Cutting Room Floor: Han system

Originally published October 14,2013

GURPS Handbook of the Planets Inputs: Personal user number 416; System number 524

The Sojourner Collective is a collection of loosely aligned systems that are engaged in strong trade relations would weaken the Federation hegemony. More worrisome to the Federation is a strong defense pact that makes overt action against one colony an offense against a dozen systems. In particular the resources of the Han system might be deployed in a military struggle.

The Han system is only lightly populated with a bare 50 thousand minds scattered across seven worlds and five moons. However it possesses fantastic mineral and mechanical resources. The main industry of Han is mining and the miners are a literal army of robots. With highly optimized minds and cybernetic enhancement, the citizens of Han are the premier robot experts of the Sojourner Collective. Each is capable of managing hundreds of machines in real-time. With the aid of low sapience artificial intelligences, they manage hundreds of millions of machines across an entire solar system.

If they were only miners, the Federation might not be as concerned but 63 years ago, a budding empire called the Sector 001 attempted to bring the Collective into its influence. The Federation research into the blasted remnants of that system has revealed that it suffered a catastrophe in the form of an army of teleoperated machines and bombardment by asteroids and comets scavenged from its Oort Cloud. The Han were instrumental in this.

As suggested by their abnormally low population density the Han are isolationists who prefer a great deal of autonomy. Intruders into their system can expect to be hailed within minutes. If they do not have business with a known individual in the system, they can expect a polite but firm request that they leave. Battle scarred hunter-killer drones will begin to warm up while the real weapons are silently trained on the intruding vessel.

Most people who visit the system arrange contact either through an intermediary or by one of the few local merchants who travel outside the system. These merchants, displaying obvious wealth, deal in the vast mineral resources of the system as well as outdated robotics technology (by Han standards).

Those who live in the Han system, typically live alone or in single family homesteads. Interaction between homesteads typically occurs through teleoperated machines. Thanks to advanced medical technologies (bought via their exploited wealth), the death rate is quite low allowing the low rate of births (or cloning) to compensate for their extreme xenophobia even amongst themselves.

Even so there are long term problems coming up for the Han. The population as a whole is quite old and innovation may be diminishing. The current societal debate is whether Ghosts, digital copies of dead minds, are people. Implicit in this debate whether the Han are losing their humanity and if so if this is a bad thing.

Game Aspects (using the Fate system):

Han System: Keep Off Our Lawn, Multitasking Masters, Don't Meet in the Flesh

System Details:

Zhou: a M2 V class star, roughly 8.8 billion years old.