Setting Details

[Aaron]

The Solar Patrol

Fifty years ago, during the First Solar War, in what seemed at the time to be a symbolic gesture, the Earth Patrol was renamed the Solar Patrol. Since that time, the name has become synonymous with courage, dedication, competence, and honor.

The Solar Patrol is not a meatgrinder, taking earnest-but-foolish young men and women and turning them into fodder for an insatiable war machine. It is not an employer of last resort, an opportunity for those who can find no other employment to slip into the cracks of a bureaucratic machine until they can collect a pension. It’s not a short-term commitment, a way to pad a resume, or a means of launching a political career. It represents the best humanity has, the concretization of the highest ideals of the Solar League.

Joining
The Solar Patrol has two main avenues of entrance (though given the strict requirements, they are more like narrow alleys). The first is via the Solar Patrol Cadet Corps. All second-ary schools throughout the Solar League offer a Patrol Cadet Program, and anyone of age 12 to 16 may volunteer for it. Entry to the Cadet Program is competitive but not overly harsh; the benefits of it are many, and the primary requirement is that a candidate be physically, mentally, and emotionally fit enough to not pose a danger to himself or others.

The Cadet Program occurs alongside regular schooling. Typically, it is expected cadets will spend one to two hours a day in special training and classes, which focus on astronomy, engineering, general science, and physical training. Body and mind are both sharpened and tested. As a rule, 75% of those who enter the Cadet Program complete it with at least a “Competent” score, and they are entitled to add “spcc” to their formal signatures. While this is a relatively minor honor – millions successfully graduate from the Cadet Program – it is still a source of pride and can occasionally open doors or grant a small edge when interviewing for jobs.

Former Cadet Corps members form a large and dilute “Old Boys Club,” not nearly as close-knit as a fraternity or the like, but enough to merit a small favor here and there.  Throughout the cadet-training process, the most promising candidates are noted and tested, often subtly and without their knowledge. For example, a student might find the monorail car that he rides home on every day suddenly filling with acrid smoke from an electrical fire. Unknown to him, the other passengers in his car are Patrol observers, often retirees or civilian associates, and they watch his reactions. Does he just rush to another car, heedless of any others who might need his aid? Does he try to assist the (seemingly) old and infirm man to safety? Does he take command and try to organize a safe evacuation? Without knowing he was ever tested, his actions might earn him a guaranteed commission, or it might cause him to never be accepted to the Patrol and never know why.

Tales of Sacrifice
It is not just that being a member of the Solar Patrol means one might die in the line of duty; a significant body of the lore and custom of the Patrol implies that it is expected. “He stayed by his post” is considered the highest
and greatest epitaph a Patrolman can receive. From the earliest stages of cadet training, the virtue of sacrificing all for the Mission is drummed into the heads of potential recruits.
Some Patrolmen go a bit beyond the mere willingness to die for the cause, and, subconsciously, place themselves
in situations where they will have a chance to achieve this great honor.

Cadet training (and Patrol training in general) is not based on brutalizing and dehumanizing soldiers, breaking them down so that they can be rebuilt into a desired image. Rather, it focuses on strengthening the best within a candidate and suppressing, or destroying, the worst. Members of the Solar Patrol are not expected to obey
because they’ve been conditioned to obey – they’re expected to obey because they fully understand their duty and the correctness of their orders.

In any given year, about 1% of those who pass the Cadet Program are offered a commission in the patrol, and 75% of those accept it. The commission does not make one a full Patrolman, though. An intensive two-year training program follows, with those who performed well in the Cadet Corps considered “very likely” to advance to Patrolman junior grade, with a 50% failure rate.
Those who did not partake in the Cadet Program are still able to join the Patrol, though it is more difficult. The Patrol is demanding and expects a lot of service out of each recruit, so the age window for volunteers is narrow – 16 to 24. Non-Cadet Corps volunteers receive a range of basic physical, mental, and psychological tests, as well as a background check, over a period of two days. If they pass these, they are sent to an intensive testing camp, which compresses the multi-year program of the Cadet Corps into three months of grueling hell. Those who make it through the program – 5% of admittees – enter the full two-year Patrol Training Course.

More rarely, experienced soldiers from other branches of the military are transferred to the Patrol. This can sometimes result in friction, as a general belief pervades the members that anyone good enough to be in the Patrol would have joined up directly; the rest of the military is a sort of “consolation prize” for those who failed to make the cut. Despite this condescending (and not wholly accurate) attitude, those who make such transfers are known for performing with honor and distinction, as well as serving the vital duty of keeping the Patrol from becoming too isolated and elitist.


NonComs:



Patroler, First Class
Patroler
Patroler, Junior Grade


Officers:

Admiral of the Solar Patrol
High Admiral
Admiral
Fleet Captain
Captain
Commander
Lieutenant
Sub-Lieutenant
Ensign
Midshipman

Marine Ranks:

Major
Lieutenant

Sgt
Corporal
Marine


By tradition, an officer must attain lieutenant first class to be granted command of a ship. If a Patrolman of lesser rank takes command in an emergency and distinguishes himself, a review board grants (depending on the circumstances) a retroactive promotion to LFC once the situation has been resolved. Such individuals are informally addressed as “LFC Pending (name)” while the senior officers do the (expected) paperwork. This is considered to be a great honor and compliment, especially if it comes from a captain or above – it is a sign the individual has shown himself fully worthy of command, even if his uniform does not reflect that fact just yet.

Gender and the Patrol
The Patrol accepts all into its ranks, male and female alike, but it does not make special allowances in the name of equality. Because of the harsh physical demands, more men than women join the Patrol, with a male/female ratio of 3:2. No discrimination exists in terms of assignments or ranks, and there are no special Women’s Corps or Ladies Auxiliaries, as exist in other branches of the Earth League military. Those good enough to get into the Patrol are good enough to do anything the Patrol might require, and that is that.

Uniforms

Department colours:

Command-white&black
Engineering-that construction yellow&black
Astrogation/Communications-blue&black
Payload/Weapons-purple&black
Life Support-green&black
Marines-Red

Fleet uses the same colours with light gray as its secondary colour.

Army uses the same colours with brown as its secondary colour.


We’re using the Farscape uniforms. So these individuals are dressed in Marine colours;
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Marine officer

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Marine non-com, no tunic with Army non-com in shipsuit. Marine is carry an Atomic Bombardment Rifle, hopefully she doesn’t plan on firing it indoors.

[Aaron]

SPS Thomas George Prince, Patrol Cruiser

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Crew: 70 ratings, 13 officers, 24 Marines, 1 Marine Officer
Passengers: 92 trainees
Internal Cargo: 53.5(S), 300t(H), 500t(C)
Acceleration: 1-3G standard, 5 max
Delta V: 300km/s before drive overheat
Small Craft: 1x 100t “boats”, 4x BTA Fighters, drones, EVA Pods
Weapons: 3x 1GJ Atomic Guns(Forward), 3x 30MJ RF Atomic Gun Turrets(Twin), 1x Magnet Grapple Beam, 2x 30cm Torpedo Tubes(20 torpedoes)

COMMAND

Captain: Captain

Executive Officer: Commander,

Communications Specialist: Sub-Lt.
Secondary Specialties: Electronics 

ENGINEERING

Chief Engineer: Lieutenant

Drive Specialist: Midshipman
Secondary Specialties: Physics (PhD)
Played by:

Power Systems Specialist: Midshipman
Played by:

Maintenance Specialist: Patrolman First Class Dave Lister
Secondary Specialties: Machining, Mechanical Engineering

ASTROGATION/COMMUNICATIONS

Astrogator: Lieutenant
Secondary Specialties: Astronomy (PhD), Physics (MS)

Assistant Astrogator: Midshipman
Secondary Specialties: Cryptology, Intelligence
Played by:

Pilot: Ensign

Assistant Pilot: Midshipman
Played by:
   

PAYLOAD/WEAPONS

Payload (Weapons) Officer: Lt.
Secondary Specialties: Electrical Engineering (MS), Demolitions, Weapons

Payload Deployment/Retrieval Officer (PDRO, "padro"): Lt.

Assistant PDRO: Midshipman
Played by:

Assistant PDRO: Midshipman or Patrolman
Secondary Specialties: Pilot (air-vehicles)

LIFE SUPPORT

Consumables Officer: Lieutenant
Secondary Specialties: Geology (MS), Chef

Life Support Officer: Midshipmen
Secondary Specialties: Meteorology (MS)
Played by:

Medical Officer: Lieutenant, MD 
Secondary specialties: Microbiology (PhD), Evolutionary Biology (MS)
Played by:

[Aaron]

Worlds of the Solar System

MERCURY
The first ships landed on Mercury in 2021. While orbital probes had mapped the arid world decades earlier, it took a while to develop space suits that could endure the extreme heat of the surface. The first expeditions were scientific, as the tiny rock was an excellent place from which to study solar phenomenon. However, the discovery of the Shadow Caves in 2026 gave Mercury a new purpose.

Millions of years of turning from the blazing heat of the day to the endless chill of night has pitted and cracked the ground of Mercury. Below the surface, the ceaseless expansion and
contraction has created a series of caves pervaded by a little water, oxygen, and life. Called the Shadow Caves, they seem to be an endless black expanse of thin, hot air and twisted, flesh-ripping knives of stone.

Mercury is rich in radioactive isotopes, especially uranium, with enough fissionables to power the System for as long as anyone can imagine. The extreme harshness of the planet made mining seem nearly impossible, until the Earth League decided that Mercury would be the perfect place to deposit the worst criminals of the System. While the traditional Earth League approach to crime is reform and recompense, there were always some criminals too hardened, twisted, or brutal to ever be returned to society, as well as some crimes that could never be compensated for. So the Mercury Mining “colony” became the last stop for the vilest of the System: pirates who butchered the helpless crews of the ships they caught; those who stole life-support gear from Lunar and Belt habitats and left the inhabitants to die; terrorists who targeted civilians; traitors to the Solar Patrol; and willing allies of the enemies of mankind. There are not many cruel and twisted enough to be shunted here – the population is rarely over 500 – the mere threat of it keeps at least some on the straight and narrow. The average life expectancy of a prisoner on Mercury is five years.

VENUS
In early 1996, a fleet of exploratory ships launched from Earth in late 1995 reached the clouded world of Venus. While in orbit, they discovered that the atmosphere’s unusual properties hindered the use of radio. Communication from Venus to Earth was impossible, as were surface-to-orbit transmissions. After a few days of debate, it was agreed that a small landing party would penetrate the upper surface and return within a week. If the ship did not report back as scheduled, exploration would be halted until some means of breaking the static field could be found.

With less than 12 hours before the scheduled return to Earth, the Celestia broke out of Venus’ atmosphere with incredible tales, tales of a world of low swamps, shallow seas, and creatures that strongly resembled the best reconstructions of Earth’s extinct dinosaurs! They also reported that the haze of the atmosphere was due to large concentrations of atmospheric particles, which not only impaired normal vision but which scrambled infrared and radar as well. Mapping of the planet was going to be a long and tedious task.

The largest landmass on Venus is a flat region rising a few hundred feet above the shallow oceans and swamps that dominate the rest of the world. Christened the Great Plateau, it became the site of the first permanent research stations. Over the years, these stations expanded, traders began to appear, at first just selling goods to the scientists and their families, but soon seeking out native products that might be valuable elsewhere in the System. They found exotic woods, astounding flowers from which unearthly perfumes could be made, amber in shades of azure and crimson . . . and sentient beings.

The Salishal

In 1998, a group of traders seeking plant samples for sale to a pharmaceutical concern made first contact with the Salishal, though they quickly became known as the Venusian Lizardmen. The Salishal were surprisingly non-hostile, though extremely cautious. Gestures and the like sufficed for the first round of trading: a rustproof machete for a collection of polished and cut red amber. Two months later, the first trained ethnologists and anthropologists made contact with the tribe, and slowly, communication improved.

When news of the Salishal reached Earth, considerable political debate ensued. Many proposals were barely disguised calls for conquest and colonialism, dressed up in words like “guidance” and “protection.” Others demanded the complete abandonment of Venus, despite ample evidence that much of the planet’s surface was not now, and never had been, Salishal territory. Ultimately, the desire for knowledge and the belief humanity would not repeat past errors won out, and the League adopted a policy of controlled settlement of uninhabited areas of Venus and limited commercial trade with the Salishal. Earth would not dump the lizardmen into a culture
thousands of years ahead of their own, but the League likewise was not going to ignore so rich a planet, especially with Mars effectively cut off.

The policy remains in effect, and enforcement is a constant struggle. The Salishal do not necessarily want to remain cut off from the magical tools of the Beyond the Clouds People. Many unscrupulous traders are all too happy to defy the edict on trading directly with the Salishal, who buy up old-style rifles and other goods in exchange for amber, rare plants, and exotic animals.

Salishal society varies greatly, from extremely simple nomadic bands wandering the swamps to city-dwellers who have mastered clay baking and simple metallurgy. All Salishal culture is heavily based on bloodline and kinship, which they can easily detect by smell. Feuds between bloodlines last until one family or the other is wholly destroyed or the feud is settled by interbreeding, effectively turning two families into one.


The Krik
The Salishal were, as it turned out, not the only thinking beings on Venus. Anthropologists had noted that they had a word that meant “Others like Us Not like Us,” which they puzzled over. The Salishal tribes fought among themselves, but all seemed to have a concept of another foe, an enemy that all Salishal hated and would destroy on sight. To a large extent, this enemy was dismissed as symbolic or mythical, something that was part of a common root religion – until exploration teams reached the smoking island chains of the Aphrodite Ocean and found the Krik.

The Krik were contacted in 2015, almost two decades after humans first landed on Venus, a testament to the difficulties of exploring this strange world. The first Krik encountered roughly resembled upright mantises. Eventually, explorers discovered that these were warrior-caste Krik, one of many different types. Krik had been seen before, in fact, but since those were scavengers and harvesters, and not intelligent, no real notice had been taken of them.
The Krik society strongly resembles that of hive insects of Earth, but several castes display signs of human-level intelligence and seem capable of varying degrees of independent thought. Contrary to what some would expect, the Queen of each hive is non-sentient – she is just a gargantuan egg-laying machine with no consciousness. The Warrior, Builder, and Leader castes exhibit intelligence, with the Scavenger and Drone castes being about as clever as the great apes on Earth.

The Krik are in a constant state of war with the Salishal, but they do not have a particular hatred for the Earthers, provided they stay out of the Krik’s way. Earth has decided on a strict neutrality policy in terms of the war between the two races, offering medical aid and basic utility goods to both but refusing to supply weapons or other advanced technology. Naturally, the same ethically challenged traders who defy the policy regarding the Salishal do so with the Krik as well, and an ancient, ritualized war has begun to change as the thunder of rifle fire echoes through the Venusian swamps.

Despite being insect-like, the Krik are warm-blooded, just one more oddity of Venusian biology. Warriors are, basically, killing machines, attacking with their claws if unarmed or with blades made of sharpened exoskeleton, usually from their own discarded moltings. They are incapable of any actions other than rote defense of them-selves or an area unless a leader commands them. Given a generalized task such as “guard this area” or “eliminate all Salishal in that village,” they can form strategies and plans, but without the initial order to accomplish the task, they would do very little. They can draw on the memories of their ancestors to guide them.

Leaders are fully autonomous beings, capable of independent thought, though they rarely engage in it unless pressed. A single Leader commands between five and 50 other Krik of lower orders. Though he defers to more experienced Leaders, jockeying for position happens frequently.

Leaders and Warriors are the only intelligent Krik likely to be encountered away from their hives. While some Salishal have given up their ways to live among humans, no Krik has ever abandoned the hives permanently.


Venusport
There’s Ma’s Bar and Grill in old Armstrong City on Luna . . . there’s the Free Fall on Ceres . . . and then there’s Venusport. With the second planet being a freewheeling frontier world, it’s not surprising that the point of transfer between the rugged, isolated, and dangerous life of the frontier and the comforts and technology of Earth is a rough and tumble sort of place. What surprises some is the degree of it. Venusport seems determined to outdo its own legend, and the Solar League (and the Solar Patrol) seem content to ignore its excesses, perhaps on
the grounds that such a place is a needed safety valve, or that it’s convenient to have a lot of the scum of the system in one place, where it’s simple to keep track of them. Finding a pirate in some tiny asteroid dive in the vastness of the Belt is challenging. Finding him flush with loot and spending it freely at some Venusport den of iniquity is, by comparison, effortless, and making sure he vanishes into a cell on the brig of a departing spaceship is easier still.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
– From Zagat’s Guide to the System, pub. 2049

[Aaron]

EARTH
The Mother Planet, Earth, remains the most populous of all the worlds in the System, by a large margin. It is a peaceful and rich world, continuing to heal from the scars of war. Most of the inhabitants would never dream of leaving it (except for brief vacations or work-related excursions). They look with respect and confusion on those who abandon the warmth and comfort of the home world to carve out a life in the Venusian swamps, the Lunar caverns, or the flying mountains.

Earth is wealthy. This does not mean that everyone on Earth is rich – or even middle class – but there’s plenty to go around, even if the distribution is still uneven. Mass poverty and starvation are gone. There are richer and poorer Political Zones, but none remain trapped in dire financial distress. There are no famines, no civil wars, no plagues, no refugee camps, no warlords, no people left abandoned and helpless after a disaster. There are poor individuals. There are lower-class areas. However, the kind of endemic, large-scale poverty that blighted so much of the 20th century has been wiped out in the 21st. It’s not paradise or utopia, but it is far better than those of the 20th century might have imagined it would be.

Simply put, life on Earth in 2056 is an idealized vision of how the future was supposed to be all along. Megascrapers, all shining chrome and glistening glass, dominate the skylines of the large cities, reaching a mile into the air and surrounded by a ceaseless buzz of mini-helicopters. Broad highways, 16 lanes wide, reach through the cities, and traffic flows smoothly, effortlessly, and non-pollutingly along them. Outside the massive central cities sprawl parks, fields, and farms. Scattered among the greenbelts, there are carefully planned suburban communities of a few thousand apiece, enough so that people still know their neighbors and have a sense of pride in their hometown.

Workdays are brief – six hours is typical – and vacation time is plentiful, averaging six to eight weeks a year. Individuals have available a wide variety of hobbies and pastimes to amuse them, and with so much free time, most people have a particular hobby that they treat as a second job. Family and community are important, and many activities are group oriented. Sporting teams, bowling leagues, garden clubs – whatever the activity, people can find someone to do it with.
Physical labor is minimal. The “home of the future,” under the careful guidance of its owners, washes the dishes, cleans the rugs, launders the clothes, and cleans up after the cat.
Travel is cheap and easy. A family in the Minnesota Sector of the North American Political Zone might decide to take the kids to see Paris over the weekend, and do so with no more expense or difficulty than a 20th-century family might have had going to see Grandma in Wisconsin.

People tend to stick close to home because of ties to the community, not the expense of travel or moving. Even Luna is a relatively easy trip, no more complex than a flight from New York to Los Angeles would have been, and business travelers routinely commute to high orbit, which is where most of the heavy industry has been relocated.
The Earth League, a democratic, representative body that evolved out of the old United Nations, governs Earth. Every adult human in the Solar System has the franchise (granted at the age of 18), except those who are currently serving time for criminal offenses or who have been determined to be insane or otherwise incompetent.

The planet is divided into 10 major Political Zones, and each zone is subdivided into various Sectors. Representatives are elected based on Sector population for the Sector Congress, and equal numbers of representatives are elected for each Zone and sent to the Zone Congress. Legislation must pass both Congresses. The president is elected by the Zone Congress from among its members, and serves a single five-year term.
The Earth League can be described, in day-to-day operation, as “benignly bureaucratic.” It has several planets to run, many different needs to balance, and a fairly low tax base with which to work. The result is a well-meaning but overburdened bureaucracy. Even though most civil service workers try their best and care about their jobs, the average citizen looking to get a pet permit or correct an error on a tax return must descend into a polite, sincere, and well-mannered hell of forms, offices, red tape, infomat punch cards (which are invariably folded, spindled, and mutilated), and a general exhausting runaround. The system works, albeit slowly. In situations that matter for a large percentage of the population – the defense of the Solar System, responding to emergencies and natural disasters, providing for general welfare, education, and health care – things go smoothly. It is only in the
day-to-day grind that the system shows its immense size and complexity.

[Aaron]

LUNA
Rarely called “the Moon” any more except by the ignorant or the old-fashioned (there are too many moons of importance in the System for any one of them to be granted “the” status – at best, it should be referred to as “Earth’s moon”), Luna is home to the oldest human settlements off Earth. New Plymouth Dome holds slightly over a million Lunarians (the term “Lunatic” is considered insulting if used by an outsider, but acceptable if used between Lunarians), and Luna in general has a population of 20 million.
Luna was first settled in the early 1970s. In the first few years, formal government-sponsored colonies were the norm, but by the middle of the 1970s, corporations, small subcultures, and even backyard mechanics found ways to get to there and settle down. The ease of converting standard jet airplanes to space-worthy (barely) vehicles triggered a gold rush of Lunar settlement, or, more specifically, a diamond rush.

The Diamond Rush
In 1973, the mining shaft at New Plymouth, originally built to extract ores and ice deposits, began turning up some-thing extraordinary. Some quirk of Luna – the low gravity, the composition of the ground, the constant bombardment of cosmic rays without an atmospheric filter, something – had caused Luna to produce diamonds of incomparable quality. They were generally larger and less flawed than Earth diamonds, but that was not the end of it. Lunar diamonds contain odd internal refractive structures that produce a slight but noticeable glow when exposed to sunlight or full-spectrum artificial light. Every shade of the spectrum is represented, and some have claimed (falsely) that “no two lunar diamonds are precisely the same color.”

This discovery set off a mad rush for wealth. Thousands sold everything they had to buy converted planes, modified diving suits, and airtight inflatable domes (with solar-powered air recyclers), and took off in search of wealth. The very lucky few actully struck a diamond node and grew rich. A slightly less lucky minority never found diamonds but survived the experience. The unlucky majority died or suffered permanent injuries.

The Outer Settlement Era
Over a few years, the mining camps consolidated into more permanent colonies, and some prospectors began hunting more reliable, if less glamorous, ores – iron, tungsten, copper, and so on. Because it was easier to mine ore locally than to ship it up from Earth, Luna began to attract settlers seeking something other than pretty rocks. By the time the Mars War ended, as Earth became more and more peaceful, with the United Nations/Earth League gaining more traction and old national borders and ideologies fading, there were many who felt out of place in this brave, new, improved world. Religious fundamentalists, political ideologues, racial separatists and supremacists, ultra-nationalists, and many other square pegs felt that putting as much distance between them and an increasingly homogenous Earth would be best for all parties. Luna became part Gold-Rush California, part Ellis Island, and part Botany Bay. The ability to simply place a dome anywhere, set up hydroponics, and live in peaceful isolation, far from one’s neighbors, made the ad-hoc system work. The Earth League maintained control over the major colonies and settlements, and it appointed judges and sheriffs to keep the general peace between the outer domes.

Thinking, at the time, that a “safety valve” of this sort could help pre-vent the growth of powerful dissident movements that could undermine the nascent planetary government, the Earth League adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward what became known as “the Outer Settlements,” referring to their physical distance from the larger, more formal colony domes and their philosophical distance from main-stream Earth opinions and values.

The Red Hive Strikes
Unfortunately, the Earth League had miscalculated. The isolation of the Outer Settlements did not put an end to reactionary forces – it gave them a chance to organize and grow. A generation raised almost completely out of contact with Earth and mainstream values grew more fanatical and violent. Over time, the broad diversity of opinions found in the Outer Settlements began to narrow. The saner of the original settlers decided to live in places like New Plymouth or Yeager, and they found ways to fit their personal values in with the larger goals of a united and peaceful humanity. Others, though, became progressively more hardened against the Earth League and all it stood for. Cobbling together a philosophy from bits and pieces of Marx, Nietzsche, and ultra-fundamentalist sects, they dreamed of a world of perfect order and harmony, without dissension, com-promise, or ecumenicism, a world where there was a place for everyone – and everyone knew his place. (The fact their own
existence was due to the Earth League’s belief in tolerance and freedom was twisted into proof of the folly of such ideals – what kind of lunatic would let enemies live free and undisturbed?)
With agents in place throughout the Lunar colonies and in key locales on Earth, the Red Hive initiated a series of strikes and raids in 2020, capturing Yeager Dome (and its vital ship-yards) and sending a rain of hyperbombs against London, where the Earth League was headquartered. With the Yeager fleet at their disposal, they swarmed the other major domes of Luna and seized control of the great cities of New Plymouth and Lunovgrad. Their demands were simple: Cede full control of Luna to the Hive.

The next two months were brutal. The Earth League, hampered by the fact the population of Luna were de facto hostages, could not respond with full force. The Hive had no such compunction. It took time for the Earth League to plan, organize, and implement a series of strikes on the domes that would take out the Hive’s leadership and armament with a minimum of civilian casualties.

In the end, the remnants of the Hive seized a few dozen ships and fled for the outer reaches of the System, passing beyond Jupiter and, some would say, out of history.
Scientists, Mad

Pirates in the Belt.
The schemes of the Overlord. The lurking menace of the Red Hive. The threat of uprisings and civil war on Venus. The fear that the Mind Masters might someday strike back. With all this going on, the Earth League and the Solar Patrol certainly have a full schedule . . . but other threats crop up.

Science is lauded in 2056. It has ended famine; reduced poverty to the point where being poor normally means a lack of luxuries, not necessities; opened the System to exploration; and granted all citizens access to the accumulated knowledge of mankind via the town infomat booth. Nonetheless, a dark side remains. There exist those who prefer beating their plowshares into swords, those who take the gifts of science and turn them into dark and nefarious things, those who venture into realms of knowledge where no one was meant to go. While their motives are as disparate as their personalities, they have become known collectively as “mad scientists.”

Most often operating from an isolated base in the Belt, Luna, or Venus, these individuals have a Vision and a Plan, and they care nothing for anyone who might get in the way. They use genetic engineering to breed monstrous soldiers. They take long-discredited theories and somehow make them work. They build mind-control beams, killer viruses, and mechanical men.

It is usually not possible to remove a mad scientist by simply blasting his lab from orbit. Invariably, human beings are the subject of the fiend’s experiments, and such innocents must be rescued. Further, most of the devious and
twisted intellects called to the path of madness think several steps ahead and are prepared to unleash their creations on the world via a deadman switch if they are somehow taken out before their plans can be fully realized.
The Overlord collects such madmen the way lesser beings collect butter-flies, and he gives them all the equipment and subjects they may desire – until such time as he grows displeased with their failures or fearful of their successes and has them eliminated.

Luna Today
Luna in 2056 is the largest industrial and shipbuilding center in the System. The iconoclast and the individualist still call it home, but it maintains this stance by encouraging open debate and expression of ideas in public – not by allowing isolated colonies to rule themselves. The old “Wild West” days of the first few decades of Lunar settlement have become a thing of romantic distortion (and the occasional documentary trying to set accounts straight). A portion of Yeager Dome has been preserved as a charred, half-molten ruin, a memorial to those
lost in the first attacks of 2020, and a permanent reminder of the errors that allowed those attacks to occur.

MARS
The Red Planet has long fascinated humanity. Of all the worlds in the System, this one always seemed most hospitable to life, and early observers saw “canals,” which had to be the work of sentient beings, not to mention areas of green that seemed to expand in the Martian spring and retreat in the Martian winter. Thus, it was only natural that the first long-distance electron-drive ships made a path for Mars.
The initial expeditions, launched in 1976, came from both the U.S.S.R. and the United States. The two ships were sent into space days apart and, to the slight disgust of their commanders back home, became fairly comradely over radio, the mutual bond of space exploration and adventure overcoming nationalistic hostilities. By the time the craft reached Martian orbit, the two commanders had agreed to land simultaneously at two points on the planet, so that neither nation could claim to have gotten there first. This angered a lot of people on Earth
but pleased a lot more.

The first overflights showed clear evidence of cities, roads, agriculture, and so on – the world was obviously inhabited. Each ship set down a few miles from a major city, close enough to make easy contact but at no risk of landing on someone’s home.
Minutes after touching down, both ships fell silent.
People assumed that the Martians had killed the crews, but there was no sign of panic or struggle, and both ships went dead at the same time. Rather than assume hostility and launch a war, the governments involved decided to gamble that an unknown factor had damaged the transmitters or the engines. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. next jointly sent a second expedition, with as much shielding and protection for vital equipment as could be built. More importantly, several craft would remain in orbit, to help monitor the landing situation.
The landing ship reported contact with the native people, though the transmissions were somewhat garbled and contradictory, sometimes changing in mid-sentence. Then all grew silent as well. As the orbiting ships considered their options and waited for Earth to reply (communications required 40 minutes to get through and back), a small flotilla of craft resembling metallic jellyfish appeared and began to attack the Earth ships. During the battle, the Stalingrad suddenly turned and began to shoot at the American Grant and the Soviet Moscow. The two ships pulled away, continuing to fire on the Martian ships while defending themselves against their former ally. As the Grant and the Moscow destroyed the last of the Martian ships, the crew of the Stalingrad hailed the others and explained they had no choice – the Martians had controlled them!

This led, in short order, to a failed diplomatic mission to Mars and the start of the Earth-Martian War. The Martian Mind Masters (as they soon became known) had great power but limited range; long-distance weapons could fry their ships. On the ground, though, they could turn any group of infantry into a chaotic mess as they leapt from mind to mind, turning ally against ally or, once they learned how to speak and communicate in English or Russian, causing commanders to give false or confusing orders. While the “Martian menace” could be wiped out from high orbit, the military learned during the war that the majority of the Martian people were innocents under the control of the Mind Masters – bombing the cities would primarily kill the victims of the psionic elite caste.
After three years of war, a tentative cease-fire was reached. Mars remains officially off-limits to the Earth League to this day.

Martian Life
Three known major races live on Mars: The Vithaani, which are genetically identical to humans; the Hajuur, which resemble humanoid felines; and the Mind Masters, which have no known racial name – the other Martian peoples refer to them as “the Lords,” “the Controllers,” “the Masters,” and so on.

The Mind Masters
Scientists believe that only the Mind Masters are native to Mars. It is uncertain where the other races came from. Some posit a connection to the Jovian Overlord, as humans live on the moons of Jupiter as well.
Others speculate that the Mind Masters took the humans in the distant past, or that an unknown human civilization achieved space travel millennia ago. The Hajuur also have no record of how they came to Mars, but
they have no related or ancestral species on the planet.
The Mind Masters are little more than gargantuan jelly-encased brains suspended in a life-support medium dwelling inside a metal shell adorned with grasping tentacles. Theylive in great iron fortresses scattered around the world, with individuals constantly flying to various cities and outposts to check on the status of their domain. They do not seem to have ambitions of conquest, but they likewise do not relinquish even the meanest portion of the world they do control.
They are capricious and cruel in the extreme. They enjoy experimenting on their subjects, though there seems to be no end goal other than the cataloguing of the degrees of pain an individual can endure. They demand obedience but do not reward it; the most loyal and subservient Vithaani can be plucked for “experimentation” as easily as the most rebellious. Disobedience means certain death; obedience merely adds a slim chance for a reprieve.
The Mind Masters seem to possess great technology – their armored globes are but one example – but the Martian peoples enjoy little of this; they live an agrarian lifestyle using simple tools of wood and bronze.
The Mind Masters, in their natural forms, resemble man-sized transparent jellyfish or octopi, with six long, slender tentacles. Their immense brains are clearly visible through the gelatinous goo of their bodies. They are, however, rarely seen in this form, preferring to interact with the world entirely from within their iron spheres.

The Mind Masters
115 points
Attribute Modifiers: ST-3 [-30]; IQ+3 [60]; HT-1 [-10].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Will+4 [20].
Advantages: Extra Arms* 4 (Extra-Flexible, +50%; No Physical
Attack, -50%) [40]; Mind Control (Telepathic, -10%; Long Range, +50%) [70]; Mind Probe (Telepathic, -10%) [18];
Mind Reading (Telepathic, -10%) [27]. Disadvantages: Bad Smell [-10]; Bully [-10]; Callous [-5]; Cowardice [-10]; Invertebrate [-20]; Megalomania [-10]; Sadism [-15].
* The Mind Masters have six arms; all have the same modifiers as the extra arms, which total to 0, so no additional points are charged.

The Vithaani
The humans of Mars are genetically identical to Earth humans, and interbreeding is possible. They possess a mix of ethnic features, and they tend toward dark brown or reddish-brown skin, similar to that of Native Americans. Hair is usu-ally long and straight, though in a variety of colors. Eyes are typically green, violet, or blue. Brown or black eyes are rare and considered exotic and ominous at the same time.

Culturally, they live in bronze-age city-states, each ruled over by a coterie of Mind Masters. They supplement their agrarian lifestyle with hunted game. While no competition for land or resources exists (the Mind Masters control everything), their overlords frequently force them to war as part of status experiments or games. Thus, they are skilled fighters, albeit with primitive weapons.

The Hajuur
The Hajuur look similar to walking cats, but their DNA is definitely not of Earth. A nomadic people, they dwell in the vast, cold Martian deserts. They too are pawns and pets of the Mind Masters. The overlords often swoop in on a nomad band to pluck away a few for experiments, or set two tribes against each other for fun, or compel a group to attack a heavily defended Vithaani city just to see what will happen.

The Hajuur are carnivores, and so they spend most of their time hunting the scarce game in the desert. They are grimly fatalistic in outlook, and they form few close emotional attachments, as death can come at any time. With little access to metal, they have developed the use of their claws and teeth to an amazing degree. They have also created several advanced unarmed fighting styles envied by Earth martial arts masters. The few Hajuur that have been freed and brought to Earth have tried to teach some of these arts to humans.

Hajuur
30 points
Attribute Modifiers: HT+1 [10]; DX+2 [20].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: HP+1 [2].
Advantages: Catfall [10]; Nictitating Membrane 2 [2]; Night Vision 5 [5]; Sharp Claws [5]; Sharp Teeth [1].
Disadvantages: Callous [-5]; Incurious [-5]; Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-10]; Stubbornness [-5].
Hajuur freed from Mars lose their Social Stigma but gain Low TL6 [-30] by default. Most such Hajuur spend months in training and education before they join League society, buying off some or all of this disadvantage.

The Underground
The failure to liberate the enslaved Martian races has long been a thorn in the Earth League’s side. Unable to win an open war, the Earth League has begun covert operations, one of the few areas where it acts in a less-than-open fashion. Highly trained members of the Space Marines are sent to the planet in small, stealthy ships, sliding past the Martian’s physical and mental screens. Once on the planet, they make highly surreptitious contact with those few Hajuur or Vithaani engaged in active resistance against their controllers. The operatives then provide arms, other equipment, training, and, sometimes, escape. While the prospect of liberating the entire populace of Mars a handful at a time is ludicrous, the goal is to help create more future leaders of the rebellion by showing them how life can be when not under the psionic thumb of tentacled monstrosities. Some are especially grateful to their rescuers or enamored of life beyond Mars, and they end up joining the Solar Patrol or working for the Earth League in some other capacity.

Those in the underground live a dangerous life. They must be as secret as possible, avoiding all public places or locations where a passing Mind Master might scan their brain and realize they are not Vithaani. They cannot rely on Earth for any aid. They serve on Mars in two-year renewable shifts, following extensive training in language and culture. They work under a constant fear of death and mental evisceration, and they see only the smallest progress toward the goal of a free Mars.

ASTEROIDS (THE BELT)
Between Jupiter and Mars, its borders vaguely defined, lies the asteroid belt, or simply, the Belt. With Luna becoming increasingly civilized with each passing day, this is where the true loners, iconoclasts, and misanthropes of the System go – along with miners, scientists, doctors, and homesteaders. The Belt is the borderland, the frontier. Constant danger and con-stant opportunity coexist here. The brave come to strike it rich and the foolish go to a cold and forgotten death, drifting alone and unknown between the flying mountains.

While a few scout ships made it to the larger asteroids in the early 1990s, it was not until just after the turn of the century that the long voyage to the Belt became inexpensive enough to launch large-scale settlement and exploration. The Earth League built the first Belt outpost, Ceres Station One, as a forward base with the intent of using it to launch scouts to the distant world of Jupiter.
Because of the difficulty and expense of hauling materials from Earth to the Belt, Ceres Station One (often simply called CS1) was designed as a bootstrap project, given just enough to get started. The 50 men and women sent there were assigned a difficult task: Create a self-sustaining industrial center using just the limited tools and supplies they’d taken with them from Earth. In the event of emergency, all they had was a small lifeboat that they could aim toward the inner system and hope an Earth Patrol ship could find and reach them in time.

Mining pods scoured the nearby rocks for raw materials. Industrial smelters converted the metals and minerals into building supplies. The same craft that mined the local asteroids for metals burrowed deep into Ceres itself, creating open spaces where hydroponics could grow. The crew converted the Tesla coils from one of their ships to provide energy until the atomic generators could be fired up. A year went by, and the base grew ever larger and more complete . . . as did the population. Four children were born by the end of the first year of settlement.
Once CS1 was up to spec, Earth launched other ships, carrying more workers and engineers and a cadre of Earth Patrol pilots and shipwrights. With this influx of labor and supplies, the keel of the exploration ship Athena was laid down in early 2002, and its electron drive was first test-fired only six months later. On Christmas Eve 2002, it took off for Jupiter. (See Jupiter and Its Moons, p. 20, for more on that part of the story.)

While this was going on, people began establishing other bases throughout the Belt. The Earth Patrol tended to view the Belt as a shield around the inner system, and it wanted to secure it. While no one knew of any “alien” threats, or what Jupiter might hold, securing the Belt simply seemed like a good idea. It was.

Three years after Athena had been launched, the largest space warfleet in Earth history tore through the Belt. Without CS1, CS2, Pallas Base One, and Vesta Outpost, the fleet would have been past Mars before Earth got any warning. As it was, those four bases provided much needed information and fire-power, taking out several of the Overlord’s battleships and forcing him to hold back additional forces during the initial assault. As the Solar War dragged on, the remaining bases (Vesta was lost in 2006; CS2, in 2007) became the staging areas for the counterattack.
While Ceres Station Two has been rebuilt, the charred and blasted ruins of Vesta Outpost remain to this day as a monument to courage in the face of overwhelming firepower, and cadets of the Solar Patrol often make a pilgrimage there before their graduation.

After the Red Hive war, though, the Belt became more than a series of military outposts. While the population had been growing slowly from 2010 to 2020, it exploded in the next decade. Technological improvements and the human urge for “elbow room” drove thousands, then tens of thousands, to the Belt. The Belt was rich in metals, minerals, and radioactives – all the things Earth needed desperately. The more the Belt grew, the more the Belt needed, so more people came to fulfill those needs, and the boom cycle was on. Luna was metal-poor;

Earth was protected against rapacious environmental destruction; Venus’ thick fog turned industrial equipment to rusted goo (and the locals took a dim view of anyone draining their swamps). Therefore, the only source for raw materials to feed the burgeoning post-war consumer, military, and industrial demand was the Belt. “The asteroids are made of gold” was the saying, and while most found nothing but a sustenance living, enough struck it rich that the dream was kept alive.

Where wealth can be earned, those who prefer to take it can be found. While the first of the Belt pirates, the infamous and romanticized Baron Black, got his start in the late 2020s, the “golden age” of Belt Piracy began in the 2030s and continues to this day. With stealthy ships, hidden bases, and spies in every mining consortium and shipping company, pirate fleets can strike suddenly along all the trade routes from the Belt back to Venus, loot and pillage, then vanish back into the ether. Pirate havens in the Trojan asteroids give them places to sell or
spend their spoils. They rarely ask and never care who is doing the buying.

The Belt Today
Over a million people live in the Belt. Roughly 100,000 of them dwell in Ceres City, a sprawling above- and underground complex that has grown up in a haphazard fashion around and between the four huge Ceres Station complexes. Ten thousand or so dwell on each of the other three major asteroids, about a thousand each on the next hundred largest asteroids, and the rest are scattered throughout the Belt.

The Belt is mostly inhabited by family groups or tiny companies, each of which has claimed one of the million or so asteroids of about a mile in size. These are mined for metals, radioactives, frozen gasses, rare minerals and crystals, and whatever else can be stripped from them. Some are used as nothing more than mines; others become homesteads, with domed farming settlements dotting the surfaces and underground passages providing massive amounts of living space.
Earth isn’t crowded, but the huge megacities do not leave much room to stretch one’s arms. Out in the Belt, anyone can have a mansion . . . if they aren’t too concerned with the view.
Piracy and Romanticism
In Tales of the Solar Patrol, space piracy is a criminal but romanticized affair. Pirates rarely kill unless
actively resisted, and they then kill only armed combat-ants. A roguish swashbuckler might steal a kiss (and her
Luna diamond necklace) from some rich merchant’s daughter but nothing more than that. A timed distress
beacon is placed on a crippled ship so that the Solar Patrol can find it and rescue it after the pirates have
made their getaway. Pragmatic reasons exist for this: The Solar Patrol relentlessly hunts down pirates, and
pirate fleets known to show mercy to their victims are less likely to be simply sent to the Mercury Mines or
vaporized out of hand. A few of the cruelest and most notorious gangs are nothing but murderous swine, and
they kill with no quarter asked or given. Nonetheless, most Belt pirates see themselves as thieves, not murderers, and act accordingly.
It doesn’t need to be this way. In more realistic variants, pirates can be more bloodthirsty and vicious. They
may raid mines and homesteads in the Belt, not just ships, and they may take to heart the motto that “spaced
corpses tell no tales.” The sudden detection of a hidden ship firing up its engines might cause brave men to
grow weak, knowing full well the dire fate that awaits them if caught.
So many metallic rocks in one place make radio communication spotty, and the vast distances of the Belt means news travels slowly. Word of mouth, or short-range radio picked up by one rock and transmitted to another, are the main ways news gets around. In the isolated homesteads and the small trading centers (with populations of 100 to 500), reputation counts for more than money. The nature of the Belt is such that “clusters” of worthwhile rocks are separated by millions of miles of dust, void, and space junk, and each cluster is fairly autonomous.
Belters come to the Belt to enjoy free and independent lives, but survival requires cooperation and community. It has been said there are only two laws in the Belt: “Help your neighbor, because it could be you next time” and “keep your hands to yourself.”
While pirates prefer to raid transport craft full of ore, a few target the miners themselves. Each cluster maintains a net-work of sensors and radio beacons to detect incoming raiders, and they issue an automated alert to all the nearby rocks if a dangerous-seeming ship is spotted. The local miners, farmers, and merchants respond to the signal by launching their craft, with mining laser-drills converted to short-range but powerful weapons and Solar War surplus atomic guns hastily duct-taped to the larger ships as the principal armament.
Danger walks behind you, and one warning’s all you’ll get A good neighbor’s a blessing, but a bad one is a threat
Soon revealed the help or harm, soon revealed the lie Prey on us, and man or beast, you die!
– Leslie Fish, “Hard Land,” recorded 1996

Each cluster has a primary settlement at its heart, set up on the largest rock. Here, industrial corporations of Earth bargain for metals. Here, the farmers sell their crops to the miners. Here, everyone comes to blow off steam, swap news, and enjoy life on the System’s edge. While no one wears cowboy hats (except a few folks from the American Southwest) and no horses live within a hundred million miles, the settlement still has something of an Old West feel to the place, in
style and character if not in garb and technology.

[Aaron]

Timeline:

1943: The U.S. Department of the Navy decides against funding the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) project.

1945: Budget issues and a management crisis at Bell Labs derail work into improved telecommunication switches. The transistor is never invented.

1956-1964: Humanity struggles to reach the stars, but both Soviet and American efforts to launch and sustain artificial satellites fail. No rocket design proves capable of carrying itself
to orbit. The first primitive general-purpose computers appear to help solve rocketry problems, but they cannot fulfill the requirements of the space program.

1964: Researchers at Westinghouse find the long-lost notes of Nikola Tesla, detailing inventions and theorems never made public. A small project begins to test the designs, and the engineers perfect the Tesla coil, a simple device capable of drawing almost limitless energy from the ether of space.

1966: Using the Tesla coil for power, the electron drive is invented. The first craft to use the electron drive, a converted fighter jet, is launched from Edwards Air Force base in July of
1966, and it performs 10 Earth orbits before returning to land safely.

1968: The Soviet Union unveils its own electron drive pro-gram and promises to create a craft that can reach the Moon.

1970: On January 7, Neil Armstrong lands Kitty Hawk on the Moon. On January 9, the Soviet Luna 11 likewise lands, a few dozen miles away. Both sides claim large swathes of the Moon for their own.

1971: The first tiny lunar settlements – optimistically called “colonies” a couple of years early – are founded. New Plymouth, the American lunar “colony,” is sited at the Moon’s south pole. Lunovgrad, a Soviet outpost, is constructed in Copernicus Crater.

1972-1975: Tensions continue to rise and the Cold War heats up as the lunar colonies become firmly established and grow. The discovery of lunar diamonds sets off the Diamond Rush, and the first homemade electron-drive ships begin to launch. Primitive independent colonies and mining domes dot the lunar surface. Saber rattling on Earth increases dramatically.

1976: Both the Soviets and the Americans launch craft to Mars. These represent the second generation of electron-drive ships, with crews of a few dozen. The ships set down on Mars within minutes of each other, after sending back clear photographs of cities, roads, and fields. Shortly after landing, both ships fall silent.

1977: In September, the U.S. and Soviet Union launch a joint fleet, consisting of several ships, most of which remain in orbit around Mars to enhance communication. This time, gar-bled and confused transmissions come through before the ground ship breaks off contact, letting the orbital craft know that some sort of contact with the natives has been made. As the orbital fleet ponders what to do and waits for orders from Earth, a small flotilla of strange Martian ships attacks. The resulting battle is a chaotic madhouse, as one of ships in the Earth fleet suddenly turns and opens fire on its comrades. The remaining ships turn to flee, destroying the Martian vessels in the process. The “traitorous” Earth ship then radios them to explain that they had been taken over by some sort of mind control.

1977-1979: The fear of a hostile “Martian menace” that maintains some degree of star-faring capacity eases international tensions. The United Nations is empowered to deal with the threat, and it forms the first true planetary space fleet. The organization charged with manning and operating this fleet is known as the Earth Patrol.

1980: A well-armed diplomatic mission is sent to Mars. From orbit, they attempt to contact the Martian government and demand the return of the crews that landed there (or their bodies), as well as apologies and concessions. The orbital fleet is attacked but survives by maintaining distance. During the confusion of the battle, stealth craft launch toward Mars, bear-ing the first Earth Marines, in the hopes of secretly landing agents who will not be instantly compromised.

1980-1983: The Earth-Martian War transpires. The inability of Earth forces to land on Mars en masse, and the inability of Martian forces to effectively battle in space leads to a stale-mate, with an uneasy cease-fire negotiated over long-distance radio.

1984: The United Nations officially becomes the Earth League. A new headquarters is built in London.

1996: With Mars effectively locked up, the Earth League turns its attention to Venus. A fleet of exploratory ships lands and begins charting the planet. The atmosphere and magnetosphere of Venus makes advanced charting and mapping techniques unusable; Venus must be explored from the ground, relying on the technology of the early 20th century. It remains a planet with many mysteries even a half century later.

The Red Hive
In the early 2000s, the peace of Earth was disrupted. A number of small factions, united in their dis-gust with egalitarian democracy, cobbled together a guiding philosophy based on such discredited thinkers as Nietzsche and Marx, forming a blueprint for a “perfect society” where everyone had a place and where the superior could rule over the weak. This clockwork culture became known as “the Hive,” and the term “Red Hive” came from their adoption of red as their signature color.

The Hive managed to build significant forces before launching their surprise attack on Earth League head-quarters in London. They also struck simultaneously at the Lunar shipyards and at many key weapons depots and naval bases. By the end of the strikes, they revealed their significant fleet and demanded total control of Luna.

The resulting war lasted only two months, but it was viciously brutal, with hyperbombs and Tesla implosion fields ravaging cities. The death toll was in the hundreds of millions. Ultimately, the Hive was defeated. Most of their supporters surrendered; a small fleet, containing their leaders and some troops, disappeared into the trans-Jovian blackness. It is assumed they perished there, unable to reach Saturn and with insufficient supplies to survive a year. Rumors of a special hyper-Tesla coil or some other device that would let them reach Saturn abound, but no concrete proof has come forth.

Currently, the Red Hive is known as a nightmare of a generation past, though some pirate/raider groups claim to be carrying on their philosophy.

1998: The first Earth League colonies are established on the Great Plateau of Venus. Early contacts are made with nomadic lizardmen.

2001: The first asteroid belt colonies are founded. The Earth League builds long-range cruisers capable of reaching Jupiter.

2002: The Earth League makes first contact with the Jovian system. Patrol boats of the Jovian Overlord meet the Earth League ship Athena and give the crew a grand welcome.

2003: An Earth League ship, Gagarin, is reported lost in the jungles of Io, allegedly from mechanical failure. It is never recovered, despite the copious aid offered by the Overlord.

2005: The Overlord launches his battlefleet of electron-drive ships, which stream toward Earth and the Belt, Lunar, and Venusian colonies. Caught unaware at first, the Earth League suffers heavy losses.

2005-2010: The Solar War, an all-out battle between the Earth League and the Overlord, occurs. The Earth League forces the Overlord back to Jupiter and seizes the ocean world of Europa, from which it can easily strike at targets anywhere in the Jovian system. The Overlord issues a call for peace. Weary of war, the Earth League signs a treaty with the Overlord. The treaty calls for the dismantling of the Jovian electron-drive fleet and the secret of the gravitic vector, which allows Earth League ships to maintain artificial gravity on board.

2006: In light of the now-interplanetary nature of war and of human settlement, the Earth Patrol is renamed the Solar Patrol and charged with the defense of mankind. The Earth League is similarly renamed the Solar League.

2015: Contact is made with an intelligent insectoid species on Venus. Brush wars between the Venusian reptilian and the insectoid sentient races take on a new flavor with the addition of Earth-built weaponry. Smuggling begins to become a serious issue.

2020: After a decade of peace and progress, war once again wracks the Solar League. The terrorist organization known as the Red Hive launches a series of lightning strikes on key Earth
cities, and it seizes control of the shipyards at Yeager Dome on Luna. The ensuing two-month war is the most brutal recorded. Tesla implosion fields and hyperbombs ravage the major cities
of Earth. Yeager Dome is breached, killing nearly half a million in seconds. The final victory belongs to the Earth League, how-ever, and the fleet of the Red Hive flee toward the outer system, chased all the way to the Tesla Line by the Solar Patrol. Their escaping fleet vanishes into the darkness beyond the line, and it presumably perishes there when their supplies ran out.

2021: The first ships to visit Mercury land to find a dismal vista.

2026: Baron Black begins raiding shipping along the Belt/Luna trading corridor. Others take up space piracy as well. The Shadow Caves are found on Mercury.

2035: Solar Patrol Marines, specially trained in infiltration and espionage, begin to establish a resistance movement in the Martian cities of Thoom, Kathar, and Val, seeking to strike against the Mind Masters without directly implicating Earth.

2050: The Adventurous, the largest ship ever built by Earth, is launched from the rebuilt Yeager shipyards. Its mission is to secure the ever-more-chaotic Belt region, where piracy grows extreme and there’s rumblings of Jovian activity.

2056: The present day.

[Aaron]

JUPITER AND ITS MOONS

Travel to Jupiter was a triumph of the Earth League. It took the most advanced technology, the bravest pilots, and several stepping-stone bases in the Belt to finally reach the distant, waiting giant . . . and, once there, Earth found the greatest enemy it would ever face – the mysterious and deadly Overlord of Jupiter’s Moons!

It was in 2002 when the first Earth ship reached the gas giant. The crew of the Athena discovered that the four Galilean moons were surprisingly Earth-like, with rich ecosystems and easily breathable atmospheres. While examining the moons from high orbit, they detected a cluster of five odd-looking ships coming in on an intercept course. Prepared to either fight or run (the lessons of the Martian war were still fresh!), they were pleased when the craft stayed out of firing range and began to repeatedly broadcast a radio message. It was a series of mathematical equations, and it began the process of establishing a shared language. After a week of slowly learning the basics, it was clear the alien craft were not hostile and were requesting that the Earth ship land. No Earth radio could reach the mother world from this distance, so it was up to the fleet captain, who decided the chance for peaceful contact with an advanced alien race was worth the risk.

The ship landed at what is now known as the Gray Fortress on Ganymede, home of the Jovian Overlord. There they were treated as honored guests, but all noticed the casual cruelty of their host. Earth history was full of tyrants who smiled at those he could use and slew those he deemed unworthy, and the crew was not taken in by his protestations of friendship, especially when it became apparent he lacked the electron drive and was exceptionally interested in acquiring it. Since he made no outwardly hostile moves, though, basic terms for trade and diplomacy were established.

A year later, in 2003, the Gagarin went missing over Io. Allegedly, the ship experienced some sort of sudden mechanical failure; the Overlord reported that it was seen belching fire and smoke and crashing into the sea. Rescue and emergency teams scoured the jungles and seas of the volcanic archipelago world, but found no sign of the craft, not even wreckage. There was a great deal of suspicion, but no proof, and the Earth League was not willing to risk war across the void without hard evidence.

In 2005, the Overlord attacked. A fleet of electron-drive war-ships larger and more powerful than any seen before streamed outward from Jupiter. They seized the smaller military outposts in the Belt and executed the soldiers stationed there for “crimes against the Sovereign.” The larger bases on Ceres and Vesta fought back vigorously, taking out a few battleships while sending what information they could to Earth. Then the Overlord’s fleet rushed to the inner system, giving Mars a wide berth and launching attacks on Earth, Luna, and Venus. Earth, caught off-guard despite the valiant efforts of the Belt bases, reeled from the assault.

In the end, logistics, resources, and courage undid the Overlord. He could not adequately maintain and supply his fleet over such distances; he had hoped for a blitzkrieg that would put him firmly in command of the inner system, but Earth proved tougher than he’d imagined. Further, Earth had deeper pockets and a more advanced infrastructure than he’d ever conceived of – his realm knew nothing of “private industry,” so he was quite unprepared when the factories of Earth quickly went from churning out pleasure cruisers and civilian transports to mass producing sleek, advanced warships. Lastly, his troops were motivated by fear, not love of their home world, and were used to dealing with broken and submissive populaces, not fierce patriots fighting for their home world with every aspect of their being.

The willingness of the Earth ships to die for their cause, or of one Earther to give his life for his friends, was something the Overlord simply could not conceive of. Over the months of the war, his fleet was diminished and pushed back. The Belt was reinforced, and the Overlord’s ships were often caught between fleets launching outward from Earth and inward from the Belt. Then the counterattack was launched.

It was brief and bloody. The ever-paranoid Overlord had kept most of his native fleet home and not upgraded them to the electron drive. The Earth League, as they had with Mars, constrained itself to limiting the damage to civilian targets as much as possible. The result was a conditional surrender on the part of the Overlord, one that a war-weary Earth accepted. An Earth League base would be established on Europa, and the Overlord would destroy all electron-drive ships and turn over the secret of the gravitic vector, which would allow Earth craft to generate artificial gravity on board.

The situation remains the same to this day. The Overlord’s hatred of Earth is absolute, but so is his fear of what they might do with a second attack. He has been reduced to scheming, plotting, and acting through proxies. Few foes of the Earth League, from the Red Hive to random space pirates, have not received some funding and resources from him – though never in a way that can be proven. The Europan base is considered a hell assignment, a tiny island of Earth League territory surrounded by hostile powers. The Earth League has refrained from actively opposing the Overlord on his own world, despite agitation to do so, at least covertly,
as is being done on Mars.

Note: Throughout the text, the term “Jovian” applies primarily to the four inhabited moons and their shared political sys-tem. The actual gas giant is of minimal importance, as are the uninhabited moons.

New Port Royal

To some, it is a myth. To others, it is a quest. To the elite of the rogues and pirates who roam the Belt, it is home.

If it really exists . . .

In the miner bars of Luna and the seedy dives of Venusport, folks whisper about a haven for the criminal, the scurvy, and the warped. The tales claim that it’s a place the Patrol can’t find, a place where the law cannot follow, a place where all misdeeds are ignored and all feuds are put on hold . . . a place called New Port Royal. Allegedly, it is an asteroid city, built into a rock a mile across, a city that has been cloaked from sight by unknown technology. Some claim the machine was found on an alien spaceship adrift in the void. Others suggest the device was stolen from the Overlord of Jupiter. Still others maintain that it was developed by the Earth League but then taken by its inventor before it could be deployed. The rumors change with the telling.

So do the rumors of its location, which place it all over the Belt – sometimes near to Mars, other times within a few days’ flight of Jupiter. If the rumors were all true, the rock would need engines, making it the largest spaceship in existence, but that’s quite impossible.

If New Port Royal exists, it would be a wild place, making Venusport seem like a peaceful hyper-suburb on Earth. There’s speculation that it’s ruled by a sort of Rogues’ Parliament, composed of the leaders of the most powerful and successful pirate bands, who are elected by the scum they rule and who only hold power so long as they have popular support.

In order for a place like New Port Royal to exist, a law of truce must be enforced. All feuds, disagreements, misgivings, and vendettas would need to be set aside within its steel walls, lest the entire enterprise collapse in a war of all against all. Those who broke this truce would be ejected from the city and given the Traitor’s Brand, a symbol that would fade after a year’s time. Those bearing such a brand would find themselves not merely outcast from New Port Royal, but shunned even in other pirate holdfasts.

What would a place like New Port Royal offer? Larger and better-equipped shipyards than any other such location. A neutral meeting ground for captains whose ships to negotiate a truce. A place for the wounded to rest and for the wealthy to flaunt their gains. A place for those weary of the pirating life – but wanted on every world in the inner system and half the moons of Jupiter – to retire in reason-able comfort. A chance to meet new crewmembers or seek a new ship to sign up with.

That’s what it would offer if it existed. Which, of course, it doesn’t. Indeed, the Patrol is rumored to have a half-dozen ships assigned to looking for it, just to prove that it doesn’t exist . . .

The Overlord of Jupiter
973 Points
The very phrase “the Overlord Of Jupiter” is enough to terrify. Mysterious, implacable, and alien, he rules four worlds with a literal iron fist, and he came close to adding Earth to his collec-tion of planets. Even now, beaten and contained, he is seen as the greatest threat to peace in the system. But who is he?

Nobody knows.
All that can be determined is that he came to Io “in a furi-ous storm of fire” an indeterminately long time ago . . . some scholars estimate it might be 10,000 or even 100,000 years. That he came from outside the Solar System is certain, but from what world, or even what galaxy, none can say but him . . . and he is not talking.
He is humanoid in shape and size, but he has never been seen without his suit of dull ebon armor. His gauntlets contain powerful lasers, and his look . . . can kill. Earthers visiting him for early diplomatic missions, before his true nature was known, were the first to see what one wag called his “look of disdain” – a devastatingly powerful burst of energy that can destroy an armored man in an instant.

The Children of the Overlord
Despite never being seen outside of his armor, the Overlord has presented many individuals as his “children.” Male and female in almost equal numbers, all those that have been seen are in their late teens to late 20s, perfectly humanoid in appearance, uniformly attractive, and utterly power-mad. They are assigned to oversee rebellious provinces, lead a fleet in a surprise assault, or rule a section of a moon for a limited span. All claim they seek their father’s favor and will someday rule in his stead; most share his predilection for overly elaborate plans, and many followers die horribly when such plans go awry.
The exact nature of such “children” is unknown. Some speculate they are artificial beings or clones; others that they are adopted from the elite of the humanoids of the moons; and still others that they are, indeed, the genetic offspring of the Overlord and Jovian women. The truth may never be known, and the Overlord has planted clues supporting all three theories.

He lusts for power and surrounds himself with beauty. The bleak iron fortress that glowers down upon the Scab of Io is packed with art of all sorts, culled from around the four moons and, recently, from Earth (mostly stolen by pirates). He loves music and dance as well, and he can play the part of the charming host perfectly – it took him but a few days to learn enough Earth culture and language to be able to host a formal dinner to perfection.

Despite the vast armies at his command, and his retinue of elite Callistan guards, he enjoys personal combat. While he can use a small atomic blaster to great effect, his preferred weapon is his infamous monomolecular blade, a sword that he always carries.

Some have commented that, to the Overlord, all of the war and terror he causes is but a twisted game; he often ignores the simple and efficient course of action for the complex and dramatic. It seems as if he is acting a part for an unseen audience, playing a role. The death and suffering that follows in his wake is all too real, and for all his flourishes, games, and seeming blunders, he can kill quickly and efficiently whenever he decides the play is over.

ST 14 [40]; DX 15 [100]; IQ 16 [120]; HT 14 [40].
Damage 1d/2d; BL 39 lbs.; HP 14 [0]; Will 21 [25]; Per 16 [0]; FP 14 [0].
Basic Speed 7.25 [0]; Basic Move 7 [0]; Dodge 10; Parry 0.

Social Background
TL: 6+3 [0].
CF: Jupiter and its moons [0].
Languages: Jupiteran (Native) [0]; English (Accented) [4].

Advantages
Absolute Timing [2]; Ally (Elite Guards; 75% of starting points; Constantly; Group: 6-10) [72]; Burning Attack 3 (Laser Gauntlets; Armor Divisor 2; Damage Limitation, No Blunt Trauma, No Knockback; Gadget/Breakable, DR 6-15 or less, Size -5 or -6; Gadget/Can Be Stolen, Must be forcefully removed; Limited Use, 5-10 times per day) [12]; Burning Attack 8 (Look of Disdain; Accurate, +4; Armor Divisor 5; Lim-ited Use, Once per Day) [92]; DR 15 (Armored Suit, Hardened, +1; Gadget/Can Be Stolen, Must be forcefully removed) [83]; Danger Sense [15]; Dark Vision (Gadget/Can Be Stolen, Must be forcefully removed) [23]; Doesn’t Breathe (Gadget/Can Be
Stolen, Must be forcefully removed) [18]; Doesn’t Eat or Drink [10]; Doesn’t Sleep [20]; Extended Lifespan 1 [2]; Extra Life 1 [25]; Hard to Kill 4 [8]; High Pain Threshold [10]; Mind Shield 4 [16]; Rapier Wit [5]; Regeneration (Regular, 1 HP/hour) [25]; Reputation (Lord of the Four Moons) 3 (Almost Everyone; All the Time) [15]; Status 8 [40]; Unaging [15]; Very Fit [15]; Very Rapid Healing [15]; Voice [10]; Weapon Master (Monofilament Blade) [20].

Disadvantages
Bully (12 or less) [-10]; Callous [-5]; Code of Honor (Overlord’s*) [-15]; Frightens Animals [-10]; Jealousy [-10]; Megalomania [-10]; Overconfidence (6 or less) [-10].
* Accept any challenge to a duel; always tell them your plans; never kill quickly when you can kill dramatically; treat even enemies with courtesy; let them live if they’ve outwitted you fairly.

Skills
Acrobatics (H) DX+1 [8]-16; Administration (A) IQ+3 [12]-19; Area Knowledge (Jupiter) (E) IQ+5 [16]-21; Area Knowledge (The inner system) (E) IQ [1]-16; Beam Weapons/TL6 (Pistol) (E) DX+3 [8]-18; Beam Weapons/TL6 (Rifle) (E) DX+3 [8]-18; Cloak (A) DX+3 [12]-18; Connoisseur (Music) (A) IQ-1 [1]-15; Connoisseur (Visual Arts) (A) IQ-1 [1]-15; Current Affairs/TL6 (Politics) (E) IQ+2 [4]-18; Detect Lies (H) Per+2 [12]-18; Diplomacy (H) IQ [1]-16*; Economics (H) IQ-1 [2]-15; Fast-Draw (Force Sword) (E) DX+1 [2]-16;
Force Sword (A) DX+3 [12]-18; Force Sword Art (A) DX [2]-15; Gambling (A) IQ+1 [4]-17; Innate Attack (Beam) (E) DX [1]-15; Interrogation (A) IQ+1 [4]-17; Intimidation (A) Will-1 [1]-20; Leadership (A) IQ+2 [8]-18; Piloting/TL6 (Contragravity) (A) DX-1 [1]-14; Piloting/TL6 (High-Performance Spacecraft) (A)
DX-1 [1]-14; Poisons/TL6 (H) IQ-2 [1]-14; Politics (A) IQ+1 [1]-17*; Propaganda/TL6 (A) IQ-1 [1]-15; Public Speaking (A) IQ+1 [1]-17*; Riding (Jovian Lizard-Horse) (A) DX-1 [1]-14; Savoir-Faire (High Society) (E) IQ [1]-16; Science! IQ-2 [6]-14; Smuggling (A) IQ-1 [1]-15; Strategy (Air) (H) IQ-2 [1]-14; Strategy (Land) (H) IQ-2 [1]-14; Strategy (Naval) (H) IQ-2 [1]-14; Strategy (Space) (H) IQ-2 [1]-14; Tactics (H) IQ-2 [1]-14;
Traps/TL6 (A) IQ-1 [1]-15; Weird Science (VH) IQ-3 [1]-13.
* +2 from Voice.

Techniques
Feint (Force Sword) (H) [2]-19; Ground Fighting (Force Sword) (H) [2]-19; Retain Weapon (Force Sword) (H) [2]-19.

THE MOONS OF JUPITER
Jupiter has many moons, but only four are inhabited: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Io
Io is a harsh and beautiful world. About one-fourth of the planet’s surface is taken up by what Earthers have uncharitably named the Scab – a massive region of basalt, obsidian, and twisting rock, strewn with active volcanoes and rivers of lava, forever shadowed under clouds of soot and surrounded by miles and miles of ash-gray seas. The rest of the world is a volcanic archipelago, with thousands of tiny islands, most less
than a mile along their largest dimension, and countless semi-active volcanoes. Rich jungle foliage covers the older and larger islands, while many of the newer ones are just bare outcroppings of rock.

The Overlord makes his home in the heart of the Scab, keeping his Iron Fortress safe and stable by unknown means. The vast factories, workshops, and barracks that support his armies and space fleets surround it.

The inhabitants of Io are varied. The Scab is home to a silicate race, the enigmatic and unemotional Rock-men. The archipelagoes hold a humanoid race that maintains a peaceful existence, though they struggle to meet the Overlord’s demands for tribute.

The Rock-men of Io
Io’s native race is a silicon-based life form, one that evolved in the magma pools and then moved out to the land. Slow moving and slow thinking, they gradually developed a culture and civilization. Skilled metallurgists and stonecrafters, they greatly fear the seas and never ventured into the oceans, allow-ing the humanoid island dwellers to live in peace, until the coming of the Overlord. Now, the Rock-men are the Overlord’s servants and form the bulk of his infantry. Their original native culture has been forgotten; now they only know how to serve
the Overlord.

While silicon based, the Rock-men still need to eat, breathe, and otherwise perform the functions of life. Likewise, they have internal organs that can suffer damage.

Only in campaigns set primarily on Jupiter’s moons would Rock-men be suitable as PCs; in such cases, they make fine “tanks” but do little else well

Rock-Men of Io
28 points
Attribute Modifiers: ST+3 [30]; DX-1 [-20] HT+2 [20]; IQ-2 [-40].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Move-1 [-5].
Advantages: DR 4 [20]; Extended Lifespan 2 [4]; Lifting ST 10
[30]; Reduced Consumption 2 [4].
Disadvantages: Callous [-5]; Ham-Fisted [-5]; Hidebound [-5].

Ionian Lizard-Horse (K’tharg)
This creature is a common riding beast across all of Jupiter’s moons, but it evolved to scamper along the rough and sharp surface of the Scab. It is a sinuous creature, something like a thick-bodied, legged snake, with a long, whiplike tail used for balance. Riding it requires skill and coordination, as it is hideously fast and snaps its flexible body around rapidly in order to turn – or throw an unwary rider. It uses its tail to sweep away predators.

During the 2020s, several were imported to Earth, where they have become something of a status symbol for the idle rich and have replaced ponies in the dreams of a certain class of young girls.

ST: 19 HP: 19 Speed: 6.75
DX: 15 Will: 10 Move: 10
IQ: 2 Per: 10 Weight: 1,000 lbs.
HT: 12 FP: 12 SM: +2 (4 hexes)
Dodge: 9 Parry: N/A DR: 2
Bite (15): 2d-2 crushing. Reach C.
Tail (15): 2d+1 crushing. SM +1; Cannot Parry; Limited Arc, Rear Only. Reach 2.
Traits: No Fine Manipulators; Quadruped; Wild Animal.
Skills: Running-18.

Callisto
Callisto is a cold and harsh world, a world of snow-covered mountains, pine forests, ice-choked rivers and seas, and cold, harsh people. The bulk of the warriors of the Overlord come from this savage world, as the Callistans are people who love war for the sake of war – and once for the sake of honor and glory. The Space Marines of the Patrol often find kindred spirits in these rough-and-tumble fighters, and the two forces learned to respect each other during the Solar War. Legends abound about a second race that dwells on the world, a race of savage, shaggy, man-eating monsters that live deep in the frozen caverns and emerge only when the nights are coldest and blackest, but no one believes such tales.

Europa
“By the infinite seas of Europa!” has become a bit of slang in the System, and with good reason: This pristine globe is mostly water. Unlike the shallow, island-dotted oceans of Io or the swampy muck of Venus, Europa’s oceans are deep and barely cracked by land. Less than 5% of the surface area is covered by ground, and the bulk of that is the island of Tovlor, which has the distinction of holding precisely four square miles of Solar League territory.

The Overlord and the Red Hive
Why didn’t the Overlord launch a second attack when the Red Hive decimated Earth? Firstly, he was expecting the Hive to win, and he felt he could deal with them in a weakened state. Secondly, he had very little to attack with – he had barely any warships that he managed to hide from the Earth League after the first Solar War.
The Hive originally headed straight to Jupiter when they fled, since the Overlord has been their covert ally, but he wanted nothing to do with weak losers. He made it clear that if they tried to land, he would happily lend his support to the European base in shooting them down. Thus, they flew on past the Tesla Line out of desperation.
Various humans, who have become masters of working with local materials, inhabit the other sparse islands of Europa. Aside from a small number of real cities on Tovlor, which benefit from the Overlord’s technological devices, the bulk of the population lives in TL1 or TL2 villages.
The most common form of housing is the quaal shell. A quaal is a shelled mollusk that grows to phenomenal size in the low gravity of Europa. When they die, their air-filled shells bob to the surface, where the locals harvest them. A typical quaal shell can house six to eight adults in cramped, but tolerable, conditions.

In addition to the humans, a race of water-breathing humanoids dwells on Europa; they offer fealty and subservience to the Overlord, but they cannot serve in his fleets or armies with ease, so they are mostly left alone. During the Solar War, the Earth Patrol foiled a scheme to smuggle battalions of merfolk to Earth, where they would enter the oceans and attack coastal cities from there.

The European seas go down to depths of 10 miles or more, and no one has explored the dark reaches of the hadean depths, not even by the Overlord’s men. Rumors and legends of mile-long monsters remain to be verified or debunked.

Ganymede
Ganymede is a strange world, a world where the cracked and pitted surface is filled with lush life. Long ago, the surface of Ganymede split and broke, forming a network of canyons and chasms. In these valleys and depths, rich life evolved, filling the cracks with green. The inhabitants are an agile, furred, and clever species that serves the Overlord as technicians and engineers of superlative skill. The surface regions of Ganymede are covered with mining pits and factories.

Furred Folk of Ganymede
23 points
Attribute Modifiers: ST-1 [-10]; DX+2 [40]; HT+1 [10].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Move+1 [5].
Advantages: High Manual Dexterity 2 [10].
Disadvantages: Cowardice [-10]; Extra Sleep [-2]; Impulsive-ness [-10]; Short Lifespan [-10].

BEYOND
Beyond Jupiter, little is known. Forces in the outer system render Tesla coils inoperative. Attempts to explore further are stymied. It is believed that immense and bizarre life forms dwell in the vacuum of the outer system. They cannot come too close to the sun, but ships that venture much beyond Jupiter’s orbit are rarely seen again.

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