Thalassa (Science Fiction Setting)

[rust]

Talking about Thalassa's exploration, there are some potential risks for the brave explorers.

The most obvious risks are caused by the planet's weather. A warm water world with no continents to limit the range of major storms suffers from frequent hurricanes and occasional hypercanes with wind speeds of up to 800 km/h (500 mph). While the colony's huge floaters are theoretically able to survive such a storm, smaller watercraft and all aircraft would almost certainly be destroyed.

Another problem is Thalassa's volcanism, from the more or less harmless hydrothermal vents (well, no diver wants to experience a water temperature of ca. 350° C) all the way up to the two huge active shield volcanoes, Hephaistos and Vulcanus. While the major volcanoes are mapped and can be avoided, volcanic activity also means seismic activity, which can lead to seaquakes with landslides and tsunamis. The highest tsunami wave ever recorded on Earth had a height of ca. 520 meters, and it is quite likely that tsunami waves on Thalassa can get even higher.

Volcanoes and seaquakes can also trigger a normally well hidden danger, by causing a blow out of the methane clathrate fields on the seafloor of the deep sea. A major blow out would result in a huge methane gas bubble rising from the seafloor to the ocean's surface. Any watercraft entering such a bubble would suddenly lose its ability to float and would drop through the gas bubble – in the case of a surface watercraft it would sink, in the case of a submarine it could drop beneath its crush depth.

These are just the known dangers. Exploring Thalassa is not necessarily like a holiday on the beach...

Edited July 6, 2016 by rust

[rust]

By the way, the first major expedition to explore an interesting region of Thalassa will leave Port Rose in 2226 on board of the Thalassa Research Institute's research ship James Cook. Its mission will be to map the Crater Region of the western hemisphere of Thalassa, to gather informations on the impact that created the huge crater and to search for native life forms in and around the crater. The James Cook, a SWATH ship which carries a Terradyne Swallow tilt rotor VTOL aircraft and a number of remotely controlled AUVs ("Autonomous Underwater Vehicles" = submersible drones), will return to Port Rose after approximately six months.

 

[rust]

A few words about learning and improving professional skills ...

Thalassa is still a young colony with a developing higher education system which offers the characters only limited opportunities to learn or improve their professional skills. Some skills, like for example Language (Spanish) or Lore (History), can be learned through the ThalassaNet's various education programs or from an experienced instructor, and the co-lony's four scientific institutions offer special courses for many of the important skills for the water world's colonists:

 

Thalassa High School (Port Rose)

- Computers

- Electronics

- Engineering (Habitat Systems)

- Engineering (Watercraft)

- Mechanics

 

Thalassa Research Institute (Port Rose)

- Science (Oceanography)

 

Thalassa Terraforming Institute (Cavorte Domes)

- Craft (Aquaculture)

- Science (Marine Biology)

 

Thalassa Biotechnology Institute (Cavorte Domes)

- Engineering (Biotechnology)

 

Other professional skills are normally learned only by the apprentices of the relevant careers, like for example the Seamanship skill of the Mariners or the Demolitions skill of the Seabed Miners. A typical example of such a career training is that of the Dolphineers in Cavorte Domes:

Thalassa Dolphineer Station (Cavorte Domes)

- Craft (Dolphineering)

- Language (Aquasign)

- Medicine (Dolphin)

 

A few skills, like for example Medicine (Human) or Lore (Interworld Law), cannot be learned on Thalassa, they require a university education on Earth. However, once these skills have been studied on Earth they can usually be improved on Thalassa.

[rust]

Well, I think that's it concerning Thalassa, at least until the Mythras PDF has been published. 

Thalassa waves Goodbye with its own flag:

[rust]

Or not. 

With another six weeks before the Mythras rules become available in mid-August I can spend some time on what I call "situations". Being a sandbox, the Thalassa setting has no structured pre-planned adventures. The adventures are replaced by descriptions of situations, and the players can decide whether and how their characters will get involved in a situation. If the characters ignore a situation, some non-player character(s) will handle the situation, and the characters will hear about the situation's outcome in the news. Under normal conditions the outcome of a situation is better when the player characters get involved, after all they are the heroes. Besides, dealing successfully with a situation improves a character's reputation, and often also his financial situation.

Here is an example of a situation:

 

„Have A Goliath, Need A David“

As mentioned previously, the Transworld Mining Corporation of Earth controls most of Thalassa's economy, both through Thalassa's debt to the corporation and through the corporation's monopoly on the regular transport of freight and passengers between Earth, Bolivar and Thalassa.

Thalassa could improve this situation by somehow breaking TMC's transport monopoly, but this would require at least one free trader with an Interworld Trade Commission license for a regular trade route between Earth and Thalassa, and the ITC has made it clear that it considers Thalassa's economy as too weak to make this trade route profitable for a free trader. While it is true that Thalassa's exports and imports and passenger traffic are not sufficient to enable a free trader to make a living, Thalassa's governor Carlos Rose has developed an alternative scheme which might even work.

The unique Thalassa water world colonization project attracted a number of engineers and scientists who were working on various kinds of maritime projects. One of these projects of a team now working at the Thalassa Biotechnology Institute in Cavorte Domes has reached the prototype stage, a bionic artificial gill using genetically modified bacteria to extract oxygen from seawater. This device would certainly be most useful for the Thalassians, and a patent on it that could be turned into a profitable production license to a producer on Earth could significantly improve Thalassa's financial situation – probably even enough to subsidize a free trader.

This is something the Transworld Mining Corporation would definitely not welcome at all. Therefore the negotiations with a potential licensee on Earth and the search for a free trader willing to compete with TMC should be kept secret and should ideally be finished before the patent for the bionic gill is claimed and the ITC is asked to accept the income from the production license as the base for a free trader license - once the cat is out of the bag (sorry, a German saying ...) TMC will certainly react.

The search for a licensee on Earth is a task for Thalassa's representative to the Interworld Council in Geneva, and he has already begun to make some helpful contacts. The equally important task to find an unusually brave (and preferably reliable) free trader should begin on Thalassa with an attempt to convince one of those free traders who occasionally visit the water world to apply for a trade route license as soon as the bionic gill patent has been filed.

So someone with good social skills (like Influence and Insight) should make friends with some free traders, find out which one could be a good choice and try to convince him or her to earn some money by standing up to TMC, or at least to keep silent about the proposal if not interested.

 

Edited July 10, 2016 by rust

[clarence]

I've been catching up on your posts this morning and the setting comes together very nicely. The tsunamis sound like a big problem to overcome, even for settlements. (I keep seeing the tsunami in Interstellar in my head...) How do they get through these? How often do they strike and how big are they generally?

And good to see some situations described! Looking forward to more of those. 

[rust]

10 hours ago, clarence said:

The tsunamis sound like a big problem to overcome, even for settlements. (I keep seeing the tsunami in Interstellar in my head...) How do they get through these? How often do they strike and how big are they generally?

The tsunamis are the main reason why the colonization experts decided to build seafloor habitats instead of swimming cities, a structure on the seafloor is deep enough down to be safe from even a monster tsunami (but potentially vulnerable to seaquakes ...). The colony's floaters are designed to survive a major tsunami, with semi-flexible armoured hulls, complete compartmentalization and shock absorber systems,They are expected both to ride out minor tsunamis and to withstand the impact of major ones. All smaller watercraft have to be protected by the floaters, usually stored in the space ("inner harbour") between the two keels of a floater, which can be closed with watertight armoured doors. The colony's oceanographers claim that tsunamis are rare in the Archipelago Region, and until now the colony's settled area has seen only some very minor ones. However, the colony's research satellites have observed a few tsunamis with wave heights of several hundred meters in other regions of Thalassa.

Time will tell whether the colony's technology is up to the task to protect the colonists from a major tsunami... 

Unfortunately I am not good at all at drawing and did not find a good image of something looking like a Thalassan floater on the Internet, but perhaps this here gives an impression - just think much bigger and lower in the water, with only retractable surface structures (antennae, etc.):

[rust]

Here is another situation, like all of them written to be an adventure opportunity, but also to provide some local colour and to serve as a source of background news in the case that the player characters prefer to ignore it and let nonplayer characters deal with it.

„Merlin's Cave“

Thalassa's mining drone controllers have a boring job and a tendency to behave strangely. One of them at the floater above the seafloor mine M2 named his drones after the Ladies of the Lake of Arthurian legend, and when his drone Nimue exposed the entrance to an underwater cave after a slightly overdone blasting operation he named the cave Merlin's Cave.

The marine biologists of the Thalassa Terraforming Institute in Cavorte Domes are very interested in any traces of the - currently still only theoretical - complex life forms of Thalassa which may have become extinct when a meteorite impact created first the huge crater in the western hemisphere and then a global ice age. Unfortunately all such traces of extinct species would probably be covered by a thick layer of seafloor sediment in a depth of several thousand meters – out of the reach of Thalassa's current technology. Merlin's Cave could be a welcome exception. It could of course just be an empty hole in the rock, but the marine biologists hope that it once was inhabited by native creatures which left traces, perhaps even fossils.

The entrance of the cave and the small part explored by the drone Nimue are too narrow for a hardsuit diver, but the cave's entrance is in a depth of only about 250 meters, well within the reach of saturation diving using a temporary shelter outside of the cave to house the divers during the exploration of the cave. Dreaming of an excavation of spectacular fossils is one thing, exploring a narrow, dark and waterfilled hole in a potentially unstable rock (there was this blasting operation nearby …) for the first time is something else - extremely dangerous, a mission for brave volunteers with at least a high Swim skill and a good Perception skill (and a limited survival instinct).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2016 by rust

[clarence]

Great opportunity for foolhardy explorers : )

The tsunamis made me think about habitat design: do the Thalassan engineers experiment with submersible habitats? Instead of going for either surface or seafloor structures, what if a small habitat could seal up and sink (100 meters?) when a storm or tsunami approaches? Do you think that would work for them?

[rust]

15 minutes ago, clarence said:

The tsunamis made me think about habitat design: do the Thalassan engineers experiment with submersible habitats? Instead of going for either surface or seafloor structures, what if a small habitat could seal up and sink (100 meters?) when a storm or tsunami approaches? Do you think that would work for them?

Yes, of course, and it is indeed one of the technological developments I am planning for Thalassa's future. There are currently two options I am tinkering with, one is basically a kind of submarine which normally stays at the surface, the other one looks more like an oil platform where the platform can move up and down along the four piles or the anchoring cables.

Talking about Thalassa's future, while I do not use pre-planned adventures I will pre-plan a number of minor and major events, for example the introduction of new technologies, important political changes on Thalassa and in the Interworld Council, and so on. In my view a "living" setting requires such a "future history" in order to give the players the feeling that their characters' (water) world exists even when their characters are not directly involved.

Edited July 12, 2016 by rust

[rust]

A while ago I promised an overview of Thalassa's organizations. I am still working on this, but here are some first informations.

While Thalassa's parlament has no organized political parties, there are various interest groups like the Aquafarming Association, the Merchants' Network or the Ecological Terraformers.

The majority of the Thalassians belong to the Ecumenical Christianity, a young Christian church with catholic, orthodox and protestant roots which developed on the colony worlds. The church has a number of organizations, many of them for charitable purposes.

Most of Thalassa's scientists and engineers are members of the Thalassian chapter of the Kalliope Society, a scientific society with chapters on all Interworld Council planets. The chapter on Thalassa has its focus on the exploration of the water world and the technological development of the colony.

Thalassa has no commercial media, the public and free ThalassaNet is used for official announcements and for the distribution of all kinds of informations. The ThalassaNet User Group established rules for the datanet's use and serves as its administration.

The Thalassa Seascouts are a youth organization losely based on the traditional boy scout and girl scout movement of Earth. Its aim is to provide a meeting place for Thalassa's young people and to teach the colony's important cultural skills like Boating and Swim through entertaining and funny activities.

There are various sports clubs, like the Thalassa Watersports Association, and hobby clubs, as well as many informal and temporary groups.

Edited July 13, 2016 by rust

[rust]

And another exploration situation ...

 

„A-Hunting For The Whale“

Two very interesting locations for the scientific explorers of Thalassa are the huge active shield volcanoes Hephaistos and Vulcanus. Since these regions are both far from the settled Archipelago Region and rather dangerous to explore, the scientists use remotely controlled drones to gather the data they require.

The biggest, best equipped and by far most expensive of these drones is The Whale. It was sent to the Hephaistos region on a mission to map the volcanoe and the surrounding seafloor with its sidescan sonar and to analyze the seawater near Hephaistos with its automated onboard laboratory. It transmitted a huge amount of useful data after its arrival in the region, but then the transmissions suddenly ended and The Whale ceased to react to any communication attempts.

According to its emergency program the drone should now float on the ocean surface, but the Thalassa Research Institute's observation satellites failed to locate it, and the scientists suspect that it may have sunk to the seafloor somewhere on Hephaistos' slope. Since the institute cannot afford to lose the drone and wants the data it probably gathered before it failed, someone has to travel to the volcanoe to search and retrieve the drone (and to collect some more data and samples while there, please).

The plan is to use one of the tilt-rotor transport aircraft to land a subwing near the last known position of the drone. Subwings are small, fast submersibles which use their diving planes instead of ballast tanks for diving, they „fly“ underwater almost like an aircraft in the air. The subwing's crew has the task to locate The Whale and to guide a transport submarine, which will arrive a few days later, to the drone, and to take a closer look at the volcanoe while waiting for that submarine.

 All in all a rather simple task, except for the presence of this very active volcanoe ... 

 

 

[rust]

And a look at Thalassa's Hephaistos shield volcanoe region ...

[rust]

And yet another situation, this time for a different kind of exploration ...

 

„Would The Real Terrorist Please Stand Up ?“

Immigration to Thalassa is a lengthy process. The future Thalassian first has to send an application with all relevant documents to Thalassa's representative in Geneva. Applicants from the European Union with useful skills and a clean police record are almost always accepted. If the applicant is accepted and as usually does not have the means to pay for a starship passage to Thalassa he then has to apply for an ICDA grant, which is rarely refused. The next step to become a water worlder consists of three months at a training camp on the Atlantic coast of France, where he will learn or improve vital skills like Boating and Swim and also learn about Thalassa and its customs and laws. Soon afterwards a shuttle will take him to an orbiting freighter of the Transworld Mining Corporation, and thirty days and another shuttle flight later he will step onto the floating Thalassa Downport and into a new life.

This is the usual process, but unfortunately something unusual has crept into it the last time it was done. The Interworld Interstellar Service has learned that Europol has raided a hidden base of an ecoterrorist group, the Sea Saviours, and has found evidence that this group has infiltrated one of its members into the latest group of fifteen immigrants sent to Thalassa. According to Europol his or her mission is to commit a spectacular act of terrorism as Sea Saviour's protest against the ongoing terraforming of Thalassa. What Europol did not find was any information concerning the identity, gender or age of the terrorist, who must have arrived on Thalassa by now.

When an IIS courier delivers the bad news to Thalassa, the unknown terrorist has already been on Thalassa for several days. The Rangers, the police force of Thalassa, and governor Carlos Rose want to keep the information about the terrorist secret in order to avoid a general panic and also to protect the fourteen innocent immigrants. Since the Rangers do not have the personnel to secretly investigate and shadow all of the fifteen suspects, they ask some trustworthy Thalassians for their help in this investigation. The operation's cover will be a new element of the immigration process, an immigration sponsorship, where each of the new immigrants will get a Thalassian sponsor who will help him or her to learn the ropes of living on the water world - while actually trying to identify the wolf among the fourteen sheeps.

Guess who will be asked to become one of these special sponsors ... 

 

 

[clarence]

I came across this recent underwater find and couldn't help thinking about Thalassa:

http://gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-mysterious-purple-blob-at-the-botto-1784380334

Check the video too; it's quite cool. 

Now, if we still make totally unexpected discoveries like these, what surprises shouldn't a newly colonized water world present...

[rust]

2 hours ago, clarence said:

Now, if we still make totally unexpected discoveries like these, what surprises shouldn't a newly colonized water world present...

Thank you very much for the link. 

Indeed, and my main problem with this is that whatever I may come up with will certainly be less fascinating than a real Thalassa would be.

[clarence]

I know exactly what you mean. Sorry for the shameless plug here, but that was the driving force behind the alien creation system in M-SPACE. I have found many such systems to be either too haphazard, or too unimaginative. With M-SPACE, I think (and hope) I have found a third path. My own results so far have been very good. 

(I also guided two 11 year olds through alien creation some time ago, and they easily came up with a highly original and believable critter. All I did was tell them the results of their dice rolls, and they shaped the creature step by step by themselves. 30 minutes very well spent : )

[rust]

1 hour ago, clarence said:

With M-SPACE, I think (and hope) I have found a third path. My own results so far have been very good. 

One more good reason for looking forward to M-SPACE. 

[clarence]

I re-read the whole thread (great work, Rust), and I found myself without an image in my head of the underwater cities. What does the "streets" look like and what is the feeling of those places? Are they technical, with submarine-like corridors, or green/blue open domes with actual streets and squares? Or something else entirely?

[rust]

12 minutes ago, clarence said:

What does the "streets" look like and what is the feeling of those places? Are they technical, with submarine-like corridors, or green/blue open domes with actual streets and squares? Or something else entirely?

The first seafloor domes of Port Rose are designed much like submarines, later domes are designed to be more comfortable, with streets, squares and parks. Each settlement consists of several domes of different sizes, connected by tunnels under the seafloor. I have to admit that I have yet to write a good description of a seafloor dome. Below is an attempt to give an impression of a major dome from a previous setting, the domes of Thalassa will be very similar.

 

[Whisker89]

Hey, I'm just passing by to say that your Thalassa setting is very appealing.

Keep up the good work! you've got a new fan in me

[rust]

7 hours ago, Whisker89 said:

Hey, I'm just passing by to say that your Thalassa setting is very appealing.

Keep up the good work! you've got a new fan in me

Thank you very much indeed, I will try to do my very best. 

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Hello from the sunny Seto Inland Sea! As the resident landscape architect I must ask, how deep are the dome cities and how much light will reach them there? That could have a significant impact on the design of your parks. If you need artificial lighting there would be no need for a clear roof, and you could locate them anywhere within the dome.

Also, the current crop of undersea hotels might give you some ideas for 'gimmicks' to drop into the game to bring the dome environments to life for the players.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/best-underwater-hotels/

[clarence]

On 4 augusti 2016 at 11:11 AM, rust said:

The first seafloor domes of Port Rose are designed much like submarines, later domes are designed to be more comfortable, with streets, squares and parks. Each settlement consists of several domes of different sizes, connected by tunnels under the seafloor. I have to admit that I have yet to write a good description of a seafloor dome. Below is an attempt to give an impression of a major dome from a previous setting, the domes of Thalassa will be very similar.

 

It looks good. With a change from submarine-like domes to more open and light designs, I suppose a city can consist of both older and newer domes? Will inhabitants prefer the new, spacious ones? 

And good point Vile about the amount of natural light reaching the dome. 

[rust]

7 hours ago, Vile said:

As the resident landscape architect I must ask, how deep are the dome cities and how much light will reach them there?

The domes are in a depth of ca. 150 meters, so there will be only rather dim natural light, although a little more of it than there would be on Earth, because Thalassa's star Poseidon is stellar type F. The main reason for the park's transparent roof is more the "aquarium effect", which enables the visitors of the park to watch the sea life and the underwater vehicles outside. There are also several minor parks deep inside the dome, mainly in the areas marked "Hydroponics" and "Recreation", and there is some greenery in the "Quarters" areas.

Thank you very much for the link.