Another
Nebula California project of mine, now about having a StarGate crossover/fusion.
Please let me know what you think.
HYPERTUBE EXTREME!!!
We had just been informed that we were stopping our attempts on leaving the Nebula California, the next step became determining on which planet we were going to spend the rest of our lives. At that time the known choices were actually quite poor, so we are making another sweep through the Nebula for more habitable worlds. A couple of days into our sweep we found this unusual star system which contained only a single planet, that we named Chevron. It also has a highly unique environment, the seas were completely black instead of the typical blue, but some of the lakes and islands showed signs of being habitable. To investigate these parts an ad hoc small team was send to the planet on a long-range shuttle to make closer observations.
Things went wrong upon reaching low-orbit, when we were suddenly being shot at by something in orbit. Out shuttle suffered multiple near-hits and glancing hits from some type of Naval PPC. Normally a shuttle couldn't survive that but the beams had relatively little power. That and the inaccuracy were explained when we found out that the Naval PPC shots were coming from beyond our detection range, likely from the edge of the orbital horizon. The damage that the shuttle had sustained combined with the threat on the horizon meant that we had to make a rapid landing.
The crew managed to crash land the shuttle in a habitable zone and during final decent we saw an actually golden pyramid nearby. We got another shock when the pyramid in question then lifted off, revealing a smaller pyramid underneath. As it slowly approached our landing site we concluded that it was actually just an AirShip with a very absurd shape. However several thousand soldiers were marching along with the Pyramid AirShip, from the distance we could see that they were equipped with ornamental weapons and armor, quite manageable with modern weapons if it wasn't for their large numbers. With the shuttle being damaged as it was we would not be able to get it airborne before these troops arrived, thus we took all the essentials that we could carry and moved away.
We had wondered if the Pyramid people were the same as those that shot us down and we got our answer in a spectacular but disastrous way, as the shuttle was vaporized by a Naval PPC from orbit at full power. At that time the Pyramid had nearly reached the shuttle, but not close enough to be damaged by the shock waves. For us it was disastrous as we lost our only means of getting back to the JumpShip and to make matters worse the Pyramid people switched objective and attempted to run us down at their maximum speed.
As the chase continued we were slowly losing our lead, which only became worse when the Pyramid AirShip began launching small fighters that had Star Empire Blaster weapons. The situation turned around when one of the fighters was shot down by unknown infantry with support launchers. Our rescuers temporary held back the enemy troops while guiding us to a circular airlock mounted into the facing of a mountain. This turned out to be an entry to the Hypertube, which is a magnetic rail-network that is under constant vacuum, allowing small Puddle-Trains to travel at hyper-sonic speeds. After a short trip we arrived at the Vancouver Mountain Complex which is a military base build around the main network point in their territory.
At the base we were interviewed and then quickly recruited, no extensive interrogation, no impounding our equipment, all very easy barely an inconvenience. Within a hour we went from an ad hoc assembled IE Team to Platoon HTX-9. As a part of HTX-9 we had a generally good time, helped a lot people, killed several Pharaoh Lords along with their minions, an all around good time.
<<<< One of the training classes that IE provides is how to approach regressed civilizations. The very second lesson of that class teaches to never directly contradict their mythology or cosmology, just shut up and listen. If one doesn't do that, then you can have religious conflict on your hands. But let me tell you, these people really tested our patience. This is because their cosmology has regressed and deformed into something truly bizarre. They think that their planet is the milky way galaxy, with each island or region being a planet and that all the stars in the sky are either other islands or glowing jellyfish.
I can't even really blame them as their religions, weird climate, and ecology of the planet really messed their worldview up. But one would think that with their technology that they would have rediscovered the truth. In any case the data that we are gathering should make for one hell of a sociology paper. >>>>>Historical Analysis There are far more civilizations trapped in the Nebula California then we had detailed in our initial report. One interesting set of civilizations originated from the action of a 24th century con artist named Anita Salzak. She sought out rich individuals and sold them routes to planets in the Deep Periphery, using the claim to have found ancient alien technology there. To convince them, she created stories of how she used clues from ancient cultures to find these planets, normally that wouldn't be enough to convince anyone, but she also showed samples of suppository alien technology. Eventually a deal went bad and she was murdered, in the following investigation the police uncovered the scam and managed to determine that the samples were actually rejected prototypes that she borrowed from her contacts in various R&D labs. However most of the names of her clients and their routes were lost with her death, from our finding here we can conclude that some of their routes lead into the Nebula California.
One of her easy clients lead a large group of radicalized egyptologists. These ended up on Chevron, which has a large number of large islands, each separated by powerful permanent storms and sea water that is as so black as the night sky. To facilitate the numerous excavations the colonists heavily invested in creating a network of high-speed subterranean transport tubes between all sites and a floating hub city. However these heavy investments left barely anything left for normal colony measures against technological regression. But this gamble was made to maximize their chances of finding ancient alien technology and monopolizing it for maximum profit. However after a decade of hard work they didn't find anything, causing some to abandon the effort to move back to the Inner Sphere, it was then that they discovered that they were stuck in the nebula. Seeing no other option they returned to the excavation to inform the others, but news that they were trapped caused society to break down. The following riots destroyed a lot of infrastructure, including the hub city, which sank in the black ocean. This caused a chain reaction that made most tubes inoperative, dividing the planet in a number of isolated regions. Until recently contact between both had been impossible at there are extremely powerful air and water currents between the two zones.
Terry Terry is a large region set in a massive water-filled impact crater, it also the largest reservoir of fresh water as the mountainous impact ring keeps out the contamination that blackens the ocean water of the world. Another unusable aspect is that the shape of largest islands in the ring matches the continents of Terra, it is unclear if this was fully natural or part of the local terraforming. In this region there are a number of countries which have recently reconnected their side to the hypertube network. This brought them into conflict with the Pharaoh Lords. Thankfully for them they have been receiving technical assistance from the Protectorate enabling them to defend themselves. In terms of development the nations of this region can be compared to late 20th century Terra, the more advanced technology used in their military have either been reverse-engineered Pharaoh technology or donations from the Protectorate.
New Mediterranean New Mediterranean, a set of regions ruled by warlords that see themselves as divine pharaohs, using the names of Gods from the Mediterranean area of Terra (with some unusual exceptions such as Pharaoh Daimon). They rule from large pyramid shaped airships and similar arcologies over a population of mostly illiterate slaves. These slaves believe that their Pharaoh Lords are divine, that the whole universe is one big ocean, that stars are giant jellyfish and that the Pharaoh Lords control the sun. From their AirShips they are easily able to intimidate the slaves and put down any rare rebellions. These slaves are mostly put to work growing food or gathering raw materials from surface deposits, such as uranium ore. There are also two other castes, these being the Guard and Priest Castes. The Guard Caste serve as enforces and troops. The Priest caste are the only ones allowed to have a formal education and support the technology that keeps their society going.
To keep internal conflict from escalating the Pharaoh Lords are unified under a ruthless Supreme Pharaoh that sets policy, enforces their laws and distributes advanced technology. A place in the council must be earned, this can be done in various ways, such as conquering new lands or by offering newly found technologies.
Their technology is quite advanced, but highly specialized and mostly stagnant. Most of their advancements are made by secretive teams of priests, that refine existing technologies. They then create black-boxed designs that prevent the lower castes from gaining any understanding. Thankfully there is little chance of them breaking planetary quarantine as their tendency to stagnate, caste culture and flawed worldview should prevent them from reaching space on their own.
The Pharaoh Lords are still obsessed with finding Ancient Alien technologies, and so much of their own history was lost that they even think that the equipment of the original colonists is of alien origin. This might someday lead them to the sunken Hub City, a submersible mobile structure that the original colonists build, which could have working examples of Small Craft or DropShips for them to reverse engineer.
They have reverse engineered other technologies before, the most extreme example was an outbound Star Empire derelict crossed the void between the two star systems and crashing on the planet. From this wreckage and many others the Pharaoh Lords somehow managed to reverse engineer the Blaster and Shield technologies. These technologies and refined materials allowed them to quickly dominate a majority of their planet, only being limited by the harsh climate of their territories.
Protectorate At some point in the Pharaoh Lords near domination of the planet something changed and another party named the 'Protectorate' began involve themselves in local matters. They have been keeping an eye on the Pharaoh Lords to prevent them from salvaging more technologies to keep them stagnant. This includes giving support and protection to other factions on the planet so that the Pharaoh Lords don't get the opportunity to rule the whole planet. Their name isn't know to our team but we do know that these benefactors present themselves as Alien, our team suspects that they did this to make Pharaoh Lords to respect them as the Lords won't respect mere humans. These mysterious benefactors have helped the Terries to produce their own military AirShips, we also suspect that it was them that shot down our Small Craft and then used a Naval PPC to remove the wreckage from existence.
<<<<<Note: Last recorded entry: We were just informed that the Protectorate want to meet us. These 'aliens' have been helping the Terry hold their ground for years so we can't really refuse, even if they are the prime suspects for having shot us down. We are quite sure that it is a Wizard of Oz scenario, the technology that they are donating is clearly newly build human technology. Here is to hoping that they can be convinced to send us home and truly help the locals to defeat the Supreme Pharaoh and the other Lords.>>>>>Technological Specifications The locals have a preference to deploying infantry squads as they can make optimal usage of the HyperTube Network, in other situations it is mostly a combination of advanced support vehicles such as AirShips and fixed-wing fighters. The latter are similar in scale to the Star Empire T-Fighter but far less sophisticated. The main type of power supply for the airship are fission reactors, some of them use weapons-grade material for use as an improvised self-destruction system.
TERRY FIGHTER Mass: 10 tons
Type: Fixed Wing SV (D)
Power Plant: ICE (4/6)
Armor: 0.5 tons (BAR 6)
Typical Armament:
2 Machine Guns
1 External Stores Hardpoint
GLIDE FIGHTER Mass: 9 tons
Type: Fixed Wing SV (D)
Power Plant: Fission (3/5)
Armor: 0.5 tons (BAR 5)
Typical Armament:
2 Large Blaster Cannons
TERRY AIRSHIP Mass: 300 tons
Type: Medium AirShip (E), Omni
Power Plant: Fission (2/3)
Armor: 4.5 tons (BAR 8 )
Typical Armament:
24 Machine Guns
1 LRM-15 (Primitive Guidance)
2 Fighter Deflector Shields
Notes:
The local Terries had a lot help from the mysterious Protectorate in designing and producing this AirShip, but the current weapons are completely locally made and thus quite primitive. With machine guns covering all facings and a forward facing long-range missile launcher that only has missiles with primitive guidance. Such guidance systems are so sensitive that even modern communication suites can jam them, locally it means that Fighter Deflector Shields cause premature detonations of these LRM missiles. Another unusual feature of this airship is the fighter bay which can store multiple small fighters, although it does not have a higher launch rate to take full advantage of this.
However there are clues that this AirShip can be upgraded, the power plant housing is compatible with known fusion models, and the design uses omni-connectors. A closer look into the software found hidden configuration files for Clan weapons, such as plasma cannons, lasers, missile launchers, and various gauss rifles.
PYRAMID AIRSHIP Mass: 1000 tons
Type: Large AirShip (D)
Power Plant: Fission (1/2)
Armor: 4 tons (BAR 8 )
Typical Armament:
8 Laser Cannons
1 Fighter Deflector Shield
Notes:
The Pyramid airship is designed to intimidate, a massive floating pyramid covered in a golden coating and able to fire energy weapons. In practice it is rarely in combat, it is mostly the throne and home of the Pharaoh Lord that owns it, showing their control over the arcology over which it is parked.
The unusual shape did require that most of the weight has to be placed at the lower levels. As such the top of the pyramid has the quarters of the Pharaoh Lord and their personal guards, just below that is the fighter bay, and the lowest levels contain the reactors, weapons, infantry compartments and cargo bays.
