Re: Gamba Subsector again

Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed] writes:

> >Madrigal:   Most  noteworthy  features are a dense  tainted atmosphere,...
> Taint is propably fossil fuel taint.

Undoubtedly.  It was a nice planet before it got to be so polluted...

> >Agricola:  Standard  atmosphere water world, with a  native  population  of
> >mammalian amphibians...
>
> I still think you need a considerable land area to evolve amphibians, but
> I'm no biologist.

I'm not either, and my thinking was along these lines: Many creatures evolve
to fit niches that are fairly restricted in geographical range.  If such a
species evolved intelligence, it would then be able to spread out beyond its
original range due to the adaptive power that intelligence (hopefully) brings
with it.  So, the fact that their unintelligent ancestors could only occupy
a small fraction of the planet's surface should not cause us any great
concern.  Are any of the people who were posting on the biology thread a
few weeks ago reading this?  Is this a reasonable position, or is it totally
unworkable.  As I mentioned before, I'd like to keep the Agricolans amphibious
to make interactions with humans a little easier.  If It doesn't seem
reasonable now, how much would the hydrographic percentage have to be reduced
to make it reasonable?  9? 8?

Regarding the Susatans:

> Btw, keep in mind that those 40-odd minor human races works out at roughly
> one per sector, so you don't want to use one without a good reason.

In general I agree, but since I am only going to do one subsector, I am a
little more willing to put in "one per sector" type features than I would be
if I was doing a whole sector.

> >Adriano: This world is too good to pass up, so it's a new colony site, and
> >the population represents the advance survey team presently on the ground.
>
> The problem is that a new colony site wouldn't have a Class A starport.
> Starship construction would not be a priority if I wanted to establish a
> new colony. Even starship maintenance would be performed at the home port.
> They might have a B- port (Starship repair, but no spaceship construction)
> but more likely a C+ (Full fuel facility). Secondly, 99 people is way too
> few to open up a new world. An initial survey, sure, but how long ago do
> you want the Imperial presence here to date back to? If it's more than 20
> years this planet would've been surveyed already. It's one of the top
> goodies of the subsector. Can you imagine anyone passing this one up and
> go settle Lassus instead?

You have a point.  OK.  Let's go for adventure potential.  Adriano was a
normal world with a population of 7 or 8 until a few years ago, when a
plague so violent and untreatable appeared and killed off the entire
population, as per your suggestion.  This will now be the single most
important feature of the entire subsector, as research will show that it
was a modified Ricercaran disease which _must_ have been deliberately
spread.  Who would gain by murdering an entire planetary population?
A mystery, and an overwhelmingly important one that must be solved soon!

(We won't leave this a mystery for ever, since it is my intention to decide
on all such details in this forum, as part of the GMing exercise originally
mentioned.)

> >Prison planet might be OK, but the "who?" is a problem.  That's why I chose
> >this one for the "plague planet".
>
> There's no reason why you should restrict yourself to one of each kind, you
> know.

Oh, I don't know about that.  HAving multiple prison planets, or planets
whose population was wiped out by plagues, in one subsector strikes me as
being too coincidental to be believable.  That's why, by the way, I think
we'll tie the Adriano plague in with Ricercar somehow.  I like the story
"hooks" to be as tangled as possible...


Regarding the question of the Scout base at Bach:

> >Supporting Type S couriers jumping back and forth from Madrigal to the
> >Imperial X-Boat route station at Forqueray...
>
> What kind of support would they need there?

Routine maintenance and refueling.  It's probably not a very large base.


> >> The world is the property of the Simpson Memorial Foundation. ...
> >
> >Not a bad idea, but I already used it to explain Galliard...
>
> You could have more than one scientific institution per sub-sector, you
> know. ;-)

Possibly.  Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Rob Dean