Silicon Shadows
Ages ago the Avaloria Rex was a ship of the line in the fleets of a now vanished civilization. What happened to that civilization is unknown, but the Avaloria was abandoned when a fault forced the crew to jettison the main drives leaving the ship stranded in interstellar space. The crew then abandoned her, leaving this vast construct abandoned and alone. Secondary power has proven more than sufficient to keep the remaining systems operational, cycling over to a similarly complete tertiary power for regular maintenance. The result is a great space fortress far from any threat or life. While its sublight drives remain active, and has a course laid in for the nearest stellar object, it will be over a thousand years before it reaches the binary star system that is its target. At that point appearances are that she will be captured between the two stars and remain there, drawing power and waiting in standby mode, until its systems give out.
Ages ago the Avaloria Rex was a ship of the line in the fleets of a now vanished civilization. What happened to that civilization is unknown, but the Avaloria was abandoned when a fault forced the crew to jettison the main drives leaving the ship stranded in interstellar space. The crew then abandoned her, leaving this vast construct abandoned and alone. Secondary power has proven more than sufficient to keep the remaining systems operational, cycling over to a similarly complete tertiary power for regular maintenance. The result is a great space fortress far from any threat or life. While its sublight drives remain active, and has a course laid in for the nearest stellar object, it will be over a thousand years before it reaches the binary star system that is its target. At that point appearances are that she will be captured between the two stars and remain there, drawing power and waiting in standby mode, until its systems give out.
All systems on the Avaloria remain active, including life support and the emergency transport station. Because of this the crew was able to remove virtually everything of value that was portable when they abandoned ship. This is also the most likely method for adventurers to find their way onto the ship physically. Along with a number of other systems of value this discovery would make the ship an ideal base of operations or aldeia. Among these are a set of food production and waste reclamation facilities and a medical bay which, while stripped of portable devices, still has a number of installed fixtures capable of diagnosing and curing virtually any ailment short of disintegration, including brief cases involving the acute cessation of biological function. Also functional are a dizzying array of ship-based weapons and shielding, which threaten nothing and defend against nothing in the void of interstellar space, and the communications bay, which can serve as a set of datasphere access pods for up to 10 individuals simultaneously.
In the Datasphere
Explorers have a several options for how they might obtain access the computer systems on the Avaloria Rex. Most of the systems and subsystems contain nodes that can be recognized as junction points, while the communications bay has the previously mentioned access pods. The last means is to arrive through the datasphere itself, generally through the portal in the Temple of the Beyond.
It's impossible to know whether the datasphere construct that exists within the Avaloria was created as an intentional interface, but it has almost certainly developed far beyond what the crew of the Avaloria could have intended.
Avaloria Rex Attributes
Level: 3
Laws: Magic, Psionics, Substandard Physics
Playable Races: Avalorian
Foci: Awakens Dangerous Psychic Talent, Bears a Halo of Fire, Commands Mental Powers, Crafts Illusions, Focuses Mind Over Matter, Regenerates Tissue, Sees Beyond, Siphons Power, Works Miracles
Skills: Avalorian Lore
Connection to Strange: Creatures within the Avaloria Rex can see and travel directly into (or fall into) the unformatted spaces of the datasphere from the edges of the world. Creatures outside in the Strange can see in, but cannot normally enter.
Connection to the Physical: Gates corresponding to subsystems in the Avaloria Rex exist in the the temples in the heart of the largest Avalorian cities.
Size: 900 mile circumference x 300 miles wide x 50 miles thick (1450 km × 480 km × 80 km)
Spark: 35%
Trait: Intelligent: Any creature with the spark adds 1 to its Intellect Pool maximum while present in the recursion. The point is lost upon leaving the recursion.
While the advancement of standard science is limited the environment of the recursion of Avaloria is thick with eldrich energies. Consequently a set of alternate laws of physics have arisen, and grown extravagant in their place. The result is a world full of mysticism and psychic power.
All of the Avalorians possess strong innate abilities to shape the world around them in ways that defy normal physics, and the very structures of the civilization are built upon these powers; travel, construction, and production of all sorts being managed through psychic and magical means rather than physical or mechanized labor. While the vast majority of the inhabitants of the world are shadows, little more than ghosts that lead simple, repetitive existences, a few have awoken. For those who become "enlightened" their talents open the possibility of great individual power.
The world of Avaloria appears as a ring, with a habitable zone occupying the inside surface. Two of the major cities of Avaloria are built around enormous spires that reach from the inner surface. These two spires, along with a third that was destroyed in a cataclysm ages ago, reach out to connect with the outer frame of a complex armillary sphere. The contents of this frame provide a cycle of day and night that sweeps regularly around the ring. During the twilight and night portions of the cycle the Strange can be seen glittering beyond the edges of the sphere.
Several cities of varying size dot the landscape, each built around a large structure that predates the rise of the Avalorians and directly corresponds with a system of the Avaloria Rex. These structures are occupied and maintained by clergy that venerate each site as the abandoned homes of their gods. Each city's faith is unique, recognizing the divine nature of the others but dedicated to their own patron alone and recognizing no divinity as having greater authority than any other. Various competing myths differ regarding why these celestial occupants left, but the dominant belief is that they shall return and any sign of their persistence is heralded throughout the world.
Some of the most notable sites are those corresponding with the secondary and tertiary engine subsystems, which will deliver explorers to special rooms set aside in the catacombs that fill the interior of the great spires. Similarly, individuals using the datasphere access pods in the communications bay will arrive in the Hall of Ancients deep below a pyramid in the city of Kitu. This large, domed chamber has 10 alcoves and a single door set into the walls. The alcoves correspond to the pods, and the door provides access upwards into the rest of the pyramid. However, attention in the room is dominated by the fact that, while there is a broad walkway around the circumference of the room, the majority of floor is an opening showing clearly the Strange beyond. The walkway around the room has a series of filigrees inlayed which, the Avalorians believe, once marked locations and invocations that could be worked to travel directly to other worlds. If this was once true the understanding has been lost to the Avalorians, though.
One of the challenges in writing something like this is finding a way to balance between the "real world" correspondence it's trying to model and making it an interesting location to visit on its own. Many of those concerns can be jettisoned for worlds with limited access. If there's only one physical access point in/out or the world is built overtop of a wireless mesh (infinite access) the interactions in specific places become unimportant. As a contained system with multiple crossover points, the Avaloria Rex demands some acknowledgement of what those different places are. Because of this I considered putting the different subsystems in their own individual recursions. Ultimately, I decided that a single underlying map with locations that had specific features relating to their associated system would be better. We'll see if I manage to fully realize that.
Similarly, a theoretical benefit of using The Strange as a backbone for my datasphere is the ability to borrow back and forth between uses. I've mentioned Ruk and Ardyen previously as places that a Numenera character might visit in the datasphere, but now I want to build a recursion capable of harnessing the imagination of Strange players equally, without the tie to the physical ship. The easiest way is to make the recursion Avaloria the ship, much like Ruk, but rather than having run aground it has lost its main engine and is adrift in the Strange. The challenge here is that the low incidence of the Spark, which fits the idea of the residents being sub-routines of the ship's datasphere, becomes inappropriate for a ship full of travelers in the Strange without some explanation. Are they the original shipbuilders? If so, what happened that they lost the Spark? If not, where did the shipbuilders go and where did these beings come from?
It's impossible to know whether the datasphere construct that exists within the Avaloria was created as an intentional interface, but it has almost certainly developed far beyond what the crew of the Avaloria could have intended.
Avaloria Rex Attributes
Level: 3
Laws: Magic, Psionics, Substandard Physics
Playable Races: Avalorian
Foci: Awakens Dangerous Psychic Talent, Bears a Halo of Fire, Commands Mental Powers, Crafts Illusions, Focuses Mind Over Matter, Regenerates Tissue, Sees Beyond, Siphons Power, Works Miracles
Skills: Avalorian Lore
Connection to Strange: Creatures within the Avaloria Rex can see and travel directly into (or fall into) the unformatted spaces of the datasphere from the edges of the world. Creatures outside in the Strange can see in, but cannot normally enter.
Connection to the Physical: Gates corresponding to subsystems in the Avaloria Rex exist in the the temples in the heart of the largest Avalorian cities.
Size: 900 mile circumference x 300 miles wide x 50 miles thick (1450 km × 480 km × 80 km)
Spark: 35%
Trait: Intelligent: Any creature with the spark adds 1 to its Intellect Pool maximum while present in the recursion. The point is lost upon leaving the recursion.
While the advancement of standard science is limited the environment of the recursion of Avaloria is thick with eldrich energies. Consequently a set of alternate laws of physics have arisen, and grown extravagant in their place. The result is a world full of mysticism and psychic power.
All of the Avalorians possess strong innate abilities to shape the world around them in ways that defy normal physics, and the very structures of the civilization are built upon these powers; travel, construction, and production of all sorts being managed through psychic and magical means rather than physical or mechanized labor. While the vast majority of the inhabitants of the world are shadows, little more than ghosts that lead simple, repetitive existences, a few have awoken. For those who become "enlightened" their talents open the possibility of great individual power.
The world of Avaloria appears as a ring, with a habitable zone occupying the inside surface. Two of the major cities of Avaloria are built around enormous spires that reach from the inner surface. These two spires, along with a third that was destroyed in a cataclysm ages ago, reach out to connect with the outer frame of a complex armillary sphere. The contents of this frame provide a cycle of day and night that sweeps regularly around the ring. During the twilight and night portions of the cycle the Strange can be seen glittering beyond the edges of the sphere.
Several cities of varying size dot the landscape, each built around a large structure that predates the rise of the Avalorians and directly corresponds with a system of the Avaloria Rex. These structures are occupied and maintained by clergy that venerate each site as the abandoned homes of their gods. Each city's faith is unique, recognizing the divine nature of the others but dedicated to their own patron alone and recognizing no divinity as having greater authority than any other. Various competing myths differ regarding why these celestial occupants left, but the dominant belief is that they shall return and any sign of their persistence is heralded throughout the world.
Some of the most notable sites are those corresponding with the secondary and tertiary engine subsystems, which will deliver explorers to special rooms set aside in the catacombs that fill the interior of the great spires. Similarly, individuals using the datasphere access pods in the communications bay will arrive in the Hall of Ancients deep below a pyramid in the city of Kitu. This large, domed chamber has 10 alcoves and a single door set into the walls. The alcoves correspond to the pods, and the door provides access upwards into the rest of the pyramid. However, attention in the room is dominated by the fact that, while there is a broad walkway around the circumference of the room, the majority of floor is an opening showing clearly the Strange beyond. The walkway around the room has a series of filigrees inlayed which, the Avalorians believe, once marked locations and invocations that could be worked to travel directly to other worlds. If this was once true the understanding has been lost to the Avalorians, though.
~~*~~
One of the challenges in writing something like this is finding a way to balance between the "real world" correspondence it's trying to model and making it an interesting location to visit on its own. Many of those concerns can be jettisoned for worlds with limited access. If there's only one physical access point in/out or the world is built overtop of a wireless mesh (infinite access) the interactions in specific places become unimportant. As a contained system with multiple crossover points, the Avaloria Rex demands some acknowledgement of what those different places are. Because of this I considered putting the different subsystems in their own individual recursions. Ultimately, I decided that a single underlying map with locations that had specific features relating to their associated system would be better. We'll see if I manage to fully realize that.
Similarly, a theoretical benefit of using The Strange as a backbone for my datasphere is the ability to borrow back and forth between uses. I've mentioned Ruk and Ardyen previously as places that a Numenera character might visit in the datasphere, but now I want to build a recursion capable of harnessing the imagination of Strange players equally, without the tie to the physical ship. The easiest way is to make the recursion Avaloria the ship, much like Ruk, but rather than having run aground it has lost its main engine and is adrift in the Strange. The challenge here is that the low incidence of the Spark, which fits the idea of the residents being sub-routines of the ship's datasphere, becomes inappropriate for a ship full of travelers in the Strange without some explanation. Are they the original shipbuilders? If so, what happened that they lost the Spark? If not, where did the shipbuilders go and where did these beings come from?
No comments:
Post a Comment