Premise


I figured I'd better start off with the premise of my 2300AD campaign. I'll fill out many of the details later that provide the context (many of which I've already considered). Some of what follows may be as clear as mud if you're not familiar with the 2300AD universe. Apologies...some will become clearer over time, but I don't want to repeat all the source material (the Kafers, mentioned below, have an entire source book dedicated to them). I think the key parts of this universe to understand are that humans have colonized dozens of worlds in the area near Earth, they have encountered several sentient alien species, and the notion of nations is still alive and well.

The Kafers have overrun Arcturus Station and invaded Aurore. The human counterattack fleet is mustering in Hochbaden, and very little is known at this time about the Kafers, a new and hostile sentient race. Kafer scouts, presumably, have been spotted in several systems up the French Arm, including Leclerc.

Leclerc has only recently been opened up for widely for colonization; hence, it lacks the population of Aurore. Even its tantalum deposit is not at this time very useful given the distances between systems, and the full infrastructure for extracting and getting the tantalum to markets from Leclerc are still not in place. This will change, but it is not unlike the mining of shale oil in the early 21st century--it's possible, but the economics of it took a while to make it viable. The tantalum on Bayard (the colonized planet in the Leclerc system) is undoubtedly very valuable and will be mined. The economics needs to swing a bit is all.

Additionally, the French government had chartered much of the operations and security of Leclerc to a corporation, Industries Aérospatiales Cosmos (or IAC), SAE. IAC had subcontracted the security to Rudianos Services Spéciaux (RSS), SE. Because of the Kafer invasion and the uncertainty and panic associated with that, RSS has found itself making better profits by hiring out its mercenaries to richer, more established colonies. Therefore, RSS has contracted with France to use prisoners from Earth and Tirane (the first colonized world in the Alpha Centauri system and home to 1.4 billion citizens) as substitute security on Bayard. The prisoners are generally white collar--not serial killers, organized crime members, and so on. These prisoners are closely monitored, and they will obtain their freedom from prison by accruing FreedomPointsTM--the amount necessary for freedom varies by prisoner and the nature of his or her crime.

While Bayard has by and large frowned on this set up, they have little choice but to accept it and attempt to make it work. In general, the prisoners are banned from entering populated areas without express permission. Therefore, they spend most of their time engaged in patrols or chasing down Kafer spottings--none of which have turned out to be actual Kafers.

The players will be prisoners subjected to this punishment and working to gain their freedom. They are confined mostly to Centre pénitentiaire de Bayard, called Phoenix Prison by the inmates.

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