The Multibears (Ursa Plethora) of Ursinos VI nearly threatened to end all life in SPACE. Seemingly innocuous, almost rather cute orange bears, they had the unfortunate habit of duplicating at terrifying speed whenever someone looked at them, and soon multiplied to fill nine entire star systems. Amazingly, it turned out that in this one case in the entire history of apocalyptic catastrophes, the solution to the problem really was to ignore it until it went away.[18]
Beings of Pure Energy (Energia Etcetera) are repulsively common in SPACE, and come in many varieties, differentiated largely by the colour of the whirly balls of lightning they’re made up of. Everyone gets really excited when they come across their first BPE, until they realise it’s essentially just vermin that looks like a shit special effect, and which is determined to dive into their personal electronics and fuck them up beyond repair.
People
Once again, while there’s no hope of introducing the vast range of SPACE’s cultures within the confines of this guide, there are certain groups you’re almost certain to come across.
The Space Men
The Space Men are a culture of intense, square-jawed, utterly identical human men.[19] It’s believed they’re all descended from a single ace pilot, although wherever he came from has either vanished or is yet to be discovered. Either way, he was stranded on a tiny asteroid, and injected himself with an untested serum which turned him into a self-replicating organism. His millions of weird identical sons used floating debris to turn that asteroid into the city-sized structure known today as Outpost Bravo, and the rest is history. Although physically strong and mathematically gifted, the Space Men are weirdly helpless, endlessly getting into dire predicaments that they don’t quite have the wits to fix. They’re also extremely anxious about fulfilling the original Space Man’s Mission,[20] although none of them have much of an idea what it was, beyond vague exploration. Professionals to the last, they wear their SPACEsuits at all times, talk using radio slang even in face-to-face conversation, and huff down cigarettes non-stop. Although they’re neither SPACE’s most accomplished inhabitants nor its most popular, they happened to end up building their base in the centre, so now they’re lumbered with running this neutral ground for everyone else.
Floyd’s Fact
Since they are all identical, the Space Men decide their ranks purely by how long they have survived in the face of their nightmarishly accident-prone nature. The Captain of Outpost Bravo, the Methuselah of them all, is nearly twenty-three.
Robots
The Space Men are assisted in their work by a species of self-aware yet astonishingly primitive robots. These automatons – self-assembling copies of the original Space Man’s mechanical companion – despise the Space Men, and the Space Men harbour a thunderous (and wholly reasonable) collective paranoia over the intentions and integrity of the robots. While grim tradition dictates that every Spaceman works with a lifelong robot partner, these partnerships are almost always dynamos of mutual loathing. Because of this, the two communities stay well away from each other outside of formal Mission time, with the robots of Outpost Bravo living in a greasy, sparking warren of tunnels, as far from the Space Men as possible.
SPACE Pirates
Once upon a time, armed seizure of cargo by rogue crews was a major hazard to those travelling in SPACE. But with the abolition of armed conflict across most of the sector at the behest of the Syndicate, most privateers headed to the rowdier environs of the Galaxy for richer pickings. This left something of a vacuum, into which stepped several retired Captains from Spume.[21] They brought with them their philosophy and methodology of piracy, and while it took them a while to master the art of sailing the nearly void, they’ve become rather successful. When a SPACE Pirate vessel threatens a boarding action, most Captains would rather instantly capitulate and pay for them to go away than endure the time-consuming, theatrical nonsense of Spume-style buccaneering.
SHADOWS IN THE VOID
Despite the enlightened technological nature of its inhabitants, SPACE is a place that lends itself well to ghost stories. All over the sector, you’ll occasionally hear tales of ships half-glimpsed: phantom vessels cloaked behind shimmering force fields, which project fleeting images and thoughts into the minds of the crews who encounter them before vanishing without a trace. Some say these ships are an alien species yet to be formally encountered, while others argue they are the Forebears themselves, still around after all these years, silently observing their domain. Either way, they’re really creepy.
Aliens
There are around seventy known species of sentient alien, with virtually all of them conforming to a fairly standard humanoid configuration:
The sweating, gargle-voiced Hunglrrrrgh (aka the dogmen)[22] are an honourable people beloved to the Stellar Warriors; their thick coat of reeking fur seems to give them the impression that it’s fine to walk around completely starkers. I suppose it would be fine if the fur at least covered their big grim balls.[23]
The deathly dull Hephaestans, who co-govern the Syndicate with humans,[24] literally just look like people with a bit of make-up and weird hair. I’m told they’ve got slightly odd necks, but I’m not really seeing it.
PEW! PEW! WHOOSH! PEW!
Part of the joy of the Stellar Warriors’ obstinately martial culture is their utter refusal to abandon weapons and tactics that make next to no sense in a high-tech SPACE combat environment. Their greatest heroes, the Sword Monks, insist on fighting with the blades that give them their name, while the outcomes of even the largest fleet engagements, between dozens of mile-long vessels, will always be decided by the actions of squadrons of tiny fighter craft. Everyone wonders why the Warriors maintain this archaic, inefficient means of fighting, until they take a ride in the passenger seat of an Insurrectionist C-7Z and realise it’s the most
