BT Touring the Stars Gulf Breeze.pdf

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TOURING THE STARS
GULF BREEZE
A BATTLETECH SOURCEBOOKS COMPANION
GULF BREEZE
TOURING THE STARS
TM
Under License From
®
E-CAT35SN230
©2020 The Topps Company Inc. All rights Reserved. Touring the Stars: Gulf Breeze, Classic BattleTech, BattleTech, BattleMech
and ’Mech are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of The Topps Company, Inc. in the United States and/or other
countries. Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Production, LLC.
INTROdUcTION
We began on Terra, a lonely, blue-green speck in the vastness of the void. It has been more than a millennium since
mankind ventured to the stars beyond home, and while it has been a tumultuous history—at the very least—we have
discovered, explored, and conquered worlds that our ancestors could only dream about. Humanity now occupies more
than two thousand worlds stretched across a vast range of interstellar space known as the Inner Sphere.
For humanity as a whole, Terra, at the heart of it all, will forever be known as “Home.” But for the far greater majority
of us, “home” is a very different speck amidst the infinite black. Our homes are many, varied, beautiful, and filled with
rich histories—each unique to itself.
In the grand scale of interstellar history, it often becomes so easy to forget this, to see planets and solar systems as
dots on an abstracted map. But, at the core of the matter, each of those dots is a place where men, women, and children
live, work, love, and survive. Join us on a special tour of the Sphere, as we explore the richness of these worlds like
never before!
—Professor Bertram Habeas,
Touring the Stars: One World at a Time,
Free Republic Press
elcome to
Touring the Stars,
a campaign supplement designed to offer players the opportunity to learn about the worlds of
the Inner Sphere, Periphery, and beyond.
The background information contained in the
Atlas
section gives players a world’s geography, history, notable events, and other
tools needed to create an unlimited number of
BattleTech
games for play, while the
A Time of War
section offers plot seeds and
details for the planet’s more notable events. These plot seeds can be used as stand-alone games, woven into an existing game, or as
part of a larger on-going campaign.
The
Rules Annex
section explains planetary
Atlas
information for use in gameplay, as well as optional terrain tables, weather, and
flora/fauna rules. Terrain tables can be used as a random chart to determine gameplay maps, or simply as a guide to provide ideas
on the types of terrain found on the world. This section also contains a list of other rules that can be used to enhance your game
experience. All players should agree whether or not to use any or all of these features before play.
Note:
The last four pages of this PDF are sized for 11” x 17” paper. Please keep this in mind when printing out the document.
W
cREdITS
Project Development:
Joshua C. Perian
BattleTech Line Developer:
Ray Arrastia
Writing:
Michael Miller
BattleTech Line Editor:
Aaron Cahall
Production Staff
Cover Design and Layout:
David Kerber
Maps:
Ray Arrastia, David Kerber
Fact Checking/Playtesting:
“Geoff Doc” Swift
Special Thanks:
Zenith Station by KuhnIndustries
STAR LEAGUE
CLAN INVASION
JIHAD
SUCCESSION WARS
CIVIL WAR
DARK AGE
ILCLAN
3
ATLAS
GULF BREEZE
Star Type (Recharge Time):
A6V (167 hours)
Position in System:
6th (of 14)
Time to Jump Point:
32.76 days
Number of Satellites:
None (planetary ring)
Surface Gravity:
1.89
Atm. Pressure:
Low (Toxic)
Equatorial Temperature:
193°C (Tide-locked)
Surface Water:
19 percent
Recharging Station:
Zenith, Nadir
HPG Class:
B
Highest Native Life:
None
Population:
33,000,000 (2,000,000 orbital)
Socio-Industrial Levels:
B-A-A-B-B
Landmasses (Capital City):
“The Surface” of Gulf
Breeze VI (Gulf Breeze Station)
GULF BREEZE
Gulf Breeze, formerly Commonwealth Mining Operation 26 (CMO
26), is an uninhabitable but mineral-rich world in the heart of Lyran
space. Due to a monstrous proto-planetary impact near its birth,
Gulf Breeze VI consists of little more than a giant nickel-iron core,
a thin mantle, and a continuous metal-rich crust simply called the
“The Surface.” The exposed riches made the world worth settling in
2556 despite its numerous drawbacks, which included 1.89 G surface
gravity on the planet, a thin, unbreathable nitrogen atmosphere,
high seismicity due to a thin crust and hot core, and improbable tidal-
locking to its distant primary. The permanent dayside temperatures
are so high that the planetary equatorial average is 193°C despite a
near-cryogenic night side.
Local naming conventions can confuse visitors because the term
“Gulf Breeze” is applied to the system, star, inhabited planet, and
capital station. Residents and veteran contract workers may add a
suffix for clarity. In order, they are Gulf Breeze System, Gulf Breeze
Actual (or Prime), Gulf Breeze Six, and Gulf Breeze Station. Confusing
visitors by withholding the suffix is a source of entertainment for
bored locals.
Since its initial settlement, Gulf Breeze has seen little excitement.
For centuries, the closest thing to conflict it knew was when an SLDF
logistics fleet mustered at CMO 26 to support the invasion of the Rim
Worlds Republic during the Reunification War. During the Star League
era, the fantastically mineral-rich system made the transportation of
hundreds of thousands of workers and their families for one- to five-
year contracts well worth the cost.
Unlike many other uninhabitable systems, Gulf Breeze’s population
grew during the Succession Wars. The Great Houses mostly ignored
the system, though on several occasions the Free Worlds League
and Draconis Combine conducted anti-shipping raids on its packed
jump points. The Succession Wars’ annihilation of JumpShips made
personnel rotation difficult, but the intense conflicts also gave the
backwater system appeal. Simply put, Gulf Breeze was a low-priority
target. Mines were too easy to replace compared to BattleMech
factories and shipyards, so the Houses often focused on the latter.
Gulf Breeze’s original owner, the Commonwealth Mining Corporation
(CMC), collapsed during the Second Succession War, causing a period
of economic uncertainty. Still, Gulf Breeze’s slow population growth
continued; indeed, the loss of CMC transport for contract workers
meant out-system hires were encouraged to settle permanently.
CMO 26’s population thus grew with a steady influx of new surface
workers and declining emigration.
However, another issue led to most of the system’s population living
on the surface: the robotic and teleoperated mining facilities on-planet
were built by factories across the Commonwealth, and those advanced
industrial operations were rapidly destroyed by the Succession Wars.
So, prior to its demise, CMC turned to an unlikely source of new workers:
the Free Worlds League. The planet Promised Land and its 1.7 G native
gravity—one of the highest of any known habitable world—was home
to residents with slight genetic adjustments to help them survive.
Despite possessing only minor edits to their joints and cardiovascular
systems, the “Landers” were hated by the rest of the League. Like most
of humanity, the Lyrans were leery of these biological changes as well,
but were also happy to exploit internal divisions of the League. In
the lull between the First and Second Succession Wars, CMC and the
Lyran Intelligence Corps’ Loki division reached out to Promised Land
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ATLAS
to recruit colonists for CMO 26. Some two million Landers immigrated
to CMO 26/Gulf Breeze over the next two centuries, drawn by reports
of Lyran tolerance.
Following CMC’s collapse, the system renamed itself “Gulf Breeze”
after the major space station that became its capital and developed a
parliamentary government typical of the Commonwealth. The former
corporate owners were replaced with an Archon-appointed landgrave
in 2869, who today hails from the Johansen family. The system
has a local, unicameral parliament, the “House of Ombudsmen,”
numbering one ombudsman per million subjects and elected
to six-year terms. The House elects the system’s prime minister,
who chairs the Cabinet. The Cabinet consists of thirteen members
including the prime minister, the eight executive departments’
ministers, the planetary landgrave,
the system’s popularly elected
Estates General representative, a
representative of the Lyran Civil
Service, and a representative of
Nashan Diversified. The Cabinet
is a
de facto
second house of
the legislature, because it can
review and rewrite House bills.
There are also two forms of
local governments, the semi-
autonomous “city” governments
and the smaller “township”
governments used by habitat
stations and large mining camps,
respectively.
Another outcome of CMC’s
collapse was the formation of
the Gulf Breeze Mining Union.
The newly renamed “Gulf Breeze”
government nationalized the
CMC assets faster than creditors could liquidate them and continued
mining activities. Interstellar shipping transport shifted to the large
Gulf Breeze station, where the new government was born. The
Mining Union thrived after discovery of the Helm Memory Core and
the early years of the Steiner-Davion union, attempting to diversify
into lostech production. But the same technological advances that
enabled such diversification also depressed commodity prices by
reducing mining costs around the Inner Sphere. Several consecutive
failed lostech ventures became a deathblow for the Mining Union.
The company’s wreckage was bought by Nashan Diversified in 3053
and survives as Nashan Mining of Gulf Breeze.
The quiet system saw a spate of violence in the thirty-first century.
In 3060, a daring “pirate” raid of well-informed, well-equipped raiders
attempted to board Gulf Breeze Station and seize rare alloys and
components meant for XL engines and ER PPCs. The surviving raiders
were taken into custody by the Lyran Intelligence Corps and remain
officially unidentified—though some “pirates” were mercenaries
personally known as the Basilisk Assault Squadron, which had been
defending the system.
Gulf Breeze’s greatest period of political unrest in generations came
in 3064, amid the FedCom Civil War, between harried teachers and
meddling parent groups who wanted new educational standards and
tax cuts with associated teachers’ pay cuts. The ruling parliamentary
coalition’s support for the parents triggered a two-month general
strike when industrial unions struck in solidarity for the teachers; the
furor led the prime minister to resign and resulted in a snap election.
Then, in 3072, local biologists investigating “terrestrial fungal and
bacterial surface proliferation” found that a small tellurium mine was
not occupied by a Nashan subcontractor with numerous WorkMechs,
but rather by Manei Domini with advanced BattleMechs. After the
Word repulsed one militia attack, Gulf Breeze eliminated the invaders
by simply dropping a dilapidated cargo DropShip full of several
thousand tons of fertilizer-diesel slurry explosive on them. Loki has
denied that any activity occurred on Gulf Breeze Six at that time, but
contemporary local news agencies
re p o r te d v i o l e nt g u n f i g ht s
involving “cyborgs” elsewhere on
the planet.
Of the 35 million residents in the
system, 33 million are descended
from Landers and live on Gulf
Breeze. Including temporar y
workers, two million more people
live in space stations around Gulf
Breeze Six and a few other sites
in the system. Contrary to racist
propaganda disseminated by
sources in the Free Worlds League,
the Lander-descended Gulf Breeze
inhabitants do not stand out in a
crowd; they tend to run short and
slim like gymnasts or equestrian
jockeys. It is non-Lander planetary
residents who stand out, often
being thick with muscle and prone
to early heart failure. Periodic labor struggles have taken place,
though the latest to require government intervention was 3031’s
“Great Food Fight,” when contract laborers held industry-paralyzing
sit-in strikes for greater food variety. Police eventually intervened
when miners took their managers hostage and began dunking
them in algal food synthesis vats. Crime is generally low and is
concentrated in the stations housing contract workers; seven casino-
brothels generate two-thirds of the violent crime in the system.
Unlike Gulf Breeze’s earliest years, only a small part of the planetary
population currently finds work with Nashan. Most residents
are simply developing the world as a colony, and the skilled,
technologically adept population is able to produce replacement
parts, food, and mining equipment less expensively than by
importing what they need. Further, the colony is able to process ores
into finished goods, enhancing their value and avoiding the waste of
scarce JumpShip and DropShip capacity to haul unprocessed ores.
Such industrial development on the planet has led to numerous
industrial space stations and shipyards being mothballed, but
Nashan appreciates the savings. To date, the relationship between
the colony and Nashan is amicable. However, there is a persistent
worry on the corporate board that the colony, which is a member
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