Space Cantons Mini-Campaign III

With Fever Dreaming Marlinko (the first Dunes stretch goal adventure) going through proofing, Anthony's Cali Dunes manuscript going through its first round of comments/edits (so excited), and the Misty Isles of the Eld getting all playtested and written, I finally feel like I have some mental room to juggle some other things.

And those things as a palate cleanser point away from D&D and toward my old love Classic Traveller. The following is one of the hooks from my new Tuesday mini-campaign shared here because I hear sharing is caring. (My past Traveller house rules, variants and mini-campaign whoha can be seen here.)

The Adventure Hook

The Cerny Vlk, the subsector-famous Boloerium (a paraterraformed asteroid-vessel used for intra-system travel, see library data below) dedicated to preserving pre-uplift wolf stock--and manned by a cooperative of self-styled “lycanthropes”--has gone “dark” according to months-old reports from The Grange. That wild and wooly system of micro-republics hunkered down on trojan-point planetoids has produced a not-too surprisingly conflicting range of hotly-contested salvage claims. Putting hard credits where their vacc-suited comm-boxes are, the system's two fiestiest polities, Cockyagne and Hayduke, are reportedly both offering 500,000 CR bounties to a crack “salvage and rescue team” for in-hand repossession of the outbound ship.

Cylinder Interior (click to enlarge).
Scale is 250 meters per hex. Map "north" and "south" wrap around. 

Library Data: the Cerny Vlk Boloerium

Like most boloeriums, the CV is dual-roled as asteroid space habitats and intra-space vessel. The CV was constructed under the auspices of the Vlk Foundation, a philo-bolo (collective doubling as a non-profit charity), six decades ago for service in the Grange system. The foundation's terse bullet-pointed mission statement blandly refers to “pre-uplift conservation” and “maintaining the green fire of wild abandon that burns away the blandishments and corruption of hypermediated civilized life” as the Foundation's guiding vision.

The habitat's interior is a hollow cylinder 6 kilometers long with the long sides sloping upwards precipitously for a “height” of 1 kilometer.

The central space is dominated by an artificial lighting and weather system that simulates cloud cover that cycles randomly between a fine rain, partly cloudy and partly sunny conditions on a twice “daily” cycle. The ten hour “night period” is experienced universally across the interior when the “sunline” lighting is reduced to a low blue-gelled hue. Internal temperatures are set to range between a low of 45-60 and a high of 55-75 Fahrenheit.

Internally the CV underwent an extension biome renovation two decades ago, the old patchwork of 114 micro-biomes was replaced with two larger more continuous biome zones (and two sub-zones) to reflect a change in program direction by the Vlk Foundation:

1. Tundra. A large rolling plains like space punctuated by moody dark grey spray-foam rock formations. Contains xeno-caribou and giant jackalope herds for game.

2. Tanglewald. A dense twin-canopy bramble forest that is in fact a single rhizomatic macro-organism.

3. The Boreal Forest. Massive black-trunked conifers and large ferns cloned from ancient primordal amber tower over this micro-biome. Houses the White Lodge, a “Future-Past Age” spiritual healing center complete with enema kivas and healing lasers.

4. The Lake. Freshwater lake complete with paddle boat rental, tea pavillion and prediluvian megafauna.

The habitat in perpetual spin (assisted by the Forward Unit) creating internal gravity set at 0.8.

The CV is also set on a perpetual intra-system vector between the grange points hitting all of the major asteroids on the route in a slow annual route. It is impossible under the current Cantonment level of advancement (TL 13) to build power plants and jump systems large enough to be used on a Boloerium.

External structures include:

1. The Forward Unit or “Spinner”. The original complex set up at the aft of the asteroid to excavate the asteroid and importantly to to create its original spin with chemical propulsion systems (and which today serve as an emergency or correction system).

2. The Main Gate. An exterior complex of docking gates, observation decks, warehouses, schlocky gift shops and elevators to the interior.

3. The Pleasure Dome. A domed space to use “party as a verb.” Includes a small personal airlock and all the space mollusk tripdust one can hope for. Defenestrations are purely optional.