The Universe of GLOOM
Welcome to the
Solar Hegemony
A gritty sector of space where the immortal, corporate elite rule from neon-drenched core worlds, connected by jumpgates. Humanity has pushed to the frontier, the Verge, using unreliable Shift Drives, creating a fringe full of scrappers, smugglers, and desperate colonists.
Meanwhile the corporations are digging up things they shouldn't, the synthetics they built are asking too many questions, and the FTL technology itself is punching holes into a dimension that is starting to stare back.
Humanity is expanding
The year is 2400 and humanity has reached out into the universe. There are the Core Worlds and the Rim Worlds. In the Core Worlds you can find sprawling megacities, where the rich live in their skyscrapers while the poor are struggling in the Sump, the sprawling shantytowns that surrender the hubs of consolidated power.
The Rim Worlds, aka the Verge, are usually nothing more than a colony, full of people searching for a lucky break or just hiding from the long arm of the Hegemony. Space travel is common but dangerous. Players are likely "freelancers" with their own (probably mortgaged) starship, taking any job to keep flying.
The rule of power
The Hegemony (the central corporate government) has "civilized" the Core, but the Verge is a dusty, untamed "Western." People in the Verge are independent, cynical, and trying to stay off the government's radar. Cultural blending is common, and new subcultures and religions pop up a dime a dozen.
The future is industrial, grimy, and "trucker-in-space." The true power is the megacorporations, who are ruthless, bureaucratic, and will sacrifice entire colonies for a potential profit or new discovery. But that is not all: there is an underlying feel of cosmic dread. This isn't just about aliens; it's about wrongness. The universe is ancient, and humanity is an insignificant newcomer.
Key concepts of GLoom
“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”
The GLOOM
Very little is actually known about The Sub-Quantum Manifold (SQM) or, as most people say, the Gloom. There are a lot of myths and rumours floating about, but Quantum theory is too complex for most people to grasp. Some see the Gloom as a wormhole dimension that ”folds” differently than our space, creating shortcuts between distant stars.
Others think of it as a parallel dimension where time and space works differently, making it possible to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye. But everyone who has been through the Gloom can tell of fragments of restless dreams and nightmares.
Something the Hegemony calls Quantum-Fold Sickness.
The JUMPGATES
Your ship approaches the Jumpgate: a colossal, Monolith-branded ring structure, a kilometer wide, floating at a system's Lagrange point. It is a perfect, shimmering circle of "dead space."
You are given clearance by the Hegemony Gate Authority (HGA). Your ship's navigation is slaved to the Gate. You align with the ring.
The HGA operator's voice crackles, "Transit-field initializing. All crew to brace for quantum-alignment."
The "hole" of the ring, which was reflecting the stars, turns into a perfect, non-reflective, absolute blackness. It is a hole in the universe. Your ship's thrusters fire, and you are pulled into the void.
The Shift Drive
Also known as the Alcubierre Drive, doesn't travel through normal space. It punches a hole into the SQM. It is powered by the "knot", a black sphere of quantum entanglement. A "jump" takes anywhere from a day to a week (ship-time), while days or, sometimes, even months might pass in the "real."
The Casimir effect from the Shift Drive creates a field around the ship, protecting it and its inhabitants from the Glooms adverse effects.
The Navigators' Guild
To navigate through the Gloom you need a specialized "Nav-gilder". These individuals are rare, eccentric, and often "Gloom-touched".
But without their guidance and skills you will go nowhere. For some reason, no Sheath or Construct can navigate the Gloom.
The Navigators' Guild is the only entity outside the Hegemony that wields any real power. The corporations try to keep the guild at ease.
Explore into the unknown
You've got a ship. Probably old. Definitely mortgaged. The kind of rust-bucket that corporations use when they need deniability.
Maybe you haul cargo. Maybe you salvage wrecks. Maybe you're running from debts, from the law, from a life you can't afford to re-sheath out of.
noun
GLOOM
- a. partial or total darkness
b. a dark or shadowy place - a. lowness of spirits : DEJECTION
b. an atmosphere of despondency
