Nonplayer Characters (CSH)

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When PCs interact with NPCs in a spacefaring environment, there are subtle differences from interactions performed in a groundling campaign.
Although the spacefaring peoples consider themselves cosmopolitan, in many ways they are less worldly and more provincial than people on the ground. If there are 100 ships in a crystal sphere, and each makes one trip per week carrying 50 people to and from the surface of a world, less than 300,000 people could take one space trip per year.
Most "spacefarers," therefore, spend their lives on their own little worlds, leading sheltered lives not much different from that of groundlings. Of course, they live near and around ship crews that travel the spaceways, they know about spelljamming, and they dream of taking a long spelljamming cruise, but most of them are not likely to do so.
The typical spacefaring population of a crystal sphere is comparable to that of a small nation. Perhaps 10% of these spacefarers are from another sphere or have traveled between spheres. The number of extra-sphere foreigners in a crystal sphere is smaller than the population of Waterdeep, Greyhawk, or Palanthus.
Nevertheless, most spacefarers consider groundlings to be inferior. They are haughty and prideful when they meet those who were born on a world, and they perceive themselves as being part of the great community of the Known Spheres—even if this sphere is the only one they will ever see.
This limited population means that expert hirelings, sages, and other useful resources are much more limited in space. Where an adventurer might have a choice of sages in a great city such as Waterdeep, in most spheres he will be limited to one or two spacefaring savants—and they will be scattered across the sphere.
The DM should reinforce this paradox. The NPCs of space should act as if they are part of a huge civilization, but they should have resources like a small, isolated town. If pressed for something that he does not have, an NPC may irritably point out that the object or information can be had on the surface. Groundling characters who properly perceive the real population of space may eventually recognize that despite all of a spacer's protestations, the groundlings are not so backward after all.