Capítulo 1 (GtSH)

# Chapter 1

## Now Arriving in Starhaven

From disparate homes they arrived—fleeing war, poverty, abuse, and derision—all yearning for freedom; the people of Starhaven echo the parables of many Earth nations and have run across equally complex and difficult realities. The city began as a refugee
colony on Star Island—a small spit of land off the coast of Earth’s Freedom City—made up of aliens fleeing the collapse of the Lor Republic, the predations of Collapsar the Devourer, and the unstoppable expansion of the Stellar Khanate. Like most refugees, the majority arrived with no possessions and little understanding of the local language or customs. Their experiences at the hands of overwhelmed bureaucracy and American xenophobia cast the myriad aliens together as one community, defined by hardship and a will to survive.

For the past year, the residents of Star Island have slowly migrated from Earth to the Jovian moon Europa, where an ancient Preserver ruin still stands with surviving infrastructure: Starhaven. But this new home is far from a paradise. The ruin is ancient, its technology heavily abused by the passage of time and countless looters. While removed from Earth, the colony still relies heavily on the distant world for food, tools, manufactured goods, and technical assistance. While the colony recently elected to form a new Republic to govern themselves democratically, a joint task force of AEGIS and UNISON still provide security and assist with the bureaucratic difficulties of founding a new city. The tireless work by immigrants, supported by maintenance robots and human technicians, has restored almost 20% of the grand city to a functional state, but the rest of the installation remains off-limits—an alien wilderness of towers and tunnels overgrown with indecipherable technology and the remains of ancient biotech experiments. Work is difficult—often demanding backbreaking labor or dangerous forays into the untamed corners of the city or Europa beyond. Crime—particularly smuggling, blackmail, robbery, and bribery—is becoming more common. To top it all off, most of the city is one technological accident away from a painful death thanks to the moon’s inhospitable climate.

### DARK SIDE OF A MOON

Europa itself is a hostile frontier. The icy moon orbits Jupiter some 390 million miles from Earth and despite its oxygen-rich atmosphere is instantly lethal to humans thanks to its extreme cold and high radiation levels. Strange Preserver creations call the dark corners of the city home—particularly the subterranean tunnels that carry utilities and connect the domes and spires across the mysterious “Green Zone.” Rumors suggest that arctic predators stalk the icy slopes and canyons beyond this safe pocket ecosystem, although vanished explorers and technicians are just as likely the victims of icy crevasses or the moon’s frequent quakes. Boreholes within the city stretch down to a saline ocean below the icy surface that hosts a strange ecosystem of blind fish and massive “ice whales.” Aquatic aliens are currently populating the Preserver station anchored below the city—nicknamed Seahaven—but encounter more challenges from hostile wildlife and unexplained disappearances that has inspired rumors that Seahaven is haunted by angry Preservers or the humans they once experimented upon.

### A UNIQUE CULTURE

Like any melting pot, Starhaven is equal parts community bonding running up against old rivalries and new misunderstandings. Many non-Lor residents blame the Lor population for letting the Republic implode, while the Lor resent Hexxim, Sk’ree, Haasaan, and other non-humanoid refugees for ruining their chances at peaceful, quiet integration into Earth society—however primitive it may seem to them. Some refugees arrived with considerably more resources—ships loaded with technology, luxury goods, or raw materials from their escaped worlds that they have parlayed into wealth and social influence. Some, like the Llainan politician D’Arjax, have tried to parlay their good fortune into philanthropy that benefits the community, while others position themselves as gods and emperors in their tiny new world. Complicating matters are the human authorities who administered Star Island and continue to control most of the power on Starhaven. The American metahuman securities group AEGIS, along with the United Nations’ UNISON, keep the peace largely by enforcing strict regulations. Protests recently ended the city’s mandatory curfew, but not without flaring tensions on both sides—the alien refugees resent Earth authority limiting their growth and persecuting them over cultural differences, while the AEGIS and UNISON personnel on Starhaven feel outnumbered and trapped millions of miles from their families or any backup. This tension translates to a harsh “us vs them” mentality between humans and aliens in the city, with even human technicians and relief workers seen as untrustworthy or dangerous. Despite its ostensible status as an independent colony—a hard-won designation maintained largely by pressure from the Freedom League—Starhaven remains too potentially valuable to Earth governments and corporations to allow total independence without a fight, and so the AEGIS and UNISON presence persists. For now, the Lor leadership struggles to keep the peace between all sides, but it’s clear to everyone that conflicts are growing more heated and frequent.

Despite the hardship, Starhaven offers something life on neither Earth nor under the Stellar Khanate did: a chance at self-determination. The newly-formed New Lor Republic officially considers Starhaven its capitol. Prime Consul Tamira-Van ran in part on a platform claiming Earth as a lost Lor colony over which the remnants of the Lor Republic should have authority. Starhaven lacks any military or political power to enact this agenda, but it has stirred many to believe they can rebuild the old republic starting with the nearby planet. While the New Republic has no official plans to expand offworld, few senators will openly condemn the ultra-nationalist “First Colony” movement that calls for the annexation of Earth to restore its natives to a “proper Lor lifestyle.”

The abandoned city means plenty of space—some of it downright luxurious to people who spent the previous several years living in tents and shanties on a wind-blasted island. There is room for schools, community centers, medical facilities, and industry, all waiting to be developed. Exploration of the city’s systems is training a new generation of experts not only in the diverse alien technologies brought by the refugees, but with Preserver tech as well. Entrepreneurs are turning the city’s fortunes around by learning to mine the resources of Europa—exotic mineral salts, hydrocarbons, and tholins—to trade with Earth. The moon also offers easier access to interstellar space than Earth, promising many residents a chance to establish trade, reunite with family, or eventually even return home.

Sitting in between Earth and the wider Galaxy, Starhaven makes a perfect launching point for a campaign that visits either location. Heroes might protect the city, but they may just as often return to Earth to track fugitives or recover stolen technology or travel into deep space to investigate Preserver mysteries, undermine the Stellar Imperium, or win allies and support. The Superteam Handbook contains two alien-themed hero teams—the teenage Upstarts and the mecha-piloting Magna-Force—which include new alien statistics, extraterrestrial enemies, and otherworldly adversaries. Supplements like the Atlas of Earth Prime and the Cosmic Handbook will prove invaluable for a Starhaven campaign, while Emerald City provides useful insight to other Preserver technologies and the superpowers they can instill, and Freedom City, Threat Report, and Rogues Gallery provide villains who can threaten the peace as-is, or serve as useful statblocks to represent your own local villains.

The city is quickly becoming a symbol of hope and prosperity to come despite the inner turmoil. For many this new opportunity inspires their best nature— anyone with grit and a good idea can carve out a life for themselves—but it also attracts predators. Those wealth-hoarding elites among the Star Island refugees consider the city’s opportunities theirs alone to exploit and hope to keep their fellow refugees subservient and desperate. Other villains—both from Earth and the larger galaxy, see Starhaven’s good fortunes and scattered law enforcement as a perfect treasure chest to exploit. Earth organizations like the Foundry (Freedom City, page 238), Majestic-20 (Emerald City, page 198), and the Litmus Group (Superteam Handbook, page 98) covet the installation’s technological secrets. And perhaps most dangerous of all, word of Starhaven has spread to the Star-Khan, the expansionist warmonger whose conquests displaced untold millions of souls only a few years ago. The Star-Khan and his Stellar Imperium see Starhaven as a precious forward position from which he can stage a full-scale invasion of Earth!

Starhaven is a city on the edge of space that promises both wealth and horrible, agonizing death. It’s a city whose weary citizens need heroes to help reclaim the city, pacify monsters, and bring villains to justice, and whose diverse population is perfect to take up the role. Whether those heroes hail from Earth—an independent, Freedom-League-backed effort or a powered AEGIS team intended to keep the peace—or emerge organically from the moon’s displaced population, they will face an uphill battle to tame this stellar frontier, inspire hope in the citizens, and bring the worst abusers of this desperate population to justice. Only courage, ingenuity, and selflessness can transform this ancient ruin into a true haven among the stars.

## WHO IS STARHAVEN?

Over one-hundred alien species make up Starhaven’s diverse population, with each divided into a myriad of national, cultural, and religious subgroups. Most have adjusted well to their new lives as diaspora, learning to tolerate their neighbors’ differences even when they can’t embrace them, but many old rivalries still lurk beneath the surface. The survivors who make up this new city in the stars are neither the best nor the worst of their kind—most are simply average, with all the wonder and shortcomings that implies.

Most of the alien species discussed here are detailed and given statistics in the **Alien Archetypes & Templates** appendix of the Cosmic Handbook. The remaining species (marked with an asterisk) are found in the **Upstarts** section of the *Superteam Handbook*.

### THE LOR

Starhaven has no one majority population, but the largest minority by far are the Lor, the humanlike population of the now-conquered Republic. The Lor once ruled the most technologically and socially advanced civilization in the galaxy, having inherited many wondrous technologies and insights from the Preservers left behind on their homeworld of Magna Lor. Most still see themselves as the natural leaders of the galaxy simply experiencing a temporary and embarrassing stumble; at best this pushes them to band together and help establish necessary services, inspire their communities, and preserve whatever art, music, and other cultural touchstones they can recall, but at worst it can inspire imperious entitlement and a streak of racial superiority.

Lor are visually almost identical to humans and descend from humans transplanted to Magna Lor by the Preservers eons ago. They bear a wider range of skin and hair colors. Having settled hundreds of worlds, it is common for colonies in extreme environments to develop more unusual traits (and sometimes superpowers) over the generations in response to their environment.

#### CENDARANS\*

Cendarans are unrelated to the Lor, but bear a striking physical resemblance aside from their unusual, black eyes, and are generally accepted as Lor until they say something. Their people exist “sideways” in time thanks to the intense gravity of their binary home system. That same gravity keens the Imperium at bay, but many off-world Cendarans were caught up in the Diaspora when Collapsar plunged the galaxy into chaos. They make up one of the smallest minority communities, with only a few dozen—mostly hailing from the longtime rival Synnagar and Manosh families—making their homes on Starhaven.

#### EALAS

Like Cendarans, Ealas resemble Lor, but descend from human ancestors engineered by the Preservers. Their large, feathered wings allow them to fly, similar to the Avians of Earth. Many conservative Lor consider them diamorphs, while the diamorph community considers them Lor, leaving the Ealas as perpetual outsiders. By happenstance, most of the Ealas refugees who were not military were part of the same service worker shuttle that fled the doomed Lor system, and so many of the city’s service jobs—maintenance workers, nurses, waiters, chefs, porters, etc.—are Ealas.

#### LLAINANS\*

While Llaina was settled by Lor colonists, it fell far outside the Republic’s borders. The original founders were technological separatists, who hoped to perfect society by better integrating it with science and technology. Their world was conquered first by the Grue 20 years ago, and more recently by the Imperium, leaving them spread thin across the stars. Already socially awkward, they now struggle to hold onto their traditions and form new connections, making them unusually insular and prone to forming their own “research groups” that pursue secretive—but rarely illegal—goals.

#### MENTATS

A sizable minority of Lor develop psionic powers, generally telepathy or telekinesis. The Stellar Imperium has made a priority of “retaining” these Mentats for the invaluable services they can provide, and so few refugees openly display any psionic abilities they may have for fear that bounty hunters might “return” them to the Imperium.

### THE DIAMORPHS

When AEGIS first began cataloging alien refugees, it pooled all non-humanoid visitors under the umbrella term “diamorph,” or “differently bodied” and the label has remained as broad culture for those aliens who can’t pass for human or Lor. While the New Lor Republic includes anti-discrimination clauses in its charter, it has become increasingly obvious to the city’s diamorph population that the development of their neighborhoods and businesses has lagged behind that of their humanoid neighbors, prompting the creation of new political groups and protests.

#### CHOLAXAN

Hairy and feral-looking, Cholaxans seems monstrous at first glance but are a peaceful people. Their ferocious strength and durable bodies mean they rarely hurt one another in conflicts, but are keenly aware of the damage they cause to the surrounding environments, and their culture emphasizes serenity, empathy, and control. When Star Khan obliterated the library planet of Endex, the majority of its Cholaxan librarians ended up on Earth and later Starhaven, and their people are over-represented among the city’s academics.

#### HAASAAN

The ophidian Haasaan are nothing if not adaptable, having integrated into planets across the Lor Republic, the Grue Unity, and various other political entities before. Many work in Starhaven as technicians, merchants, and politicians, but a number also hailed from the Uburros, a long-standing organized crime syndicate that the Star-Khan aggressively routed from his captured Lor worlds. This gives their people an unearned reputation as criminals and smugglers, particularly among AEGIS and UNISON security forces.

#### JEREID

The Lor Republic and the Jereid Hegemony enjoyed an alliance so long-lasting they were essentially a single political entity when the Republic collapsed, leaving the crocodilian humanoids reeling when the Stellar Imperium arrived to annex them. Tree-thinkers and academics, many Jereid fled rather than submit to the propaganda and purging of history they knew Star-Khan would deliver. Many on Starhaven see themselves as protectors of their racial culture as well as true galactic history. Because their people need very exacting conditions to lay eggs and rear young, their primary concern is overseeing the construction of a creche dome that can artificially replicate the environment they need before they die out.

#### SHOON

Shouna has been a client world of the Stellar Imperium for centuries, but many Shoon dissidents took advantage of the chaos of conquest to desert their posts. Many were soldiers pressed into service, and so the Shoon of Starhaven are sharply divided between those still working in security and devoted pacifists.

#### SK'REE

Arboreal, arachnid-like aliens from the forest-filled world of Et'erak, the Sk'ree look terrifying to humans but are quick-witted and gentle. Their society turns to philosophy and history more often than technology. Sk'ree traditionally leave their eggs in hiding and let their newborn, highly venomous younbg fend for themselves.

### THE AQUATICS

While distinctly nonhuman, the city’s aquatic aliens stand out culturally because they were never limited to Star Island on Earth and now have the whole of Europa’s oceans to explore and colonize. Many of their fellow refugees resent the freedom and expanded opportunities aquatic enjoy, while the aquatic peoples have come to resent the city relying on the resources—particularly food—they can provide. The city’s Aquatics have largely settled the subsurface research station known as Seahaven, and some are beginning to see themselves as an independent colony not limited by air-breather laws.

#### HEXXIM

These six-armed cephalopods make up the majority of Starhaven’s aquatic people, and their inability to breathe air or function on land has created a wide gulf between them and most of the other refugees. Already a standoffish culture, they lead Seahaven’s independence effort, as well as most of its restoration.

#### PISCEANS

The fish-like Piscean people now serve largely as diplomats and politicians, keeping the peace between Hexxim and Lor. An uncomfortable role for a collection of displaced farmers and ranchers, they manage by often turning to homespun wisdom and rambling stories. Those Pisceans who have mercifully escaped “babysitting” duty generally work in maintaining the city’s environmental systems or farming kelp, algae, and krill under the ice.

## GOVERNMENT

While the refugee population resided on Earth, they lived under the watchful eye of AEGIS, the United States’ security agency for superhuman affairs, with the United Nations’ UNISON acting as human rights oversight. The aliens had little freedom to move about and most felt it akin to imprisonment. Understandable, once they arrived on Europa, the citizenry overwhelmingly voted to establish an independent government free of Earth’s influence. That hasn’t gone exactly according to plan, but Starhavians finally have some say in their destiny.

### THE SENATE

Starhaven operates as a democratic republic—officially the New Lor Republic—with the citizenry divided into 20 districts based on their cultural background and profession. Each district elects a representative to serve in the Senate and represent their interests, get funding for projects, advance their causes, and protect their rights. Senators theoretically serve for five years, but the city is still voting in its first Senate—a process that is taking much longer than expected as they argue over how to fairly assign districts. The current plan scales the Senate up to fifty seats as the colony expands to encompass the entire moon.

The Prime Consul acts as final arbiter in the Senate, calling for votes, keeping the peace, breaking ties, and approving committee memberships. Most of the Senate is still too new to have divided themselves into firm camps beyond those new to politics and those who served as politicians before their exile.

Every Senator is served by a dozen Senate Aides, a formal title that grants an individual considerable authority to commandeer resources, access corners of the city, and issue orders to security and emergency personnel. Aides act as their Senators’ direct hands among their constituents, and often act as investigators (some would argue spies) on their employer’s behalf to help them better serve the community.

Most citizens only deal directly with their Block Captains, a local leadership position either elected or appointed by a Senator to help with day-to-day matters on a local level. A Block Captain answers to only a few dozen people and acts as their liaison to the larger government for almost everything.

#### PRIME CONSUL TAMIRA-VAN

The daughter of a powerful Lor Senator and inheritor of a long political legacy, Tamira-Van trained from birth to serve on a Senate, and was one of the leading voices to establish an independent, Lor-style government upon arriving in Starhaven. The majority of her family wealth was lost when Collapsar devoured Magna Lor, but Van retained many of her political connections and secrets, allowing her to call in favors from around the galaxy to provide Starhaven with needed technology and ships, but those same connections have meant the arrival of more refugees faster than the colony is ready for.

A lifelong politician, Van is canny. She offers even the harshest criticisms alongside glowing compliments and rarely says more about her own intentions than is absolutely necessary. Her campaign platform revolved heavily on restoring the glory and civility of lost Magna Lor and Lor culture in general, and while she is a moderate herself, these attitudes have attracted many conservative and wealthy Lor to her camp. She is happy to work with independent “heroes” as they prove her assertion that Starhaven can stand on its own.

#### SENATOR GIG-MALACHIS

One of the few Lor Senators to escape the destruction of Magna Lor, Malachis’ seat is honorary as they haven’t formally been elected yet. The aging politician escaped their villa with substantial wealth and many historical treasures, and while they surrendered many to Earth authorities in exchange for a measure of command within the Star Island camp, they are still wealthy enough to live comfortably even as they bemoan their newfound “poverty.” Malachis favors Lor needs over those of other refugees, and privately laments having to spend valuable resources to lift everyone rather than focus on their own struggling people. Everyone knows they have their eye on the Prime Consul seat, and are biding their time until Tamira-Val makes a big enough public mistake that they can oust her.

#### SENATOR TRUNT CHUG CHIN’NAL

An archivist by trade, Chin’nal won popularity among the diamorph community as a staunch advocate for those with specialized environmental needs. He has taken to politics reluctantly, more because he wants to see everyone cared for than because he enjoys the work. As a result, the large Cholaxan is generally overworked and exhausted, with several of his aides dedicated solely to keeping him fed and rested. Chin’nal empathizes deeply with others, and sees this new city as a chance to discard many of the outmoded traditions of the Lor Republic, like incarceration and wealth, meaning almost everyone has a strong opinion about the intellectual Senator, good or bad.

#### SENATOR ICHUS-VELAPEER

Senator Velapeer is a blunt young politician who came from a career in middle-management. Ichus is not an extraordinarily insightful or skilled politician, but his plainspoken style, luck, and general lack of opposition has resulted in a meteoric rise in power and popularity as a representative of “the common Lor.” He’s eager to see Starhaven stand on its own feet, independent of Earth, and while he has no loyalty to the Stellar Imperium, he’s a fierce advocate of opening trade negotiations as soon as possible.

### THE COUNCILS

Below the Senate, a network of administrative offices called the Councils handles most of the practical realities of running a city. Each major agenda has a dedicated council, such as the Atmospheric Council, the Maintenance Council, the Trade Council, or the Education Council, with more specific interests spinning off into a confusing web of sub-councils. The New Lor Republic inherited most of this bureaucratic mess from the Earth organizations that sponsored the colony, who in turn developed it organically in response to the increasingly complex task of running a city for a hundred different cultures and biologies.

#### CHAIRWOMAN FALLING SANDS

The only member of the reclusive, bat-like nulorry species on Europa, Falling Sands parleyed her exclusive knowledge of advanced environmental engineering into the position of chairwoman of the Science Council. But her position is tenuous—Falling Sands is actually a Grue metamorph who was caught in the mass exodus of refugees. The technology she shared was stolen intelligence, as well as the full extent of her scientific knowledge. For now, she plays the part of an eccentric and reclusive administrator, but she fears her cover identity will fall apart soon and has begun sending anyone too suspicious on dangerous “scientific” expeditions to the most dangerous corners of the city while she works to extract herself.

#### CHAIRWOMAN NOX TEMMUEN

The appointment of Nox Temmuen to leadership of the Internal Security Council is one of Starhaven’s biggest scandals, as the Ruluan formerly served as a general in the Imperium. By far the most experienced soldier and tactician in the colony, she nonetheless struggles to gain the trust of anyone but Prime Consul Tamira-Van—a position made more difficult by her brusque and confrontational attitude. The common story is that Nox saved the politician’s life in the invasion and in exchange Van offered sanctuary for her and her children, but other rumors insist the old general is extorting the Prime Consul.

### OTHER POLITICAL POWERS

Several other factions have powerful influence on Starhaven and its government.

#### EARTH

AEGIS and UNISON retain some authority, providing much of the city’s armed security and shuttles to and from Earth. On paper they are ideally a customs agency that contracts for logistic and police support, but in reality, UNISON Deputy Director François Yassine is still bitter the refugees rejected his proposition that Starhaven become an official United Nations colony and stubbornly holds on to whatever control the new Lor government doesn’t overtly demand. Most of the police and nearly half of the technical staff of Starhaven are agents of one of the two organizations.

Beyond official Earth support, many groups and private companies on Earth see Starhaven as a well of untapped wealth and technological secrets. ASTRO Labs, Grant Conglomerates, Brande Management, and the Litmus Group have all made generous offers to support the new city in exchange for varying access to its resources. More secretive groups like Majestic-20 and the Foundry have their own moles digging through scientific secrets and establishing a foothold in the burgeoning underworld.

#### IMPERIUM LOYALISTS

Starhaven’s refugees divide themselves into roughly two camps: Those who fled the Star-Khan and those who fled the destruction of Magna Lor, with the latter being more tolerant of the Stellar Imperium as a pacifying influence in the galaxy. While once a common source of fistfights over a meal, this division has deepened as so-called Imperial Loyalists have grown into a small but passionate political minority. The Loyalists generally see themselves as persecuted regardless of their economic status and believe they will only be free and equal if the Imperium takes over management of the outpost. In reality, most are well-off (particularly by refugee standards) and simply lament their lost comforts as they scare one another with increasingly outlandish scary stories about Earthling culture and non-Lor aliens. The firebrand Citizen Sun-Ren—a gifted public speaker who first rose to prominence denouncing the Hexxim claim to Seahaven—has emerged as a charismatic leader among the movement and is prepared to ride his sudden popularity into a Senate seat.

#### THE TRADE ALLIANCE

The Trade Alliance considers themselves an independent government, with Captains serving as final judge and jury for their crew and not bound by Earth or Starhaven’s local laws—which was fine when they lived almost entirely aboard their trade ships. But those Trade Alliance caravans that have spent the last several years as part of the Starhaven community still allege this independence. Now a sizeable portion of Starhaven’s nascent business community claims membership in an attempt to skirt regulations and reconstruction efforts. While the Senate has no patience for this obvious abuse of power, they rely on the Alliance and its few functional ships to keep them connected to the rest of the galaxy. For now, Starhaven uses independent heroes and bounty hunters to keep the merchants in line.

#### THE UNIVERSAL FAITHISTS

The various religious professionals and scholars who found themselves gathered up in the mass exodus of galactic refugees formed themselves into a single voice to advocate for better treatment on Star Island, and those political ties remain strong even as the members have dispersed across Starhaven to build long-term congregations. More a lobbying group than a cohesive religion, the Faithists argue for religious tolerance to prevent matters of faith from tearing the nascent colony apart at the seems. They also organize charity and relief efforts. While no one member rules the Faithists, the Jereid **Wet Mother Gundaang** handles much of the scheduling and networking, serving as the group's de facto face.

## SOCIAL GROUPS

Years of isolation in close proximity to neighbors from alien cultures has created a cultural melting pot. Starhavians belong to various groups and factions seen nowhere else in the galaxy, from the adorable to the lethal.

#### AEDES OF PRIMARCH, REFORMED

The most common religion of the old Lor Republic, the Aedes of Primarch, revered the Mentat Primarch whose ascendance to a cosmic being ushered in the Republic’s second golden age. The religion broadly preached the values of self-improvement, community, and patience, though millennia of schisms and reunifications had seen it develop into a number of competing philosophies. Lor refugees on Earth combined their own faith with local perspectives and reformed the church into a more hardline religion that demands obedience to “the will of Primarch” and the values he set forth—which just so happen to align with the needs of older, wealthy Lor exiles.

Many Lor colonists at least pay lip-service to the Aedes of Primarch, Reformed, as they have effectively made themselves the old Primarch religion on Starhaven, and as a result the church commands a fair amount of wealth and voting power. They involve themselves closely in the Senate, putting forward several prominent temple leaders like soft-spoken but merciless Fay-Teth as potential senators. While the church doesn’t openly legislate against non-Lor, they eagerly point out that Primarch (according to them) knew only Lor could truly improve themselves, and so it is the Lors’ burden to lead.

#### BLUE DOT

For many refugees, arriving on Earth desperate for survival was their first interaction with human society. Many found it disturbing or terrifying, while others saw a wonderland of new experiences! Blue Dot is less a social group and more a cultural movement—particularly among younger aliens—who love the fads and fashion of human culture, particularly what they saw around the Freedom City area in North America. Most are harmless fans who hang out in abandoned buildings, wearing western clothes, listening to Earth music, and trading downloads of television and movies, but opponents link them to crime and cultural degeneracy.

While their understanding of Earth cultures and history is relatively shallow, Blue Dots represent the first generation of aliens with genuine sympathy for Earth, making them likely contacts for any Earth heroes working in Starhaven.

#### THE DEPARTMENT OF OUTWORLD RECOVERY AND INTERNMENT

One of the few true joint efforts between Starhaven and Earth agencies, the DORI are a special task force formed to track down and recover alien refugees on Earth. Agents from both AEGIS and Unison, as well as security, medical, and sociological experts from Starhaven cooperate to assist lost and confused aliens on Earth and contain alien criminals for extradition to Europa and the wider galaxy. Agents can move freely between any UN member-nation and are provided with advanced alien weaponry to combat potential threats. Sadly, its status as an inter-agency department means it stands unloved and under-supported by all its parents and operates on a shoestring budget and heavy red tape, forcing agents to get creative.

While DORI’s official charter only covers the recovery of aliens on Earth, Director Sven Chase takes a broad approach to their enforcement. The department focuses heavily on assisting extraterrestrials in need, but agents use that mandate to subvert anti-alien groups such as Majestic-20 and the Litmus Group, seize alien technology used by villains, and undermine alien criminals operating planetside.

#### GRAVBALL LEAGUE

Sports adapted quickly to the myriad abilities and morphologies of Star Island’s population, and by the time aliens began arriving on Starhaven the young sport of gravball was already a well-developed pastime with several informal teams. A combination of the human sports soccer and dodgeball, but with any natural powers allowed, gravball is one of the few events that brings together most of the young colony to cheer and celebrate. Now that they have a city and construction has begun on an arena, politicians and merchants scramble to sponsor those old informal teams and get in at the foundation of a real league. The Ealas-dominated Sky Sharks and the psionic Brain Games have already emerged as fan favorites.

#### THE ENGINEERS GUILD

Soon after Starhaven opened for colonization, a number of alien trade unions and Earth technicians joined forces with Daedalus himself to create the Starhaven Engineering and Utility Reclamation Guild, one of the few successful joint ventures between the alien refugees and Earth humans. Guild teams lead the major renovation and reclamation projects across the city, handling everything from cleanup and masonry to computer programming. Positions within the Guild pay well, but more important is the prestige that comes from taming a dangerous city—Guild engineers (a title broadly handed out regardless of a person’s actual field of expertise) often enjoy discounts and free meals at businesses throughout Starhaven.

Guild work is the most dangerous work on Starhaven as well. In addition to all the normal hazards of utility work—electrocution, drowning, burns, falling debris, and disease—an engineer’s work might take them deep into unexplored tunnels or buildings stalked by wild predators. Most of the city’s rogue AIs and feral maintenance robots now recognize Guild uniforms and deliberately target them.

#### EUROPAN ECOLOGY ENCLAVE

Earth scientists are still unsure if the life on Europa is native or the result of Preserver transplantation and experiments, but a small sect of Starhavians believe the moon’s inhabitants should be sheltered from any impact caused by refugee arrival. The Europan Ecology Enclave demands the cataloging of species and conducting extensive environmental surveys ahead of any reclamation or expansion projects—changes that have improved health and safety conditions for workers and new residents—but also strongly oppose any industrial efforts beyond the city’s bubble or the re-opening of Seahaven. The Lor xenobiologist Ma-Kem Shen leads the EEE’s lobbying and political efforts, by the more cutthroat Nam-Smyth leads the group’s clandestine sabotage and espionage efforts.

#### FLAPPERS

Life as a refugee left its scars on many aliens who arrived on Earth. Isolation, loss, and harsh authoritarianism broke many spirits, and those who never managed to recover drifted toward a growing disaffected subculture. Taking their name from early 20th-century Earth counter-culture, the flappers of Starhaven flout social conventions, resist all forms of government, and embrace do-it-yourself and small-community-support attitudes. The vast majority are harmless communities who look out for their own and want to be left to themselves, dabbling in experimental music, tinkering, homesteading, and experimenting with drugs. A few violent gangs—such as the drug-running Embalmers or the violently anti-government Flukies—exist within the wider subculture, but members would sooner handle problematic elements themselves than cooperate with security forces or superheroes. Influencers like the Lor musician Dro-Pend or the Sk’ree philosopher Qinlottek have some control over the anarchic subculture, but in practice the groups are so fractious and prone to in-fighting that no one has been able to unite them.

#### FOUNDER CULTS

While none exist officially, every Starhavian has a friend-of-a-friend involved in one of the new Preserver-centered religions popping up around the city. These “Founder cults” generally spring up around charismatic individuals who claim to have gleaned some deeper truth from the Preserver technology and ruins that support the city. The most stable cults build themselves around a unique artifact they recover from the ruins and might number a dozen or more, and most have strong opinions on Preserver AIs like Collapsar, seeing them as saviors who bear the creators’ will or devils who wiped out the gods. While the New Lor Republic ignores these fringe religious zealots, AEGIS and UNISON have both begun collecting data on the cults and their participants, worried their growth may mirror the development of similar extremist groups on Earth.

#### IAPYX ACADEMY

The Iapyx Academy draws on Duncan Summers’ success with the Claremont Academy to establish a secondary school for children with divergent backgrounds and abilities. With its sister school, the Ariadne Academy (for younger students), the Iapyx Academy offers a top-tier education that many refugees feared they’d left behind. Many former experts in their field, including the enigmatic Mentat Headmistress Elenk-Te, now serve as faculty, and Daedalus himself repurposed two-dozen maintenance robots to supplement their number as tutors, which the student body have nicknamed “Harpies.”

Of particular interest to many adventurous young souls is the Academy’s Legion of Civic Honors, a volunteer club that guides students in using their special talents or expertise to help the community. While Headmistress Te insists the group encourages safe, wholesome activism, cleanup efforts, and community participation, the students quietly refer to the LCH as “superhero club.”

#### KICKSHAW CABAL

While most of Star Island went to bed hungry, a growing subculture in Freedom City indulged in delicacies from across the cosmos, enjoying alien ingredients and cooking techniques. In time, exclusive dinner parties developed into culinary duels between human and alien chefs, integrating unusual foods and technologies, with incredible prizes doled out to the winners. Dubbing itself the Kickshaw Cabal, these clandestine cooking competitions relocated to Starhaven along with their celebrity chefs, and now, once every two months, a collection of elites, supervillains, and billionaires travel to Starhaven to watch alien chefs fight for their gustatory pleasure.

The Kickshaw Kitchen is a no-holds-barred culinary competition between the greatest chefs of Earth and the young colony and has even begun attracting specialists from the wider galaxy. Saturnalia Roman (see Freedom City, Third Edition) played a key role in establishing the original showdowns, but now Due-Rata, a Lor dilettante, manages the show. Ehnra “The Rotisseur” Zol, a visiting member of Long Toll assassin’s league with a passion for cuisine, has emerged as the local champion, dominating the last three Starhaven showdowns.

#### NEIGHBORHOOD CLUBS

Almost every reclaimed block in Starhaven spawns a tight-knit community working hard to help one another succeed, building informal clubs around a shared social media group and a central headquarters—usually a favorite local restaurant or shop. Growing organically, each neighborhood club has a unique feel and structure, ranging from avant-garde progressives to meddling busybodies trying to preserve the culture they hail from. Most answer to their local Block Captain, and a persuasive neighborhood club can be instrumental in winning an election, so Block Captains and even Senators listen to them. The influencers for an individual’s neighborhood club can be a close friend, valuable ally, obnoxious know-it-all, or power-hungry local tyrant, depending on the area.

Neighborhood clubs band together to fix up buildings, organize to handle threats, and offer a hand to struggling neighbors, as well as become unofficial sports or gaming leagues for friendly (or less-than-friendly) competitions with other neighborhoods. With the city largely un-policed, neighborhoods also form the first line of civic defense and emergency response, and many Starhavians are finding they prefer this community-lead approach to peacekeeping over the heavy-handed authority they endured on Earth.

#### THRILL GANGS

With life looking so bleak, some residents have cast aside respectability or community to form nihilistic gangs built around excitement and indulgence. Crime isn't the purpose for these groups, but they rarely respect the law or public safety, turning to drugs, street racing, base jumping, urban exploration, and other dangerous hobbies. Most build themselves around a common interest or racial identity, such as the Jereid Sewer-Gators, or parkour crews like the Redroof or the Gargoyles.

## CITY OVERVIEW

Starhaven is a technological wonder—a star-shaped city complex sitting in the center of an even larger dome of Earth-like atmosphere locals call “The Green Zone.” Towers stretch up toward the stars above, while channels and tunnels create an endless, dark warren deep below. Terraforming and bioengineering technologies left abandoned for thousands of years have created unique, beautiful, and deadly microclimates that refugees uncover every day as they slowly push the urban boundaries into the chaotic ruin. With the entire settlement left abandoned, Starhaven is a home waiting for residents, but one that is going to take a lot of work to secure.

Despite Europa’s freezing, irradiated surface, the Green Zone is a pleasant and safe environment for human-like life; likely created by the Preservers to sustain humans and other biological samples retrieved from Earth. Starhaven fills most of the Green Zone, with the rest consisting of overgrown fields and forest that seem impassible— dense thickets of alpine conifers stand surrounded by saguaro cactus, and coral-like land reefs stand overgrown with roses and other creeping blossoms. Isolated buildings—some apparently old dwellings but others with unknown purposes—dot this artificial wilderness. A dome of fluid suspended in an energy field protects the city. Seemingly powered by the awesome electromagnetic fields nearby Jupiter generates, the dome creates full spectrum light on a roughly 13-hour day/night cycle and even creates a gentle rain every few days—though the Engineer’s Guild aren’t sure if that’s intentional or a misfiring system.

Most Preserver buildings seem to be grown from a metal ceramic (Toughness 12) rather than constructed, though the remains of earlier settlement efforts dot the city with traces of other cultures’ architectural efforts. Spiraling rooms or a spiral hallway lead to a building’s center—generally the largest room and the purpose for which it was built—with smaller offices, archives, labs, dormitories, and storage chambers lining the approach. The Preservers only locked those rooms with dangerous contents, though decay and rust have left many doors unintentionally sealed, and the refugees reclaiming the city retrofit doors with locks for privacy and safety.

Despite the extensive physical infrastructure that remains, almost nothing of the Preservers’ data infrastructure can be found. The Engineers Guild claims that no computer systems could maintain uncorrupted data for so long, but most everyone assumes the Preservers deliberately purged their data before abandoning the city. What few traces of data remain have all been recovered from out-of-the-way or forgotten systems, lending credence to the rumor that the ancients deliberately purged their city.

Explorers have recovered the traces of earlier expeditions that tried to claim Starhaven, including an ancient Lor outpost within the city itself, Grue tools and supplies, and a crashed Drik salavage ship embedded in a nearby glacier. The fate of some of these former efforts is obvious—Lor skeletons found in the old Treshna outpost were clearly killed by large animals—but others remain unexplained. The Drik ship shows no obvious signs of exterior damage, and the Grue colonists seem to have simply given up and walked away from the attempt to claim the moon. Daedelus's earliest encounter with the city and his reports of "haunting" struck a particular cord with many colonists, who see their own metaphorical ghosts behind every malfunction, strange noise, or disappearance.

#### UTILITIES

Rather than rely on massive utility hubs, the Preservers built a distributed network of water reclaimers, generators, digital archives, atmospheric scrubbers, and waste recyclers into many otherwise unrelated buildings. This design has ensured pockets of the city retain clean water, air, and power even after an eon of neglect, but makes the process of locating and repairing the countless obscure facilities one of the ongoing challenges of the reconstruction effort.

The smallest utility nodes are barely more than a small room, but most fill multiple rooms or one large chamber. Because the Preservers only expected maintenance robots to access the nodes, few have any safety precautions like railings or even adequate shielding on dangerous parts. Water pumps lack cowlings for their churning turbines or gratings to keep hands away from the laser purification grid, and fusion power stations might flood the area with low-level radiation while operational. The Engineering Guild spends considerable time finding and training workers who can survive these harsh conditions, but Daedalus’ recent repairs to the Robot Foundry have made the process infinitely easier.

#### EMERGENCY SERVICES

In addition to providing utilities, the city government is working hard to maintain emergency services. Until recently, AEGIS and UNISON provided armed agents—often supported by medical technicians—as the only response to any crisis, and Earth security forces still respond to many incidents as a de facto police force.

Medical emergencies were handled through a field hospital established in the Draffsnarl (see the Promenade), but with the recent opening of the Daedalus Center—the city’s first true hospital—in the Central District, the Senate has authorized funding for a small ambulance service using a suborbital shuttle. The lone shuttle struggles to keep up with demands, however, and many citizens still rely on local doctors and healers. An enterprising Drik tech expert, Vsiv Muniq, has stepped in to fill the void by recruiting several of the city’s out-of-work soldiers to found Impact Interventions. II is a subscription service that guarantees first response in a crisis, and blurs the line between security force and emergency medical technician. While their health services are far from the best—most Impact EMTs only have cursory combat medical training—they have three shuttles at their disposal and staff arrived armed to the teeth to stop any ongoing violence or intervene in other disasters like a building collapse.

Outside of security and medical emergencies, the Engineers’ Guild tackles most other crises, ranging from fires to atmospheric leaks to toxic spills. Benren San, an amputee and mentat, oversees the Starhaven Engineering and Utility Reclamation Guild Disaster intervention Unit. Nicknamed the Icemovers, the squad rely on science and materials expertise, diverse alien abilities, and a team of powerful Centaur industrial robots and two suits of Typhon power armor. They team has access to extraordinary powers, and needs to jury-rig processes and specialized equipment in the moment, and many of their missions become whispered legends around the Europa Light and Sewer offices.

### THE LAR

A massive freshwater reservoir Daedalus dubbed the Lar fills much of the Green Zone’s northern reaches. Docks and waterfront buildings dot the otherwise marshy shorline, suggesting it once served a scientific or industrial purpose beyond storing drinking water. Though shallow close to shore, its depths plunge down nearly a kilometer. In this deepest abyss, the bottom transitions to ice rather than rock and mud and colonies of blue krill frolic in the crushing pressure and icy temperatures.

Despite the unexpected cold, the Lar supports a wide variety of microbial, plant, and animal life—both Earth-native and alien—and many aquatic Starhavians have begun settling the reservoir rather than make the long trip down to Seahaven’s dismal depths. In addition to providing fresh water, the Lar supports a bustling young fish farming industry currently feeding much of the city. With so much money to be made, fishing rights have become an unexpectedly heated topic on the Senate floor. Rival fisheries sabotage one another’s tools and rustle seafood from rival waters. With the reckless abandon of this new frontier, several Blue Dot bloggers have dubbed the Lar “the Wild Wet” of Starhaven.

#### PINNACLE ISLAND

Steep cliffs and deep fjords line the perimeter of a jagged island in the Lar's western waters. Primordial forest—most of it extensive bird habitat—covers the surface. The island's remoteness lead the original colonization effort to unofficially set it aside as a nature preserve, but that same inaccessibility makes it appealing to those Starhavians accustomed to their space and privacy—and the money to enforce it. A small coalition of wealthy refugees now lobby the Senate to declare Pinnacle Island open for development, while some—like Citizen Sun Ren (see the Imperium Loyalists in Chapter 2)—have moved forward with construction of private estates knowing the Senate doesn't have the power or resources to stop them.

Opposing the current push to turn Pinnacle Island into a retreat for the wealthy stands Starhaven's first environmentalist movement, the Europan Ecology Enclave. Lead by a former Ealas soldier, Nam-Smyth, the EEE's operations consist of theft and sabotage from building sites and intimidating workers. Citizen Sun Ren labels the movement "eco-terrorists", citing their actions as proof that his own construction efforts are legitimate.

### THE PROMENADE

The northern point of Starhaven’s urban layout culminates in a massive bridge across the habitat’s lake, ending at the Pegasus Starport. Early settlement efforts focused heavily on restoring the starport and pushing out into the city from this easily evacuated command center. The city’s earliest housing and offices were tents and converted warehouses clustered north of the Lar, and many residents are either slow to move or have simply dug in, growing attached to the first land they’ve “owned” in years. These squatters are creating minor issues as the Republic tries to convert this land for farming, but for now any conflicts seem years away.

The Promenade’s terrain is a strange blend of ecological and industrial. Terraces of alien ceramic break up the rolling grasslands to the lake’s edge, and a titanic causeway crosses the quiet waters, running 26 hours a day with trains, security cars, and delivery vehicles. Metal spires—most residents assume they’re the Preserver equivalent of statuary—jut irregularly from the meadows, while within the city’s proper borders the district gives way to miles and miles of warehouse space and manufacturing facilities. The expansive facilities provided housing and food for residents when they first arrived to reclaim the city but were obviously intended by their builders for large-scale manufacturing and the creation of exotic materials. Now that the refugee population is slowly relocating to the Central District, the Engineers Guild and Senate hope to restore those industrial capabilities.

The roughest refugee housing still spreads across parts of the Promenade, and as the poor spread into the Central District and the Wings, the abandoned housing is quickly being taken over by makeshift businesses and criminal enterprises.

#### THE DRAFFSNARL

One of the original housing projects, the Draffsnarl is a chaotic mix of storage bays and atmospheric processors connected by a mess of raised bridges and concealed tunnels, all nestled at the southern terminus of the Lar causeway. No one has officially demarcated the borders of the Draffsnarl or even gotten an accurate count of the buildings within—the difference between multiple edifices and a continuous complex is razor thin in the chaotic web—and the city government considers it a bureaucratic nightmare—especially because several large utility nodes converge within the mess.

Cultures who prefer dark, tight-knit spaces, such as the Drik and the Sk’ree, refuse to move on to new homes, frustrating efforts to reclaim the warrens for their industrial value. The Lor-leaning government and human-dominated authorities fail to understand that some species despise the avenues and plazas they find comforting, the local communities feeling alienated. Criminal elements have also taken a shine to the site, whose subterranean passageways allow them to move weapons and contraband observed only by those nocturnal aliens who have no reason to trust the powers that be. Instead, "darksiders" are increasingly turning to solving their own problems with vigilante violence.

While most of Starhaven is beginning to see the Draffsnarl as the city’s “criminal underbelly,” the Drik Block Captain Quazzik insists her people are decent, hardworking, and law-abiding and tries to draw a distinction between good neighbors within the community and the invasive underworld element.

#### EUROPA LIGHT AND SEWER

Daedalus established the Starhaven Engineering and Utility Reclamation Guild—more affectionately known as the Engineers Guild—as the first “boots on the ground” agency dispatched to restore the site. The Guild operated from a tough dome at the confluence of several major utility lines and nodes, affectionately nicknaming it “Europa Light and Sewer.” Sturdy and still largely functional, the domed headquarters is even capable of slowly producing maintenance robots to assist organic repair crews

Europa Light and Sewer originally served the Preservers as a security shelter or military command center of some sort, making it unusually secure and durable. It serves as the hub for a city-wide network of monitoring equipment—including cameras and audio sensors—blanketing Starhaven, and the Guild keeps this aspect of their headquarters a careful secret to avoid tempting AEGIS, UNISON, or even the Senate to overreach the citizens’ privacy. For now, the sensors also let them track outages and plan missions into more dangerous corners of the ruin.

#### MARXLA’SH MARKET

With easy access to the importers of the starport, industrial sectors of the Promenade, and the new homespun manufacturing in the Central District, the Promenade’s major marketplace carries almost anything one could want from Earth or the old Lor Republic—for a price. While most of the stalls sell fresh fruit, vegetables, grains, fish, and various home goods, many also deal in secondhand goods, salvaged technology (from alien ships or the city itself), and strange wonders from across the galaxy. With touches of home from a hundred different worlds, the Marxla’sh is a chaotic mix of sights, sounds, and smells.

Many Starhavians commute to the market as an excuse to socialize and wander, recovering some sense of normalcy most thought lost. Buskers line the streets to take advantage of the casual crowd, as do con artists and pickpockets.

#### PEGASUS STARPORT

Starhaven’s impressive spaceport is one of the city’s crown jewels, allowing ships to come and go from the city to import new citizens and supplies from Earth, export their burgeoning hydrocarbon and exotic mineral output, and generally stay connected to the wider universe. Several large landing pads can handle full-sized cruisers—though none have yet arrived—while a dozen smaller pads juggle smaller shuttles and fighters. Nearby hangar and drydock facilities keep spacecraft in good repair, though some of the Preserver systems remain a mystery to staff.

So far, Pegasus Starport operates at only a fraction of its full capacity—Starhaven sees only occasional small trade vessels and refugee shuttles from the wider universe and monthly deliveries from Earth. Director Ashon-Vela hopes that will change as she begins directing funds and personnel toward construction of the Cascadian, a true cruiser that Starhaven can use to transport huge values of crew and cargo. Her initiative is making waves in the Senate, as she pulled resources from constructing a dozen starfighters intended to act as the city’s first line of defense from invasion.

### CENTRAL DISTRICT

To many, the Central District is Starhaven for all practical purposes. Joint efforts by brave alien volunteers, AEGIS, Daedalus, and other Earth heroes focused their initial thrust of exploration and restoration on the towers, plazas, and palace at the settlement’s core, opting to use it as a central camp from which to push outward in all directions. While far from fully repaired, the Central District now houses most of Starhaven’s native population and businesses.

The beating heart of Starhaven throbs in and around an elevated highway encircling the city’s center. This wide avenue serves as a massive roundabout, connecting all the major train and road arteries of the city to its center hub. Within the loop, a massive palace complex handles the settlement’s government affairs, while the densest urban core surrounds it on all sides. Unlike most of the city, the extensive greenbelts of this district died long ago, leaving the neighborhood with a stark, industrial feel despite the wide avenues and sweeping balconies. Most of the city’s long-term housing lines the wide streets. Living conditions range from luxurious to squalor, but most residents live in comfortable but sparsely-furnished homes as they wait for Starhaven to begin importing (or producing) consumer goods. The joint UNISON/AEGIS operations initially tried to limit settlement to towers that had been thoroughly explored and mapped, the reality of refugee needs mean that many people began squatting in buildings and tunnels with questionable security and facilities.

The Central District struggles to recapture every species’ ideal of urban living, but with the sheer variety of cultures occupying the space, that remains a challenge. The Lor majority established forums at all the major crossroads, where children can be taught, scholars debate, and local merchants ply their wares, but these obstruct the roadways other species use to commute, while others—particularly the Jereid and Shoon—consider street-corner lecturing deeply offensive. This is just one of the countless mundane, cultural conflicts the city struggles to reconcile.

#### DAEDALUS CENTER

Starhaven’s premiere (and to date, only) medical facility is the reclaimed hospital named in honor of the city’s discoverer. A rare case of a reclaimed building obviously filling its original function, the Daedalus Center once served as a medical center for the Preservers as well. AEGIS and various supply convoys provide most of the medical technology—the remaining Preserver technology proving erratic and as prone to permanently maim or mutate a patient as miraculously cure them—but the building sterilizes itself, provides vital fluids and gases for a variety of species, and generates more than enough power to run the most complex medical devices.

#### IAPYX ACADEMY

Iapyx Academy and it’s neighboring Ariadne Primary School provide academic instruction for the children of Starhaven, with Ariadne providing introductory lessons on linguistics, mathematics, history, and culture and Iapyx offering more advanced courses. While instructors from Earth casually refer to them as the “elementary school” and the “high school,” Daedalus himself shuns this practice, insisting no one should feel like a child for needing to study the basics, and no youth should be denied access to higher education based solely on age.

Catering to a wide variety of cultures and their education systems, Iapyx provides unconventional instruction that encourages independent study with teachers providing lectures and serving as advisors. Staff are drawn from refugeesas well as human volunteers from Earth. While many students attend regular classes, almost any “educational” activity—from field trips into space to constructing mecha—is school-sanctioned so long as a youth can find other students interested in the same topic and a faculty member to sponsor them.

#### PRESERVER HALL

Starhavians love arguing over the original purpose of the palace-like complex of domes at the city center, but UNISON quickly commandeered it to serve as their administrative headquarters upon landing in the city. Better served than most areas, it became the heart of government and bureaucracy for Starhaven, now housing the Senate and all government offices. UNISON and AEGIS both maintain their own offices on the grounds as well, creating constant power struggles as the Earth organizations try to hold on to their dwindling influence.

#### QUASAR TECHNOLOGIES

Proudly boasting its status as Earth’s first extraplanetary startup, Quasar technologies is a joint venture between the tech genius Solo Takashi (once known as the teen supervillain Doc Otaku) and a cadre of alien engineers. The company bridges the “technology gap” between the scattered refugees and the Preserver ruins, helping the colony tame hi-tech threats and spin their discoveries into cutting-edge patents. The Senate considers the company a necessary evil to provide security and information infrastructure, but AEGIS is wary of Takashi’s long-term plans.

### THE WINGS

Those sections of the city directly east and west of the Central District weathered the millennia of neglect better than the rest of the city thanks to a fleet of automated drones aggressively dedicated to maintaining the areas. While the robots survived, their programming drifted over the eons and they now reconnect utilities, wall up entire rooms, and otherwise conduct bizarre and purposeless “repairs” that make the buildings of both Wings into confusing labyrinths. The drones are extremely protective of their avant-garde urban designs and operate independently of the city’s control network, making reclamation a slow process of exploration and decommissioning the Preserver automatons.

Most of the current restoration effort focuses on the East Wing, which contains apartment towers and hydroponic facilities—everything Starhaven currently needs to house and feed its population. Multi-use towers—connected by raised walkways and elevated plazas—fill most of the area, with the ground level studded with rubble and trash left untouched by the maintenance robots. Industrious settlers regularly pick through these middens to reclaim parts for home repairs, furniture, or art projects, or to resell in Starhaven’s markets.

The West Wing remains largely untamed thus far. A dozen alien environments have outgrown their containment systems and now compete for dominance, with scorching desert giving way to arctic tundra and alien jungle, all filled with precious secrets, stockpiles of technology, and dangerously mutated animals. The varied ecosystems provide more comfortable living conditions for many of Starhaven’s non-Lor residents, and so most expeditions into the ruins are conducted by adventurous individuals or families

#### DARKWELL

The Darkwell is the primary elevator connecting Starhaven to its aquatic neighbor known as Seahaven. The high-speed vertical train makes the ten-kilometer trek in about five minutes. While several service tunnels below the city eventually connect to Seahaven or the moon’s subsurface ocean directly, the Darkwell is the fastest route and the only means of carrying large industrial cargo between the settlements, making it a vital chokepoint that both settlements want sole control of. Because control remains contested, UNISON maintains control of both endpoints for now until Seahaven and Starhaven work out their respective frustrations.

#### DECENTRALIZED PARK

Strange ecosystems define the West Wing, with the most prominent being the “Decentralized Park.” This massively overgrown artificial forest resembles the primordial rainforests of Earth’s Pacific Northwest, with titanic trees stretching up nearly a hundred meters and supporting unique ecosystems in the branches. A wide variety of Earth animals and strange hybrids stalk the canopy and the fern-choked ground level—far more than the ecosystem should naturally be able to support.

The park’s more aggressive plants and climbing critters have spread to the surrounding towers as well, making them dangers for scavengers and targets for poachers. Rumors even suggest the overgrowth conceals a legendary lost pirate starship locals call the Greengold.

#### NEW HAASAANA

One of the West Wing’s success stories, the neighborhood of New Haasaana stretches across several city blocks whose environmental controls render the area unusually hot, dry, and bright. While Lor and humans find these arid conditions borderline deadly, the reptilian Haasaan consider it ideal. Nearly fifty of the ophidian aliens reclaimed an apartment tower and surrounding plaza to establish a home and begin raising heat-tolerant crops the rest of the city can’t support. New Haasaana has no separatist inclinations, but its remote location means its residents are largely self-sufficient, producing their own food, conducting their own repairs, and defending themselves against the district’s creatures. As an unsanctioned reclamation effort, the neighborhood lacks any official representation in the Senate, and Block Captain Rihnaana spends his frequent visits to the Central District arguing for official recognition to support his people’s efforts.

#### THE PROPYLAEA

Small utility nodes help keep pockets of Starhaven running even in the event of catastrophic failure, but the Preservers still collected some resources into mega-architecture for their own inscrutable reasons. The Propylaea is the city’s “air reservoir,” producing much of the breathable atmosphere and storing thousands of tons of compressed gasses for scientific work. Massive pylons beneath the building bore down into the surface, cracking ice into breathable oxygen while storing hydrogen and trace gasses for the city’s industries. The five nested, seashell-like curls of the facility tower over the East Wing, cycling the atmosphere and seeding the moisture and particulate needed for the city’s various “weather” conditions—the light rains, fog, windstorms, and occasional snow that provide a sense of normalcy. The Engineers Guild still struggles to understand the building’s control systems, essentially putting one of the city’s most critical utilities in the hands of fate.

#### THE ROBOT FORGE

Daedalus’ most recent project in Starhaven’s construction efforts was to help restore the so-called Robot Forge, an automated factory that produces and controls the maintenance robots that helped maintain the city. These mechanical aids have sped up construction efforts tenfold and can operate in parts of the city too cold, hot, or irradiated for other residents to endure. While individual robots have basic artificial intelligence capable of searching out and repairing problems, they rely primarily on the forge’s central computers to coordinate their efforts. Warhawks in the Senate now debate repurposing the forge to produce war drones and starfighters, arguing that restoring the city won’t matter if Earth or the Stellar Imperium burn it to ash.

The Robot Forge primarily manufactures the human-sized Cyclopes drones—named for the single sensor lens in the center of their heads—but also produces the new quadrupedal Centaur drones in limited quantities. Use the statistics for the Medium Robot and Large Robot (Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, page 152), adding 6 ranks in the Technology skill. The foundries can also produce a limited supply of Typhon power suits (use the Robot Jockey; (Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, page 153), but the only line units produced so far lack any weapon systems and are used for heavy industry.

### GREENWALLS

The southwest corner of Starhaven once housed most of the original biotech and computer facilities, but residents today consider it the most dangerous and untamed district of Starhaven. Like the West Wing to the north, it hosts a variety of overlapping alien biomes, but the flora and fauna here are obvious mutants—the results of ancient bio-engineering experiments. The digital systems here—designed to keep the experimental subjects alive—continue to modify and cybernetically augment their test subjects as well as adjust environmental controls of individual towers to generate microclimates. Those same environmental computers generate massive holograms as well, rendering much of the area into surreal mirages that conceal threats and leave visitors wandering an ever-shifting labyrinth.

Like the rest of Starhaven, buildings in Greenwalls tend toward circular domes interconnected by bridges, but individual facilities are large and squat—intended for scientific and industrial use rather than habitation. Laboratory complexes and vast server farms fill much of the district, but just as many host reproductions of alien ecosystems—building-sized terrariums for studying life in its natural habitat.

The Senate has officially blockaded the district after a band of would-be “heroes” released a cybernetically-enhanced Lor Van rhino that rampaged through the Central District, but that hasn’t stopped scavengers and poachers from exploring the urban canyons to hunt technological secrets and rare beasts. With much of Greenwalls acting like a planetary zoo, many residents hope it can eventually be reclaimed to offer them a slice of home.

#### THE CRYOSPHERE

Located near Greenwalls’s center, the Cryosphere is a massive cryogenics complex storing dozens, perhaps hundreds of Preserver experiments in deep-freeze suspended animation. Leaking cryogenic gasses plunged the entire, spherical building into extreme cold, making exploration or repair virtually impossible for all but a handful of Starhavians—even the city’s standard maintenance robots soon freeze solid in the biting cold. A handful of cold-adapted creatures—either survivors of other experiments or escapees from the cryogenic tubes—lair within the complex and hunt intruders as well. Despite these dangers, the Cryosphere has come to the attention of the villainous Mastermind (see Threat Report, page 98), who believes the facility may hold his original, paleolithic form.

#### DOME 338

The various enclosures of Greenwalls house every imaginable alien environment, but one in particular captures the imagination of Earth natives. Dome 338 houses a recreation of Earth during the late Cretaceous era, including healthy populations of dinosaurs ranging from the massive T-rex and ceratopsids to cunning velociraptors, as well as enormous insects. Preservers weren’t active on Earth until long after all these creatures died out, raising questions about where they acquired their specimens, but the anachronistic park is also largely free of the genetic tinkering and biomechanical augmentation that plagues many other environments in Greenwalls, and many Earth paleontologists refuse to look a gift horse in the mouth.

#### DREKPORT

Starhaven's own hive of scum and villainy lies near Greenwall's southernmost edge, close to the dome itself. A large building here once housed equipment for boring and supporting the network of tunnels that support the city above, and the enterprising Mama Kaiger (see Chapter 2) hot-wired these systems to construct smuggling tunnels to a nearby ice fissure that sits in a sensor shadow. Members of the smugglers' syndicate—and even some members of the legitimate Trade Alliance—know the approach, allowing their small vessels to enter the city unseen. The smuggler's tunnels aren't as well-sealed as formal access points around the city, and slowly vent heat and atmosphere.

Because of the great danger in moving illegal goods through Greenwalls to the wider markets of the Promenade or Central District, few smugglers actually bring their goods into Drekport when they can easily bribe customs officials to look the other way at Pegasus. Instead, Drekport specializes in servicing criminals who can't berth at legitimate ports, and selling scavenged materials and animals from the wilder corners of Starhaven. It offers shelter for anyone needing to lay low, and repairs for any ship that has tussled with the law.

A thriving underground community has grown up around the secret hangar, supported by startship mechanics and bars. Beings branded as criminals on Earth or greater Starhaven can eke out a living here as pilots, technicians, or muscle, while known pirates can resupply and sell their wares. Still, few people choose Drekport, hence the emerging slogan: "You don't go to Drekport. You just end up here."

#### LIBRARY PRIME

The heart of the Preserver computer networks in Starhaven, the Library Prime complex lies far below the city surface, concealed beyond twisting lengths of utility tunnels. The Engineers Guild still hasn’t located the server farm, but knows it lies somewhere beneath the Greenwalls district. The hidden facility also secures a massive collection of historical artifacts—mostly documents—maintained by an offshoot fork of the Preserver AI known as the Curator (Freedom City, page 230). The city’s original lockdown disconnected the drone from the primary Curator, but as city communications system come back online, the AI has worked to re-establish contact with the powerful entity.

#### THE MIRROR ZONE

Looters warn their fellows away from a seemingly-peaceful stretch of the Greenwalls. This quiet avenue—lined with reflecting pools, gardens, and balconies—seems like a rare oasis in the hostile district, but rumors claim those who visit never emerge. The Mirror Zone’s extensive cloning facilities can create copies of visitors from even the trace DNA exhaled in a breath, but its facsimiles are imperfect and unstable, dissolving with violence or impact. The deteriorating AI seeks larger and larger genetic samples to feed its flawed cloning procedure, eventually dismembering trespassers to create hordes of short-lived, uncanny duplicates. Because living creatures carry trace amounts of DNA from everyone they have recently encountered, visitors may encounter friends, family members, lovers, or enemies generated from these traces, who do their best to lure intruders deeper within the zone.

### THE FASTNESS

Unlike most of Starhaven’s sleek towers and flowing domes, the structures of the Fastness in Starhaven’s southeast corner consist of angular, blunt buildings that feel constructed more than grown. The many redundant systems and thicker walls suggest a more dangerous purpose than the elegant science the rest of the city served—a suspicion only enhanced by the extensive damage spread throughout the district. Patches of radiation and unshielded, arcing electrical conduits dot the streets and ruins. Citizens debate the district’s original purpose, ranging from experiments in quantum physics to wargames and weapon testing. Whatever its intended purpose, the Fastness is dangerous, and, like Greenwalls, the Senate has declared this district off-limits until it can be secured and restored by experts.

The Fastness has suffered the worst ravages of age of anywhere in the city, if for no other reason than because its boxy buildings are less stable than the elegant arches and domes seen elsewhere. While Greenwalls is dangerous for its predators, the Fastness threatens visitors with collapsing walls and sudden drops. Entire blocks are little more than rubble hills and freestanding walls, with sinkholes plunging into the utility tunnels and icy depths below. The district’s artificial gravity pumps frequently misfire as well, leaving chunks of rubble or small buildings drifting in the air for days at a time before they come crashing down.

The greatest dangers in the Fastness aren't creatures or robots, but the district's strange laws of physics. Whatever experiments the Preservers developed here left scars on the fabric of reality. Corners of the district might negate or reverse gravity, change how chemicals react, warp the flow of time, or bend light to create illusions or pockets of invisibility. These environmental efgfects might impose circumstance penalties on various checks, provide unexpected concealment, or present genuine hazards that cause damage or impose temporary Complications.

#### HORTUS MAXIMUS

Near the edge of the district, a collection of plazas and storage facilities houses an unusual collection: samples of plants, minerals, and common objects all magnified to incredible size. Dubbed the Hortus Maximum—or Garden of the Big—by scavengers who discovered it, the strange objects within have since become status symbols for Starhaven’s wealthy elite, who fancy decorating their new homes with furniture-sized blossoms or transforming titanic lab equipment into eclectic art pieces. While these gargantuan artifacts seem like simple props, scientific analysis reveals their physical structure has been modified—that they are ordinary samples transformed at a subatomic level into giants. This discovery implies that a device or phenomenon within the Hortus can enlarge matter—a wonder that could eliminate Starhaven’s chronic food shortages if discovered and controlled.

#### IMPACT LAKE

A larger crater near the central district suggests a meteor breached the dome above the Fastness after the Preservers fled. Its shores are almost perfectly circular, and its rainbow-shimmering surface lies almost perfectly smooth even when the winds pick up. Tests suggest the lake contains fresh water and trace oils and chemical runoff from the city’s infrequent rains, but remote vehicles and robots quickly shut down in the waters and the few aquatic explorers who attempt to plumb its depths vanished without a trace. Some utility workers and scavengers have begun to question if the damage wasn’t caused by an interior blast rather than some asteroid impact.

#### PHOBETOR

The most prominent feature of this defunct corner of the city is the ominous black tower that juts up from the ruins, even piercing the atmospheric dome above. Inside are long, featureless halls that curve back on themselves, and wide rooms devoid of furniture or apparent purpose.
The tower’s interior is polymorphic, able to re-shape at command to suit any need, but its psionic control circuits weathered the years badly. Today, the interior warps to reflect the whims and subconscious desires of anyone who enters. Its dark hallways can recreate a paradise or fulfill secret desires, but the tower just as eagerly manifests fears, insecurities, and past horrors for trespassers to endure. Those who have escaped call the monolith "PhobeTor," after the Greek nightmare spirit.

#### THE SINGULARITY RING

One of the few installations in the hands of Starhaven’s nascent government is a complex housing what scientists have dubbed the Singularity Ring. Constructed from an unknown mineral, this ten-meter ring floats unaided in the center of a large testing bay, neither producing nor consuming energy. Most Preserver technology is advanced beyond conventional understanding, it seems intuitive to use (at least its most basic functions) or provides an AI operating system to assist users, but the Singularity Ring defies any attempt to use or understand it. Theories range from a new power system to paracausal scaffolding the Preservers used to construct Collapsar to a spatial gateway connecting Starhaven to other, undiscovered Preserver sites. While the project’s head, a Lor scientist named Yagen-Als, is open to these unusual theories, his quiet hope is that the torus is a functional time machine that could eventually prevent the fall of Magna Lor in the first place.

### OTHER CITY FEATURES

The Green Zone extends far beyond the city proper, hiding additional secrets and resources, though few citizens will brave the overgrown wilderness for now.

#### BLUE FIRS

A large stretch of coniferous trees from all across Earth, this stretch of the Green Zone is noteworthy for housing a stable population of Cholaxans—better known on earth as bigfoot or sasquatch—native to the area seemingly since the Preservers abandoned them tens of thousands of years ago. This population lacks sapience, but whether this represents an earlier stage in their evolution, or a bizarre Preserver experiment remains unknown. For now, the Senate has declared the forest a sanctuary for the native sasquatch and the few true Cholaxan Starhavians.

While seemingly a natural paradise, Blue Firs conceals many neolithic hazards from North America, including sabre-tooth tigers, dire wolves, and hell pigs. The wet, moss-covered rocky terrain is also hazardous and confusing to travel despite its small size. Because of this, transplanted Cholaxans are becoming surprisingly wealthy—under the auspices of a shady Cholaxan merchant referring to himself only as Mr. Shaq—as Starhaven’s only reliable source of many indigenous plants as well as meat that wasn’t grown in a cloning vat.

#### MERRIMENT HILLS

Located near the Lar, this overgrown ruin consists of statues, small buildings, and technical frameworks surrounding a central plaza with supernaturally keen acoustics. It stood as a mystery until an entrepreneur named Yavva Ten-Sly reactivated just enough systems to realize an entertainment complex—an alien amusement park—lay buried beneath the strangling figs. Now the Drik scavenger is negotiating with a very wary Senate for ownership of the site so she can restore and profit from the ancient arcades, rides, and simulations. In the meantime, squatters and looters visit frequently to gawk at the relatively safe Preserver ruin.

Ten-Sly hates being a low priority. In her opinion, Starhavians have suffered too much in recent years and need the lighthearted diversion her amusement park can provide—even if she doesn't fully understand all the technology involved. She currently plans to conduct a "soft opening" for a select corner of Merriment Hills in the coming weeks. Whether things will go according to plan or unleash untamed Preserver technology remains anyone's guess.

#### MICRO-LOR

According to reports, a small stretch of wilderness to the south of Starhaven abruptly ends its approximation of Earth climates and instead grows wild with plants, animals, and fungi native to the lost world of Magna Lor—former seat of the Lor Republic. With almost all of the planet’s native life destroyed by Collapsar, this genetic ark represents a chance to create a replacement world with flora and fauna familiar to the millions of Lor refugees.

Nothing in Starhaven is simple, however, and the creatures and blossoms within Micro-Lor hail from a more aggressive period in the planet’s history. The titanic, herbivorous wraths (use stats for the Stegosaurus; Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, page 148) dominate the ecosystem, aggressively defending their burrows and foraging grounds with serrated tails and jagged armor, while blood-drinking leechblossoms and hallucinogenic terror-lemurs (use stats for the Giant Flytrap and Trickster Faerie, respectively; Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, page 149) control the tree canopies. These predators don’t deter government missions to recover samples, nor poachers supplying Lor elites with a taste of home.

#### SEAHAVEN

Ten miles below Starhaven lies a smaller research outpost bolted to the underside of the continental ice sheet making up Europa’s surface. Apparently existing to generate power, mine minerals from the seawater, and serve as a laboratory for aquatic terraforming projects, Seahaven—as locals now call it—connects to the colony above via an express elevator and miles of unexplored tunnels. Water-breathing aliens of all kinds migrate to this “suburb” of Starhaven for easy access to the moon’s warm, dark oceans, and the Hexxim- and Piscean-dominated community is quickly starting to see itself as an independent nation. For now, Seahaven serves as another district in the New Lor Republic with very vocal Senate representation and secretive reporting on local affairs.

The Preservers constructed Seahaven to be a titanic single building, rather than mirror the domed city design of Starhaven, but the facilities are nonetheless expansive. Most of the structure consists of wide corridors, spacious dormitories, and labs stretching nearly a kilometer across. Warehouses, vehicle bays, and hydroponic parks large enough to house small Earth buildings line most of the outer surface. Less obvious and harder to access, the site has also suffered far less from looters over the centuries, though water damage has flooded many compartments as seals and systems failed. Several Preserver vehicles are still operational, with enough living space to sustain a small crew comfortably for months as they map and study the moon-wide seas.

Despite their aspirations of independence, Seahaven seems cursed. Catastrophic failures cascade from seemingly-stable systems, supplies vanish without a trace, and rumors of residents missing minutes or even hours of memories become increasingly common. For now, En’shessus, the Hexxim leader of the settlement, chalks this “bad luck” up to exhaustion and stress, but superstitious Seahavians have begun whispering that something more dangerous than blind fish and moon coral swims the waters outside.

#### ZETA

Europa is a moon with a moon. 344302 Europa I Zeta—just called Zeta by locals—is a small, rocky asteroid in a roughly circular orbit around the moon. The Jovian gravity and competing moons should have torn away the small rock—barely a kilometer across—eons ago, so locals assume its presence is deliberately engineered. Daedelus himself could find no technology integrated into the celestial body, and theorized the Preservers installed it as a sort of "shepherd moon" to protect their city from stray meteorites.

Zeta isn't entirely benign. It creates a rotating sensor shadow the city can't easily see beyond, providing a "dark" corner of space pirates and smugglers can hide their ships within. The Engineers' Guild plans to establish a radar outpost on the asteroid, but the operation remains low priority in favor of rebuilding the city proper.

## LIFE ON EUROPA

Life on Starhaven is a bizarre experience. Residents hail from across the Milky Way, with a variety of cultures and biologies standing as barriers to cooperation. And yet everyone has survived deep loss—fleeing the destruction of their worlds or the conquests of a tyrant—experiences only other refugees understand. Everyone lost family and misses familiar sights and sounds of home, and everyone has a collection of friends who feel like family. Many adults have adopted children of other species or taking over care for elderly with no one else, forming tight-knight, multi-generational households.

After years of isolation and tent-living on Star Island, Starhaven offers a future, and Starhavians are cautiously optimistic. The city needs extensive work—walls are crumbling or industrial, power flickers, food shortages loom, and strange technologies and critters are a constant threat—but now every day’s labor puts them one step closer to stability instead of merely surviving.

Day-to-day life is taking a shape familiar to many urbanites. Most people live in apartments in the reclaimed city-center and go to work for 4-8 hours a day; the city itself is the colony’s largest employer, recruiting engineers and laborers to restore the buildings and services, but also organizing teachers, healers, counselors, sanitation workers, archivists, and bureaucrats to provide basic services. Private businesses are generally small—small shops, food stalls, construction or decoration services, security specialists, and repair centers—but a few large corporations have sprung up to provide for the city’s technological or information needs, providing steady work for a sizeable minority of the population.

#### ENTERTAINMENT

Unable to work while assigned to refugees camps on Earth, most survivors depended on entertainment to lift their spirits and distract them from all they lost. Many arrived with only bits and pieces of their home culture—a computer with a few dozen music files, copies of novels they were reading, gaming rigs loaded with a smattering of titles, or a single musical instrument or the knowledge of how to make one—and traded these eagerly amongst themselves, supplementing with whatever Earth culture was available. Korean dramas and American animation both developed strong followings on Star Island, as did African heavy metal and roleplaying games.

Now in Starhaven, a booming market exists from the lost media of their respective homeworlds and television, games, and films from Earth. Community music and theater events are the most common entertainment with restaurants and coffee houses all offering live entertainment to attract visitors. The community media app Third Eye lets anyone make videos, music, and podcasts for public distribution and most new Starhaven media flows from this tech giant, and a few of the most popular influencers have begun spinning their personal success into larger, crewed productions.

The New Lor Republic has also sold its first three official broadcast media licenses. Third Dot Broadcasting specializes in licensing Earth media and broadcasting it on Starhaven, while the Lor Communications Channel focuses on local and galactic news with “cultural” broadcasts like documentaries and music in the off hours. Starhaven Central Media is the growing powerhouse, however, with their focus on creating new media to appeal to Starhavian experiences and interest. They release local news and studies on the city’s expansion, interview local professionals, and produce low-budget series like the melodramatic romance The Stars Our Haven or their runaway hit, Picking Up the Pieces, a sitcom about a flustered Lor throuple raising four rambunctious adoptees from other species.

#### FOOD

Unsurprisingly for a cultural melting pot, Starhaven cuisine combines the familiar with the foreign. UN emergency supplies—rice, legumes, vegetable oil, preserved meats and vegetables, and vitamin supplements—made up the bulk of the refugee diet and continue to be major imports from Earth, but various cultures applied their own techniques for preparing these simple ingredients, from elaborate Sk’ree threadmeal to hearty Haasaan fried buns. Chefs made substitutions using local ingredients—the similarity of Earth calamari to Lor thon fruit gave way to a dish AEGIS agents refer to as “sweet squid pie”—creating new cultural staples.

As the city’s hydroponic farms begin coming online and poachers retrieve various meats and plants from the ruins, the Starhavian diet has expanded. Packaged drinks and snacks from Earth are readily available thanks to industrious smugglers stocking the city's omnipresent vending machines. The city finally has the space to handle foods that require more processing, such as alcohol, breads, and tofu-analogs. Milk—once considered repugnant to every species except humans—earned slow acceptance thanks to powdered milk rations, and some Starhavians have begun experimenting with cheese and other dairy products—though few will admit it in polite company. Fresh fruit and vegetables are luxuries, given as gifts when visiting a friend’s home but rarely purchased for personal use. Few residents have fully-functioning kitchens, making small restaurants and food stalls vital. Yahnen—a noodle soup bolstered with whatever vegetables and protein are available—is the most common option, but a hungry visitor can find diners representing any component culture of the city.

#### LAW

AEGIS and UNISON still jointly handle law enforcement in Starhaven, ostensibly answering to New Lor Republic observers and judges. In reality, there’s no love between the Earth agencies and alien government and both agencies remain only because Starhaven lacks the power to remove them. Peacekeepers patrol the streets to “keep order,” but how hard they come down on crimes generally depends on how human-looking the perpetrators are. Protesters refer to peacekeeper troops as an “occupying force,” but in the end neither AEGIS nor UNISON have much interest in ruling so much as maintaining some human presence in the city. The mistrust means few Starhavians willingly call the authorities, handling most crimes personally, by recruiting a posse, or by hiring a freelance investigator or security specialist. When hands-on justice fails, citizens turn to their Block Captains rather than the police.

Starhaven builds its justice system off the older Lor model, in which prosecutors and the wounded party bring evidence before a magistrate and the accused may defend themselves. The city uses no juries but in especially important cases, multiple magistrates might collaborate to reach a fair verdict.

Because the city lacks a prison, punishments are limited to fines, house arrest, mandatory public service, and exile. Magistrates often prescribe mandatory counseling as well, usually under a Mentat, and in extreme cases the city resorts to psionic “conditioning” to curb violent behavior—something most non-Lor citizens see as a barbaric violation. In most cases, however, the city simply attaches a monitoring bracelet to convicted criminals to track their movements, communicate directly, and issue pacifying shocks (rank 6-10 Affliction, resisted and overcome by Fortitude) if needed, often pairing that with labor hours dedicated to restoring the city or otherwise serving the public.

#### MONEY

During their stay on Star Island, refugees traded an ever-shifting spectrum of currencies from dead or conquered worlds, with values fluctuating daily and inflation rampant. Most eventually turned to barter or relying on Earth currencies like the US Dollar or AEGIS-issued ration coupons. The New Lor Republic has begun issuing New Lor Credits—generally referred to as NLC or “nulcs”—a digital currency tracked on smartcomms (see Technology) and locked to a user’s biometric data. In theory, one nulc buys the equivalent of a hot meal or a plain article of clothing—roughly equal to $10-15 USD—but many merchants are slow to accept them until they see just how stable the new government is.

Public markets are common sights across town, with almost everyone setting up a stall for a day or two each week to sell home-spun goods, scavenged supplies, and surplus from personal gardens or offer specialty services like repairs and body modifications. Dedicated storefronts are becoming more common as the city reclaims and restores space, but for now they give priority to living space and hydroponics, leaving businesses competing for the spaces available or illegally squatting in less-than-ideal conditions. For now, most small businesses still operate out of their owners’ homes.

#### TECHNOLOGY

While Starhaven has collected a wide variety of alien technologies from all across the galaxy, it lacks the production capacity to manufacture new units or even many replacement parts, and so the city is a combination of cutting-edge technology and kit-bashed repairs. New Earth technology has begun arriving from supply shuttles, giving citizens access to 21st-century consumer goods at highly inflated prices to count for shipping and scarcity. The average household has a motley collection of appliances: a microwave, refrigerator, lights, phone, computer or laptop, and a television—often with a game system—but these systems are old and need frequent repair. Most homes also provide clean water, but utility issues still cause outages and rationing. Still, most people have access to a trinket or two that Earthlings would consider super-science.

Public areas and businesses generally provide access to communications terminals, televisions, and sound systems, while automated systems keep streetlights running. A fleet of maintenance robots—designs left over by the Preservers and poorly understood even by the Engineers’ Guild—repair and clean public spaces. The robot forges pump out new units—especially the ubiquitous “Cyclopes” drones—to keep up with the extensive work the growing city still needs, but the aging systems make for frequent breakdowns.

The one ubiquitous piece of technology across Starhaven are smartcomms—essentially smartphones that building their own wireless network. The New Lor Republic issues one comm per citizen and uses them to track work requests and credit accounts, as well as to locate anyone trapped or injured in the ruins. Critics claim the comms are an invasion of privacy just waiting to be abused, but many young programmers and tech startups are building their reputations providing apps for this commonplace device.

### STARHAVEN COMPLICATIONS

Complications in a Starhaven campaign might relate to powers or alien biology, such as dependence on an unusual atmosphere or food supply, but just as often they tie back to a hero’s experience with the city or circumstances that made them refugees. The following Complications are especially appropriate:

**Addiction:** This Complication can represent some alien nutrient or tradition that, while not critical for the hero’s survival, makes life easier. It may be something as lighthearted as cooking from their homeworld to as important as an inhaler than helps them breathe an Earth-like atmosphere without coughing and sneezing.

**Disability:** The refugees of Starhaven survived both war and natural disaster, and many walked away with lasting injuries that received minimal—if any—medical care or therapy. Heroes may be missing limbs, blinded, or suffer from mental illness like post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. Others may be from species that lack abilities most of the galaxy takes for granted, like a sense of smell or the dexterous fingers needed to operate modern technology.

**Phobia:** Those who have survived Star-Khan’s forces or a brush with Collapsar may walk away with deep-seated fears related to those traumas. While a fear of cosmic entities won’t come up often, a fear of earthquakes, the dark, or confined spaces are all common issues among Starhavians who witnessed the Devourer in action. Those who escaped war may instead fear soldiers, weapons, or fire.

**Prejudice:** Even in a city of aliens, some are more alien than other. The human-like Lor make up the majority of Starhaven’s population and government, and so-called “diamorphs” (nonhumanoid aliens) generally receive worse accommodations, struggle to find work, and rarely fill positions of authority. Even among the Lor community, tension exist along old social, economic, and religious lines that can be exacerbated as people struggle to maintain whatever sense of normalcy they can.

**Relationship:** No refugee survives alone, and most Starhavians have formed families of choice from a collection of random survivors. Almost everyone owes their survival to a kind stranger who has since become family, and most help someone else survive in the chaos of relocation.

**Rivalry:** Just as few refugees survived without making lifelong friends, few survived without making bitter enemies. When resources are thin and tensions run high, every slight and snub can blow up into a fight, and the consequences of those fights might linger for years. Another survivor may be a bully or opportunist, or just rubs a hero the wrong way. A stranger might even blame the hero for the death of a family member and take pleasure in making their life hell. And maybe you did some terrible things to survive.

## HEROES OF STARHAVEN

Starhaven needs heroes, and those champions might be locals, Earth imports, or cosmic authorities like the Star Knights.

### CAMPAIGN CONCEPTS

Starhaven can be a destination for your Earth-bound heroes to visit, either once or repeatedly as they help support the colony or chase villains who threaten it. The refugees and the Jovian moon both offer intriguing secrets, incredible technology, and strange opportunities-as well as incredible danger. Some heroes, such as Magna Force (Superteam Handbook, page 110) might even be Earth heroes whose antagonists lair on Europa, inviting repeated visits for the safety of both worlds.

But Starhaven can also serve as the home for your campaign, with the heroes defending the colony and investigating mysteries just as Earthly heroes defend their hometown. Heroes can be alien refugees, human heroes attached to AEGIS or UNISON or invited to assist by Daedalus, or representatives of a galactic peacekeeping force like the Star Knights. In addition to handling supervillains and escaped Preserver experiments, the city needs to slowly recover the ruins, gather resources, and establish diplomatic ties with both Earth and cosmic society, providing personal motivations and a break from the usual pattern of “fight the bad guy.”

 **Setting:** Futuristic • **Style:** Dark

While most of Star Island’s refugees happily relocated to Starhaven—a place they were free to decide their own destiny—a few slipped through the cracks. The desperate, the discontent, and the exploitative escaped onto Earth to live among—or prey upon—humanity. Starhaven’s Department of Outworlder Recovery and Incarceration claims jurisdiction over earthly crimes involving Starhaven, and its resourceful agents investigate unusual crimes, recover alien technology, and battle extraterrestrial crooks with the ultimate goal of removing any threats introduced to Earth by their willingness to take in alien refugees.

Agents of DORI is a lower-power campaign where the players take on the role of talented humans and aliens, backed by alien technology and knowledge to hunt otherworldly threats or humans using alien technology. Adventures focus on investigation and preparation, and even minions make for challenging fights for unwary agents. As an inter-agency department run jointly by AEGIS, UNISON, and the new Senate, politics abound, and conspiracies might flourish as different power groups fight to control alien powers.

 **Setting:** Weird • **Style:** Light

Europa doesn’t repair itself. Well, some corners of it do, but even these need supervision. Enter the talented troubleshooters of the Engineer’s Guild, a.k.a. Europa Light and Sewer. The brave technicians of this organization spearhead the steady reclamation of Starhaven and provide housing for the rapidly expanding population. Exploring the ruins and conducting repairs occupy much of their time, but select technicians with a wide variety of powers and skills, might find themselves tracking down scavengers, battling rogue robots, or rushing to save children lost in the overgrown corners of the settlement.

Europa Light and Sewer is a campaign that shares many similarities with traditional dungeon-crawling games—the heroes must investigate forgotten corners of the city, battle feral creatures and robots, and recover supplies in order to bring new corners of the city online and repair the ravages of time. The Engineer’s Guild still confronts villains—particularly those exploiting or looting the city—but their primary focus is always on keeping the colony alive and healthy.

 **Setting:** Cosmic • **Style:** Grayscale

Alien monsters and ancient robots lurk, villains profit off of suffering, and citizens don’t trust the authorities. Starhaven is a city that needs heroes. Thankfully it is also a city that has attracted considerable attention from the heroes of both Earth and the wider galaxy. Resident heroes take the frontline against not only local villains but Earth supervillains who might arrive to claim some advanced gadget and minions of the Star-Khan who hope to soften the colony up for invasion.

Guardians of Haven is a traditional superhero campaign, with a decided bend towards technology-oriented powers and strange villains. The heroes ultimately want to protect the city and keep citizens safe, but occasional adventures might take them to other planets. They may keep secret identities or serve as public figures and role models, even being deputized by the Senate as Starhaven’s official champions.

 **Setting:** Futuristic • **Style:** Light

The Iapyx Academy is dedicated to nourishing young minds so that Starhaven’s youth—already scarred by tragedy—can have a future defined by something more than what they’ve endured. While not explicitly a school for young superheroes, Daedalus borrowed many lessons and philosophies from his old friend Duncan Summers when designing a curriculum that could accommodate the varied abilities and cultures of the secondary school’s student body. More than a few of those lessons teach community support and, combined with many young alien’s exposure to human pop culture, many have taken it upon themselves to become young heroes under the auspices of the academy’s Legion of Civic Honors. Legionnaires ideally volunteer to feed the needy, clean public spaces, and use their various innate abilities to solve nonviolent problems and help the community, but many follow a pubescent urge for adventure and excitement into exploring the ruins and confronting evil.

Students of the Cosmos is a Hero High campaign with a cosmic twist, bringing the heroes into conflict with space-faring villains and domestic dangers while also trying to build a stronger community they will someday lead.

### POWERS

One of the defining traits of comic books aliens are superhuman abilities shared across entire species. For some alien heroes, their natural abilities—often honed to their peak through training—define their superhero identity and toolkit. But for other aliens, their natural abilities are minor or supplement mutation, extraordinary technology, or intense physical training.

When building your hero, consider what abilities are shared across their people and which are unique to them. A Kash’rodan refugee mutated by cosmic rays, for example, would retain the enhanced strength and charm of her people, but her ability to become invisible might be wholly unique. This provides a basis for the Gamemaster to build other character that share a homeworld and helps define how powerful (or dangerous) other Starhavians see members of your culture.

#### IMMUNITY

Immunity is one of the most common “innate” powers possessed by Starhavian citizens, who hail from a wide variety of alien worlds and ecosystems. Some may be immune to toxic atmospheres and extreme temperatures, while other might age so slowly they are effectively immortal.
With Europa’s harsh climate, some level of Immunity—particularly to cold, suffocation, and/or radiation—can help heroes survive adventures beyond the city dome without protective equipment. Other Immunities, such as low pressure or heat, might be more practical to a space-faring society while still others, like starvation, helps a refugee better weather the ordeals currently threatening the city.

#### SENSES

Another common and low-cost way to define an alien hero is to provide senses humans don’t normally possess, or enhance a familiar sense to extraordinary levels. An alien hero may be a traditional martial artist or secret agent whose only “super” power is echolocation or keen sense of smell shared by all members of their species. Unusual senses in particular are ideal ways to gather information about the city’s layout, damage, and inhabitants or provide clues to the ever-shifting political landscape.

#### SKILLS

Most Starhaven campaigns are urban campaigns at their heart, mixed with a dash of cosmic weirdness—characters will probably spend more time leaping across rooftops or wading through sewers than piloting starships, for example. As such, traditional “superhero” skills are more valuable than “space hero” skills.

#### EXPERTISE

Expertise specialties like Science, Streetwise, or Politics are all useful for city-based heroes, but the unique locale presents several new specialties players might consider. Expertise (xenoculture) focuses on the diverse biology and traditions of the city’s residents, helping heroes understand their neighbors, ease over social faux pas, and recognize common medical problems. Expertise (Preservers) is as much a superstition as history, with the hero understanding broad swathes about Preserver legacy and making educated guesses on the details. Expertise (Starhaven) relates to the city itself, its districts, and local trends, as well as its recent history and major dangers.

#### TECHNOLOGY

The Technology skill is incredibly useful, and Gamemasters may consider breaking it into two or more separate skills to differentiate its computer-focused uses, its security aspects, and its ability to understand, build, and repair advanced machinery.

Preserver technology is almost always advanced enough to impose a –5 circumstance penalty on technology checks to understand, operate, or repair it, while especially degraded Preserver technology increases this penalty to –10.