Appendix G

Appendix G
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Friday, March 3, 2017

Concluding my Rocket to Garm blather

DAR/Rocket to Garm

I left off bleating about some sort of vague timeline. Unfortunately I've had lots of time to think abotu this.   So... a vauge post 1949 timeline then? By vague I mean a handful of events from which to web things out if necessary. Point by point.
Curiously I find myself maknig up a spin off game in the 50s taking a cue from Justice League : New Frontier. (Of course I do....) /So perhaps I can be forgiven for the first bit. Anyway here's the rest of my brainstorming. More will be forthcoming in the eventuality I do anything with it.

Also, I am still working thorugh learning Blogger's interface so bear with me on the inexplicable formatting these past few posts seem to have gotten up to.

Mars

1957 - Mystic Theurges of L. Ron Hubbard
Bit of an aside as the crumbling us struggles to remain competitive.  the Alfar and Svartalfar who have been "guests" of the US gov't since 1950 care of a rogue MI6 telepath go rogue.  
The short one - coded Clarice grows tired of speaking with the Gray alen from faerieland at Area 51 and so goes AWOL from Dreamland. 
flees into the seedy disepunk hollywood underbelly of Los Angeles.  (Ultimately hidden by L. Ron Hubbard)


Svartalfar identified as Gerfired remains with the captured serpentech, and the roswell UFO (grays from faeire) all at Area 51.  Gerfried has the US ready to throw sweitch on first secret fusino plant (powering LA) by late 1957


Martians attempt to invade in 1957...George Pal style.  Cylanders plumet into the atlantic (england’s not there folks) and across the length of the poisoned lands (not local microbes but the seprent taint is what kills them)
Many land in E CAlifornia however like the movie
America's pocket mystic resources (the captured svartalfar, the saucertech) used up for the most part. (clarice) She bails and does not come back


The succession 

Henry IX is King until around 1972 - 1974) when Eiizabeth II becomes monarch.????

- will have to see if Liz II survived WW2 in timeline; I don't think so though.
unless she died (she turned 18 in 1944)  (Was supposed to take over when she was 18 - at least possibly - but this continuity is one of greatly retarded equal rights for women and minorities in the New British Empire.  Once she takes over that begins to thaw, slowly.
- ( Also look up: What about Henry's two sons, William & Richard?)


so possibly Henry IX dies just shy of the moon shot in 72 and so she (Queen Liz II or someone else) is the monarch on the throne (by days) when the British astronauts land on the moon.  And Claim it for Britain.
So if not Elizabeth II then someone else...but filling a simliar role for our purposes.  Either way, even if it is her, different husband, and different kids.   (who would presumably be from India South Africa. Canada,  or Australia but still brit and white of course)


Space!

So...1972 to 2000 the next wave of space;  Britain establishes their permanent foothold in space and then works to secure it, largely by "any means necessary."  
- the moon is regarded as soverein British Territory.


A notion to make the US a client state of Imperial Britain, at least at first.  
1975 - The United States’ 20th and final Fusion plant goes on line. The second era of the United States has begun.
  • Pact with Britannia;  mutual defense, we’ll sell you fission nukes;  you agree not to develop fusion bombs or tech;  we’ll keep fusion weapons to ourselves….BUT
    • American Fusion (it’s a nationalized company;  also one of those pesky Svartaflar own 52% of it) will come to Britains lands set up, build, and run, fusion power plants for Britain but that’s it.  
    • Later a revised agreement has americans as necessary crew members on all Torchships as they will share the tech but ONLY if the Americans keep the fusion specifically to themselves


likely someone challenges this and finds themself at war with Britain.  Japan?    What's become of Russia?  ( I think I like Japan as an adversary better tbh)



Of course, the Rotting Carcass

80s speaking of “the Containment” usually means a period beginning here;  the absolute transformation of Europe, Africa, the Atlantic, by the rotting carcas and all it has released
What kind of environmental/exo/extinction level catastrophie is that?

What about south american/antarctic nazis?

What ABOUT The soviets?
Kind of like the idea of them getting frozen by glacier;  maybe this necesitates them moving to mars.

While America has Fusion power in this equation, long enough to play itself as a useful if traitorous client state to Britain, it probably remains mired on the ground, invading Mexico in 2001 (the issue of the succession, as with a lot of the dangling plot threads from DAR are purposefully here not being resolved) However lots of individual AMERICANS are in space, and an increasing amount of US business is making the transition.

What about the Moon?

September 9th to 13th 1999 Garm eats the moon
Some knid of exotic mega disasdter happens to the moon
-this likely cripples the inevitable Garry Anderson UFO/Space 1999 British moonbase, to say the least, .
I'm going with the moon being shattered as I do have a soft spot for rhsttered moons in the sky.
Also, this provides a dandy rationale for a large scale migration into the solar system (well besides the rotting organic megastructrure and it's hostile to all life interior ecosystem) ala
Cowboy Beebop, Eclipse Phase, and that old Tom Swift reboot from the 1980s

So people are leaving or wanting to leave the old shattered earth in droves. Again, I'm hearing the set up to 85% of Phil Dicks' near future output here.

At the very least I feel that regardles of how this is or isn't understood in universe, burgeoning Imperial Space Britain at this point probbaly goes all 9/11 war on terror with it.  Blames it on “terrorists, separatists, anarchists, and those sympathetic to communist propaganda.”
The usual basically.

Meanwhile in the Solar System - who goes where first?  

Britain to mars by 88 - maybe give the "expeditionary force" from the 50s some payback
Instead find Bradbury like empty cities


Soviets?  Red Mars - perhaps they get to Mars first?


Swamps of Venus by ???  (or someone else got there first?  Russia?  Unlikely....)



2001 - 2017:  the Rise of the Sons of Space

So the second half of this future rationale looks like this t - he inner solar system opens up and it is the new Golden age for Brittania;  in space it is the Pax Britannia as in space mother england reigns supreme

Rise of Japan and it’s space defense forces - more than a litle influenced by Space Cruiser Yamamoto as Britain wanes over the next few decades.

The golden age of British space Exploitation begins.  The miniing of the belt under the watchful eye of the crown.   

First appearance of space pirates in the asteroid belt.

By the 1990s the first british subjects are being born off world



2000 - Britain launches it's Jupiter probe,
- a year later, Britain launches it's Saturn probe.  The Saturn probe is lost


December 2001 the Saturn mission is, under great secrecy, lost; shades of the book version of 2001
Eventually (8 years later) the Russians (on Mars?) are preparing their own Voyage to Saturn.
However there is not a monolith awaiting them. There are alien horrors on Titan however, who wish to control humans as puppets......



Imperial Space Britain

The Solar System navy flies under the flag of the southern cross. Terrestrial Britain is comprised of Southern Africa, all of Australia, and Canadian America. (Despite two revolts) Most of the nation at this point is in low orbit, around the new Lunar belt, on Mars, over Mars, or in the Belt. In space they *are* civilization.
And that's the problem. Britain is not the progressive bastion that it is in our world. Women, people of colour, and sexual and gender minorities still struggle for recognition, let alone an equal share. In the Solar system, the old values are eroding rapidly under the survivor rigors of space living. Something must give sooner or later.

At least some of the Space Pirates are probably made of revolutionary types who wnat equal - or at least more - representation in Britain, in the System, wherever.
If the Space Pirates have a Secret Base in the belt, then maybe these rebels should control it to some degree?
.
Mars has a number of Free Mars movmements, regardless of where on or over Mars you happen to be.



The British Imperial Space Patrol campaign arc

Game is probably set in the c. 2014 - 2018 era; There will be a cadet class graduating in 2017 or whenever date the game is set.

The Space Patrol is probbaly the result of the Garm Incident. While it is theoretically international, it's heavily contolled and influenced by Briitish power, especially since British power has been waning in all other areas since they lost the moon....

I expect the characters would all be fresh out of boot rosy cheeked cadets doing basic Space Patrol stuff


who are dealing with an increasingly gray seres of circumstances over the course of their job. Lots of episodic adventures at first, eventually drawing them into the deeply conflicts of the setting until they feel a need to Pick A Side.



Thursday, March 2, 2017

GARM part two - brainstorming

So.  the Day after Ragnarok - the sequel

ROCKET TO GARM

A tale of the British Royal Rocket Patrol!




So, to carry the thought exercise forward, were I to develop this enough to pitch or run this, I think ultimately the list of sources (posted, so prospective players would have some notion where I’m coming from) would look something like this



Dan Dare & the Day After Ragnarok of course
the Ministry of Space
Triplanetary
UFO Belter
Space 1999
2001 A Space Odyssey


Robert Heinlein, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, a lot of early Philip K. Dick, and the Jetsons


So with all of this, and an eye toward all of the “Rocket Patrol” era of SF , I’d populate the inner and outer solar system, pepper the colonial powers out by extrapolating forward from DAR (which leaves off in summer 1947 I think).  
On that last I would need, at least for my own purposes, something like a post 49 timeline (again heavily inspired by ministry of space).



I’ve pro’lly got a bit of the Expanse in here but that’s because
a) I've got it on the brain a little
b( the Expanse is genius and
c) the Expanse incorporates a metric grinth load old golden and early silver age ideas about the Dawn of the Solar System Age.  
Go read your Heinlein juveniles  It’s in there.  This sort of thing used to be hard coded into Classic Traveller back in the day. I own a copy of GDW’s Belter. )   Either way we’re talking about what is on the surface a game of “Plucky engineers, everyone has a slide rule, and torch ships are just now a thing.”  
Of no great surprise to anyone who knows me, I would be drawing a fair bit of inspiration from Ellis’ Ministry of Space.  Maybe all of it.  I’m sure I could work out some vague timeline.  

Also! one of the awesome things that Hite does in DAR is seed the book with references to other works of thematically or period related media or fiction.  Dan Dare gets checked, so does UNIT, so does a LOT of things.  This trend would persist with this project to some degree.   

The big question would be for me What does the Title pertain to?  Rocket to Garm?
Since Garm, mythologically eats the world, and since we’re allowed to incorporate other media, I’m just going to suggest that right now, the whole ministry of space timeline gets interrupted by Garm, eating the moon AKA a colossal atomic explosion on the far side of the moon on September 10, 1999.   If the command staff happen to resemble Martin Landau and Barbara Bain you can only blame me so much.  

Next, I shall hash out that timeline and figue out what thee is to do in this Rocket Age solar Darestopia