WORGAV

Principalities and Powers · 23rd Century Intervention

Book 3: Universe and Game Theory

Game physics, gravitic power, fusion, and jump

Originally written by Jeffrey J. Kempton · Actualized 2026

PART I: GAME PHYSICS

Canon note: This book supersedes all prior Worgav propulsion material. The EPOLA / electron-positron-lattice 'grip-field' drive and the dark-matter ramjet are retired and non-canon. The G-Drive (gravitic, reacting against ambient mass-energy density) and the Jump Drive are the sole propulsion canon. Earlier relativistic flip-and-burn travel, the 10 G / 6 G-pod acceleration regime, and D-³He/p-B11 'low-neutron' fusion are likewise superseded by the G-Drive envelope (~2 g practical ceiling) and D-D / D-T fusion described herein.

This appendix provides the mathematical and cosmological foundations underlying the Worgav probability system. GMs familiar with real-world physics will recognize how the NPD10 model is grounded in observable physical law.

A.1 Overview — Thuum and Spirit Matter

Champions perform feats constrained by both physical and spiritual laws. For inert objects, outcomes are entirely predictable — the deterministic result of dead matter. But Champions are alive, adaptive, and intelligent. A Champion can alter course, adjust, and even adhere to a target mid-flight. This capacity for intelligent, real-time correction is called Thuum.

Thuum is defined as the total effective will-force of a Champion to command-and-control the nodes of a domain:

Thuum = Belief (¥) × Mantra (id) / second

This mirrors the mechanical definition of power (force × velocity) and anchors spiritual mechanics in familiar physical intuition.

The Mantra behaves as a complex state: Ψ = A + Bj, where A is the real (physical) component and B is the imaginary (spiritual) complement projected through node alignment. The Faith Score quantifies how effectively the Champion's current state aligns both components.

A.2 Cosmological Framework

The War Gods universe is built on cardinal matter — matter defined by four equal poles: real positive, real negative, imaginary positive, and imaginary negative mass. In the beginning, there was nothing. Then the Word declared "I Am," and existence began. Cardinal matter coalesced into a void without size or form; light followed, and charged particles formed the first elementals.

Reality is defined as any person, place, or thing that can be observed. When multiple observers become aware of one another, they form a domain. There are 12 domains, organized into four cardinal domains:

White — positive spirit matter

Black — negative spirit matter

Prime Material — real matter

Shadow — negative matter (contains Earth, Fire, Air, Water; plus the Fifth Element, Ethereal Matter, and Astral Matter)

The probability-mode success equation originates at coordinates (0, 0), representing grey matter: the iris of the all-seeing eye.

A.3 Physical Laws

Newton's Laws of Motion

First Law (Inertia): Objects at rest remain at rest; objects in motion remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force.

Second Law (F = ma): Force equals mass times acceleration. Equivalently, the rate of change of momentum.

Third Law (Action-Reaction): For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Law of Universal Gravitation

Every particle attracts every other particle with a gravitational force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

First Law of Thermodynamics — Conservation of Energy

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. All Champion feats are bounded by this law.

Maxwell's Equations

Gauss's Law for Electricity: ∇·E = ρ/ε₀ — electric field divergence is proportional to local charge density.

Gauss's Law for Magnetism: ∇·B = 0 — no magnetic monopoles; field lines always form closed loops.

Faraday's Law of Induction: ∇×E = −∂B/∂t — a changing magnetic field induces a circulating electric field.

Ampère-Maxwell Law: ∇×B = μ₀J + μ₀ε₀ ∂E/∂t — both electric current and a changing electric field generate magnetic fields.

Planck's Law

Describes the spectral density of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body at temperature T. Key consequence for game physics: energy is emitted in discrete quanta (E = hν), not continuously. This principle underlies the NPD10's quantized outcome system — probability does not flow continuously but snaps between defined states.

Spectral Radiance: B(ν,T) = (2hν³/c²) × 1/(e^(hν/kT) − 1)

A.4 Area of Effect Hazards and Damage — Game Physics for Hostile Environments

This chapter defines a layered model of environmental threat scaling—from psychological suppression to full physical destruction—tied together by unified physics calculations for damage, survival, and recovery across all entity types (biotic and synthetic).

Non-Lethal Disorientation and Sensory Suppression

Focuses on non-lethal hazards like sensory overload, confusion, and fear.

Typical sources: flash-bangs, bright lights, loud noise, slippery surfaces, jagged terrain, crowds, smoke, thunder, machinery vibration, and psychic or magical illusions (e.g., fog, doppelgangers, fairy fire).

Effects include:

Tactical range reduction by 10–90% for sentient beings (e.g. androids, clones, sophonts).

Willpower or sensor suppression by 10–50% for drones and cybernetic units.

Disorientation is additive to real damage in calculating the mortality roll factor:

Players cannot die from disorientation alone unless total real body damage exceeds body mass.

Battle metrics for measuring control and recovery:

Disorientation = (E + P)

Concentrate = (E + P + C)

Overcome = (E + P + C + L)

NPD10 Fate Roll outcomes:

F = fear/faint (lose momentum, -1 on next round)

‘-’ = total momentum loss, unable to act until recovery check

H = successful recovery; regain clarity, +1 momentum bonus

M = hype state, +2 momentum bonus

Momentum: The cumulative bonus or penalty to succeed in any action based on previous success or failure. The absolute value of momentum causes 1 point of fatigue damage per round. The only way to stop momentum fatigue is to break away from combat and take a 1-minute break to calm down.

Momentum causes 1Semi-Lethal Real Shock and Fire Suppression

Combines real physical damage with suppression or confusion effects.

Recovery takes hours, and death by shock is possible without treatment.

Examples include:

Riot control tools (rubber bullets, tear gas, fire hoses)

High-voltage stun weapons

Explosive suppression (non-lethal blasts, snares, sonic bursts)

Magical or psychological debuffs (sleep, paralysis, laughter, charm).

Lethal Exclusion / Hazard Zones

Represents full lethal environments combining real, fear, and shock damage.

Examples:

Battlefield conditions — live fire, artillery, explosives, small arms suppression

Environmental hazards — toxic gas, radiation, vacuum, uncontrolled fire

High-energy weapons — particle beams, directed energy, RPG strikes.

Health Physics and Body Damage

Four main sources of body damage:

Daily wear or biological stress

Environmental hazards

Becoming a hazard (e.g., your gear explodes)

Combat wounds

Fragility Ratio defines how mass relates to structural integrity:

Living tissue: 1 g damage = 1 kg body damage point → ratio 1000:1

Everyday tech (circuits, vehicles): 100:1

Industrial structures: 10:1

Hardened fortifications/tanks: 1:1

Damage survival formula:

Base mode multipliers:

Glass: 10

Normal materials: 15

Strong materials: 20

Living beings: determined by Will to Survive

Resistance rolls:

Mortality skill: (E + L)

Fatigue: (E + P)

A.5 The NPD10 Probability System (Technical)

The deterministic die score for success is:

BM 28.5 is the equilibrium point — average human normal. Below this threshold, failure rates rise sharply. Above it, reliability increases toward near-certainty at BM 56–57.

Low f (≤ 1): Fields overlap — actions enter Contested Mode and immediate opposition governs the outcome. High f (>> 1): Fields separate — actions follow the Universal Factor Probability Equation, decaying proportionally to 1/f².

Illustrative Case: Can a knight on horseback dodge a bullet? Only if the bullet's trajectory lies within the knight's active node range, where his Faith Score — combining reflex, awareness, and will — still sustains coherence against the attack's scaling factor.

Every victory and failure reshapes the nodal lattice. Champions who learn to hear their own resonance can alter the rhythm itself — touching the border where physics becomes faith, and probability turns to destiny.

The formula for resolving a Champion's actions in contested or non-contested ability and skill maps out a mode strip

Success Die roll NPD10 Snake Method is given below:

NPD1

The Snake Algorithm: Rerolled N value divided by 10, 100, 100, etc..

Rerolled D+10, 20, 30,40, et…

Where ‘f’ = non-contested normalized tactical range, ‘n’ is the number of champion control nodes, see table 2.3 to the Champion on the command-and-control tree. The more nodes you control, the less your bonus or greater your penaltyNode(n)= (1:+10, 2:+5, 3: +0, 4:-5, 5:-10, 6:-15, 7:-20)

"The dice do not lie — they echo."

— Archivist Senn of the Second Node

PART II: GRAVITIC POWER & PROPULSION

One core fictional grant underlies all Worgav starship physics: a G-source that makes a bounded region behave gravitationally as though mass sat beneath it, reacting against ambient mass-energy density. A second, acknowledged grant — the jump drive — is the sole exception. Everything else is real physics paid for in full.

2.1 The Master Equation

Drive power scales linearly with ship mass and acceleration, divided by efficiency η = 10⁻² N/W. P_drive = (M × a) ÷ η. A frigate reference (5,000 t) sized so a 1-g burn draws 40% of output needs a 12.3 GW plant; deck gravity draws ~1 MW near a planet.

2.2 Gravity Wells and the Density Floor

Drive purchase scales with local mass-energy density. A galactic background (including dark matter) sets a permanent floor, so authority never reaches zero. Stars and planets are sharp density spikes; crossover from full authority to the floor-crawl sits ~2.2 AU from a sun-like star.

Deck gravity and hover cars use the same G-source, so gravity is cheap near mass and dear in the dark — gravitics is inherently a planetary and inner-system technology.

PART III: FUSION & FUEL

The reactor runs deuterium fusion — the real "hydrogen from water" burn (not proton-proton, which no reactor can run). Fuel is consumed in grams per day; the water reserve exists for cooling, thrust, and jump reactant, not to feed fusion.

3.1 Two Burns

3.2 Why Lithium Is a Steady-State Consumable

Each D-T fusion consumes one tritium and yields one neutron; that neutron must breed a new tritium in a lithium-6 blanket, but neutron losses put a bare blanket below break-even. Neutron multipliers (Li-7, beryllium) and Li-6 enrichment reach a breeding ratio of only ~1.05–1.15, and breeding consumes the blanket — a frigate burns ~11 kg/day of enriched Li-6, ~46 days per 500 kg. Lithium is a combat consumable, not a one-time igniter.

3.3 The Shield Stack

Of D-T's 17.6 MeV, the neutron carries 80% (14.1 MeV) and the alpha 20%. The neutron energy becomes heat — the origin of the waste-heat budget. Shielding runs fast → thermal → absorbed: water jacket (moderates and cools), steel/aluminum (scatter, stop gammas), then 25 mm B-10 boron (absorbs thermalized neutrons). Order matters: thermalize before absorbing.

3.4 Fuel Sourcing

You cannot scoop a star: it has no tritium and is actively lithium-poor. The frontier fuel run is a gas-giant atmosphere skim (deuterium, helium-3) plus asteroid lithium mining. Tritium is never found in nature — always bred from lithium. No-starport explorers are self-sufficient forever for cruise and jump on water alone; only combat and long-jump endurance is gated by mined lithium.

PART IV: HULL, THERMAL & JUMP

4.1 The Thermal Size Ceiling

Square-cube law: heat scales with volume, radiating skin with area. Above a certain size a ship cannot radiate a sustained 1-g burn — small ships sprint, large ships burst-and-drift. The glowing stern is a ship too big to cool passively, venting heat as thrust.

4.2 Hull Architecture

A mild carbon steel (A-36) pressure vessel forms the weldable, field-repairable airtight shell; high-tech lightweight reinforcement with expansion joints carries flight loads. A dorsal I-beam spine runs fore-to-aft with radiating ribs. Small craft land on four legs (gear rated to static weight × SF 2, cushioned by the G-drive until shutdown). Large ships lift off their construction site once and are void-only thereafter, reaching planets via carried landing craft.

4.3 Jump Range and Tech Level

Jump range is tech-gated; fuel scales with distance (5% hull mass per parsec), so a full tank buys ~8 pc total at any rating. Safe travel is charted-point to charted-point; the network is a graph of surveyed jump points, and the deadly first jump to any new system is what the navigator-scouts exist to make.

PART V: JOHNSON’S ARMOR EQUATIONS

The armor and terminal-ballistics model. It governs whether a projectile perforates armor, how much energy passes behind it, and how that energy becomes game damage. All personal-combat and starship-weapon resolution reduces to this family.

5.1 Johnson’s Damage Number Φ

The dimensionless penetration parameter that classifies an impact regime. Φ = ρv² ÷ σ, where ρ is projectile density, v is impact velocity, and σ is the target’s flow/yield strength.

Worked example: a steel slug at 929 m/s against 3.5 GPa RHA gives Φ ≈ 1.94 — plastic/transitional, the regime of most personal-scale kinetic weapons.

5.2 Ballistic Limit & Residual Velocity (Recht–Ipson)

The ballistic-limit velocity v_bl is the minimum impact velocity that perforates a plate; below it there is no exit. Above it, the residual (behind-armor) velocity is:

v_r = a · (v_iᵖ − v_blᵖ)^(1/p), where a = m ÷ (m + m_plug) and p ≈ 2.

Worked example: v_i = 929 m/s, v_bl = 400 m/s, plug factor a = 0.747 → v_r ≈ 627 m/s behind the plate. That residual velocity drives the behind-armor damage roll.

5.3 Areal-Density Mass Efficiency (barrier equivalence)

Any barrier converts to an equivalent steel thickness by mass efficiency: t_material = t_RHA · (ρ_RHA · k_RHA) ÷ (ρ_material · k_material), with k the material’s efficiency coefficient relative to RHA steel (k_RHA = 1).

⚑ PLACEHOLDER — extend k-factor table with the full 13-material reference (earthen berm, sandbags, wood, gravel, high-hardness steel, ceramic-composite, HEA) and per-material caveats from the barrier-equivalence workbook.

5.4 Tate Eroding-Rod Penetration (high Φ)

For long-rod penetrators above the hydrodynamic transition, penetration follows the modified-Bernoulli interface condition: ½ρ_p(v − u)² + Y = ½ρ_t u² + R_t, integrated over rod erosion until the rod is consumed or arrested. This is the armor-defeat model for dense kinetic penetrators (the tungsten-class round); softer/faster slugs (aluminum-class) instead use the energy-deposition/ablation model.

5.5 The Universal Damage Equation

Energy behind armor converts to game damage by the equation of record: D(E) = (E ÷ 100)(1 − e^(−E/1000)), with E in joules and D in grams of universally damaged tissue. Marginal cost approaches 100 J/g; the τ = 1000 J knee gives a shallow sub-100 J/g cost dip at low energies.

5.6 The Three-Channel Energy Ledger

Every impact partitions its energy into three channels, and the split determines the damage type:

Universal convention: 1 cc of destroyed volume = 1 universal damage point. Human tissue splits each cc as 1 permanent + 999 shock. Shock is restored over a recovery period; permanent damage is not. Small impulses (1–10 J) still register temporary shock; flexible armors reflect part of the blunt impulse.

PART VI: WEAPONS PHYSICS

What actually threatens a starship, derived from first principles. The dominant arm is the gravity gun; lasers, kinetics, missiles, and nuclear devices each have a narrow physical niche.

6.1 The Gravity Gun (Blaster)

A gravity gun projects a G-gradient down the barrel so the inert slug "falls" up the bore at extreme acceleration. Because the field reacts against ambient mass-energy density rather than the gun, the weapon is recoilless; muzzle velocity is v = √(2aL) for bore acceleration a over barrel length L. Power scales with local density, so blasters are strong in a gravity well and weaker in deep void (~sqrt(10) ≈ 3× slower at the galactic floor).

The recoilless property is the decisive feature: a light fighter mounts a heavy gun without being thrown off-aim, and a handheld weapon fires a 2 km/s slug with no kick. Slugs are inert — damage resolves through the Johnson Φ model (Part V).

6.2 Lasers

Diffraction spreads the beam: spot diameter ≈ 2.44 λR ÷ D, so a 1 µm laser through a 1 m mirror makes a 2.4 cm spot at 10 km but a 2.4 m spot at 1000 km, and intensity falls with spot area. Lasers are short-to-mid range. Water fog (3 MJ/kg ablation) is a hard counter, and metal armor conducts heat away faster than a man-portable laser deposits it — so lasers are combat-ineffective against ships with fog and against armored troops. Their real roles are civilian use, dazzle, and sensor-blinding.

6.3 Kinetics

A 1 kg slug at 8 km/s carries 32 MJ and defeats any hull plate it strikes. No fog or sand stops a kinetic slug — mass beats ablation — so kinetics beat the defense that stops lasers. The limit is hitting: at range, light-lag and flight time let a target dodge. Effective at short range and high closing velocity.

6.4 Missiles and Nuclear Devices in Vacuum

A nuclear warhead has no blast wave in vacuum; it kills by X-ray and thermal flush, which obey inverse-square brutally — a 1 kt device is lethal to a hull at ~100 m, merely ablates armor at ~1 km, and is survivable at ~10 km. A bare nuke is therefore a short-range weapon unless built as a shaped or bomb-pumped-laser design. A missile's value is that it closes the range a laser cannot reach and a railgun cannot guarantee.

6.5 Detection and the Heat Economy

A burning ship's radiators glow at ~1200 K against a 3 K background, so thermal detection is nearly unbeatable while maneuvering. Running cold (radiators stowed, on steam-dump) is stealthier but spends the combat clock — stealth is thermal endurance. Comms and targeting are light-lag limited; a jammer is a beacon that reveals its own bearing.