Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Effects of the Long Night on the Solomani Region.
While this is all well and good, I think it's just a
teensy bit too much detail for what we need here
.
Pre-Collapse Expansion Thoughts and Spica Colony Thoughts
OK, this is more directly useful
.
Circa -2204, the Solomani were totally occupied with taking over the First Imperium and turning it into the Rule of Man. Expansion toward Spica would have been minimal.
Agreed. They wouldn't even have had any reason to expand in that direction anyway.
With exploratory *initial* contact only coming in -1802, it would seem to suggest that any settlements created by sleeper ship from before the Jump Drive (say, 3-6 worlds all told throughout the entirety of the Sector) did *not* have sufficient technology to go visiting the Hivers, or be visited (publicly) by the Hivers in turn.
Why do we want to have settlements created by sleeper ships in the Spica sector?
So, this leads me to lean toward believing settlement in the area by humans is spare to nearly non-existant in -1802. Now, with explorers coming through in -1802, and settlers hot on their heals through -1774 (which is when the effects of the Long Night are first felt).
I think the last thing that people would want to do is embark on a trip into unknown space around -1774. I'd guess that chances are people won't have a clue what's going to hit them when the Long Night falls - after all, at the time there's no historical precedent for a total collapse of the Imperium.
I think the effects of the Long Night are somewhat over-exaggerated - I don't see how everything would just stop working. This isn't a collapse on the scale of the Final War or Virus. It's an Imperium-wide economic collapse, which means that worlds turn away from interstellar trade and (if they have any sense) resort to a closed economy that is contained within their own systems to survive (we're surviving, after all). Sure, the transitional period would be "interesting" but it's certainly survivable. I'm not seeing why there'd be less scientist or engineers or anything like that anyway. (there may well be less
parts for equipment and so on, which is another matter that could be important for those living on non-habitable worlds).
-1770: All financial and material support to the Spican colonies is reduced by 25% to 50%.
(I'm assuming that you're referring to colonies that are formed by these sleeper ships you mention). Why would they be getting financial and material support? Spica is quite a long way from the Solomani Rim (well, for the time at least... the Sollies are only on J3 (have they reached J4 yet?)).
I'd imagine that the colonies would be expected to be self-sufficient. Particularly if they were Sleeper ships. It may even be that the folks back home don't even know the colonies exist, if they were sleeper ships.
-1700: All contact with the Spican colonies ceases. The Hivers send covert missions through the area to observe humanity more closely while it is not in a good position to notice this observation.
This in itself is an interesting question... The first contact between Hiver and Human is only 26 years before the Long Night starts. (hmm. Conspiracy theorists may wonder if the Hivers might even have had something to do with it... the timing seems awfully convenient!)
But in the centuries afterwards, what do the Hivers do? I wonder if their parenting instincts might oblige them to lend a hand to any struggling Spican colonies that might exist. In which case this may be a sector where Hivers and people of Solomani-origin (as opposed to Ancient-transplanted humans) have been in direct contact for a very long time - much longer than the rest of the Sollies (who would have eventually reached the sector, centuries later).
-1690 to -1500 Terran Mercantile Community establishes waystations through Spica to reach the Hive Federation.
Why? From the timeline, it sounds like the Rim States existing at the time (the TMC, Vegan Polity, Dingir League, and Easter Concord) are pretty self-contained. Heck, they don't even really start talking to eachother til IY 200, under coaxing from the new 3I. I'm not seeing why anyone would be interested in or concerned with colonies that may or may not be two whole sectors to trailing, and they certainly wouldn't be interested in trading with Hivers. I'm under the distinct impression that this era of the Long Night was one of insularity and "making do with what you've got", not of expansion and exploration.
-700 to -200 sleeper ships from the Old Earth Union sent out to trailing to colonise habitable planets. Each sleeper ship mission had its own agenda. Some were corporate sponsored exercises to more fully develop waystations, others were driven by individual families, adventurers, or other crackpots. Some consisted of fleets of ships, others were solitary vessels. Many of these missions succeeded, while others came into conflict with existing colonies, remanents from the ROM. Some were never heard from again. Over the centuries several of these colonies flourished and started to develop adjacent systems.
I don't get this - are these the sleeper ships you're referring to earlier? -700 to -200 is way after the worst parts of the Long Night mentioned above. This doesn't appear to fit into the chronology, unless I'm misunderstanding something (or you got the dates wrong?!)
