ExMod/DramaSpaceTravelSystems

Space Exalted

Geography

During the Primordial War, Gaia's fetich was killed, and Creation shattered. Now she is Cosmos, a vast emptiness in the Wyld, spangled with stars and whirling planets. At her borders, the fiery lace of chaos eats at the blackness.

Creation is not the same place it is in standard Exalted; it contains everything. Space is the Void, filled with broken pieces of earth and machine. There are no stars; instead, prayer energy allows the gods to create glowing effigies of themselves that bring light to their worshippers. In the very centre of Cosmos lies the everchanging mandala that is Yu-Shan, the floating mansions of the gods, whose dances hold back the Wyld. The Jade Pleasure Sphere, the Icons of the Maidens, and the Elemental Poles are pivotal to this dance. Five great pentacles rotate through the worlds, the Houses of the Constellations. On planets bare of worship, these provide the only light apart from that of Yu-Shan itself.

Worlds, broken pieces of the Gaiabody, are scattered around the void in clusters, surrounded by pockets of air. Outside these havens, the drowning darkness consumes light and breath, and it cannot be travelled without a protected ship or magic. As Cosmos writhes in the grip of the Wyld, these clusters shift rapidly; the sky is rarely the same from one day to the next.

Space is big. It's too big to map easily, and bits of it move. That makes it a little difficult for navigators. So the Exalted have developed a system of banners, which are supernatural beacons set in orbit around certain heavenly bodies; each banner identifies itself and broadcasts information about the location of nearby heavenly bodies, and gathers information from other nearby banners. Meanwhile, it also holds a constellation of clusters together, but separate, allowing them to communicate amongst each other with relative ease. So, the "bannernet" collectively knows what's around in space and where it is, but each individual node doesn't know everything, nor is its knowledge unique.

We don't bother having an out-of-character map, either. That's silly; if you have a map, it limits the holes you get to fill in.

Systems

A banner is rated from 1 to 5, depending on the number of clusters it defines. A secondary rating, Density, is a game-mechanical construct that tells about how nearby the next few banners are.

To navigate to a system not local to a banner, roll Intelligence + Pilot + Density of the local banner; each success reduces the base travel time of a year by one week. A botch indicates that not only does the ship fail to reach its destination, but it also encounters some inimical being along the way.

Navigation within a cluster is easy sailing; navigation within a banner's clusters is more difficult.

Charm Ideas

Note that many Sail Charms are relevant here.

Solar

Essential Astrolabe

Pilot dice-adder.

Flight of the Golden Crow

Contracts travel time; base time is a month, each success subtracts a day.

Void-Traversing Comet Stance

Travel without a ship (alone).

Barque of Heart and Mind

GSS for boats.

Creation-Encompassing Gaze

AWD-style perfect navigation.

Abyssal

Spirit-Pursuing Technique

Perfectly navigate to a location by killing someone from that place and following their soul.

Dread Midnight Rider

Ride a horse through space, slowly damaging it.

Sidereal

Concordance of Spheres

Actually an Astrology effect, this makes the universe think you are in more than one place at once, then moving you to the place you fooled the world into thinking you were there.

Auspicious Revolution

A Performance effect, TN dropper.

Note that the Mirror Shattering Method makes Journeys Sidereals among the fastest travellers. Certain "dealing with spirits" Charms can be used to lock two places together relative to each other, in order to stabilize travel lanes. Unfortunately, these are temporary effects at best (the Wanting and Fearing Prayer is the obvious Charm for this technique, but others, such as the Blue Vervain Binding, could also be used. Neighborhood Relocation Scheme has a large-scale variation that can shift planets.)

Comments

How do you figure astrogation is based on Manipulation?\\ On a totally unrelated note, I feel that Exalted space travel should be portrayed in a manner similar to that seen in the Disney movie Treasure Planet.\\ _Ikselam

I dunno. Appearance, maybe? I envision a succubus-powered interstellar 'net, where your online time is based on your stamina. Or something bizarre like that. I can also see Perception; it depends on whether you're thinking of it as massaging your trajectories to get the fastest travel time, or just knowing where to point your transmitter.

I haven't seen TP, but I'm thinking of obsidian soul barges powered by blood sacrifice (you can chase the soul back to its homeworld) and golden temples flying through space! - willows

I'd think that plotting courses would be Intelligence. I don't think it should be social-based, unless you're literally entreating the spirits of the aetherium to carry your vessel on swift wings of light, or whatever.

The soul-guided spacecraft are a good idea.

In TP, space travel was functionally identical to sailing. Some kind of breathable atmosphere clearly existed in space (along with a day-night cycle!), and ships had magical thrusters which were powered by Essence-collecting solar sails. Planets were treated like islands. The movie wasn't too commercially successful, but I really liked it. I thought the imagery was great. The planet on which the story starts has what appears to be a moon in its sky, but when you travel toward it, it becomes clear that it's a white, crescent-shaped city suspended in space.\\ _Ikselam

Awesome! I think that's an excellent model for local travel (by which I mean, in a banner's local range); do we have mechanical stuff for sailing already? This system above is intended for seriously lon-distance stuff. - willows

You could possibly think about modelling space as a collection of stable areas (which would have banners), connected by fluctuating lanes, with space outside those lanes being the Wyld. There could be stable lanes between most nodes, but you might be able to make better time by taking advantage of unstable/moving lanes. Dunno how you'd abstract this.\\ _Ikselam

That basically a superset of what this system is trying to do. It's essentially your idea minus the stable lanes; every time you want to go somewhere, you have to recalculate the distance because the world's organs have shifted around. I'm planning to add complexities by means of the supernatural overlay of Charms. - willows

Other Abyssal Charm ideas - Piercing the Well (dive your ship into a black hole for crazy teleportation effects), which begs for Void Attendant Sight (perm. turn your eyes into pinpoints of black light as you unify your neural system with the ability to perceive that which Is Not, such as standard Nothingness, or black holes), and Gossamer Shade Skin Drift (personal travel a la Comet Stance, but with the deathknight's clothes becoming voluminous and tugging him along with voidstreams). I could think of more 'voidcraft' for other Abilities, too. :-D Balthasar