Merchanters And Stationers - Setting up the Spyrate Setting

So I randomly generated the worlds and stations of the six alien species in our Spyrate setting. It is very unlikely to generate a habitable world, but it can and did happen. All the species automatically get a homeworld, of course, That's necessary! But I also generated two random habitable worlds, one for the Mashtusad, in the same system as their homeworld, and one for the Trassein, in a different system from their homeworld. That is interesting, and gives both of these species a bit of an advantage, but not what I wanted to talk about.

M&S is not centered on planets, but on stations. Stations are the lifeblood of the game setting. Worlds are mostly things to be mined or otherwise extract resources from, especially asteroid belts. There are rare instances where a station is damaged or mothballed for possible later use in the generation tables. I rolled two such instances, both damaged stations.

The first was a small station in (can't remember the name) Space. These people are not good with science, and do not even make their own spaceships. They are good with art, and fashion, and consider themselves the arbiters of taste. They only have five stations, and one of them was damaged and uninhabitable.

The second was an enormous station in Mastusad Space. The Mashusad are a much more powerful people. Mediators by nature, they are scavengers and carrion eaters, and pack-minded. It takes a lot to piss them off.

I asked Klaxon why had these stations blown. He's a player in the game, and this is a very player oriented game.

He said obviously the first station was a screw up. The species is just not good with science, and were carrying out some kind of lame-brained experiment that got out of control. They probably wouldn't talk about it, embarrassed by the subject.

The second, he said was obviously sabotage. He traced the trade routes of Mashtusad Space. It looked like a twisting snake, starting at Central Station and going far out before returning back to the Tamberlin Space border, and ending in a tail. The damaged station was the last big station before the border.

His theory was that the PC's faction, the Old Regime, traded through that long jump into Mashtusad Space even after it lost power, and the New Regime's agents blew the station to prevent trade with the remnants of the Old Regime. He said I would probably find the Mastusad did not like the current Regime.

I looked through the points they had made in the setup phase on Saturday, and there it was: Mashtusad Do Not Trust The Tamberlin. Bam!

This is making some crazy, scary kind of sense! :D