#StayAtHome: John M. Ford's "The Final Reflection"

 

This was my first rereading of John M. Ford's The Final Reflection (1984) since its original publication some thirty six years ago (!).  My first reflection is how much the novel (and, secondarily, the FASA Star Trek RPG supplement The Klingons, also authored by John M. Ford) have shaped my understanding of who the Klingons "really" are. I believe this was the first really sympathetic portrayal of the Klingons, written from a Klingon point of view. I mean, in my current post-Dominion war Shackleton Expanse Star Trek Adventures RPG campaign, there are Human-Klingon and Romulan-Klingon fusions, and there is even a small renascent Imperial Klingon States in the Expanse. In fact, one of my best pieces of game writing for this campaign was their "declaration" of the new IKS.

A second reflection, provoked in part also by some of the journalism about Star Trek: Discovery, is that the Klingons have been reinvented several times. So any Star Trek GM will need to decide which Klingons they are using - or which combination of Klingon-types they are select for the Klingons in their game. For example, while Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation had this weird idea that repairing disabilities with prosthetics was somehow un-Klingon and/or dishonorable, the Klingons in The Final Reflection have all kinds of prosthetics - even obvious plastic facial prosthetics. Similarly, notions like the Black Fleet and the significance of "the naked stars" start here, with John M. Ford.

A final reflection is that whoever wrote Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, must have been influenced by The Final Reflection. There are just to many similarities in themes, and in the core conspiracies present in the movie to make this happen by accident. Some of Ford's themes spill back to Enterprise as well, particularly the "humans first" movement which seeks to cut off Earth from other worlds.

This is a very enjoyable novel, with a lot of action and a lot of heart, and some really evocative literary references as well. Anyone who has Klingons reading The Once and Future King is doing Klingons and Trek the right way. 

It was nice to see an acknowledgement of John M. Ford in STA's new Klingon Core Book.

Ball Lightning

I just finished Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning this morning; it was a fairly quick read, since I had just started the novel a week ago. While the book is in some ways a prequel to Remembrance of Earth's Past (i.e., The Three-Body Problem trilogy), featuring the first appearance of both the aliens and the physicist Ding Yi from the trilogy, the book's primary focus is on the scientific investigation of ball lightning, a poorly understood phenomenon.

Scientific research quickly morphs into weapons research. The physics in the novel uses and extends perhaps the most exotic hypothesis regarding the nature of ball lightning, the soliton hypothesis (shades of the physics in Liu's Death's End), and the experimenters have more than one brush with the uncanny as they explore the implications and applications of ball lightning. 

Now, I am wondering how long I'll have to wait to read another of Liu's novels in translation?

Harmonization

During the Nexialist Revolt, seventeen worlds were rendered Harmonized by the Nexialist insurgents. This was both a practical measure to mobilize entire populations to resist the Imperial Sovereign, and an ideological demonstration of the principle of Nexialist Unity. Every ball was said to bounce at the same time on these worlds.

While the Empire's philosophers and sociologists are loathe to use terms like "totalitarianism" to describe this level of planetary-civilizational social engineering and manipulation, the term of course fits. The pacification of these worlds was equally absolute, and took the form of Excommunication.

Harmonization (Curse/Necromancy, Cost, Per Scenario, Permanent, Requires the Great IT spell, Corrupting): This formula must be cast in the immediate vicinity of an IT-class giant brain, and is therefore typically cast inside a Nexialist Institute that has been configured to accommodate such a brain. The spell's zone of effect expands incrementally; it can take up to 24 hours to achieve its effect planet-wide. A newly cast Harmonization reaches out across the planet's surface in an expanding circle whose center is the giant brain. The effect is Permanent, as long as the giant brain is intact.

The casting places the following Aspects on any intelligent living creatures on the planet:

• Of One Mind
• Obedient to the Brain
• Every ball shall bounce at once

Anyone who needs to resist the effects of Harmonization does so as if contending with a +6 Clever adversary. This casting has no effect on robots or other non-biological intelligences, or on other-planar intelligences such as angels and demons. 

This entry in the Galactic Grimoire is of course inspired my Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time."

Space Vampires

We finished Colin Wilson's 1976 classic "The Space Vampires" this weekend, just a tad after Vintage Science Fiction Month (in January). It is arguably a Mythos story since the titular monsters have a connection to Clark Ashton Smith's Ubbo-Sathla. The book is written using the Van Voghtian method: a narrative with terse sentences, and often vague or partial description of things in the environment. The latter is supposed to produce some anxiety and a sense of estrangement, as the brain "fills in" the missing pieces of the description.

So who or what are these space vampires? They are the spirit forms of formerly star spanning aliens who lost their physical bodies as a result of ancient accelerations of evolution. Or the immortal, malevolent, and degenerate forms of an ancient and benevolent star spanning race - take your pick.

The space vampires are very similar to how Nephilim were conceived of in the old Multisim/Chaosium RPG: they are disembodied astral parasites who can only act when they occupy a host organism. No less importantly, they are also energy vampires who feed off of life energy/sexual energy of embodied intelligent creatures.

They require a voluntary host - probably. But we know how that goes: such parasites always target those with very strong drives - often drives about which they would be embarrassed to tell others.

OGL MECHANICS

Space Vampires 
Parasitic energy vampire 

ASPECTS:

• High Concept: Parasitic energy vampire from another world
• Trouble: No body aside from yours
• Aspect: "I know what you want."
• Aspect: "I can help you get it."
• Aspect: Skilled infiltrator

APPROACHES

• Careful: +2
• Clever: +3
• Flashy: 0
• Forceful: 0
• Quick: 0
• Sneaky: +2

STUNTS:

• Embody - A Space Vampire first spends 1 FP to attempt to embody in an intelligent biological host to which their spirit form is adjacent, or to transfer from one intelligent host to another with whom their host is physical contact. The Space Vampire attacks with Clever; a potential host defends with Clever or Forceful, whichever is lower. Stress lands immediately as a Consequence. A Severe Consequence indicates possession.
• Feed - Take +2 to Forceful Approach when Attacking a potential victim with a seductive touch or kiss; the target resists with their Forceful Approach. Any stress lands as an immediate Consequence for the target. When the target takes a Consequence, the Space Vampire immediately gains 1 FP.
• Insight - Take +2 to Clever to ascertain the appetites of an embodied intelligent being.  

REFRESH: 2 

STRESS: 3 Boxes

***

SPECIAL: 

• Hunger - Must feed daily. Each day without feeding means the Space Vampire either takes a Consequence or loses 1 FP.
• Physical invulnerability - Cannot be harmed by physical (i.e., melee/ranged weapons) attacks, although mental and energy attacks might harm a Space Vampire, and a Faraday Cage Room might contain one. 

Young Centurions Take On Mars!

We'll be running "Young Centurions Take On Mars!", a Young Centurions scenario at Con of the North 2017. The event will be part of the programming for the Saturday Night Space Opera dedicated theme space. I have requested the game for Friday afternoon, February 17, from 12-4 PM. 

Here's the teaser:

On the eve of WW I, Martian artifacts are uncovered hinting at a new Tripod Invasion. The teen heroes of the Century Club must find a way to defeat the Martian foes before they once again wrap their slimy tentacles around the Earth. Try out this easy, fun-to-play pulp RPG prequel to Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: A Yantran Holiday

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vaal

A Yantran Holiday: it has become a euphemism in the Vokun Empire for unforseen, improbable disaster. All too many Vokun lords have brought their entourages to Yantra for a holiday to dally with its beautiful and accomodating natives. More than a few of these pleasure trips have meet with sudden, inexplicable calamity.

Invariably, these disasters take the form of catastrophic technology failures. Anti-gravity or drive systems fail; Vokun rocket chairs suddenly plunge to earth; Metascape-based guidance systems become improbably unrealiable; life support systems spit out toxic goo.

More than one Ibglibdishpan mentat has calculated the odds. They have concluded that primitive and pleasantly lush Yantra is improbably dangerous - and especially so for parties accompanied by a Vokun lord.

So an experiment has begun.

The Vokun Empire has temporarily opened Yantra for holidays by sophonts from outside the Empire. A temporary Smaragdine art colony here. A space hauler shore leave there. A Hyehoon or Djagga-led eco-safari in the equatorial regions. Dilettantes from the Circus ringworld tour the natives' quaint stone shrines.

The Ibglibdishpan are watching and running the numbers.  

Strange Stars A-to-Z: "X" is for Xe-Xem-Xir

http://www.nydela.sakura.ne.jp/delany/babel.htm

Gender neutral pronouns such as xe, xem, and xir are used by some cultures in the Strange Stars setting. They're introduced on the Terminology page (p. 29) of Trey Causey's Strange Stars Game Setting Book. You'll find ones spelled similarly if you scroll down this post from the Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog.

I've never GMed a game in a setting where gender neutral pronouns (other than "they") were in regular use at the table, although in one Diaspora campaign a player introduced and used them from time to time.

Maybe I should use them in a game (1)... and maybe also reward proper usage (2). But I would never do this as a casual change in a game or campaign, or with stranger-players about whom I know nothing, or as a joke (3).

Here's my best guess at the proper usage for gender neutral pronouns in the Strange Stars setting, with setting-appropriate context:

• Nominative/subject: "Xe was the first Hyehoon I saw with wings." 

• Objective/object: "I beat xem within an inch of xir life" said the Hwuru thug.

• Possessive determiner: "Xir spiracles sursurrate like shivers" said one Boma to another about a third.  

• Possessive pronoun: "The pretty torture-slave is xirs" the Vokun said, pointing xir lips at the Algosian procurer.

• Reflexive: "Xe is full of xemself" said the Gnome of the officious Ibglibdishpan.

Note:

(1) I would never use this with a open game table at a mainstream gaming convention. I've had players sit down to games and before they know anyone at the table make gay jokes or use language that I'd consider demeaning to women, LGBTQ folks, etc. I might use this with a group of players that I know well, ones who think linguistic experimentation is fun, and/or understand the value of gender neutral pronouns in the real world, and/or have an interest in exploring the implications of lingustic change in SFnal social systems. I might use gender neutral pronouns in an open game at Gaylaxicon 2016 or maybe at a WisCon.

(2) Possibly with a reward mechanism for proper usage. Maybe with Fate points, or maybe just as a Boost for proper usage in-character. I am not sure how this would affect the overall economy of the game, since Fate is so language-based. I wouldn't want it to be very gameable, just a reward for immersion.

(3) Pronouns are a life-and-death matter for some people, and may be seen as less important/non-negotiable/or a joke by others whose privilege (or ontological status or social position, if you prefer) allows them to play out their gender as if it were a natural category. Which it isn't. By extended metaphor and as Gang of Four taught us more than three decades ago, "Natural's Not In It" (see the video below). For some cisgender folks, gender-neutral pronouns may may be a way to emphasize or explore the alterity of a situation or setting. For some people who are trans, it may be a way to create safety at the game table. This is really one of those things that needs to be talked through carefully at the table.

The image at the top of the post is possibly the best cover ever for 
Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: Woon Academies

"For Children The Gates Of Paradise" by William Blake

Woon, the homeworld of the caterpillaroid Bomoth. It has a reputation of being a closed world, but nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that few not-of-Woon have visited the vast fungal preserves below the planet's surface. Still fewer have witnessed and reported the legendary "butterfly women" said to covort among those dim caverns.

But the surface of Woon sees many visitors from elsewere among the Strange Stars. A few thousand attend the Woon Academies: various small institutions that share what the Bomoth know with off-worlders - often for a great price. All of these institutions have extrance examinations; the application fees are considerable, and examinations occur only on Woon.

Here are a few of the Woon Academies:

• Attarus Academy is the most famous of the Bomoth schools. Here flock travelers from all regions of the Strange Stars to learn vocal and instrumental musical arts from Woon's Spiraculous Masters. A vast mountaintop castle with numerous dead-end tunnels, galleries, auditoria, and air shafts, the Attarus itself is an eerie musical instrument that resonates, whispers, and pipes strange songs into the mountain's winding passes and surrounding ravines and valleys. 
• Dchided Towers spears the miasma clouds above a spore-covered dead sea. Its students are the most daring of Phantasists: experimental oneirochemists who use their own bodies to discover and test new cocktails of dream drugs harvested from the dead sea. It's said that the dead sea's spores are the sediment from vast subterranean fungal farms whose caverns collapsed thousands of years ago.
• Cromlech is a series of ancient rock-domed complexes. Some are pressurized, others are open to the elements. The Cromlech admits only the very young among the Strange Stars' multitude of clades. That's because this academy teaches humanoid biologics how to listen to the alien languages of non-hominds, and to the spoken tongues of the wild moravecs, robots, and androids. Only juvenile biologics have neural networks sufficiently plastic to listen to and learn these languages.  
• The Mujib Academy is the most secretive and exclusive of the major Woon Academies. The Mujib also exclusively admits biologics, although it only enrolls adults. Its exact purpose is unclear, but its entrance exam is a series of vocal auditions called "The Ordeal."    

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/165972/Strange-Stars-Fate-Rule-Book?src=slider_view

SNSO! Strange Stars!

Last night was my first time running a Saturday Night Space Opera! event for our open group of players! I had eight players show up for my Fate Strange Stars game, which ran from 6 PM-10:15 or so at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center.

We started with character generation, and that went pretty smoothly. I gave everyone a copy of the Strange Stars setting book, and copies of chapters Ch. 2 and 3 of the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book, which cover character generation and clades (races), respectively.

Jay's PC, and improvised Fate points!

The characters were:

• Shrike, a space-ninja. Shrike stands for Synthetic Humanoid Reactionary Intelligent Killing Engine. Shrike was a true human in a "robot suit." His goal was never to give up the game that he was not a machine. One of his aspects was a stock phrase: "I am NOT a human being!" 
• Dorchah, a Blesh (a crystalline insect with the downloaded memories of a human medic) with telekinetic abilities. This was the first time the player, Deanna, had played a tabletop RPG, although she is a World of Warcraft guildmaster! By the time of the climactic battle, she had really grown into her role as a combat medic, telekinetically putting respirator masks on the crew to protect them from nanites, and brewing up combat drugs to juice up the Hyehoon PC!
• Butkowski, a burly, ornery Smaragdine engineer. We're pretty sure Butkowski couldn't be his real name, but he was so touchy that his crewmates didn't want to push on this issue. In the climactic battle with a Van Vogtian Coeurl in a cargo elevator, Engineer Butkowski pulled a trick on the energy starved beast!
• Bhat Akana, a Voidglider. His name comes from the Hindi word meaning "Wonder." A bit before the climactic battle, Bhat Akana used his Voidglider senses, which include "hearing" way into the EM range, to determine that Shrike was most definitely not a robot! This was a very clever use of Voidglider base abilities skills.
• Tcar, one of the feathered but flightless avian uplifts of the Hyehoon clade! Looking at Eric's character sheet after the game, I noticed he dropped in a Star Trek reference, listing Tchar's homeworld as Skorr! Tchar was the ship's pilot, but used his claws to great effect in the battle with the Coerul!
• Taan, was a unique Moravec created by the most experienced Fate player. Taan is roughly humanoid, with three Waldo-like arms. Taan specialized in Creating Advantages during the combat, distracting the Coerul with the hypnotic gyrations of his three robotic arms, and in the last moments of the battle leaped onto the Coerul's back to distract it further.
• Arkadina, an extremely chipper and talkative member of the angelic Deva clade. She felt truly called to battle against the Coerul, seeing it as her opposite: a demon from the darkest depths of hyperspace, and a grave existential threat to her god. She landed many blows against the monster, and even managed to slice off one of the tentacles emerging from the beast's back!
• Aasimar, an androgenous Yantran technoshaman. She was committed to nonviolent diplomacy - even in the midst of battle, and Created Advantage against the Coerul by going into a trance and beginning a compassionate death trance for the beast. Every time Aasimar used her powers, her gender affect switched; the player created the gender pronoun indicator below (a tiny table tent) so that the changes were visible to the other players.

Fate is opimized for a group of 3-5 players and a GM. I've run Fate of Tekumel games with eight players, and that worked OK, but eight is really a big table to manage for a fast and furious Strange Stars game!

Here are a few things to make a big game like this go smoothly:

• Bring enough Fate point chips for everyone - OR, be ready to improvise with little pieces of paper. I seriously underestimated how many players we would have! Fortunately, Jay Mac Bride had brought along some colored index cards. People made their own Fate points using the cards, and I folded cards in half to create little one-use Boost table tent indicators.
• When big groups get excited, everyone is talking at once, and less extroverted players, who may have good ideas, can get frustrated. Enforce a more structured flow of play, rotating the action from player to player either clockwise or counter clockwise. I did this at the mid-game break at one player's suggestion. It made a real difference at the table. If memory services, this  procedure was part of the normal sequence of play with Diaspora too.
• Table tents with character names are critical. 
• I also create a GM map of players around the table, like the one below.

• Finally, I use a Leuchturm 1917 journal for all my notes - work, reading groups, and game prep - and in-game jottings. I use Bullet Journal notation wherever possible or to-do lists and record keeping. It really helps to have everything in one place, with a quick method for notes.

The players were very engaged, had high energy, great ideas, and pushed the action forward at a breakneck pace. It was a great game to GM on the coldest night of the winter.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "V" Is For V&V

Illustration by David Lewis Johnson

"V&V"? That's Volkun & Voidgliders of course. But it could almost be the name of a roleplaying game - or at least a campaign using the Strange Stars setting!

These two races are tied together inextricably in Strange Stars.

The Vokun have an entire empire named after them. Their young are lean, aggressive, impusive, and ambitious. Their elders are corpulent, conspiratorial, and ambitious. But the Vokun are an empire in name only. The reality is one of clan elders vying against each other for commercial dominance and political power.

Think the Great Houses from Dune, but with no Emperor.

Every clan elder is a Harkonnen.

Which leads me to a new campaign idea. I'm currently rereading Dune for the first time since high school. I noticed someting in the text that had never registered before:

"We must not, however, ignore the possibility the Duke has contracted with the Guild to remove him to a place of safety outside the System. Others in like circumstances have become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium."

So the Imperium has an outside? How had I missed that before?

Now, the Strange Stars setting has many outsides. The core setting we know through the Strange Stars Game Setting Book is just the fragments of what was once a much, much larger civilization. Many hyperspace nodes are now quiescent, hiding connections to long-lost systems waiting to be rediscovered. There are many systems out there in which to run, hide, and explore.

This is very useful game-wise. One could imagine a Vokun clan that has lost big in the political game. They might decide that their only option for continued survival is to strike out on their own.

Maybe they had time to assemble a clan flotilla. But maybe the elder only has time to evacuate with a single huge clan ship.  Alternatively, the elder might only have at his disposal a single modest space yacht.

Desperate times.

But no matter how desperate the times and how limited the resources, that evacuation will soon need to transform itself into an exploration and surveying mission. And eventually of course trade and commerical exploitation.

Because that's all the Vokun really know how to do.

So that clan elder will need at least one Voidglider, the sleek, space-skinned clade that serve as the Vokun's space scouts. The Voidgliders are expert at "sniffing out" hyperspace nodes. Perhaps the Vokun elder has a Voidglider who serves his clan already. But perhaps he doesn't, and the elder will need to mount a raid on the Voidglider space-reservation in order to get a scout or better yet at least have a breeding pair of the species.

An entire tribe of Voidgliders might be persuaded to come along with the Vokun evacuation fleet in exchange for a "better deal" in the future: no reservation.

There could be a whole Strange Stars campaign here: V&V.

Klingon-Romulan Fusions

http://www.cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/220.2_Chinese.html

The guy on the right might be a good match for John M. Ford's concept of the Klingon-Romulan fusion, a Klingon clade genetically modified to resemble (and interact more readily with) Romulans.

Many people will recall the original FASA depiction of the fusions here:

Here is my take on the Klingon-Romulan fusion for use with the Far Trek RPG.

Klingon-Romulan Fusion
Attribute Modifiers: ST+1, CA-1

Species Talents:
Desert Adapted +2
Aggressive +2 to Initiative rolls
Duplicitous +2

Skills: Use general skills list on p.15

Class: Choose a Klingon branch of service from Appendix IV.

Strange Stars: The Quigley Table

Yesterday, I said I'd write a 1D6-1D6 Table featuring Eric Quigley's cover image for the core Strange Stars products. Imagine these folks are PCs or NPCs. The table below gives you some options for fleshing them out a bit.

As a point of reference, I'll refer to the guy on the left who appears to be of African descent as L, the Moravec in the middle as M, and the green Smaragdine female on the right as R. As another point of reference, negative numerical results correspond to more contemporary themes in SF; the 0 case and positive numbers represent more longstanding SF themes.

The Quigley Table for Strange Stars

Roll 1D6-1D6 and consult the corresponding result below.

• -5: One of the figures has a cortex  Metascape bomb, a devastating digital weapon with the potential to wipe out the local noosphere.
• -4: The crashed spacecraft in the background used to be alive; it had issues.
• -3: The Moravec carries (or IS) the consciousness of the crashed spacecraft.
• -2: R is a mind-copy of the criminal mastermind Uln Pharesm, founder of the Pharesmid Crime Syndicate. All Pharesmids are mind-copies or bio-clones of the founder. Her tattoos are minimalist, and take the form of yellowish pigmented zones under her eyes.
• -1: The armsman L is an Aurogov cultist. He spends every free moment, when not in physical training or active combat in the LZ, using the Aurogov's self improvement software for a relentless series of self-audits and critiques. At least then, he's quiet and not actively prosyletizing his companions.
• 0: L prefers to be called Fury. He's never without that cigar you see him chomping. It stunk up the whole ship; maybe the smoke got into a critical system and that's why it crashed. 
• +1: M is a robot. Somehow, M subverted its ethical protocols. Especially the one about not harming humans or allowing them to come to harm.
• +2: The Trio are bounty hunters. They are looking for YOU and your companions. You may not even be sure why.
• +3: The crashed ship was stolen.
• +4: L is a Space Marine. Got that? S-P-A-C-E M-A-R-I-N-E. For hire, of course. He was also the pilot and is pretty pleased that he executed a landing from which all three could walk away.
• +5: R is an assassin; those yellow patches under her eyes should have been your first clue.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "P" Is For Pirate

Doctor Who "Sleep No More"

Did you see last night's episode? There was a funny quip by the Doctor that you don't really add anything by putting the word "space" in front of words like "restaurant." It's not a space restaurant, just a restaurant. Clara's rejoinder is "What about spacesuit? And space pirate?"

That shuts the Doctor up for a second. And next thing the Doctor and Clara know they're being accused of being space pirates.

Most of the Strange Stars Fate games I have GMed have included space pirates. In three cases, the players decided to BE the pirates. This works very well with on-the-fly style games that come together at conventions.

Space battles are rare in the Strange Stars setting (hyperspace-capable starships use very old, very difficult to replace and repair technology), but space piracy isn't. Boarding actions are common, as are hijackings (either at a starport or in deep space), false flag "rescue" operations, and raids on planets and space stations. Extortion/protection rackets targeting traffick on secondary and tertiary hyperspace routes are another way that piracy occurs. Many Space Haulers quit while they're ahead and give up the goods at the first hail from a pirate.

There are distinct tiers to the pirate enterprise. The top players are the dreaded, cyborged-up, ruthless Zao Corsairs. They are the Strange Stars' answer to Firefly's Reavers. But don't say you're a Zao Corsair unless you really are: the Zao take a dim view of wannabees who dilute their brand.

Another bad news group that frequently resorts to piracy is the inhuman Ssraad. While the three warring clades of these reptillian space demons are as likely to prey on each other as on any unfortunates whose path they happen to cross, there is no doubt that the Ssraad are beginning to range farther and farther from home.

Then there is everyone else. Part-time Space Haulers, belters, smugglers, or mercenaries. Mutineers with nowhere else to go. All pirates great and small. They're all bad news.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "N" Is For Node

Source

Many people know about the New Weird: people like China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer, and K.J. Bishop to name a few. But the weird in SF isn't a new thing, and M. John Harrison didn't invent it back in the 80s either. It goes back to the 30s and the weird tale, and even further back to the late 19th Century supernatural tales (read Bierce lately? the weather is perfect for it now!) and the scientific romance.

Charles L. Harness's 1968 SF novel, The Ring of Ritornel, also very much written in this longstanding SF tradition that taps into the weird, and one of the central concepts that ties in well to the Strange Stars setting is the concept of the Node. In Strange Stars, the existing hyperspace network is an artificial construct of the ancients. Some parts of it continue to work as originally constructed; others are quiescent and/or forgotten.

Systems are linked to the hyperspace network via local system nodes. These are fixed jump points that link to a specific system or systems. The architecture of the network of hyperspace nodes was similar enough to the system of clusters in the Diaspora RPG that I used the Diaspora SRD to build systtem and cluster creation rules for the Fate edition of Strange Stars. 

There is some weirdness to nodes as they exist in Strange Stars.  The biggest one is that these jump points are psi-active. Someone with psionic abilities like the Voidgliders can discover unmapped or quiescent nodes. People with knowledge of psi-cyphers can activate a node for a jump, or even turn one on/off.

But things could get even weirder. Unlike the hyperspace nodes in Strange Stars, the node found in The Ring of Ritornel, is an interdimensional rift. It's a productive rift which generates new particles leading to hydrogen gas clouds (and eventually new stars and galaxies). The node is an object of scientific study, with a nearby space station that needs to be periodically evacuated due to space quakes emerging from the node. If you thought of these space quakes as massive clashing gravity waves, you'd have an idea of how I'd describe them in a game.

Harness' node also has wildlife, such as the winged space-spiders known as Krith, and smaller fry ursecta that feed on any kind of normal space energies (beam weapons, nuclear drives, etc,) used near a node. This makes the node an extremely dangerous place in which space travellers have to rely on harpoons and melee weapons for defense, as well as ancient slug thrower weapons.

People who pass into Harness' node physically are changed; they come back with bodies made of different matter, and develop strange psi/energy powers. Being stuck inside a node is a pain. Imagine floating without sensation for an eternity in a void. One might go insane. Or become a god with an energy shielded antimatter body upon return to normal space. (Note to self: Some of Harness' SF jargon such as "passivated antimatter" was pretty amusing and must be appropriated for a game.)

Some sequences in The Ring of Ritornel made me wonder if Harness' node was an inspiration for the Negative Zone in Captain Marvel. The Negative Zone was a strange space dimension where Rick Jones was frequently imprisoned as a result of his planar-timeshare with Mar-vell. I've never met two guys in comics who deserved to be together as much as Rick and Mar-vell, but those Nega-Bands always got in the way.

So there are a lot of ways to weird-up the hyperspace nodes in Strange Stars. Here are a few; in fact we have an Alean D12's worth. May the blind goddess of free will protect you from Ritornel's cyclic determinism:

1. The node bleeds energy from space vessels, shields, and weapons. You need to enter the node using chemical rockets.
2. The node is malfunctioning. It leads Nowhere. Or Knowhere.
3. The node is psi-active but has been corrupted in some way. It only responds to psi-communications using the ancient and terrible thought structures of the Zurr.
4. The node is psi-active. In fact, it confers psi-abilities on people who didn't have them before. People are superstitious about this node, but it attracts many pilgrims.
5. The node produces space quakes. Gravitational waves have broken up most planets in the system, so that the planetary system orbiting the star is just a series of concentric rings. The system is a Mecca for space miners but it is very dangerous to prospect here because of the quakes.
6. The node is a drive-drainer. Ships emerging from the node are vulnerable to ambush because their shields, drives, and energy weapons aren't working.
7. There is a research station near the node. Its goal is to breed new nodes through an experimental process called node mitosis. The system has drawn spy-scientists representing different Strange Stars factions eager to steal the secrets of node mitosis.
8. Ship systems randomly fail near the node - not all the time, but often enough that the node is surrounded by a ship's graveyard which is periodically trawled by salvagers.
9. Node diving is a popular sport in this system. It's also an insane sport. Try it if you like. Don a spacesuit, connect suit-to-ship by means of a physical tether, and reel yourself into the node. Some people come back changed. Some people never come back.
10. The node plays an important role in the mating rituals of the Voidgliders. The system derives a steady income from tourists who come to see the elaborate mating dances in which couples, triples, and quintets dive about and sometimes into the node.
11. The node is an important religious and meeting site for various clans of Kosmoniks. If you need to find a Kosmonik this is the place to come. Of course, they're a superstitious bunch, so depending on what you do and say, and when and how you approach them, they may view you as a god or a demon.
12. This node is a major safari site. The Krith are about the tamest thing to come out of the node. Come here to hunt space leviathans, krakens, and other megafauna. Watch out for the single huge tentacle that periodically lashes out of the node, wraps itself around a ship, and crushes the vessel - or even worse, pulls it somewhere else.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "M" Is For Minga

Image by Ricken-Art

The Minga are submissive, beautiful humanoids enslaved by slimy alien catfishoids. The Slavers keep only small quantities of Minga available for sale at any given time, and most sales occur in the Vokun Empire and lawless regions of the Strange Stars such as the Zuran Expanse. Both the Alliance and the Intrumentality of Aom take a dim view of slavery, so few Minga are sold or even seen in those regions of space. A few have been seen among the Star Folk, but with their shapeshifting abilities, who even knows if these are "real" Minga?

No Minga has ever run away from their master; neither have their been any records of Minga participating in the slave revolts that periodically convulse isolated Vokun orbitals and their more sparsely settled far colonies. Indeed, they seem to have a moderating influence on even the most perverse and cruel of masters.

Player characters might encounter Minga in a few different contexts, including as a:

• Personal attendant of a Vokun Lord
• Companion of a young, ambitious, and well-connected Vokun administrator (probably on loan from a Vokun elder)
• Cabin-Mate of the Capatin of a long-distance trade vessel (perhaps acquired in a game of chance, perhaps acquired by raiding a Slaver slip)
• Erotic performer among the pleasure domes of Erato (although perhaps that Minga is really a bioroid), or in the Snake Palaces of Fortuna IV, the Gambler's Paradise
• Assistant to a Phantastist dream-drug merchant or Psychotech mind-healer 
• Negotiator or representive of a very wealthy and reclusive master
• Welcome Guest on a Kosmonik ship
• Captive of Algosian torture cultists

While the Minga are very compliant and submissive, they are also quite curious. Minga will seek out the company of long-lived and star-spanning clades including Wanderers, Deva, and Deodands, although they will be discrete in making contact. Minga enjoy hearing stories of farflung worlds and cultures - and especially enjoy learning about clades, cultures, and worlds that have grown in wisdom and transcended violence. 

And more than a few have persuaded their Vokun masters to take a holiday on Yantra.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "L" Is For Lekku

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Unidentified_Twi'lek_thrall

Of course we're cheating a bit with this one. Lekku are the so-called fleshy "head-tails" found in Twi'leks and Togruta species of the Star Wars universe. They are highly sensitive to touch, containing unprotected brain tissue. Lekku are the seat of some motor functions and repressed memories. Since the Twi'lek's frequently apply tattoos and glitter to their lekku, and they are highly sensitive to touch, it is reasonable to assume that they are also part of sexual display and an erogenous zone.

Any human-derived clade might have lekku as part of the extensive body modification that humans have undergone as they colonized other systems. As well as the common hairless and fleshy lekku, depending on the specific integument of the clade, there might be hirsute or even scaly or warty varieties lekku with all kinds of interesting textures and fur patterns, including stripes, spots, and colors.

Here are a few other ways to use lekku in the Strange Stars setting:

• Minga pleasure slaves might have these structures for an additional element of body-exoticism. Perhaps they have other functions of which their masters are unaware, such as secretory cells that produce microquantities of substances that increase the target's susceptability to suggestion. 
• Some infiltration and shock troops among the Sisterhood of Morrgna might sport lekku that are all muscle: these head-tails allow for deadly whip strikes.
• Lekku would look very handsome on the green-skinned Smaragdine! As a criminally-inclined psi-sensitive species, the additional brain tissue could also allow tricksters among their kind to develop greater psychic potency and/or more specialized psionic abilities.
• The Phantastists could readily create special gene mods for clients to promote lekku growth. The additional brain tissue could increase the client's receptivity to the dream-drugs that are the Phantastists' core business.
• Vokun elders might develop these structures for additional fat and memory storage. The additional brain tissue may be where grudge-memories get deposited, although it is probably also the site of some of the runaway hormonal changes associated with their girthy senesence.  

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "K" is for Krith

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/First_Battle_of_Quadrant_14

Krith are giant spiders that glide through space on membraneous wings. They unfold space, emerging from cracks, fissures, and anomalies in spacetime when they sense the proximity of intelligent quarry. They have also been encountered emerging from black gates and otherwise apparently inactive hyperspace nodes

After entering normal space, krith move rapidly toward their prey. They don't cast true physical webs, instead entangling their targets within hypersnares: unstable, magnetically and gravitically "sticky" tangles of chaotic spacetime. Ships attacked by these creatures suffer drive accidents and other sudden and disastrous systems excursions.

Krith are able to phase their way inside of most ship hulls to prey directly on crew. The only hulls with protection against krith incursions are found on a handful of ancient vessels manufactured during the Archaic Oikumene. These ships have ceramic hulls incorporating various types of exotic matter.

Interestingly, the spaceborn Voidgliders have many legends about these creatures, and some among their kind claim to know ways to call the space spiders out of the void. More than a few Voidglider elders have wicked scars and uncanny scrimshaw fetishes attesting to direct encounters with the krith.

Young and ambitious Vokun lordlings often seek to demonstrate their virility and prowess by mounting expeditions to hunt krith. Such harpoon hunts rarely end well, and resentful Voidglider scouts often return home masterless after these deadly expeditions.

The krith are the creation of Charles L. Harness, and come from his classic weird space opera, The Ring of Ritornel (1968).

More Of The Bomoth Jook

The Bomoth Jook never stops, it just keeps playing on and on to the breakka breakka dawn. Here are a few more tunes to get you in the mood, ones that really bring home the range of music that the Bomoth are capable of delivering.

We begin with a song for those who love automata:

Then one of my favorites from Old Earth:

Lastly, an acquired taste, the other kind of oft-banned space opera:

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "J" is for Jook

Source

The giant blue caterpillaroid Bomoth have powerful lungs and a prodigious ability to imitate human (and alien) voices and musical instruments. Their syncopated, improvisational Bomoth Jook has made them the stars of musical venues high and low among the Strange Stars.

Here's just a few of the tunes that make up the Jook:

I used "Hello Dolly" in a Strange Stars game at a convention!  Did my best Louie Armstrong imitation ever, in fact.

Here's another popular one:

And now that your feeling your hyperspace nodes:

Nodes in hand, one more for the road:

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "H" Is For High House

Illustration by John Howe

The High House 

Wing there with me

The high place, the infinite space

The only structure built into hyperspace 

What node does it thread? What race built it? Who lives there now - 

Among its many rooms?

We know it's real 

(we think) 

Because the feathered Hyehoon 

Of quick-clawed Omu 

Say they've been there 

They call it Marao's House 

Wing with me there

We've loved the title of James Stoddard's The High House for a long time, so hopefully he's OK with another even higher (hyper?) house.