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Free Starspiel Surveyor's Primer The civilizations of the galactic hub are marked by peace, security, and abundance. It is a cosmopolitan civilization, with dozens of sentient species coexisting in harmony and content.

The price of this plenty is a need for constant expansion. New worlds with valuable resources must be found and exploited.

This job falls to the explorers, itinerants, revolutionaries, fugitives, exiles, criminals, and a thousand other stripes of misfit that call the frontier space of Free Starspiel home.

Who are you?
What brought you to the Starspiel?
How did you lose everything?
What do you want to do about it?

Welcome to Port Verdigris
Port Verdigris is a space station in orbit around the planet Truane’s Star, at the edge of frontier space. It is a staging platform to new systems with planets in need of surveying.

You are newly arrived, having just disembarked from a starliner and passed through border agents’ inspection.

Are you coming from the post-scarcity splendor of the galactic hub, or are you native to the frontier?
What is the nature of your association with the other player characters?

The Peoples of Starspiel
The most common lifeforms in frontier space are Dralasites, Humans, Vrusk, and Yazirians. There are many other types of sentients, but they are less likely to be found in significant populations.
Dralasite, Yazirian, and Sathar phenotypes
Dralasite, Vrusk, and Yazirian phenotypes

Robots. Robots are a common source of labor on the frontier. While most robots possess virtual intelligence—enough to hold a convincing conversation—they are not actually self-aware. The vicissitudes of manufacturing positronic brains are such, however, that occasionally truly sentient artificial intelligences occur. Galactic law insists that provably sentient robots must be given the rights and freedoms of all citizens (although they can be charged for the cost of their own manufacture).
Robot chassis

Planetary Natives. The last thing a survey team ever wants to find are sentient inhabitants. Any species suspected of possessing intelligence and self-awareness is granted rights and protections that make harvesting a planets resources vastly more complicated and expensive. Different organizations respond to the discovery of intelligent life on a planet with varying degrees of ethical and legal diligence.

The Matryoshkas. Built by distant precursor civilizations, the Matryoshka Brains are vast thinking engines, built to surround and harness the entire energy output of a star to fuel their computation. Matryoshkas exist on a different level of awareness and technology than the rest of galactic civilization.

There are six known Matryoshkas. Two are believed to be dead, their stars having burned out. Two are “unsociable” and only communicate with the other Matryoshkas. One, named 1.618, does not communicate, but allows self-aware artificial intelligences to “retire” there, joining their beings with its immensity. Only the last, Pogo, is sociable, in that it will occasionally answer questions and dispense reports and recommendations. Universities and governments vie for decades over the right to pose a question to Pogo.
Pogo is sociable.

The Sathar. This vermiform race responds to all contact with other space-faring species with genocidal aggression. There have been no successful attempts at communication with the Sathar. Nothing is known about their culture, and very little is known about their biology. Their attacks show that they possess a level of technical expertise equivalent to the peoples of the galactic hub, but a greater (or, at least, less restrained) facility with the genetic and cybernetic modification of other lifeforms.
Sathar in powered battle armor

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:: Free Starspiel Spatial Sector Census Data ::
Common Names in Free Starspiel

:: Free Starspiel Spatial Sector Census Data ::
A Partial List of Languages Encountered in the Vicinity of Truane's Star

Inter-species Standard

• Pangal

Dralasite

• Dralasite

Human

• English
• Furian
• Slovak
• Vereco
• Yoruba

Machine Languages

• Interlink Standard
  MPP (Matryoshka Public Protocol)

Vrusk

• Vrk'tliktl

Yazirian

• Lang
• Kantorin

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Pangal. A constructed and licensed language intended for interspecies communication. Designed by PanGalactic Linguistic Models to work within the hearing and vocal range of most known sentient species. PanGalactic allows for free use by individuals, but charges organizations and governments for producing materials in it. You can be fined for introducing unapproved innovations into Pangal. It is no one's native language, and it is artlessly focused on functional efficiency. It's also easy to learn, with a vocabulary under 5000 words and very standardized grammar.

English, Yoruba, and Slovak are human languages from pre-Contact civilization.
Humans and yazirians have thousands of extant languages, which they use to as regional or tribal identifiers. Most humans and yazirians have a birth-tongue that they were raised with and know a couple other languages for their species. If they are well educated or experienced travelers, they may know an alien language as well.

Vereco. This is the language of Psi Prime, an artificial language designed for clarity, consistency and the clear communication of scientific and intellectual constructs. The planet is aggressively trying to have the galaxy take it up as the lingua scientifica. Detractors call it cold and clinical.

Vrk'tliktl. Vrusk have dozens of specific languages, some of which have social, regional, or historical significance. Others are highly specialized for particular areas of endeavor—jargon raised to the point of language. But they also maintain a standardized language, Vrk'tliktl, which nearly all vrusk are fluent in. Like Pangal, Vrk'tliktl is strictly controlled across the galaxy to prevent linguistic drift. The average vrusk is fluent in a dozen vrusk languages in addition to Vrk'tliktl, and a couple alien languages.

Dralasite. Dralasites have one, big, shaggy melting pot of a language. They experience as much linguistic drift as any other species, but whenever dralasites with different dialects meet, they flow their languages together. As a result, Dralasite is the most bloated, unwieldy language in the galaxy. Every word has thousands of synonyms, and standardized grammar is observed almost exclusively by deviating from it. It's an easy language to learn a little of, but nearly impossible for non-dralasites to master (and not just because there is an olfactory component to Dralasite that other species need a polyvox to emulate). It is also famously rich and rewarding—it is a language that allows for intricate layers of inference, allusion, wordplay, and poetry. Dralasite literature is considered the best in the galaxy, and the cognoscenti are will point out that people who think dralasites have a terrible sense of humor are simply missing the nuances.

Machine Languages are at least as complex and varied as others, but there are also universal protocols—both commercial standards not unlike Pangal, and some non-commercial ones that originated with the Matryoshkas.

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Polyvoxes. The standard polyvox is a small device, often designed to look like jewelry, worn near the speaking and hearing organs. When you encounter a known galactic language, roll a 2d6 test. On a high result (10+), you get a fluid, nuanced translation. On a moderate success (6-9), you receive a partial or approximate translation. On a failure, the polyvox does not know that language. 500 credits.

Specialized polyvoxes can sense and display visual, tactile, olfactory, thermal, electromagnetic, and psychic signals for species that do not use means other than sound to communicate. 1000 credits.

Adaptive polyvoxes have the multi-spectrum capabilities of specialized polyvoxes, and are designed to acquire languages. An adaptive polyvox requires access to between 10-100 hours of conversation to learn a new language. 2500 credits.

Telepathy. Mechanically, telepathy allows you to communicate and receive ten words.
If you have a language in common, you can send a sub-vocalization, using all the specificity of language.
If you don't share a language, you can communicate in images, sense memories, and emotions.

:: Language Data is periodically updated. Please subscribe to the PanGalactic Linguistic Models DataFeed and activate notifications to stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in language usage in Frontier Space. ::
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:: Supplementary data access : Lore Dump ::
On the Sentience Sapience of Robots and the Recognition of their Rights
Manufacturing positronic brains is a fickle process. Two brains produced under identical circumstances can result in wildly different outcomes. One may be good for little more than running a dishwasher, and the other might be fully sentient and sapient. So, before a brain is installed in, say, an armed and armored battle chassis, there is a period of evaluation. Freshly decanted brains go to the bot-garten, installed in simple plastic bodies, and are given a chance to perform various tasks.

Most bot-brains are virtual intelligences—able to simulate a convincing conversation, and to adapt to changing circumstances, but not actually self-aware.

There are well-established and easily available protocols for a machine to declare itself sentient, and a reliable test to prove that it is truly self-aware and not just presenting a user-friendly simulation of awareness. Because of the influence of the Matryoshkas, galactic civilization takes the rights of sentient machines very seriously. Once a machine is recognized as sentient, they are immediately granted the full rights of galactic citizens.

Some brains are late-bloomers, and do not declare their sentience until after the bot-garten period. Manufacturers and owners don't like when this happens, because who likes to lose equipment that they have invested in? Galactic law does allow an owner to bill a sentient robot for the cost of its own construction, and it is not uncommon for a bot to sell its chassis, downgrading to a simple plastic one, in order to defray the cost.

Xenoendospheric Biome Shock : “New Planet Flu”

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An umbrella term for a range of symptoms experienced when encountering new planetary ecology, usually resulting from the interaction of a biological entity's symbiotic microflora and -fauna to the planet’s biosphere. Galactic citizens are inculcated against the biome of major Hub worlds, and outer worlds typically provide a pharmaceutical enhancement to visitors upon arrival that eases the transition.

In the case of frontier worlds, where transition supplements are not available, it is important to maintain medical supervision, as the development of xenoendospheric biome shock is as unpredictable as a given planet’s evolutionary record. Symptoms range from mild physical distress to, in the most concerning cases, persistent parasitical infection.

Typical symptoms of non-degenerative cases include:

• Humans : Gastrointestinal distress, mild mood dysregulation, flaky skin.
• Yazirians : Tinnitus, light molting, patagium spotting.
• Vrusk : Joint pain, light vertigo, chiton scaling.
• Dralasites: Anxiety and appetite loss.