I'm slowly working through updating the previous arcs. and here's where you can find them!
01 - A Ship Named the High Falutin
02 - The Choice
03 - Family Matters
04 - There has been a murder...

Last time...

Pucc and Shadow's Notes

Welcome to Sikorrak

Welcome to Sikorrak.png

Welcome to the beach planet Sikorrak! A world of oceanic and terrestrial deserts, of chaos and order; politics; passion; drugs and the free market; but most of all, it's about family.

Life and communities spring from the ecotones between the desert and oceanic biomes.

Entire subaquatic elven cities are nestled deep among the oceanic steppe
Towns and cities built over coral forests, mining them for their incredible resources and linked by intricate trade networks
Rumors of deep desert tribes that are more dangerous even than the shifting sands
Shifting tectonic plates make even the ground unstable and shifting, with volcanoes and earthquakes as unpredictable as they are violent.
And who knows what strange creatures live many fathoms down below the surface of the glistening sea?

Space Age

The only thing resembling an interstellar government is the megacorp "Arctern Trading Company" (ATC), which has a monopoly on interstellar space travel
1. The ATC is the last remaining interstellar merchant company since AI preceding The Great Fall almost destroyed all known sentient life almost a thousand years ago
2. The ATC began as an inter-planetary joint-stock company to facilitate and fund trade between colony planets, but invested heavily in FTL travel research (and suspiciously, which no other venture has managed to research or understand), and now has the monopoly on interstellar travel
3. Interplanetary travel is far more common, and many smaller trade/travel companies exist to move people and resources between intra-solar planets
4. A solar system's membership in the ATC is completely optional and negotiable, and any system that leaves the ATC is simply no longer traded with…
  1. …there are rumors that the ATC has discovered technology to initiate rapid-onset super-nova in stars. Real or not, there are few systems that elect not to participate.
One of the biggest suffusions of wealth and discord on a planet is when a corporation expands into a new solar system through "franchises"
1. Many companies will simply "colonize" sections of a planet and then open themselves up for business
2. Sikorrak has not been franchised yet, but rumors are that it's caught someone's eye…
New Factions
1. Whalen's School of Business (WSB)
  1. Issues highly-coveted business licenses; members have a tendency to turn profit from nothing.
  2. All contracts between WSB graduates and members are FINAL. Broken contracts between members leads to suspension of business licenses, which forbids members from doing business with other members of the WSB. Continued failure leads to fines and bounties.
  3. For reference, check Whalen's Rules of Acquisition (NOTE: WSB is an inclusive school and does not discriminate profit based on race or gender, and these rules should be modified to be gender and race neutral): WSB_Rules_of_Acquisition
Equipment and technology
1. Synthetic Life/Intelligence
  1. AI/Machine Learning is banned per the Rachael Accord, which formed after The Great Fall
    1. Cyborgs and integrated-brain-units (IBUs) fill the void
      1. All technology that would normally be done on a computer (Google search, navigation, etc.) is interfaced with via an IBU
      2. Each IBU has a distinct personality, and some are more helpful than others. Use appropriate social skills (Persuasion/Deception/etc.) to convince an IBU to assist.
        
        IBU can be small scale, local operations, or part of a larger call-center-like facility, though the really top-notch are reserved for the elite.
    2. Research into AI or machine learning, once discovered, is destroyed by the ATC, along with any who work on it.
2. Guns/Armor
  1. Most weapons are made with local materials, though sometimes they are enhanced with off-world technology.
  2. Gunpowder is very rare on Sikorrak and fossil fuels don't exist, but renewable electricity (wind turbines, solar, geothermal, wave-paddles, etc.) is common
    1. BATTERY DETAILS
      1. Capacitors are frequently used in place of batteries where renewable energy is available but variable
      2. High-quality batteries manufactured off world with many available recharge cycles are available, but can be quite expensive
      3. Tech weapons are either weak and sip power or powerful with only a couple shots per charge. Batteries of this size and capacity start at 50GP.
      4. Energy shields provide damage reduction, but use battery charges based on rounds of activation.
      5. Every-day technology (communication devices), unless specifically noted, drain their power over the course of a day, and require recharging or replacement each night.
    2. Laser weapons, Gauss/coil guns, plasma guns are more common among military/militia units and interplanetary merchants
    3. Sonic weapons are sometimes sold as home-defense weapons
    4. Most weapons available on the planet are traditional mechanical weapons
      1. Often considered more reliable, honorable, etc., and a sign of a local vs. an off-worlder
      2. Salt water damages electronics.
  3. Check out the Weapon Tables for details on custom weapons
3. Communications and Daily Gear
  1. Most available equipment is mechanical (sometimes with electric/magical components added)
  2. Personal comms unit (not a walky-talky)
    1. 7GP
    2. Allows for basic planetary communication between users over a cellular network. Includes a calculator and flashlight, and can be linked to an IBU-ancilla for 50GP (basically Siri/Cortana/etc.) for basic research.
4. Cybernetic enhancements exist and do not require daily power maintenance, but a basic prosthetic limb starts at 100GP (additional features can be added for additional cost).

Questions for Max:

How does the space expansion work with the Vast Desert?
1. Vast Desert remains mysterious; attempts have been made to move known civilization into the Vast Desert, and those attempts have failed.
How do shields and lasers interact?
1. Max's answer: They don't interact in the same way as in Dune.
  1. Energy shields provide a temporary AC bonus (a la the first level "Shield" spell; see above) as a reaction at the expense of battery charge
  2. Lasers do energy (Radiant) damage
2. I had to think a while about this, and here's some background:
  1. There are inherent balances in our game that reduce the effectiveness of both lasers and shields, and mutually-assured-destruction is not necessary.
  2. In terms of gameplay, it would add unnecessary hesitation to taking actions in combat.
  3. Some thoughts of people only (here are some interesting comments Shields and Lasers) are generally that it was a way to rule out firepower-based warfare (in favor of political/societal-based warfare), and as a way to highlight the dangers of relying heavily on your defenses and not taking action.
    1. Neither of these feel particularly relevant in a standard DnD game, and I think the inherent limits of energy-based equipment helps balance for it
Space ships/ports
1. Breaking and entering atmosphere is costly, hard on equipment, and generally dangerous.
2. There are several solutions implemented at various locations around Sikorrak:
  1. Specialized shuttle to launch people and equipment into orbit and return safely.
    1. Equatorial magnetic launchers send shuttles into orbit, where they can dock with other orbiting vessels or space station, and then they drop back into the ocean near the launcher
    2. Still relatively expensive; mostly reserved for corporations, merchants, and government bodies.
  2. Monofilament space elevator
    1. Currently under construction.
    2. Once complete, it becomes trivial to transport people and goods into space.
  3. Local air travel is relatively common.
    1. Flight typically must happen over the water. Travel over the Vast Desert often encounters sand storms that down aircraft, with no reported survivors.