Thursday, October 8, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Wormhole Thoughts
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| The SS Freeman - Earth's first Wormhole Transit Vessel :) |
Back a couple of years ago, I completed the lifelong dream of creating an accurate (mostly) stellar database for scifi gaming. Alas, my life's work turned out to be not nearly as fun or useful as I had hoped. Space is big. Even with a slew of number-crunching tools and auxiliary programs, I found GMing the thing very taxing and un-fun. It killed my geographical spontaneity.
Going back to the drawing board, I looked at the hex-based star maps of Traveller and Stars Without Number. Not for long though. I just don't like compressing 3d space into two dimensions, even if that two dimensionality is explained as 'hyperspace geography.'
About the same time, I was looking at the Vorkosian Saga supplement for GURPS, as well as the Infinity scifi miniatures wargame. Both have node-based stellar astrography. I mulled wormholes over in my mind, did some research, and figured I might be able to come up with something that I could use. By May of this year I had a pretty good idea for a wormhole-based scifi setting.
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| Stellar Map for Corvus Belli's Infinity N3 Game |
- The wormhole system in The Nazareth Chronicles is a zero-distance network. Travel through the wormholes is instantaneous, though travel from one wormhole to another is not.
- Wormholes are a Precursor Artifact in which two gas giants in different star systems as quantumly entalgified and electro-bosonified with gravoblobicons [insert more techspeak as needed] until they form into either end of a wormhole. Minimum size of a wormhole seed is a Neptune/Uranus type planet. Cooking time is half a million years.
- While the Wormhole mouths must be relatively close to one another when initially created, the nature of stellar orbits around the galactic core ensure than most wormhole entry/exit points are scattered all over the place. The node map has very little in common with the actual stellar topography.
- A wormhole has the mass of a gas giant, but has little volume. Ships and stations can orbit the wormholes, as well as moons and planet-sized objects.
- Around each wormhole orbits an artificial satellite that acts as an interface for controlling the wormhole. The term for these satellites is a Triton Core.
- Wornholes can be put in one of three states; Locked, Closed, or Open. A Locked wormhole has a closed mouth where nothing can get through. A Closed wormhole is closed to physical traffic, but allows energy to pass through. An Open wormhole allows matter to pass, the width of the hole being adjustable.
- Humanity has never figured out how to Lock a wormhole on purpose, though it has happened.
- The Triton Core interface satellites can relay communication almost instantaneously with one another, as long as they are within 1,000 Astronomical Units. Thus, a patch of the Wormhole Network that is left in a non-Locked state acts as it's own Galactic Internet.
Humanity became aware of the Wormhole Network when the planet Neptune disappeared. Researchers discovered that the mass remained, however, still orbited by a remnant of the moon Triton. Eventually, they discovered that the core of Triton was a machine that could control the wormhole, and exploration of the galaxy began.
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| Relics of Past Civilizations |
After several centuries of colonization, the wormhole network mysteriously shut down. All nodes went into a Locked state. Isolated from one another, most of human civilization collapsed or regressed significantly. Five hundred years later, one planet learned how to open some of the wormholes, though the decryption algorithms took decades to perform with the most powerful computers available.
Currently there are only 25 systems open. 12 of them have enough will and resources to be capable of interstellar trade and cooperation. They formed a coalition 50 years ago, but much of the goodwill is gone. And still, no one knows why the wormhole network turned off five centuries ago.
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| Interstellar Magic Carpet Ride |
Before going through a wormhole, it's standard to wake up everyone on a ship. Sleeping through a wormhole passage is not recommended. People report confusing and horrific nightmares in transit. Some say that a sleeping person's mind connects to every other alternate reality version of themselves that is going through the wormhole at the same time. The Surgeon General recommends against it, but there are a few cult members that relish the chance to dream in the quantum foam.
I hoped that answered all of John's questions. :)
- Ark
Friday, October 2, 2015
The Nazareth Chronicles Wormhole Map
Above is a wormhole map for our GURPS SPACE game. I had originally called it Triton Core, arter the mechanism that triggered wormhole jumps. That proved to be a boring name. We now call it the Nazareth Chronicles, since their ancient spaceship is called the Nazareth and NPCs have started calling the PCs 'the Nazarenes' instead of just 'hey you guys.' Please not the ample white dots indicating systems I have not flesh out yet. :)
- Ark
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Monday, September 7, 2015
Clumzor's Bambi Study
This is a study of Clumzor’s Bambi from his NSFW comic, The Party. Clumzor is one of my favorite artists, and Bambi is my favorite character of his. The top left image is from his comic, while my copy is on the right. Below should be a gif showing my process.
I once was fortunate enough to catch Clumzor drawing on Picarto and got to talk to him for a bit. Very nice and helpful guy. He had some great advice, and two points have stuck with me. The first was to get off my ass and actually MAKE the comic that I’ve been thinking about. I’m working on that one. :) The second was to basically wallow in my favorite artist’s work.
So, I wallowed a bit in Bruce Timm’s stuff, and now here I am wallowing in Clumzor’s art. It’s great fun. I love his style. Thanks for the advice, Clumzor!
- Ark
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Monday, August 31, 2015
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