DEREGULATED
Twenty-five years ago, the planet SEVI-T3 was first explored by a planetary survey team contracted by the United Nations Interstellar Council. The distant planet's ruddy surface glowed against the black void like a smoldering firebrand, and so those first surveyors gave SEVI-T3 the more affectionate moniker Ember. The initial survey team spent less than a week in orbit above Ember and no more than 72 hours on the planet's surface; there were dozens of new star systems to explore in those first decades after the advent of the annihilation engine and there was simply not enough time to thoroughly explore them all. Despite their brief exploration, the xenobiologists and geologists sent to Ember's surface discovered a stunning world that was simultaneously alien and Earthlike. The atmosphere had the ideal nitrogen-oxygen composition to support terrestrial life and a comfortable gravitational field only slightly less powerful than that of Earth. But the surveyors were not alone on this new world, for a stunning array of extraterrestrial life had evolved on Ember. Curiously enough, the sheer volume and diversity of alien lifeforms on Ember precluded any further exploration or settlement by mankind of this planet. The early years of man's spacefaring age were rife with stipulations rigorously enforced by the UNIC, among which was the Law of Non-Intervention: that no space traveler was to ever intervene with the natural affairs extraterrestrial beings. Alien life, if encountered among the stars, was to be left to its own devices and allowed to flourish or flounder on its own. Wishing to comply with the Law of Non-Intervention, the Ember surveyors took a few soil and rock samples before boarding their dropships and leaving Ember's skies with no intention of ever returning.
A decade later, as space travel became increasingly frequent and overcrowding on Earth, Luna, and Mars sent human settlers farther afield, an interest developed in scouring soil samples from poorly-explored planets for traces of tritium: that all-important fuel for nuclear fusion. A physicist of Latvian stock - Andrei Baltuška - happened upon the substrate samples collected by the SEVI-T3 survey. He found negligible amounts of tritium those vials of orange Ember soil, but discovered something remarkable in a curious-looking hunk of rock collected from Ember. Embedded in this particular rock were flecks of bluish-gray mineral; a metallic material composed of the elements neodymium and osmium arranged in an alternating crystalline matrix. Sample of the isolated mineral, when exposed to powerful radiation, yielded a relatively enormous number of positrons: the antimatter fuel of the annihilation engines that propel starships through space. The discovery of this curious mineral, named baltuskite after its discovery, was surprisingly little celebrated in spite of the material's ability to make antimatter production 5-12 times more efficient. Efforts to recreate the crystalline structure of the mineral described by Andrei Baltuška were unsuccessful, suggesting either erroneous results from Baltuška's experiments, or that the baltuskite from Ember had formed under exotic conditions that could not be replicated in the laboratory. With UNIC regulations prohibiting anyone from returning to Ember to collect more baltuskite for further study; the scientific consensus came to be that baltuskite, the purported philosopher's stone of antimatter production, was nothing but a sensational rumor perpetuated by an incompetent quack.
As time went on, demand for tritium came to outstrip supply. The radioactive isotope needed for fusion power was becoming ever more scarce as humanity's population exploded across the stars. Mining asteroids and barren worlds had proven insufficient to meet mankind's appetite for tritium. The United Nation's Interstellar Council was unswayed at first by demands to allow mining on worlds with native organisms. A terrible economic crisis unfurled as the fusion reactors ran out of tritium. As brownouts erupted throughout the colonies and settlements, frustration turned into violence. A brief but bloody military coup on Earth resulted in the end of the United Nations, which was immediately replaced by a military junta known as the Federation of Worlds. Quickly after seizing control of Earth's government, the Law of Non-Intervention was stricken from the Federation's code of law. Dozens of alien planets that had been off-limits to even the most non-invasive surveys were opened completely to human exploitation and colonization overnight.
It has been six months since the Federation assumed control, and some semblance of normalcy has returned. Following the great deregulation that came with the new Federation government, a great mining boom has sent the stock indices on Earth and Mars rising sharply. Investors see easy money to be had in mining tritium on a number of alien-occupied worlds. But while the largest mining companies are totally focused on mining tritium, there are a handful of small-time entrepreneurs who recall rumors of a nigh-magical mineral found on a distant planet with the ability to effortlessly produce quantities of antimatter sufficient to make a billionaire overnight.
You are one such entrepreneur. You have enticed investors back on Earth and Mars with the promise of easy money, cobbled together your life savings and sold your other assets, or simply stolen enough for a one-way ticket on the very first freight starship to Ember and a little start up capital. You are by no means a mining tycoon - in fact you probably know nothing about mining to begin with. Big Tritium and the so-called "smart-money" is not interested in this wild goose chase on Ember. You haven't the faintest idea of the perils and risks associated with this gamble you are about to take in. The dangerous climatic and cosmic forces that plague Ember, the myriad hostile life forms that roam that remote planet's surface, the greed and malice of your peers who will be joining you in seeking incredible fortune; not a single one of these caveats has even crossed your mind.
All you know is that there is a fortune to be had, and you must find it if you have any hope of leaving this planet alive.
This is the interest check for Deregulated, a space colonization roleplay set approximately 200-350 years in the future on the exoplanet SEVI-T3 - Ember. Deregulated is an advanced, literary RP with some stat elements included. While I intend to have dice rolls and stats play a part in this roleplay, the primary purpose of this roleplay is to build an intriguing collaborative story while building and exploring an entire alien planet.
In this universe, man has taken to the stars and ditched their equivalent of the Prime Directive in order to drill, baby, drill. The player will take on the role of a small-time entrepreneur hoping to take advantage of the deregulation in order mine and sell the alien mineral baltuskite for a huge fortune. Due to the scant funds available for this endeavor, you and your fellow players have pooled some money in order to hire a freighter starship to transport yourselves from the Solar System to Ember - a 47 light year trip with a one-way trip lasting six weeks. This great distance will make Ember the most remote human settlement with a regular route to and from Earth. Deliveries and communication from Earth will therefore be costly and infrequent.
Funds (hopefully) acquired from your mining efforts will need to be used to buy items that you cannot make or MacGyver-rig at your settlement on Ember. Your funds can be exchanged for a wide variety of goods issued in an in-game catalog that can be ordered from and delivered to Ember when the next freight starship returns. At first, these catalog orders will likely be basic supplies like foodstuffs, medical equipment, and prospecting gear. But if your mining operation takes off, you will be making more specialized orders; heavy excavating equipment, electrified perimeter fencing to keep out hostile wildlife, and weaponry ranging from small arms for clearing out hostile fauna to the urban-combat exosuits and anti-orbital missiles that allowed the Federation to wrest control from the UN. If there's a demand, then there's a seller. The freighter company will be happy to reach out to their vendors to provide a quote for supplies not currently listed in the catalog.
For the time being, I need nothing but a statement of interest. I will wait to see if this generates any interest before making up an application form for prospective players to start on. For now, feel free to brainstorm or bounce ideas off one another in the thread. I will be cross posting this thread in a few places, so you may wish to hop around to the various Interest Checks to see if there is more discussion elsewhere.
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