No one can hear you scream

[Ebiris]

ISCS Khonsu was the first of Earth's Nile-Class colony ships, which utilize cloning technology to grow colonists in route, rather than take risks with the unprecedented long-term cryosleep required for interstellar travel. The ship started its voyage toward the orange k-type star Epsilon Eridani in the year 2109. Sponsored in a joint effort between Global Aerospace and the U.S. based genetic engineering corporation Xenotek, this 10.5 light-year journey was the first of its kind. The 34,000-year voyage was both a gamble and an investment in humanity's future.

Detailed analysis indicated the planet Epsilon Eridani II to be a near twin to Earth in planet density, size, and atmosphere. Although there was no indication of what kind of life had evolved on the planet, its conditions would likely be hospitable to human life. It represented the perfect opportunity for humanity to expand beyond its solar system.

The sponsoring companies recruited loyal employees first, chosen for mental stability and expertise in their fields. Other people were chosen by application from outside agencies, and each volunteer was paid for the limited rights to a digital brain recording (DBR), or a "digi," and a clone.

The colony ship was piloted by its computer navigation system, and remained inhabited only sporadically by biological androids, or "simulacra," which were grown every so often to conduct maintenance during the ship's long voyage as mandated by the controlling AI Alexandria.

Two years before Khonsu reached orbit around Epsilon Eridani II, combined accelerated growth tanks and cryogenic tubes, which incorporate frozen tissue sample storage, virtual reality teaching equipment, and DBR machines, were to initiate growth of the first batch of approximately 200 simulacra. These would form the initial work force once the colonists reached the planet. The machines would continue to grow "batches" of simulacra as need requires. The remaining tanks would begin growing clones of approximately 50 administrators and professionals six weeks before reaching orbit. During this time, the clone brains were to be prepared with their appropriate DBR recording and their bodies were physically matured to a stage roughly the equivalent of 25 years old. The command crew was scheduled to awaken a few hours before entering orbit around Epsilon Eridani II, and the remaining crew would remain in cryogenic freeze until the main ship lands on the planet.

A new chapter in the existence of humanity has begun, and it is up to the capable crew of the Khonsu to found an entirely new civilization. Her journey across millennia was completed on schedule, and 34,264 years after the colony ship left Earth orbit the command crew awakens to view the first truly alien world human eyes have ever laid upon.

Only to find that something has gone horribly wrong...

This will be a science fiction survival horror game, if it wasn't already obvious, set aboard the eponymous ISCS Khonsu, with the players taking on the role of the command crew from the moment they emerge from their automated cloning tanks as they seek to unravel exactly what went wrong during their long voyage between the stars, and if not fix it then at least find a way to survive the horrors that now roam the titanic vessel.

Looking to be pretty rules-light, most likely using the PDQ system (which can be found here), with the game being run over IRC on Saturdays late morning/early afternoon (UK time, that is). Won't start until the pirates game ends, which is likely to be in two weeks or thereabouts. I'm not anticipating a huge campaign here, but it should hopefully last a month or two.

So, anyone interested in being a clone facing mysterious horrors in the depths of space?

[Carthrat]

Once, we were the twinking stars who did the boarding.

Post-pirate, we're getting boarded amongst twinking stars. How the tables turn. In for saturday night entertainment~

[Corwin]

What Rat said, to no one's surprise?

[Jon]

I trust the 34,000 year figure is from Earth's reference point, not the Khonsu's? We've only had writing for about 6,000 years; I feel doubtful that, only a mere hundred years from now, we can build a complex electronic and mechanical device which will operate without human maintenance for 34,000 years.

Let's say that that is Earth elapsed time, and relative to the Khonsu (or, 'proper time') a maximum of 100 years have elapsed. That's probably a decent span of time for a ship to survive. Only problem is, you can't GET that kind of time dilation factor except at very high percentages of light-speed. (We're talking greater than 99.9999% of light-speed.) And the only way to get going that fast is to boost at reasonable accelerations for a long time (which means we will go much further than a paltry 10.5 light-years) or boost at unreasonably high accelerations. I haven't bothered to do the actual math, since I'm sure you picked 34,000 out of a hat. The point is, unless I'm misunderstanding something pretty basic, the numbers don't work out.

Take a spaceship, thrusting along at a solid 1g. After two years shipboard (or 'proper time'), she's gone nearly three light-years and has a velocity of 97% of light-speed. More than two years have gone by, Terra-side, but not much more; only 3.75 years. We keep on thrusting at 1g and after only five more months, we're halfway there; time to turn around and start decelerating. 5 years have gone by from the point of view of our shipboard AI, around 8 years on Terra.

(1g is a very nice acceleration, mainly because it makes it comfortable for any human crew. And it's not that slow, either; at 1g, our starship could go from Earth to the center of the galaxy in 20 years ship time, 25,000 years Earth time. Course, she'd be going pretty dang fast by the time she got there.)

Sorry to blather on at length, but this is one of my favorite topics. Consult http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html if you want to make sure you get the science right. In any event, my advice to you is this: forget Epsilon Eridani; it's too close. Make the good ship Khonsu a Valkyrie ship (if you're willing to handwave an efficient means of producing antimatter which can run off solar power, with a total mass of a couple of tons) or a Bussard scramjet (which involves even more handwaving, but has the handy superpower of not actually needing to carry fuel, and being large enough to have this sort of plot on). Say the mission _started_ going to Epsilon Eridani, but when Alexandria found that Epsilon Eridani b (a gas giant with 1.5 times Jupiter's mass) didn't have any habitable moons, she picked the nearest most-likely star and went onward. A dozen hops like this and she's reaching the end of her viability parameters, but she finally found something, perhaps at Gliese 358 (approx 30 ly from Earth, which means any secondary waves of colonists (or shipments of machinery) could arrive in a mere 6.7 years of shipboard time, with, again, minimal time dilation relative to Earth or 358, once they know where to go).

Another approach might be to postulate some form of "jump"-based FTL drive which is inimical to the human mind, but which both human embryos and the ship's AI could survive. This gets you around the nasty physics of rocket travel and could easily let the ship travel so far from Earth that lightspeed communications would take centuries. Then, too, this sort of FTL would be a convenient way to get the alien terrors onto the ship. Again you would take the multi-hop approach, with perhaps some needed time between hops to gather energy from the system primary.

Of course, I don't know what criteria, if any, you had for the selection of mission parameters. If you like, I'd be happy to help you fine-tune something to fit what you're looking for.

[Dracos]

"Make Sure You Get Your Science Right" => "Science Fiction".

Terms I do not often hear in combined context. o_O

[Jon]

"Make Sure You Get Your Science Right" => "Science Fiction".

Terms I do not often hear in combined context. o_O

Generally, science fiction these days at least tries to pay lip service to relativity, for much the same reason that most space exploration stories use a heliocentric model, not a geocentric flat earth with crystal spheres. After a certain amount of ignoring physical laws, your "science fiction" loses its science and becomes "fantasy". Which is fine if that's what you want to write.

Ima shut up now, though, so as not to derail the thread any more.

[Sierra]

In, of course.

[Merc]

Hrm...any idea roughly what the UK morning/afternoon schedule translates to central time? I´m a bit interested, probably can manage it even if it ends pretty late for me though, given it´d technically be friday evening (I should be back from Peru before your planned start date, I think). Need to get to Lima so I can open the pdf file and check what that game system is like too before I ask for a reserved spot though, so if other people grab those spots, I´ll just invade irc channel and watch. =)

[Ebiris]

Central time is 5 hours behind UK time, so starting at say 11am for me would be 6am for you.

[Sierra]

Because someone has to post the first sheet.

~

Emma Graham

Qualities: Expert (+4) Gunfighter, Good (+2) Pugilist, Good (+2) Outdoorsman, Poor (-2) Sociability

Born in the American midwest, raised intermittently there and in the wilds of Canada--when she was very young, her mother and her mother's lover took her away and joined a band of anti-government survivalists who lived on the move in the forests around the Canadian Rockies. The authorities caught up with them when Emma was ten or eleven (her biological father had reported her disappearance as a kidnapping, which it essentially was). Teenage development was complicated by the difficulty of getting reacquainted with normal family and civilian life--though the new family her father had acquired over the last seven or so years treated her well, communication was always strained and the adult Emma wound up with a rather confused set of morals and priorities. Suspicious of powerful government/corporate entities, but protective of anyone she knows personally and has grounds to respect or trust. Ultimately, she wound up in local law enforcement because it suited her personality and skills developed while young, and because Wyoming does not offer a wide range of employment opportunities even at the best of times. There weren't many other options; she'd always liked animals as a kid, but proved too inept a student to pursue anything along the lines of veterinary medicine. As Emma is quite disillusioned with Earth in general, starting over again in the wilderness of a new world had a certain amount of appeal and she wasted no time applying for a security position aboard the Khonsu once she heard of the expedition. She didn't have a lot to leave behind--while she doesn't go out of her away to avoid talking to people, interpersonal relations were never her forte.

Emma is a few inches shy of six feet tall, and has blond hair which is usually tied back in some fashion. She is quite plain-looking, her face almost always expressionless. It's not that she doesn't care about anything. She just has one of those dour faces that seems built to radiate apathy regardless of its owner's intentions.