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Pulp Rocketship Empires

Page history last edited by Michael 10 years, 4 months ago

A strange alternate history, in which powerful humanoid Martians arrived on Earth in 1919!

 

Rocketship Empires website  (no longer active)

 

Ed Kann's developer blog

 

Agent White

 

Operation Long Bow

 


 

Quick summary of the RSE world:

 

The human race is not native to Earth (so the Martians claim); tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago a vast human empire ruled the galaxy. The human race was defeated in a war with various alien races; the surviving humans were banished to Earth. Of course, there may have been other human survivors elsewhere in space.

 

The Martians now control an interstellar empire, the Hegemony, which dominates at least four other alien races; it has also been in conflict with various other alien races and leagues for most of its 6000 year existence. The most recent war has been ongoing for 250 years, with the mysterious Enemy (the Martians haven't actually provided a name or description).

 

In 1919 the Hegemony contacted Earth, and made a demand/offer:  Earth would receive aid from Mars, and in return, Earthlings would prepare to take part in the Hegemony's war(s). The aid would take the form of technology, and access to various suitable colony worlds near Earth.

 

With vastly superior technology (including, of course, the ability to drop bombs from orbit) the Hegemony's request was impossible to refuse. So far, though, the Hegemony has not required humanity to confront the Enemy.

 

The Hegemony Accord was established in 1920, formalizing the relationship between the Martians, the League of Nations, and various Earth nations. The Hegemony has chosen to designate Mandarin Chinese as the standard language for interaction with humans. The Accord, and the League of Nations, have outlawed warfare on the Earth and on the core worlds near the Sol system (whether by League nations or by other countries); this prohibition is enforced by Hegemony starships. No human space-warships or starfighters are allowed in the Sol system.

 

Very little personal, face-to-face contact takes place between humans and Martians; little is known about the culture within the great Imperial Dome on Mars. In fact, most of the Martians live on colony worlds; Mars itself is apparently worn-out and barely habitable even for Martians. No humans have (officially) ever seen more than the spaceports on Mars or on a Martian "primary" world.

 

A huge dome was constructed by the Martians within the Arctic Circle, and already by 1923 held 25,000 human scientists, engineers, workers, etc. being instructed by the Martians in how to meld Hegemony bio-mechanics with human machines. Few of the scientists or engineers have ever been allowed to leave the dome -- mostly to keep Hegemonic technology secret from humanity, it seems.

 

Another dome was built on the Moon by 1922, and human space travellers began visiting nearby worlds not long after that -- ten habitable worlds were found by 1925, and dozens more in the years since.  A further Martian "ecology" dome exists outside of Beijing, China.

 

On Earth, and on the core systems, psi-capable League agents (with the assistance of Hegemony Enforcers) has made criminal activity very difficult. The League Credit (worth about $0.25) is a widely used currency, with French and Chinese text.

 

Interplanetary colonies have been established by various human nations and groups; most of them are overseen by the League of Nations. Britain, France, the US, Holland, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Soviets, and the Japanese have many colonies each.  Vast numbers of persons have migrated off-world:  28% of the French population live outside the Sol system, the capital of Spain is now off-world, Italy is being denuded of population and industry in forced colonization efforts. Japan has been reduced to a depopulated rural countryside -- two-thirds of the Japanese population emigrated off-world since 1930. Several of the American-settled worlds recently (1932) formed the Star Confederacy, a return to the slave-holding states-rights values of the old Confederate States of America.

 

Kaiser Wilhelm, while in exile in Holland, somehow managed a sort of outer-space coup in 1927, which produced the "German Star Empire"; this odd nation, ruled by Wilhelm from Holland, was absorbed by Germany in 1933 with the rise of Hitler.

 

Factions and parties with Martian society have secretly made common cause with various human governments and groups, not always with the approval of the Hegemonic Emperor.

 

Space travel and alien worlds seem to have awakened various latent psionic abilities with humanity. Whether called magic or psi, these powers are very rare on Earth, but increasingly common among spacefarers and colonists.

 

Space travel often requires rabbis, priests, Muslim imams, agents of the Golden Dawn, etc. to protect the ship and crew from supernatural trouble. Space colonies, too, have had trouble with "the Dark" as malicious supernatural events are called. A common manifestation of the "Dark" is ghosts or zombies.

 

The Order of the Golden Dawn operates as the official arm of the League of Nations for dealing with psionics and the supernatural. The human base on the moon is one of their primary training locations. While psi talents outside of League control aren't usually illegal, they are being closely monitored, and gradually brought under the control of various governments or the League itself.

 

"Hybrid" technology powers space flight and many other marvels in use by the human race. It may appear to be of human design -- there will be knobs and switches, with (most often) Chinese characters on it -- but inside are bio-mechanical components unfathomable (as far as is known) by humans. The most visible hybrid technology around Europe would seem to be hover vehicles and large atmo-capable freighters -- water-borne ships and purely human-tech aircraft have all but disappeared from long-distance transport on Earth. but normal aircraft, propelled by gasoline engines, remain far cheaper than hybrid gravity-drive craft.

 

Even the machine-guns and cannons of human spacecraft are hybrid devices, using alien materials and propellant chemistry to produce amazing velocities and penetration. Capital ships fire plasma shells, which even the great powers can barely afford to purchase from the Hegemony. The Hegemony also provides the materials and techniques for humans to make and use Glass Steel, Astrosteel and Rocketanium -- armors far tougher than any material known before 1920. No purely human-tech machine guns or AA guns can penetrate the armor of even a small hybrid-tech starfighter.

 

Astrosteel was the first of these improved materials introduced, back in the early Twenties; it's already outmoded, replaced after 1926 by Rocketanium (probably at least four times stronger than steel). Glass Steel is considerably stronger than any transparent material available "normally" on Earth.

 

All of this technology is paid for by shipments of ore, oil, foodstuffs, etc.

 


 

Here's a standard hybrid-technology gravity drive. The specifically Martian components are labelled or marked in green:

 

 

 Very pulsing and gooey, filled with terrifically strong acids and other poisonous chemicals. (art copied and colored from the RSE book, copyright Ed Kann)

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