Chaine (in progress, feedback appreciated)

[BwapTED]

Chaine

E46469E-4

Frontier installation
4000 miles diameter
Standard atmosphere
40% hydro
over a million inhabitants (60/40 human/Aslan)
impersonal bureaucracy
law level 14
Tech level 4 (local production roughly equivalent to 19th Century Earth’s advanced nations)


Human and Aslan

In old times the Aslan of Chaine lived as slaves to the humans--except some ‘ferals’ living in the wild scrub forest and badlands. The Imperium ordered the abolition of slavery on Chaine generations ago, when word of recontact with Chaine finally reached the sector duke. And Chaine’s gov’t moved to comply with what passes for swiftness on Chaine: the slaves were all freed within thirty years, after the search for antiquated manumission forms, dozens of interdepartmental squabbles, and seven failed committees on abolition.
The Chaine gov’t had spent a huge amount of money on paper, ink, and overtime for clerks. It did the sensible thing and billed the Aslan. No Imperial representative has yet bothered reading through the two-hundred-and fifty-three volume summary report of the Eighth Abolition Committee, much less the actual records warehoused in the Grand Depository in Dulsur, the planetary capital.

Trade
The only regular visitors to Chaine’s ‘starport’—a massive slab of exposed rock—arrive during the harvest season. The vessels drop off a variety of off-world products, mostly finished goods, and fill cargo containers with bundles of the resinous pajiit cane grown on Chaine’s plantations.
Local officials expect all forms to be filled out in quintuplicate and every checked, cross-checked, inspected, and validated at a corresponding five levels of authority. All this looks impressive, but accomplishes little. Damaged or dangerous items frequently pass inspection, sometimes because bored inspectors dash through their tasks and other times working slowly as they chat and chew pajiit cane without really paying attention to the cargoes. Obvious weapons do get noticed and blocked, barring corruption. Chaine has become a dumping ground for defective and subpar goods from higher TL worlds all over the subsector.

Buying goods in the star-town market requires a receipt, bill of sale, and tax form. Per item. And in triplicate.
Contracting or services requires even more forms.

Because lawful commerce requires a lot of paperwork, the locals have developed many dodges around the bureaucracy. Violations of the commerce regulations carry heavy fines, but the time taken to process cases can run so long that the prosecutors lose interest and witnesses’ memories grow dim.

Agriculture and country life
Much of the non-mountainous portion of Chaine’s main continent lies in the southern subtropical belt. Many hardscrabble wheat and meat-melon farms line the underground canals bringing waters down from elevated aquifers; the smallholders of Chaine mostly live on these plots.
Down along the tropical southern coast in the fertile bottomland and coastal marshes, grand houses rise over sprawling fields of candy-pink and mint-green stippled pajiit cane.
Most of the planters owe big debts to foreign merchants and startown factors.
The planters all hold commissions in the constabulary or militia; this allows them to carry locally-made blade weapons and firearms ‘on patrol.’ Long ago, the planter’s son who revised the weapons codes penciled in a footnote which later copyists fixed in print: ‘on patrol’ for a constable or militia officer means any day in which he moves at least one total kilometer looking for violations of the law or hazards to the public safety.
Pajiit cane acts as stimulant for humans. It’s delicious, surprisingly nutritious, and habit forming.


The Wilds
Feral Aslan hunt in the back country.

 

[BwapTED]

I think maybe pajiit sours at the touch of metal.
Dewclaws work nicely.
An Aslan field-hand grabs a bunch in both paws and then uses his dewclaws to snip/slice it, scissor fashion?

I might push the world's diameter up while keeping it under the next value on the 1977 tables.

Values were all rolled as per Book 3 1977.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

I think maybe pajiit sours at the touch of metal.
Dewclaws work nicely.
An Aslan field-hand grabs a bunch in both paws and then uses his dewclaws to snip/slice it, scissor fashion?

its at semi-industrialised society, that used or still uses muscle powered agriculture. the fact that aslan are bigger and stronger than humans means they would be more productive because they can move heavier loads, etc (when your field hands can carry a hundred kilos apiece, do you even need to bother with a horse and cart?). the only downside is the need to provide for their obligate carnivore diet (which might be a major secondary industry in rearing some form of food animal. I Assume that these "meat melons" are your intended food supply?).


and in such a paperwork heavy society, the sheer effort involved in doing things above board would mean that the "Black market" trade would likely be several times the "legal" trade, with the possible exception of off world trade to people with access to photocopiers (major advantage for those that have them. maybe a sign of high status in society, as opposed to having a clerk?). even then, the ease of a starship just skipping customs at the "starport" by just landing at a plantation would limit the effect of this bureaucracy. more to the point, would a class E starport even have anything resembling a working customs system? anything that is in place would be pretty much on a honour system, given the ease of which it could be circumvented.


suggested mechanism for the introduction of aslan to the planet:


colony ship in the Long Night misjumped into the system with major problems, the passengers were forced into the life pods and made for the planet as their ship crashed into the oceans and sank (possible adventure hook of a salvage op?). the aslan were scattered all over the planet in small groups with only basic survival tools and almost no tech. the humans (already present, a remnant of a Rule of Man colony that regressed when the supply ships stopped coming) were able to overpower the aslan in their lands by numbers and firearms, and took them as slaves. the aslan that landed in the wildlands became the feral aslan of today.

Presumably, if their are wild aslan, then their must be some form of prey animal that can sustain them in their preferred hunter lifestyle ie some analogue to buffalo or other large grazing animals. maybe the "food beasts" form the aslan ship (they have a proper name but I cant find it)



30 second plot hooks:

a trading ship from the Aslan Hierate have come to visit, and the players need to convice the traders not to just take off and nuke the site form orbit after the first local mistakes them for native Aslan. Alternativly, they need to protect the traders form several thousand gun toting locals after the Aslan gut someone claiming them to be escaped slaves prisoners with jobs and demands their return to his plantation.

the imperium has assigned a new Knight to the world, to better represent its interests and promote its growth. glancing at the demographics and late for a meeting, some bureaucrat in the Sector Duke's court has assigned Sir Blazing Pouncer, a recently knighted 16 year Marine Corps vet and noted advocate of Aslan intrests, to the system. the players are hired to transport the Knight, his family, and a news reporter to the planet for his official inauguration. The locals are aware of impending arrival of a new Knight representive, but the message informing them of the specifics was delayed and, ironically, arrives with the Knight himself on the players ship.

 

[BwapTED]

RE skipping the port:

Good point.

I think I'll go with this:

It's one thing to circumvent the law in trading retail goods/services with other Chainites or even individual off-worlders, another to just bypass the starport for the cash crop export and import wholesale finished goods trade and thus cut out the gov't and all the factors and professional middlemen. Pajiit revenues are too important to just let go.

Oh, sure, it takes time for the bureaucrats to get moving, but when they do, your plantation is screwed.

Trying to get your impounded property back requires some paperwork, for starters...

I might say the port was a class D until a ship exploded/crashed, slave rebels blew the place up, etc. So it was more than what you see now, some years back.

RE Meat-melons

Yup. Cat-food in a rind!


RE Aslan arrival


Cool ideas.
Thanks!



RE Plot hooks: ditto

 

[gchuck]

the imperium has assigned a new Knight to the world, to better represent its interests and promote its growth. glancing at the demographics and late for a meeting, some bureaucrat in the Sector Duke's court has assigned Sir Blazing Pouncer, a recently knighted 16 year Marine Corps vet and noted advocate of Aslan intrests, to the system. the players are hired to transport the Knight, his family, and a news reporter to the planet for his official inauguration. The locals are aware of impending arrival of a new Knight representive, but the message informing them of the specifics was delayed and, ironically, arrives with the Knight himself on the players ship.

Sounds almost like "Sir Blazing Saddles"

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Sounds almost like "Sir Blazing Saddles"

well, yhea, you think I can make this up better than Mel Brookes?



on topic, an additional idea:


The main starport is isolated on top of a mesa-like plateau that is edged by cliffs on all sides, with only one path that is really passable for carts and other road vehicles, which is the "Offical" road up to the port that the Pajiit cane is shipped to market on, with the customs post and guards and so on.

Their are several secondary routes that a man could scramble up, which are used by various smugglers to move goods without passing through customs. the officials know that these paths exist, but because the amount of goods moved is small (and its impractical to shift commercially viable amounts of Pajiit cane along them), they tolerate this trade as it doesn't affect the trade balance too much. sometimes they send a patrol down these paths but unless they physically run into a smuggler coming the other way its more of a token effort than a serious deterrent.

 

[Timerover51]

I cannot see such a high Law Level of 14 working with the Aslan. This is a

E Extreme Law. Full-fledged police state.

Do you seriously think that an Aslan clan is going to put up with that? You have a 60/40 mix of humans and Aslan, so the Aslan have more than enough population to successfully revolt. They also have very deadly natural weapons in the form of claws and teeth, plus being close to pure carnivores. As I see it, the humans, if attempting such a high Law Level, are wiped out pretty quickly. If not turned into meals for the Aslan, then at the very least being used as processed fertilizer for the savannah for the Aslan food beasts.

With a Tech Level of 4, the Aslan are going to be very hard to control with weaponry, unless higher Tech Level weapons are imported. Read up on what happened to the British at Isandlwana, and assume that it will be far worse than that.

I am not sure about the government either, given the large numbers of Aslan, and the relatively low population. Impersonal Bureaucracies are going to have a hard time when you have a planet of that size with a population in the millions and Tech Level 4. That means a lot of your human population is going to be engaged in agriculture, so it is going to be spread out, and not really open to a central bureaucracy trying to run things. As for the Aslan, presumably they are engaged in grabbing and holding as much land as they can. That is not a recipe for bureaucracy either.

I would say that you have some work to do on this.

 

[aramis]

Those Aslan probably should have a separate government & law code.

 

[Timerover51]

Those Aslan probably should have a separate government & law code.

That would change the world government rating to Balkanized. Also, I have a very, very hard time visualizing any Aslan as slaves to humans, especially if initially the Aslan outnumbered the humans.

I still would argue that the planet does not have enough population or a high enough Tech Level to support an impersonal bureaucracy. It is going to be too fragmented for that to work. Besides that, the humans are going to need some form of weaponry to stay alive against the Aslan.

 

[aramis]

That would change the world government rating to Balkanized.

No, it doesn't, at least not necessarily.. There are canon worlds where the government in the UWP is the majority, but a separate minority exists.

I'd have to dig through to find them.

Note also, at least in MGT, factionalization can be used with ALL government types, each but the largest with it's own mini-government generated normally. See p.173

 

[Enoki]

Some basic questions that need answering. Given the incredibly high law level and the presence of an impersonal bureaucracy,

1. Who runs the bureaucracy? Humans? Aslan (doubtful)? A mix?
2. Who enforces this law level, and how?
3. Why do the locals put up with it short of total repression by some elite / nobility?

Given the tech level,

1. Does the government have far superior weapons and simply suppress the rest of the population?
2. If not, then how do they maintain an iron fist over the population?
I would further suspect that given the tech level, the majority of the population are engaged in some sort of agriculture / food production-- to the tune of say, 75 to 90%. That doesn't leave a lot of bodies to run a bureaucracy.

Given the Human / Aslan mix,

1. Are the two populations heavily mixed?
2. Do they have separate areas of the planet they inhabit with little mixing?
3. What are their race relations like?

What are the primary economic engines of this world? Do they have an export or do they heavily import? What are the main productive areas of the economy?

I had to create the conditions of the Anubian Trade Coalition

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Anubian_Trade_Coalition

They don't use downports almost at all, only a high port. All traffic from the high port to the surface is government controlled and uses small non-starships. This makes smuggling difficult or impossible, it means the mostly peasant / serf / indentured (read near slave) population can't escape. It also means the local government gets a nice cut from moving your goods to the surface not to mention charging you for the privilege of their doing it.
Orbiting space stations, asteroid monitors, and other sorts of warships take a dim, and instantly negative (they start shooting) view of anyone or thing that decides to not follow their rules...

These will lead to a better picture of how the planet and its society work. That, in turn, will lead to a good set of plot lines.

 

[BwapTED]

Some basic questions that need answering. Given the incredibly high law level and the presence of an impersonal bureaucracy,

1. Who runs the bureaucracy? Humans? Aslan (doubtful)? A mix?
2. Who enforces this law level, and how?
3. Why do the locals put up with it short of total repression by some elite / nobility?

Given the tech level,

1. Does the government have far superior weapons and simply suppress the rest of the population?
2. If not, then how do they maintain an iron fist over the population?
I would further suspect that given the tech level, the majority of the population are engaged in some sort of agriculture / food production-- to the tune of say, 75 to 90%. That doesn't leave a lot of bodies to run a bureaucracy.

Given the Human / Aslan mix,

1. Are the two populations heavily mixed?
2. Do they have separate areas of the planet they inhabit with little mixing?
3. What are their race relations like?

What are the primary economic engines of this world? Do they have an export or do they heavily import? What are the main productive areas of the economy?

These will lead to a better picture of how the planet and its society work. That, in turn, will lead to a good set of plot lines.

Great questions. Thanks!

I think I muddled this one by trying to forcibly mate ideas adapted from the 'Dootchen Estates rewrite' thread with a randomly generated UWP.
I'm not abandoning this, but the feedback has convinced me it needs a full rewrite, maybe a very different slant.

 

[Enoki]

Read the page on the Anubians. It might give you some ideas to use here. They're repressive and have a iron lock on the population, not to mention sometimes repressing technology on purpose.

 

[BwapTED]

Read the page on the Anubians. It might give you some ideas to use here. They're repressive and have a iron lock on the population, not to mention sometimes repressing technology on purpose.

Will check it out.

:coffeegulp: