What's in Jumpspace?

[malek77]

I've only just got hold of CT, and I've got a rough idea of how things work - but little mention has been made of details regarding Jump space.

It mentions it may be called Jump space, hyper space or Tau space...and I know the theory of going into an alternate universe where Lightspeed isn't the limiting factor...but that doesn't quite seem to be the case in CT.

So, if you're in Jumpspace and look out the porthole, what do you see?

Could you go EVA in Jumpspace? Where are you if you get cut adrift? (Man overboard -> Man Overspace?)

Might you meet other ships in jumpspace, or never?

Is there anything 'in there'?

...or is this all an IMTU thing?

(Which I'm happy to hear about too!)

 

[flykiller]

it's an imtu thing.

'fact, it all is.

 

[Malenfant]

Officially, IIRC jumpspace is just a big grey expanse. You can't go EVA in jumpspace - you have to be within the protection of the jump grid around the ship. I think in the OTU there is one guy who survived getting caught in it at a hull breach, and he's gone bonkers.

But basically, yeah, it's an IMTU thing. Do whatever you like in it

 

[clementk]

JUMPIN' BUDDIES!

(translation: don't get exposed to j-space)

It's like something's there but you can't see it, or maybe just your mind can't process it, but don't stare at it too long regardless.

In Endeavor we have it being about 6' max IIRC off the ship's hull. Enough to crawl around outside the ship if you're careful but that's it.

The real answer of what lies in J-Space is...how much do you want to know and how much sanity are you wanting to risk?

-“hurtling and shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and the realms of matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time wherein Azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes.”

from The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft

Casey

 

[Andrew Boulton]

There was a similar thread a few months ago:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001055;p=1

 

[aramis]

MT had an "Official" answer of sorts...

J-space is essentially empty. Certain anomalies exist, but for all intents and purposes, when in jump, the universe ends 1m off the hull grid. (or was it 1.5m...)

Cross that line of death, and the GM can make up whatever cruel fates he sees fit...

IMTU, cross that gray line and you get expelled from jumpspace... in 1Kplank increments... as you cross the boundary... whcih varies about + or - 1mm.

The mind numbing effect is from J-space radiations, wich become random photons when they forcibly decay inside the jump bubble, giving hints of pattern and color...

The psychological damage thereof is not (mostly) from any actual hazards, but from staring into a psychodelic picture... I've seen people induced into hypnogogic states and psychotic states from random noise patterns... as the mind tries to find, fails to find, and then makes up patterns in the white noise. Put get within the particle decay range, and you get random photons appearing inside your brain. Not healthy.

IMTU, the guy "Exposed" wasn't actually immersed... he just happened to be near a piece of hull that remained intacct when the ship exploded. (My players TRACKED HIM DOWN!!!! His imput allowed them to move from theory 10.23 to theory 11.1)

 

[virushi]

The above answers are from people who have deluded themselves into denying the true horror of jumpspace.

It is a little-acknowledged fact that jumpspace is actually a pan-dimensional nexus connecting together all the washing machines in the universe. Whenever someone operates a washing machine it briefly opens a small dimensional rift into jumpspace, just large enough for a single sock to pass through. Most people are so heavily into denial about this phenomenon that they convince themselves the sock has simply been mislaid.

So the answer to the question "What is in jumpspace?" is really very simple:

"My God.... it's full of socks!"

 

[mike wightman]

The limited info on the hyperspace exposure guy can be found in The TAS News bulletins in Challenge 26 and 27.
The story never went any further (if it was ever intented to is anyone's guess) because CT TAS News was dropped for MT TAS News.

 

[mike wightman]

Addendum: in Challenge 36 there is a story from Terra/Sol dated 1118 concerning a reporter for the Phoenix Sun News organization who has just got out of Imperial internment after six years of imprisonment.
His crime???
Investigating hyperspace sickness

This investigation lead him to a "ring of high tech Imperial research".

Before he could publish his work he was murdered by a bomb, which SolSec believed may be the result of Imperial Intelligence.

A draft of his work entitled "The Hyperspace Web" was released by his publisher after his death.

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by malek77:
So, if you're in Jumpspace and look out the porthole, what do you see?

Cthulhu ... or something from that mythos?

Might you meet other ships in jumpspace, or never?

IIRC there was a mention of something in one of the Challenge Magazine Halloween specials. I used it for inspiration IMTU and had the crew interact with a ghost ship. Really gave one of the players the willies too.

... But its important to get the atmosphere just right for that to work.

Regards PLST

 

[mike wightman]

The T4 adventures Long way home and Gateway include descriptions of jumpspace and some encounters along the way

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Some of my favorites are:

1. Void kraken - yeah, stole this idea too

2. Banished ancient evils - i.e. Cthulhu and his brain sucking minions (actually re-wrote the plot for 'Prince of Darkness' for one Halloween game)

3. Paranoid xenophobic races - bent on staying undiscovered and unmolested

4. Masoleum planetoid - from the great 'Crusade' episode

5. Lost home world of the Ancients

 

[signless]

After one memorable session of gaming, my players and I retired for brandy and cigars in the smoking lounge and began to speculate on the nature of jumpspace.
The leader of this intrepid band of players was working on his doctorate in physics, and more than likely the combination of our liquid refreshments and his all-too-recent attachment to reading bizarre Shinto texts led to the following speculations.

1. Jumpspace is a plane of existence on the quantum mechanical level. It is the playground of Schroedinger's Cat. It is the place where ALL possible futures are represented.

2. A ship, protected by its jump-bubble, is merely an object seeking a "resting" place. It rides the arrow of time forward to the place where it naturally "should" be amongst the possible futures. Once it gets there, it settles into a vibrational groove and rests there as its jump-bubble evaporates and releases it into normal space.

3. Protected by BOTH the jump-bubble, AND the integral shielding of the ship's hull, travellers are most often unaffected by their passage through this almost-metaphysical medium.

4. However, those few hardy souls intrepid (i.e. insane...) enough to dare, stand to witness a sight few sophonts have imagined by staring into the void of jumpspace.

This train of thought hadn't even left the station before I was napkin-backing a few handy rules. For any character exposed to jumpspace OUTSIDE the protection of the jump-bubble:

Automatic, irreversible insanity. The brain is bombarded with so much information the synapses simply short out. If the character is lucky, a swift death awaits. For those unfortunate to have their bodies survive, all that remains inside is a shattered mind.

For those who spend more than an hour looking into jumpspace from INSIDE the jump-bubble, but OUTSIDE the ship's hull, roll 1d6:

1-2 See above. The character has joined the ranks of the permanently vegetized.

3-4 The character experiences a mild headache followed by extreme drowsiness. Upon waking he/she begins to experience strange "whispering" noises, and sudden flashes of movement detected in the corners of the eyes. These symptoms happen at random intervals and will last for 1d6 days.

5. As above, but the symptoms do not fade with time, instead they grow worse. MUCH worse. Unless the character is successfully treated at a psionics institute, the hallucinations will drive them mad.

6. The character develops an immediate, splitting headache. After 1d6 rounds they will be unable to stand upright. After another 1d6 rounds they will be unable to see or hear. Unconsciousness follows in another 1d6 rounds. Upon waking, the characters feel refreshed and invigorated...for 1d6 rounds. Then, they begin to "see" and "hear" things...nothing that will lead them to the loony bin, but enough to cause problems, ESPECIALLY during times of stress or critical thinking. These characters are those whose latent psionic powers have been either awakened or modified by their exposure to jump-space.

For those who choose to view the abyss from a vantage point of (relative) safety, INSIDE the ship, roll 1d6

1-4 The characters develop massive headaches and nausea. Projectile vomiting is NOT fun inside a closed environment...neither is explosive diarrhea (don't EVEN ask how I know this...).

5. The characters wonder what all the fuss is about. It's just a freaky shade of JEEZUS CHRIST! What the HELL is THAT thing? GET IT OFF OF ME, GET IT OFF OF ME!!!!
This should last for about 1d6 rounds.

6. The characters begin to experience what appear at first to be imaginary sights and sounds at odd times. They "see" and "hear" things when they're alone or under stress. These are the characters who are developing the psionic abilities of clairaudience and clairvoyance. Their brains possess the ability to "resonate" with the quantum environment of jumpspace, and from this day forward will possess those gifts. Which, of course, necessitates a trip to the nearest psionics institute. Which of course shouldn't be a problem with a band of trustworthy, loyal, and close-knit friends as...hey...why are you staring at me like that?

Of course, it's all B.S....

...isn't it?

 

[Straybow]

For every hour staring into J-space roll 2d6.
2-11: You have just wasted 1 hour of your life. You will never get it back.
12: You have just wasted 59 minutes and 59 seconds of your life (see above). The one second that wasn't wasted you had a life-altering insight into the Meaning Life, the Universe, and Everything. Then you startle out of the near-sleep state and can't remember quite what that thought was...

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Straybow:
For every hour staring into J-space roll 2d6.
1-11: You have just wasted 1 hour of your life. You will never get it back.

Been there done that, at least once. A friend and I spent a good part of an evening staring at the test pattern on the tv and humming back to the hum. Nothing else. It was a boring evening at university and nothing (obviously) was on tv and neither of us could sleep. I blame drugs. We didn't have any

Anyway after about 15 minutes the test pattern went off the air too No more pretty color bars and soothing hum to harmonize with

So I stared at the snow on the screen and listened to the hiss of the random noise, yep, you start to see things after a while, and hear things too. Kinda fun and kinda spooky, of course I put it down as research for my Psych 101 class

In the words of Hunter S. Thompson "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me..", well three out of four anyway, substitute staring at a snowy tv for an hour or more for the one I don't advocate...

Originally posted by Straybow:
12: You have just wasted 59 minutes and 59 seconds of your life (see above). The one second that wasn't wasted you had a life-altering insight into the Meaning Life, the Universe, and Everything. Then you startle out of the near-sleep state and can't remember quite what that thought was...

also btdt, didn't get the t-shirt

a couple times in fact, danged annoying

 

[jwdh71]

We had a breach in our hull during a jump in one game I played in. In the GM's TU the Jump grid was there to hold Jumpspace outside the hull, so when the hull was breached, it let some of Jumpspace inside the ship, as well as letting something that lived in Jumpspace in as well... Most of the PC's lived, and several of them were even sane afterwards (well...mostly).

 

[MrMorden]

I have come up with several descriptions of Jump Space over the years...here's one of my favorites:

Jump Space is essentially a manifestaion of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In Jump Space an object is effectively removed from the probability matrix that governs action, reaction, and the laws of physics as they are known.

In this "null probability space," the ship exists according to the uncertainty principle, just as that principle relates to measured energies of electrons, having no actual position, while simultaneously *possibly* having ANY position.

The jump computer's job is to bring the possibility (however remote) of the ship simply disappearing from one location and reappearing at the desired destination (in much the same way that particles sponaneously arise and disappear into the Zero Point Energy at the quantum scale), into line with *probability*. Once the probability becomes stable enough, it essentially becomes a certainty, and the computer collapses the uncertainty field and the ship simply "is" at the destination.

While in jump space, someone looking out a viewport would see something in line with the constantly changing probability of position. There would be a constantly changing starfield, with occasional flashes of nearby stars, galaxies, planets, and nebulae. Since these probabilities are essentially co-existent, the person would see all of them *simultaneously*. The brain cannot process that.

As far as what would happen to someone or something exiting the jump field in transit, it is unknown. Current Imperial theory is that the object would simple be expelled from Jump Space at essentially a random point in the Universe. Due to the nature of probability, there is a marginally greater liklihood of the object reappearing at a point closer to the jump entry point than farther, but in Universal scales such terms are relative. It should be noted that there is no verifiable case of an obect expelled from a jump field ever being recovered, so this is all just theory and speculation at this time.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

MrMorden, what book is that from? I know someone wrote with a Heisenberg drive....

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Sounds like the Infinite Improbability Drive to me...

 

[kafka47]

I have been toying with the idea of returning to writing the Ancients Sourcebook. What do people on the Board think of this idea:

The Ancients (ie. Droyne) were hyperspacial engineers. Therefore, far from being the first sentients to use Jumpspace, they were to first to domesticate it and create the Jump Routes that we know Jump Drives 1-6 before finding the way to superceed them. The analogy that I was thinking of was the creation of a highway/freeway/motorway whereby different lanes are created for different speeds. Other species have mastered hyperspace travel but less predictable results before the Droyne. The 3I is currently on the threshold of breaking the J-6 barrier for this reason but as they still predominantly think of JumpSpace as the landscape they are unable to see that it is merely a preordained route. If they think outside the box or weave, they may chance upon the true and darker nature of jumpspace...