The game currently takes place in two locations, both spaceborn.
The Abyss
Locations
“The City” – A place inhabited by refugees. None of these are Awake, and will be content to live their lives in the darkened Station for as long as they can. The City takes up the two topmost levels of the Abyss, and laid out in a spiral around the Abyss, itself. There are no waterways in The City, but there are a number of public pools, bathrooms and water rooms. Ships can actually dock into the Abyss through the bottom-most level. Those who live in The City are used to strangers coming in on ships, and tend to be very taciturn with them. Moreover, such ships rarely stay long, generally driven off by the subtle sense of wrongness in the station. Those who stay on, and go exploring usually end up disappearing, and their ships are impounded.
The City is protected by ‘volunteers’ who defend the entrances to the Undercity. Those who find their way up from the Undercity with their sanity intact are welcomed with a mix of pity and wariness, but the guards can generally tell the difference between
another Refugee, a Lost One, and a Ghoul. Nobody remembers when they came to the station, or how. If they’re lucky (or unlucky, depending), they remember waking up in the Undercity, and fleeing to The City.
The Upper City is where the well-to-do of Abyssal Society makes its life. They tend to travel from place to place by small air cars, or by the travel tubes which cross through The Upper City’s extremities. The Upper City is more a collection of higher-class buildings and businesses.
The Lower City is closer to the middle or low-class slum areas of most cities. Lower City society thrives in smaller, tighter, and more squalid conditions. Swoops are common, as are go-gangs which ride them. Crime and vice are actually a part of the way things work here, and the threat of Ghoul attacks is common, as the monsters sometimes work their way in through
the ducts and tunnels.
“The Undercity” – A place of darkened catacombs and cannibals and death. This is where the mad ones eventually come to, and where they sooner or later join up with some of the marauders or get eaten by the same. The Undercity connects The City to the rest of the Station, including its most important functions.
“The Abyss” – Beneath the Undercity is the actual bowels of the station, itself. The Abyss is actually a huge shaft which encompasses all of the maintaining technology and ducts and works. Organics found here are usually destroyed by the Strangers’ droids.
Abyssal Inhabitants
The Refugees: These are the average inhabitants of both the Upper and Lower Cities of the Abyss space station. They tend to be clannish with outsiders, but try to look after the Lost which arrive in The City from the Undercity. Refugees tend to be
apathetic and somewhat listless, going about their lives with drone-like persistence. The average Refugee tend to ignore the world outside himself as much as possible, though they can still at least go through the motions of society.
-The tattoo each is marked with twinkles in a muted,
lethargic pattern.
-Refugees are seldom Force-Sensitive, and never have any Force Skills to speak of. Those who somehow become Sensitive and gain Force Skills become Lost.
The Ghouls: These are savage beings who have gone insane from life in the Abyss. They hate everybody,
including other groups of Ghouls, and tend to be violent, sadistic, and prone to cannibalism. They prefer to feed on aged dead, but are not averse to fresh meat, and live in the deeper tunnels and corridors of the Undercity, where they cause havoc amongst the Refugee workers who are forced to come into the Undercity to work on the tramlines and other essential machinery. Ghouls hang around together in packs, and favor the darker places in the Undercity, though they are often capable of destroying conduits which provide light for some areas. Indeed, this is one of their favorite tactics for waylaying trams full of Lower City workers for a good, filling meal…
-The tattoo each is marked with sparks violently.
-Ghouls are sometimes Force-Sensitive, though always consumed by the Dark Side.
The Lost: Most Abyssal Player Characters will be from this category. The Lost are an anomaly among the other damned souls. Though they can actually recognize what’s happening around them better than either of the previous groups, they are automatically
marked as outsiders by both the Refugees and the Ghouls. The Refugees attempt to take in these poor lost souls and help them to find productive lives as members of Refugee society. This is less out of kindliness on the Refugees’ part as it is that they have an unexplainable fear of the Lost. The average Refugee looks at a member of the Lost as a normal person would look at an adventurer, with a mixture of awe, fear, and distance. Lost who persist in attempting to be outside the norm are ‘encouraged’
to check into one of the psychiatric facilities in either the Upper or Lower City to help them get acclimated. The Ghouls, however, regard the Lost with abject fear and hatred, attacking the Lost on sight, and giving or expecting no quarter.
-The tattoo each is marked with is faded to nearly nothing.
-The Lost are often Force-Sensitive, and sometimes even possess Force Skills, despite their inability to remember quite how they learned them.
New Hope
The New Hope is a Strike-class medium cruiser, avenerable 450-meter warship. It has firepower about half of a Victory II-class Star Destroyer and defensive shielding and armor superior to an Interdictor Cruiser. It has an optimal crew of 2,000+ crewmen and a skeleton crew of 800. It has twenty standard turbolasers, ten turbolaser batteries, ten enhanced ion cannons, and ten tractor beam projectors. The New Hope has a modular superstructure that allows for quick manufacturing, repairing, upgrades, and modifications.
However, the modular superstructure has proved to be its greatest fault. A well-placed series of shots can break part of the superstructure, disintegrating the vessel. For this reason, Captain Pierce and the engineering staff have made several modifications on the workings of the ship, reducing its normal modular construction, but increasing its stability.
Its primary hyperdrive is a Class 2 rating, and its backup was a Class 12 rating. It can carry 6 thousand metric tons of cargo, could operate autonomously for 2 years, and had a decent velocity and maneuverability for its class.
In its current configuration, the New Hope carries 400 troops, 5 Ground Vehicles, Two squadrons of fighters, and a small number of assorted support craft.
…..
The Hope's ongoing mission is to seek out others to rebuild the Jedi Order, based on clues left by those who had passed before. In the course of the search, the New Hope has traveled the torn galaxy, picking up refugees and aiding in the recovery of the places it has visited.
Also in that time, the Hope has been involved with a somewhat running battle with the Sith Remnant. The various squadrons under the ship's command have gone from a ragtag band of fliers with some veterans to… a very accomplished group of veterans in their
own right.
Recently, the ship has started to release refugees to more desirable planets, and even many of the Jedi picked up have been sent off to Coruscant or to Dantooine, all the better to populate the Order once more. The resulting exodus has left the ship quieter and less crowded, giving those remaining more room to
move around and be.
