Stars Without Number.pdf

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StarS Without Number
Core editioN
For Eden, who gave me a reason.
© 2010-2011, Sine Nomine Publishing
ISBN 978-1-936673-19-3
Written by Kevin Crawford.
Cover art by Jimmy Zhang.
Interior art provided by NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville),
The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee.
Interior art by David Sharrock, Tamás Baranya, Cerberus Illustrations, Pawet Dobosz, Angela Harburn, Andy Hepworth, Szilvia Huszar,
Peter Szabo Gabor, Eric Lofgren, Bradley K McDevitt, Jeff Preston, Louis Porter Jr. Design, Shaman’s Stockart, Maciej Zagorski, and
The Forge Studios, used with permission.
Some artwork copyright Talisman Studios (c) 2007, used with permission. All rights reserved.
Some maps created with Hexographer; http://www.hexographer.com.
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Introduction ......................................................................................................4
Character Creation ............................................................................................6
Psionics ...........................................................................................................24
Equipment ......................................................................................................32
Systems ...........................................................................................................58
The History of Space .......................................................................................70
Game Master’s Guide ......................................................................................77
World Generation ...........................................................................................86
Factions .........................................................................................................112
Adventure Creation .......................................................................................127
Alien Creation ...............................................................................................137
Xenobestiary .................................................................................................147
Robots and Mechs .........................................................................................157
Societies ........................................................................................................180
Designer’s Notes ............................................................................................199
Hydra Sector .................................................................................................206
Game Master Resources ................................................................................222
Index .............................................................................................................242
Record Sheets ................................................................................................244
3
The year is 3200. Humanity is scattered like
dust among the stars. The broken relics of a
former day litter the sky and men and women
struggle to rebuild the glory of humanity’s
lost golden age.
For almost a thousand years humanity had expanded from its
ancient cradle to fill the sky with its worlds. At first the expansion
came by way of the enigmatic “spike drives” that granted humans
the ability to skip between stars. Countless nations, faiths, and
ideologies sent colonists to the darkness above to find new homes
where they could live free from the oppressive rule of Terra’s
calcified masters.
The spike drive touched on different worlds. It folded the tissue
of space and time and pierced it to emerge at distant stars, but
the space between touched in turn those who traveled it. Over
the course of generations, this subtle influence shaped certain
descendants of the starfarers. The condition that resulted was
known as “Metadimensional Extroversion Syndrome”. Most
simply knew its victims as “MESses”. Later, they were known as
psychics.
MES inevitably killed or maddened its carriers when they began
to use their powers. The surge of extradimensional energy either
cooked their brains or burnt a pathway through their sanity. It was
only through decades of research and the expenditure of countless
lives that techniques were developed for harnessing this power
safely.
The channeling of psionic energy began the second great expansion
of humankind. Even though hardly more than one in ten thousand
humans were touched by MES, it was still enough to reshape
human civilization. Vast choirs of psychics were employed to
develop new technology, advanced manufacturing capabilities,
and huge jump gates that could teleport whole freighters across
interstellar distances. Spike drives were relegated to the frontier,
to the distant star systems that could not yet afford to train the
psychics or buy the components necessary to build their own jump
gates.
This reliance planted the seed of the golden age’s destruction. In
2665, a metadimensional pulse of unimaginable violence erupted
from the Veil Nebula, washing over the whole of known space
in seconds. Every psychic in human space was instantly killed or
maddened by the surge, burnt out in what later became known as
the Scream.
With the jump gates inoperable and all the psychic mentors insane
or dead, the core worlds were suddenly cut off from the frontier. A
few spike drive ships remaining in the core were able to make their
way out, bringing tales of horror, starvation, and frantic warfare
over shipyards and orbital factories. Most of the core worlds are
thought to have perished, cut off from the worlds that supplied
their enormous populations and fueled their vital technologies.
The centuries that followed were known as the Silence, as
unnumbered human worlds fought to survive their sudden
isolation. Some slid into barbarism or worse, their planets unable
to support a starfaring civilization. Some worlds lacked metals,
or fossil fuels, or any one of countless other vital ingredients for
maintaining their industry. And all, of course, lacked the psionic
mentors necessary to train a new generation of psychics.
Over the past six hundred years, humanity has slowly, painfully
begun to heal the wounds of the Scream. Not all worlds were
incapable of independent survival, and these hardy planets have
become the linchpins of stellar nations and miniature empires.
Trade routes have revived with time and the building of new spike
drives. Expeditions are regularly mounted to the tomb worlds of
the outer core to scavenge what can be reclaimed from the bones
of the dead past.
Yet a pall hangs over these efforts. Great sacrifice has revived some
of the old secrets of psychic training, but no world dares rely
on psionic forces any longer. The nature of the Scream is still a
mystery. For now, humanity strives to build a world that does not
rely upon powers it cannot fully understand or completely control.
Human space is a vast canvas of mystery to most. Ancient nav
charts are long out of date. Alien races have since moved into many
formerly human-held sectors, and there remain ruins of races
that long predate mankind. Warlords and petty tyrants scheme to
expand their stellar domains, and brave souls struggle to recover
lost secrets.
Stars without number await you.
4

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