Haydee Chronicles

Welcome onboard the Neo-Jovian frigate Haydée, formerly the Juan Carlos IV of the Republic of Cygnus. A relic of the Solarian War, the ship had been laid up for half a decade before being seized by a group of Neo-Jovian commandos. A few short months of overhaul couldn't remotely put to right decades of hard use and poor maintenance, but nonetheless the renamed Haydée was launched.

Pocket history of the Solarian Federation

The events that led to the creation of the Solarian Federation are often considered to have begun with the Falcon I expedition to Minerva and the course it charted for the inhabitants of Erde. High resolution photography taken from the orbiting voidcraft confirmed not only the existence of the vast, ancient canal network but also discovered the Great Pyramids - ancient structures the size of mountains, presumably built by the same people who built the canals. This electrified the world and accelerated the already-extant three-way 'space race' and within a decade, all three of the great powers had Minervan outposts with other, smaller nations racing for similar abilities. It was what was found inside the Great Pyramids by Northern Coordinate Union explorers on the Falcon VI that truly changed history however.

It had long been theorized and more recently confirmed that the clouds of glowing gas in the outskirts of the Solar system were vast streams of ether leading out to other stars, moreoever, ancient myths spoke of how humans had once sailed along them. No mechanism or technique had properly explained how to accomplish this feat though, despite several attempts over the preceeding decade. Found inside the Great Pyramids were ancient starmaps and, even more excitingly, a number of enigmatic devices. After long study it was determined that they could be used to open routes between stars, albeit at great energy cost.

As the original discoverers the Northern Coordinate Union took the lead but it would be all but impossible to proceed alone and haltingly, the great powers came together in the goal of reaching the stars. Industry and colonization began near the gas giant Jovis in order to take advantage of its energetic environment. The entire process was to take a generation and then some, undisputably the largest megaproject in Solarian history. At the culmination of this immense energies were directed to the mechanism and in a brilliant flash of light, the portal was opened. Exploration found a marginally habitable world on the far side. Unanticipated imperfections led to setbacks and isolations, but for every step back two were made forward. The new age of colonization had begun.

Over the next half-century the remaining devices were used to open a small network of star gates; at the same time methods to cross the etheric streams were developed and more worlds were discovered. Some were habitable, more were not, a few had evidence of ancient habitation.

A few more were already inhabited.

These planet-bound folk were of great interest to the Solarians; the most advanced of them wielded muskets and cannon, hardly a threat to combat jets, power armor and orbital bombers. As such relations were surprisingly cordial - at least from the perspective of the Solarians. Many academics wanted contact to be limited and controlled, but controlling access to entire planets was impossible and soon enough sophisticated Solarian goods could be found across known space and products began to flow from the 'Other' Worlds. Kings, Caliphs and Viziers eagerly sought the patronage of powerful - or generous - Solarian states, willingly prostrating themselves to offworlders for greater temporal power. Dangerous and destabilization ideologies also spread to these worlds, and in some the regime was changed to eliminate odious institutions such as slavery. Perhaps most importantly, the Solarians discovered the practice of sorcery. While vexingly Solarians seemed to have little aptitude for it, it nonethless validated ancient myths.

As the Expansion Era came to a close, Solarian explorers first encountered other spacefaring humans. Long considered simply of a matter of time, this provoked excitement as opposed to surprise. Meeting other spacefarers led to new insights in various disciplines, most notably in star travel and sorcery. Unfortunately, relations were hardly uniformly friendly and several small conflicts peppered the subsequent decades. Worse yet - far worse - were genuinely alien intelligences, lurking in the deep darkness and inaccessible reaches of space-time. The ancient Nephilim benefactors these were not.

Running parallel to this was the practice of human augmentation. The intersection of technology and near-religious desire to follow in the footsteps of the Nephilim saw the development of many methods to 'improve' the lot of humanity, sometimes in rather unwise and exclusive ways. At the centuriad of the opening of the first star gate Solarian society had became one with a clear stratum of enhancements ranging from the highly-enhanced near-superhumans to the poor baselines. It was in this environment that the Solarian Federation was founded, the official blessing of a supranational government that avoided many of the flaws of earlier and less ambitious attempts.

Combat Rules

Taking Actions

Roll 2D10 + skill + modifiers vs target number

Rule of 10 - gunfire

A 10 on a gunfire roll allows for another dice to be rolled; it also reduces the critical threshold (see below) by 1.

Damage

Rule of 10 - damage

A 10 on a damage dice means that a critical has occurred. This number is modified by scaling (see below) and the rule of 10 - gunfire (see above)

A modified value greater than 10 means that multiple 10s are required, with every additional 10 rolled increasing the effective critical roll by 1; two 10s will cause a single critical on threshold 11, three 10s at threshold 12, etc.

Protection

Protective measures reduce damage taken on a 1:1 basis BEFORE modifiers are applied (eg, scaling)

Damage Thresholds

Units have multiple damage thresholds. Stress and Damage is inflicted is as per the highest threshold reached, but any added effects are cumulative with lower thresholds (if any)

Minor: 1 Stress

Major: 2 Stress, 1 Damage, Critical roll

Vital 3 Stress, 3 Damage, Vital Critical roll

Stress & Damage

Units accumulate Stress as they take weapon hits; this covers minor damage, items knocked out of alignment, crew casualties, etc.

Damage is related, but covers more severe damage, elimination of backup systems, etc.

The primary difference is that Stress can be removed via actions while Damage is permanent (at least in battlefield terms)

Stress floats 'above' Damage on the damage track, and as Damage is taken, Stress icons are converted to Damage icons.

Stress icon: /

Damage Track

As stress or damage accumulates, the structure track is filled up. At certain points (normally every 10), a critical roll is applied. If the structure track is entirely filled up by stress, the unit is nonfunctional if (marginally) salvageable.

Every point of stress or damage taken when a unit has a full structure track converts one point of stress to one point of damage. Once the structure track is entirely full of damage, the unit is blown into confetti.

Component Damage

Components (engines, etc) have their own stress tracks which are generally much shorter and have defined effects as stress/damage is applied. A component that has a full stress bar is entirely offline.

Stress on components can be removed as normal, but damage is (tactically) permanent. For every point of stress a component takes once its stress track is full, convert one point of stress to damage.

A component that has its stress track full of damage is nothing but scrap and will need to be entirely replaced, or see so much repair work that it would be effectively replaced.

Scaling

Moving up or down relative scales moves the offense/protection and accuracy/evasion bonuses in opposite directions; larger guns/targets are more powerful/tougher but easier to hit/less accurate and vice versa.

Scaling also adjusts the rule of 10 for damage; Modify the critical threshold by 1 per weapon scale difference (positive or negative)

Critical scaling

When critical hits inflict damage or stress, the scale diffence modifies the amount taken by +/- 1 point each per stage difference - larger weapons will inflict more punishing criticals on smaller components.

Component Rules

Shields

Shields are a protection system and as such, weaken all weapon attacks uniformly.

Shields have two stress tracks; a component track which represents the physical integrity and operation of the generator(s) and a bubble track which represents the shield bubble proper.

The bubble track is filled up every time an attack is successfully strikes the shielded target and penetrates the shield

The amount of bubble stress taken defaults to 2 but is doubled or halved for every weapon superiority or inferiority stage - this means small weapons will find it difficult or impossible to bring down strong shields.

Accumulated bubble stress will progressively reduce the effectiveness of shields; at full bubble stress the shield is temporarily offline until it is rebubbled, which removes all bubble stress.

Shields that are online will steadily remove stress every turn as they regenerate; shields that are offline due to a full bubble track do not regenerate and must be rebubbled.

Destabilizers attack the energetic structure of the shield itself and inflict damage, not stress; this can only be removed by deactivating the shield and then rebubbling.