What kind of culture?

There is a certain argument to be made that Highland worlds along Major Routes are uniformly bland, or at least not terribly different from one another. There is certainly a small amount of truth about that, if the visitor limits himself to the orbital spaceport or one of the planetary starports or mega malls of the large cities.
Once one gets away from the port cities, even if one is limited to the transmat system, a much greater array of cultural opportunities become available. For example, on St. Martin there is a transmat portal just across the street from St. Barnabas Basilica which can take you to the Golden Beach on the South Continent, where reef diving is a major pass time. As good as the reef is it is vastly overshadowed by the Great Barrier Reef of St. Philopia's Wright Archipelago. Philopia's St Marys Hospital is renown throughout the County for its work in taking on emergent diseases.
Travel on Port San Benedict is a more arduous, and interesting task. No transmat system here, limiting options to high speed grav train, commercial aircraft or private omnivehicle. Large sections of the world are effectively uninhabited, with vast animal preserves for the native life and large ranches teaming with imported livestock. The Monastery of St. Dionysius in the Andreanous Mountains is well known, mostly for it associated seminary.
WoodSocket is a major pilgrimage destination due to the Shrine of Our Lady of WoodSocket, which is surrounded by the almost impenetrable Rothwell Wood. It is easily accessible through the transmat gate across Blakely Square from St. Martin's Cathedral. The Great North Forest continues to supply lumber for most of the Diocese.
The kinds of activities tourists (PCs) along the Major Route are likely to become involved in are varied, but not necessarily safe. Any adventure that can be played in a modern urban setting can probably be played on one of the Major Route worlds.
Also worlds are politically independent. While most Highland governments tend toward laissez-faire republican union governments there are pockets of Great Compromise Sharia Caliphates, where Christians are required to abstain from Proselytizing, and are not permitted to openly practice their religion. Of course, followers of Islam are bound by the same Compromise in Christian areas.
There are also pockets, sometimes even worlds, colonized by other fringe religious groups, though most have move beyond the Highlands and travelers are going to have to go to the Midlands at least to interact with those cultures.
In all these cases individuals accused of breaking the laws on one world are not likely to be extradited by the governments of other worlds. The reach of the Church is somewhat longer and individuals who have broken canon law are more likely to find retribution by the Church, in the form of medicinal punishments, some of which will have temporal as well as spiritual effects. For example, an excommunicated trader is likely to find a dearth of tradesmen who are willing to do business with him. Even governments might refuse to deal with his company, out of respect for the Church, and its position.
A world under interdiction is likely to wither on the vine, as no commercial outfit will do business with them. Such worlds have typically broken some serious precept of  Natural Law, of the sort that even non-Christian members of the Great Compromise believe they are a danger to themselves or others. Examples include approving of abortion, child sacrifice to a false deity (such as convenience or greed), involuntary  human experiments, dangerous culturally supported promiscuity, biological weapon experiments or free roaming nanotech. All of these practices have been shown to result in societal collapse, unnecessary human deaths, and dangerous moral pollution of other worlds.

Brake Spacecraft

A brake is a relatively small spacecraft containing facilities to allow from four to six people to travel in minimum comfort for several days to a few weeks. It is intended to be used on Major Routes and Blue Highways in the Highlands. For this reason it is designed with a simple B/G engine not capable of shunting. This simple spacecraft is within the budget of many families, costing a mere P400 (400 Parliaments or about 400,000 dollars.)

This particular model is manufactured by TRTT and is designated the Skate. It has accommodations for 4. Is fitted with a Barnes-Gutierrez Engine. but has no shunt capabilty. Its floor-plan features innovative user-friendly features and maximum comfort.

The Skate has a small galley, a fully outfitted head with a shower, twin bunk beds and a master cabin with a full size bed. The 250 cuft cargo hold is accessible from both outside the craft when on world and inside the craft when in space.
It has a 5000 cuft hull and is powered by a Toofren Fusion Power Unit. Its Barnes-Gutierrez Engine is capable of propelling the craft at an modest acceleration of 75 Gs. This same engine allows the brake to hover while in a gravitational field or take off from a standing start. Thrust can be applied in any direction while the inhabitants of the craft are cushioned in their own artificial gravity field.

The Airlock Containment System uses memory plastic to compress the airlock walls below the passenger compartment when not in use, allowing more usable floor space. It is primarily designed for emergency egress, since it is expected that EVA will be an unusual occurrence for the Skate's target customer.
The Skate contains a standard communication and navigation suite, including a subspace beacon driven autopilot navigation system, a universal GPS unit, a standard proximity detection system and an IFF transponder/black box.
Millions, if not billions of such vehicles are likely on any particular Major Route at any one time. Even if your Player Characters have a more sophisticated ship they are likely to see and interact with any number of brakes at any facility they may visit along a route or highway.

The Mind of the Church

Now the intent of New Diasporia is to be as accurate as possible in matters of Natural Law, Church teaching and morality. It's your game and I don't have Dogma police to chase you down, if in your own game, you decide to make the Church corrupt or claim that the Church will change Dogma in the future or that Mars is inhabited by pink unicorns who serve some mythical Hindu god.
However the intent of New Diasporia is that the Church be holy as Our Lord is holy, and that as it has from the beginning that the Church's Dogma be unchanging and unchangeable. If this is your intent then it is important to understand the difference between dogma, disciplines and practice.
The perpetual virginity of Mary is a dogma. The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is a dogma. The fact that there are seven Sacraments is a dogma.
Priestly celibacy in the Roman rite is a discipline. The custom of allowing married men to be ordained in the Eastern and Orthodox Churches, but not to allow ordained single men to marry is a practice.
It is possible for the Church to alter a discipline. So yes it is possible that some day the Roman Rite may allow married men to be ordained (as a more general rather than highly specific practice.) It is unlikely that the Church would change the very ancient practice of not allowing ordained men to marry, or of raising married men to the bishopric.
In my New Diasporia universe I have chosen to have the Roman Rite continue to follow its ancient discipline.  But it is perfectly proper to decide in your game that the Church no longer follows that particular discipline. I would not set the Dogma police on you even if I could.
The Church cannot ordain women to the priesthood. It can not give up its moral stands rooted in Natural Law, so its stands on family structure, sexual activity and promiscuity, all of which are based on Natural Law, as well as Scriptural teaching, will not change.
Will some members of the Church disagree with these stands, perhaps even live lives in contradiction to them. Most certainly. They can even be Player Characters. But under the general tone of the game they will not be highly admired and are likely to come to a bad end, barring a conversion moment. That is the reality of life and of the Church. We were never promised that the members of the Church would be holy, or that her ministers would be holy, only that the Church itself would be holy, and that only through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Characters

Up to now a bit about the history, technology, and geography of the New Diasporia game universe has been covered, but not much has been said about Player Characters. Since New Diasporia is about the background and not about the game system I'm not going to tell you how to create characters, or what attributes or stats or what ever they should have, except for perhaps a stat you're not likely to find in any other game.
To start with lets put aside all of the possible regular characters that players are likely to meet or be. New Diasporia allows for many of the typical stock science-fiction characters you are likely to see in just about any such game: The grizzled old captain, the young hot shot pilot, the interstellar lawman (or law woman,) the scout (although in New Diasporia they are called Posties if they deliver mail or Rangers if they don't,) the Naval Officer (Legionnaire,) etc. In most ways these characters are similar to those you've probably played in other space RPGs.
So what else is left? To start with there are a large number of possible characters who are members of the Church. These characters are similar to the ones that some medieval period games might have. Remember one of the principles of New Diasporia is that the Church is good. More than that it is holy. That does not mean all of its members are good or holy. It is possible to have in the game a bad bishop, an evil priest or a corrupt monk, but these are personal failings and in the New Diasporia universe, as in the real world not without consequence. But it is also possible for a PC or NPC to be good priest, a devote monk, a saintly bishop.
This leads to the stat that you are not likely to see in another game. God calls everyone to be holy. In New Diasporia the holiness stat is an indication of how well the player character is answering that call. So when the character is created it will be given a level of holiness. During the game the Player Character's actions will effect that stat. Actions which are in accordance with the will of God, as prescribed in Scripture and the Tradition and teaching of the Church will increase holiness. Actions which are against God's will will decrease it. The character can always restore their full original holiness stat by availing themselves of the Sacrament of Confession. To go beyond that they must perform acts which are equivalent to real world actions used to increase holiness.
There are two types of Player Characters for which holiness in high levels are required.
Many fantasy games have the Paladin character role or class. A Paladin was one of the Twelve Peers, who were the foremost warriors of Charlemagne's court. In RPGs they are typically holy knights, often divine spellcasters, who must be lawful and good. New Diasporia uses the term Divinely Inspired Hero, or Great Hero to describe this type of character. St. Joan of Arc was a Great Hero. Besides receiving her instructions from St Michael the Archangel, she took a vow of chastity, attended Mass and recieved the sacraments regularly and fought not for her own glory but for her people. Along the way she became a Franciscan Tertiary and eventually was recognized as a saint and martyr.
The Knights Templar failed not just because the King of France conspired against them, but because they did not live holy lives. Their leaders were not holy men, though they might have been good men or just men, or even just not that bad men. Great Heroes will be holy, whether they are lone defenders of the down trodden or members of the great martial orders.
The second type of Player Characters to whom holiness is important are the Saints. Now it is true that in the strictest sense of the word one must be dead to be capital S Saint. Originally the word "saint" was used in place of the Greek word hagios which means "holy person." It is used in this way in many translations of Colossians 1:2,

"To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae. Grace to you and peace from God our Father."

To be declared a Saint first the person must be found to have lived a life of faith and morals with heroic virtue. What is heroic virtue?  Heroic virtue is a phrase that was coined by St. Augustine. It denotes a degree of bravery, fame and distinction. In relation to the teaching of the Church it denotes someone who has lived their life in a way that makes it evident that they are endowed with the four cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Restraint and Fortitude as well as the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love.
So Saints are PCs or NPCs who live their lives with heroic virtue. By virtue of the way they live their lives they accumulate holiness.
So a Saint can be of any game profession. While it might be easier for a cleric or a Great Hero to be a Saint it is also possible for a ship's captain or a postie to be a Saint. It all depends on how bad the Player wants his character to be a Saint.
There is, of course, another type of character which can have very high holiness stats and be a Saint. That is to be a martyr. Unfortunately martyrs make really bad PC's, being dead and all. However it is possible for a PC or NPC to become a martyr in the course of the game. It is even possible to have the Church in the game to recognize such a martyr.

Major Routes

Major Routes tie together the high population, technologically advanced worlds of the Highlands. They make it easy for vehicles without shunt capable Barnes-Gutierrez Engines to travel between star systems. Brakes, small RV size vehicles without shutting capability, are within the budget of many families. They allow even people of relatively modest means the ability to travel to foreign systems. Of course the hypertrains that travel the Major Routes also put interstellar travel within the budget of many Highlanders.
Travel along a Major Route is relatively safe. Vehicles enter at a portal gate, usually in orbit around the planetary solar primary. Once through the gate the auto navigation system of  most vehicles will lock onto one of the directional beacons toward the destination gate.
Major Routes typically have a redundant number of beacon stations to ensure clear navigation through subspace, avoiding plateau gravitational shear planes and other subspace hazards. Most beacons are simply unmanned stations locked on to the subspace plane with gravitational anchors. Others are manned, sometimes hypercable relay stations, Highland Ranger outposts or Department of Roads equipment warehouses.
If the distance between worlds is too great, more than several days distance, its likely that a waystation has been constructed along the Route. Waystations are the equivalent of the subspace truck stop. While hypertrains do not usually stop at them, all other vehicles typically make use of these convenient multi-purpose structures.
The typical waystation contains restaurants where travelers can get a good meal, rooms where they can spread out in more comfort than many brake or hyperlorry sleeper compartments, repair shops for those vehicles which break down, snack and grocery shops to pick up food to go, and even tourist shops to drop a little extra cash on bobble headed Saint icons and cunning hats. Needless to say there is almost always a chapel, sometime several belonging to different rites.
Of course travelers are not compelled to stop at any station or gate they pass in subspace. Still worlds on Major Routes are host to millions of visitors a year, most of whom are just passing through on their way down the Major Routes.
One of the dangers of subspace travel is subspace storms. Gravitational sensor can often detect such gravitational shear planes before they cut through Routes and Highways, but not always. The Department of Roads maintains a storm watch channel and smart travelers monitor, or have their vehicle monitor the DOR storm watch channel.

Tech Level A

This is the penultimate technology level available to New Diasporia science.
Advanced hyperdrill technology results in smaller, cheaper, units which allow for much cheaper transmat portal systems. This allows the wealthy personal transmat systems, between a wilderness home and the city in which they work, half a world away, for example.
Captured nanotechnology allows very small minfacs to produce just about any item, provided with enough material and energy. Nanotech factories can even be implanted in humans to repair damage and protect against drug attacks and disease. The grey goo problem and the Church's ban of free cloud nanotech relegates that technology to heretical and foolish worlds in the Wilds.
Practical Terraforming becomes possible at this tech level, both due to advance biological knowledge and greater advances in the environmental and physical sciences.

Tech Level B

Tech Level B is the technology level of advanced time-space manipulation and subspace physics.
Force Fields are a manifestation of the ability to manipulate gravity itself. By manipulating the space that a solid projectile or projected energy weapon must traverse its potential energy can be absorbed, rendering it harmless. Force Fields can be adjusted so that only high potential penetration will be impeded, allowing, for example, a person to walk through a deflector field, or to allow gas, such as air, to penetrate. Or the field can be made so impermeable that even gas will not penetrate.
Fixed Force Field systems are typically called wards.
High power Force Fields can be installed on vehicles, where with sophisticated controls they can be adjusted to allow synchronized sensor systems and beam weapons to be used even with the field on.
Transmat portals become available at this tech level. Though revealed by Barnes work on subspacial physics it took another fifty years to make the transmat portal a reality.
Large masses in real space are reflected in subspace by gravitational plateaus separated from the subspace plane by massive shear planes. Basically a transmat portal in nothing but two subspace gates back to back on a gravitational plateau, so that one might step from real space to real space without traversing the real space in between.
At this their introductory tech level they are still fairly expensive, requiring a full size hyperdrill to construct. Worlds at this level tend to treat transmat portals as a form of public transportation used to travel from one city or continent to another.

Tech Level C

Tech Level C is the technology of time-space manipulation. Hyperdrill technology allows a permanent portal to be opened between subspace and real space. Using gravity anchors a portal gate can be placed in that opening allowing passage from real space into subspace and back out.
Hyperdrill technology is also capable of distorting real space, making it a potentially destructive weapon. Fortunately the same technology can stableize real space, preventing such uses. Proper application of this technology can also prevent a Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine from shunting into or out of subspace, though the effect is very localized.
Gravity anchors also allow the placing in subspace of beacons between the portals.
While every gate and beacon transmits to allow vehicles to locate and follow the road network along Major Route gates and beacons also have tight beam transmitters and receivers to allow broadband communication through subspace. This hypercable communication system allows effectively instantaneous interstellar communication, at least over medium distances. For example most worlds on Major Routes in a particular County have what is effectively instantaneous communication. Over extreme distances, such as 1000 light years, the delay in transmission becomes noticeable and recorded messages are more practical than live interaction.
Deliberate attempts to manipulate the time side of the space-time relationship have resulted in horrific catastrophes. Church theologians have postulated that such manipulation comes close to challenging Divine Providence and propose that dangerous temporal recoils are the result. Still every once in awhile there have been cases of Hyperdrill or even B/G engine malfunction which have resulted in disjunctive time abnormalities or even situations which have stretched the bounds of causality. Perhaps at Divine direction.

Highland Government

The Highland Government, or as it is officially known the Grand Human Union, can best be described as a constitutional union of sovereign worlds. The legislative branch consists of the Grand Parliament. The Parliament is divided into an Upper House and a Lower House. The Upper House is made up of representatives of the various world governments. The Lower House is made up of representatives elected by the individual Counties
The President of Parliament is selected by the members and has a primary role in deciding what legislation is brought before the body. He or she presides over the Upper House. The Lower House is presided over by the House Chairman (or Chairwoman). The Lower House can only take up legislation which has already been approved by the Upper House.
The Highlands are divided into Counties, each of which is administered by an appointed Count. Counts typically serve until they are recalled by the  Parliament, resign or die. They have very little authority on most worlds except for issues which extend beyond the world's surface, principally trade and interworld cooperation. They are the actor of last resort for legal review and have the power to issue pardons.
In the area of Parliamentary Law the Count is assisted by the Sheriff, who is the chief law officer of the County. The Sheriff typically has a staff to enforce the law and run the prisons.
The Highlands also have a territorial paramilitary police force, the Highland Rangers. The Rangers perform both police and custom duties as well as such little immigration control as the Highlands see as necessary. They are led by a Senior Captain of Rangers.
The court system of the Highlands is inquisitorial based. Each County has a number of courts with a superior court for review. There is no Highland supreme court, though the upper house of Parliament can convene a Parliamentary Court to hear specific cases with Inquisitors appoint from among the members of Parliament. Judges of the lower courts are appointed by Parliament and like Counts serve until they are recalled, resign or die.
The Highlands have a combined military force called the Star Legion, who's primary purpose is to ensure none of the polities of the Midlands constitute a threat to the Highland worlds.
The Grand Postal System is responsible for delivering mail within the borders of the Highlands. Postal routes primarily join together worlds on the Blue Highways and worlds off the road network entirely. At the borders postal routes sometime connect with external package services.
The Highland Department of Roads is responsible for maintaining the road network, including the beacons, portal gates, waystations and the hypercable communication system.
The Grand Treasury, which is under the control of the Director of the Exchequer, is responsible for minting currency, it does not act as a central bank and has limited responsibility in the management and collection of revenues, which come from a combination of world contributions and individual fees.

Tech Level D

Tech Level D is the technology level at which the Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine was developed, so it was the tech level of early twenty third century Earth.
The B/G engine is in reality a spin off of gravity control technology. So it should be no surprise that contragravity use of the B/G engine allow for both the suspension of large structures, even cities, and artificial gravity independently of a massive body.
Scaling of B/G technology to both small extremes and large extremes turns out to be no more challenging than was scaling the steam engine, resulting in bullet sized B/G missiles and floating cities within decades of their development.

Tech Level E

Tech level E is the technology level of advanced cybernetics and medical breakthroughs.
Cybernetics have reach the stage that autonomous robots are now ubiquitous. Such robots do not have actual intelligence, just sophisticated programming. They neither have feelings nor morals, but merely programming, but the programming is very advanced, allowing expert systems to perform very complex tasks with little human interaction.
These advancements include advanced medical systems that are capable of repairing bodily damage in cases that would previously have been impossible. Biocybernetics, that is organic robots can intervene in cell functions, repairing genetic damage and combating diseases in a completely new way. The ethical aspects of using this technology have resulted in very strict guideline for its use, in the Highlands and most of the Midlands at least. Its mis-use in the Wilds have resulted in some very horrific situations.
Minifacs & macrofac, computer controlled robot manufacturing factories become available at this tech level.
Medical suspension allows biological processes to be slowed down to millions of times their normal speed, this allows for the placing of people and animals into what is effectively suspended animation. These techniques are used for medical purposes, to allow treatment deferral, for cases when immediate medical attention is either not available or unable to cope with the injury or disease. It can also be used as a survival method of last resort. On animals it is often used to transport specimens more easily.
Advanced power cells have double the capacity of first generation power cells developed at TL F.

Currency

Just as in a real economy in an RPG the type and value of the currency used in the game universe is an important consideration for the Player Characters. Barring the progressive social background of Star Trek, where they don't use money, in almost every other Sci-Fi universe the venerable Credit is often the currency of choice.
Part of the framework of Natural Law is the concept that value is inherent to certain things. The value of a human is based on the divine spark which is contained in him or her. The value of work is in the wealth that is created in its effort. Money is substitute for the labor that is inherent in the wealth it creates or in the material goods which can be traded for that money.
Now throughout history there have been two ways to use money to keep track of wealth. One way is through the use of money made of a substance which is of itself considered to have value, typically a precious metal, although at certain time and places gemstones or even rocks have been used. The other method is through fiat money.
The Song dynasty of China was the first known government to use fiat money. Inflation became so rampant that by the 15th century the Ming Dynasty ended it's use. Eventually every country which has ever used fiat money has experienced hyperinflation and economic collapse.
Governments who wish for long term economic stability do not use fiat money.
The Highland government instead uses commodity money, that is money whose value comes from the commodity out of which it is made. Because it has intrinsic value Highland money is accepted almost everywhere even in the Wilds.
To compare the value of individual denominations of Highland money to real world value use the follow suppositions. Gold in the New Diasporia is worth about US$1000 an ounce. The value of silver to gold is about 15 to 1. With that in mind:
The smallest coin used is the pence. It is about the size and weight of a penny and is made of copper. It is worth the equivalent of ~ 2 cents.
The milli is about the size and weight of a dime, is made of silver and worth about US$2.00.
The spot is about the size and weight of a quarter, is made of silver and worth about US$5.00.
The dime is about the size and weight of a U.S. 50 cent piece, is made of silver and worth about US$10.00.
The Centro is about the size and weight of a dime, is made of gold and worth about US$100.00.
The Quarter Parliament is about the size and weight of a quarter, is made of gold and worth about US$250.00.
The grand is about the size and weight of a quarter, is made of platinum, and worth about US$350.00.
The Parliament is about the size and weight of a U.S. double eagle, is made of gold, and is worth about US$1000.00.
Coins, especially Parliaments, Quarter Parliaments and Centros are sometimes transported in coin socks. The typical sock is made of plastic netting and holds 10 coins.
When moving about large amounts of money it is sometime not convenient to carry around large numbers of coins. As well, in high tech societies it is also very convenient to be able to use electronic money, that is to transfer the ownership of money electronically or using notes or letters of credit.
With this in mind the Highland government does allow the use of banknotes, though it does not issue them. A banknote is a promissory note made by a bank, payable to the bearer on demand for commodity money equal to its face value. The usual issuers of banknotes in the Highlands are banks and credit companies, which sometimes issue loans in the form of banknotes. The Church also issues banknotes, often as letters of credit to its religious and clergy or to pilgrims.
Some other polities in the Midlands and many in the Wilds do issue fiat money. Since it usually has little value outside the particular world or interstellar group most offworlders will not deal in it, preferring strait bartering to holding instruments of dubious value.

Tech Level F

Levels below TL F are historical. Tech level F is the technology level of cheap power and advanced material science.
Fusion reactors produce power by fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium. Fusion reactors do not produce radioactive waste and though they do require shielding while operating they quit cold, allowing easy maintenance. Fuel is provided by integrated fuel tanks which last the lifetime of the plant, typically greater than 200 years. That means just about every fusion planet ever built is still in operation. Importing a fusion plant gives even the most backward world maintenance free power for centuries.
Power cells provide high density power via the use of superconducting storage banks. They come in a variety of sizes and are rechargeable.
Convergent devices reach their apex. The personal digital device capable of recording audio & video, playing it back, connecting to the cell communication system and net, as well as performing conventional computing tasks become ubiquitous. Wearable devices, such as com bracelets and enhanced view goggles are common fashion accessories.
Smart nanomaterials such as thermo-cloth become available. Thermo-cloth can be made into clothing. While fitting almost skin tight the material captures heat in its weave making the wearer cool. When exposed to cold temperatures the weave releases the heating keeping the wearer warm. Chameleon cloth or surface takes on the color of the background, making the wearer less visible. Gecko pads adherer to a variety of surfaces, without leaving residue, and hold many times their own weight. Living Material is a "Smart" material that can be programed to take on different shapes. besides the obvious uses to disguise bladed weapons and manufacture multitools living material can be used in the manufacture of adaptive lenses, clamps and climbing pinions, and even doors and windows.
Advanced computer systems store googles of data on dine size recording media. High speed computers perform complex calculation and database searches instantly, and calculate the impossible in a little while longer. Simulated personality programs make interfacing with computers easier. No true AI, only God can create a person.

Stellar Mapping

Star systems in real space are spread in three dimensions. In subspace though only the plane of subspace is important and worlds can be considered as existing only on a flat plane. Therefore subspace maps are two dimensional.  Maps in New Diasporia are not of standard sizes. There are no regulation size sectors, subsectors or quadrants. In the Highlands maps tend to be based on Diocese or Parishes, irregular areas based on population and ecclesiastical governance. Maps are sometimes based on Counties, a Highland governmental subdivision administered by a Count. Counties sometimes contain several Diocese or may contain only one. Midland maps typically are organized around Blue Highway routes if they exist in the respective area or are based on the same ecclesiastical ordinates as Highland maps. In the Wilds arbitrary navigational groups determine the size and scope of individual maps. A mission map might contain all of the systems under the direction of a specific Church ordinary, that is a bishop, archbishop or designated ordinary, such as an archabbot. A Postal Route map will contain all of the roads on a particular postal route, etc.
On the game map worlds are placed on a field of hexes. Each hex is 1 light year of subspace travel across (times the subspace quality factor.) Planets are represented as either having no water present, which typically means they have not been terraformed and have hostile environments, having water present, in which case they either have natural human compatible environments or have been terraformed, or are asteroid belts, meaning the system has no major planets. The tech level of the system is designated above the planet. To the left base designations are given. To the right whether the world is a major crossroads or even just has a gate portal. Red lines illustrate the Major Routes and blue lines the Blue Highways. In the Midlands and Wilds a red line along the hexes is used to illustrate borders. Worlds which have been placed under Church Interdiction are noted with a red arc.
Waystations are basically network road truck stops. Fusion powered B/G engine powered spacecraft don't need to stop for fuel, but the human occupants do need to stretch their legs, get grub and buy little bobble headed dolls so superstructure has been constructed around some beacon stations to allow spacecraft passengers a place to rest.
On maps routes are often shown as having doglegs. This is to make them conform to the travel distance between worlds. The convention is to lay out routes so that Waystations are located at the angles of the doglegs.

The map above is of St. Martin Diocese, located in County Cook in the Highlands. There is a Highland Rangers station at St. Martin. The cathedral is located at WoodSocket due to the shrine of Our Lady of WoodSocket being located on that world. There is a Syro-Malabar Catholic Cathedral at St. Martin. Waystations are typically named and numbered based on the route they are on. So the Rt 232 Waystation between St. Philopia and Wymouth is 232-15.

Tech Levels

In many Science Fictions RPGs Tech (Technology) Levels play a fairly important part. In Traveller Tech Levels are used to give the Player Characters information about what kind of equipment, weapons and culture they might find on a particular world. The GURPS system also uses Tech Levels, though as they were originally design Tech Levels were not to be mixed and matched in the same game, but rather intended to set the technology of the entire game world.
These Tech levels are primarily historically based for periods before the present technology level (which itself is a moving target,) and speculative for technology levels in the future.
I have always had two problems with tech levels quantified in this manner. One is that many devices would have been possible to fabricate at earlier historical periods than they appeared, if the people of the period had the prerequisite knowledge. For example the technological base to create computer chips did not exists in 1902. However all of the necessary technologies, principally metallurgy and photography, did exist for the creation of printed circuit boards. So crystal radios using printed circuit boards could have been manufactured in 1902.
Medical advancements, for example antibiotics, could have been produced easily by any culture who understood brewing, if they had known of their existence.
Future tech levels are entirely arbitrary, selected primarily to create some imagined level of game balance. The assigned level of any postulated superscience device is typically violated at will when required for the proposed game background. So in GURPS 3rd Edition teleportation is TL15, unless required for you game background, then its whatever TL your game world is. Good enough in the abstract, but not really useful on the ground.
My second problem with Tech Levels defined in this way is that the practice does not fit well in the real world. Take cell phones as an example. If we pick an arbitrary African country with little manufacturing capability, poor farming techniques, and abysmal medical treatment facilities what TL are they at? If we're using GURPS maybe TL5. But cell phone are ubiquitous and the local thugs always seem able to get the best and latest firearms. Those are TL7.
GURPS, which was first published in 1986, found its future tech books brushing up against real technology advances with night vision equipment listed at TL8 for prices double or triple real world prices just a few years later.
So if Tech Levels are arbitrary anyway and especially if collections of particular types of technology are arbitrarily assigned anywho let's assign Tech Levels in a top down way rather than a bottom up way.

.	Tech Level

. A Personal Transmat Portal technology, captured nanotechnology, terraforming. . B Commercial Transmat Portal technology. Force Field technologies. . C Hyperdrill technology, Hypercable systems. . D Gravity control, B/G engines . E Advanced cybernetics, medical robotics, power cells, medical suspension. . F Nuclear Fusion, Advanced computers, nanomaterials. . G Atomic, fossil fuel engines, electric distribution, aircraft . H Industrial revolution, mass production, steam power, telegraph. . I Advanced Iron Age . J Iron Age . K Bronze Age . L Non-technological . M Stone Age

The examples are neither all inclusive nor do they indicate the total exclusion of higher tech items on any world. They are an indication of the average technology available on that world. Obviously any world on a road had, at sometime in the past, a road crew outfitted at TL C or above come through or there would be no gate at that world. But a TL D or below world on a network road is dependent on workers from another world for parts and equipment to maintain that road. That becomes very important in the Midlands, where there is no Highland Department of Roads. Only worlds with a tech level of TL C and above can maintain their own portal gate.

Spacecraft Overview II

Real star craft, that is larger ships designed to operate primarily off the grid, while still being capable of using the gates to the road network, are used everywhere, but many more are likely to be found in the Midlands and Wilds than in the Highlands.
The Patrol Corvette is the standard service vessel of the Highland Rangers. With a crew of ~25 the patrol corvette is an armed escort and patrol vessel capable of a multitude of tasks.
The containerized cargo freighter is a highly automated transport sometimes used on the road network, but more often seen in areas of the Midlands off the grid.
The tramp trader is a vessel configured for a mixture of passengers and cargo. They typically run irregular schedules and are often armed, especially in the Wilds.
The schooner is a fast (in real space) vessel with little cargo space and high end accouterments. Sometimes armed they are typically used as yachts or courier vessels.
A ship-of-the-line is any of a number of naval vessels of various sizes maintained by the Highlands Star Legion or one of the Midland navies. At their largest sizes such craft are behemoths capable of scouring entire worlds.

Spacecraft Overview

A staple of any space based RPG is spacecraft and their design. As I use GURPS Vehicles Second Edition (henceforth called VE2) and the GURPS Modular Spacecraft Design System, from GURPS Space, in my game, and such volumes may not be available to all the readers of this blog I intend to post some specific craft descriptions that can be used in the game. Before I do that I will give an overview of the kinds of vehicles the PC's are likely to see in the game, starting with those in the Highlands.
Because it is unnecessary for craft which travel the Major Routes to have more expensive and complicated B/G engines which have shunting capability many commercial vehicles are designed without this feature.
One type of such vehicle is the hypertrain. The hypertrain consists an engine module and a number of other modules pulled behind. These can be any of a number of specialized cargo modules or a variety of passenger modules. Hypertrains travel exclusively on Major Routes, between portal gateways.
Hyperlorries are smaller tractor engine units mated to a single standard containerized module used primarily to transport cargoes. If it is fitted with a single combined passenger module it is typically called a hyperbus. Used on Major routes and Blue Highways.
A brake is a relatively small spacecraft, the size of a small RV containing facilities to allow four to six people to travel in minimum comfort for several days to a few weeks. Used on Major Routes and Blue Highways
A hypershuttle is a larger craft capable of extended travel. Unlike the aforementioned vehicles it has a hypershunting B/G engine, which makes it suitable for use on Blue Highways and even off the grid, though most hypershuttle designs lack sophisticated subspace navigation systems and off-grid safety equipment. This makes venturing too far from marked routes hazardous.
A Postal Courier is a light tractor fitted with a hypershunting B/G engine and subspace navigation systems used to transport postal modules. They primarily service the Blue Highways and off-grid routes.
The Hyper Utility Vehicle (HUV) is a hypershunting equipped vehicle primarily used by military, postal, police and government for transport along Major Routes, Blue Highways and off-grid. They are lightly armed and have been manufactured by the millions for a multitude of official uses. Because of this there are also many second hand models in private hands where they fulfill a variety of roles.

The Church

One of the major pillars of the New Diasporia universe is the Church, specifically the Catholic Church. As the Church of the Apostolic Age and the Church of the Middle Ages is the same Church as the Church of the twenty first century, so is the Church of New Diasporia the same Church. As are many of the trappings of the Church different from the first century, the twelfth century and the twenty first century so are the trappings of the Church different in the time of New Diasporia.
Two key theological concepts of Catholicism are relevant here. The first is the promise of Christ to his Church given in Matthew 16:20.

On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

This is called the Petrine Promise. It is the basis of both the Supremacy of the Pope and of the promise that the Church would endure until the end of time.

The other point is is from John 17:

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.

The wish of Christ was that Christians be one, under the guidance of his Vicar, the Pope, and joined in one Holy Catholic Church.

In New Diasporia is is postulated that in the future the Church will continue to seek reunification. In our present time Anglicanorum Coetibus has authorized Ordinariates where Anglicans can re-join the Church while keeping some of their prayers and liturgical practices. Dialog with the Orthodox continue, seeking to define the role of Peter as understood in the early Church. Even the once almost schismatic Society of Saint Pius X is engaged in talks with the Holy See on reunification.

Meanwhile the old mainstream Protestant groups, having rejected Natural Law find themselves hemorrhaging members. Yes in some places Catholicism is losing worshipers too. These are the very places where in the New Diasporia universe Christianity has been replaced, not by secularism, by a vibrant and culturally strong Islam.

In the New Diasporia universe the Church has met Christ's call for reunification. The Great Reunification, not accomplished by a single act, but by a series of pastoral, intellectual and theological actions has result in a larger more diverse Church. Now the Church has not compromised on any of its doctrines, but it has given ground in areas that are not doctrinal. Roman Rite Catholic priest, still do not marry, but there are many other rites, Anglican, Orthodox, etc. where they do. Liturgy in Latin? Yes for some. In Greek for others. The vernacular or a mixture of all three for others. Before Trent there were dozens of different local rites. One liturgical rite has never been a dogmatic requirement of Catholic practice.
What of the Protestant Churches? Outside the Highlands, in the Wilds some still exists. Evangelicalism, primarily a phenomenon of the American century, faded under the light of theological intellectual discourse. Others choosing to follow the world into the Progressive Era faded as did the failed ideas of that age.

So what is the Church like in the twenty fourth century? In the Roman Rite much is the same. Bishops still lead diocese, which are divided into parishes, led by priest. But they share the stage with Eastern Rite bishops leading eparchies, Anglo-Catholic bishops leading Ordinariates, Orders of religious of various traditions some under their control and some not, Personal Prelatures and other structures, all part of one Church.

Outside the Highlands things become a bit more flexible. Great Orders, some with traditions spreading back centuries; Jesuits, Dominicans, Opus Dei, others somewhat newer; the Knights of St. Bix, Cyberistians, Actors of St. John Paul, preform the ministries the Church has performed for over two thousand years, run hospitals, scriptorium, monasteries and churches.

In the Wilds the militant orders have seen a resurgence as travel for pilgrims and missionaries has once again become just too dangerous without protection of arms.

The Church is led by Celestine VI, the first Benedictine Pope since Pius VII in the nineteenth century, and the first Pope not to have been born on Earth ever. With the vast scope of the known universe the Holy See, always famous for working very slowly is even more likely to move deliberately due to the great time lag to the mission territories. This makes it even more important that local bishops and archbishops be holy men and that men appointed as papal legates and national patriarchs know the mind of the pope. It also means that not all men raised to these positions are worthy of them, and that petition to Rome of abuses of power or authority are slowly if ever answered.

Not all members of the clergy are Saints. Nor are all Saints good administrators, good judges of character, or good leaders.

More on characters from among the clergy and religious in the post on player characters.

What kind of game is this?

I've given some of the background of the New Diasporia universe. right now you might be asking your self: So what kind of game is this? What kind of characters and adventures can I play in this universe?
If you've read the broad outlines of the area spheres of known space you will hopefully have realized that a vast array of different kinds of games can fit into this background. Many of the kinds of characters that inhabit other RPG universes can be found somewhere in New Diasporia.
Specifically the Highlands are an advanced interstellar civilization where some kinds of technology are very advanced and other kinds of technology are simply not used, due to their immorality. Now the easy answer would be to say they are banned, but that is not really accurate. They are instead philosophically shunned. That is the vast majority of the population considers them unconscionable practices.
An in universe example might be the practice of brain taping. In and of itself the total recording of a human mind is morally neutral. However if that record is then loaded into a biological construct, a clone, what you would have was a man, with his own self being subjected to eradication or sublimation. He might think he was someone else, but in actuality the individual who had made the recording would not be transferred to the clone. That person's soul would either be still inhabiting its own body or have passed out of it. The clone would not be him.
Like wise if the recording was transferred to a machine that machine might "think" it was the person, but it would not be him. It would merely be a machine who "thought" it was a person. It would not be a person. it would not have a soul.
The vast majority of the population knows and believes this, so these practices are not only banned by the Church and government, they are seen as morally reprehensible by the people.
In the Midlands the same prohibitions on most of these kinds of technologies are still followed, but not all of the permitted technologies  available in the Highlands are available there.
In some ways this follows the safe tech concept used in GURPS to produce the retro tech feel of Science Fiction from the Golden Age. This concept, however, includes the questionable moral practices of our own age. That's why this is a Christian Catholic Science Fiction RPG based on Natural Law. In the game world abortion and contraception have resulted in vast demographic changes on the pre-diaspora Earth. They have seen the negative social, political and individual Repercussions of the immoral choices of the Progressive Era. Moreover the strongest proponents of these concepts have simple failed, failed to reproduce, failed to convince the succeeding generations of their irrational world view. So though many technological methods of contraception are known they are simply not used, because the social, environmental and health consequences of their use are well known.
The Wilds are another story. There almost every failed philosophical theory is still in effect. Most often they result in yet another failed society. This is where AI pretends it is really alive, until its human servitors all die off or rebel, or the power dies rendering them the objects they really are. It is here the last followers of Nietzsche play the Last Man, until knocked down by the "slaves" whom they have tried to exploit or by a passing hero/Saint directed perhaps by the hand of God. It is here the high tech society crashes into stone age ruins in a few generations because they fail to acknowledge Natural Law and that actions have consequences.
So what kind of game is New Diasporia? It is a game where there are consequences to actions.

The Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine

The Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine is an engine which can function in two operational modes, depending upon how it is configured. In its standard mode it acts as a gravity drive. That is it is capable of directly transferring energy into thrust. B/G Engines in gravity drive mode can be built quite small, small enough to power bullets. In its hypershunt mode it is capable of shunting a specific amount of mass into subspace. While in hyperspace the relative faster than light speed of a B/G equipped ship is 1 light year per hour irregardless of the amount of mass the engine has shunted into subspace, times the subspace quality factor, modified by the Navigation Skill Modifier.  The first factor is a function of the existing subspace superstructure. These Quality factors are:

. Subspace Quality Factor . Major Route 1.00 . Blue Highway 0.75 . None 0.5 .

The Navigation Skill Modifier runs from +3 to .5. IN GURPS terms a +3 is a critical success and a .5 is a Critical failure. A success gives a +2. Using an automatic pilot results in a modification factor of 1. Trip modifiers are typically calculated for journey legs between subspace gates or between worlds when there is no route, even if the world is not a waypoint or destination.
It is possible to design a B/G engine without the ability to hypershunt, indeed B/G engines used by planetary craft and many ships which exclusively utilize the Hyperspace Routes do not need to shunt.

For game design purposes I use a modified version of GURPS Space's Modular Starship Design System, which itself is based on GURPS Vehicle 2nd Edition rules. 

The B/G drive is designed as a Gravity Drive at Tech Level 12. If it has shunting capability the engine's weight will be 10 lbs per ton of shunting capacity plus the weight of the reactionless drive unit. Volume will be weight/50 cf for the shunting unit plus the volume of the gravity drive unit. Power requirement is the power requirement of the gravity drive. It cannot use its gravity drive and shunt mass into subspace at the same time. For GURPS purposes weight is equivalent to mass at 1G.

Subspace quality factor is a measure of the best case average speed of a vehicle in subspace. It is possible for local conditions in subspace to modify these numbers. Major Routes are designed to circumvent negative local conditions as much as possible but subspace storms sometimes still disrupt travel on the Major Routes. It is also possible for badly maintained hyperspacial drills to damage subspace topology, resulting in delays. Along less traveled roads or where there are no roads at all ships are sometimes required to re-route or even leave subspace to get their bearings resulting in reduced effective quality factors for long distance travel.

Subspace

Subspace is the theoretical mathematical construct used to describe the extra-non-euclidean time-space structure upon which the framework of normal space is built.
In order to explain subspace to laymen without the use of tensors, manifolds and eigenvectors, physicists typically describe subspace as a two dimensional plane in a three dimensional space. Large mass bodies in normal space translate as plateaus in subspace. The larger and more massive the body the higher and larger the plateau. The faces of the plateaus form a massive shear plane easily capable of ripping apart any object which attempts to traverse them. The only safe place is on the surface of subspace which corresponds to the space between worlds and on the plateaus.
These gravitational shear planes extend out from any object in real space. That is a stellar or planetary body will create an area in real space in which it is dangerous to try a shunt into subspace. As a rule of thumb this area extends for a volume approximately 100 diameters around the body. Any vessel shunting into subspace in this volume will be torn apart by the shear plane caused by the body. It takes a mass equivalent to a small planet, or very large asteroid to produce a large enough shear to create this effect.
The surface of subspace changes as a function of the density of stars or other matter in real space. Where stellar density is high travel is faster and easier. Where it is low, such as between the stellar arms or at the edge of the galaxy it is slow and difficult.
Normal matter can exists in subspace in the same way that it exists in real space. To an observer in subspace it appears as though one is immersed in a glowing cloud of color. The shear plane of gravitational plateaus appear as rugged discontinuities. Other normal space objects, such as other ships, beacons and portal gates appear normally, though speed and distance don't always seem to correlate properly to the human mind.
As might be expected there is no air in subspace. Research has shown that, while sensory input from looking too long as some subspace topological structures, such as shear planes, can cause headaches, generally observing subspace results in no adverse physiological or psychological effects.
Subspace Ghosts are unexplained objects and sometimes people which have been reported by observers. Many times such objects are merely ships of unknown or unusual designs. Sometimes such objects do not appear to be solid and some physicists have postulated they are the reflections of objects located in real space or in a hyperspace separate from subspace. Some believe they are either the souls of the damn or angelic messengers, although the Church has been silent on the matter.
Topological features in subspace are not always stable. Gravity producing masses in real space move in their relation to each other and sometime this causes shifts in the underlying topology of subspace. Such topological shifts are called subspace storms, and they can be very destructive as shear planes move through subspace causing havoc to objects from normal space.

The Wilds

The Wilds encompasses a volume greater than all of the rest of known space. It is the area outside the influence of civilization. No subspace roads connect the worlds, not even Blue Highways. There is no postal service of any kind nor even many interstellar governments. Trade is slip shot at best, non-existent at worst. Those ships which ply these areas of subspace are heavily armed and outfitted with sophisticated sensor systems to map subspace and navigate its uncharted routes.
Every year the Midlands expand by a half a light century and the Wilds by double that, as humans venture further into the unknown.
Here there is little law, or the great police state, backwards villages living in the iron age and great cities brushing the tech level of the Highlands.Worlds dedicated to evil and unholy practices and great heroes trying to save them.
This is the great mission area of the Church. Of all of man's organizations only the Church has any kind of regular communication network and influence throughout the Wilds, because it is not really an organization of man.
But there is great danger for the missionaries in the Wilds. They are not alone in proselytizing there. Heretics who rejected the Grand Reunification, Islamics who rejected the Great Compromise, pagans, satanists and even atheists roam the Wilds, as Scripture says, seeking the ruin of souls, or at least their confusion. Not all competitors of the Church are willing to compete on an intellectual level. Indeed not all members of the Church are willing to let vast population labor in error, suffering or threat of death.
If mankind is going to meet others it is in the Wilds that it will happen. Though some believe the Church has spoken out against the possibility of alien intelligent life, of alien's who are ensouled,  in truth it has not. Indeed there are deep theological questions involved in the concept. Would such beings be free of Original Sin, walking with God as did Adam & Eve before the fall? If not, did Christ come to save them too? Or did Christ effect their salvation through some other act sometime in the past, or not yet in the future.
This is the sphere of the great heroes and Saints. The province of the grand campaign and great mission, where a single person can change the course of history, with God's provincial help.

The Midlands

The major roads of the Midlands primarily consist of Blue Highways. Worlds in the Midlands are beyond the control of the Highland Parliament. The Grand Postal Service does not deliver there, though private express package services connect some of the worlds. Interstellar polities of various sizes and government types exist there. The road networks tend to be held by either private companies, which generally means they are toll roads, or by local governments. Intersection portals tend to tie together systems owned by others, sometimes for tolls, sometimes just to skim what they can off the transshipping traffic. Transmat portal networks are few and far between. Those that do exist tend to be larger commercial units, rather than personnel doorways.
Though the Midlands are beyond the reach of the Highland government it is not beyond the reach of the Church. Many monasteries, convents, hospitals, missions and banks belonging to the Church knits together the Midlands more tightly than if they were not there. The Church maintains its own courier service and transports pilgrims great distances.
Much of the area of the Midlands is only accessible using B/G engines configured for travel off the road network. System beacons guide ships from great distances, though some still get lost. Still some hardy souls run transport trains along the Blue Highways and stages between the other systems.
Without the Pax Terra These governments do sometimes wage war, though rules about damaging gates and subspace superstructure are fairly well followed. There aren't enough hyperspacial drills and beacon portal manufacturing facilities for governments to frivolously destroy those that do exist.
The Grand Human Union is civilization. Every year the Highland Department of Roads spreads Blue Highways and Major Routes farther out, connecting worlds at the Highland border to worlds beyond. Every year the justice of the Highland Rangers and the power of the Star Legion moves farther away from the capital/center of the Highlands, encroaching on the Midlands. Worlds that resist are bypassed, to wither in economic isolation. Worlds that embrace the advancement win seats in the Grand Parliament.
Some flee, further into the Midlands and eventually into the Wilds.

The Highlands

Centered on Earth, the Highlands represent the most scientifically and technologically advanced human civilization known.
The Earth itself, in the aftermath of the Great Compromise is divided between the Christian Compact and the Islamic States. World government is embodied in the Global Security Council which itself provides members to the Highland Parliament's Upper House. There are still other groups on the planet, but they are of small political note. Many radical groups from both camps left Earth long ago, most never survived more than a generation or two at their off world colonies.
While the B/G engine made interstellar travel possible, it was the hyperspacial drill which made it easy. The B/G engine allows any craft to open a passageway into subspace. In subspace it is theoretically possible for a ship to travel at the rate of one light year per hour. So its four hours to Alpha Century and a week and half to Polaris. But subspace has no stars. Instead subspace topology has a series of gravitational plateaus where large masses exist in normal space. Subspace navigation is the process of mapping those plateaus to corresponding points in normal space, a challenging mathematical exercise.
But a hyperspacial drill allows a portal to be open between normal and subspace. In that portal a gate can be planted. A gate with one side in subspace and one side in normal space. Then any craft, even one without a B/G engine configured for opening subspace, can enter subspace.
In the Highlands a series of navigation beacons have been strung between the gates of the major systems. They form a kind of major subspace road between the high population worlds. Where the roads cross great intersection gates are built. Between the minor worlds smaller beacons, scattered father apart, allow travel, but at a reduced rate of speed, less a beacon signal be lost, and a ship likewise be lost in subspace.
Between the major intersections communication signals are tight beam broadcast through subspace, giving effectively instantaneous interstellar communication. This hypercable communication system, as it is called, is limited to major population centers on major subspace routes. Areas off these routes, typically called Blue Highways after the way they are marked on maps, are usually limited to the speed of the Grand Postal System, That is no faster than a ship can travel.
There are still some worlds in the Highlands which are not even on the Blue Highways. Most are poor and low population. But even these are serviced by the Grand Post, though perhaps not every day or even every week.
The worlds themselves, at the top of the subspace gravitational plateaus have access to another technology. Though revealed by Barnes work on subspacial physics it took another fifty years to make the transmat portal a reality. Basically a transmat portal in nothing but two subspace gates back to back, so that one might step from real space to real space without traversing the real space in between. They only work within the same gravitational plateaus, so no interplanetary or interstellar portals, not even from orbit to surface.

Game History

The history of the New Diasporia starts near the beginning of the twenty third century. The worst fruits of the Progressive Era have started to pass. China has nearly recovered from its century of Communist/Oligarchy Capitalist despotism, whose death blow was the unbalanced male/female population ratio caused by its one-child policy. The destruction of European civilization, which contracepted and aborted itself to oblivion has result in a relatively stable Islamic state in Northern Europe balanced by a Catholic/Orthodox Christian state in the south, in Spain, Italy and Greece and to the east in the Russo-Balkan Confederation. In the New World the Hispanicization of North America has resulted in a stable Christian democratic republic, with a strong minority Mormon population. Africa remained a battle ground between Christian and Muslim.
The triggering event of the great human diaspora was a result of the collaboration of the world renown Jesuit physicist Fr. Borland Barnes and the equally obscure graduate student Joesph Gutierrez.
Man space flight had become extinct in the middle of the twenty-second century, deep in the collapse of the Progressive Era, when even the struggling Russian Republic could no longer afford the cost of sending people into space for no reason other than to say they had. Robots continued to investigate the solar system, but no human had been in space in a generation.
This was a problem for Gutierrez. As a boy he had eaten and slept Asimov, Straczynski and Norton. He studied all of the twentieth century manned space data from both the American and Soviet-Russian programs. He wanted to go into space. Intellectually he knew that he was unlikely to ever fulfill his dream. In his soul he rejected that.
Fr. Borlan Barnes S.J. shared that dream. He was determined to free humanity from the single globe that God had placed them on. Working at Argonne National Labs, while teaching at the University of Chicago, Barnes was attempting to overcome the greatest hurdle to manned space flight, the cost per kilo of lifting mass off of his planet.
His goal required that he solve the greatest mystery of physics, the so-call theory of everything, a unified field theory which would explain why the Standard Model did not work and how relativity and quantum mechanics fit together. This was a mystery that physics had been seeking the answer to for two centuries.
Gutierrez worked for Barnes at Argonne. A brilliant mathematician, Gutierrez was very good at seeing the relationship between the high level mathematics and physical experiments necessary to prove the physics. Even so, he always claimed that the idea for the product of this famous collaboration, the Barnes-Gutierrez hyperspace engine, came from a dream.
The B/G engine's most immediate effect was as a reactionless engine. That is a device that would produce thrust without mass. It did this by reacting with the multidimensional subspace below normal space. Once beyond the gravitational pull of a planet it allowed direct access to subspace itself.
This opened up the stars to mankind. Moreover it was cheap. Cheap in require power and cheap in construction costs. For the price of a private plane anyone could build a star going spacecraft.
As could be imagined the reaction of government was not favorable. But once out of the bottle the genie could not be easily returned.
So started the great human diaspora. In a year humans had reach every star within the solar neighborhood, while governments had barely been able to get a working arrangement in the solar system. Within five years humans were spreading out in a globe 250 light years across. Government was lagging a thousand light years behind. Within a century Humans had traveled to the edges of the galactic arms and beyond, and civilization was far smaller.
Any group, practically, could put together a colony ship and head out for the wilds. Some were dissidents, other just explorers. Some running from the Church, others from governments. Where ever they went they found planets and systems, some dead as space others teaming with life, some alien, some as familiar as an Earthen forest or jungle. What they did not find was intelligent life. Silentium Universi.
The Fermi-Hart paradox asks the question "where is intelligent life?" The B/G engine answered the question quite firmly. Only on Earth. At least until mankind dispersed among the stars.
At the era of the game, the early twenty-fourth century, mankind has had interstellar travel for approximately a century. Known Space can be divided into three great spheres, representing significantly different levels of technology and social interaction. Each of these will be covered in the next posting.

New Diasdoria

This blog is devoted to the development of the background for a new game universe. I play it using GURPS 3rd Edition, but it can just as easily be played using FUDGE, FuRPiG, or any other system that takes your fancy. It's not about the game system it's about the background.
What kind of a game universe is New Diasporia? It is a Science Fiction game based on a universe where Natural Law is the guiding framework. What does that mean?
Up until the ascension of the irrationality of modern secularism scientific study from Plato to Pascal realized that the universe was more than the matter that can be prodded, probed and measured. Yes the universe is rational, and can be measured. It is the product of a rational mind, the mind of the all powerful Creator, who gave man the tools, intelligence and a divine soul, that would allow him to understand that rational universe. But it also contains things that cannot be understood solely through use of the scientific method, things that are only open to study of the metaphysical and theological.
So New Diasporia is a Catholic Christian science fiction RPG. In it there is true Good and true Evil and a billion billion normal sinful human souls some attempting to attain holiness, some just trying to survive what the universe throws at them.
The science is speculative hard. That means its more like Traveller than like Farscape or Lexx. The theology is Catholic/Orthodox, so the "Rapture" and "Fundamental Creationism" are not included.
Concepts which violate natural law, such as the Vinge Singularity, brain taping, sentient artificial intelligence, robot sex, etc. are not included.
That doesn't mean that immoral practices are outside the scope of the game. Just that they typically have negative short or long term ramifications. The good guys do not always win. The bad guys do not always lose. But societies which consistently violate Natural Law come to pay the consequences.
It'll be a few weeks of entries before there is enough info posted for anyone to actually have enough info to start a game. So I thank you for your patience and solicit your comments.