Village of the Star

The following is (possibly) an old Pyramid #2 article. Posting it here is an effort to prevent it from disappearing entirely (as many Pyramid #2 articles might) if not archived.
= Village of the Star =
by Paul Drye 
There's not much original research on Homeline, but that doesn't mean there's none at all. Observational astronomy took a huge hit after it became apparent that there were timelines as advanced as Homeline (or more) that had made their own telescope runs to steal. Rather than building an observatory and paying to man it, one could just mine the papers produced elsewhere. Still, there's grant money to be had if a scientist can tie his work to parachronics, no matter how obliquely. Other timelines just don't know what to look for in that case. 
The Schuler Project was founded more than a decade ago by several major American and European observatories. Its purpose was follow up on hints that some of the processes occurring during neutron star formation might give insight into projector physics. Waiting around for a neutron star to form (and even expecting to catch it early enough to see the whole process) is a fool's errand under normal circumstances, as you need a particular type of supernova to make one. With hundreds of timelines at hand, though, each with a different date in the past, it was possible to know when and where one could be seen by examining Homeline's own history. 
That was the theory, anyway, but even with this advantage the Project has struggled. The 1572 and 1604 supernovas were of the wrong type, and the Cassiopeia A is too dim and shrouded by interstellar dust to give good readings. The 1181 and 185 explosions were hunted down and observed too, but they turned out to be the useless Type Ia as well. Only the Crab Nebula supernova produced a clean neutron star and, while it's been studied on several different timelines now, only one data point is a disappointing harvest for what counts as a major scientific endeavor by Homeline's standards. 
Accordingly, the Project has moved on to the one remaining candidate despite its inherent difficulties. The Vela Supernova took place more than 11,000 years ago, and before the Project started looking into it the error bar on the exact date was more than 1,300 years. Close study of records from the most advanced timelines at that date took more than two years, but have finally narrowed the explosion down to somewhere in the years 11,291 and 11,290 BC. For the last 18 months, two astronomers have been living in the central Chilean mountains of Clovis-3, the sole timeline presently known to be moving through those two years. Their mission is to keep a battery of telescopes pointed at the progenitor star and catch it when it finally goes off. When they do, the Project's board will finally be able to justify the expenses of their project, and hopefully can extend the program further into the past. 
Of course, there are complications.
== The Project ==
Schuler's people selected Santiago, Chile as the point from which they'd transition to Clovis-3. The Vela Supernova is to occur in a southern constellation, and Chile has a history of high-level astronomical work. Many unemployed workers from Cerro Tololo and Las Campanas moved back south to Santiago in the post-parachronics pure-science funding bust, and were hired as support crew for the current effort. One of them, Juan Navarro Hernandez, is on the two-member team out-time. 
On Homeline, the Project has a small but advanced facility in San José de Maipo, a small town 30 miles outside of Santiago. Though quite accessible, it is on a river embedded in the Andes (the Rio Maipo) and so is also close to the mountain tops the researchers need on Clovis-3; there is a climbable ridge to the east, a couple of miles long, which takes travelers to a small plateau more than a mile high. Just 100 yards long and 50 wide (running southwest to northeast in its long axis), it's more than big enough for the task at hand. 
On Clovis-3, the plateau has been turned into a small observatory. Porters having translated in from San José carrying an aluminum sheet observation dome, several small telescopes (visual light and other frequencies), and the necessities of life for the two on-site personnel. There are a series of tree-protected rock shelters on the north of the plateau where the researchers have set up their tents, slit trenches, and cooking area. Once installed, the plan was that the researchers would walk down to a contact point nearer the Maipo where they would drop off their latest observations for translation back to Homeline, then return to the plateau. 
As there's a chance the supernova will explode at a time when the constellation is not visible from Santiago -- Vela is quite high in the sky most of the year, but it does disappear at various points -- there is also a backup station near the similarly dry and high Warburton, Western Australia. However, it is unmanned for budgetary reasons. The plan is that if the neutrino detector at the Maipo station says the star is going off when it's below the horizon, the two researchers will crash a message back to Homeline where two more researchers in Australia can back them up.
== The Refugees ==
The Khormokatho are a tribe of some 20 Paleo-Indians who lived in the Santiago Basin until last year. They're members of the sparse and rather unsuccessful people that inhabited South America prior to the real conquest of the New World by Asian hunters crossing Beringia. It's taken these Clovis culture people and their descendants this long to reach southern South America, but now they're pushing out the Khormokatho and their like. If history runs anything like it does on Homeline, they're going to be very successful. 
After a raid killed several of their fighting-age men, the remnants of the Khormokatho escaped up into the mountains surrounding their former home. It was a strategy of desperation, as life in the mountains is harsh and none of the tribes-people had any skills geared to living there. By a stroke of luck -- whether good or bad depends on one's perspective -- they stumbled across the Schuler Project's encampment where the two astronomers took pity on them. 
They allowed the Khormokatho to set up a permanent encampment on the plateau, and have used their technologically advanced resources to help defend them. The two out-timers use their local knowledge, the firearms they've been given, and even their food and medicine (to the extent that they can be extended to ten times the number they're supposed to support) to keep the Clovis-culture interlopers off the backs of their charges. Unfortunately, while the invaders are somewhat afraid of chasing down the Khormokatho now, they're not entirely dissuaded. The refugees have had to be enlisted to protect the plateau, forming a bicultural, bi-technological society that breaks every kind of rule Infinity has. 
The researchers have justified their decision on the basis that the Clovis people would have found the encampment otherwise and brought the attempt to observe the supernova to an early end. However, the Project's protocol was that, if attack threatened, they were to wrap up and come home. This has been ignored. Quite rightly, the researchers believe that failing at this observation will break the Project, and there will be no second attempt. Accordingly, they've been falsifying their reports. They include mentions of friendly natives in the area (true, as far as it goes) while omitting the reason why the natives are this high up in the mountains. 
The Khormokatho's origins are somewhat mysterious, and certainly they don't look much like any group of humans living in the modern world. Their arms and legs are relatively short, leaving them about a head below most out-timers. Their skins are quite dark and their hair brown and curly, which suggests some association with Australian Aborigines, but their facial features have a "European" cast. If any of them survive the next few years, some geneticist is going to find it interesting to study them.
== Changes ==
The researchers have used the isolation of their plateau base to their advantage. They walk nearly a mile to their dropoff point, and often the contact is automated, with no other humans involved. Accordingly, they've been careful not to give any indication that things are not going according to plan. They don't think they're doing wrong, but they know what they're up to would not meet with approval back home. As long as their reports are either bland or upbeat, they're hoping to be left alone. 
Anyone on a journey from the drop-off point to the camp will realize right away that all is not as reported. The occasional switchbacks along the ridge route are crudely fortified with piled rocks retrieved from around the area. Observant visitors will notice that a few spots between the drop-off and the Rio Maipo plain below -- in other words, in the opposite direction from the camp -- are fortified too. The obvious implication is that the astronomers are trying to keep something from getting between down there and the plateau. Neither the Homeliners or the Khormokatho know much about defensive structures, but their hearts are in the right place. While very basic, the gates are admittedly somewhat effective in keeping the Yultang from an all-out assault. However, their size and number will be the first clue that not just the researchers are involved. 
Unless the two have been doing nothing but toting boulders around, there's more manpower involved. The camp itself is a dead giveaway. The edges of the plateau are piled up with rocks and logs to throw at (or roll down on) anyone approaching from those angles. Posts have been driven into the ground at the flatter spots and wicker fences woven between them; some are still in the process of construction. The line of approach along the ridge is guarded by one of the two researchers carrying a rifle or, more worryingly, a Khormokatho woman named Pangka armed with the researchers' spare. She's the only one who can hit the broad side of a barn with it. Within the compound itself, fire pits line all the available rock ledges and outcroppings. Children run around playing, while adults watch newcomers warily.
== The Researchers ==
Juan Navarro Hernandez: A graduate of the University of Chile in the mid-1990s, Hernandez was on track for a career as an astronomer when most institutions pulled out of Chile's observatories. For the last three decades he's been stuck as a high-school mathematics teacher in Valparaiso, pining for the life he nearly had. When the Schuler Project contacted him, he jumped at the chance to do "real work" even if he had to go out-time to do it. 
As well as being a trained astronomer he is into hiking and outdoor activities, a combination that brought him to the attention of Schuler. Though over 50 now, he is still very fit, with tanned skin and distinguished-looking gray hair. To some extent he has never lost his youthful idealism, which people who know him attribute to the influence of his missing father. The elder Hernandez was an educated union organizer who was murdered in the aftermath of the Chilean Coup of 1973. Juan has always thought of himself as a passionate, socially responsible person in the mold of his long-lost parent. 
He is the driving force behind giving the Khormokatho protection. It was obvious to him that the ragged band that appeared on his doorstep was in trouble, and he was the one who used his orienteering skills to establish that a new group had appeared in the region and were ousting the previous natives. In the months since, he has developed some rough language skills that let him communicate with his new charges, and direct them in their resistance. He does harbor some guilt that this is interfering with his duties as an astronomer, but as mentioned previously he claims that the two are complementary to one another. What would happen if he were forced to choose between the supernova and the people is unclear. 
Jenna Harpe: A 28-year old native of Seattle, Washington, the young Jenna somehow got interested in astronomy despite her hometown's terrible skies. Her mother is Mexican-American, so she grew up bilingual in Spanish and English, then took a degree in astronomy at UC Davis. After graduation she was hired by Infinity as a "time-checker": one of the people who went in early to an empty timeline and used astronomical observations to establish the local year in the absence of any cultures with recognizable calendars. She was seconded to the Schuler Project two years ago after they asked for some help on the Vela observations. Though working in civilian life since then, it's entirely possible that any visiting Infinity personnel will have met her at some point, perhaps during training. 
As well as being a good liaison to the locals in Homeline Chile, and a skilled astronomer, she is also Infinity's eyes on Clovis-3. Unfortunately for that idea, she and Hernandez have fallen in love and, despite her misgivings, she is going along with his plans to protect the Khormokatho. With her insight into Infinity's procedures, she's even been helpful at constructing the ruses with which they deceive the folks back home. 
She is a young "American-looking" woman with tanned brown skin and long black hair that she wears in a practical pony-tail. While in the field she wears a mixture of the leather-and-denim clothes she picked up during her postgraduate work in the American Southwest and the more colorful (but equally field-practical) Chilean huasa garb she discovered recently. Somewhat chubby, she could be quickly described as Indiana Jones turned female and squashed down into a 5' 4" frame.
== The Enemy ==
The Yultang are the newcomers to the area, the vanguard of the Beringian colonists known to archeologically minded Homeliners as the Clovis culture. They're not the stereotypical picture of the slavering invader, being in dire need of a new homeland themselves. Native to the Atacama region to the north, the recent end of the last ice age has been drying out the plains they called home; in a few thousand more years it will be transformed into the driest desert on Earth. Faced with severe population pressure, some of them have moved south. 
They aren't even very good fighters, as they've spent the last couple of thousand years on two continents so wide and empty that it's simply easier to move to another location rather than conflict with another group. Still, they have spearthrowers and basic ideas about tactics. The Khormokatho, on the other hand, are more technologically primitive, and they and related peoples were so widely spread out that they rarely encountered each other let alone fought. Their native language is unrelated to anything found on Homeline (or a lot of other timelines, for that matter), but Juan Navarro Hernandez has a smattering of it as mentioned above, and some of them have started picking up Spanish. 
The Yultang (and their relatives) are in the process of becoming the typical pre-Columbian people of the Americas; only an expert would be able to distinguish them from an American Indian, as per Homeline's idea of the term. They are relatively tall, with reddish-brown skin and black hair. While their language is ancestral to modern-day Mapudungu, even on the off-chance an out-timer knows this obscure tongue it will be of little use. Their speech is as different from the modern version as English is from Armenian.
== The Star ==
Sooner or later, the Vela Supernova is going to blow. Before it does so, anyone who wishes to look at it at night will just be able to make it out with the naked eye in the dry, thin air of the plateau; if viewed through binoculars or anything stronger it is obviously "fuzzy" from the gas it has been expelling over the last few millennia. When it explodes it will increase in brightness over a day about magnitude-11 then gain another magnitude over the next week before slowly sliding back down the scale of brightness. At its peak, it will give off as much light as the full moon, but compressed into a point source rather than spread out across a disk. Unless the GM has been indulging in some unusual timelines, it's likely to be the most remarkable thing the adventurers have ever seen in the sky. It will certainly be the most unusual seen by the natives of Clovis-3. 
The uncertainty in the actual day it will go off lets the GM use the star at the high point of any visit. If the situation is deteriorating, an attack by the Yultang can occur just as the critical observations are getting underway and it will be up to the adventurers to keep the astronomers safe for extraction . . . either after the recordings are made, or before if that's absolutely necessary. Alternatively, if the visitors are trying to broker a peace between the Khormokatho and the Yultang, a latter-day Thales of Miletos might want to use the supernova as an omen. "Behold! The sky gods smile upon peace!" Hopefully they'll think to do this before some bright spark among the Yultang decides it's a signal to finish their enemies instead, and convinces the others of the same. Some tension can be milked out of having both interpretations occur at the same time.
== Other Adventures in the Village of the Star ==
Simon Says: The Khormokatho aren't inclined to listen to the players' characters; after all, it's Juan and Jenna who've helped turn their lives around. If they want to cajole the natives into doing something against their better judgments, the strangers will have to help too. The only question is, what can they do that doesn't break four kinds of laws? 
In talking with the Khormokatho, they'll find that they had to leave behind an object of religious import, the native equivalent of an altar or totem pole. It's now deep inside Yultang territory on one of the city of Santiago's hills. Retrieving it without alerting the invaders might be just the ticket. 
For an additional wrinkle, perhaps the object in question is irretrievable on Clovis-3 but still can be found in the matching spot on Homeline. Or the object the natives revere could be something entirely out of place for their timeline, such as a knight's helmet; is there a natural weak point in the multiverse here? 
One Down, Several to Go: If the researchers are given sufficiently long warning of visitors, they might be able to set a trap. One of the group (either an NPC or a handily unavailable player's character) will be taken hostage and used to pressure the remainder to keep their mouths shut and help the conspirators arrive at a permanent solution to their problems. They won't kill the hostage if their bluff is called, but they won't free him either and won't allow the remaining group to stay on the plateau. The visitors will have to stage a rescue with two groups against them instead of having allies in one against the other. 
What's All This Then?: The Homeline visitors are projecting into the drop-off point (either on their first visit or, if co-opted by the researchers earlier, perhaps returning with some aid) only to find themselves in the middle of a group of Yultang assaulting the stoutly defended gate next up the line. A very confused combat ensues. 
Attack From Within: There is one basic question that might be worth answering: Why are the Yultang here, now? If the GM wants to throw a completely different light on things, it may be that this is not a natural migration. The Yultang may be attacking the Khormokatho at the instigation of someone else from out-time. After all, the Schuler Project was initiated to study a poorly known aspect of parachronics physics. There's money and power in play here. This possibility is particularly worthwhile if the playing group is having a hard time bringing the situation in the Village of the Star to a satisfactory conclusion, as discovering outside interference would justify the group throwing themselves behind the plateau dwellers. Possibilities for the Yultang's mentor include Centrum looking to prevent Infinity from getting info the Centrum already has, an alarmingly well-informed Reich-5 group that somehow knows what's going on, or even Infinity themselves trying to prevent the study. Perhaps the terrifying secret Paul Van Zandt revealed to the UN has something to do with it. 
If the GM uses "Simon Says," above, the unusual out-time object being retrieved could foreshadow the identity of the opposing faction.
== Using the Village of the Star in Other Settings ==
The key element of this setting is to nail down the adventurers in a situation where they'll be tempted to help a desperate group of primitives lower-TL humans against their enemies using what amounts to godlike powers. A fantasy setting likely has the advantage of several different races, so the main difficulty is picking ones that make a moral conflict. If saddled with an alignment system, take care not to make the Yultang a band of orcs or whatnot. There are more subtle antagonisms -- elves against dwarves, for example, or Lawful Neutral against Chaotic Good -- that would work better. Transposed into a primitive tribal region, they would fit the events described above to a T.
Sci-fi settings also have opposed races, but here the danger lies in getting the players to identify with the Khormokatho. If mapped onto an alien species, the GM runs the risk of the players not caring very much. GURPS Traveller has the advantage of primitive minor human races, so placing one of those in peril of extinction at the hands of an equally primitive alien race would work. Come up with a reasonable justification for the aliens to be aggrieved that is no fault of the humans (perhaps the aliens are violently allergic to human body chemistry, or "galactic culture" humans once took them as slaves) and you'll be good to go. 
Pulp settings have it easiest of all, since one can hardly turn around in those without discovering a new tribe in Africa or South America. About the only part of the Village of the Star that has to change is the astronomical justification for the civilized folks to interfere, but naïve scientists can be found in any field of knowledge and co-opted for similar purposes.
Category:Paul Drye