HOTEL / THE CITY / OFF THE ASTEROID / PASSPORTS, MONEY, LANGUAGE / FOOD / CRIME SYNDICATE / ROBOTS / TECHNOLOGY
H O T E L
PORTAL ROOM The Portal Room has been established as being just beyond the entrance to the lobby. It’s a small room, about 6’x6’. On one end is a metal door with no visible handle. On the other end is a wooden door with a round doorknob. Against one wall is a podium with a computer monitor on it. Unfortunately, the monitor is dead and the portal room is non-functional at this time.
LOBBY The Crystal Japan Hotel has a large lobby. The furnishings are sleek and futuristic. When you enter through the glass doors from the Spaceport Mall, the registration desk is against the far wall in front of you. Another set of doors near the first leads out into the park. Before you is a large sitting area with couches, chairs, tables, and so on. The lobby offers free wireless SSW access. While the registration desk is usually unmanned, there may be a robot concierge present from time to time. Check-in is done by computer. Once you're registered, the computer will spit out your room key. The elevator bank is to the left of the registration desk.
To the right of the registration area and all the way down at the far end of the lobby, you'll find the entrance to the Moondust Casino.
HOTEL The Crystal Japan Hotel is an 8-story hotel with 180 total guest rooms on floors 3-8, 30 rooms per floor. Most are regular hotel-style rooms with bedroom and bathroom, but all are spacious. Suites are sprinkled throughout the hotel, for those guests with different needs or more discriminating taste. Each floor has a vending machine and ice. Laundry bags are provided in each guest room and service takes only one day.
The hotel is staffed entirely by robots, who do not accept tips.
The first floor contains the lobby, and is also home to the casino, restaurant, and theater. There are no ground-floor guest rooms.
The second floor is the Concierge level, accessible by room key only. There are no guest rooms on the Concierge floor, but you will find:
- a pool and sauna area
- a full gym
- a business center with computers with wired SSW (Solar System Web) access and printers
- a club room complete with comfortable chairs, a fireplace, fresh flowers, and refrigerators stocked with beverages. Food items are set out for guests by robots several times a day.
- a robot-staffed beauty salon.
CASINO The Moondust Casino has multiple gaming rooms, a jazz lounge, a theater, and an arcade. You can play cards, slots, roulette, craps... whatever games you like. Watch out, though: the robot dealers are programmed to cheat. Underage characters are allowed in all areas, but are not allowed to gamble or buy alcohol. Robots will glide by to take drink orders while you're enjoying gambling.
LOUNGE & BAR The Stardust Lounge has music every night. Sometimes jazz, sometimes not. Underage characters are allowed in for the shows, but are not allowed to purchase alcohol at the bar, which is staffed by a robot. The house musicians (robots, of course) play every night until 11 p.m. After that, hotel guests are allowed to take over the stage.
THEATER The Space Oddity Theater is designed to showcase a variety of entertainment, from comedians to drama to poetry slams.
RESTAURANT Station to Station is a multi-ethnic restaurant, serving foods from all over the solar system. You can get pretty much whatever you want in Earth-based foods, and specialties from other planets and satellites. The restaurant has tables, booths, private rooms, and an elevated section for VIP guests. Service is provided by robots. Ordering is done via computer from your table.
THE MALL You can find whatever you need: clothes, living supplies, foodstuffs, furnishings, toiletries, etc. in the mall. Staffed by robots, the shopping mall connects the hotel/casino complex in the south to the spaceport in the north. It's a pedestrian-only indoor mall and is designed to ensure that visitors to Outpost 12 never have to set foot in the city's streets if they don't want to.
THE SPACEPORT The Outpost 12 Spaceport is your entry and exit point if you arrive or leave by personal spacecraft or space shuttle. It can be found north of the hotel, beyond the shopping areas.
T H E C I T Y
SUNRISE, SUNSET, WEATHER This is a domed colony; the atmosphere is controlled by the Climate Control Station. Assume that most days are balmy and about 72 degrees. When there's rain, it usually lasts from about 4pm-5pm, although there are entirely rainy days from time to time. The days and nights average just slightly more than 12 hours in length. There are no spectacular sunrises or sunsets since the asteroid is too far from the sun (and blocked by Mars) to benefit that way. However, you might be able to see the sun rise behind Mars once in a while, and on the asteroid itself residents will notice a gradual lightening of the sky in the morning and an equally gradual darkening in the evening. Some stars may be visible through the dome in the nighttime, but not as many as you would see either from Mars or from Earth.
OUTSIDE In addition to being a hotel/casino/resort, Outpost 12 is a city designed to hold some 35,000 residents, although the current population is closer to 5,000. You can feel free to create the environment outside to suit your needs... to a degree. Buildings are allowed, as are parks, pools, cabs, dark alleys, junkyards, etc. The city residents live in the city (obviously) and may be described and used in play by way of scene-setting. However, the sole place of residence designed for MPU's visitors to the Outpost is the hotel.
Doors marked with EXIT signs lead out from the pedestrian mall area in the resort. They lead to a landing overlooking the city and an escalator follows down to a park with benches, a fountain, grass, and trees. The city itself lies beyond that.
THE DEFINED CITY ENVIRONMENT If you add to the environment, drop the mods a line so we can update.
- The outskirts of the city appear vacant, but if you go on into the city proper, you'll find that it has a population, although a relatively small one given its size. A holographic billboard advertises a drive-in/fly-in/walk in movie theater with 12 screens, the casino resort, and a used car/personal spacecraft dealer.
- One of the first things you'll see is a convenience store consisting entirely of a row of vending machines, with holographs advertising the contents.
- A little further into the city, there's a Mars Import/Export store called Mars on 12. It's an all-purpose convenience store but it has some Martian specialty items. Its upper floors have also served as the de facto Outpost 12 Headquarters for the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate.
- Three blocks south and one block west, at the intersection of Deimos Street & Magellan Ave, is a large bookstore called Shosekishou ("Bookstore").
- Be careful where you go: the Red Dragons have a very large interest in the goings-on at Outpost 12 and are in control of the city. There might be shootouts or other mob-related actions going on at any given time. Handguns, semiautomatic rifles, and similar weaponry are likely to be in use.
- There's also a pawn shop that sells weapons in the city.
For the curious, here's a map of the asteroid.
O F F T H E A S T E R O I D
OTHER PLANETS/MOONS/SATELLITES/ASTEROIDS Outpost 12 is situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but it's the closest colonized asteroid to Mars.
- In this reality Mercury was never populated (too hot), although there's a small research outpost there inhabited only by their staff.
- Venus has a population of about 500 million.
- Earth residents live underground due to meteor storms; its moon is uninhabitable and largely destroyed, raining rocks down on Earth. The population of Earth is about 200 million.
- Mars is the second most heavily-populated planet in the Solar System. It numbers about 300 million residents.
- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are unpopulated, but three moons of Jupiter (Ganymede, Callisto, Europa with 150 million residents each) and one moon of Saturn (Titan with 30 million) are colonized. Note that Titan is war-ravaged and houses mostly military operatives, although it has a small non-military population. Also note that Europa is home to the Blue Snakes Crime Syndicate, a gang that rivals the Red Dragons.
- Pluto (dwarf planet or not) serves only as a penal colony and is restricted to visitors.
Aside from that, use your imagination. Personal spacecraft, shuttlecraft, and the like abound.
TRAVEL TIME FROM OUTPOST 12 TO OTHER PLANETS Space travel times are calculated to include the use of the space phase gates; variations depend on the type of spacecraft.
- Mercury: 31-44 hours
- Venus: 23-29 hours
- Earth: 16-27 hours
- Mars: 3-16 hours
- Jupiter: 11-35 hours
- Saturn (Titan): 3-6 days
- Uranus: about 2 weeks
- Neptune: about 3 weeks
- Pluto: about a month.
- The asteroid belt itself, being unpredictable in movement, doesn't have much in the way of space phase gate technology; manual navigation through the asteroid belt takes anywhere from 2-5 days.
GOT WANDERLUST? For all but the neighboring asteroids, you'll need a passport.
P A S S P O R T S , M O N E Y , L A N G U A G E
PASSPORTS Passports are a necessity for visiting other planets and moons, although many of the asteroids don't require them. However, coming by a passport without the proper paperwork is not an easy thing. There is currently no way for your characters to obtain a passport, but this will change in time.
MONEY Every resident of Outpost 12 who doesn't already have one is given a money card. They can transfer their own native currency to the card; it's used as a debit card throughout the Outpost. The local currency is the Woolong; one Woolong is equal to approximately $.01 in current US currency. You can decide for yourself how much money is put on your card when you come in. The mods don't really care about your characters paying the bills unless it's a big part of your storyline. You will rarely see us ask you to settle a debt; this is a game. However, if it's important to your character to be concerned about money, by all means be concerned about money. If your character comes from a world where the currency is something other than money, feel free to convert the something else to Woolongs. If your character comes from a world entirely without money, assume that the minimum amount you'll see on a money card is 500,000 Woolongs (~$5,000). That's your starting basis if you need to have one (you can choose to have more if you like).
LANGUAGES Did you ever see THIS PROGRAM IS BEING BROADCAST IN 12 LANGUAGES and wonder what the twelve languages were? They're English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi, and German.
F O O D
A wide variety of food can be found at the Outpost. The following are a few of the local favorites:
CALLISTO BLUE TEA Made from the flower of the Callisto Ice Plant, which only blooms for two weeks in July. The tea is sweet-and-tangy and turquoise blue in color. Due to small production numbers, it's exceedingly rare.
ONSUI-KAJITSU A small round orange fruit, onsui-kajitsu is best described as a cross between a mandarin orange and a tangerine and twice as sweet as either. It's a delicacy on Mars, where it only grows at the equator.
POTECHI A fried vegetable. Round, like onion rings; orange like carrots; starchy like potatoes; greasy as anything. Common at roadside food stands as well as a standard restaurant menu item.
MARS BARS Like their Earth-based namesakes, Mars Bars are single wrapped chocolate bars with a nougat center. However, the color and flavor of the nougat changes in a timed progression. There are seven potential flavors in every Mars Bar, ranging from lemon and orange to shikonberry and onsui-kajitsu and beyond, and there's no shortage to the flavors you can find if you look hard enough. The packages don't tell you what flavors you'll get, and since the only hint of flavor is the color of the nougat, the first bite is always a mystery flavor.
REDBERRY Native to Mars, they're small red berries that start out tart and mellow to sweet as you eat them. They're often found as an ingredient in Martian wines and ales, and can be infused in cream.
SHIKONBERRY Another berry native to Mars, these grow on the slopes of the Tharsis volcano crater. About the size of a blueberry, they're bright purple in color and are sweet and sour. Shikonberry-picking is a popular family activity in and around Tharsis.
PIYOKOS An Earth delicacy, they're pear-sized chocolate-covered Peeps.
ZIP-HEAT NOODLES The 2074 version of ramen-in-a-styrofoam-cup, these noodle dishes have pull-tabs at the bottom that, when activated, automatically heat the noodle dish inside. It's the poor man's lunch of choice.
C R I M E S Y N D I C A T E
THE RED DRAGON CRIME SYNDICATE The Red Dragons are the predominant crime syndicate not only on Mars, but throughout the asteroid belt as well. Established on Mars, they were run in typical fashion until the year 2071 when the capo, Mao Yenrai, and the three Elders in ultimate charge were murdered in a takeover bid by a man named Vicious. Since then, the Dragons have been in a bit of disarray and are currently headed on Mars by a relative unknown named Fan Jianmu. The Dragon contingent at the Outpost does not want Fan Jianmu to pay a visit to the asteroid to check up on them and will do whatever they must to keep this from happening. The core contingent of Dragon members at the Outpost varies between (loosely) 30-50 at any given time. Those numbers aren't set in stone but can be used as a guideline.
While Outpost 12 City is known to be a Dragon town, the resort itself is actually managed by Seijoutai, Ltd., a division of Shugoryuu Corporation. If one researches deeply enough, they'll find that both Seijoutai and Shugoryuu eventually lead back to the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate at its home base on Mars, in the city of Tharsis. From this, one can surmise that Shugoryuu is the division of the syndicate responsible for operations across the asteroid belt.
On the asteroid, the closest thing to a headquarters building is Mars on 12, otherwise known as the Import/Export store. Behind the counter is a door leading up four stories, and that top floor is where Vicious set up shop during his brief stint at the Outpost. That's where most of the asteroid's Syndicate activities are planned, although with a clear lack of leadership, anything calling anything "planned" is a bit of an overstatement. However, the Dragons are a persistent presence in the city, engaging in the usual types of Syndicate activities: shakedowns, protection rackets, petty thievery, random gunfights, and so on.
Players can feel free to have their characters interact with NPC-Dragons. If there are going to be any wide-scale or significant interactions, please discuss the matter first with the moderators for approval.
R O B O T S
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF AUTOMATION Outpost 12 is the first fully-automated resort in the asteroid belt. It's staffed entirely by robots.
APPEARANCE All Outpost robots look identical. They're 5'8" in height, humanoid in form, with featureless faces and metallic exteriors. Although programmed to understand and interpret voice commands, the robots do not speak. Instead, they have a touchscreen across their chests which serve as their primary method of communication with humans. It's entirely possible that a robot will not be able to answer your question via touchscreen unless it's a typical question a resort visitor might pose.
Because they perform a variety of tasks requiring fine motor coordination, they have sophisticated hands and arms. Instead of walking, the Outpost robots glide.
These robots fill a variety of roles:
- bartenders
- concierges
- waiters
- cooks
- clean-up crew
- musicians
- cashiers
- porters
- maids
- room service attendants
The most visible robots are the ones tending bar, the musicians in the lounge, and the cashiers at the resort's stores. When any part of the resort is damaged, a clean-up crew will be sent to deal with it typically within about 24 hours. However, should an incident set off a fire alarm, for example, the response will be near instantaneous. The computer running the resort (MPU) allocates response robots on an as-needed basis.
The resort's robots are individually programmed to fill their required tasks. If a robot performing a unique task (piano player for the house band, for instance) is damaged, it will take time to reprogram a spare to fill that role. Any robot not functioning to normal standards will be noticed during a nightly check and replaced as quickly as possible afterward.
T E C H N O L O G Y
TECHNOLOGY, 2074 STYLE In addition to the expected: personal and large spacecrafts, automobiles, weapons, and so on, there is some technology that simply doesn't exist outside the 2074 solar system environment. These technological marvels, large and small, are accounted for here.
HOLOGRAPHIC MALLS You'll find a holographic mall between the Spaceport and Outpost 12 City. It's the 2074 version of a convenience store. Vending machines line either side of the mall, and holographs protrude from each machine as you pass by. The holographs are virtual advertisements for the machine's contents, and the things sold in the mall are the same types of things you would expect in any convenience store: cigarettes, soda, snacks, zip-heat noodles, burritos, condoms, and so forth.
SPACE PHASE GATES The space phase gates were a product of the Gate Corporation and first came into use in 2021. When a ship passes through the gate it enters hyperspace, which allows the craft to accelerate to its destination much more rapidly than normal. Unfortunately, the first gate between Earth and its moon was put into use before it was fully tested. The gate exploded, taking out the moon and half of Earth along with it. As a result, Earth is besieged by meteor showers and its population has moved underground. Fortunately, the problems were ironed out and today travel by space phase gate is perfectly safe.
PRIVACY SHIELDS This technological marvel is the ultimate in privacy. Found primarily at beach resorts, these are invisible barriers that allow light and air to penetrate but completely block sound and view from the outside.
FLY-IN MOVIES Like a drive-in theater, this has arena-style spacecraft parking for those who simply have to watch the film from the comfort of their personal spacecraft. There's a combined Fly-In/Drive-In theater in Outpost 12 City, near Bob's Used Cars and Spacecraft. It could be that Bob gets a commission on every ticket sold to someone who's just bought one of his vehicles, but he'll never tell.
ALPHA-CATCH A device hooked up to a sleeping person's temples, the Alpha Catch captures and displays the sleeper's dreams on a projection screen. |
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostinapapercup and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
7hoursfrommars