Without Stutterwarp

[Space Cadet]

What if the Twilight War didn't take place until 2080?

What if the Stutterwarp was never invented?

What if Humanity go off a single generation ship before the Twilight War started, and it arrived at Tirane is 2300AD?

Humanity recovered from the Twilight War and the effect is that technology is basically the same as in the original timeline, but humanity is basically confined to a single solar system with the exception to the expedition to Tirane. Other generation ships were launched after the recovery period, but the Tirane expedition is the first to reach a planet. Now imagine a Bernal Sphere arriving with a population of 10,000 people, the voyage has taken 220 years at 2% of the speed of light.

The challenge in the campaign is to make one planet and one system sufficiently challenging for a group of 10,000 humans. Communication has opened up with Earth and technology is transmitted from Earth to the colony via the electromagnetic spectrum and reproduced on site.

What sorts of creature inhabit Tirane?

If they seem a little tame in the original universe, can they be made more dangerous?

Also since this is the only planet PCs are going to be dealing with, should intelligent races be introduced?

 

[gavindady]

Check out the Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf's Children by Niven, Pournell and Barnes for some inspiration, or the Coyote quadrology by Allen Steel. Good reads all.

 

[Space Cadet]

A Tyrannobird, a large flightless bird with sharp teeth, and tiny stubby wings, all covered with feathers..

Tyrannobird (large)
Huge Animal (6,000 kg)
Stamina Dice: 12d10+69 (135 hp)/ Lifeblood: 21
Initiative: +1
Speed: 12 m (8 squares)
Armor Class: 14 (-2 size, +1 Dex, +5 AR) touch 9, flat-footed 13
Base Attack/Grapple: +13/+30
Attack: Bite +20 melee (3d6+13)
Full Attack: Bite +20 melee (3d6+13)
Space/Reach: 4.5m/3m
Special Attacks: Improved grab, swallow whole
Special Qualities: Low-light vision, scent
Saves: Fort +16, Ref +12, Will +8
Abilities: Str 28, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 15, Cha 10
Skills: Hide -2, Listen +14, Spot +14
Feats: Alertness, Improved Natural Attack (bite), Run, Toughness (3), Track
Environment: Warm plains
Organization: Solitary or pair
Challenge Rating: 8
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 13-14 HD (Huge); 15-27 HD (Gargantuan)
Level Adjustment: -

Tyrannobird (small)
Huge Animal (3,200 kg)
Stamina Dice: 11d10+53 (114 hp)/ Lifeblood: 19
Initiative: +1
Speed: 12 m (8 squares)
Armor Class: 14 (-2 size, +1 Dex, +5 AR) touch 9, flat-footed 13
Base Attack/Grapple: +12/+29
Attack: Bite: +19 melee (4d4+8)
Space/Reach: 4.5m/3m
Special Attacks: Improved grab, swallow whole
Special Qualities: Low-light vision, scent
Saves: Fort +15, Ref +12, Will +8
Abilties: Str 26, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 15, Cha 10
Skills: Hide -2, Listen +14, Spot +14
Feats: Alertness, Improved Natural Attack (bite), Run, Toughness(3), Track
Environment: Warm plains
Organization: Solitary or pack (2-4)
Challenge Rating: 7
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 12-14 HD (Huge); 15-27 HD (Gargantuan)
Level Adjustment: - [/QB][/QUOTE]

 

[Nearside]

Wrong spot, I suspect.

[edit] Wait, no, just looked like your other thread there for a minute. My mistake.

 

[Space Cadet]

Yes, its a generic Tyrannosaur with feathers. I figured since I went to the trouble to figure out the stats in one thread, why not reuse them. The creature basically is a large flightless bird with a terrible beak with sharp serraded teeth, a carnivore that fills the nitch of the T-Rex in Earth's past.

In a Universe without stutterwarp, you would want to make the one planet they do have access to, to have dangerous wildlife. There is what amounts to a O'Neill colony in Synchronius orbit around this Tirane.

To avoid confusion, this Tirane uses the same map as the standard 2320AD setting, the continents have the same names, there's even a number of outposts with the names of the major cities in the standard 2320AD campaign, but the outpost populations amount to a couple hundred people in each case.

The initial colony ship was a multinational venture with a total population of 10,000 people, and the habitable area was an Island One Sphere with agricultural rings off the the side along the axis of rotation. For the 220 year journey, population was held in check with births stricly controlled to match the number of deaths in the colony to maintain a population of about 10,000. In the last years before the journey's end, people held off from habing children, and then they had children all at once, temporarily doubling the population to 20,000 people with a population of 10,000 twenty-somethings and about 8,000 sixty-somethings, the idea was to have the maximum number of young people to handle the rigours of planetary exploration. The old folks stayed in the habitat, while the 10,000 young people explored the surface of the planet.

There is a spaceport in Tirania, and that is the only spaceport on the planet, as there simply isn't enough people to maintain more than one spaceport. The space port is erviced by the standard interface vehicles as described in the 2320AD setting. There is no stutter warp, so typically most space travel is between what remains to the starship and the surface spaceport. There are other planets in the Alpha Centauri system that are much as described in the 2320AD PDF, but with only 10,000 people one planet is enough to explore for the moment, remote probes are sent to the other planets, but no human being has yet set foot on them. From the description Tirane there are two moons Esa and Europos, I assume they are asteroids or something like that since not much information is given about them by the description. Much of the landscape of Tirane is unimproved, there are the outposts marking bases where exploration of the various places on the planet take place from, but between those bases are nothing but wilderness. The first landfall was in 2300AD, it is now 2320AD, so the first generation of children raised on the planet are now reaching adulthood. Aside from the 10,000 40 year old adults, minus those fatalities that occured in the planet's surface, there are about 2,000 18 to 20 year olds that were born on the planet as well as 8,000 younger simblings ranging in age from 0 to 17 years old. Total population of the planet is 20,000 now, but some are moving up to the mothership in orbit to take the place of their parents who are now in the process of dying of old age.

There is of course communication with Earth, which has by now fully recovered from a late World War III that occured in 2080, shortly after the ship left. There are machine shops onboard the mothership that can manufacture limited quantities of just about any 2320AD technology other that Stutterwarp drives, which don't exist. There is a trade in technology from Earth in exchange for data on the planet Tirane. There are other ships on their way to Tirane, but the closest ones are still a century from arriving at the planet, so the population of 20,000 colonists plus the 8,000 old people in orbit are on their own. High tech items are used sparingly and are considered a community resource. Local communities on the surface have a rather primitive manufacturing capacity, they rely on locally produced goods and imports from the mothership's machine shops and inventories. There just aren't enough people to operate factories. A popular form of transportation is by airship. Airships have virtually unlimited range as they are solar powered, they rely on hydrogen as a lifting gas, as sources of helium are virtually unknown on this planet. Surrounding the bases are small communities of farmers that feed the base personelle, tractors are used to plow their fields and harvest the grain, and airships deliver food and supplies to bases inland while regular ships deliver things to bases along the shores and on the rivers.