The Perseus Federation: an original TOS setting/campaign idea
The origins of the Perseus Federation are quite similar to those of our "Orion" Federation, and the two merged, both having equal claim as the beginning of the Federation. The Perseus Federation is on the inner edge of the Perseus Arm of the galaxy, almost directly rimward of sector 001. The Perseus Federation is discovered by the players' crew jointly with the USS Alpha Mensae. They recieve a distress call concerning a supernova. The Perseus Federation is threatened by a sort of energy being never encountered before. The actions of this being as well as its communications make it clear that if it understood the nature of the Perseus Federation it would cease its hostility.
please do not post on this topic until I have posted the information on three important members of the Perseus Federation.
Planet: Teun
Class: M
System Data: No moons
Diameter: 9000 km
Gravity: .55 G
Year: 240 local days
Day: 22 standard hours
Atmosphere: 20% Oxygen
Hydrosphere: 60% surface water
Climate: Average temperature: 60 degrees celsius (excessively hot)
Population: 59 million Vaan
Resources: Fruits, Chemical Technology
Places of Note: capital city called Beea on Utar Continent surrounded by Feik Ocean
Star System: Meev
Affiliation: Perseus Federation
System Type: single star type K
Planets: seven: F, M, J, H, L, J, G
Planet: Quatee
Class: M
System Data: No Moons
Diameter: 13000 km
Gravity: 1.0 G
Year: 390 local days
Day: 23 standard hours
Atmosphere: 24% Oxygen
Hydrosphere: 10% surface water
Climate: Average Temperature: 10 degrees celsius (excessively cold)
Population: 1 Setif (all others off planet due to religious reasons)
Resources: Raw Materials
Places of Note: home region called Quee, 6100 km north of planet's only sea, called Klee
Star System: Tieni
Affiliation: Perseus Federation
System Type: single star type F
Planets: eight: D, M, D, K, L, G, F, G
Planet: Neeo
Class: M
System Data: One moon 6000 km class K
Diameter: 19000 km
Gravity: 1.8 G
Year: 400 local days
Day: 20 standard hours
Atmosphere: 22% Oxygen, 10 times earth pressure
Hydrosphere: 90% surface water
Climate: Average temperature: 20 degrees celsius
Sapient Species: Reea
Resources: Spaceships, Information
Places of Note: capital city called Lytha on Queuh Continent, three other continents, all small, several islands, largest sea called Naok, excellent ship facilities. Settlements on high mountain plateaus.
The Reea Civilization
Technology: Mostly level 6. Higher in space travel, lower in biological sciences.
Economics: Information-based.
Government:The planet has only one level of internal political divisions: Counties. The planet is ruled by a computer, built by a religious group and secretly influenced by the Nealee, another member of the Perseus Federation, whose homeworld is 52 light years away, with no input from the citizens. The goal of the state is to create a better society.
Motivations: The Reea are primarily motivated by ideology.
Culture: Knowledge-oriented, religious extroverts.
Other Details:All Reea buildings are one level. Reea spaceships come in a very wide variety. The public are not allowed to own or use computers. Each county has a completely distinct native language. The people are monotheistic, and believe that their god will return in the very distant future.
Initially, I'd say take pains to separate the two Federations more. The Perseus Federation should be a new, and at least initially welcome discovery.
The name "Perseus Federation" threw me a bit at first. My initial reaction was, use a different name to avoid confusion. BUT, upon reflection it works in fun, insidious ways.
It plays upon the Players' expectations.
Initially, contact reveals the existence of the similarly named interstellar state. Contact is made with a Vulcanoid species, both familiar in appearance and close enough in some cultural aspects to be a splinter from the Romulan diaspora. PC's will expect to like and cooperate with their Perseus counterparts. BUT, even though they are similar, not all the Peseus member species follow the same moral & ethical standards as the "Orion" Federation. They meddle with their neighbors. They might be more aggressive, in a benign sort of way. They actually make pretty good TOS era stand ins for the Taurhai! Maybe they even have slightly better tech in some areas.
The PC's won't be able to just look the other way when the Perseus differences come up, but they won't be able to dismiss them as Klingon or Romulan style aggressors either.
And then, there's the problem of the Energy Being, the shared danger, and the need to answer Perseus member world's calls for assistance.
Should make for an interesting game!
The Vaan look okay. They are Vulcanoid in appearance and their world will remind visitors of vulcan, but they are weaker, have poor eyesight, and are apparently outgoing, emotional, artisitic people! The Vulcans will be scandalized! Humans will love them! Andorians will be underwhelmed. ("Linguists? LINGUISTS? Squinty babbling Linguists? Eternal Ices! Don't we have enough of those on Tellar?") Of course, the Tellarites oughta be delighted with them!
The Setif give me more trouble, mechanics wise. I like the snail-like description. About time we got some non-humanoids around these parts! But, how do you have a species of "resourceful scientists" with deficient INTELLECT scores? I'd swap out that COORD 2 with the INTELLECT of 1, give 'em either a Perception-1 (no sense of touch is a big handicap!) or give them additional senses (excellent chemoreception or enhanced vision types) to balance it out.
I'd do the Setif as:
FIT:2
COORD:1
Reaction +1 (quick reactions from sluggish looking aliens will mess with the PC's too much to give it up! maybe even boost that to a +2 for full effect. saying that the Setif are so good at gauging another's likely response that they are already reacting before the other has begun to act.)
INT:3 (or 2 with bonuses in Logic)
Perception -1
PRE:2
enhanced vision, especially Infrared sight, since they are Tundra-inhabiting species with a sensitivity to heat. (Sebetian Peacekeeper Slugs! for the FARSCAPE fans out there!)
Andorians will love these guys. The world is pleasantly cool, the natives are sharp-witted and excellent duelists, in their own alien ways!
Okay. The next questions I've got are all focussed on what, exactly, the "Perseus Federation" is, does, who are the core members, and who makes the decisions.
Some ideas already evident or suggested by the posted material are that the Setif provide the intellectual/scientific core with the Vaan being diplomats. The Nealee, only mentioned but not described, seem to be computer specialists with a knack or interest in social engineering.
Neeo seems to be a sort of "marketplace of ideas" trade world. (love that prohibition against personal computers, by the way. Wait till the landing party whips out their first tricorder and promptly gets either arrested or mobbed by outraged True Believers! heh!)
You should work out exactly who runs things in the Perseus core, even if the players aren't likely to meet them any time soon. Who are the founders of the Federation? How did they come together? Did the Nealee "engineer" their neighbors into suitable partners, or did the Vaan travel about, translating and spreading cultural values? Was it all begun by Setif probes? Inquiring minds...
Okay. I'm slow. Caught the Tech Level 1 on the Setif. Well, that would explain the Intellect of 1, and vica versa. Makes them awfully damn primitive to have their entire population (save 1) off the homeworld!
By the way, where did the rest go! Why? What role do they perform? What religious beliefs result in all but one of the species leaving their homeworld?
Have they all been transplanted to Neeo? Do they travel with the Vaan? Who are these Reea on Neeo anyway? (Damn. These Perseus types like their vowels! Most names have doubled vowels and are structurally very similar. hmm. Vaan or Nealee at work?)
Maybe Setif are carried around by Vaan diplomats, pet-advisors? But they have to be kept in separate, cooled containers/quarters.
Neeo has an awfully high atmospheric pressure. 10 atmospheres would do some unpleasant things to unprotected visitors. Are you sure you want that extreme an environment for a trade world?
A good chunk of this I randomly generated using Star Wars systems. Some of what I came up with is pure clumsiness. I always believe people should do absolutely anything they want with my material. "Butcher" it as much as you must to make sense of it. I originally intended for the two federations to be ideologically identical, and the Perseus addition to the name was to be for avoiding confusion, but stories need conflict, right? As for the Vaan, I intended ther vulcanoidness to only mean that vulcanoids are independently widespread. The Romulans went in a completely different direction both culturally and astrographically, but now I think a fantastic idea is that these are a completely separate group from Vulcan. And of course their huge size is just due to low gravity. Maybe change what I said and have the energy being responsible for the poor ethics. If there is something wrong with the member races, then it should be easily fixed before the merging. The Setif intelligence problem was pure clumsiness, but I think it can be worked with. perhaps the resourcefulness is dumb luck, and I didn't say they were good scientists! I really wanted to stand by the dice, but I think your thinking is more rational. The additional senses is perfect. After rolling the dice, I figured the setif were simply a very inferior species. I hadn't planned on the computer restriction applying to offworlders. I do think the Nealee are not good guys. Perhaps all the Nealee offworld should mean they worship the Nealee, who provide the transportation. the atmospheric pressure is another loyalty to the dice.
So, do your comments mean you'll use this stuff in a game? If not it would all go to waste because I've never even played this RPG at all! As always, the Bob is great in his insight, but I'd like someone else's insight for a change as well. It doesn't have to be positive either! And Bob, I'd like to continue the conversation with you too.
Hmm. Given free reign to play with the basics presented, this is the sort of thing I'd do:
FIRST CONTACT: The USS ALPHA MENSAE, while patrolling on the edge of explored space, deep in the thinly starred void between the Orion and Perseus arms, receives a powerful signal, part computer surge, part telepathic wave. The Psionically adept crew receive psychic images of a distant Federation of worlds under attack by an unimaginably powerful energy creature of some kind. (Crackling tendrils of light lashing at cities and ships, aliens whose eyes burst into glowing fire as their brains burn out, at the same time an EMP-type pulse fries all computers in the area. Ships are powerless to stop The Being, but bravely attack it anyway in desperate defense of the colony worlds it attacks. etc.) The Signal, carries with it a tremendous package of information on a distant Perseus Federation, with basic info on member worlds, stellar cartography, art and literature, and a HUGE linquistic database.
Intrigued, Starfleet sends the ALPHA MENSAE and the PCs' ship across the void to make contact with this embattled sister Federation...
THE PERSEUS FEDERATION scenario, a la 'Bob continued!
Okay. Our valiant ships reach the fringe of Perseus Fed space. They are met by a small ship filled with very tall Vulcanoids. (Vaan diplomats). The Vaan prove to be distant cousins of the Vulcans, having left long ago, before the teachings of Surak had fully taken hold. In no time, the Vaan are charming the crew with their engaging conversations and almost instant fluency in Federation languages. The Vaan do naturally what the Universal Translator does technologically. The Vaan are not thrilled with the UT. Maybe even are repulsed and disgusted by it! To them, communication is something sacred which must be kept out of the hands of computers, for some reason.
The Vaan in the contact ship show little interest in the Starfleet ships' tech. Instead, they break out these little refrigerated hat-box looking things. Out come furry white slugs that instantly crawl over every piece of technology they can reach. The Setif, who seem dull-witted in direct interactions, all possess Mathematical, Scientific or Engineering Aptitudes (gives 'em 2 extra dice to roll on Scientific assessment rolls, etc.) They process information, almost like Dune's Mentats, but are not very bright themselves.
Satisfied diplomatically and personally with their Orion counterparts, the Perseus crew directs their visitors to the nearest "Information Hub", the planet Neeo.
In my version of the Perseus Federation, some as yet not fully described member species, probably the Nealee, organize their Federation by giving away computer systems, even to underdeveloped species. They have "standardized" computer technology in Perseus Federation space to make themselves the dominant power and guiding light. I'd make them genuinely benevolent in their goals. They want to help primitive species develop peacefully. They think the best way to do that is to place Nealee computers and computer systems on allied worlds. The AI's and Expert Systems built into those computers take over the running of the primitive world's government and culture in no time and starts to shape it to fit the Nealee's parameters for a successful Federation member world. (Kirk would NOT be amused!)
The Setif are all off their homeworld because they found so much more nifty stuff to study in the stars and it suited the Nealee to let them work for P.Federation ships. They left one of their number on the abandoned homeworld as a link to their revered past. Spiritual Anchor of the far-roving Setif.
The Vaan were recruited as diplomats. The P.Fed has no Universal Translator systems. They rely on the Vaan's natural ability.
The attacking Entity may well be the Reea's prodigal "God" returning to find it's little section of cultivated space "infected" with controlling computer systems that it views as "contaminaiton", sort of the reverse of V'Ger's "carbon-unit" notions.
The PC's get to negotiate contact with the Perseus Federation. The P. Feds are all gung-ho explorers and information exchange junkies and absolutely in favor of peaceful co-existence & cooperation. They also let alien computers run their worlds and happily give those computers to less advanced species. Yikes!
It would also be a good idea to stop that rampaging "God" before it destroys a promising chunk of galactic civilization.
That's what I'd do. If I were to run it. Which I doubt I will. I'll probably not run LUGTrek again any time soon. If ever. sigh.
Cochrane, I have to say, I love this stuff. If and when I finally get the TOS role playing game, I would be sorely tempted to use this material. I am inclined to use Bob's take on things somewhat. Only a few things that I would change. I would make the Setif a race who's religious beliefs relvolve around science. According to their teachings, they are to learn everything they can about the universe, thus a mass migration. The remaining Setif is a kind of High Priest, who runs the main library/temple, where all the records of the exploring Setif are stored. Essently, the entire planet has been transformed into this library, but none but the designated High Priest is allowed to set foot (or whatever) on the world. This would, of course, require that they have a higher tech level, and I would change their intelegence and coord as Bob recomended. About the only other thing I would change from Bob's senerio is that I would have only one ship send to the P. Fed, the PC's ship. (Which in my campaign would be the USS Chalenger).
Chris, I have to say, your comments are as cool as Bob's. Wanna be his replacement if he really does disappear?
You could of course use these cultures in the other eras, or even say their discovery is in those eras.
The only real reason I mentioned the Alpha Mensae was as very subtle hint that I was the Surak who did the Mensaeans as wellas the Bwuutut, Aba, and Zwickau. My new Mensaean thread I didn't decide to do until later. I intend to post more on the Bwuutut as soon as I find what I did with them.
Glad you approve, I'd love to hear additional opinions, and hopefully you'll see more where this came from.
the Perseus Federation (long)
Reply With Quote
