Spacer Education

Dossier

There are not that many people in the solar system who go to school and train to be a spacer. In fact, being a spacer is more of a description of a birthright than an outright educational class. To be a spacer, simply live in space for a few decades. If you survive, congratulations, you're a spacer. If you don't make it, well no one's going to find your body because the voids of space are enormous and there are few reasons for others to go exploring them haphazardly. The Talents, Skills, and Knowledges spacers acquire are almost universally considered survivalist qualities. Spacers frequently have a make do or do without attitude, since the difference between life or death in outer space is often a matter of ingenuity and cunning, not book knowledge or adherence to abstract theories.

Simply put, spacers live on the fringes of society. Whether they are a small crew of men and women on a single-engine short-distance space freighter, or a stand-alone mining colony on an asteroid with only a numeric designation, spacers are a rough and tumble lot. They tend to have low cost and highly repetitive hobbies and they tend to form extremely loyal communities. After all, if the fight for survival is a day to day, you need to be able to depend on your mates with everything.

Unlike the other educational classes, there are no schools that formally teach spacer wisdom. The primary reason is that in the voids, literally thousands of emergency and survivalist scenarios can happen at a moment's notice and there is simply no way to plan for this sort of thing in a class room. Spacers learn by doing or by apprenticing their young from birth. It is not uncommon for a trip to the furthest reaches of the solar system (Neptune and beyond) to take 15 years or more (one way). A spacer who has done 3 or more trips to the deep voids and back to Earth may very well be pushing ninety years in age and have never once set foot on a rock that provided the experience of gravity. In many ways, this inability to function in gravity environments is the calling card of the spacer education, and a wide variety of insults have been developed by spacers to describe the way most gravity bound individuals lack "space-legs".

Sample Concepts

It is unlikely for a true spacer to focus on a particular skill set as their defining feature. Planet side, a person may spend a lifetime studying Bio-medicine and eventually call themselves a medical doctor, but spacer life has no real need for such formality. Spacer educated characters tend to take on jack-of-all-trades-esque qualities. Physically oriented concepts can include: space marine, deep space tour guide, asteroid-farmer, explorer, and bounty hunter. Socially inclined concepts tend to display roguish qualities and can include: space cowboy, alien negotiator, salvage business owner, space insurance adjudicator, and zero-gravity performers. Mentally based concepts gravitate towards practical hearth knowledges and include: ship medic, hands-on astrophysicist, navigators, alien researcher, and virtually any adventuring archetype where knowledge of the unexplored is the goal.

Common Spacer Breeds

• Cyborgs: 10% Cyborgs tend to be rare and short lived in the voids because they require a large amount of upkeep and natural resources that just aren't common in deep space.


• Mutants: 60% Mutants currently make up the bulk of the total Spacer work force, and that number is constantly growing due to cosmic radiation exposure that mutates most humans after a decade or two in outer space.


• Constructs: 25% Bio-engineered humans make up the second largest sector of Spacer demographics. Such people are usually genetically designed to fulfil a specific ship-board task.


• True Human: 5% Unmutated humans have every reason not to travel in space to protect their "viable genetic status" from solar radiation. When True Humans do become spacers it is usually the result of refugee displacement or a resonse to a one-in-a-lifetime business venture.

Spacer Stereotypes of Other Educations:

Administrative--Always let your best talker deal with Administrative types because they are the ones who will rubber stamp any legal documents you need to travel anywhere. They can be a pain in the ass when they want to strike a hard bargain so watch yourself when they start wheeling and dealing and don't ever sell yourself short.

Arcane--While we may be behind the times when it comes to the latest technology, some of these guys are still trying to perfect fire and the wheel. Unless you want something that's handmade and low quality they really don't have much to trade with us, and their customs are so unpredictable that working with them is usually a waste of time.

Gangsta--In many ways a Gangsta is a spacer who never learned how to stretch their space legs. Like us they have to live by their wits, but most of them have a decidedly malicious streak making them hard to handle. They annoy the crap out of Administrative and Military types which is fine by us, but their frequent use of Spacer middle men for illegal activities gives us a bad name.

Liberal Arts--Art, beauty, and class? We ain't got no real need for it in space. You don't need a PhD in acting to amuse a crew, and you certainly don't need a media hound on a tin can in the middle of outer space. What's gonna happen that needs reporting? You already know who's sleeping with who, and who's not agreeing with the captain. Total waste of good brainpower if you ask me.

Military--These guys are the arms and guns of the Administratives. They are the ones that will board your ship and search your bunk looking for "contraband"; which is just a legal-ese way to say, "stuff we want to steal since we don't feel like paying for it.” Still, these guys are trained to survive and fight in zero-gravity situations so don't ever underestimate them if it comes to blows.

Professional--Besides a good medic, these guys are just about as worthless as a Liberal Arts major but with all the annoying traits that make Administrative types so infuriating. They live with a sense of well-trained entitlement and then expect you to be their beck-and-call servants when they pay to travel with you. Screw'em.

Technologist--These guys are definitely cool. They always come up with the most useful gadgets and they are almost as good at keeping a ship going on duct tape and hope as we are. Still, they have no sense of adventure, and they rarely know how to handle themselves in an emergency. If you can get one to grow some space legs and travel with ya, they’ll make it worth your while.

Core Spacer Abilities

Every character that takes the Spacer education class receives one free level in the following abilities at character creation. These levels represents that your character has achieved a high school level of competence in core fields of study for their upbringing.

Talents:

• Alertness
• Awareness
• Empathy
• Persuasion
• Scrounge

Skills:

• Agrotech
• Helmsman
• Mech Operations
• Survival
• Zero-gravity Operations

Knowledges:

• Bio-medicine
• Computer Science
• Cosmology
• Physics
• Xenobiology