Cutting Room Floor: Tabernas system

Originally published on September 2, 2013

GURPS Handbook of the Planets Inputs: Personal user number 314; System number 152

Note we will tweak the atmosphere of the 2nd world up to a more reasonable pressure.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Tabernas system is very different from what humanity expected for an inhabitable solar system. Illuminated by a single red dwarf star, called Estrella, the second planet supports a vast array of native life. While normally such a planet would be frozen over, Tabernas is tidally locked to its star leaving half the planet baked by the sun's warmth. This brings the sun-ward half up to a comfortable tropical temperature. The plant life of the world has taken advantage of this causing Tabernas to have unusually high oxygen levels.

Settled 183 years ago, Tabernas is populated by 2 million sentient beings, none of whom are native. The world is still divided between the lines formed by the original 3 colonies. The three factions are the Pan Sapien Alliance, the Megadon Cosultate, and the Technocratic Union. The three nations spend a large amount of their resources struggling with each other to control the world's bountiful resources. Local technology continues to lag that of Terra particularly when it comes to FTL and gravity manipulation technology.

The Pan Sapien Alliance consists of a large number of homesteads owned and controlled by genetically modified humans as well as animals altered to have higher levels of intelligence. These parahumans and uplifts, respectively, see adapting to the environment as the most responsible way to exploit this world. They oppose widespread alteration to the planet. On the other hand they are a very rigid society where one is born into the role one is expected to play. Personal choice is not something their culture values. There are long-standing grudges against the Alliance due to its support of asymmetric conflict (i.e. terrorism).

The Megadon Cosultate is the name of the colony founded by the Megadon Corporation. A colony founded by employees of an orbital factory fleeing the war, they have focused on exploiting the rich deposits of ore in the central plains of the north. Despite their name, Megadon is only one of a host of corporations and startups that control and support their society. Emergency services, the legal system, and infrastructure are all run by one or more companies. It is said anything can be bought or sold in the capital city of Enterprise. The current concern is the growing power of the Kaven corporation which has held a monopoly on the legal system (but not enforcement) for over 25 years.

The Technocratic Union works, its inhabitants like to say, with digital precision. Managed by complex computer algorithms designed by the best minds, human or otherwise, available. They are the only place where artificial intelligences, limited as they are, are treated as people. The Technocratic Union has claimed the deserts east of the Steel Mountains where they run a large solar power system. Much of their society occurs in virtual space as the physical inhabitants interact with the digital citizens on the local Net. Which makes damage to the transmission lines by desert dwelling miscreants of the Alliance so frustrating.

As for the indigenous life, Tabernas is dominated by autotrophs. Animal life seems to have gone extinct or never managed to dominate the niches available. Two main branches of autotrophs dominate the current ecologies:

Moss Coral: these plants resemble moss growing on stony or even metallic surfaces. In actuality they possess hidden roots that dive deep into the earth, extracting rare minerals which they secrete into a rigid and durable skeletal structure. Over generations they have built massive (and inedible) growths as they build layer over layer. The Megaon Consultate is currently "mining" these plants.

Slithering Algea: an ambulatory plant that grows in the lakes and swampy lands of the Tabernas. They resemble greenish worms with large leaf like protuberances and a fibrous but tough exoskeleton. They can defend themselves with a painful whip of their tails. In the water they can grow to 40 tons while on land they maintain a smaller length of a few feet. Their life cycle is rather complex, shifting from seed to immobile flowering plant to free moving slithering creature. In their immobile stage they pollinate, produce seeds, before transforming into their mobile form. The "adults" will then continue to produce further offspring with others of their kind that they encounter. Despite adopting a pollinating reproductive strategy they are oddly protective of their young.

Game Aspects (using the Fate system):

Tabernas: The Sun Never Sets, Three Sides to Every Issue, The Plants Fight Back.
Moss Coral: can be invoked for cover.

Slithering Algea: These could be dealt with as character. Land based versions are not very dangerous except in groups. Perhaps give them a few physical Stress boxes and some Fight skill. Notice, Physique, and Stealth are also good skills to include. Common aspects include: It Has No Brain, Blends in with the Scenery, Travels in Packs, or Covered in Thorny Spikes.

Aquatic version are bigger and more dangerous. Increase Physique and number of Stress Boxes. Some Aspects include: Swallows Things Whole, Master of the Sea, or Too Big to Notice.

System Details:

• Estella: a M2V class star, roughly 12.1 billion years old.
• Tabernas: the second planet of the system, tidally locked to its star and with a small sea on its southern end of its sun-ward hemisphere. The gravity is a bouncy 0.5 Gs while the atmosphere is thin but high in oxygen. Temperatures on the surface range wildly. Carbon dioxide freezes on the dark side of the planet while in many places on the sun lit side can reach dangerous levels of heat.