Ten-K

Yet another rough draft idea/ pre-alpha version for a free-roaming sci-fi campaign:

It is the year 12010, by the old reckoning… Give or take a century.

The human race, as it was, is long gone. Various branches of humanity have either transcended this
dimension, others have mutated into a thousand different ‘species’, or bound their minds in eternal steel
or the stars themselves as the Terrans have.

A hundred-thousand worlds are either teeming with life, mysteriously bereft of it, or have been burned to
cinder by forces unknown.

Jumpgates, created by pre-Ascension humans, or other equally powerful entities are the primary means
of travel. It is true that sometimes what goes into one gate may emerge somewhere else entirely or not
at all, but overall it beats the alternative.

The Stochastic drive is the only alternative to the gates that doesn’t involve cryo-sleep and a transit time
measured in thousands of years. The S-Drive tears a hole through space that the vessel falls into, and
keeps falling in a dimension where an object at rest tends to stay in motion, and energy increases
exponentially over time. The S-Drive acts as ‘brakes’ that attempt to slow the vessel down, otherwise
the ship will continue to accelerate into what passes as infinity in that dimension, if the drive fails. 

Given that neither space nor time in Stochastic Space have a direct one to one relationship with
Real Space, navigation is left to those with Psionic ‘gifts’ or borderline insane AI systems that
exist on the verge of becoming singularities, but their madness allows them to make sense of
S-Space in a way that no sane sentient could. Even with a good navigator, being off the mark
temporally or spatially by some amount is to be expected.

Polities exist by the thousand in every conceivable form. With habitable worlds being so plentiful,
and FTL travel readily available, new ones are founded almost daily by the malcontents of regimes
looking to make a ‘better world’ for themselves.

With such diversity, and the varying FTL options presenting substantial logistical issues
(i.e. Communication between systems relies exclusively on what news a vessel may bring.
FTL broadcast does not exist.) maintaining a massive galactic empire is not currently feasible,
but there is the Council.

The Council exists as a venue where the most powerful polities meet to work out trade agreements,
promote cultural exchange, win support for wars on lesser polities and engage in never-ending
scheming and espionage against one another.