EDIT: BAH. There's two cool pictures links further down the thread. The first link is a dull diagram. Unfortunately, the first cool picture link won't cooperate when I try to make it an [img ] [ /img]. The second one is too big a picture (and my new desktop wallpaper) that requires sideways scrolling...and stretches out all the text to require sideways scrolling. So you're just going to have to click on the links for pics. Most of the text is dull discussion; you'll get the point if you just read the paragraphs in the "Description" section at the top.
I don't have fluff per se for this setting. This is more like a description of a very unusual environment ready to be customized to your game. You can fill in your own society.
I liberally borrowed from Larry Niven's "Integral Trees" and "Smoke Ring" novels, and the cover art of Michael Whelan.
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DESCRIPTION
Gas toruses are nothing new. There are several in the solar system, with the largest being Saturn's Titan gas torus. A gas torus is a band of gas bled off an object orbiting a larger one, forming an approximately donut-shaped belt around the larger body. Io and Europa also have gas toruses. These belts of gas around Jupiter and Saturn are, basically, a hard vacuum. The molecules of gas are contained by magnetic fields and the source of the gas. It is important (for later parts of this text) to understand that these gas molecules are actually in orbit around the larger body - they're not just a random cloud floating there.
Not all bodies are so benign as Jupiter and Saturn.
A gas giant captured into a close orbit around a neutron star is in for a brutal life. Close to the Roche limit -- the limit where the larger body completely shreds the smaller (you find gas giant ring systems inside of Roche limits) -- the gas giant's atmosphere is teased away from the planet and into a gas torus around the neutron star. This relatively compact torus and the voluminous source of gas is enough to form a very, very dense gas torus.
Given a nearby "friendly" star to provide some UV and energy for photosynthesis, the conditions may be about right for life. Down in the heart of the gas torus, where the surrounding mass of air actually helps maintain pressure, there's a warm 'n fuzzy band of temperature, humidity, and lighting. Given a billion years for the neutron star to learn to behave itself and the original hydrogen-methane-water-ammonia gas torus to be converted by life into an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere...well, you'd have Larry Niven's "Smoke Ring."
(Ignore the dimensions in this link:)
http://members.optushome.com.au/guests/NSFPhys05.gif
This "smoke ring" is a band of habitable, breathable air within the much larger gas torus. It circles a neutron star (of 1.4 solar masses) at a distance of 4 million kilometers, making it 8 million kilometers in diameter. The approximately circular cross-section of this ring is a good 20000km across and has been described as appearing to be a "christmas wreath" floating in a faint, larger haze (the uninhabitable "gas torus"). The gas torus's inner edge is about 3.5 million kilometers from the neutron star, while its outer edge is a good 5.5 million kilometers out. Beyond the fringes of the gas torus is a hell of radiation trapped by the neutron star's magnetic fields. The gas torus is lit with faint ribbons of auroras as the radiation plows through the increasingly thick air molecules.
DAY AND NIGHT
The "smoke ring" orbits the neutron star ("Spark") once every 32 hours. With the "sun," the nearby yellow "friendly star" being a good 250 million kilometers away, this gives a day/night period that humans can adapt to reasonably well. There are extended, hazy twilights and dawns (~ hours each) as the bulk of the gas torus blocks off most of the sunlight; only about a quarter of the "day" (actually, this is technically a "year" since the smoke ring is completing an orbit around the neutron star) is marked by decent sunlight levels. At night, those observers near the fringes of the "smoke ring" can see the blue sprays of radiation above and below the poles of the neutron star.
A BIG LUMP
The stripped core of the gas giant that formed the gas torus orbits in the "smoke ring." It has about Earth's mass and is a sulfurous, rocky, volcanic lump hidden in a clot of storm clouds some 15000km across. The gas giant, Oculus, looks like a giant eye when seen from outside the smoke ring as wind streams draw clouds "up stream" and "down stream" of the giant.
SMALLER LUMPS
60 degrees ahead and behind Oculus (about 4 million kilometers around the smoke ring in either direction) are clumps of "stuff" at higher densities than the rest of the Smoke Ring. These egg-shaped volumes are the L4 and L5 points of Oculus and Spark, and material tends to congregate at these points. Spark and Oculus discourage them from lumping into new solid bodies, but at the core of these points, it is perpetually twilight or darkness due to the accumulation of haze, dust, water, etc. The L4 and L5 points are the "jungles" of the "smoke ring."
IT'S LIFE JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT
http://members.fortunecity.com/tirpetz/ ... elan2.html
The "Smoke Ring's" life forms are understandably aerial. Some life has amphibious or aboreal adaptations, but almost all animals are capable of flight. Quadrilateral symmetry dominates, though larger animals tend to have two major fins/wings for propulsion, with steering fins/wings set perpendicular to those. None of the critters are particularly smart yet; none approach the intelligence of terrestrial avians or mammals. Of course, while they're slow (no spelling bee winners among them), they're not necessarily slow, if you know what I mean. The dominant aerial predators compare well with sharks for voracity and effectiveness. While critters look like funny aerial fish, plants tend to form spheres with leaves on the outside.
INTEGRAL TREES
Long objects in orbit tend to orient with their long axis pointing at the ground. If you put a quarter staff or long rope in Earth orbit, it would end up pointing at Earth's core; the rope would stretch out into a line pointing at Earth's core. Some satellites have used this "gravity gradient stabilization" technique.
These long objects orbit at the orbital speed of their center of mass. However, remember a basic axiom of orbital mechanics: lower orbits are fast, higher orbits are slow. Because long objects remain oriented pointing at the center of the object their orbit, their low end is moving too slow for its orbital altitude (it's moving at the speed of the higher, slower center of mass). Likewise, the high end is moving too fast for its orbital altitude (which is moving at the speed of the lower, faster center of mass). This means that at the ends of the long object are not perfectly in free fall. They are, in fact, straining to swing into different orbits. A long enough object will start picking up noticeable G-forces; a 1000km tether in Earth orbit might experience lunar-like "gravity" at its ends. These orienting effects are much stronger near the orbited body; they drop off with the cube of the distance (2x further away, 1/8th the stabilizing effect).
In Niven's "Integral Trees" and "Smoke Ring," there were some big (~50km) trees, pictured below. These trees were oriented to point directly at the neutron star, like spokes around a wagon wheel's hub. They were an integral (heh) part of the stories, and gave a surface in an otherwise weightless environment. They had low G forces at their far ends, a little above lunar gravity, tapering down to zero-G at their centers. Because of stiff winds at their ends (see "Well, Make It Better," below), the trees had their ends warped into a curve. Overall, they looked like integration signs, a slight S-curve.
However, Niven put his "smoke ring" in a much tighter orbit than my "smoke ring," 26000km above his neutron star. While his neutron star was about 1/3 the mass of mine (too small to actually be a neutron star), the increase in mass only approximately triples the tidal effects. By putting my Smoke Ring 153 times further out, I've reduced the ability of trees to generate "gravity" by about 3.6 million times (153 cubed). All told: tidal effects are about 1.2 million times weaker in my "Smoke Ring." Thus, integral trees are unlikely in my Smoke Ring.
WELL, MAKE IT BETTER
No, you're not getting integral trees in my smoke ring. I picked the 4 million kilometer orbit for my "Smoke Ring" for a number of reasons.
First, the Roche Limit. I mentioned this earlier. It's the point where a large object's gravity shreds another object. Basically, its where the gravity of the big object gets more powerful than the gravity of the small object, so the big object can start pulling parts off the smaller object. This is how gas giants form their rings - a moon gets too close and is pulled apart into little chunks. A 20km diameter neutron star with 1.4x Sol's mass (like mine) has a Roche Limit of about 2 million kilometers. At 2 million kilometers or closer (to say nothing of 26000km), Oculus would not form a gas torus, it would form an "accretion disk" (or temporary super ring system) that would eventually pile onto "Spark."
Second, the basics of orbital mechanics again. The closer you are to an object, the higher orbital velocity is. At the space shuttle's orbital altitude above Earth, orbital velocity dictates a 90-minute orbit. At 22,500 miles altitude, orbital velocity has dropped to the point it takes 24 hours to circle Earth. At 250,000 miles (lunar orbit), it takes about 29 days to circle Earth. Orbits around the neutron star will be much faster at a given altitude than over Earth, but the basic pattern remains the same: closer = faster, further = slower.
My "Smoke Ring" is 20,000km thick. Its inner edge is 3,990,000km from Spark while its outer edge is 4,010,000km from Spark. This is not a big difference compared to a 4 million kilometer average altitude, but orbital velocities DO differ, and (like I said earlier) the gas torus/smoke ring IS in orbit around Spark.
The inner edge of the smoke ring orbits Spark 682m/s (1525mph) faster than the outer edge. This difference is more pronounced the closer you get to Spark (or Earth). If the "smoke ring" was only 250,000 miles from Spark (the first location I tried), a 2000km-thick smoke ring would see a difference of about 3400m/s from inner edge to outer edge - 7600mph. Every mile of altitude from the inner edge would see winds that were 6.3mph slower, which starts adding up when you have 1200 miles of habitable air. There's a lot of stratification, turbulence, etc. Thus, I picked the more distant orbit where these effects were minimized - there might only be a few major weather bands.
However, such a distant smoke ring would not have the integral trees.
ELEMENTAL PLANE OF AIR
What you end up with is, basically, a scientific version of DnD's elemental plane of air. From the center of the smoke ring, you have 10000km of free sailing in either direction. Lake-sized globs of water and puffballs of greenery dot the sky, while puffs and layers of cloud lace between them.
http://solaris.surgut.ru/gallery/data/m ... tegral.jpg
OCCUPANTS
You're welcome to stick whatever sort of inhabitants into the "Smoke Ring" you want. Niven put mutineers in his "Smoke Ring," a crew who abandoned their ship and its dictatorial AI.
For Battletech, ideal occupants are scientists, or descendents of them. A neutron star is worth examining anytime, and the unique "smoke ring" would give astronomers and xenobiologists the thrill of their stodgy lives. During the Star League (or other times) you could see the Smoke Ring becoming an exotic resort, or even being colonized. Perhaps the occupants are refugees from the Succession Wars or even the classic mutineers.
NOT GOING ANYWHERE ANYTIME SOON
However, if you want the occupants to interact with the rest of the BT universe, they do have several strikes against them.
First, the neutron star's escape velocity. The good news is, the smoke ring is already in orbit around Spark, so there's no need to launch from the ground to orbit. Moving into vacuum can be accomplished by using the abundant air of the smoke ring, and the thin gas of the gas torus as reaction mass (i.e., you can use jet engines, propellors, etc. to change orbit). It would be easiest to brake into a lower orbit inside the gas torus, in the relatively hard vacuum between the gas torus and Spark, but you could also climb into a higher orbit. The bad news is, you're not getting out of orbit (up to escape velocity) without very advanced (normal BT) rocketry.
See, orbital velocity around Spark (at the inner edge of the gas torus) is 231 kilometers per second. Escape velocity equals orbital velocity times the square root of 2: 327km/s. Orbital velocity over Earth (at low altitudes) is 7.8km/s, while escape velocity is 11.3km/s. One notes that the realistic (but advanced) fusion spacecraft of GURPS Transhuman Space rarely have enough fuel to change their speed by 100km/s, just enough to escape. Realistic chemical rocketry is screwed. Even fission rockets aren't up to the task. Ion rockets would take decades.
The second problem is lack of materials. The Smoke Ring is very deficient in metals and materials fit for building industry with. I suppose there could be some captured asteroids lurking in the cores of the "Jungles," but any civilization in the Smoke Ring is going to be starved of materials to build something so simple as steam engines, to say nothing of spaceships, or spaceships fit to escape the Smoke Ring.
So if your Smoke Ring is inhabited by people who lack foreign-built dropships...they're probably stuck for a long, long time.
HEALTH OF THE INHABITANTS
Niven's Smoke Ring inhabitants benefitted from the "gravity" on integral trees to help their bones develop correctly. Even so, they were slimmer and taller than Earth-bound humans (such humans looked like squat "dwarves" to them), had fairly nimble toes, and their bones were moderately adapted to long periods in zero-G. (Though in at least one case, an individual with a broken leg bone who did not spend time on a tree had his leg bone heal with a big knot of bone - the bone didn't know when to stop growing around the break.)
If you put long-term inhabitants in a Battletech "Smoke Ring," I urge some genetic engineering on the part of the original colonists, something to keep bones strong in zero-G. Biologists have just noted Black Bears do not loose bone mass during their hibernation (unlike humans on bed rest and other hibernating animals), which points to a fairly near future "calcium hack" to give humans similar resistance to bone loss.
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Now: Becouse the ends of the trees where moving at a diffrent speed then the local atmosphere (all tree ends thus have a breeze,) they therefore generated gravite? That is, they where a source of gravity, so that `wood is 
