House Aramin

Turns

Agents_Of_Empire/Turns/Introduction/House_Aramin
Agents_Of_Empire/Turns/1/House_Aramin

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!

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)

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.

The Colony

The colony is on a densely jungled and swampy world known by the formal designation ARS-232, with relatively small and highly scattered oceans. 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; few physical artifacts of their time remain, 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).

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.

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• What sort of planet is the colony on and what is its name, what's the terrain like, what resources are found on the planet
• What does the colony do (ie, why is there a colony here?) Was it for resource-gathering (farming, mining, etc), industry, military training, or what? ('Research' and 'tourism' are probably stylistically bad choices, so I wouldn't pick those as the primary thing)
• What nearby planets might be of interest?