Rimwise is knowledge of the outer rim colonies and seedy parts of the galaxy. In-Universe would be knowledge of places very far from Earth, un-registered colonies, pirate havens, etc..
You don't need to be necessarily a criminal for this skill, it's knowledge that you can have gathered also by boarding many ships around the rim or talking to lots of people coming from it.

There we go! Character page is now up for your enlightenment and entertainment!

In reply to Zen (msg # 11):

Very nice! You obviously spent a lot of time with the details of your character (lots more so than me!) -- thanks for the fun read! :)

Welcome to the new folks in the Cast (Crew): Franz, Hazel, and TBD.

Zen (OOC) has already schooled me on some of the nuances of Human-AI interaction; I look forward to writing and gaming with you, as well! :)
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 16:38, Mon 27 Apr 2020.

Yes, welcome to everyone! Please introduce yourselves here, if you'd like.
The team is now complete, so as soon as we have all the character sheets up we can start!

In reply to The Seed (msg # 14):

Speaking of Character Sheets, I don't know whether anyone else's is locked, but Anders' is. Can you help?

Also, how would you like for us to address you, Oh Exalted One? Seed, TS, GM, and Warden (which I believe is "Mothership's" version of a GM) come to mind, but what is your preference?

Ah, I accidentally locked it. It's now fixed.
I am still getting my bearings around RPoL interface, so you'll have to forgive the odd oversight.

Any of those names will work. Seed is just a reference to the aleatory nature of your characters' destinies :)

Well, then. Introductions! And I'll get to my sheet shortly.

Zen is a new member of the crew. She came on board with the current cargo, and is on hire from Vis-Ion. Not an altogether unusual arrangement, as large corporations usually try to have their own representative on board vessels with important cargo. Zen, however, is not so much an agent as a useful appliance. Her specialist areas are linguistic - she speaks the common galactic language, of course, but also the local tongue, which is different, and her presence will make things easier in that regard. She's a well-programmed pilot, and also has medical software. This means she can fly the ship when everyone else is in cryo-sleep, and also tend to their medical needs while they are asleep, to ensure their safety. She's completely conversant with all ship computer systems. So, left on her own, she could fly the ship to the drop off point in a crisis.

Like all androids, she looks human. But her body language and small signals that are entirely subliminal mean she does not FEEL human. Across a crowded room, you couldn't tell the difference. A few minutes conversation is enough to reveal the truth, though. And, again like all androids, her not-human-enough non-verbal signals make people get seriously creeped out.

As an example, think of the way Wednesday Addams behaves, and you've got a good handle on it. A smile that is not a smile. A gesture that is just a mite too slow, or too precise. Language that is perfecly acceptable - but also, just a little too cold and clinical.

Robophobia is a phenomenon that exists in both the works of Asimov, and in Doctor Who. I fully expect that it is a problem in some people who spend a lot of time locked up with androids.

You know. Just like you are, on this ship...

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Grimwade%27s_Syndrome

An old American rock song named "Dust in the Wind" also comes to mind. :)

Hiya, folks! I'm Hazel Winters of New Jerusalem. I'm a Teamster and a mechanic. My people are asteroid miners, so I've been around spaceships since before I could walk; that's why I was hired. We're a highly religious and isolated colony; that protects us from the ungodly, dont'cha know. But I couldn't just stay there when there's so much to see in this great big galaxy! That's why I'm so enthusiastic. I'm friendly and maybe a bit naïve; back home, everyone was kinda like one big family, y'know? But I know space, and I can't wait to see more of its wonders!

And not in the character voice, is anyone else getting periodic 404 errors on RPOL today? Is that just me?

It is agreeable to meet you, Hazel.

I have been getting 404s, yes. All yesterday and today. it is proving VERY vexing indeed!!!

Welcome to the team! And yes, the 404 stuff has been going on periodically since yesterday for me too.

Ha!! I see what you did there, Zen. :)

And yes, welcome, Hazel. I look forward to gaming and writing with you. :)

Just to give you a bit more information about how this universe works, I've update the In-Game Universe notice:

Even with hyper-jump, it often takes weeks or years to travel from one system to another. Crew sleeps in cryochambers during the years of travel, while the ship AIs and the androids take care of astrogation.

Sending information between systems is limited by the speed of light, which makes it impractical (systems are at the very least few decades, if not more, apart). Because of that, the only reliable way of sending messages from one system to another is to load it on a ship bounded to the desired destination via hyper-jumps. Hyper-jumps (and ship) are expensive. As a consequence, news of distant systems arrive very sporadically and can be months to years old, and not always useful.

Because of this the Universe is quite fragmented ad any attempt at creating any sort of cohesive political unity has failed. Each system tends to have their own laws, customs and morals.

Your characters should all have this information.

I do love the sound of this. So many sci-fi settings have these huge universes, where people can zoom about with impunity. And they are great! Star Trek did a pretty good version of the "it takes forever to go anywhere" model with Enterprise, with the freighters hitting warp two, at best, and taking months and months to go even short distances compared to the ships of the future. Andromeda also had a fairly good take on the "multiple radically different cultures always clashing" model, too. Obviously, Alien is probably the peak example of the cryosleep gone wrong model, as it leaves you so isolated and far from hope or help. But there are many similar examples. Asimov's Robot novels show how isolated cultures that start from the same place can become so radically different, with Spacer worlds being so different from Earth, and even from one another. The peak of that is the wonderful notion that "human" is defined as "people who speak with our accent" and nobody else. Which means that robots, who are sworn to never hurt humans, can cause severe harm to anybody not from our society...

On the subject of Alien, I was very young when I first saw it, and it utterly terrified me. It still does, even though I can see the rather dated effects compared to how it looked when I was a kid. It's not the effects, it is the concepts, that are so dreadfully scary. I know my mother was shocked when she watched it... not from the gore. She was horrified that such classical actors as Ian Holm and John Hurt could lower themselves to appearing in such a gory space slasher flick. She was a bit of a film snob, really...

In reply to Zen (msg # 24):

"Alien" was *very* spooky! Just sayin' -- not to give our GM any ideas, or anything . . . :)

I prefer spooky to gore, myself. For example, I found the original movie versions of both The Fly and The Thing utterly terrifying as a kid. The modern gorefest remakes? Nah. Not interested. I know John Carpenter's Thing is an utter classic of the gore horror genre, and I can absolutely see the artistic merit behind all the extreme body horror. But it just nauseates me, not frightens me. A really good psychological horror, where things are left to the imagination, is a million times scarier.

For example, on the subject of John Hurt, his performance as Caligula in I Claudius. At the close of one episode, he disembowels his sister, and consumes the unborn child he fathered on her. And you see precisely NONE of the gore. At all. Just a little blood on his chin afterwards. You just hear the horrifying screams. That is way scarier than seeing a load of fake blood being sprayed everywhere!

I've done a lot of stage work - I trained as an actor professionally. I know a fair bit about things like the work of Artaud and his kind. The philosophy of grotesque gore as a means of social catharsis, and so forth. I get it, I really do.

But I'd much rather watch some superb suspense laden film noir, any day!

I'm glad you enjoy it! I'm taking a few artistic licenses with the settings. I'm a big fan of hard sci-fi. From cinematography to literature, I really think that in general interesting ideas flourish from practical constraints and limitations, rather than from complete freedom. I think one of the best examples of this is the first Silent Hill game. The original Playstation was not able to render fully the 3d town, so the game makers introduced the now-famous oppressing white fog, in order to allow themselves to render only a few meters ahead of the character. To this day I still get shivers thinking about moving the character around the town in that asphyxiating mist.

I really like Alastair Reynolds novels (no faster-than-light travel and no portals!) and The Expanse universe, so I was going for something in that style. Cryochambers are cool, and I didn't want to leave them out of the picture, so I looked for something in between. Faster-than-light travel, but not too fast though. I also really enjoyed Asimov's novels. I've actually never read the Robot cycle, but I've gone through all the Foundation's books, and they were really amazing.

I also loved the first Alien. That's another nice example of limitation, where, since CGI was nowhere near the level needed for the movie, they had to rely on the atmosphere and the tone.

The Expanse is pretty awesome, I agree. Also a big fan of Killjoys - I guess anyone who has looked at my character page could work that out, though the photos are not actually from Killjoys, they're from Ant Man and the Wasp.

I prefered the Robot books to the Foundation series, although they are tied in together. A certain character appears in both. I shall say no more... spoilers. :D

I agree, I also prefer spooky to gore, and now that you described it I absolutely have to watch I, Claudius (I read the book and really enjoyed it, did not even know there was a television series).

Ahah, yes, that character was absolutely one of my favourites.

The I Claudius TV series is a true masterwork of BBC TV from the 1970s. It was a massive success, and the cast list is truly stellar. John Hurt, as mentioned, along with Derek Jacobi, George Baker, Brian Blessed, John Rhys-Davies, Sian Phillips, Patrick Stewart, Patricia Quinn, and a truly skin-crawling performance from Christopher Biggins as the future Emperor Nero. And these are only a few of the names involved. Point at any of them, and you'll be pointing right at someone who has been involved in the great TV and movies of the past thirty years.

I actually saw Sian Phillips and David McCallum (of the Man from Uncle, no less) performing in The Lion in Winter at a theatre many years ago. She played Eleanor of Aquitaine in an almost identical way to how she performed as Livia in I Claudius. There's a lot to be said about the similarities. Except I don't think Eleanor of Aquitaine was a mass murdering fruitbat...

Is the typical hyperjump closer to weeks or years?

In reply to Zen (msg # 28):

The Foundation trilogy was one of my favorite series ("The game's over, and I'd like to tell you a story"), but after the trilogy there's a bunch of clumsy retcons and I found the later books disappointing.

This is an extract from the introduction [ spoiler :) ]:

On the subject of hyper-space travel. Harnessing quantum fluctuations to locally alter the vacuum expectation value makes possible the use of jump-drives, but canonically conjugate variables such as distance and elapsed time still cannot be simultaneously well defined, since they form a symplectic basis. As a consequence, ships going through hyper-space can either know with an acceptable level of precision where they will arrive or when they will arrive, but not both. Generally captains tend to be happier with some uncertainty on their time of arrival rather than the non-negligible risk of appearing near the gravity well of a gas giant.

In short, you cannot really know. It depends on the distance between the two systems, the quality of the jump-drive, and on how precisely you want to get there. Risky captains with state-of-the-art jump-drive could get to the other side of the galaxy in days. Until one day they end up in Andromeda and they're never heard of again.

When systems are arranged in a cluster they can be few days / couple weeks apart from each other. Earth is not too far away from where you are now. 15-40 days.
Jumping to another cluster could take more time, weeks to months.

This particularly trip you are taking should take, worst case scenario, at 2-sigma confidence level, less than a couple of months. If you're lucky only two weeks.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:17, Tue 28 Apr 2020.

I am still waiting for the stat rolls from the two other players. In the meantime I will start the game (there's not much dice rolling at the beginning and you can introduce yourselves to each other).
Boarding the ship should take a couple of rounds of posting, so hopefully by then we will have all the character sheets.