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The Moon

Some Basic Moon Facts

Paradise Lua is located at the North Pole of the Moon, where the constant sunlight and Paradise Lua’s vast solar farms work together to power the Moon colony. While the plex panels protecting the solar panels from meteorite strikes need to be replaced frequently, the solar farms are extremely effective and produce more than enough power for Paradise Lua’s many operations.

Paradise Lua involves itself quite aggressively in lunar raking and mining, as rare Earth metals like gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and tungsten are plentiful in the asteroids constantly striking the Moon’s surface.

Oxygen and water mined from the lunar soil are vital to the continued operation of the facility.

Paradise Lua itself is located in a large, deep crater, initially made by detonating a large hydrogen bomb on the surface. The crater is covered by an enormous, well-armored cap, kilometers long. Each of the craters is covered by enormous, well-armored caps, and the bulk of Paradise Lua is located beneath these caps.

Some parts of Paradise Lua are encased in fully-pressurized domes, giving a sense of “outside”, inside. Other parts are just pressurized buildings.

Area

The Circumference of Paradise Lua is about 40km long, the Radius about 6km.

Paradise Lua’s Rings

Paradise Lua is divided into four rings:

  • Joyeuse Division - The outermost ring, the ports, the police, the military-industrial complex - and, of course, The Daybreak Institute.
  • Krater Valley - Most common people live in Krater, it’s where the apartment blocks are.
  • Florin Division - The financial district, parliament. Government and management.
  • Nadir Division - The innermost ring and center to the deep mine at the center of Paradise Lua.

Arrival at Paradise Lua

Trade and commercial transit between Paradise Lua and Earth are slow, and fairly rare.

Players will arrive at Airlock, Docks & EVAs in the Joyeuse Division.

Going Outside Will Kill You

The tl;dr of this is that “going on to the moon without an EVA suit is a very bad idea and will cause your player characters to die very quickly”.

Depressurization without an EVA Suit is bad. Unlike what you might have seen in science fiction media, though, it will not cause the players’ blood to boil or their faces to explode. Human tissue is strong enough to keep the air that’s in - in. Surface liquid will boil off, though, which is bad. It’s not great for the eyes.

Nope, mooned humans just die for the regular reason that humans without access to air die: they suffocate.

  • Rapid depressurization creates a Minor Injury: Blinded after 30 seconds.
  • No air creates a Critical Injury (“suffocation”) every 30 seconds.
  • Okay, so: let’s imagine you have a source of air. Managing the pressure of that air in such a way as not to die is a subject of more than a little detail. Modeling that in detail is going to be frustrating, so let’s short form it:
  • If players have a way to manage pressurized air, the next problem is severe radiation, which will give them the Major Injory: Disease (“radiation poisoning”) after 1 hour.
  • Temperature is the next problem. Good news/bad news: even though the temperature is very dangerous, there’s not a lot of medium to do stuff with the players’ heat: the moon’s exosphere has basically no pressure, so even though the temperatures are wild (-120°C, +120°C), the players’ temperature will shift relatively slowly. However, in the sunlight, players will slowly roast (nowhere for solar heat to go), and outside of it, players will slowly freeze. After 6 hours of uninterrupted light or dark, give players a Critical Injury (“thermal problems”).

Living in a Material World

The lunar regolith is rich in iron deposits, and one of Paradise Lua’s earliest operational industries was a steel foundry. If you’re not sure what an object on the moon is made out of: if it came from Earth, it’s cheap, lightweight plastic. If it came from the Moon: it’s probably made out of steel, painted with something to help it resist corrosion.

EVA Suits

If you go outside in an EVA Suit, most of the “Going Outside Will Kill You” problems are… handled.

EVA Suits manage air, temperature, block radiation, provide a water tank for hydration: but, an EVA suit only carries enough air and water to supply these functions for about 4 hours of Moon Adventure.

You might expect EVA suits to look like your traditional, bulky, 1960’s Space Suit, but the design is actually quite different. First of all, the EVA Suits are an order of magnitude cheaper. Paradise Lua is significantly less concerned with human safety than NASA was (and technology has come quite a way), and as a result they have managed to produce suits that are much less bulky, cumbersome, and expensive.

One of the major differences in design is that, on the Moon, most threats - and by threats I mean “radiation” and “tiny, deadly rocks” - tend to come from above, so the bulk of the EVA suit’s shielding is on top, provided by a flexible lead-lined reflective poncho and a solid wide-brimmed steel helmet. The weight of these things is less of a concern than you might think: they would weigh dozens of pounds on Earth, but on the Moon they just feel like a heavy coat and hat.

Air supply is provided via compressed tanks worn on a backpack, under the armored poncho. The backpack also holds a liter of potable water. Hanging off of the backpack is a cable connected to a little readout with air supply information. (To determine if your player can understand the readout, draw an Easy SCI check.)

The only part of the EVA suit that’s pressurized is the helmet: it’s sealed off at the chin, under the ear, and the rest of the suit is simply exposed to the elements.

Inside the poncho the suit itself is something similar to a neoprene wetsuit. The wetsuit is mostly not exposed to the elements, thanks to the poncho, so it mostly serves to compress and protect the body.

Past that, there are lightly armored gloves and boots (to protect the hands and feet from radiation damage). The gloves can be removed for brief periods if users need fine motor control.

Slim, hyper-absorbent, disposable adult diapers are provided alongside EVA suits. The broad guideline among EVA users is “hold it in unless things are critical, no deuces under any circumstances”. Please do not go to extra trouble to model this for players.

EVA Vehicles

EVA Suits can also be paired up with EVA Vehicles, which can resupply some of the suit’s supply with a larger, rolling tank. Vehicle-paired EVA adventures can go much longer than EVA Suit ones, with Moontrikes extending the trip’s viability to 8 hours, and Moonvans to 24 hours (past which “sleep, bathroom, and hunger issues” start to get so pressing that while longer trips might be possible, they’re unwise.) Trips longer than that require a fully pressurized, self-contained rolling Moontanker (of which only one has ever been built) which essentially provides a fully pressurized micro-moonbase on the go, with its own airlocks and EVA Suits.