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The Cyberwolfe's Den

Timeline: 20 Minutes Into The Future

Some indeterminate time in the future, mankind has conquered the biggest hurdle of all and discovered the fine art of Faster-Than-Light travel. Shortly thereafter, we decided to pack up and see what color the grass was on the other side. Within a few decades, a dozen star systems held colonies. Within a century, the earliest colonies had become thriving concerns, some even launching colonies of their own. Now, there are nearly a hundred established colony worlds in the Terran Alliance, plus another score or so worlds out on the fringe that aren't members of the Alliance.

The Outplanets, or 'Fringe', whatever you want to call it, are where the quick money is made for anyone who can get their hands on a starship. Most worlds are all on their own, making their way through dint of their own sweat. Law on these planets is almost non-existant, and there are always pirates and raiders to watch out for. Some of these worlds have banded together into small governments, but the Alliance doesn't take them seriously yet. In these pocket hegemonies,you can find everything from peaceful living to out-and-out dictatorships.

Faster-Than-Light travel is through Hyperspace which has a couple of limitations - Hyperspace is affected by gravity wells in realspace, such as that of a star or large planet. As a rule, anything twice as massive as the Earth will have a Hyper Limit that prevents Hyper transit within it's area of gravitational pull. Our own star has a Hyper Limit of 2 AU, Jupiter's is only .35 AU. If you get too close to one of these Hyper Limits, your ship will be dumped out of Hyper in what they call a 'crash translation'. This is exceedingly hard on both personnel and systems, so it is avoided at all costs.