GasBandit
Staff member
In the distant future, humanity has spread to the stars in countless numbers. However, despite the postulation of myriad science-fiction authors and movies, no "faster than light" travel has really been discovered. Interstellar travel means entering crytptosleep - a bizarre and slightly unsettling state of suspended animation in which you do not dream, age, or experience anything whatsoever - frozen in time for hundreds of years.
Closest to Earth, the cradle of humankind, are the Glitterworlds - shimmering balls of light on which the wealthy live and play in the pampered luxury of their beautiful skyscrapers and plazas, with little thought spared for those whose lot in life is worse elsewhere. But the farther out into the black you go, the more the harsh realities of life become apparent. Thieves and urchins choke the dirty streets of the urbworlds, and men and women toil ceaselessly in the factories of the indworlds. But they are comparatively lucky still. The underground dwellers of the hiveworlds might never see sky, the iceworlders huddle in their caves and hydroponic bays, eking out a living, and the midworlders rediscover the "joys" of serfdom as they till the soil for their feudal lords in a new spaceship-studded dark age. And worse off still are the glassworlders, whose planets' radioactive surfaces mean short, sick lives for any who do not frantically work to keep running the technology that keeps them alive in the vaults below the beautiful, deadly crystals of their home.
But by far, the worst off of humanity has to be those consigned to the planets out on the rim of explored space. The rimworlds are barely even settled, if at all. Many of their populations have reverted completely into neolithic tribes, while more recent, often unwilling population additions struggle to make some life for themselves on this new frontier - or find some way to escape it back to more comfortable climes. It's rare that anyone comes to a rimworld by choice, aside from a few opportunistic trade ships looking to abuse the abject poverty for huge profits back home. Thus, most people who wash up on the shores of a rimworld spend the rest of their lives there - however long or short that might be.
And short those lives often are - dangerous creatures, inhospitable climes, natural disasters, pirates, hostile tribals, and worst of all the biomechanical remnants of a great cyberwar that ended millennia ago are all found on these untamed planets, and the law of life is that for one to live, usually someone else must die. Survival of the fittest claims the lives of tens of thousands every year, as spacers discover themselves particularly unsuited to the rough life one must lead... on a RimWorld.
Take, for example, one such unlucky bunch. Attacked by twisted, alien, mechanoid monstrosities, their ship was destroyed. Their lifepods found only one minimally "safe" place to take the survivors within range. Keeping the humans in cryptosleep, the lifepods silently made their way to the rimworld. Many didn't make it. Malfunctions, malefactors and plain old misfortune cut short many lives who never even woke to know their doom.
But four and a half score doughty survivors survived the perilous plummet through the atmosphere, and woke to find themselves marooned. The last message left by the AI of their old ship was that this planet would only be safe for 11, maybe 12 years... for though there was no other place to take them, a planetkiller moved steadily in the wake of the fleeing lifepods, and when it arrives, no one at all will survive, anywhere.
Edit - might as well throw in the teaser here, too, eh?
Closest to Earth, the cradle of humankind, are the Glitterworlds - shimmering balls of light on which the wealthy live and play in the pampered luxury of their beautiful skyscrapers and plazas, with little thought spared for those whose lot in life is worse elsewhere. But the farther out into the black you go, the more the harsh realities of life become apparent. Thieves and urchins choke the dirty streets of the urbworlds, and men and women toil ceaselessly in the factories of the indworlds. But they are comparatively lucky still. The underground dwellers of the hiveworlds might never see sky, the iceworlders huddle in their caves and hydroponic bays, eking out a living, and the midworlders rediscover the "joys" of serfdom as they till the soil for their feudal lords in a new spaceship-studded dark age. And worse off still are the glassworlders, whose planets' radioactive surfaces mean short, sick lives for any who do not frantically work to keep running the technology that keeps them alive in the vaults below the beautiful, deadly crystals of their home.
But by far, the worst off of humanity has to be those consigned to the planets out on the rim of explored space. The rimworlds are barely even settled, if at all. Many of their populations have reverted completely into neolithic tribes, while more recent, often unwilling population additions struggle to make some life for themselves on this new frontier - or find some way to escape it back to more comfortable climes. It's rare that anyone comes to a rimworld by choice, aside from a few opportunistic trade ships looking to abuse the abject poverty for huge profits back home. Thus, most people who wash up on the shores of a rimworld spend the rest of their lives there - however long or short that might be.
And short those lives often are - dangerous creatures, inhospitable climes, natural disasters, pirates, hostile tribals, and worst of all the biomechanical remnants of a great cyberwar that ended millennia ago are all found on these untamed planets, and the law of life is that for one to live, usually someone else must die. Survival of the fittest claims the lives of tens of thousands every year, as spacers discover themselves particularly unsuited to the rough life one must lead... on a RimWorld.
Take, for example, one such unlucky bunch. Attacked by twisted, alien, mechanoid monstrosities, their ship was destroyed. Their lifepods found only one minimally "safe" place to take the survivors within range. Keeping the humans in cryptosleep, the lifepods silently made their way to the rimworld. Many didn't make it. Malfunctions, malefactors and plain old misfortune cut short many lives who never even woke to know their doom.
But four and a half score doughty survivors survived the perilous plummet through the atmosphere, and woke to find themselves marooned. The last message left by the AI of their old ship was that this planet would only be safe for 11, maybe 12 years... for though there was no other place to take them, a planetkiller moved steadily in the wake of the fleeing lifepods, and when it arrives, no one at all will survive, anywhere.
Edit - might as well throw in the teaser here, too, eh?
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