Ismada
A ring at every star, six peoples and a truce. Fuel up. Pick a job. The gates go everywhere. So can you.
- Space opera
- Aliens
- Smugglers and bounty hunters
- Your own ship
- No magic
space opera 1 メンバーWorldtableが制作
Nobody knows who built the rings: a gate at every star, older than any people living, that throw a ship from one star to the next in hours or days. Six peoples share the sector now, under a truce that has held for eleven years since the Gate War ended on paper. The core powers tax every jump; past the rim, nobody taxes anything. Ismada, a desert world where every lane meets, is the crossroads: its port Miraq asks no questions. From there a crew with a ship of their own can reach the capital that covers a whole planet, the gill-breathers' jungle shipyards, a mining moon over a war that never quite stopped, a pirate station built inside a dead dreadnought, and the rim gate, which woke last month after a thousand years dark. Keep the ship flying, take jobs from the board, smuggle, hunt bounties, fight or run when a pirate jumps in behind you, and fly past the rim where the worlds you find carry your name.
すべての始まりの地
the Truce
Eleven years ago the Gate War ended. The Orysan Compact (the humans' core power, ruled from the city-world Orysos) and the Diervaq clans had fought for twenty years over who could tax the lanes. The Varkel, who keep the oldest records of the rings, brokered a truce on Ismada, at the crossroads, and every people signed: the Compact, the clans, the Thasindi shipyard houses, the Rith hives, even the Olren, who were not asked if they were people and signed anyway. The truce split the tolls: the core lanes taxed, the rim free. It ended the war on paper. On Trag, below the mining moon Rosla, the shooting still flares every few weeks, and both sides call it something else.
この大地
Al Jura
the Port
Miraq's port country, where every lane in the sector meets: the blast pits and jump field, the job board, cantinas in four languages, the Rith warehouses, a shipyard that sells on credit, and the Compact's toll office at Becar
Miraq is the crossroads of the sector: every lane meets at Ismada's ring, and every ship that wants to go anywhere stops at its blast pits for fuel, crew, cargo or a job. The board at Afolabi's posts freight, passengers, salvage and bounties every dawn; the Skathur hive's warehouses buy and sell anything; and nobody in Miraq asks what's in the crates, because the Compact's toll office is at Becar, a day's drive away, and the port likes it that way.
Saiyahia
the Deep Dunes
the deep desert: salt crawlers and moisture farms, wrecks buried under the dunes, dune borers, and people who came out here so nobody would find them
The deep dunes are where people go to stop being found: salt crawler clans, moisture farmers, hermits, deserters from both sides of the war, and a machine with a price on it. Wrecks from three centuries of crashes lie under the sand, and a storm can bury a crawler or uncover a ship in a night.
Khanza
the Fallen Ring
the badlands round the Fallen Ring, a dead gate that came down from orbit before anyone kept records and lies half buried in the rock: salvagers, Varkel archivists and a Compact dig
The Fallen Ring lies across the Khanza badlands: a gate of grey ring-stone forty kilometres round that came down from orbit before anyone kept records, half buried, its broken edge standing out of the rock like a wall. The Compact has a dig on it, the Varkel have an archive beside it, and salvagers pick at it at night, because ring-stone sells and the codes carved inside it sell for more.
Chelanthain
the Hive Quarter
the Rith hive-city dug into the red canyons south of Miraq: tunnel markets that sell anything, hive warehouses, and the Skathur hive, which owns half of what passes the port
The hive quarter is a Rith city dug into the red canyons south of Miraq, a warren of tunnel markets where the hives sell anything: guns, ships, people's debts, nav data, water, secrets. The Skathur hive owns half of it and the ledger of half the port, and its speaker never forgets a debt in either direction.
あなたがなれるもの
Human
The most numerous people in the sector and the Compact's citizens: they spread through the rings three centuries ago and never stopped. Short-lived next to a Varkel, soft next to a Diervaq, and everywhere: every port has a human cantina, every crew a human who swears they know a shortcut. Humans fly anything, sell anything and fight anyone, and the Compact thinks the sector belongs to them, which the other five peoples have noticed.
Thasindi
The gill-breathers of Thasinde: slender, smooth-skinned amphibious people in greens and blues, with gill-slits along the throat and great dark eyes, who breathe water and air both and dry out in a desert wind. Off-world they wear misting collars. Their shipyard houses grow living hulls in the jungle groves, and a Thasindi can tell how a ship was raised by laying a hand on her. Patient, proud, polite to a fault, and very hard to cheat.
Rith
The hive people: chitinous, six-limbed, waist-high to a human with a carapace like lacquered bronze, a clicking voice and a sharp sense of smell. A hive is many bodies that share one mind at home; a Rith away from its hive is a single body that still says 'we', carries the hive's name and its ledger of debts, and trades. The hives sell anything to anyone, honour every bargain to the letter, and never forget a debt in either direction.
Olren希少
The machines: tall, spare bodies of grey alloy and ceramic with a lit seam where a face would be, who say they used to be people a thousand years ago, before the rings went quiet, and remember lives nobody can find a record of. They don't eat, breathe or sleep; they are repaired, not healed. The Compact calls them property, and its courts have never agreed otherwise; the rest of the sector treats them as people, carefully. Olren are precise, curious, and tired of being asked to prove they are anyone.
Diervaq
Heavy-worlders from the high-gravity clan worlds beyond Trag: broad, low and enormously strong, with grey hide like plate armour, small deep-set eyes and tusks they cap in metal for every clan debt paid. They fought the Compact in the Gate War for twenty years, and most of them think they won. Diervaq keep their word, count honour in scars, and find light-gravity worlds a little funny.
Varkel希少
The oldest people in the sector: three metres tall, slow, long-lived for centuries, with soft grey bodies built for a crushing world, who walk among the others in pressure frames full of their own heavy air and speak through a speaker grille. The Varkel keep the oldest records of the rings and brokered the truce; they think in decades and are rarely in a hurry. A Varkel far from home is a scholar, a broker or someone their own people would rather not discuss.
門の向こうへ
- Orysos. the Orysan Compact's capital: one city covering a whole planet, spires above the clouds and underlevels below the light, where the truce talks are and every lane into the core is taxed
- Thasinde. the gill-breathers' homeworld: a hot, rain-soaked world of jungle islands where the Thasindi shipyard houses grow living hulls in the groves, and where a hull blight has sealed a quarantine ward with people inside
- Rosla. an airless mining moon an hour by shuttle from Trag, the world where the Gate War ended on paper: Compact camps on one side of the ceasefire line, Diervaq clan camps on the other, and the war below in the sky
- the Victra. a Compact dreadnought from the Gate War, gutted, towed into the rings of a dead gas giant and turned into a pirate station: the hull market, the gun decks where the pirate queen holds court, and the Drift where the smugglers race
- Qersuk. the station on the rim gate, the last ring before uncharted space, which woke last month after a thousand years dark: a boom town of prospectors and nav-data sellers, and a survey ship that came back with one more aboard than left