, but still in that 'uncanny valley' that made passengers uneasy around them, Annabel was to give them a bit more of a human touch by intermittently remotely controlling them. It worked well, one human brain in a tank could manage a staff of half a dozen, vastly cutting costs. With a direct link to a computer expert system Annabel was given a medbot, then a couple of maintenance bots and then it started to go wrong.

Being virtually present in her many robot shells was no substitute for being fully alive, and she became increasingly eccentric, mothering the passengers, then bossing them about, arguing with the chief engineer and then getting antsy with the pilot and captain of what she insisted was her ship, her very body. She secretly used her engineer bots to put in a few circuit boards here and there and one day seized control of the autopilot, annexed the navigation computer and life support and froze all the controls. Annabel was in command of the ship, and its passengers.

The mass kidnap wasn't easy, the stewardbots had to do some violent crowd control, and the medbot had to put most of the surviving passengers and crew into a drug induced coma. She radioed her hopelessly unrealistic demands – a real human body for her brain to be transplanted into and a million credits per passenger – and then engaged warp drive. She was pursued to this then uninhabited system, and after an unsuccessful boarding action she was forced to crash land into the ice capped sea on the dark side of a tidally locked planet. And there she lays to this day, a gruesome monument to a failed experiment in Transhumanism. Cebus Cybernetic went bust due to the lawsuits and fines, and the ship was too deeply sunk to profitably recover.

The current settlement is a landing field and stopover just over the dayside of the terminator line run by HappyCorp Waystations. It has a population of 25 humans and 50 barely autonomous robots. HappyCorp renamed the world Annabel's Garden, and then Unicorn Garden, but on most maps and in the minds of the starfaring public it is still Annabel's Grave, and this raises all kinds of un-Happy and macabre associations. The port has few visitors, the projected colony and mining operation has fizzled from lack of interest, the irritating muzak plays for no one but the bored staff and forlorn cook-bots stand silently rusting in the food court, spatulas at the ready for a HappyBurger take out order that never comes...

Adventure Seeds

• Cyber-psychologist Professor Julia Yamato wants to dig up Annabel and see if the addition of so many expert systems and multiple bodies could have contributed to her flip out.
• Father Hennig Kosminsky, interstellar Jesuit, wants to conduct a mass for a lost Catholic soul driven mad by ungodly cyberneticists (or possibly recover the tech for use with his plan for an immortal infallible cyber-Pope).
• Annabel's great-niece Danielle is sure she is alive down there and wants her great-aunt's life support turned definitively off, so at least she will find peace.
• The bots are acting funny – is it the ghost of crazy Annabel seeking to inhabit another machine body?
• HappyCorp PR are serious about this Unicorn Garden business – they have found an ex-Cebus Cybernetics scientist to implant the brains of horses into pink fluffy robot unicorn bodies to gambol around the icy wastes and burning deserts and act as a tourist attraction.
• The crew of a freighter just come into port reckon they saw a battered old space liner zooming through space, but they out ran it. Kept sending peculiar signals about their starship not having its vest on in the subzero cold of space.
• A sinister black ship has entered orbit, the vessel of Alpha Geek Omicron 2652, the Transhumanic Cybergoth popstar. The silicon-crazed loon has decided the homicidal cyborg stewardess is destined to be the love of his life and wants to reactivate her.  

Lhankor Mhy

Another cult updated for Legend/RQ6. The Legend specific bits are in red the RQ6 bits in blue

Lhankor Mhy is the Orlanthi god of knowledge. He stood by Orlanth's throne as his Lawspeaker when he ruled the world during the Storm Age and accompanied him on his epic quest to rescue the sun from hell.

He is worshipped by the 'Knowing Men', the scholars and lawyers of Sartarite and other Thelayan cultures. They are quite emphatically scholars, not scientists or sorcerers, and can be relied on to waffle endlessly about the minutiae of history, legal precedents and ethics, but few among them create anything truly new or experimental. In fact knowing a fair bit about the Empire of the Wyrm's Friends and the Middle Sea Empire they are downright leery of anything new, regarding innovation as a sure path to disaster. The new Red Moon goddess and her 'progress' crazed followers are on the road to Hell, no doubt about it.

They are supposed to be impartial and uninvolved in politics, advising all impartially. This doesn't preclude fighting amongst themselves though, and any sizeable temple is a rat's nest of cliques, academic rivalries and backbiting.

Followers

There are two sorts of followers. The temples run a few classes for ordinary members of the populace, usually in Literacy (local language), which are paid for at the usual rate, up to 50%.

A few, usually younger people, are accepted as Apprentices if they have Literacy skills of 50% or more and pass a test, rolling INTx5% or less. If they fail they can always reapply next year. Apprentices are expected to work full time for the temple and spend at least 50% or their time in class, studying any number of cult skills at half price. The rest of the time is spent doing a variety of unexciting tasks like copying scrolls and books, cleaning, helping in the refectory and even farm work where the temple has lands attached for its upkeep. Their little free time is spent doing the usual damn fool things students do in all times and places.

Apprenticeship lasts around six years, but bright apprentices who make suitably large donations to the temple can take their exams early.

Apprentices can learn the following Folk/Common magic at half price:

Legend: Bearing Witness, Detect Magic, Detect Gold, Detect Silver, Mindspeech, Understanding

RQ6: Appraise, Find Magic, Find Gold, Find Silver, Mindspeech, Translate

Initiates

To become an initiate one must have 50% in five temple skills. At least one must be Literacy (local language) and another must be a Lore skill. The other three are chosen from: Any other Lore or Literacy, Theology (Lhankor Mhy) or Devotion (Lhankor Mhy), Oratory, Insight, Evaluate or Bureaucracy.

Other skills or requirements may be required by individual temples; Hevduran Dege temple in the Holy Country for example allows sword combat skills to be part of the curriculum and the Jelenkev School in Heortland requires some knowledge of sorcery, being dominated by Aeolians.

Initiates are the grad students of the temple. The cleverest are invited to stay and work as teachers and researchers or have to leave and find a trade . Either way they donate at least 30% of their income or time to the temple.

They get training in the Teaching skill at half price, and can enrol in classes in other cult skills at the same discount.

Initiates get access to the following Divine Magic, and may know up to ¼ or their POW in Divine Magic.

Divine Magic

Legend: Absorption, Amplify, Behold, Dismiss Magic, Mindlink

RQ6: Absorption, Behold, Dismiss Gnome, Dismiss Sylph, Dismiss Magic, Mindlink

Initiates who have proved their orthodoxy and have 50%+ in Theology or Devotion may learn sorcery. The priests of Lhankor Mhy know their god invented sorcery and that the charlatan Zzabur stole his notes to cook up the Blue Book. Sorcery as practised by anyone outside their cult is literally soul destroying, the only spells permissible are those that have been sanctified by the cult through the use of the mysterious Alien Combination Machine, and then encoded in secret scrolls.

An initiate may know a maximum of ¼ their INT in Sorcery spells on top of this, but an apprentice who knows more sorcery than divine magic is usually regarded as religiously suspect (except at the Jelenkev School) and their Exhort/Pact rolls are at one step greater difficulty.

The skill studied is Grimoire (Torvald Fragments) or Invoke (Torvald Fragments). The precise number and nature of the spells available at different temples varies, depending on what ancient texts they have in the library, but the following selection is in the largest publicly known collection.

Spells

Legend: Analyse Magic*, Enhance Intelligence, Intuition, Object Reading*, Sorcery Resistance*, Dismiss Confusion*

RQ6: Analyse Magic*, Intuition, Sorcery Resistance*, Dismiss Confusion*, Enhance Intelligence, Object Reading*

* New spell.

Otherwise almost any spell is possible, the library stacks in Lhankor Mhy Temples are disorganised to say the least, Temple strongrooms have forbidden books that no one dare translate or use (Tap spells for example) and plenty of scholars have private collections they will let their colleagues see one day, but not just yet, not while they are still working on them. It is widely suspected that Minyarth Purple has a copy of Abjure Ageing somewhere he isn't sharing with anyone.

Each time a non-sanctioned spell is cast, 1d4-1% in lost in Pact (Lhankor Mhy) or Exhort (Lhankor Mhy). Use of totally banned spells like Tap, Demon Summoning, and the creation of undead reduce this to zero immediately. Once it reaches zero you are deemed souless and excommunicated, and in the most serious cases the Brain Flayer will be invoked (see later).

Acolytes

Acolytes must have Teaching 50%+, a literacy skill at 75%+, a lore skill at 75%+ and Theology (Lhankor Mhy) or Devotion (Lhankor Mhy) at 50%+ and must have contributed one previously unknown fact to the temple library, as adjudicated by the Priests. The libraries are so full that these contributions are often mindbogglingly obscure scraps of trivia of no possible use to anyone, but if it isn't in there, it still counts.

Acolytes may gain up to half their POW in Divine Magic and a third of their INT in sorcery spells, making them potentially very powerful and versatile magicians.

Divine Magic:

Legend: Heal Mind, Mind Blast

RQ6: Heal Mind, Mind Blast

Sorcery:

Acolytes may go beyond Torvald's Fragments and use the more obscure spells sanctified by the temple. Typical choices are Telepathy, Spirit Resistance and Mystic Sense.

Priest

Priests must know one Lore to 90%, one Literacy skill at 90% and one other cult skill (may be another Literacy or Lore) at 90%. They must have been an acolyte for at least five years and have written one book deemed worthy of inclusion in the temple library. These books are often indexes, bibliographies and compendia culled from existing books, but deemed worthwhile additions if they cut down the number of dusty scrolls and tablets one must dredge through to find the fact you are looking for.

They may gain up to ¾ of their POW in Divine Magic, and half their INT in Sorcery, a powerful magician by anyone’s standards.

Priests usually live full time at the temple, receive fees for teaching and advice, often sit alongside the greatest tribal Kings and the High King of their realm in court, or even sit in judgement on his behalf. They can ferret through all the secret libraries, lead expeditions to discover lost knowledge and generally rule the roost, though there are always eccentrics who get fed up with it all and become Wild Sages doing protracted field research and only seeing their colleagues once a year (or even less for those who consecrate their own shrines).

There are three positions they covet – Provost of Apprentices, Chief of Loremasters and Chief Priest. No one makes it to Chief Librarian, as they call their High Priest, without going through one of these jobs first.

Divine Magic:

Extension, Consecrate

High Priest

Every major temple has its own high priest, called a Chief Librarian. Often eccentric and obtuse quite simply because they can be and get be and get away with it, they are elected for life by the priests and acolytes and by dint of dubious sorcery and comfortable and cloistered living they can live to a very ripe old age. The various Chief Librarians rarely get on, endlessly disputing each other's religious dogmas, organisational practices and right to receive fees from subordinate temples. Fortunately these turf wars are conducted through long and tedious court cases, snarky letters and thick books full of obscure references.

They can have as many divine spells as their POW allows, and up to 2/3 of their INT in sorcery spells, and have access to the Alien Combination Machine that allows sorcery spells to be consecrated to Lhankor Mhy. They generally have 110% or more in a Lore skill and one other cult skill and several books to their name.

Divine Magic

Legend: Excommunicate

RQ6: Fortify Library, Excommunicate

Lhankor Mhy and Sorcery

It is widely known that the cult dabbles in sorcery. Traditionalist Orlanthi regard this as deeply suspect, but the sages are unwilling to give it up as it is so damn useful, and, after all, their god did invent it. Lhankor Mhy priests are well aware of the hostility and get very defensive about it, going to great lengths to reassure people that their sanctified spells are without any risk and that nothing remotely God Learnerish, Malkionist or horror of horrors Lunar is going on.

Relations to other cults

The doctrines of Lhankor Mhy insist that knowledge cannot be denied to anybody. The cult has no qualms about charging high prices for their advice and for teaching, they aren't a charity, but an outright no is unacceptable. As a result their temples sometimes have members of other knowledge related cults as tenants or even parts of the faculty. In Pavis the Lunar Irripi Ontor cult has an entire branch of the central temple, in Jonstown the Lunars have an annexe within the temple grounds, but are refused entry to the library. The cult has less of a problem with Buserian cultists, but will not allow any foreign sorcerers on their premises under any circumstances.

In southern Heortland the cult has pretty much been entirely supplanted by the Aeolian Saint Ankormy the Scholar, who have almost entirely gone over to sanctified sorcery, and even written grimoires for other Aeolian cults to use.

Oddities and eccentricities

Each temple has its own unique features, but all follow a few basic doctrines. Apprentices are not allowed to marry until they have become initiates. All initiates must have a beard, preferably grey, a requirement female members get round by wearing false ones. Members are required to preserve written knowledge, even at risk to themselves. Wild Sages, those who opt out of the temple hierarchy and go off to study in the field, are prone to all kinds of manias and peculiarities, though the idea that a rival sage is out to get them or steal their work is often not purely paranoia.