Space Carrier Amahara

Space Carrier Amahara is a game about the eponymous ship and its deeds. Due to the original studio going out of business (rumoured to be after a very ill thought out attempt at magical girl subversion), the property is now in the hands of another company that has made numerous controversial retcons. It remains a (very) soft-science space opera.

Episodes/Exp Tracker

Background

In 1999, the Lunarians emerged from the surface of the moon and invaded Earth, laying waste to its surface. By the end of the year, some 90% of humanity had been wiped out and the remainder were driven deep underground into the Hollow. For years, all humanity could barely do was survive, until the Ectasia Impact delivered alien technology into the hands of humanity and allowed them to once again unleash the power of spin weapons on the battlefield. Emboldened, the survivors joined together as the Earth United Front and fought back. In the end, it was the odyssey of a single ship and what it found at the end of its journey that convinced the Lunarians to break the siege of Earth in late 2016. The exploits of the space cruiser Amahara have passed on into legend.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the surviving human nations coordinated the reconstruction and rearmament of Earth and founded the Earth Union, a permanent civilian counterpart to the EUF. In this way, Earth's leaders hoped to permanently set aside their differences and be prepared for all out interstellar war if the Lunarians were ever to return. It is this same Earth Union, on the cusp of its centennial, that still governs Earthian space from Earth today.

As years of peace turned into decades, Earth civilization recovered from near destruction to embrace a new age of spacefaring prosperity. A generation of navigational intelligences - the Pathfinders awoke from the liquid metal. They tapped into the precursor starmaps of Earth's alien benefactor and opened long trails of wormholes, pushing the borders of the accessible universe far into the distance. Earthian colonies followed, appearing like droplets of dew on a web. What Lunarian forces and influences they encountered over the years proved to be no more than remnants that had been abandoned and left behind. Gradually, the Earth Union drew down from its initial state of paranoid hypermilitance to a more general vigilance. The singular fear of a Second Lunarian War gave way once more to the mundane yet complex concerns of politics and economics in an expanding interstellar civilization.

Earthian Space

Earthian humans began travelling space in earnest after the end of the First Lunarian War about a century ago. Compared to the Celestials, their knowledge of the cosmos is little and many of the technologies they use, derived from alien influences, remain mysterious black boxes to them. This includes their sole method of superluminal travel, the Starpaths. A Starpath is created when a navigational intelligence subliminally accesses the precursor starmaps hidden within the liquid metal and engages her instinctive ability as a superdimensional drive. The process pulls the ship along with it and tears a wormhole in spacetime that, over a period of weeks, stabilizes enough for normal ships to transit. While often described as a network, the Starpaths are long lines of wormholes that all terminate at Sol.

Each of the navigational intelligences is dedicated to a single Starpath and since even they cannot control its direction, only a minority of lines actually cross with another by happenstance. These become Crossroad systems, rare nodes that often become strategically important. Pathfinders go through cycles of activity and inactivity, resulting in on-and-off waves of expeditions that have pushed the horizon of navigable space far beyond what Earth can effectively administer or control. Earthian space nominally contains over thirteen thousand systems with a total population of over 30 billion. The majority are thought to live ancient or neolithic lifestyles whereas humans of Earth stock account for no more than 10% of the population. Because Starpath termini are necessarily separated by a minimum distance in ordinary space and the transit itself is not instantaneous, end to end travel down the longest Starpaths is now a years long journey.

Earth United Front
The United Front was formed in June of 2015 as a military alliance of Earth’s human nations against the Lunarians. While all international conflicts were defunct by the end of 1999 as over 90% of human population was lost in the Lunarian invasion, the catalyst for formalizing the EUF proved to be the revelation of mass superluminal travel by Ruruie the first Pathfinder, and the advent of the tampered spin bomb which made military success against Lunarians a realistic matter. The United Front won the First Lunarian War in late 2016 when the Lunarians sealed the Moon and withdrew from all contact with Earthian space.

The vast majority of the EUF's great fleet of destroyers and capital ships is posted around Earth itself as an enormously expensive insurance against Lunarian attack. Long term quiet and taken-for-granted necessity has led to organizational decay and corruption. Moreover, the bulk of the EUF's assets are proliferation risks that have limited application for low scale conflicts where spin weapons are inapplicable, hence the relatively recent foundation of the Earth Strategic Strike Force. Compared to the Union itself however, the EUF is still less unpopular; the need for unity against the possibility of further Lunarian attack is less controversial than the need - or the justice - of the Union's Earth-centric economic policies. The EUF is commanded through the consensus of the permanent members of the Council of Earth rather than the Union Executive and does what it can to remain aloof from the politicking that goes on in the EU. It maintains a monopoly as custodian of Earth's spin arsenal.

Earth Union
In the immediate post-war period, Earth's national leaders met repeatedly to discuss Earth's future and eventually agreed to form the Earth Union, a civilian counterpart to the EUF. Where the United Front was the bastion guaranteeing the survival of humanity, the Union would be concerned with renewing governance, reconstruction and returning some semblence of normality to day-to-day civilian life. The Union proved highly successful in this regard, having carried out large scale reconstruction across Earth over the decades, fueled in no small part by extrasolar colonies. It also successfully maintained the peace between Earth's surviving nation states and has had a strong, moderating, centrist effect on politics for many of them.

Nearly a century after its foundation however, it still isn’t entirely clear whether the Earth Union is a federalist superstate, an intergovernmental organization or, if the latter, what sort of unit - whether states, nations or even the many interest groups and lobbying coalitions with a voice - properly constitutes a member. As a result, it is a tense organization at every level. Its numerous institutions with varied, sometimes overlapping competencies deal with the divergent interests among its constituents and resistance to its inherent centralizing tendencies. There is the threat of Frexit and also the strong perception in the colonies of it as an institution of Earthbound imperialism.

Navigation Guild
The Navigation Guild is a support organization for Earth's 72 active and inactive navigational intelligences. As the Pathfinders go through cycles of activity and bond with individuals or families rather than institutions, the Navigation Guild is necessarily a rather non-rigid affair that does its best to stay out of politics for the benefit of humanity as a whole. It organizes, recruits and trains for Pathfinding expeditions and also conducts surveys of already accessible systems. Given that it takes months or years of effort to chart even a single star system in detail and decades to fully understand its cycles and foibles, outstanding charting and research missions now form the vast, massively backlogged majority of the guild's workload.

Earth Strategic Strike Force
The ESSF is a new military force seeded with personnel and equipment poached from the EUF and Navigation Guild. Its mission is primarily focused around "domestic issues" - incidents relating to something other than a major Lunarian adversary or all out interstellar war. Somewhat controversial even on Earth, the option of a military response to "internal" unrest is billed as necessary to maintain the unity and stability of the human race against the Lunarian threat and also to safeguard trade along the Starpaths. Predictably, the organization was accused of engaging in black ops well before its first units were even operational.

While technically a subdivision of the United Front, the ESSF is commanded directly by the office of the Union Executive. The formation of this second, smaller but much more flexible military force has greatly increased the power of the Secretary-General's office.

Lunarian Space

Lunarian humans, who refer to themselves as the Celestials, have had access to space travel for thousands of years. Lunarians are involuntarily immortal and can phase through almost all physical phenomena. They cannot be killed or held against their will except by spin weapons and liquid metal respectively. Because of this, they lead distant and independent lives and have found it difficult to sustain much organization or society. Their core population is thought to be stagnant at only a few million but they rule over vast subordinate empires of humans that, in totality, greatly outnumber free humans. They primarily project power with robotic forces; real Lunarian ships are as much palace as battlestation and are rare overall. At the end of the First Lunarian War, the Lunarians withdrew from all contact with Earthian space. According to interview of the sole Lunarian known to reside among Earthians, the Celestials abandoned about 8% of their empire.

The Lunarians' principle form of superluminal travel is the Moon, a superdimensional celestial body colocated across countless systems, allowing instantaneous travel between each instance of its existence. It is not known how it is managed - either it is one of the few things the Lunarians can reach a consensus on or else it must grant the controller(s) considerable influence over other Lunarians. There are over a hundred (former?) instances of the Moon in Earthian space, including Earth's Moon. In addition, the Lunarians also have some access to a seemingly arbitrary superluminal drive that allows ships to warp independently.

Celestial Superluminal Patrol
A volunteer organization of a number of Lunarians that sought to stop the journey of Space Cruiser Amahara during the war a century ago using vessels equipped with an arbitrary warp drive. The entire fleet was apparently owned by Celestial Lord Kirtansis and it is unknown whether that technology was inherited by anyone else after his death.

Other Worlds

Arshes
Arshes is a long inhabited world of broadly comparable or slightly superior advancement to Earth before being likewise invaded by the Lunarians. However, they never received further alien technological assistance and were thus never able to do more than cling on to survival. The Lunarian invasion of Arshes was abandoned around the same time as that of Earth (indicating the Lunarians immediately regarded it as part of Earthian space long before Earthian explorers arrived). Thereafter, Arshes rebuilt itself as the Arshes World Republic in a similar fashion, heavily reverse engineering Lunarian technology as well as further developing their own. However they did not have superluminal travel or extrasystem colonies until the Starpath reached the Arshes system in 2084 when it became the terminus of the Elodia line. Arsheans have advanced spacecraft but their only superluminal travel for the time being is through the Starpath system administered nominally by Earth.

Compared to the vast Earth Union, Arshes is only a regional power. The Arshean Armada is much smaller than the EUF but is spin armed. Considering its distance from Earth and the difficulty of projecting power that far it is not known where the line of balance between the two powers actually is. The area of space under obvious Arshean influence is known as Arshes space and has a population of about 4 billion, mostly in the Arshean home system. Earth-Arshes relations are a prickly issue.

Rawa
With a population of over 40 billion, the lush, teeming and festive world of Rawa has a greater population than the rest of free humanity combined. The technology of genetic engineering into which Earth has taken tentative steps were taken to extremes on Rawa over thousands of years resulting in humans divided into numerous castes with morphological variation similar to Earth canines. Needless to say, Rawa is an extremely disconcerting place for outsiders and they, for their part, find the rest of humanity akin to freakish clone societies.

Sharom
A distant and restive planet in one of the handful of Crossroad systems with three or more lines.

Space Carrier Amahara

Amahara (2112) class strategic carrier
operator: Dominion of Amahara (ESSF)
length: 380m
mass: 234000t
power: 2 helium fusion reactors
weapons:
1 phase transit cannon (axial; normally disarmed)
12 condensed light beam cannon (6 x 2 turrets)
4 missile blocks
systems:
eLM
complement:
1000+ crew
1 carrier battle armour group
1 spatial infantry brigade

Other Ships

EUF

Destroyers
A destroyer is a warship built primarily around delivering spin warheads in combat, with all other functions secondary. The United Front commissioned vast numbers of these vessels over the past century as the backbone of Earth's defense. The earliest types were built immediately after the war and were essentially space torpedo boats designed for a very limited number of mission profiles - Earth orbital defense at various perimeters, and blockade of the Moon. From the 2040's onward, the United Front began setting increasing logistical capability targets for destroyers and the ships accordingly grew larger, with 15,000 tons mass now being typical. Although their cruising range has grown, they remain quite specialized warships, usually only have a hangar bay for USVs and utility launches. Their limited scope contributes greatly to their affordability but avails them poorly to scenarios that don't involve the hypothetical Second Lunarian War.

Cruising Destroyer
An expanded destroyer capable of much longer cruises than ordinary destroyers. They are sometimes called "light cruisers" out of tradition, although they have much less flexibility and much lighter conventional weapons than true cruisers. Their mission is to engage and destroy remnant Lunarian robotic forces still scattered throughout Earthian space. They average about 25,000 tons.

Frigates
Frigates are similar in size to destroyers but have a very different role, acting as anti-piracy vessels or dedicated escorts to larger long range ships. Unlike destroyers, they are not spin armed and the space normally devoted to warheads is instead given over to the storage and accomodations required for long cruises.

Cruiser
Full cruisers are extended range warships with expanded capabilities.

Battleships

Strategic Carriers

Rules/Characters

Dice are d6 in an attempt to break the d10 hegemony. The minimum difficulty is always at least 2 while the upper end goes past 6, with things impossible to do without training.

Defense
Defending is passive and the value is equal to the number of successes needed. This value starts at 0. Each point of defense in a contested roll increases the number successes needed to hit by 1. The simplest way to get a point of defense is to be behind some applicable piece of cover.

Soak
When hit, roll your Physique to soak with difficulty depending on what the threat is. Having armour helps.

Stats

The starting max is 5 on all stats.

Basic Stats

The most frequently rolled, mostly self-explanatory stats.

Agility
The stat for hitting things and probably helps you stack Defense to avoid getting hit as well.

Physique
Physical strength and toughness, allowing you to risk getting hit. Probably helpful for resisting forces while piloting too.

Wit
Your reactions and ability to notice changes.

Smarts
Overall intelligence and studiousness.

Charm
Your ability to provoke a reaction in people and overall likeability.

Guile
Your capacity to manipulate or pretend.

Pool Stats

Pool Stats are less frequently rolled than Base Stats. They also double as a pool of expendable points. Regaining them usually involves rolling the stat itself, so higher ratings also tend to rebuild points faster.

Willpower
Your strength of Will. Willpower is required to retry a failed action. It effectively creates an extra action after the failed action takes place. It cannot be used after a successful action.

Since the failure still occurs, this may cause the second roll to be of higher difficulty or require a different stat. A few situations might be explicitly inapplicable to retry, but there is usually room for at least one extra shot. You may use willpower as many times as you like until the difficulty reaches 6.

Fate
Spend a point of Fate to gain all sixes on a roll involving any basic stat.

QT
Supernatural powers. QT is spent on firing specific QT powers and rolled for results on some of them. It can also be used on rolls of Pool stats like Fate is used for Basic stats, that is, set any roll of Willpower, Fate or QT itself to all sixes. The archetypical starting QT power is a perfect defense.

Other

Enhancements

Genetic Enhancements are reasonably common across Earth Union space but only the 1% get really high end mods for their scions.

Depending on the level, an Enhanced stat gets a free 4, 5 or 6 on any roll involving that stat.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics are generally obvious or obvious to anything more attentive than a second glance. They tend to be Ghost in the Shell type gear - the future as imagined in the 90's. Wetware type adaptive, biological or organic functions as common in Transhuman Space are generally not possible. Attitudes towards cybernetics vary across space but they are usually limited to prostheses and edgy military equipment on Earth.

Cybernetics may add up to 3 dice beyond the cap to Agility, Physique and Wits or provide unique capabilities.

Skills

Each level of Skill (up to 3) reduces difficulty scale by 1 for that task. Skills never stack but can be quite broad.

Example Skills:

Computing
Shooting

Characters

Stat packages still provisional right now

Players are elite operatives of the Earth Strategic Strike Force, a fairly new subdivision of the Earth United Front dedicated to the speedy resolution of military incidents throughout human space for which the ungainly bulk of the EUF is poorly suited. Most personnel in the ESSF are newly poached either from the Navigation Guild or the EUF proper.

Earthborn Nobility

Despite the Union's vast territory across the stars, ultimate political power still rests on Earth. The descendents of those who came out on top at the end of the First Lunarian War are mostly those who are still on top now. As a member of the Earthborn "nobility", you are a young prospect set up for success before your career ever started; indeed, before you were even born.

Significant genetic enhancement is the norm for the 1%, but cybernetics are not considered presentable. They almost always support Earth's primacy in Earthian space since they are the main benefactors of this arrangement. Many are liberal but even liberalism is best with Earth at the helm. They may, however, have very different opinions on federalism and the Earth Union itself.

• Basic stats 3 across the board.
• 4 levels of Enhancements
• 15 points
• Cannot have cybernetics.
• Connections to Earth organizations.

Supersoldier

Supersoldier programs are not a new concept, with a number of declassificated Lunarian War era programs being infamous. Their latest revival is spurred by the (re)emergence of military needs short of total interstellar war (which requires warheads, not operators). Modern supersoldier programs are centered around intense cybernetic enhancement and training regimens both deep and broad in order to equip special operators to handle a wide variety of situations.

While modern programs are well past the era of the moé pill, it is not considered a suitable role for scions of good Earth families who are expected to end their careers in politics or business rather than a lifetime of military service. The program does, however, have a specific interest in individuals with high QT some of whom might be found at shady, moé pill distributing institutions. Supersoldiers are not supposed to have political opinions.

• Agility, Physique, Wits, Intelligence of 3.
• +1/+1/+1 Agility/Physique/Wits from cybernetics
• Various military electronics built in.
• Enhancements cost double.
• 20 points.

Near Colonials

The near colonies of Earth were founded within a generation or so of the end of the war and are developed states with populations in the millions and emerging or established national identity. They are, generally speaking, stuck in the middle of things, with strong popular sympathy for colonialist causes of all stripes whilst sticking strictly to moderate politics over the table in deference to Earth. Both the establishment and their opponents find recruits here and there is plenty of room for talent to rise in the ranks for any cause.

• 30 points
• +1 Fate and Willpower rolls
• Enhancements cost double.

Catgirl

The kemonomimi tribes of Earth - those that didn't go extinct during or in the wake of the First Lunarian War - tended to be disproportionately represented in early colonial populations as they attempted to find new homes where they wouldn't be minorities. The cat people of Earth, in coordination with some Rawan castes, have established the world of Nekoheim as a sort of motherland.

• 30 points
• Enhanced Agility II
• Enhanced Wits II
• Connections to Nekoheim