House Aramin

Turns

House Overview

A small, young house which just broke off of House Sulei less than a century ago. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- their small size, they've shown remarkable rate of technological development in that short time, and thus proved to be a very important player in the alliance against House Gwyne.

Players

vimes
Jota
Lucian

House Skills

Trade: Average
Industry: Good
Research: Good
Exploration: Average
Diplomacy: Bad
Military: Average

House Aspects

(Two things of note about the House that can be used to benefit/penalize character actions wrt that house -- this could be unusual talents possessed by the members, a particular House ethos, some standard-issue piece of equipment, etc)

Jarou Allies - The Jarou are an race of alien shapeshifters with no homeworld. They have joined with House Aramin in the hope of being able to found a home colony on the far side of the wormhole.

Experimental High-Tech Gadgetry - Aramin's research laboratories are constantly churning out clever improvements on existing devices. Characters associated with House Aramin are usually equipped with gadgets which are not quite standard issue and which usually have special features or enhanced functionality that more mundane tools lack.

House Background

(More about the House, history, governance, name of home planet or planets, any special assets, etc)

Characters of Interest

(list characters in the house, players or non-players. players should have a more complete skillset listed, but you don't have to decide now who is who. it would be useful to know the names of important/significant people in the house even if they aren't present on the colony -- eg, the head of the house)

Rick Starfarer

(PC, Jota)

An explorer with a laser machete and spacepilot goggles. He was born to fly through wormholes and visit strange new alien planets.

As a boy, Rick grew up on stories of the ancient explorers: seeking out new star systems in their tiny one-person spacecraft, battling alien monsters never seen before by human eyes in hand-to-hand combat, sleeping out under the stars of unfamiliar constellations... Of course, he knew that they were all completely made up, but they inspired him to explore the "strange alien worlds" in the forests near his family's homestead, to join the Imperial Scouts ("Be Prepared Or Die", as the motto goes), and to eventually volunteer to join the team heading to ARS-232.

Skills
Great: Survival, Investigation
Good: Vehicles, Weapons (Exotic), Athletics
Average: Weapons (Other), Engineering, Socializing (Aliens), Academics
Bad: Socializing (Other), Criminal, Stealth

Aspects
Daredevil
Imperial Scout
This Is Just Like What Happened To Lance Trooper In Issue #324 Of True Space Stories
I Don't Have Time For This; I Have Important Exploring To Do!

Standing Orders
[Aramin]|17:40 Jota says, "Oh, by the way: if I ever forget to give Rick an action, just assume that I want him to explore some hex that's the highest difficulty he can do."

Reig

(PC, Lucian)

Like all his kind, Reig has no home planet-the hostile and ever-changing planet on which his species evolved has long since torn itself to pieces. But it bequeathed his kind with incredible adaptability: Jarou all have flexible musculature, yards of loose skin that can be tucked away or stretched out, a rearrangable skeletal system, and retractable translucent fur whose color reflects the adjustable pigmentation of the skin underneath.

Reig's great Athletics is explained by his being an alien evolved on a very tough planet; his great Socializing is explained by a mild latent psychic ability to induce calm in others, plus his extensive training as an ambassador. His good Stealth is explained by his ability to camouflage himself and morph into something appropriate for the terrain. His good Primitive Weapons are his natural weapons, notably his razor-sharp claws (normally retracted, but able to be unsheathed instantly from the majority of his forms). His Good Academics are because he has studied extensively to obtain his current post as ambassador.

Great:
Athletics (Physical); Socializing [Politicians] (Social)

Good:
Primitive Weapons [claws] (Combat); Academics (Knowledge); Stealth (Subterfuge); Socializing [other] (Social)

Average:
Weapons [other] (Combat); Investigation (Perception); Survival (Mundane); Criminal (Subterfuge)

Bad:
Engineering (Craft); Vehicles (Drive)

Aspects:
Shapeshifter
"Guys, I'm still working on it; I just need you to help me on this one thing." (for calling other Jarou backup)

Default action
something political if need be; otherwise assist with research or, really, whatever you all want.

Jude Farlight

(PC, vimes)

Jude is a whiz-bang engineer who isn't also a complete social outcast. Sure, he's more comfortable talking with droids than with people, but there's something about his easy-going demeanor that takes off the edge with other people. He was awarded an honorary degree for his work with the unusual dual-mode crystal seeds (particularly, developing a technique to more quickly identify and discard the self-opposed crystals). Later, he turned down the House post of Chief Engineer ("too many people, not enough grease"), accepting instead an R&D position with essentially zero oversight (and not much budget, though his R&D group does enjoy somewhat preferential treatment from the family in return for getting all the inconvenient problems).

Great: Engineering, Vehicles
Good: Academics, Socializing (Technicians and Engineers), Socializing (Droids)
Average: Survival, Stealth, Investigation, Athletics, Socializing (Other)
Bad: Criminal, Weapons (Exotic)
No, REALLY bad: Weapons (Other)

Aspects:

Intuitive Engineer - Jude sees good engineering solutions quickly and easily, almost without thought. It takes him some time to work out why they're good and correct sometimes, especially when they're harder problems. He is also likely to see the engineering solution before other solutions. "Hey, this gas pump is broken." "Ok, I'll go rig up a gravity siphon and pop open the storage tank." "Or...you could just use the other gas pump." "Oh hey, that didn't even occur to me!"

Hyperfocus - Jude easily enters into a "fugue" state, where he can ignore all distractions to concentrate on solving a particularly tricky problem. On the negative side, Jude easily enters into a "fugue" state, where he does ignore all distractions to concentrate on solving a particularly tricky problem.
Least Threatening - Jude has a friendly, easy-going attitude. Nobody feels intimidated by him; nobody thinks he's scary; he tends to be looked over as a threat or target of first priority. He doesn't seem like a pushover or a wimp, per se - although a mugger might see him as a preferable target to a combat veteran, he wouldn't be seen as an "easy mark". On the other hand, he'll never manage to intimidate anything out of anyone.
Aramin's Favorite Engineers - See character brief.

Standing Orders:

First priority: Assist with building if skills are highly appropriate or if we can't afford it otherwise
Second priority: Assist with research - tech tree advances, buildings, or units in that order of precedence

Kyil

(PC, lpsmith)

[Putting this here, even though he's on Vefna at the moment, since there is no Vefna page. Also, this isn't a non-Jarou, but hopefully he's a different type of character anyway.]

Being dragged along with his parents to the far side of the wormhole to colonize some dump of a planet was bad enough, but then they didn't even end up on that dump, but on some *other* dump of a planet, which was, if possible, even worse than the first one sounded. His parent were all 'This is a great opportunity for Jarou everywhere blah blah' and 'Aren't we lucky we're the ones who can finally blah' when all Kyil wanted to do was hang out with the other kids after school in the Holy Names School for Wayward Aliens and see how long they could set fire to things before one of the nuns found them.

Then they got captured by Gwynne soldiers, which at least was exciting, but in the intervening weeks, he's discovered that if there's one thing he hates even worse than nuns, it's Gwynne soldiers. They've even picked on his baby brother, which is just too much. It's time to find a way out of here.

Skills:
Great: Criminal, Weapons(Primitive)
Good: Vehicles, Survival, Stealth, Weapons (other)
Average: Athletics, Engineering, Investigation
Bad: Academics, Socialization (everyone)

Kyil is 8 years old, which is the Jarou equivalent of a late teen. He has several tatoos and piercings which seem to intentionally interfere with his shapeshifting ability, which horrifies his parents.

Aspects:

"Don't treat my baby brother that way." Kyil has a fierce loyalty to his baby brother Puul, which he tries to keep hidden, but which is fairly obvious to anyone who observes the two of them together for any amount of time.
Tatoos and piercings. Kyil's tatoos and piercings make it hard for him to shapeshift into certain shapes, but it does mean he always has his lockpicks and other criminal paraphernalia with him.
Tolerance for Extremes. The shapeshifting ability Kyil does find useful is survival in extreme circumstances--he figured out how to get tatooed and pierced with hardly any pain at all, for example, and he's practiced a lot to survive in other unpleasant and dangerous circumstances--'who can last longer' was a game he almost always won among his friends after school.
Subversive Thinking. Kyil usually doesn't get along with people, but if they're subversive like him, they get along famously (can use Criminal instead of Socialization when talking with sufficiently lowlife scum).

Mister Boffin

(aka Agent 44-XT-Indigo, aka Christopher Trelaxe)
(NPC)

Class
Secret scholar spy clown.

Bio
The Fraternity of Scholarship is an ancient secret society of academics and researchers which studies fields that could easily get them into trouble if they were to make their work public, including areas which would undoubtedly draw the attention of the wrong kinds of people. (In short, it was founded by people who did not want to end up like Laria du Benwick.)

Trelaxe is part of the branch of the society that infiltrates other places to gather information and find out about interesting avenues of future research (and, if convenient, to appropriate a copy of their findings). He was assigned to attend the Emperor's party and investigate the rumors that someone near the emperor may be using some kind of mind-control powers to influence galactic events. As unlikely as this is, someone needed to follow up on it, and Trelaxe was the one chosen.

Unfortunately, he was assigned to attend not as a guest but disguised as an entertainer -- specifically, a clown. While there, he has heard some rather more promising rumors about wormhole research going on involving the colony worlds and possibly House Gwyne. Naturally, it was his duty to pursue them, and so he quickly arranged a position for himself in a troupe belonging to one of the colonial houses (Aramin, as it turned out), with plans to do a tour of the colony worlds. Very unfortunately, this job requires him to maintain his current cover as "Mister Boffin".

Christopher Trelaxe hates clowns.

Skills
Great: Stealth, Academics
Good: Engineering, Criminal, Investigation
Average: Vehicles, Weapons (Something), Socialization (Something)
Bad: Survival, Athletics, Weapons (Other), Socialization (Other)

Aspects
No Sense Of Humor
Voracious Reader
Member of the Fraternity of Scholarship
Something something

Tesher Bendros

(PC, Jota)

Tesher Bendros is a smuggler and occasional purveyor of black market goods. He lives on board the Old Betsy, a cargo transport that saw its best days before he was even born, held together with duct tape and hope, with more shadowy niches and loose panels than a customs team could search in a week. He's generally laid back, and he has a knack for seeming just like a regular guy. Who would ever expect that he has a secret past, and is actually nothing of the sort? Appearance: medium height, medium build, tan skin, brown hair, brown eyes. Dresses in slightly scruffy generic blue-collar clothing.

Skills
Great: Stealth, Criminal
Good: Vehicles, Weapons (Blasters), Socializing (Bureaucrats)
Average: Weapons (Other), Socializing (Other), Athletics, Academics, Engineering
Bad: Survival, Investigation

Aspects
MASTER OF DISGUISE: Tesher has a knack for becoming someone else.
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE: Once you know the tricks to pull off a good fake, it's easier to spot when someone else is using them.
OLD BETSY: Old Betsy is an old cargo transport that he bought fourth-hand (and then made a few special upgrades to).
WALKING THE LEGAL TIGHTROPE: Tesher lives in the grey areas of Imperial law, where a deep personal familiarity with the complex and often self-contradictory code of inter-stellar regulations can come in handy.

The Colony

The colony, Hau Ndogg, is on a densely jungled and swampy world known as Elvis, with relatively small and highly scattered oceans. Elvis orbits a star officially designated ARS-232, but known locally as "the Sun". Harvestable resources are Unsorted Crystals (+4 frequency, see below), Metals (+2 frequency), Food (-2 frequency) and Radioactives (-2 frequency).

In the mists of time, an ancient civilization lived on the world; any physical artifacts of their time that remain have been thus far well-hidden, but the evidence of their heavy gene-splicing and genetic engineering is found across every area of the planet. House Aramin has begun to research some of the more obviously useful of these genetically engineered creations:

Unsorted Crystals

One of the more common plants in the jungle produces as a component of its seeds a huge variety of the omnipresent crystals; it is theorized that the crystals are produced as a waste product of the highly silicate soil. This would be interesting enough in and of itself, but the crystals are unique in the known universe that they are not single-purpose. Where normally a crystal would provide one of (for example) communications transmission, or communications reception, or light focusing, or data storage, every one of these seed-crystals combine two functions.

Most of the crystals in any given area will share a crystal function; communication transmission, say. (Perhaps 1% - 5% will not have communication transmission as their 'primary' function.)

All of those crystals will have a secondary function, but it is highly likely that the secondary function will be either so weak as to be effectively useless or an essentially pointless function ("smells like cheese", or "glows purple instead of green", say). A tiny percentage will have an opposing function, basically nullifying the crystal (communication transmission and communication blocking, for instance). A larger percentage will have a useful secondary function (communication transmission and data storage), and a few of those will have a highly supportive secondary function (communications transmission and communications reception, say) instead of just some random pairing. These double-use crystals do not generally show up in enough frequency to be of use as a trade good as a whole, but they do mean that individuals in House Aramin are likely to have access to them.

The "unsorted" crystals are not generally useful in industry before they've been sorted, as some of the secondary functions can be highly dangerous if not identified (even if they are unlikely to provide any significant benefit or threat once they have been). A significant portion of Aramin's industry involves sorting and tagging the dual crystals for sale (and finding the actually useful ones for internal use, and getting rid of the duds, and putting the ones who have no identified secondary function to the side for future research).

(Photo reference)

Binary Birds

These birds, native and extremely populous in the planetary jungle, form a telepathic bond when they mate; when one mate sings, the other sings the same song, instantaneously and over planetary and (rarely) in-system distances. They also have an echo reflex - when they hear certain patterns of notes (depending on which flight or nesting they come from), they will repeat the song that follows. This provides an extremely secure mode of communications - unlike traditional insystem communication, there is nothing to tap if you cannot hear either end, and due to the extremely vocal nature of the birds, it is essentially impossible to determine what birdsong is telepathically communicated intentional echos from the other side and which are just ongoing chatter.

The birds sicken and die quickly if taken beyond the telepathy range of their mate, and cannot tolerate being in hyperdrive if their mate is not in the same ship, which restricts (but does not remove) their utility as a military advantage. They also tend to bond tightly with a single handler while they are being trained for communications use.

([Photo reference])

Unanswered Question

What nearby planets might be of interest?
- Nixon - the trickster god
- Kirk - patron deity of space explorers
- Mickey - an anthropomorphic animal-god
- Einstein - who stole relativity from the gods and gave it to man
- Marilyn - goddess of love, Mickey's consort