Transient Humanity: A New Home

[TheUnknowable]

December, 2035:

Twenty years ago an alien ship entered orbit, contacting all of the major news networks with a message: Earth doesn't have long. A group of interstellar warriors, the S'reet, had detonated a device within the star we know as Alpha Centauri because they met too much resistance when trying to capture its worlds. This device caused the star to go supernova. Just over 4.37 years later a wave of radiation struck the Earth, killing all surface life. They had already sent out a message to several nearby worlds before arriving, asking for help in evacuating the Earth.

There were also be many independent ships aiding the charities and governments that sent assistance to Earth. The independents didn't all have as pure of a motive as the charities. Many of them were recruiting for various companies across the galaxy and some were hiring themselves out to anyone who can afford passage off world. The more desperate people got to leave the planet, the less picky these ships were as to the skills their recruits had and the more willing they were to accept a debt in exchange for passage. Once the star could be seen exploding in the sky, the people of Earth grew desperate. Just over ten million people had been evacuated by then, and the remaining people, including those that didn't trust the aliens, suddenly wanted off world and were willing to do anything to leave. That's when the slavers arrived, accepting anyone willing to sell themselves. Some of these people were indentured, and some were literally enslaved.

Many of the charities and independent ships offered training to the people so that they would have marketable skills off world. The rapid nature of the training required that an implant be either placed or grown in the person's head so that they could have the knowledge downloaded into their mind. This allowed them to learn enough to take low-level positions in technical areas.

Several groups on Earth managed to get their own ships off the ground using alien technology sold to them by the independents. The most notable of those ships was the Horizon, a cruise ship retrofitted by NASA to evacuate several thousand people at time, but all three of its round trips only resulted in military and other government employees, including politicians, making it to Teros, a trade world several light years from Earth in the opposite direction from Alpha Centauri. When the radiation struck Earth, the only ones to survive were those that had went underground, living in one of the many sanctuaries that had been built to protect humanity from the supernova. Just over 200,000 survived underground, and just over 12 million left for other worlds.

Word recently started circulating around the galaxy, however, that a group of humans, former leaders, had started a colony on an uninhabited world. Though the world has little life and has good ore deposits, they are calling it humanity's new homeworld. Most people are suspicious, however. They are used to living among aliens now and don't understand why humans need a homeworld to separate them from the other species. After all, there are many transient species out there that don't have homeworlds, but they are doing fine.

Is this new homeworld real and, more importantly, is it what humanity needs?

Groups that made it off world

Rich: These people had the money to purchase raw materials with which to buy passage off world.

Politicians: Like the Rich, only they often used tax money to do it, using the resources they could get with their personal finances to set themselves up off world.

Military: Skilled fighters. Many left with the Horizon and other Earth built ships, but far more left with the independents, as fighting doesn't really change with technology level.

Pilots: Sometimes autopilot can't measure up to an organic pilot, usually because a computer can't improvise nearly as well. In extra-dimensional space, and in areas where space and time aren't as concrete as they should be this long after the big bang it is especially evident how superior organic pilots are to computers.

Engineers: People who either had enough knowledge of science and technology already, like PhDs to get a job repairing ships, or who were able to get training in order to get a job in the field.

Specialists: People who have knowledge of a specialized field. Some fields, like agriculture or mineralogy, don't change that much. Others were able to learn what they needed from the training of the charities and independents.

Indentured: Locked in a specific job for a set number of years with a contract that isn't exactly in their favor, they can learn a skill or set of skills and have a steady supply of everything they need to live, and as an added bonus, they got to leave Earth before it was sterilized.

Slaves: They must do whatever their master tells them to do. They can be traded by that master at his/her/their will. Many are given the opportunity to buy their way free by working on their own to earn money, and on most worlds those born to slaves don't inherit that status.

World Government Distribution

Free worlds: 60%. Usually settled by companies or groups of individuals, here individuals are their own master, and have full responsibility for their actions. Worlds like this tend to have dozens of different species on them that arrange themselves into groups, based on similar beliefs in right and wrong, with lawsuits and neutral arbiters deciding conflicts between the groups.

Republics/Democracies: 20%. Worlds where, ostensibly, the people have the power. They tend to have large numbers of politicians and bureaucrats.

Oligarchy: 10%. Worlds ruled by an elite few, usually the rich or those born to power.

Monarchies/dictatorships: 5%. One ruler with absolute power.

Mixed: 5%. Either multiple forms of government exist on one world, or the government for is a mixture of several types.

World Sheet

Name:

Government type:

Common species:

Population:

Economy Base:

Description:

Species Sheet

Name:

Population:

Appearance:

Special traits/abilities:

Culture:

Description:

Character Sheet

Name:

Sex:

Appearance:

Skills:

How did you get off world?:

Story:

[TheUnknowable]

Species: Shita

Name: Shita (Shee-taa)

Population: 57 billion

Appearance: Blue humanoid, smooth skin, no hair, small vestigial tail (10-15 cm), gills

Special traits/abilities: can breath underwater, agile (with better hand-eye coordination than humans), and can regenerate (an arm can take a year without special treatment, a finger several days to a week)

Culture: Multiple, as the assimilate the local customs.

Description: Evolved from salamanders, they are most at home on lower gravity and moister environments. Their fluid movements give them a sensual quality, while their increased agility and hand eye coordination means they favor jobs where at least one of those three characteristics gives them an advantage, including genetics, medical, art, manufacturing of precise devices, and entertainment.

[TheUnknowable]

Species: Humans

Name: Human

Population: 13 million

Appearance: Extremely humanoid

Special traits/abilities: none

Culture: Various, tend to adopt local cultures, but have their own superstitions and mannerisms due to only recently leaving their homeworld twenty to twenty five years ago.

Description: A transient race, virtually all life on their home world was destroyed when a nearby star exploded. Some of them still live underground on their homeworld, struggling to survive, though many left to find a new life among the stars.

[TheUnknowable]

I guess I'll give you a basic overview of the plot I came up with, though if enough people want to change it I'll work with that.
1) We live in various places, though my guy is on Teros.
2) We hear the rumors/news of the new human homeworld.
3) For whatever reason, we aren't entirely sure about this new homeworld, so we don't go, and instead look into it.
4) We find something that makes us certain that we don't like the idea of a new homeworld.
5) We team up to lets the people know what we learned.

I would like most of us to be human, but if you want to be an alien with close ties to a human or humans, that's fine too, as long as we don't get too many non-humans.

[TheUnknowable]

World: Teros WIP

Name: Teros

Government type: Free World

Common species: Human (1.2 million), Shita (760 k), more (once they are written)

Population: 20.4 million

Economy Base: Mining, Trade

Description: Long ago the first people to come to this world dug mining tunnels deep into the surface to get to the valuable ores hidden there. When the most valuable ores near the surface had been gathered, they dug deeper, bringing in more miners and equipment. Eventually the starport on this world expanded enough that ships started coming to this world for more than the metals they could pull out of it, and Teros slowly became a trade port. When the wormhole was discovered approximately 4500 years ago, on which linked it to a world over twenty thousand lightyears away, it became the hub for most of the trade between this area of the galaxy and the other.