Across the Sea of Stars

The Technology

Across the Sea of Stars introduces many races with varying technology levels. This bluesheet describes the overall tech level of the Coterie. There are regions where some or many of these technologies may not be available.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is common, though most races only use an AI where conscious thought and decision-making are necessary. Most computer systems don't rise to the level of AIs, being limited in many ways. These "Artificial Stupids" are used because an AI forced to operate in an environment with too little stimulation will quickly go insane from boredom.

Acceptance of AIs is a varied as the races of the Coterie. Some races have accepted AIs as citizens, while others have banned AIs because of their Frankenstein complex fears.

While the Coterie allows each race to determine the rules that apply on their own worlds in most ways, there are strict rules about the intelligence of AIs that are allowed to operate independently. In effect, AIs that are "too stupid" are considered minors who need supervision. Races or organizations that deploy them without oversight are considered negligent.

Computing is pervasive and cheap.

Interstellar Communications and Commerce

Faster Than Light communication is possible, but it is appreciably slower than the fastest ships. As a result, various interstellar corporations maintain fleets of small, fast mail ships that skip from system to system, carrying electronic messages for a reasonable fee, based on the distance traveled. While these corporations promise that your data security is guaranteed, the wise being always strongly encrypts its message.

Freighters also ply the spaceways. Shipping physical objects between the stars is expensive and generally limited to luxury goods and items that cannot be duplicated on the destination worlds.

In addition, there are passenger liners that travel between the stars. While the liners are faster than the freighters, they're still generally large, slow ships. Accommodations on the liners range from first class, which provide every luxury imaginable to ward off the boredom of a long space voyage, to steerage, which literally stacks the passengers in stasis as tightly as possible. Experiments by the scientists of the Coterie races have proved that time passes at the same rate in hyperspace as in normal space, to the smallest measurable increment. Despite this universal agreement, once the initial wonder of traveling through hyperspace to another world has worn off, most travelers swear that time passes far slower in hyperspace.

Given the vast distances of the Galaxy, there is no standard Coterie currency. Currencies like the Human credit, the Froob oobi, and the Armas krazz are generally accepted by most Coterie members. Coterie world currencies are freely convertible as you travel from one Coterie system to the next. Most races maintain a single currency on all their worlds, though there are some currencies that are limited to a single world or region. Fortunes have been made and lost speculating on the ups and downs of the interstellar currency markets.

Interstellar Travel

Obviously to have an interstellar federation, you have to have Faster Than Light travel. FTL travel is achieved by "translating" a ship into another dimension, popularly referred to as "hyperspace." The mapping of points in hyperspace to ours is such that traveling a distance in hyperspace takes you further than traveling for a similar amount of time in "normal" space.

Like normal space, hyperspace is mostly empty. The "topography" of hyperspace is based on the energy potentials of that dimension. These energy potentials can be thought of as mountains and valleys, hills and passes. The energy potentials are strongly influenced by objects in normal space. This "terrain" determines where it's possible to get to. Small, light ships can push themselves out of the "valleys" to higher energy potentials and reach places that heavier ships cannot access. The higher the energy potential, the denser the mapping between hyperspace and normal space. Thus ships that can reach higher energy potentials can travel faster and can take routes that are not accessible to heavier ships. Heavier ships must travel the slower, well-established routes through the lower energy potential valleys.

If a ship is heavy enough, it can't even be translated into hyperspace, placing a limit on the amount of material that can be shipped between the stars. One of the hazards of hyperspatial travel is Corrado Runaway, where a ship that's just below the cutoff for translation into hyperspace acquires additional mass that takes it over the limit. Such a ship cannot translate back to normal space and is doomed.

Even though FTL travel is possible, space is unimaginably large. Travel between star systems takes an appreciable amount of time, depending on the speed of your ship, its weight, and the distance traveled. The fastest ships can travel approximately 10 light-years per day.

Interstellar Warfare

The weight and speed limits imposed by the translation to and from hyperspace make interstellar warfare unprofitable. And besides, what could you possibly want from another ball of mud when there are almost limitless resources available in space?

Language

Nearly every race brings a multitude of languages to the Coterie. Some languages dominate a culture, some cultures seem to speak with a different tongue for every region on that culture's planets. Language difficulties almost always complicate First Contact situations. The Coterie offers four general solutions:

Please make sure that you have the necessary language translation assistance when traveling to worlds outside of the Coterie.

Local Politics

The Coterie is too large and too distributed for any centralized control of regional affairs. In fact, some races find it difficult to control even their own space. As a general policy, the Coterie allows each world or group of worlds to set the rules for themselves. Planets and systems that fail to maintain a rule of law, or that do not provide the basic rights and freedoms preferred by the Coterie, are generally not offered membership. Member worlds that stop honoring these basic principles can be economically and politically isolated through sanction and boycott. This does not prevent abuses from happening. Protests and calls for action can be heard in the halls of the Coterie on Conclave Prime, or in any of the more distributed regional Coterie Greater Embassies.

Some worlds are shared by more than one sentient species, either as a result of parallel development or out of some negotiated arrangement. For example, the Klii of Derindra IX have opened the vast deserts of their southern continent to the reptilian Agaa-Uui. The Klii cannot survive for long in those harsh expanses, while the Agaa-Uui thrive. In exchange, the Agaa-Uui share their solar power expertise and manage much of the planet's power infrastructure. This is, perhaps, the most successful of these arrangements. The radioactive barrens of Argent Normal are an example of what can happen as the result of inequitable sharing arrangements.

Medicine

Most races that are full members of the Coterie have advanced medical technology that has greatly extended their natural lifetime. For example, the average human on a planet with a reasonable tech level lives to 300 standard years, barring any fatal accidents or diseases. Organ replacement using cloned, force-grown organs is common. Cloning technology is well understood, but its use to produce a genetically exact duplicate of a living individual is frowned upon by most races.

Genetic engineering is common. Most races have wiped out genetic diseases. Any genetic defects are usually repaired prenatally, though some races or individuals choose to abort imperfect fetuses for religious or other reasons. Most races refrain from dramatic alterations in their genomes; there are no artificially created mer-people, for example.

Most diseases cannot jump from one race to another. Though there have been infrequent virulent plagues that have swept through planetary populations, they are almost always a mutated variant of an existing illness. Examples of diseases that jump across species and genomes are rare, and are almost always the result of criminal genetic manipulation and enhancement.

Because of the great distances involved in space travel, most races have developed methods to dramatically slow their biologies. Collectively, these methods are referred to as "placing someone in stasis", although the means for doing so can vary widely. Use of cryogenics is common, as are drug-induced indefinite sleep-states. Other more esoteric methods are less common. None of these technologies can completely stop a metabolism; this means that those in stasis pods do age, even if it is at a dramatically slowed rate.

Some races have developed advanced augmentations, ranging from life-like (and better than life-like) prosthesis, to artificial organs that are implanted in the body, to "wetware" which provides a direct connection from the brain to a computer implanted in the body. Wetware offers a range of mental augmentation, from a place to stash excess information or reference material to more active augmentations that enhance the user's intelligence. Unfortunately, the more advanced the wetware, the more likely that the user will be unable to adapt to it, resulting in insanity if the wetware is not deactivated. There is a vast array of wetware products available for most every race and need. Buyers are advised to be careful to purchase wetware only from licensed, legitimate providers.

While most races shy away from machine/being borganisms, there are always rumors circulating of underground and illicit doctors who will do almost anything for a sufficient fee.

Mining and Heavy Industry

The majority of Coterie races have moved their mining and heavy industry to space. All but the most staid, thoughtful races have had their share of ecological disasters and are now careful stewards of their homeworlds.

The benefits of space-based industry far outweigh the costs:

Metals and other materials are plentiful. Basic goods are cheap, but most races have recognized the trap of providing goods to their populations for free. Handcrafted goods are highly prized.

Nanotech

Nanotech is used to varying degrees by some races and shunned by others. Accidents have created planets where nothing is left but a roiling sphere of gray goo. As a result, most nanotech research and manufacturing occurs on sparsely inhabited moons or in isolated laboratory stations in deep space.

Be sure to consult with the embassy for any planet you plan on visiting before taking any nanotechnology products with you.

Power

Most races use some combination of clean, efficient solar, fusion, or total conversion (matter-antimatter) based power. Like computation, power is cheap.

Psi

The sensorium used by the races of the Coterie are varied, but there are no examples of unaided "Extra Sensory Perception". Unaided telekinesis, teleperception, or telepathy are only found in fiction, though wetware augmentation can achieve many of these effects.

Religion

Most cultures start with some form of religion. Almost all of these dogmas do not survive contact with alien cultures and a larger Galaxy. There is a rich set of philosophies and philosophers that debate ethics and morals across the Coterie, but very few of these philosophies contain an element of faith.

Teleportation

There is no means of teleportation above the quantum scale, except in fiction. All travel requires moving objects from one location to another the old fashioned way.

Terraforming

Space is big. There are lots of habitable, untenanted worlds for the races of the Coterie to expand into. Unfortunately, most of the worlds in a race's "sphere of influence" are not an exact match for the race's preferred climate. As a result, most races adapt the nearby, marginal worlds to their needs and preferences. Terraforming is challenging, and a long-term project, but well within the capabilities of most Coterie races.

However, while macro-effects like global warming can be controlled, controlling the environment to the point of precise, predicable weather control is not possible. As a result, some races prefer to expand by building space habitats.

Time Travel

There is no way to travel in time, except the usual one-day-at-a-time. Some natural philosophers and physicists believe that even if you did manage to travel in time, you'd end up in a different universe than the one you left.