The Setting
Somewhere in a galaxy across the universe, a separate, but identical species to Earth's Humans has developed into a thriving society, stemming from a planet known as Valus. This galaxy is technically nameless, as those within it believe it to be a part of their own identity, and so refer to it as "Our Home". Humanity has spread out amongst the stars of this galaxy, and has many settlements scattered across most of the suitable Earthlike planets, as well as thousands upon thousands of space stations, orbital colonies, and asteroid habitats.
Faster-Than-Light travel exists in the form of great Interstellar Gate Stations. These gate stations maintain a spacial distortion linking two places, and are generally truly massive toroidal structures measuring in the tens of kilometers across, each of which houses millions upon millions of people. Smaller Gate Stations exist as well, linking major hubs of commerce together within solar systems.
Humanity has split into a number of subspecies, as the result of genetic modification which, although illegal in the Old Valus Alliance, was nigh impossible to police on account of the vast distances involved. As a result, the galaxy is split roughly in half, and is in a constant state of tension and minor conflict, after the Neo-Valusian Confederation declared independence from the Old Valus Alliance in an attempt to protect their metahuman friends, and a number of major bombings occurring across the newly created border on both sides. Each side claims the other side shot first.
With the constant skirmishing and the looming threat of genocidal warfare breaking out, though, there is much profit to be had, and a group of rogues has gathered together to pool their funds and purchase a ship. It's not a very good ship, but it can haul cargo, and it's relatively lightly armed.
Tech levels are relatively near-future, but with warpgate technology and extremely efficient ion thrusters and fusion reactors, which provide nearly free energy.
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The Ship
The Mudskipper - Ship ID OVA-1B18M823196
An enormously hideous (as well as enormous) metal brick, measuring fifty meters in length and twenty meters in height and width. At one point it had been painted brown, but much of the paint has been charred or torn by interstellar gases and dust, or by the previous crew flying too close to the sun to make a deadline. The previous crew was "evicted", or so the seller said. Come to think of it, the seller of the ship never showed his face, and seemed to be in a serious hurry to be rid of it. Most likely stolen by a space pirate band. Most of the old crew's stuff is still in the ship, including a few blackened bones lying around between the machinery, where the cleanup crew wasn't able to reach.
The previous log entry reads "Distress beacon source located. A pair of small fighter craft, engines dead. Borf has the cargo bay doors open and is trying to dock them, and McConnel is on-site with his equipment in case anyone is hurt."
This ship may be sold and replaced if necessary.
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The Crew
This is you. The ship has space for, theoretically, up to twenty characters, but cash is tight, and supplies are limited for now. The ship's crew starts out with an arbitrary amount of credits that I'll decide upon later, along with what can be purchased with those credits.
The one big thing is that the ship's crew, overall, has whatever morality the players choose. If you want to be a bunch of goody-two-shoes characters, go for it. If you want to be scumbag pirates, go for it. There's a moral event horizon somewhere, though, and if the crew tries to be far too evil (as in unsafe for readers), I will not hesitate to pull GM bullshit, kill everything, and dispose of the character in question.
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General Information
Somehow, in case of emergency, the ship and its crew are able to miraculously be resurrected at a different point in space, some time after the event that killed everyone. Memories of recent events are wiped, and recent log entries are wiped, as well as all recent profits involved in the events leading to the destruction of the craft or the deaths of the crew. Individual crew members may choose to stay dead and be replaced with another character. Depending on how it's all going, and if the players want to, I may opt to rewind time a bit and let the crew try to worm their way out of a situation another way.
If a crew member dies without the craft or the rest of the crew, then they may be replaced, provided the new character is led into the story in some sort of believable way.
I will be in charge of News Bulletin information, Ship Computer readouts, and a fair portion of the NPC entities, as well as event occurrence management.
Space travel between bodies at different orbital heights and velocities is almost never done in a straight line, and all object velocities are relative to one another. All those fancy Space Opera maneuvers you see in anime and movies are pretty much impossible, because seriously, space isn't an ocean, and space sure as hell isn't air. As such, I will be taking the time to attempt to imagine and plan out realistic and believable combat and warfare maneuvering if the party arrives in such a situation.
Time flows quite a bit during space travel, and as such, I ask that if you're going to do a lot of dialogue, try to do it quickly via collaborative posts. It might be worth it to set up a chat room of some sort somewhere, like on Skype or something, to get all the details down. I want to keep this thing moving, and I've seen a few roleplays get slowed to a halt by excessive detail drawn out over too many individual posts.
Pictures may come later. I'll draw out some maps if this gathers enough interest, and I'll include information about economics, cargo values, ship equipment prices, etc.
By the way, yes, you can buy stations, buy extra ships and personnel, set up whatever kind of empire you'd like. Only requirement is that you have the money for it in-RP.
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...Yep, I think that's about it. Lemme know if this sounds good.
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