2 Galsheen A Sci-Fi Tabletop RPG Supplement Table of Contents All material is original to Galsheen, Copyright 2013, by Brett Fitzpatrick, Starbright Illustrations, Sa m ple file except the images of stars and galaxies used in the maps and backgrounds which are courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech, (link: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu). RORO Alley................................................3 Design ....................................................... 5 Equipment.................................................. 7 Inner Rim Unity ......................................... 9 Convoy Operations...................................11 Deck Plans .............................................. 13 Key to Deck Plans ...................................14 Deck 1 ..................................................... 16 Deck 2...................................................... 18 Deck 3...................................................... 20 Deck 4...................................................... 22 Deck 5...................................................... 24 Deck 6...................................................... 26 Deck 7...................................................... 28 Deck 8...................................................... 31 Hull Features ...........................................39 Accidents and Incidents .......................... 40 Variants ................................................... 40 Crew ........................................................ 40 Adventure Hook....................................... 41 Game Stats.............................................. 41 3 incomprehensible tasks. RORO Alley Late in the year of IR87600, on a cold but clear morning on Novamouth, feeling very much alone, I got my first close up view of a Galsheen-class transport. Little did I know that our colony would soon fail, and my future lay on one of those steel monsters. I could have no idea that nearly 30 years later, when someone says "home" I think first of the Galsheen-class transports, on which I was privileged to serve. ple The artificially flattened landscape of the landing field was an impossible tangle of cables, pipes and roads, littered with machinery and crates. Power, data, materials, droids and vehicles flowed into our nascent colony from those landing fields. Each delivery was a shot in our arm. Each spaceship that landed, most of them Galsheen class, was bringing the lifeblood that made our colony stronger. file In fact I was seeing a dozen or so, this was RORO Alley, a peninsula of rock near our first planetary colony. This was before the encounter with the Precursor Robots, before the colony was abandoned. Sa m The spaceships themselves towered over the whole scene. They were planetside for a few hours at most before rising on columns of ionized gas, back into the upper atmosphere, and away. The noise was unbearable. There was the roar of the engines landing, the clank of landing struts locking into position, the thunder of wheels, tracks, treads and feet disembarking. And above all was the shrill shriek of gases escaping from safety valves and sputtering from leaky joints in thick black hoses trailing from spaceship to holding tanks and pipelines. I stood unsteadily, fresh out of hibernation, with my heavy colonist's starter kit resting on a grav sled beside me. To my untutored gaze these transports looked vast, impossibly cluttered and complex. I watched the crews pick their way through the vehicle bay, about their 4 Sa m ple file A Galsheen-class transport landing a military expeditionary force on a contested planet at the edges of IRU space. 5 Design Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are vessels designed to carry wheeled, tracked and legged cargo such as automobiles, trucks, tanks, mechs semi-trailer trucks, trailers or railroad cars that are driven on and off the ship under their own power. This is in contrast to lo-lo (lift-on/lift-off) vessels which use a crane to load and unload cargo. The ships were designed to be a new concept in vehicle delivery, during planetary assault, colonization and exploration. Previously a carrier would bring vehicles, which were then ferried to the surface on shuttles. The Galsheen is a point to point solution, capable of interstellar travel. The hangar on the spaceship can quickly be divided into three fire bays by thick steel doors that are designed to restrict the spread of fire. Sa m ple The Galsheen-class vehicle transport spaceships are also known as Fast Spacelift Ships (FSS) or SL-7s. They are currently the fastest cargo ships in the IRU Space Navy, capable of speeds in excess of one light year per month. file The Galsheen-class vehicle transport vessels are a class of very large logistics spaceships in service with the Inner Rim Unity Navy. The Galsheen-class transports are distinctive spaceships with a box-like structure running the entire breadth of the hull, fully enclosing the cargo. They have two side ramps for dual loading of vehicles, and extensive automatic fire control systems. Travelling from star to star within the galaxy is therefore very swift, and an average journey between stars, of about three light years, takes only three months. Originally built in IR87550 as high-speed container ships known as SL-7's for Military Spacelift Command (MSC), the spaceships' high operating costs limited their profitability. Then came the Inner Rim Unity's expansion and colonisation drive. The SL -7s were converted for colonisation, and renamed the Galsheen class. The conversion entailed the installation of a pair of huge roll on/roll off ramps and a redesign of the former cargo hold to turn them into a vehicle bay to better facilitate storage of vehicles. The Galsheen class has liftable decks to front and aft of the vehicle bay, to increase the number of “low and light” vehicles carried, as well as a heavier central decks for "high and heavy" cargo, such as mecha. These kind of vessels perform a usual speed of ½ a light year per month at ecospeed, while at full speed more than one light year per month can be achieved. The lead ship of the class is named Galsheen, and these workhorses are named after a very wide and eclectic naming scheme. Names include large alien life forms, planets where nomadic peoples have been found, and other names connected with journeying, load carrying and sheer size. As well as eco-speed, the IRU Space Navy is finding other way to save money. Spaceships time their entry into ports so that they arrive in daytime, not at night, when spaceports on diurnal planets charge higher rates. 6 The Galsheen has another money-saving feature: 328 deck-top solar panels that produce enough juice from the sun to power the ship's machinery, such as steering gear and the ventilation fans on the cargo decks. 200 years without refueling and are predicted to have a service life of over 5,000 years. Ship Privacy All crew quarters sensors dump their readings into a data store that can only be accessed by the ship computer or the captain. This is regarded as an acceptable level of privacy by the IRU, while still providing some security because recordings do exist of events in private quarters, even if they are never usually viewed. ple Every day, while the spaceship is underway, crewmembers and droids patrol every four hours, walking among the vehicles, constantly checking to make sure the valuable vehicles are properly lashed, keeping a watch out for fire and generally making sure everything is shipshape. file Many of the crewmembers serving on this class of transport spaceship have served aboard other types of craft. Serving on vehicle transports is different from other types of freighters or container ships. A cargo of mecha is far more expensive than the ship. Sa m Life aboard also has its rewards, such as the stunning views of destination planets at dawn and sunset. But at times, it can be tedious. Officers are aboard at least four months at a stretch, and the ships are rarely planetside longer than 12 hours. Months away in space make it hard to have a family. Relatives are forced to keep in touch via e-mail and occasionally, vidphone. The crew passes their down time aboard ship playing cards, watching videos or napping. The Galsheen-class carries enough onboard food to feed the crew for five years. With an overall length of 200m they are a very large spaceship, but by no means the largest deployed by the IRU. They employ the standard warp systems used for propulsion on many modern starships. As a result of the use of electrodynamic power, the ships are capable of operating for over 7 Equipment As standard, the Galsheen class is not provided with very much special equipment. There are however sometimes special droids provided for overseeing and ‘wrangling’ vehicles. Sa m ple Droid naming conventions Droids are given a serial number based on starship name, droid role, and manufacturing batch number. So for a droid serving aboard a Galsheen-class spaceship (Ga), in the role of comms officer (co), with a batch number of Z009987, for example, its name would be GacoZ009987. This is a long number, and tricky of many humans to remember, so droids often have a ‘human-memorable’ shorter version, in this case Gaco87. file Vehicle liaison droid. This droid, or sometimes a vehicle with AI, is an intermediary between drone vehicles and humans.