The Long Night

[GypsyComet]

Bear in mind that Long Night couldn't have been a complete power vacuum or the Aslan would have had nearly 1.5 millenia to conquer all of human space with no meaningful resistance.

The Vargr are the same, but with centuries head start relative to the Aslan. They were blunted and somewhat absorbed by the honey trap that would become Gashikan and the Julian states, while the Aslan were slower due to internal competition, a strong Solomani flank, and several other unencumbered directions to move in.

By comparison, the center of the two former Imperiums likely fractured along financial, cultural, and racial lines. Strong regional centers of the Vilani bureaux probably maintained small pockets around themselves, though none to rival Vland itself. The minor races with gumption (most notably the Suerrat, Geonee, Luriani, and likely a couple others) would have taken the opportunity or necessity to create their own territories. How long each of these would last as viable states is a different matter. 1700 years is a long time, and only Terra, Vland, and the Julians kept a reasonable structure for the whole time. No one else who jumped into a local empire at first was still a player by the end, or we would have heard about them. The warring states that eventually produced the Third Imperium were all late-comers, by the evidence provided.

 

[Whipsnade]

I see the Long Night as being partly Imperial Propoganda - Cleon wanted to portray the post-2I universe as having collapsed back to barbarism so he could spin the Third Imperium as bringing civilization and restoring the Imperium to its former glory.

And that, of course, is the actual answer to the "question" being asked here. The Long Night isn't impossibly illogical. It is, however, incomprehensible if you're unable adjust your perspective.

As with so many other things, there is what canon tells us and there is what canon shows us. What canon tells about the Long Night is little more than the Third Imperium's founding mythos: Cleon and the Imperium expanded into the howling dark wilderness bringing the light of civilization. What canon shows us is something else entirely.

• The early Imperium had opponents like the Chanestin and Antilles large enough to threaten Sylea itself.
• The post-RoM polity around Vland nearly doubled the size of the 3I when it joined.
• Polities in Daibei, Dark Nebula, and elsewhere were large and organized enough to stop Aslan expansion to trailing.
• The Imperium avoided expansion rimward for centuries because of the possible threat posed by polities like the Old Earth Union.
• The coreward provinces of the old Ziru Sirka contained enough large and organized polities to first resist 3I expansion and then coalesce into the Julian Protectorate.
• The pre-3I anti-Vargr Gashikan Empire reached a sector in size.

Those are just a few examples of what canon shows us about the Long Night. There were large, organized, starfaring polities within and beyond what would become the borders of the Third Imperium. What we're being shown isn't what we're being told.

Let me also remind everyone about the cultural oppression aspect of Ziru Sirka governance. To a greater or lesser extent, every minor race, human or not, was hammered into the same cultural mold and kept there for over a millennia. Although the boot on the neck of all those races was lifted somewhat with the advent of the Rule of Man, it was only when that polity disintegrated that the boot was gone.

The fall of the RoM would have triggered a renaissance among and within minor races. Those races would have been more or less free to rediscover and reorder their worlds, cultures, and lives. There would be an "inward turn" as those cultures and races focused on themselves and their local or regional concerns instead of the wider universe.

The Long Night isn't a failure on GDW's part. As autodidact historians they wisely copied actual history when fashioning their future history.

The failure is on our part. It's our failure to comprehend, to shift perspectives, to look beneath what we're told and instead examine what we're shown.

 

[aramis]

I've got an old Commodore 64 somewhere. Same timeframe as the Kaypro, but probably a different format.

So you're saying that if a world had to go backwards, that they would have to start over?

If we lose enough infrastructure, the only way forward is back.

And the needed man workable resources might not be man recoverable in a timely manner.

 

[mike wightman]

The reason I suggest it as a setting is because there are lots of small empires and yet not everything is known about the stuff "off the end of the map".
Characters can still come from a high TL civilisation but end up on the frontier up to all sorts of shenanigans.

The fall of the Third Imperium thanks to the Rebellion, the Hard Times which followed and finally the release of Virus probably had a much more catastrophic effect than the fall of the Rule of Man.

 

[Condottiere]

You need backward compatibility, like USB, and that only lasts as long as that interface appears useful.

Which is where language and the capacity to communicate knowledge comes along in a format that's longlasting and can be accessed.

 

[nobby-w]

The reason I suggest it as a setting is because there are lots of small empires and yet not everything is known about the stuff "off the end of the map".
Characters can still come from a high TL civilisation but end up on the frontier up to all sorts of shenanigans.
[ . . . ]

That's exactly what I like about the period. It's a large chunk of history where there is no single, dominant superpower. The fall of ROM setting also has an upper limit to the tech level of around TL12 or so with ambient tech in the TL10-11 range and plenty of worlds with developing TL4-6 fossil fuel economies. That makes starship designs quite fun¹ and sits in the sweet spot for stuff like Striker as well.

The campaign setting I built is set around the Daibei and Reavers Deep sectors², starting around 2780 AD, roughly 35 years after the banking crisis that caused the 2I to start falling apart. In this setting the local economy in the Daibei survived in relatively³ good condition due to its isolation, and has re-booted the local interstellar economy through a treaty establishing a local interstellar trade currency (new credits).

• The Daibei government is starting to fall apart, with Vilani separatist movements being the main driver of political unrest.⁴
• Drexilthar is home to a minor human race and is finally rising as a local economic power now the colonial boot is off the back of its neck (think something like a BRICS country). With a population of 2 billion or so, it is by far the largest single local economy in the Deep sector. Ilthari expats, originally drafted as colonial labour, make up a significant fraction of the population of the worlds in the subsector and nearby regions. Ilthari Mafia are a significant thing in the region.
• Caledon and the nearby worlds settled by Charles Stuart Scott et. al. are still a minor economic power but are aligned with the Daibei as they consider themselves to be primarily Terran ethnically and are suspicious of the Ilthari. To save money and distract the Ilthari and Aslan clans, the Daibei has transferred a significant body of naval assets to Caledon, but the Caledonians can't afford to run them any more than the Daibei can. There is a loose economic federation in the Caledon and Scotian Deep sectors but the Principality of Caledon won't be formally founded for another 1,000+ years.
• The other two major powers in the region are the Yerlyaruiwo and Khaukeairl clans, who have had jump tech for around 2-3 centuries and have had a presence in the rim/spinward sections of the Deep for about 150 years.
• The Saie are still around, although in smaller numbers. The civil war that destroyed their homeworld left some asteroid colonies in their main system along with a handful of breeding colonies⁵ on habitable worlds in the region.
• Most of the other worlds in the Deep are developing economies, and the region is showing its later-to-become-famous lack of rule-of-law due to the fact that nobody has the resources to run significant naval patrols in the region.

I decided to avoid filling the region with minor interstellar polities and left most of the worlds independent, precisely as this gives the region an uncivilised, frontier vibe. I'd argue that GDW would have actually been better off doing a fall-of-ROM setting like this than doing the Schism and Virus, but I wasn't there at the time so I can't really speak for MM et. al.

¹ At TL11-12 you really can't have your cake and eat it with starships in the way you can at TL15.
² Although not called the Reavers Deap as 'Reavers' is a term that won't be coined for another millennium or so.
³ 'Relatively' is relative. Good condition means 'Economy hasn't totally collapsed like the core.'
⁴ More conservative elements of Vilani society still regard the Terrans as a barbarian invading force occupying their homelands, just as the Russians regarded the Mongols in this way while they held the Golden Horde.
⁵ IMTU I gave the Saie a life cycle involving a parasitoid larval stage, something along the lines of Alien Xenomorphs or the Prawns from District 9. Naturally, humans would find this rather gross, giving a potential motivation for a subsequent genocidal war that finally wipes out the species and which might be glossed over in the official histories. By Cleon's time this would be ancient history, with the Saie having 'mysteriously' disappeared with no real record remaining of their existence. Perhaps some old media still exists, but it's long perished and nobody can read the format anyway.

 

[nobby-w]

[ . . . ]
1700 years is a long time,
[ . . .]

And also, the 2I didn't collapse all at once - It fizzled on for another couple of centuries after the banking crisis, and the Sylean federation started life as a minor state somewhere about -600 or so. Quite a bit of that 1,700 years is covered by periods where the 2I or progenitors of the 3I were still more or less active polities.

 

[Iracundus]

And also, the 2I didn't collapse all at once - It fizzled on for another couple of centuries after the banking crisis, and the Sylean federation started life as a minor state somewhere about -600 or so. Quite a bit of that 1,700 years is covered by periods where the 2I or progenitors of the 3I were still more or less active polities.

Quite right. The banking crisis is only what historians looking back chose to use as the effective end of the ROM. For people living in that era though, the ROM would still have been a superpower. Only after more time and more fragmentation and more claimants to the throne, only then would the ROM become more an ideal rather than a reality, much as how there would be claimants to the name of the Roman Empire long after the reality of the Roman Empire was gone.

 

[GypsyComet]

And also, the 2I didn't collapse all at once - It fizzled on for another couple of centuries after the banking crisis, and the Sylean federation started life as a minor state somewhere about -600 or so. Quite a bit of that 1,700 years is covered by periods where the 2I or progenitors of the 3I were still more or less active polities.

The claimant remnants of the 2I lasted only another 250 years or so, the period referred to as the Twilight. From that point to the very beginnings of the Sylean Federation is still roughly 900 years of what the propagandists would have us think was howling wilderness and isolated populations getting in touch with their inner Zhodani.

 

[Carlobrand]

...What the Dark Ages lacked was a single super power producing literature that anyone cared enough about to preserve in quantity. ...

Well, there was the Eastern Roman Empire. They evolved into the Byzantine empire, and they were pretty hot stuff through that era, maintained Roman knowledge and even advanced on it a wee bit. Didn't actually fall until pretty close to the Renaissance. Thing is, no one in France or Britain gives a damn what was happening over in Turkey at the time so, as far as they're concerned, since it was "dark" in their corner of Europe, it was "dark" in Europe.

 

[nobby-w]

Well, there was the Eastern Roman Empire. They evolved into the Byzantine empire, and they were pretty hot stuff through that era
[ . . . ]

And the Chinese, the Caliphates, numerous Asian polities and much, much more. 'Dark Ages' is a very Euro-centric term.

 

[Condottiere]

It is, and may only be semi-true, but it last for half a millenia in Western Europe, before feudalism starts off a new centralization of governance.

Other cultures experience their own Dark Ages and periods of stagnation, or Darkagenation.

 

[Silverhawk]

'Dark Ages' is a very Euro-centric term.

Agreed.

Sorry for being late to the party. One of the big things overlooked in the decline of the Roman Empire in the west was the failure of the economy. Actual minting of coin stopped. It is hard to pay the troops without cash. By contrast the Empire in the east maintained minting of coins (often times debased but that's a different story).

Now in RoM the refusal to accept a draft drawn from a bank in another system is in the same vein. It starts an economic breakdown. The quote from Phantom Menace, "Republic credits are no good here."

 

[Timerover51]

Agreed.

Sorry for being late to the party. One of the big things overlooked in the decline of the Roman Empire in the west was the failure of the economy. Actual minting of coin stopped. It is hard to pay the troops without cash. By contrast the Empire in the east maintained minting of coins (often times debased but that's a different story).

Now in RoM the refusal to accept a draft drawn from a bank in another system is in the same vein. It starts an economic breakdown. The quote from Phantom Menace, "Republic credits are no good here."

Aside from the economic factor, which is a major area, you have the lack of technical knowledge in the populace at large, or even a knowledge of how to grow crops and manage animals. Ask the average person to explain the workings of an 4-cycle internal combustion engine using gasoline, or how to plant a diverse vegetable garden or a corn field, or how to you correctly butcher a hog, and find out how little the average urban dweller knows about
how things work.

 

[Silverhawk]

Ask the average person to explain the workings of an 4-cycle internal combustion engine using gasoline, or how to plant a diverse vegetable garden or a corn field, or how to you correctly butcher a hog, and find out how little the average urban dweller knows about
how things work.

True. It can be even worse if they understand the principal but have no experience with working on an actual machine. I am reminded of a customer when I worked as an undergrad selling garage door openers. He was a cheapskate wanted to spend as little as possible. Trouble is that his door required a little more power than the cheap model could provide. Insisted that he knew more than me because "I'm a mechanical engineer". My reply was that if the manufacturer's trainer said it was the wrong model then I think they should know since they build the thing. He left then came back bought the cheap one from a uncaring coworker.

So it goes to show that sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing I guess.

 

[Enoki]

It's not just knowledge with urban dwellers, but often a lack of tools and equipment too. So, not only do they lack the know how but lack the implements to do the work even if they figured it out.
For example, people living in high rise condos or apartments won't have much in the way of even basic hand tools. When something breaks in their unit they call the building super and a maintenance guy shows up to fix it.