Marie Celeste had been named by a mother with far, far, far too much appreciation for ancient legends and...unknown to Marie...historical irony.
She had been four years old when the Brazilians had lit off the torch on the
Brasilia and the
Rio De Janeiro and begun their thirty year long acceleration phase to push them from the orbit of Saturn to the interstellar space between the SOL system and Tau Ceti. She had, as a child, watched their burning streamers of thrust exhaust through telescopes as science projects - while, at the same time, the solar system began to burn down around her. She hadn't known it at the time. The cascade effects of the breakdowns of the Antarctic Treaty, the arming of the asteroids, the destruction of Ceres on Bloody Thursday, the massive naval arms race between the United Nations and the Kingdom of Barsoom...all of it had been pointing towards war and she had been too young, too wrapped up in her own life, to recognize it.
Now that the UN and the Soomies were shooting each other to shit across the solar system, Marie Celeste, now Dr. Marie Helmut-Celest, was watching five billion UN dollars and six years of her husband's work...go up in smoke.
"What do you mean gone?" she asked, for what had to be the third time. The spin-gravity of the imaginatively named Stellar Observatory L1 Satellite kept her glued to the deck, while the anti-nausea drugs she had to chow down at a constant rate kept her inner ear from telling her she was on a merry-go-round whipping around at a preposterous rate. She still felt sick, looking at the curved screen that served as the main information feed for the Rama Probe's telemetry.
"Uh, that's just what I said, gone." the comtech who was bringing in data from the Rama Probe through the amount of jamming and signal pings that filled the system looked as harried as Marie felt. "We turned on the gravity wave detector and it just...it's gone."
"Shit. Find out who shot the probe. I don't care if there's a war going on, civilian ships are off limits," Marie said, her lips turning down in a scowl.
"No, it's not gone as in someone put a railgun shot through it, it's gone as in...gone." The comtech gulped.
Marie walked to his console, leaned over. "A five ton probe doesn't..."
She paused.
The telescope showed nothing. She spooled back the footage.
There was the Rama Probe, situated in the gravitational barycenter of the SOL system, ready to switch on what Dr. Eugene Helmut-Celeste's math said would be the worlds first gravity wave detector. Humanity had been trying to actually pick up whatever it was that made gravity happen for more than two centuries - and despite refinements here and there, despite breakthroughs in related fields that had led to better computers and faster engines and (sadly) more effective guns...they'd never quite managed it.
But Gene wasn't just
any human.
Marie frowned.
She ran the clock back.
She ran the clock forward.
She ran the clock back again.
At exactly the moment the signal to switch on the gravity-wave detector hit the probe...
It vanished.
"...well I'll be a son of a bitch," Marie Helmet-Celeste, nee Celest, named after a ship that vanished into legend and myth, said as she looked at the probe that would be lost to legend and myth.
Five years later, after the peace treaty promised a mixed crew hand picked by both governments, the first ship with the first slipdrive humanity had ever built approached the Barycenter of the SOL system. It was a five AU trip, to hit a point in space where the sun's radiation and gravitational pull didn't cause the slipdrive to go nowhere in particular. Which was what the first tests, back on Earth, had proved. What the original team had thought was interference in a gravity-wave detector had, in fact, been a slipdrive trying and failing to drop through a specific, stable point of space-time and into another stable point of space-time. The math didn't say, exactly, where this other point was. Or, more accurately, 90% of the math said one thing and 10% of the math said the other.
The first possibility was that the Rama-1, 2 and 3 probes had arrived in the same solar system, an unknown distance from the SOL system.
The second was that they had each been shunted randomly into a different region of space/time. Maybe even ripped into atoms and scattered to the winds.
There was a definite note of uncertainty - attempts to build probes that could auto-return had failed mysteriously. They had gone through, then never come back. The decision had been that, until humanity finally cracked artificial general intelligence, there was only one way to figure it out.
Send humans through.
See if they came back.
All those thoughts rushed through Marie's head as she sat in the acceleration couch. Being one of the few people who actually knew how the damn slipdrives were supposed to work, she was required in case it broke and one of the backups needed to be started up and hooked to the rest of the ship. That didn't make her any less nervous. The rest of the crew - a mixture of tall and spindly Soomies and the increasingly diverse ethnoforms of Earth - worked at their consoles. The Earthers were fine with the 1G acceleration. The Soomies refused to show any discomfort.
"Deceleration complete in five...four...three..." the captain, a UNN man named Anderson Michaelson, said. His XO, a Soomie named Theisa, nodded to him.
The gravity went away. The subtle roar of the fusion torch cut off.
"So, who wants to bet the Brazilians are pissed?" the navigator, an Earther civilian named Joseph Kliner, said.
"They can always turn around," Thesia muttered.
That was actually not true. The two generation ships had been built to turn their antimatter revivors on, then turn them on again only when they were ready to decelerate. And the deceleration would be just that: A
stop. It wouldn't bring them back. If they stopped now, they'd be drifting out at the edge of heliopause. Doomed. Marie tried to not think about the people on those ships. Instead, she spoke: "Slipdrive ready when you are."
Captain Michaelson nodded.
"Hit it."
Marie flicked the switch.
There was no flash. There was no buzz. There was nothing...but a
wink in reality. One second, they were one place. The next, they were somewhere else. But the stars were different. Looking through the screen, Marie could see them change - one moment, familiar. The next, alien. She grinned, slowly - while excitement exploded across the rest of the ship.
The funniest thing?
They even found the probes.
But, as each had emerged from the slipknot at a wildly erratic vector, winging off into space without anyone to guide them...they found them well
after they found the verdant, blue green world that sat 1.2 AU from the star. A glittering jewel. A promise of a new age.
Future generations called it Eden.
But Marie named it better, when she watched the Soomies and UNN Earthers glancing at one another and then at the readouts of the world they were observing.
"Great," she whispered. "A poison apple."
***
100,000 YEARS LATER
***
...
...
...
CACHE RETRIVAL ACTIVATED...
BELISARIUS CLUSTER IDENTIFIED.
EIGHT SYSTEMS.
LOADING SYSTEM DATA...
SYSTEM #1: NEW CHANCELLORSVILLE
[T0 | E3 | R0]
"Cold War Between Colonies"
"This system can't be natural"
SYSTEM #2: SANGALEA
[T-1 | E0 | R-1]
"Magnetic Tape For Everything."
"Green Power Only."
SYSTEM #3: ONEIDA
[T3 | E1 | RO]
"Space Hippies"
"Heavy Biopunk"
SYSTEM #4: OZYMANDIAS
[T-3 | E4 | R0]
"Hot Hydrogen Holistically Historic Home"
"World of a Thousand Mountain-top Kingdoms"
SYSTEM #5: AKNA SECUNDUS
[T-2 | E-3 | R-2]
"Heat like Hate: Burning and Devouring"
"Elegy for a Dying World"
SYSTEM #6: SHORTSTICK
[T-1 | E0 | R-1]
"Solarpunk because we don't have the gas for dieselpunk"
"Big Hungry Sun"
SYSTEM #7: VULCANTHIS
[T2 | E-3 | R3]
"The Nomad Traders"
"Family First"
SYSTEM #8: NYX-OMEGA VOIDYARDS
[T0 | E-4 | R-3]
"Deep in the Black"
"Ancient Shipyards and Stations but failing hydroponics"
---
Here's how it works.
Roll 4dF (for those who have not played FATE, that's a d6, where 1-2 = -1, 3-4 = 0 and 5-6 = +1. 4dF produces a result between -4 and +4) three times. The first roll is Technology (T) the second is Ecology (E) and the third is Resources (R). Each system them has two Aspects (short, declarative sentences that refer to an element of the culture, environment, technology, what have you.)
Here are the tables for when you roll.
TECHNOLOGY
T4: edge of collapse - this system is nearing a singularity event that is indistinguishable from an extinction event
T3: slipstream mastery - advanced and able to dominate a cluster if unopposed
T2: slipstream use - able to build and operate slipstream capable ships
T1: Exploiting the system - able to colonize and exploit the system (if you've seen the Expanse, they're here)
T0: Exploring the system - that's us, baby
T-1: Atomic Power - 1950s-1980s
T-2: Industrialization - 1800s
T-3: Metallurgy - 1600s>
T-4: Stone Age - Prehistory
ECOLOGY
E4: Multiple Garden Worlds - this is equal to 4-5 earths, maybe more. Ringworlds are possible, as well as other megastructures. Unnaturally good.
E3: Some Garden Worlds - this is 2-3 Earths. A very odd system
E2: One garden world and one "survivable" world - if Naboo and Tattooine were both in the same solar system, this would be a E2 system.
E1: One Garden World, several hostile worlds - this is us (Mars is hostile)
E0: One Garden World, some barren worlds - nothing better than Mercury beyond the habitable planet
E-1: One survivable world - this is not a place you want to live
E-2: Hostile environment - the only "habitable" planet in this system is Mars or on par
E-3: Barren World - this system is desolate and sparse, barely habitable with T2+ tech.
E-4: Desolation - no gravity, no atmosphere, no nothing. Gravel. May be a black hole or neutron star system. May be unnatural.
RESOURCES
R4: All you can want - this system could sustain overconsumptive populations in the tens of billions for centuries. This is unnatural and unusual in the extreme.
R3: Multiple exports - this system can sustain itself and sell the excess for profit (or have it taken by others.)
R2: One significant export - this system is known for a singular thing it can put out. Lithium, maybe. You always need lithium.
R1: Rich - this system can sustain and grow itself, sell the excess for a bit of profit.
R0: Sustainable - this system isn't really producing a surplus, but it doesn't need to bring resoruces in
R-1: Almost viable - this system can ALMOST sustain a high tech civilization (imagine Earth without, like, uranium or petroleum)
R-2: Needs imports - this system is resource starved and needs one or two resources to keep tech levels up.
R-3: Multiple dependencies - like R-2, but more desperate
R-4: No resources
at all. That seems unlikely...what caused this?
Some guidleines
The SOL system, right now would be T0, E1, R1 (we can explore the system, have robust computers, and could do even more if we got our asses together, and we have a lot of resources in the Belt and the gas giants to exploit.) Our Aspects might be "Ecological Catastrophe Ongoing" and "Heavily Balkanized."
Resist the urge to give lengthy descriptions. Just...go with your gut and leave holes for everyone to fill in.
If a system seems impossible (T-4, E-4, R4), come up with a fun reason! Collapse, recolonization, and collapse again are a part of the Diaspora.
Once six systems have been generated (seven counting New Chancellorsville) then we move to the next stage...
Oh, also, if no one gets T2+, then the system with the highest combined values gets T2 and then the system with the lowest combined values...also gets T2. You know.
For fun! 
