GURPS Third Edition Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure By James L. Cambias Introduction Far off in space floats a planet with ale-colored skies… Jack Vance took us there. Vance introduced delighted Earthlings to the people, creatures, and customs of Tschai. It's a world of danger, where humans are ruled and exploited by strange alien races. With Vance's hero Adam Reith as your tour guide, learn the awful secrets of the Chasch, foil the treacherous agents of the Wanek, escape the hunters of the Dirdir, venture into the underworld labyrinth of the Pnume, and meet vivid characters like Traz Onmale, Zap 210, and the appalling Aila Woudiver. GURPS Planet of Adventure lets you plan your own excursions on Tschai. Retrace Adam Reith's footsteps as intrepid scouts for Earth, or play natives of Tschai just trying to survive and make a few sequins. Tschai's depth and variety cry out for a long visit, with time to admire the scenery and get a feel for the place. A talented author like Vance can imply a tremendous amount in just a few sentences. The game designer has to turn those references into rules and complete explanations. He can invent some things, but not too much… the feel of the original novels must shine through. If any errors remain, they are entirely the designer's fault. Some of Tschai's mysteries have been left unsolved. What's the connection among the Pnume, the Phung, and the night-hounds? What are the goals of the Wanek? What will Earth do when it learns about Tschai? Those are for individual GMs to decide. Here's your ticket to Tschai. Watch out for attanders, be careful at the eel-races, and keep your power-gun handy! About the Author James Cambias is very likely a Pnume. The evidence is strong: he is tall and pale, wears wide-brimmed hats and black clothing, avoids sunlight, and prefers quiet. He collects all manner of odd things, is fascinated by history, and plays games in which entire civilizations struggle merely for his amusement. He has been a freelance writer and roleplaying-game designer since 1990, and is the author of GURPS Planet Krishna and GURPS Castle Falkenstein (with Phil Masters). He once lived in New Orleans, was educated at the University of Chicago, and now lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. About Jack Vance Jack Vance is one of the grand masters of science fiction and fantasy. He published his first story in 1945. In 1950 he attracted notice with his innovative book The Dying Earth, and since then has risen steadily in critical acclaim and popularity. He won a Hugo Award in 1963 for “The Dragon Masters”, and another in 1967 for “The Last Castle” (which also won a Nebula Award). He is considered one of the best world-builders in science fiction and fantasy, creating exotic yet plausible alien settings for his stories. Among Vance's best known works are his “Demon Princes” series (The Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face, and The Book of Dreams) and, of course, the four Tschai novels. About GURPS Steve Jackson Games is committed to full support of GURPS. Our address is SJ Games, Box 18957, Austin, TX 78760. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) any time you write us! Resources include: Pyramid www.sjgames.com/pyramid Our online magazine includes new GURPS rules and articles. It also covers Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, and many more top games—and other Steve Jackson Games releases, like In Nomine, Illuminati, Car Wars, Toon, Ogre Miniatures, and more. Pyramid subscribers also have access to playtest files online! New Supplements and Adventures GURPS continues to grow, and we'll be happy to let you know what's new. For a current catalog, send us a legal-sized or 9″×12″ SASE—please use two stamps!—or just visit www.warehouse23.com. Errata Everyone makes mistakes, including us—but we do our best to fix our errors. Up-to-date errata sheets for all GURPS releases, including this book, are available on our website—see below. Gamer Input We value your comments, for new products as well as for updated printings of existing titles! Internet Visit us on the World Wide Web at www.sjgames.com for errata, updates, Q&A, and much more. GURPS has its own Usenet group, too: rec.games.frp.gurps. GURPSnet This e-mail list hosts much of the online discussion of GURPS. To join, point your web browser to www.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l. The GURPS Planet of Adventure web page can be found at www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ planetofadventure. Tschai Chapter 1 Tschai has not been explored in any detail by Earthmen. All that we know about it comes from Adam Reith's travels, and he was more occupied with finding his way back to Earth than with making a proper survey of the planet. The information here is based on material in the books and on reasonable inferences. Carina 4269 is an old sun 212 light-years from Earth. It is a type K star, cooler and more orange-colored than Sol. Such an undistinguished star would never have drawn the attention of interstellar explorers, had it not been for radio signals broadcast from the Carina 4269 system toward Earth. These transmissions led Adam Reith to the weird and dangerous world of Tschai. Tschai is Carina 4269's only planet. It circles at a distance of 1.12 AU (104 million miles), giving it a year of 516 standard days, or 488 Tschai days. It has two moons. Carina 4269 may once had had more planets; perhaps the close approach of the red star Hsi a few million years ago flung the other worlds off into deep space. Tschai is slightly bigger than Earth, with a diameter of 8 240 miles. Its mass is 1.05 times that of Earth, but it is less dense. Its surface gravity is 0.99g. A day on Tschai is 25 hours and 22 minutes long. Tschai doesn't have as much axial tilt as Earth, giving it less seasonal variation in temperature. Like its star, Tschai is very old. The planet's core has cooled and its crust is thick. There is little geologic activity on Tschai; there are few volcanoes and no ranges of young, high mountains like Earth's Andes or Himalayas. Earthquakes are very rare. The planet's crust is honeycombed with caves. Tschai's atmosphere is thick, with a surface pressure of about one and a half times Earth's. The air is composed of 74 % nitrogen, 17 % oxygen, 4 % water vapor, 2 % argon, 0.5 % sulfur compounds, 0.25 % carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. There is also a good deal of airborne dust. The trace compounds give the air a noticeable brownish tinge when seen from space; from the surface the sky is beige and gray at the horizon, shading to blue-gray at the zenith. The dense atmosphere creates a considerable greenhouse effect; without it, the world would long since have become too cold to support life. It also makes the sunlight on the surface dimmer than it would be on Earth, with an amber color. The density and composition of Tschai's atmosphere interferes with sensors; any attempt to scan the surface from orbit is at a −10 penalty. The Star Carina 4269 is a type K2 star, only 60 percent as bright as the Sun, with a mass two-thirds that of the Sun and a curiously amber color. It lies in the constellation Carina, the Keel of the Argo, and is 212 light-years from Earth. Because the star is so dim and so far away, it is barely noticed by Earth astronomers. Carina 4269 is an old star. Type K dwarfs life for over 10 billion years, and Carina 4369 is approaching the end of its life on the main sequence. The great age of the Carina 4269 system means that it is relatively free of asteroids and comets. Gravitational perturbations have long since tossed most of them into the interstellar void or dropped them into the star itself. Native Life Tschai has a very rich array of life forms. In addition to the native species, there are organisms brought from other worlds and new species created by genetic engineering. In some cases it is easy to see which creatures are native— Pnume, Phung, and night-hounds all share common features and are obviously Tschai-born. But many of the imported or modified species have lived on Tschai so long that they are completely adapted to local conditions and are effectively “native”, making it hard to tell where they really originated. Plant Life As on Earth, there is a great variety of plant life on Tschai, with all sorts of weird forms and colors. As a general rule, the plants of Tschai tend to have darker foliage than their Terran counterparts. Adam Reith saw black-limbed trees with brittle black leaves that rattled in the wind, bushes with flame-shaped leaves of red and blue, low trees with soft blue and gray foliage and poisonous red fruit, and trees with white spiraling trunks and foliage like a tangle of black string topped with luminous balls. In the desert he encountered cripthorn, spurnet, and rack-belly plants. In the populated parts of Tschai, the people grow keel trees, psillas, asponistras, and tayberries for shade, decoration, wood, and fruit.