2. UNDERSTANDING SPACE
A Brief History
Oh right, this’ll be easy, then. Just summarise the entire history of a few-thousand planets in a few-hundred words, shall I?[13] OK, fine. But I’m only going to give you the beginning, then skip to the end: the sagas that make up much of SPACE’s history are so long and complex they can only be told via the interminable means of opera, and we’ve certainly not got time for that.
Nobody is quite sure when humans first began to cruise the void, but every culture in SPACE – aliens included – remembers the Space Men being there already when they reached the stars. The Space Men, however, claim to have no idea where they came from, or – if they’re really honest – what they’re doing. Ask them directly and they’ll just start babbling on about the Mission while getting increasingly anxious.[14] There are rumours, however, that SPACE was inhabited long before even the Space Men. The Captains of Syndicated Space regularly encounter artefacts and derelicts belonging to a people called the Forebears, who apparently lived ages ago – but beyond that, almost nothing is known about them.
Floyd’s Note
For ages, when people told me about the Forebears, I thought they were talking about Four Bears, and I got incredibly confused – sounded like the shittest creation myth ever. So, to be perfectly clear, there are no bears involved in the history of SPACE (apart from the Multibears of Ursinos VI, that is, but there were way more than four of them).
SPACE Today
SPACE has had its ups and downs, but especially since the Syndicate banned all war outside the Galaxy, it has been a fairly tranquil place. Indeed, other than the Blundakh plague on Pletphah VII, the unexplained horror nimbus around Star Omega Six, and the other few minor, episodic crises one expects to crop up from day to day, there’s never been a better time to visit. Or to claim planets in Earth’s name![15], [16]
Climate and Terrain
Except for the region of Hard Vacuum, whose fastidiously bleak inhabitants have gone out of their way to make their local environment as true to its name as possible, SPACE is not a true void at all. As such, it has weather like any other atmosphere, but considerably weirder, from the devastating firestorms of solar flares to the astonishingly pleasant phenomenon known as astro-snow. The planets and moons, of course, each have their own climates and landscapes, although they tend to fall into several common categories:
Earthlike planets look uncannily like humanity’s real-world home, only with randomised coastlines and maybe some different bugs. Perfect if you want to pack light.
‘Palette swap’ worlds are often alien home worlds and, reflecting the nature of their inhabitants, tend to look like earthlike planets, but with different coloured foliage, water and sky.
Poly-Badlands planets, often encountered by away teams from Syndicate ships, resemble lifeless deserts, full of strange rock formations. The terrain is not made from rock, however, but from a strange, naturally-occurring form of expanded polystyrene, which tends to wobble alarmingly when a Captain is slammed against one while being strangled by a rubbery-skinned alien.
Single-biome planets, common in the Galaxy region, are entirely covered in one extremely unimaginative terrain type, such as swamp, snow or lava. Sometimes they are also palette-swapped, but don’t be fooled.
Wildlife
One might expect SPACE to be packed with incomprehensible wild beasts. But, just as is the case with its technologically advanced aliens, most of its fauna is startlingly comprehensible, being just a couple of anatomical degrees removed from familiar animal life. Nonetheless, there are some interesting specimens out there:
THE VAST AND THE CURIOUS
Spend enough time in a nebula and you’ll almost certainly encounter the marvellous Astrocetaceans, more commonly known as SPACE Whales. While nothing like whales biologically (they appear more like gigantic, gas-filled worms), these filter-feeding drifters are well named, thanks to their enormous size, mournful foghorn cries and inquisitive, intelligent nature. While they are content to feed on astroplankton, however, their sheer scale means they will often swallow up anything not capable of getting out of the way fast enough – such as Space Man rocketships that have suffered equipment failures. It’s not uncommon to look through the translucent hide of an Astrocetacean and find a colony of glum, bearded Space Men dejectedly banging on the walls of the body cavity in the hope you’ll let them out.
The bizarre Astrofish (Piscis Stellaris) appear remarkably similar to terrestrial fish, swimming through the void in the thicker nebulae and congregating in shoals millions strong. When they exhaust the food in one gas patch, they’ll build up speed and leap into the void, where they’ll freeze solid and drift until they hit another patch of air. Consequently, they’re a dreaded navigational hazard, and any SPACE Captain lives in terror of a fish strike, when thousands of frozen Astrofish will start punching through their vessel’s hull without warning.
The creatures known as Xenads (Pseudoscolopendra Badejo), resembling giant centipedes, are thought to have been engineered by the Forebears either as a bioweapon or a truly horrendous prank. With their reputed habit of laying eggs in the mouths of unfortunate travellers, they tend to be exterminated as soon as a colony is discovered. And hey, even if they don’t lay eggs in
