A Study of Hummus - The Boring Stuff

The [goo aliens] currently have three homeworlds - too developed to be colonies - in a single solar system. Calcaei, a rocky planet with a moon that once so bright it competed with the system's star frequently. Weltra, a rocky planet with a stunningly complex set of rings, and Iu'husid, a thick-atmosphered ringed planet tilted on its side. Due to this, public clocks are usually in sets of three - they look very similar to Arc clock designs.

They seem to use floating point math a lot - that is, a number between 0 and 10 base 12, and an exponent. If this is common off the ship... is unknown.

The ship has three Counselors - Science (Grerbe), Harvesting, and Navigation. 

The Science counselor is responsible for the studies abord the ship. The Harvesting counselor is responsible for provisioning - asteroid mining for restocking, life support systems, and the recycling systems. The Navigation counselor Is responsible for the integrity of the ship and astronavigation. Navigation is the smallest group, and Havesting is the largest group, but crew can be resigned depending on needs and qualifications.

An order issued by a counselor can be overridden by the order of two counselors, which can be overridden by a vote of the crew. Grerbe's order kicking Ken'di out of Navigation was not overridden.

The [Ship Name] is a short hop jumper, a short hop being a light year or three, depending on space weather. 

A small probe is sent to the desired arrival point, about a week before a jump, to confirm the destination point is "safe". it then magnetically clears interstellar hydrogen that the ship could bump into when it warps. It's not 100% effective clearing the area - so this week is also used for repairs of the main ship as required. After the main ship jumps, the process is repeated. The last jump, next to a solar system, is the riskiest. Somthing recognizable as rockets then propel the ship to it's intended destination.

It took 38 hops to get to Earth's solar system. It's not claified if this was a base10 or base12 number.

Most of the crew was in 'sleeping pods' during this trip. Normally being rudced to minimal hydration would lead to major aches and headaches, but these pods render the occupant comatose - with some redundances, and more importantly, manual escape mechanisims if somthing goes wrong.

During a jump, when the ship is traveling faster than light, light is still going the same speed. That is, it's utterly dark. Profoundly dark. Hallucinate things you see in a cave dark. Sound still operates normally. So it's only well trained navigation crew that are awake for this, in rotating shifts.

Grerbe, insisting on privacy, had a pod away from the rest of the crew... and was distracted by her own thoughts during the emegency escape training.  She experienced a jump. Ken'di was the one that found out her state afterewards... and bore the brunt of the blame. As a counselor, Grerbe remained dedicated to the mission - but this experince allowed the failures to "snowball". She isn't the leader she could have been.

The ship itself has artifical gravity, but was retrofitted with two huge toruses for living and working space. These toruses aren't equipped with artifical gravity generators - rather, the ship spins along it's length to throw it occupants on the toruses' outer walls. Like gravity throws you on the dirt. Except they can stop the ships spinning should the need arise.