Travel, Money, Education, and Language of the 'Verse

[Cortex Mainframe]

This information is for those who would like to have a quick reference for the general mechanics of the 'Verse. Finding Serenity is more narrative driven, so these are like the Pirate Code. "More of a guideline."

Travel Time

Time is a tricky business in space. It's even trickier when one is travelling between planets.  For what can be referred to as "Standard Time", the time that is used to mark News Feed releases, the Alliance adopts the time of its Parliament, located on Londinum.  This is the same as Earth's timing (gotta love terraforming) a 24 hr day and 365 days a year.  When travelling, people most often adopt the time on the planet from which they are departing. When they arrive on a new planet, they adopt that time.

Because time varies greatly on each planet, one might find themselves experiencing the same Wednesday of the same week on three different planets. When entering a planet, the date and time is provided by a low-frequency transmitter which is maintained by local authorities on that planet and records all the timezones of that planet. The date and time will be viewable from any communication console on the ship.

Finding Serenity has a very fluid timing system.  The timing of whats happening on one ship might not necessarily reflect the timing that's happening on another ship.  The administrators will move the general date of the 'Verse on occasionally but that does not mean that the ships suddenly have to jump X number of days to suddenly match up with the current time of the 'Verse.  The ships will just continue on as normal and without interference. 

Firefly RPG Travel Time Calculator

Money

While getting a job and getting paid is the focus of most ships on our site we actually do not pay that much attention to how much things actually cost. We do fall with Credits being paperless money and the official traceable Core Currency.  Platinum, Gold and Silver are the coins and the hard currency of the 'Verse they are a lot harder to trace.  So if you are dealing in the underbelly side of things or are out in the Rim you are more than likely to be dealing in these currencies.

However we do keep with the standard Serenity/Firefly RPG conversion of Gold/Platinum/Credits/Dollars. 

Language

During the transference from Earth that Was to this new 'Verse humans spent over a generation in Ark ships.  Therefore languages got muddled and merged.  Its unusual to find people in the 'Verse these days that don't speak at least English and/or Chinese.  A lot of the old languages survived as well though its unlikely that you'll find someone that only speaks one of these languages and does not know either English and/or Chinese. Culture and language have both continued to evolve, with economics becoming a primary dividing line. It is easy to distinguish a person from the central planets from one born and raised out on the Rim. Slang and linguistic shortcuts are used on the frontier, though some have filtered back into the refined speech usually found on worlds of the Core.

Cussin'

Human beings have happily fouled the gift of language with whatever inventive, vindictive, and insulting expressions they can imagine. While the traditional English swear words have survived intact, a few additional crude words have been added to the common man's vocabulary.

The basics include Gorram or Gorramit ("Run! It's the gorram law!"), Rutting or Ruttin' ("It's gettin' too ruttin' hot in here."), and Humped ("He's got a gun on us. We're humped!"). Cursing in Chinese is considered more imaginative and expressive, and most everyone does it--at least when his mother has left the room.

Here are some valuable language resources, from Fighting' words, Rim Speech, and Cursin'!

Firefly Chinese Slang PDF

Firefly Dictionary

Education

Becoming a Qualified Doctor

Doctors/Medics are one of the spots available on the ships but there is always the question of what it takes to become a doctor.  From research the admin have discovered and agree that in order to become a qualified licensed doctor a character will have needed to complete the following. 

5 - 6 year degree/study (This is either a 5 year complete medical school degree or a 2 year undergraduate degree and then 4 years of Medical School)

2 Year Intern-ship/Junior Doctorate (This is practical on the job training)
There is then a final exam to gain the medical license.

Therefore it takes about 8 years to become a fully qualified and licensed doctor and it is unlikely that this will be shortened even if the character is a genius.  A child prodigy (very rarely accepted) might start sooner but would not be able to do the whole thing in three or four years.  Any character that has not completed the above will be classed as a Medic and not a licensed Doctor.

Becoming a Qualified Pilot

The amount of time it takes to become a Qualified pilot can vary as its all about flight hours and such.  The times set forward for Finding Serenity are based on what it takes to become a commercial pilot in today's society. First step would to get a private pilot license.  This would qualify you to fly small ships and single crew ships that would take non-paying passengers.  To obtain this you are looking at approximately 300 hours of flying time, 100 of which is with an instructor.  Once you have reached this and passed a theory test (you are looking at about 120 - 150 hours of study) you would get the Private Pilot license.

To be able to fly larger spaceships you would be looking at something more like a commercial pilot License.  With this you are looking at an additional 750 - 800 hours of flight time, 1/2 of which would be as a Solo pilot and 300 hours in theory. 

If you are looking to get a job with an official Guild or an Alliance/Core corporation then you can expect to have to have this license already in hand.  Of course flying with some of the more independent and less fussy/more desperate ships means that they might not be so picky about this piece of paper as long as you don' go crashin' the ship.

Even larger ships like cruise liners, large transport ship companies and large non military government ships would generally require pilots with an additional license.  You would be looking to have at least 7500 hours flight time under you belt before even being considered for a license like this.

Of course having served as a pilot in the military means that these licenses are easier converted based on the time served in the Military, especially for military transport pilots.