Re: DS/FT/SG: Tuffleyverse Cannon & Personal Stratrgy/Tactics/Design Philosophies

> > I've designed a couple of minor powers -- the Hanseatic League and
> the Pantropist Society
> 
> You've got around to designing the Pantropists, have you?  Posted
> anywhere?
Well, perhaps “designed” is putting it a bit strongly.	“Made notes on”,
and “scrawled
some modeling ideas about” would be more accurate.

Nevertheless, in stream of consciousness form, here’s the history of the
Pantropists,
lacking any kind of dates or basic coherence:

The Pantropist Society started out as a group of radical
environmentalists, founded in the
decades preceding the first FTL jump.  Central to their philosophy was
the belief that
planets are living, sentient beings, and that interfering with the
ecosystem of a planet
is a crime tantamount to murder.  They took this belief to rather
ridiculous extremes,
declaring their opposition to the proposed terraforming of Mars out of a
desire to protect
the non-existent ecosystem of the red planet.

Instead of terraforming, the Pantropists believed that the PROPER way to
colonize the
stars was to genetically engineer human beings into forms that could
live on alien worlds
with a minimal amount of impact upon the natural ecosystems.

For the most part, they were not taken seriously.  UN law expressly
forbade genetic
experimentation on human beings, and world opinion was pretty firmly
behind this.  When
the Pantropists produced a pair of 8 year old children with gills,
designed to live and
thrive underwater, the outcry was tremendous.  Within a matter of
months, the Society had
been effectively wiped out.  The more prominent members had been
arrested, and the rest
(including some very skilled geneticists) had been driven underground.

The society limped along for a few more years while FTL travel was being
developed.  One
by one, the Pantropists fled-off world, bankrolled by supporters who had
managed to keep
their connection to the Society a secret.

Over the next several decades, the Pantropists established colonies on
five different
worlds.  None of these planets would be considered suitable for human
life, but the
Society has managed to produce children perfectly suited to these
hostile environments.

They have managed to keep their existence secret, more through luck than
anything else. 
The fact that they’ve chosen to settle worlds that no one with any sense
would have any
interest in has been a big help too, of course.

I figure that they are due to be discovered Real Soon Now, and will
probably be mistaken
for another race of aliens, at least initially.  The younger generation
is intent upon
getting out there and saving some of the worlds that humanity is
currently despoiling;
when and if they managed to mount such a campaign, they are likely to
have their asses
seriously kicked.  They don’t have the numbers or the resources to be a
serious threat to
any real military force.

The Pantropists will specialize in hit-and-run attacks and commando
raids, hoping to
disrupt fledgling colonies.  For Stargrunt, I’d use Ral Partha’s “Psion”
miniatures.  Long
OOP, alien creatures that look like something designed by Wayne Barlowe;
these are some
really nice figures that I’ve been trying to find a use for.

For DSII and FT, the Pantropists don’t have enough forces to really game
with.  Their
“fleet” is a handful of converted yachts and merchant ships, and would
be blown to atoms
in moments if it came to a stand up fight.

..so it’s not much, in other words.  The Pantropists are not going to be
anyone’s
definition of a major power, by any means.  I just wanted to come up
with something that
didn’t have any connection to any existing nations or powers.  Radical
environmental
nutjobs seemed like an interesting direction to take, especially since
it would allow me
to use some really nice miniatures.  It would take a lot more work (and
some painted
figures) before I tried to do anything serious with the idea, though.

John Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com
http://www.voicenet.com/~johncrim

---------------------------------------------
This message was sent using Voicenet WebMail.
      http://www.voicenet.com/webmail/