Rosary

Introduction

CANCELED FOREVER

More two thousand two hundred years into the future, on the borders of a region space known as the Expanse lies a planet called Rosary. It's a divided land, with no less than four factions struggling for control. Three are alien, two of these are human, one from a race called the Sea Devils, and one native.

The PCs will be members of one of the two human factions.

Planet Rosary

Though on average five degrees hotter than earth is has a pleasant climate and a wide variety of geography, ranging from a tropical equator to vast tundra near the land bound South Pole. Three fourths of Rosary is covered in Ocean, and its conditions are surprisingly earth like except for the air, which has a rather high oxygen content. What makes Rosary interesting however is that it is a shared world, with no less than four groups calling it home.

First there is the native sentience who call themselves the Chchula. They are not a particularly advanced people, with technology barely at the beginning of the industrial revolution. They're a tough folk however, and more than willing to trade various elements of native art for advanced technology from the star spanning Expanse.

Second there are colonists from the Expanse states of Themescria and Sumatra. The humans settled without knowing that there was any sentient life on the planet, and split its territory between them. Now they watch one another and the sometimes violent natives with trepidation. A cold war grips the Expanse and Sumatra and Themescria are on opposite sides.

Finally, waking after twenty thousand years asleep are the Sea Devils, an ancient and proud species nearly destroyed long ago by an evil they awoke. Many of them are not at all happy with finding the world they left so long ago changed and filled with new sentience. Others see only an opportunity.

Flora and Fauna

Rosary's life is still recovering from a meteor that struck the planet around ten thousand years ago. The rogue asteroid destroyed the then rising civilisation of the Chchula, leaving only scattered ruins and buried structures. In the mean time the planet returned to the wild, with the old Chchula cities being overgrown by the forests and vast savannas.

Animal life on Rosary tends to possess radial symmetry, and have six eight limbs. A highly mobile central mounted head. Another common feature of Rosary's fauna is size. The largest plant eating land animal is the Giant Clutcher, a massive animal weighing some seventy metric tons, which lives in the planets equatorial regions, pulling up and eating whole trees.

Predatory life is similarly large and presents a real danger to sentient visitors. Feared varies include the Toothed Spider, a ten ton beast named for its six huge mouths, which can bite through metal plate, and the Laughing Stalker, a seven ton ambush predator named for the sound it makes during the final phase of its attack.

Plants are equally unusual looking, with fern like leaves but brightly coloured flowers being the norm. Another common feature is vast scrublands, rather than any grass analogue.

The Chchula

The Chchula are unusual compared to most of Rosary's life forms. The Chchula look like two creatures stacked one on top of the other, a four legged lower half and a for armed upper half, with two sets of sensors, one at the top one at the bottom. Originally forest dwellers, the Chchula are capable of walking on either set of manipulators, or even turning on their sides and performing a strange hopping run with four feet on one side.

The Chchula are extremely strong and fast. It is perhaps fortunate that Expanse humans have undergone such a level of genetic engineering as an unaugmented one, even with high technology would be no match for one. The Chchula's own technology is low however, with primitive industrial processes and cities only appearing in the last few years, as several major tribes rediscovered remnants of their past civilisation and making a rapid series of breakthroughs.

This bought them to the attention of the Expanse colonies, which they now trade with, and occasionally attack. There has been strong pressure from both Sumatran and Themescrian government to keep modern weapons out of the natives hands, but this policy has met only limited success as various independent traders have been more than willing to supply the Chchula with technology.

While they are perhaps the weakest power on Rosary, the Chchula and perhaps the Expanse and Sea Devils too if they were to admit it know that they are in the right. Rosary is there world, and all others are trespassing.

Expanse settlements

The joint colonisation of Rosary was meant to bring the governments of two up and coming Expanse nations closer together. Instead it ended up driving them further apart. As tensions rose between the two powers due to the Expanse's cold war, the shared colony, with several cities and ill defined board regions became both a natural flashpoint and a centre for espionage, spies and the like.

Both sides have deployed substantial armed forces to garrison their side of the colony, and there have been several boarder incidents ranging from simple territorial violations or air intercepts to outright battles involving anything up to battalion level formations. Both sides remain highly alert, and while so far now weapons of mass destruction have been deployed both sides know that it remains a distinct possibility.

Contingents from both Dark Rose and White Flame are also present on Rosary to support and watch over their alliance partners. Both sides are also very interested in investigating the precursor ruins there, which has led to friction between allies, as Sumatran and Themescrian governments (both know for their independence) react against possible impingement on their sovereignty. In all, Rosary is perhaps the cold war's hottest front.

Themescria

Themescria is an economic and technological power house, with science rivalling that of the White Flame, and a growing (though still relatively combat inexperienced) military. Internally they are a progressive direct democracy, with large numbers of specialist AIs and expert systems employed to help citizens through the process of choice and voting.

Themescria dominates Rosary's Southern Hemisphere, basing its colonies out of large self contained arcologies. Many are built near precursor ruins, which the Themescrians continue to investigate, despite the warnings and quiet political pressure to turn over such investigation to White Flame specialists.

The Themescrian ground forces, which have long been regarded as something of the weakest of the Themescrian military services have taken it upon themselves to prove that they have what it takes on Rosary, and have indulged in a splurge of equipment purchases since tensions began to ramp up. Supported by a substantial airforce and wet naval contingent on world, the TGF forces operate multiple large armsforts as mobile bases in the extensive wilderness, and are generally using Rosary as a testing ground for new doctrine and equipment.

Sumatra

Sumatra is the newest member of the Dark Rose Alliance, and a centre of research into cognitive technology. Indeed it is this cognitive research which led to them abandoning the White Flame governed mainstream of Expanse society and joining the Dark Rose. Many Sumatran citizens have sold or licensed their personalities to be remixed to better serve in various jobs and industries, and the Sumatrans continue to make more strides in this field, and in personality engineering more generally. Most Sumatrans have some level of conditioning, and many use experimental cognitive implants, much to the alarm of some in the Expanse.

The Sumatran Colony controls Rosary's Northern Hemisphere, and their main cities are built in the rainy sub-tropical areas of the planets upper latitudes. Like the Themescrians they are extremely interested in the planets precursor structures, especially what are believed to be precursor data networks, which they are just as eager to keep their hands on as their rivals.

Sumatra also maintains a large standing force on Rosary, employing large amounts of hover armour supported by airborne and orbital drop troops to rapidly move around the often difficult northern Terrain. While their troops are less well equipped than their Themescrian enemies, they are more experienced and many have cognitive enhancements which give them an advantage in combat.

Sea Devils

Sea Devils Are an Ancient species once all but destroyed by the Ten, the vast civilisations which bestride the galaxy. Much of their species survived in vast stasis bunkers deep in the seas however, and now, twenty thousand years later, they've begun to awake and found their old homes not at all empty. Strange surface dwellers now inhabit the planets they left.

Many Sea Devils view these surface dwellers with a high degree of xenophobia and alarm. Many are currently seeking to reclaim their old cities and weapons caches preserved on the sea bed, and there have been small scale skirmishes between Sea Devils and expanse naval units which have come too close to their enclaves.

While the Sea Devils are still rebuilding, on Rosary and elsewhere it is unclear whether peace can truly be maintained between them and the Expanse.

The Buzzer Threat

As if this wasn't enough, a fifth possibly player in the drama on Rosary is the Buzzers, a militant race of insect like beings attacking the Expanse from the area beyond it. While low tech the Buzzers have proven surprisingly resistant and effective raiders. None have been seen near Rosary yet, but it seems only a matter of time given their apparent interest in precursor ruins and inexplicable hatred of the Expanse.

Precursor Ruins

Rosary is pocked with the invulnerable black monoliths of the precursors. Many of the buildings still have active energy systems and some date to just after the cooling of the planets crust. Due to the age and extremely well preserved nature of these artefacts they are of extreme interest to archaeologists and jealously guarded by the governments involved, who believe that they may gain vast technological resources from exploiting them. While no major technological breakthrough has been gained yet, competition, and espionage around the ruins remains fierce, and they offer a possible shelter in the event that war escalates to the use of nuclear weapons.

Character Creation

Character creation is similar to that in The Expanse with 75 points to create your character. The first group will be members of a Sumatran airborne unit, the 175th Airmobile Brigade (nick named 'Burning Sapphires') You are being sent to investigate a sudden loss of communications with an communications and listening post near the Themescrian boarder.

There are 5 available player slots, and 2 are filled.