Source GM Core pg. 96
Source GM Core pg. 94
Urban environments include open city spaces and buildings as well as the interiors of constructed environments and structures, including climate-controlled satellite cities, orbital stations, and starship interiors. The building information in this section also applies to ruins and constructed dungeons. Depending on their construction and location, cities might be vulnerable to many sorts of disasters, especially fires and floods, while the interior of starships and space stations are more likely to be vulnerable to decompression and power outages.
Urban environments in the Starfall Galaxy range from Inner Sphere ecumenopolises and orbital arcologies to cramped starship decks, asteroid warrens, and half‑collapsed megastructures in the Outer Sphere and Frontier. Doors, walls, catwalks, crowds, elevators, and maintenance tunnels are more than geometry—they are class markers, security lines, and firebreaks between guild turf, corporate concessions, and black‑market corridors.
Airlocks- Airlocks seal the climate-controlled environment inside a satellite or starship from the vacuum outside.
Catwalks- Catwalks are walkways that cross over maintenance tunnels and warehouses or run alongside wider corridors.
Crowds Crowded thoroughfares and similar areas are difficult terrain, or greater difficult terrain if an area is truly packed with people.
Elevators Elevators are common in space stations, large starships, and buildings. Typically an enclosed chamber or flat platform, elevators move up and down a vertical shaft via technology or magic at the push of a button or other simple command.
Maintenance Tunnels-Maintenance tunnels are generally located below floors or inside the walls of large constructed structures and starships.
Rooftops- Rooftops make for memorable ambushes, chase scenes, infiltrations, and running fights.
Security- Across the galaxy, countless nations, planets, and galactic governments are protected by military forces. Most settlements have peacekeeping or law enforcement agencies whose agents and officers work in shifts to protect the settlement at all hours.
Sewers- Sewers are generally 10 feet or more below street level and are equipped with ladders or other means to ascend and descend.
Streets- Most settlements have streets that were largely established organically as the settlement grew.
Walls Well-built structures have exterior walls of steel, concrete, brick, or stonemasonry. Smaller, lower-quality, or temporary structures might have wooden or plastic walls.
In the Inner Sphere, a city might be an entire planet wrapped in ferrocrete, foamglass, and transparent aluminum towers, stacked so deep that some residents never see a natural sky. On the Frontier, a "city" might be a kilometer of tunnel bored through an asteroid, held together by scavenged nanocarbon struts, flickering grav‑plates, and the faith that the hull will last one more Yom. Between those extremes float hollowed‑out worldships, orbital refineries, and station complexes where streets are corridors, plazas are cargo bays, and every maintenance hatch is a rumor of escape or ambush.
Fire and flood still threaten surface megacities, but the greatest urban terrors in Starfall are decompression, power loss, and structural failure—one bad hit or Rift surge, and a thriving deck becomes hard vacuum.