Starships

I really feel strongly about the unifying theme of alchemy to link the game world to the game mechanics. In reading about gold and the sun, I noted that several sun gods are linked to chariots or boats that pull the sun across the sky. This is an interesting connection to our theme in the game as the devise that allows interstellar travel, the stardrive, is powered through energy collected in close proximity to a star. The sun literally facilitates interstellar travel. This would be a detail of interest to the Swanscove. It's also an opportunity to develop myth and background regarding gold, suns, the stardrive, and wormholes.

In particular, the mechanism of the stardrive is of note. Using the energy of a nearby star, siphoning off one of it's flares to power its effect, the stardrive compresses space between the star and a distant target location. This produces a wormhole that the starship can pass through, dramatically reducing the travel time.

The exact mechanics of this process are unknown but it has mysterious results. One, a viscous fluid is "squeezed" out of this compressed space that persists until it evaporates back into nothingness. Two, strange "barnacles" collect on the hull of a spaceship as it travels through particularly long wormholes. These have a corrosive effect on rocket hulls and have to be scraped off at port. There is research into whether these barnacles are truly living creatures. They persist longer than the liquid, but do sublimate back into nothingness after a time. Three, figures can be see in the walls of the wormhole produced. Most studies equate this to seeing faces or figures in clouds, a phenomenon produced by the mind. Superstitious folks believe they are looking through to the world of the dead.

These phenomena could greatly be expanded, unified, and benefit from additional links to alchemic myth. In reading about lead, saturn, and its symbolism related to death and rebirth, thinking about these barnacles and specters, these topics could be greatly developed.

One thought that occurs to me is in the process by which the stardrive operates. It was my thinking that the stardrive uses the immense energy of a star to simulate exotic matter. This is, really, a kind of alchemy. I think a diagram of the stardrive process that mimics an alchemic reaction would be really neat. This simulated exotic matter might even be called nigredo by Swanscove esoterics.