The Light is jealous of her priestesses and punishes the World when new acolytes are not given unto her in the green of each new cycle. The Light is the life of the World, housed in the Holy Cathedral. Without the Light, the World would founder and fall into the Abyss, where souls are forever snuffed out. But the priestesses and acolytes are just one part of the divine plan. The angels who are blessed to live in the World are jubilant to serve, and they do so in many ways. The biomancers keep food on the tables, the wiredancers keep the glows alive, and the datasingers appease fluctuations in the warms and cools—everyone has a part to play because all the angels are blessed. The angels satisfy the holy requirements of the Light so the World shall continue forever and ever without end, amen.
At least, that’s how the average “angel of the World” sees things inside the starship named Heinlein. But when the ship left Earth a thousand years ago with state-of-the-art antimatter engines boosting it toward Alpha Centauri, the original crew was well aware that they traveled aboard a generation ship. The Heinlein was designed to survive more than a thousand-year journey through space by replacing crew over time with new generations of people who would be trained to be as competent as the previous generation. But all the failsafes failed, because Starship Heinlein is seeded from dozens of similar stories where that’s what happens.
The World consists of a few main parts. These include two rotating wheels where artificial gravity is maintained (the World Above and World Below), as well as the command module connected along the hub of rotation where the bridge, maintenance and engineering sections, and antimatter engine are housed (the Holy Cathedral, which houses the Light).
The World Above is a maintained artificial environment whose inhabitable area was originally designed like a Japanese garden. The environment is a blend of natural and parklike precision. Although the angels have retained some semblance of the knowledge required to keep a starship operational (which they consider rituals of worship, not science), blights and other malfunctions have turned some parts of the World Above into truly wild locations.
The angels (that is, humans) in the World Above hum joyous tunes as they go about their days. Most believe they are working in harmony with the Light, which is purpose enough for anyone. Angels may serve as priestesses (though these are usually found in the Holy Cathedral) or in a host of other positions required to keep a starship active, despite the ritualized and supernatural names those positions now possess. Those who manipulate genes and cause fruit to ripen according to needs are biomancers, those who fix malfunctions and restore proper illumination are wiredancers, and so on.
Typical angel: level 2, pleasant social interaction as level 4; Armor 2 (angelic vestment artifact)
Angels each have a revelation, which is proof of their divine heritage. A revelation gives an angel limited power over the surrounding environment, including the ability to change the temperature and lighting conditions, access food, and call for transport. Each revelation is a ring-shaped drone that provides owners with basic access to certain functions provided by the starship. Revelations speak with a unique synthesized voice and have limited abilities to keep their appointed angels safe from harm.
Revelation: level 3, Speed defense as level 5 due to tiny size, understanding and manipulating ship systems as level 6; flies a long distance each round; short-range laser attack inflicts 4 points of damage
Most of the Holy Cathedral is off limits even to the priestesses, including the bridge, the cryobay where some of the original crew is still maintained in stasis, and the shuttle bay. The parts normally accessed by the priestesses allow them to control the interface with the Light (the antimatter engine) and the Food of God (the magnetic storage where antimatter fuel is stored). Although the tasks are mixed up with a lot of ritual, the priestesses keep the antimatter engine running and, generally speaking, in good health.
The Light is the literal glow the engine makes when in a thrusting phase, though a residual glow persists even when coasting. The illumination is indirectly visible from both the World Above and the World Below. The priestesses teach that when the Food of God is fed to the Light, contact with Her numinous flesh causes an explosion, which emits pure holy exultation that scalds the wicked but purifies those who accept the Light into their hearts.
The angels of the World who serve the Light take a vow of service in which they are expected to give up their former lives and become holy extensions of the Light’s will. Each priestess learns rituals for worship of the Light, which (though muddled and mostly irrelevant to the needs of an antimatter engine) accomplish enough to keep the engines in working order. Priestesses are also tasked with dealing with those who spout the Heresy, as well as dealing with contaminations that sometimes make their way out of the World Below. Thus, in addition to their revelation companions, each priestess also carries a staff of prayer that provides additional functions, including a method to cleanse heretics and demons with searing pulses of holy glory.
Priestess: level 5, pleasant social interaction as level 4; Armor 2 (angelic vestment artifact); long-range electrical attack with staff of prayer inflicts 6 points of damage
Every so often, someone shows up claiming that the Light is an artifact of mortal construction, that angels are just animals called humans, and that the World is a craft that has lost its way. These heretics say that Heinlein wasn’t the first prophet of the Light, but rather is the name of the craft everyone lives on, named for a long-dead writer of fictions. The reason the Heresy won’t die, despite how harshly each new heretic is expunged, has to do with the cryobay. The original builders of the Heinlein included a failsafe mechanism by arranging for a few hundred crew members to be frozen in cryosleep and thawed out every few decades to make certain that the mission was proceeding accordingly. Unfortunately, each crew member thawed by the automatic systems becomes a hunted criminal—branded as a servant of the Demon Lord—and ejected into the Abyss (space), burned alive in the glory of the Light (the engines), or sent to fend for himself in the nightmarish World Below (the other spinning habitat).
Although still spinning and thus creating artificial gravity, the World Below is mostly dark and cold. An alien seed from a midspace collision with a rogue planetesimal infected the crew of the Heinlein, which is probably when things first got so confused. In order to save the mission, the commander of that lost era ordered one entire habitat wheel quarantined. Residual populations inhabit the World Below, but the disease kills most of those it infects and turns the rest into homicidal maniacs that regular angels refer to as demons.
The same alien seed also germinates into thick, hallucination-inducing vegetation that now overgrows a good part of the planned parklike environment of the World Below, called the Forest of Perfidy. Portions of the vegetation, called sinroots, sometimes animate and hunt heretics and demons living in the World Below.
Angels who venture into the World Below must face demons, sinroots, and recalcitrant revelations. Many of the blessings (functions) that revelations normally provide to angels fail in the World Below.
These shambling, not-quite-humanoid beings resemble trees. They are sentient, mobile, aggressive creatures that use barbed roots to feed on blood. When active, they shed faint light in darkness. A sinroot’s seeds are highly hallucinogenic, and ingesting or having one of the barbed seeds lodged in the skin induces distressing visions of torture, ecstasy, homicidal thoughts, and everything in between. While the visions last, a victim must consciously attempt to wrench her mind back to reality each round with a successful Intellect-based roll.
Sinroot: level 4; Armor 1; moves an immediate distance each round; long-range exploding pod attack deals 4 points of damage and inflicts maddening visions until those points are restored
People who survive contact with sinroots occasionally come away with horrible disfigurations and harmful mutations to go with their homicidal tendencies. This makes them an even easier target of angel hate and disgust. But that doesn’t hurt the feelings of a “demon”—when one smells an angel, a heretic, or a hurt demon, it descends with primal bloodlust. The only thing demons have going for them is that the mobile extensions of the Forest of Perfidy do not target them.
Demon (human): level 2, unarmed attacks as level 4
The current homicidal maniac who claims control of the others has a colorful title. The Demon Lord also has a few pet sinroots that serve him at all times. Although he is just as murderous as his subjects, the Demon Lord retains more of his original intelligence from when he was brought out of stasis, branded as a heretic, and banished to the World Below. If he ever put that knowledge to use, he could be one of the greatest threats facing Starship Heinlein.
Demon Lord: level 5, knowledge of starship systems as level 6; Armor 2
Level: 1d6
Form: Articulated bodysuit with deployable helm
Effect: This armor is designed to allow a human to survive comfortably in a vacuum or poisonous atmosphere for up to three days at a time. It is light armor but grants +1 to Armor in addition to the 1 point that light armor usually provides. The suit’s protection also applies to damage that often isn’t reduced by typical Armor, such as heat or cold damage (but not Intellect damage).
Depletion: — (After three days of continuous use, or if the GM rules that the vestment has sustained enough damage that its atmospheric and environmental protections cease, the suit is no longer spaceworthy but still functions as armor.)
Level: 1d6+1
Form: Quarterstaff of synthetic wood and circuitry
Effect: The staff has three functions.
Cleanse: When used to attack, the tip of the staff releases a bolt of searing electricity at a target within long range, inflicting damage equal to the artifact level.
Transport: The staff levitates the user up or down to a short distance each round, or horizontally to an immediate distance, for up to ten minutes per use.
Analyze: Each round spent analyzing a creature or object within short range yields one pertinent piece of information about it, such as its level, toxicity, or other noteworthy features.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20