Thursday, July 5, 2007

New type of character for FTL:2448: "Le Ractua"

First off, I had to learn a little Loglan to come up with this name. "Le ractua" literally means "the traveling worker", and can be interpreted as a "migrant worker". Ractuas (lo ractua, "lo" is how you say some thing is many or plural.) are the stellar migrant workers of FTL:2448. I admit that I got this idea from the wonderful online comic Dicebox by Jenn Manley Lee. A story of two migrant workers plying the starlanes.

When a seasonal business needs a "grupa turka" (a bunch of workers) they will hire this unique breed of migrant worker. Lo ractua are a group of workers that take working passage on ships, or ride in cryosleep to the next world that has "ro fu corperpli" or many temp jobs.

Many colonies don't have the people to do all the jobs that are available or only occur at irregular times. The lo ractua fill that role. They travel from system to system, from fu corperpli to fu corperpli. They don't earn much, just enough to keep food in their stomach, and to pay for ice bed on the next trip. If they can wrangle a "le fu corperpli sea racketpi" or working passage, they will, as most dislike cryosleep.

There are generations of lo ractua wending their ways through ISCO space, after the next job and dry place to sleep. Many are in need of adequate health care, and most shy away from the authorities, as they don't trust the ICL or ISCO.

Third or fourth generation lo ractua speak nothing but Loglan, are slightly taller than grounders, and have connections everywhere, even on good ole mother Earth. Typically these lo ractua have a strong constitution and a stronger back, but may be missing minor body parts like fingers or other appendages. Normally, they travel either as complete family units, or as pairs, typically as a civil union couple, whether or not they actually are.

Some "lo ractua kulgru" (migrant worker clans) have been able to pool their money and buy a claptrap of a space ship, and then form one of the infamous kibbutz ships. Most of these ships have seen better days, hell, better centuries, and only by dint of constant repair and scavenging parts, do they even fly. If caught by a ICL patrol boat with nothing better to do, they are typically towed to the nearest planet and the ship impounded. This typically lasts until the kulgru can pool enough money to get the ship out of impound orbit and off they go again.

This is just the beginning for this concept. I plan to expand it some more.

3 comments:

Frederick Paul Kiesche III said...

Hey, is this thing on? No explorations of the FTL:2448 (does one put a gap in there or not?) since July????

Kedamono said...

Yes and no. I've been busy with other projects. Sorry Fred.

Frederick Paul Kiesche III said...

A year down the road...hope to see something new soon!