Reading through a bit of Gatecrasher for fun this morning, I had a bit of a revelation as I was thinking up character ideas. I'm just going to hash out my ideas here, but if someone takes this and runs with it for a game, let me know how it goes! Obviously, gatecrashing is a tremendous scientific opportunity, and there's probably a ton of very fierce competition between different scientific communities for gate time to specific places. But another thought occurred to me: what kind of schools are there? Xenoarcheology, xenobotany, xenobiology, all of those are new studies, and arguably each specific world becomes its own field, but even discounting that..."residency" end result, how viciously competitive must the various university exoworld studies programs be for funding, prestige, and just trying to learn this new field faster? Especially since so many of the experts in the field are, well, in the field, and communication is going to be very difficult if not outright impossible due to security, gatecrasher corp rules, and the nature of the gates themselves. Exoworld communities do tend to have a media presence, yes, so recorded lectures and field notes, possibly even semi-regular forks of the field personnel, would be available where they're not censored, but there's still a lot of obstacles in the way. Might just be me and my preference for the argonauts as a player "conspiracy" over Firewall, but now that I thought of that, it's not leaving my mind. It's a turbulent field and no one really knows the right way to go about it beyond extrapolating from Terran archaeology and making up the rest as they go along. (As an aside, imagine the emotional curve that archaeologists went through between the Fall and the discovery of the Pandora gate, on top of everything else. Going from being certain their field is about to go extinct to suddenly being the darlings of scientific industrial endeavors). And anyone who's gone to college or university for a research-based field knows how savage departmental rivalries get. I suppose the Fissure gate would become a new Mecca for a lot of universities, especially if the trend of universities to lean politically left hasn't changed, but they're going to be very, very much in demand by all the other gatecrashing corps. There's only so much gatetime a single gate can promise, and the BYO nature is limiting to universities (who also have to pay the costs of getting their stuff there and maintain good relations with the autonomists). Having four other gates drastically increases the options available. Lots of intrigue potential there, with wheeling and dealing, schools weighing hypercorp claim laws which would limit the school's ability to publish or experiment, but provide them with a lot more resources and financing as well as opportunities they just wouldn't have. There's also the tremendous risk to the universities, since their reputations are quite on the line with such bedfellows. To say nothing of any scandals that happen beyond the gate. Probably not the most action-packed campaign (though since combat/survival training is standard for any proper gatecrasher, exoworld studies majors would probably have to pass a minimum badass quotient) but I could see it doing a lot to flesh out the world for any version of the setting, and let the GM push their imagination to the limit. And pull in inspirations and homages to other settings freely. I personally am thinking of one of the supplements for Rogue Trader with a dozen or more bizarre worlds, and pondering converting those to Eclipse Phases' brand of weird science.