Alternates:GC-Gatecrashing

Gatecrashing is the practice of using the Gate system to explore the galaxy. Parallels with the Stargate franchise, while unavoidable, are discouraged - an entirely new set of jargon has been created for the purposes of this not being confused with that work of fiction.

The following is mostly verbatim from the Eclipse Phase book Gatecrashing, used under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 with a little remixing by Mal-3 to fit the established paradigm:

Though the Oberon gates are all very similar in look and function, in truth there are many notable differences between individual structures. First among these is size. Some of the gates are quite large, with the main spherical cage having a radius of over 100 meters. On the other hand, most gates are significantly smaller, with the lower end gates having a radius of approximately 15 meters across. There is some speculation that the gate sizes may be programmable, though no one has succeeded in reshaping one yet, or at least acknowledged such to the research community. It is possible to manipulate the wormhole size so that it is smaller than the gate; this is in fact standard procedure when connecting to unknown locations. In these cases, the wormhole is intentionally kept just wide enough to stick a microsensor through, while preventing anything larger from coming through.

All gates have the same basic form: a rough sphere of interlocking angled arms, like a round patterned cage. These black arms are solid and composed of an unknown form of stable and programmable exotic matter. Despite several years of study, the exact composition continues to spur a raging debate in materials science and physics circles, and there seems to be some evidence that different gates may actually be composed of different substances, or perhaps change composition over time. The arms move and change shape when new destinations are programmed into the gate, though it is interesting to note that set destinations do not always produce the same arm configurations.

Physically, gate arms have a polished metal look, and they seem to be impervious to signs of aging or physical damage, having an inherent self-repair function. Nobody has yet been willing to risk damaging a gate—at least that they’ve admitted—and so no one is quite sure just how resilient to damage these structures are. Analysis of the material properties suggests they can easily shrug off concentrated burns from even our heaviest beam weapons and are all but immune to personal weapons fire.

To viewers, the wormhole within the cage appears as a pure black sphere of nothingness, rippling with green static energy. Like the cage, the wormhole itself is effectively invisible on various electromagnetic wavelengths. The wormholes bleed Hawking radiation, however, so they show up very brightly and with a distinct signature on thermal scans.

The unknown fields surrounding each wormhole effectively keep the environments at each end of the throat or tunnel from interacting. This means that gatecrashers do not need to worry about suddenly losing atmosphere or getting sucked through if they open onto a vacuum environment, nor do they need to worry about the remote location’s hostile atmosphere, radiation, or gravity until they pass through. No sensory data passes through the wormhole; it is impossible to see, hear, or otherwise sense what is on the other side without passing something through.

The Gates

The Oberon Gate

the first one discovered by humanity.

Grand Central

the big one, as defined by how many other gates it can reach.

Operations

This is what usually happens, and the usual order, when a new gate address is opened up.

First-link

This is the first step when exploring a new gate address. The operators open the wormhole up to the smallest aperture they can and then stick a small probe through. This probe is designed to survive at least for a little while in all kinds of environments, and it relays back basic temperature, atmosphere composition/pressure, gravity and radiation data to the control center via a fiber-optic line. It also gets a live visual feed of the immediate surroundings. Gate control looks at this and decides whether or not to go to the next stage in a first-link. If the world looks reasonably okay, then the wormhole is inflated a little bit more and a drone - basically a ROV on a leash - gets shoved through. This drone will get a better look at the surroundings as well as do some basic sample work, look for life if there's nothing visible, etc. If the drone doesn't find any show stoppers, control proceeds to the next step, the first-in team.

First-in

What everybody thinks of as 'gatecrashers,' these are the guys who get to be first through to another world. SOP is to walk through in suits; just because the drone didn't find anything immediately dangerous doesn't mean there isn't anything, so proper biological sequestration is required until the third or fourth visit at minimum. Most crashers haul their gear (tools, rations, portable survival shelter) on their backs with a motorized cart for heavy stuff, though a few teams have proper vehicles available. In any case, the first-in team's job is to reconnoiter the gate's general area out to at least a fifty-kilometer radius. This is generally done using free-flying ROVs but also involves a fair bit of hoofing it, especially if there's something interesting close to the gate. Gatecrashers are more than often armed, especially on missions to Gaian worlds, because while the first-link drone might say the atmosphere is safe it won't tell you there's a flock of giant murderstorks just over the hill that might consider humans tasty.

The first-in mission usually lasts for a fixed period, between 24 and 100 hours depending on the nature of the world visited. The more interesting or potentially valuable the place looks on first-link, the longer the first-in mission normally is. The gate is operated from the far side and it's on a schedule, so if a team misses the connection they're SOL; if nobody comes back the address is usually locked off. There might be a followup if the world is promising enough, but for a stranded crasher team that's a thin thread to hang hope on.

Vulture missions

These guys are the followup people. They're all still gatecrashers - the average team will do four or five vulture missions for every first-in - but they get the unglamourous job of going in after the first-in guys and setting up the new world for resource extraction or colonization or research. Despite the insulting name, vultures still run a considerable risk; new worlds don't stop being dangerous just because the first-in guys came back after all, and murderstorks are always potentially over the next hill. Vultures generally tend to make up missions 2-10 to a new setting.

Colonies

In July 2039, there are three major colonies and a couple dozen minor ones scattered along the gate network. The majors are Hyborea (mapping to mainline Yggdrasil), $Planet_to_be_named_later (mapping to mainline Arda) and Grand Central (not a mainline world, orbits a nondescript G1 about 550 light years away). Hyborea and $TBD only connect to Oberon and each other, and have been nicknamed the Local Triangle by operators and fanboys. Grand Central is significant because it seems to be a major network node with hundreds, if not thousands of potential links (as opposed to the 1-200 links from Oberon). Most of the heavy gatecrashing activity in Fenspace happens on Grand Central.

Gate Ratings

ROV Carrier Crawler "Oregon Trail"

Oregon Trail is a custom-built, slab-sided crawler resting on a pair of tracked drive pods. A covered wagon with a broken wheel is painted on the side of the cab section. It's a regular sight at Grand Central, with its sides covered in graffiti from Gatecrasher groups believing it to bring good luck. Oregon Trail is space rated and fully capable of making controlled planetary landings, but not taking off again without help.

Gates addresses are color-coded according to how risky it is to traverse them:

Gray

Unknown Gate

Blue

Nothing of Value or "Empty" Gate

Green

Safe-ish Gate

Yellow

Visit with caution

Amber

Hostile/Vulture group lost

Red

Gatecrashers never returned also known as "Death" Gates.

Black

Blocked Addresses "Oblivion" Gates

Jargon

Gatecrashers

These are the people who get to be first through to another world.

Vultures

Those that do in depth follow up surveys for corps, gov'ts, or interested parties on gates that have been "Crashed" by a Gatecrasher team. Just as risky as Gatecrashing, but less "flashy" then Gatecrashing

Crows

Those that visit "Death" gates in the hopes of recovering bodies and/or salvage from lost Gatecrasher/Vulture groups. A number are made up of people trying to find out what happened to friends or family. Success of a Crow "Murder" can change the rating of a Gate. A "Murder" that doesn't return from a Red rated gate always result in the gate being re-rated Black.

Aliens

As of July 2039 nobody's seen a real, live alien. Or at least nobody's claimed to have seen a live alien and brought back actual proof of the encounter. There have been plenty of signs that there are aliens out there, however: gatecrashers have discovered dozens of sites through the network that show the gates have been used or known for a very long time. Traces of alien civilizations ranging from ten million years BP to just a few decades prior have been found, so somebody obviously is using the gate network. Which leads into the next topic of discussion...

The Great "What"

Two years ago, the gatecrasher team 'the Order of St. Grimace' did an otherwise routine first-in mission on a planet that seemed to support primitive life and had some odd ruins strewn around the gate. The Order quickly determined that the planet (officially tagged "Strangelove" in the databases) had gone through a severe nuclear war sometime around 2,500 years BP, a war fought with salted fusion warheads that quickly killed off all the higher lifeforms. Then the Order found remains of the local sapients.

They were not expecting to find human remains.

Since the discovery of Strangelove, Convention gate authorities have been reevaluating all their data on past "alien" civilizations and are finding that yes, some of these may indeed have been human. The further discovery of Tellus Secundus (again by the Order) has thrown pretty much everybody for a philosophical loop. Who built this duplicate of Sol system? Why did they build it? How in the hell did humans show up in the network? And the $64,000 question: are there more duplicates out there?