Gamemaster Culture (IF)

Hard Science-Fiction Setting

The solar system is both very divided and culturally cohesive. History has shuffled people around, mixing genes and cultures and creating new hybrids, while old minority have clung to or even recovered their past. With universal translation, the pressure to learn a major language disappeared, and when the large political blocks fractured, the pressure to conform disappeared. At the same time, living conditions have become more similar across humanity, creating similar solutions to the problems we all face.

Abundance Society

Humanity has never been richer. Industrial automation and hydroponic farming makes everyday resources abundant. After the struggles of the 21st century, basic income was recognized as a human right; no-one outside degenerate polities lacks food, basic necessities, care, or access to education and information. With genetic engineering, many of the causes of need and impulses to crime were eliminated and most people live to 200 years of age. You no longer have to work to survive, you work to achieve self-realization and social standing.

Money still exists even when basic goods are free; personal services, handicrafts, pastorally produced food, and luxury housing still have a cost. People work to afford such perks, but most are able to find a job that aligns with their own interests. The average work week is 20 to 30 hours; some work 4 to 6 hours a day, others prefer fewer, longer days. Caretaking employs many, taking care of children, even your own, is considered a profession. Dangerous, uncomfortable, or simply unpopular work nets higher pay, rising until the needed workforce volunteers. This can make pay rates highly variable; some exploit this by changing jobs almost daily.

This all took a hit during the Fall; people were ordered to work, with those lacking appropriate skills often ending up in involuntary work parties. When the crisis abated, this was quickly abolished, but resentment and distrust lingers, mostly directed at Earthforce that stepped in to handle the crisis.

Personhood

With genetic engineering, many things once decided by birth can now be altered. Common genetic programs brought most of humanity to the point where no-one performs much below what was once average. Poor health, eyesight, birth defects, and vulnerability to mental ill-health can all be pre-empted. Ageing is routinely postponed; most people live 200 years or more, maintaining the health and flexible intellect of youth.

Gender and sexual expression have become matters of choice, while the differences between the sexes have narrowed. On average, women are physically stronger and more resilient under stress than they used to be; men have become more cooperative and socially agile. Fertility is fully under conscious control — conception must be willed, and no longer declines with age. Painful menstruation and involuntary menopause are conditions of the past. Ancestral features can be altered or erased, though this is uncommon today. All of this is voluntary, and many choose to retain older ideals. Virtual reality experiences allow people to try new roles before undertaking therapies that would alter their bodies more permanently.

Greater changes are achievable, if somewhat dangerous and controversial. Cosmetic changes, such as altered skin color or adding fur, tails, or animal ears, have long been popular in various subcultures. Adaptations to different environments are possible, facilitating life in microgravity, low gravity, and even underwater.

Posthuman Genetic Modifications

Not everyone thinks this should be done. The Earthforce Medical Service continually reviews medical standards, caught between conservatives and radical post-humanists who want more change. Rules used to be stricter before the Fall; adaptations to the harsher post-Fall environment are now widely accepted.

Race Race has an entirely different meaning than it did historically. It is seen as a group of related ideas of beauty. When appearance can be easily altered, no-one is forced into a certain racial phenotype; instead it has become fashionable to select one you feel expresses your individuality, often but not always among your ancestries.

Education & Lifepaths

Large families are normal, with parents usually 50 years of age or so. It is not unusual to start over with a second family in a much later relationship. A large part of the work force is engaged in fostering and educating the young, giving young people rich sources of nurture, education, and apprenticeships. Education begins around age fire with human interactions and general education, with specialist skills taught from age 15 in apprenticeships or virtual reality. Age of majority for Earthforce voting is 25, most polities also use this as the official date of adulthood, tough some activities — recreational drugs, vehicle operation — are allowed around age 12 under adult supervision.

Gerontocracy

With people routinely living to the age of 200 and luck and wealth can allow you to live up to twice as long, power is gathered in the hands of the elderly. Therapy maintains fluid intelligence over time while crystalized intelligence still accumulates over time; older people simply have more skills to use. A stable economy also benefits the old; long time savings and interest means many old people are rich. Well-sestablished politicians have the support of stable constituencies. The backside of this is that old skills do lose in value as new technologies and social issues develop, but not enough to overcome the advantages of age.

It is not that young people lack opportunities; education is free and run by enthusiastic teachers with long experience. Entry level jobs are available in most sectors. But advancement is slow; few elderly retire to make room for the new. Two trends have grown out of this; older people do retire to focus entirely on their personal interests, and young people become colonists to find opportunities in faraway places where few are senior to them.

Law, Custom, and Jurisdiction

With the plethora of independent polities, each of which may have its own special laws and customs, justice has become a complex labyrinth.

Space Law

The Bern Space Accord of 2066 set the convention for space law, modeled on Earth’s old nautical laws. Intended as temporary, this accord is still in place, though amended over time. The rule was practical for Luna ports and early stations, but it remains in force across the System despite being outdated for larger hubs and interplanetary traffic.

Earthforce Senate law is a bare-bones set of regulations that mainly applies to shipping and the rights of shippers, crews, passengers, cargo, and salvage. These rules are sometimes draconian — they require you to provide assistance to save lives while offering little protection for ships.

Colonial Law

Colonial "law" is only partly codified — local customs and security regulations are often just as harshly enforced, and a neme may not be able to interpret these subtleties. You can be punished for breaking a local custom even if it is not strictly written. The general trend here is that you are expected to render help to anyone who asks for it, beyond what space law requires.

Jurisdictional Limit (JL)

Local authority extends to 0.01 light-seconds (≈3,000 km) from a habitat or body; beyond that, Earthforce claims jurisdiction under Senate law.

Patchwork Rules

In habitats a patchwork of rules apply. Usually a new habitat begins with the laws of its mother polity, which are then amended and appended to fit local needs. This creates lineages of laws that share many elements, often based on old legal traditions like Common Law, Civil Law, Sharia, or the Confucian legal tradition, with only minor local differences. But two neighboring habitats can belong to different legal traditions and use completely different systems of law. Air, water, and light are always regulated commodities; tampering is a felony everywhere, assuming you escape the lynch mob.

Habitat qualification

To claim a Jurisdictional Limit, a site must qualify as a habitat. The usual threshold is at least 100 permanent residents with autonomous life support, and a published charter with a continuous navigation beacon broadcasting its legal code. Prospectors, work barges, and small stations that do not meet this requirement fall under their sponsor’s jurisdiction for internal matters and Earthforce Senate law for conflicts between vessels or expeditions. Polities sometimes try to extend “local” space by seeding nearby habitats under the same charter; this can backfire when those stations declare independence.

Ship jurisdiction

Large ships with crews or passengers of 100 or more may claim a temporary Jurisdictional Limit while under way, provided they are outside any habitat’s JL and broadcast an active flight plan and beacon. The temporary radius is 0.003 light-seconds (≈900 km).

Conflict of limits

• Habitat JL prevails over ship JL; the ship’s claim collapses to its hull and interior.
• Between ships, precedence is determined by the Right-of-Space protocol: the ship with the earlier-filed flight plan corridor stands on. If equal, the less maneuverable vessel stands on. If still equal, Earthforce arbitration applies.
• Between habitats, JL is merged if they share a charter. If not, it splits at the midline, with a narrow 0.0003 light-seconds (≈100 km) neutral buffer for traffic. This can get tricky when trajectories intersect.

Enforcement

All JL-eligible sites and ships must broadcast Charter ID, JL class (Hab or T-JL), current center, and ephemeris. The Right-of-Space (RoS) protocol resolves overlaps in seconds; notices are binding, and penalties apply if ignored. Search-and-rescue overrides all other jurisdiction. The Accords Mediation Service (Senate) has oversight of all judiciaries. In practice, the Earthforce Navy (Commons) enforces space law rules and local authorities enforce colonial law.

Abuse & edge cases

Habitats sometimes set unreasonable rules and penalties to trap passers-by — “inspection fees,” “heritage light taxes,” or instant fines for minor etiquette slips — keeping Belt advocates in work for decades. Travelers swap warnings: don’t argue on the dock, pay the small fines, and appeal once you’re clear.

Common snares include:

• “Mandatory courtesy services” that you never asked for, then a bill on departure.
• Flag-of-convenience shakedowns — a charter you’ve never heard of claims you entered “their” space for three minutes.
• Quarantine pretexts — your cargo is held “for safety,” then storage fees grow by the hour.

When in doubt, let your neme log everything and ask for a written notice — most bullies prefer marks who leave no paper trail. Search-and-rescue orders override all disputes; if someone calls for help, rescue comes first and the arguing waits.

Religion, Meaning, Civil Rites

Religion in the System is highly varied and tolerance is widespread. It is simply difficult to maintain closed communities across space lanes. Most habitats adapt one of the major belief systems into their own local variant, but influence from other religions is commonplace. Very few attempt to enforce religion on visitors; faith is considered a matter for the core population. Occasionally this limits outside contact — if certain groups (children, women, minorities) are absent from the public spaces of a habitat, this is generally taken as a bad sign and affects its reputation.

Syncretic and System-born forms

Syncretism is the merger of different traditions and even specific gods, which is quite common in space.

• Storm chaplains serve as multi-faith leaders during crises — solar flares, hull breaches, famine — often qualified to minister across several religions. This is seen as normal in war or emergency, and has persisted into peace.
• Pilots’ cults flourish: oaths sworn before burns and landings are part of professional identity. Keepsakes and relics are common — an amulet blessed by a relic, a fragment of a wreck survived, or a personal charm carried on every burn.
• Regrav is a recuperative time that often includes religion, and many religions protolyze to those in regrav.
• Memorials for the drift-lost are common. Bone-ash is spread into greenhouse soil, turning every visit to the gardens into an act of remembrance. The old Jewish practice of placing stones has spread widely across faiths.
• Early explorers and founders are often sainted or deified. Relics such as helmets, flight suits, or even recovered 21st-century probes are revered in shrines.
• Charismatic cult leaders thrive in isolated societies. With longevity, their cults can persist for centuries, merging apocalyptic visions with worship of aliens, hyperspatial beings, or local natural phenomena.
• Religious art and artifacts are often represented in holographic displays, sanctified as representations of the original.
• A neme can serve as a liturgical compass, showing the required direction of worship; the neme updates it as the station slews or precesses.
• Allowing another faith to use your place of worship is generally seen as meritorious.

Memorials and Rites

Space limits burial; communities adapt meaning to what’s possible. Faith affects which option is chosen, but local policies may not offer every option.

• Neme wills — individuals predeclare preferred rites; next of kin or charter law arbitrate if a chosen rite is unavailable locally.
• Cremation with bone-ash returned to greenhouse soil is common.
• Some recycle the dead as part of a “circle of life” policy, returning organics to station feedstock under strict consent rules.
• Drift release (“return to the rings”) marks pilots and EVA workers; names are etched on bulkheads or projected in light.
• Sealed interment exists in some habitats with limited graveyards; plots are time-leased and later consolidated. Long lifespans make leases long and graveyards space-hungry.
• Home shrines with urns or memorial chips keep ancestors present; columbarium walls are common in promenades.
• Annual remembrance days are universal, even in atheist communities.
• Rock asteroids mined out or lacking metal are sometimes consecrated as cemeteries or memorial parks.
• Transit practice — on long voyages, remains are held in cold storage until port; the captain’s log records cause and disposition.

Superstition in space

A lot of spirituality is expressed in superstition, crossing religious boundaries. Not formal religion — but often treated as sacred custom; beliefs and habits that help crews face risk and uncertainty.

Common spacefaring taboos

• Renaming a ship after launch is bad luck; if you must, paint the old name in vacuum before erasing the old one. A ship without a name lacks spirit.
• No whistling in airlocks — said to “call the leak.”
• Silent first step — the first person aboard a new ship enters in silence to “hear if it welcomes you.”
• Offer to the void — a crumb from an energy bar, a drop of water, or a puff of air vented before sealing a hatch.
• Helmets off, boots on Superstition that is also etiquette “bare head, silent tread repels the reaper”.
• Number lore — Dock 13 skipped or reserved for storm shelters as a “sacrifice.” The local orbital-zone number is lucky; many Lunar bars have “Three” in the name.

Rituals around survival

• Storm charms blessed by chaplains, worn during flares and hard radiation.
• Drift tokens — a pebble or bead carried so a ghost — yours or another’s — can “find the rings” if drift-lost.
• Checklist prayers — reciting maintenance steps like a litany; skipping a line invites failure.
• Air-sharing oath — partners touch helmets or share a breath before EVA for luck. This can, but need not, shade into flirting.

Community beliefs

• First-plant ward — the first greenhouse plant is a guardian and not harvested; when it dies, it is replaced with a small rite.
• Echo ban — hearing your own echo is believed to “invite collapse.”
• Color signs — green suit stripes mean safe return; yellow/gold is a wish for success; chrome/steel wards gremlins; black stripes avoided except in mourning or before combat.
• Founders’ ghosts — shrines kept in old maintenance bays for the first settlers who “walk the rings.”

Fall relics and omens

• Shard against fire — a scorched hull fragment from a lost station wards heat and arc-flash.
• Meteor omens — an unexpected shower is read as a warning; crews may turn back or alter trajectory.
• Fuel offering — vent a gram of propellant before long burns to “buy passage.”

Helians

A major faith born of the Icarus Fall interprets the catastrophe as divine punishment for human hubris. The Dedalus Project is remembered as a sin against nature — an attempt to enslave the Sun itself. In their view, Helios struck back, burning away pride and reminding humanity of its fragility.

• Theology — Survival is proof of grace, but humility is demanded. Humanity must live within its limits and honor the cosmic order.
• Attitude to space — Spaceflight is a spiritual undertaking to be treated with reverence; launches and burns are preceded by prayers, including vows such as “If you grant me safety, I will conserve propellant.”
• Economics — Asteroid mining is a regrettable necessity, ritualized to “ask forgiveness.” Terraforming is condemned outright as another attempt to seize godlike powers.
• Rites — The Children of Helios hold “Fall vigils” in which habitats dim lights in remembrance. Gardens and greenhouses are sacred spaces; tending plants is prayer.
• Culture — Clothing in sun-colors and natural fibers where possible; nudity is seen as meritorious. Music and ritual borrow from Earth’s environmentalist, hippie, and new-age movements, blended with spaceborne symbolism.

Christianity

Ecumenism is widespread. Denominations dominate in certain habitats, but overall Christians find rigid boundaries difficult to maintain in space.

• Confessionals often double as privacy booths with active sound-dampening and anti-surveillance systems. Personal wearable confessionals provide this privacy with a highly encoded link to a priest within a few light seconds. These are highly controversial in authoritarian ships and habs.
• Eucharist uses synthetic wine or spirits, and communal bread-baking is sometimes a central ritual.
• Crucifixes and chapels are often placed in storm shelters, making spiritual protection synonymous with physical safety.
• Liturgical east is usually the Solar-Tangent rule: altar faces prograde within the orbital plane; entrances retrograde. Cislunar parishes often prefer the Earth-Facing variant (altar toward Earth). Spin habitats frequently adopt Spin-East along the promenade.

Atheism

Atheist and rationalist communities frame meaning in human responsibility, natural law, and shared ethics rather than deities.

• Procedure as mindfulness — checklist recitals and maintenance drills used as calm-focus practices before risky work.
• Secular chaplaincy — counselors trained in crisis support and bereavement without religious language; common in ports and rescue crews. It is surprisingly common for these to also be licensed for another religion, viewing it as a psycho-cultural practice.
• Humanist rites — naming days, coming-of-age vows, partnership contracts, and remembrance gatherings held in promenades or gardens.
• Moments of silence — pre-EVA or pre-burn quiet periods to center attention and honor risk.
• Codes and oaths — crew ethics and safety pledges read aloud at muster; violations treated as moral, not just technical, failures.
• Study circles — salons and lecture nights on history, science, and civic duty in place of sermons.

Islam

Islam suffered greatly in the Meltdown of 2055, shattering the authority of its factions and leadership, particularly militiants. It now consists of a number of small, scattered communities.

• Prayer alignment (qibla) is tracked by neme software. Some Islamic habitats maintain orbits with their axis locked on Earth, keeping the direction stable.
• Wudu is performed with clean recycled water, with strict conservation measures. In some places sand is used symbolically, echoing early Islamic practice.
• Halal rulings on vat-grown or cultured meat vary widely; each habitat tends to establish its own interpretation, sometimes leading to disagreements with neighbors.

Buddhism

Three types of practitioners are common. The first are solitary Buddhists with little or no contact with a community. The second are those strongly aligned with a community but who may wander outside it for extended periods. The third live entirely within their community, rarely leaving its bounds.

• Buddhism has no problem accepting those of other faiths, seeing itself as a philosophy rather than a formal faith.
• Monks are willing to adopt security procedures such as wearing vacsuits, but try to go for basic colors with orange robes worn on top. Some prefer orange or partially orange body suits.
• Meditation chambers are kept at 0.1 g or more. Only masters can meditate in microgravity.
• Monks still collect alms despite abundance; this creates personal engagement between monk and layperson.
• Offerings are given in service time to the habitat as well as food.
• Imagery of rebirth is tied to airlock cycling and hydroponic renewal.

Hinduism

Hindus may be devoted to individual gods but honor all of them and the common spiritual lore they share.

• Puja (ritual offering) often uses open flame despite oxygen cost, making it a meaningful sacrifice.
• Temples occupy central promenades. Because of the gravity gradient, towers cannot rise far; some exploit lesser gravity “closer to heaven” at the top levels.

• Temples commonly face sunrise. In orbit this maps to Solar-Tangent (altar toward prograde or sunward by local custom).
• Most habitats focus on one god, but have minor altars to many gods.

• Festivals include processions, carnivals, and public rituals — sometimes daily mass exercises.
• Sacred rivers may be recreated in miniature, seeded with water brought from Earth. Most communities claim to have done this, some with tons of water, others with only a few drops.

Confucian tradition

Confucian tradition is a societal structure rather than a religion; individuals are often part of other communities.

• Ancestor veneration is deeply tied to habitat maintenance. Computerized citizen rolls and genetic archives create vast webs of ancestry, each individual responsible for honoring thousands — a demanding duty that confers status.
• Life extension makes age less apparent; many habs have formal rules for what appearance is acceptable depending on chronological age.
• Rites of respect are built into air discipline, silence in oxygen gardens, bowing in airlocks.
• These traditions strengthen cohesion but can become dystopian: absolute tracking and total social control in the name of harmony.

Judaism

Judaism continues as a diasporic faith, with many small and widely dispersed but resilient communities. Synagogues adapt readily to habitat life, and practices are pragmatic but deeply tied to memory.

• Diaspora practice orients toward Jerusalem when computable; otherwise to Earth as proxy. Nemes provide a Yerushalayim indicator.
• Shabbat observance adapts to station clocks; many follow the local port charter’s week, but some communities fix their own rhythm, leading to multiple Sabbaths on the same promenade.
• Kashrut rulings vary on vat-grown protein and fabbed food; local rabbis or councils certify what is acceptable.
• Memorials for the drift-lost often use the Jewish custom of placing local stones. This has spread widely across faiths.
• Torah scrolls and other sacred objects are often supplemented by highly secured digital archives, but communities still prize physical scrolls, even if stored in vacuum-sealed cases and only displayed on holy days.

Language & Media

Understanding is cheap; attention is not.

— Lunar proverb.

Nemes can supply simultaneous translation of all known languages and give cultural hints, but they do not confer the cultural capital associated with learning a language. With appearance now a matter of choice, it no longer signals cultural identity; language has taken its place. This keeps language learning popular — the key to insider status.

Languages

There is no single dominant language for cross-cultural relations, nor is one needed with ubiquitous neme translators. English, French, Spanish, Hindi, and Mandarin are all widespread, but none is supreme.

Neme translation has allowed small languages to survive, since assimilation into a larger tongue is no longer as important as it once was. Some places revive an old language or cultivate their own brogue, setting themselves apart with an identity that outsiders can only access through translation. Archaic versions of established languages are common. The Jovian upper class lean into Latin for this, though the question of medieval versus classical Latin is still unsettled and a frequent cause of challenges of honor. Some habitats adopt new or artificial languages such as Esperanto, Klingon, or Tolkienian tongues, though none are widespread. A few polities use language as a form of border control, reserving core areas for speakers only. Regional trade cants mixing local tongues thrive along the routes; some shift so quickly that even nemes struggle to keep pace.

An emerging custom is to allow only a single language to be spoken aloud; those who do not speak it converse silently with their neme, which provides the translation. This can lead to situations where two native English-speakers converse in French, both using their nemes to speak for them.

Universal Modes of Communication

What has become universal are sign languages. Throughout space and ocean exploration, silent communication without radio has been vital, and during the Fall it became an essential survival skill. Full sign languages remain linked to the spoken languages they grew out of, but a vernacular has developed to convey survival concepts. This extends to communication between small craft: signaling intentions, making simple demands, or even expressing annoyance or gratitude through flight patterns. There are an emergency code that can be conveyed with very low bandwidth, like old telegraphy, to send simple messages like "all clear", "we can survive for X days", and "we need resource X". This simple code is taught to spacer children. Learning these codes is part of mastering the skills they belong to; they are not usually studied as separate languages.

Media

Much media is still 2D or audio-only. 3D is possible with holographic displays, but they are expensive to capture and render, and consume enormous bandwidth; only high-end productions use true holography. Virtual reality is far easier. Viewers use glasses, haptic gloves, a body suit, or (at the top end) a full-body rig. VR can play recorded works, but shines in shared virtual worlds with other users and simulated environments. Nemes handle identity, translation, and safety prompts.

Most media is local by necessity. With light delays and costly, lossy transmission, only the most important or popular items cross interplanetary distances — marquee entertainment from Mars, major Earthforce addresses, headline news — and almost always in 2D. Everything else is local.

Local bandwidth is abundant, feeding a long tail of media from professional houses to individuals broadcasting themselves. Within habitats and station clusters, 3D is common in studios and plazas: professional outfits can afford true volumetric capture; everyone else fakes depth by reconstructing 3D scenes from multi-angle 2D and renders 3D from VR.

Augmented reality via nemes is ubiquitous: overlays in eyewear turn promenades into guided theaters, annotating performances, markets, and festivals.

Virtual reality is widely used for entertainment and education, mostly in virtual worlds. Virtual meeting places are extremely popular for socializing, but light lag restricts this to about 10.000 km.

Rights and payment are lightweight and use Lunar Bank micropayments; creators are paid per view by the bank; nemes track play counts and tip jars

Etiquette & Daily Life

Small rules keep everyone alive. Most began as safety habits, but over time they became matters of honor and courtesy.

Recycling courtesy

Everything is valuable in space, we cant afford to lose anything!

• Water is sacred — spilling it deliberately is an insult. A shared sip is welcome; wasting a drop is not.
• If you eat or drink during a visit, you are expected to excrete before leaving; otherwise you remove organics from local recycling.
• Finishing food is polite — even small waste can clog filters or foul sensors.
• Accepting air, food, or water from a visitor is a gesture of deep trust, since it could foul your recycling system.
• Reading sensors to analyze the quality of shared air is rude — it suggests suspicion of the host. Nemes will warn you if values are extreme.

Vacuum etiquette

Vacuum kills; we need to work together to survive.

• First Out, Last In — in airlocks the most experienced exits first and enters last, protecting less experienced crew. Some crews mark this role with a badge or stripe.
• Helmet contact in vacuum is intimate — a sign of trust with friends, questionable with allies, a firm no with enemies.
• Pointing at or touching someone’s helmet is insulting — it implies you doubt their seals.
• Spacesuits have internal air and water recycling; sharing those lines is deeply intimate and done only in absolute emergency.

Weapons and tools

A weapon is a took for killing.

• People of Earth need weapons to hunt; there are no animals to hunt in space.
• People of the inner solar system see private handarms as barbaric; only security and military carry them.
• Jovians treat handarms as marks of civic duty — not carrying one is like shirking the oath.
• Belters blur the line between tool and weapon; a cutting torch or a pistol can both be “tools,” drawing either at table signals trouble.
• Never pocket a tool borrowed in a hab; always return it to its place. Tools are semi-communal lifelines.
• Always restore the settings of any tool you use, especially of it is burrowed or communal.
• Do not give a tool or weapon as a gift; it should be paid for, even if only nominally.

Manners

The dangers of space require a polite society.

• Greet strangers in your own language before using a common tongue — it signals confidence in identity.
• Wearing a helmet indoors, especially with a closed visor, is discourteous; it implies distrust. (Some communities grant women more leeway.)
• Eye contact is polite in spin-gravity; in micro-g it can feel threatening if you’re too close.
• In narrow corridors, avoid overtaking unless invited; rushing past signals aggression.
• Giving way in a tight meeting in microgravity displays competence.
• Never mock or hinder another’s superstitions; it signals you don’t trust them to do it safely.
• Clapping hands against bulkheads is avoided, seen as tempting resonance or fracture.
• Showing xenophobia displays weakness; you can stay back but have to stay cool.

Noise & light discipline

The people before us built this place — don't disturb the dead.

• Quiet hours are posted by charter — work bays and promenades dim and hush during set periods, especially after storms.
• Headphones indoors — public music without consent is rude. Earbuds are fine; external speakers are for festivals and alerts.
• Work songs — singing and chatter create a shared presence in big, empty spaces, helping crews feel less alone.
• Sound discipline — any one can call a “quiet check”, cut music and chatter so hisses, rattles, and alarm tones are clear. Sensors lead, ears assist.
• Alarm respect — never imitate emergency tones or strobe patterns; false cues can kill.
• Glare etiquette — visor tints and task lights are angled down in crowds. Personal devices auto-dim in shared spaces.
• Window shades — during storms or space combat, exterior viewports are shuttered to reduce panic and preserve night vision.
• Whisper range — in areas dense with people, close conversation is kept to whisper or use communicators; shouting across a room is a breach of courtesy.

Health, Risk, and Psychology

The body keeps the score.

• Degrav syndrome, regrav protocols, bone banking, and radiation budgets are the employer’s responsibility, spacer pride make many loath to accept this as necessary.
• Storm Time coping includes breaks within sealed refuges, followed by the Quiet After. Employers often send employees to regrav in the aftermath of a storm, which is unpopular.
• Gene therapy has reduced the risk of many health problems, which casts suspicion on those who do fall ill, particularly with mental illness or exhaustion collapse.
• Some believe extensive gene therapy shortens lifespan. This is unverified, but it shapes attitudes.
• Extended life keeps people youthful until genetic restoration finally fails. Apparent age, once a marker of status, no longer works, complicating status relations.
• Appearance used to serve as an identity marker and still does to some degree, but people are more cautious about such signals today.
• Uncanny Valley: Posthumans and humanoid robots provoke xenophobia. This is stronger the closer they are to human. Humanoid robots are made to be obviously mechanical, posthumans adopt non-human traits to be clearly identifiable.
• Death & disposal — Space constrains body handling: cremation, sealed interment, or drift release are the practical options. Choices affect recycling loads, living space, and crew morale. See Memorials and Rites under Religion for customs and ceremonies.

Mobility & Travel

Space is not fixed and has no permanent travel lanes. Trajectory windows shift, and delta-v often matters more than distance.

Routes & burns

There are no fixed routes; every ship optimizes every trip. Most propellant is spent at the beginning and end of a journey, with no halfway stops to lean on. Misjudge the first burn and you may not have the delta-v to brake — a near-mythic fear among spacers, rare but haunting.

Visibility & comms

Apart from launch and braking burns, ships are essentially invisible except for their beacon — and even that can be washed out by solar storms. Tightbeam lasers are reliable for sending but poor for receiving on the move; tracking a jittering target over long distances is fickle. Most ships fall back on burst radio and store-and-forward relays.

Life aboard

In transit a ship is the ultimate closed room: days or weeks with the same faces, no outside help, nowhere to go. Glances become promises; silences become stories. What happens on a ship stays on the ship.

Arrival & customs

On arrival, customs care less about goods than about people and pathogens. Identity, residency, warrants, and quarantine matter most. Most habitats welcome immigrants who bring skills or education — the right licenses can open doors quickly.

Conflict & Enforcement

Violence in space has its own customs and rules. Most polities claim neutrality, but in practice there are three major zones of power: the inner system under Earthforce protection, the Jovian sphere that proclaims independence but is divided within, and the Belt, a shifting quilt of fiercely independent-minded polities caught between the two.

The main tool of projecting power is the carrier, which need not be large. Earthforce pilots fly winged fighters that can enter atmosphere, practical on Earth and Venus. Jovian forces favor humanoid combat machines that would be useless in air but symbolize the honor they prize. These choices are as much about identity as engineering.

Laws of war places limits on violence. Attacking a ship or habitat without offering a chance to surrender is considered a war crime. Sneak attacks are condemned, though desperation and piracy have seen them practiced. A surrendered ship cannot self-destruct, but a crew that arms their vessel to explode and then abandons it may surrender freely. Once taken, a ship is given over to the attacker with its cargo, but the personal possessions of crew and passengers are inviolate. Captives employed by enemy polities may be imprisoned; neutrals are supposed to be released. These rules are bent in practice, but they frame the language of legitimacy and reputation.

Pirates exist, and often claim to be their own ship-polities in deep space or to belong to a polity that commissioned them as privateers. They will often declare the opening of hostilities just before demanding surrender or attacking, a ritual mocked by victims but vital to framing their action as pseudo-legal. Without such gestures, they risk being branded as terrorists. Private attacks on ships or habitats without political sanction are classed as terrorism and invite extreme sanction. Still, locals find other ways to plunder ships under their jurisdiction: protection rackets dominate in the inner system, privateers roam the Belt, and in Jovian space the line blurs with local lords who claim feudal rights.

Security & Law Enforcement

In space, Senate Law rules supreme. It is very bare-bones. Crews are expected to divert course and even take risks to save lives, but an abandoned ship, or one whose crew has accepted rescue, is then free to be salvaged. Salvage law is fiercely debated, and disputes over spoils often fuel feuds for years.

Law in habitats is very local, and so is enforcement. Each polity polices its own charter, often through citizen posses, guild enforcers, corporate security, or neighborhood vigilantes. Anti-social behavior is not tolerated in space; the margin for error is too narrow. Within their jurisdiction, local authorities can do almost anything. The exceptions are “crimes against humanity,” “terrorism,” and cases accepted by the Tribunal of Accord; in these cases Earthforce has the right to intercede. The Tribunal is widely seen as slow and political, but its rulings are respected to avoid escalation.

The reach of local law is limited, and criminals often slip away by crossing jurisdictional boundaries. Bounties fill the gap. After a court declaration, space law and many polities authorize bounty-hunters to make arrests. In some places this is a respected trade, in others barely a step above outlawry. Poor relations or the low reputation of the issuing polity can make a bounty unenforceable, and politics often decides whether an arrest is honored.

Economy

• Services: you can go small, local, cheap, and risky or expensive, large, and safe. Skills are important here; can you estimate risks and judge if what you are told is the truth?

Food & Culture

Abundance with taste gaps.

• Hydroponic staples; luxe agri belts; vat proteins with terroir branding.
• Festival foods tied to storm shelters, first-burn anniversaries, arrival days. == Sports & Games == Where pride lives.
• Spinball (by radius); hull races; micro-g grapples; wing regattas for Angel crews.
• Heavy-lift meets for Kobold clans; freefall parkour for Lemure crews.
• Ocean courses for Melusine in high-pressure arenas. == Crime & Shadow Markets == Where scarcity bites.
• Air/water skimming, credential forgeries, med-gene bootlegging.
• Wreck runs that “forget” to declare survivors; storm-time score settling. == Technology Norms == Ubiquitous, but not magical.
• AI as tool, not sovereign; audit trails mandatory in most ports.
• Medtech: reversible first, inheritable last; lineages licensed, not owned.
• Suit culture: personalization heavy; loaner stigma. == Timekeeping & Calendars == When is now?
• Station clocks by charter; convoy time by flagship; local sols on Mars.
• Storm clocks override all; every culture recognizes the all-clear.

Specific Customs

Besides these general norms, there are customs specific to various situations.

Storm Time

All across Sol space, post-Fall communities have adapted to recurring solar storms. Magnetic shields and heavy water tanks blunt the danger, but intense events still drive whole populations into mass shelters. This shared ordeal has produced a distinctive cultural event known simply as Storm Time.

Storm Time carries taboos and rituals that vary by station yet share common elements. At the signal — usually blue beacons or a two-tone siren — work, recreation, even sleep stop, and life shifts into Storm Shift. Families, strangers, and rivals crowd into shelter halls where normal distinctions blur. Class barriers soften, rules are set aside, and local law often grants a storm-time amnesty for minor offenses. The unspoken rule is absolute discretion: what happens in storm-time stays in storm-time.

Customs have flourished in this suspended space. Communal playlists and low amber lights create calm; storm kitchens distribute simple meals; children’s story circles carry traditions forward. In some places, shelters become clandestine meeting halls or spontaneous festivals, with music, drinking, and matchmaking — a brief ritual outside of ordinary time that lets off steam and keeps communities intact. The Quiet After — the silence that follows an all-clear — is observed everywhere as people return to their usual lives, without speaking of what happened in storm-time.

First Burn Feast

When a ship, station, or convoy makes its first significant burn, the community gathers for a feast before acceleration begins. Passengers and crew share dishes from their home habitats, weaving a temporary family across backgrounds. Leftovers are ritually sealed in a vacuum jar and jettisoned as “food for the void” — in practice on a crash trajectory, so the offering will not linger as debris.

The Feast is not limited to a ship’s maiden voyage. Any significant change — a new captain, route, or refit — may call for it, giving old vessels many “firsts” over their lives.

Regrav Festival

When a community cycles back into gravity after long micro-g, they hold a communal “regrav dance” — awkward, stumbling, joyous. Some stations have professional musicians who compose special low-gravity marches for the occasion.

Quiet Cycle

Once a year, certain habs dim lights and enforce a 24-hour silence to “listen to the hull.” Families spend it telling stories in whispers or tracing constellations through viewports.

First Harvest Parade

When hydroponics beds yield their first full crop, a procession carries baskets through the promenades. A few leaves or grains are burned, boiled, or floated out the airlock as an offering to “feed the void before it feeds on us.”

Drift Day

Memorial day for those lost to the void; people float paper lanterns, holographic candles, or even tiny sealed bubbles of air released through locks.

Spinball Cup

A System-wide sport tradition: children and young players mimic the pro leagues with improvised balls in airlocks and corridors. The start of the season is celebrated like a holiday in some places.

Ancestor Roll Call

In Confucian-leaning habs, once a year the full citizen rolls are read aloud (sometimes taking hours), honoring both the living and the dead stored in genetic archives.

All-Clear Carnival

Some stations pair the end of storm season with a wild carnival, explicitly breaking storm-time’s taboos: bright lights, loud music, noisy processions — a cultural “reset” before things quiet again.