Creating Pocket Empires

[Jame]

Well, BlackIrish, I think I'm confused - I was kinda thinking something that got so out of hand that a lot of data was lost, and the infrastructure of the larger civilization pretty much died except for a corsair base to trailing and a somewhat larger (but less wealthy) pocket empire to spin/coreward, who I would intend that the Duchy run into pretty far into the campaign.

EDIT: If anyone wants to help with this, kind of a group effort (except for my fellow players, and you know who you are), just PM me.

 

[Jame]

I've got a map. So maybe you're telling me to figure out where it is in relation to Terra?

 

[Jame]

I'm thinking of something entirely new - if the 3I et al ever existed, they're looooooooong gone - in space as well as time...

 

[Jame]

Here's my solution - the Duchy is on another arm of the Milky Way, like either of the ones immediately to trailing or spinward. And yes, I know that something drastic would be needed to get that far. So if the 3I ever was, then the OTU map data still applies - for the portion we know about...

Would you (or anyone) like me to type up and send you the notes I've jotted down, so you can give some feedback?

Edit: Just looking back over the topic, and realized that I could well place this on the other side of the Sollies from the Imperium, but then I'd need a reason why the Confederation hasn't come in and taken over... Still could be some sort of catastrophe?

 

[far-trader]

I've always placed the obligatory "Here there be Dragons" on the map trailing the Confederation. Or more precisely imtu "Here there be Berserks*"

* Inspired by Fred Saberhagen's "Berserker" series which I read before being exposed to Traveller and was disappointed to not find in it so I added a version to mtu.

I think there were many exploration and settlement attemps made to trailing, and most of them failed. But there's no reason to imagine that some didn't make it and either on purpose or by accident broke ties completely with Terra. The Confederation is too "busy" to go looking for lost colonies so there's no problem that I can see with a pocket empire or three even a sector distant from the trailing edge of the Confederation. Just make the space between them and the Confed unsettled and sparse. No J1 and few J2 between the two so no curious traders or scouts come snooping or disgruntled colonials go looking to see home again.

 

[Jame]

Good idea. I was thinking of a somewhat larger (less than a subsector but more than 6 worlds) pocket empire to coreward, with only one or two worlds with Jump-2. Still probably a good idea to place it like a sector and a half or two to rimward of the Confed, though. The basis is that worlds beyond two parsecs aren't generally known, because it was affected by a version of the Long Night and lost most of the data (they know that the systems are there, and where they are, but not what's in them).

 

[mike wightman]

This all sounds like a really good set-up Jame.

If you do want to set it in the OTU there are a few places you could place it with no problem.

Rimward of the solies, all the way out on the Perseus Arm.

The descendants of some early terran colonization mission - either by STL sleeper/generation ship or perhaps that old chestnut a misjumped colony ship.

Far to spinward of the Spinward Marches - descendants of human minor races that fled from the atrocities of the Vilani Imperium.

Coreward to the Sagittarius Arm. Human servants of the Ancients who explored this way thousands of years ago. The masters fled unexpectedly - we know why now, of course - leaving their servants/pets (humans) behind to fend for themselves.

 

[Jame]

I think maybe a combination of Sollies, Vilani and "minors" that fled the long night, and somehow made it to the Sagittarius arm. Most of the people to rimward - at least Orionward (we're in the Orion Arm, right? RIGHT??? ) - are human, recovering from their own Long Night - but the Pocket Empire to Coreward would be non-human. If I go that route I'd need another minor race (they could have gotten the Jump Drive from those who fled, either by hijacking traders or from recovered artifacts - they wouldn't have made it on their own).

Edit: And yes, the distance would be why they're only climbing out of their own Long Night now, as I'm thinking it would take several generations to get over to the "Archer" Arm. Now wasn't there some thread around here about goin' off the Charted Space Map?

Of course, an interesting tidbit could be the information that they're refugees from Charted Space - they would likely know that they're refugees.

 

[Jame]

Okay, someone's doing a workup of Simonson. I'm going to take Selena, eventually, but if anyone else wants to write up a system they can.

 

[Pickles]

Originally posted by BlackIrish56:
By the way, how do I join the " Bring Back the LBBs T5 Edition" group?

Just join the queue, right behind me ...

 

[Jame]

Originally posted by BlackIrish56:
Jame...

Glad to see you got all that random data straightened out and are continuing to march...

By the way, how do I join the " Bring Back the LBBs T5 Edition" group?

Are you volunteering to write up a planet?

And if you want to join the "T5 as LBBs" thing, just write down something similar to what I've got and put in a number (higher than [I think] 11).

 

[Jame]

Sure. How 'bout I give you some thoughts on the background and you tell me what you think?

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Jame:
Are you volunteering to write up a planet?

And if you want to join the "T5 as LBBs" thing, just write down something similar to what I've got and put in a number (higher than [I think] 11).

May I join these two ventures too? I'd prefer to write up about Victoria (I have a suggestion to you to make it a "survivor colony" during the long night-equivalent, formerly a chemical-mining colony of a corporate which has been stranded and run by the local workers until Selenian ships came decades (?) later; this will fit the government type better than megacorp ownership, IMHO), but i could think out background for other planets as well. And I'd like to join the T5 LBB foundation too.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Jame:
The Pocket Empire to Coreward would be non-human. If I go that route I'd need another minor race (they could have gotten the Jump Drive from those who fled, either by hijacking traders or from recovered artifacts - they wouldn't have made it on their own).

What role do you want the alien pocket empire play in your campaign? Alien Menace? Strange creatures you could trade/negotiate with? A radically different culture?

I can really see the Ael Yael (Sorry, fell in love with them

) as a menace or maybe as a culture which isn't totally hostile but is hard to negotiate with.

If you want them to be a major enemy for the Duchy of Selena, have their homeworld (just move it to your sector) be a strip-mining corporate operation (with the poor aviants used as cheap labor) before the local Long Night equivalent. Once the old government fell and the corporate weakened, the Ael Yael staged a revolution, took back their world and began building a mighty war machine to protect themselves from further slavery and to take revange on the Humans who've enslaved them (if you don't want them to be the big-time enemies in your campaign, just make them "take revange" on corporations and not on Humans in general - maybe a few Humans helped them in their struggle for freedom. Think of the Babylon 5 Narns; they were repressed and overthrew the foriegn rule, and now (before certain events in the second season of Babylon 5, ofcourse

) are a well-oiled war machine out to kill their former enslavers.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Jame:
Also: I'm thinking that most of the ships are either corp, scout or naval, although there are now starting to be private ships, mostly noble but a free trader or three. Suggestions?

Depends on what was left behind in the two Long Nights; but anyway, if Selena had TL11 shipyards for some time, there will eventually be private ships, atleast yachts for it's nobles, but yes, most ships in the beginning would either be requisioned by the military and outfitted for war or bought/salvaged by the corporates and used for their needs (trade and exploration, I presume, and also convoy protection).

And if the local Long Night variant was quite recent, there should be a decent amount of salvage to be done - so many dead high-TL (12? 13?) ships left over by the war, so much tech to recover...

 

[Jame]

Let me send you a PM so I can give you what I've got. And if you want to want to join the Bring Back LBBs thing, just write in (something like) what I've got and put in as #13 or higher.

 

[Golan2072]

By the way, what was the TL before the local Long Night equivalent? refugees fleeing from the OTU Long Night would have TL 12-13 (IIRC), but how much time has passed between their arrival and the local Long Night equivalent?

 

[Jame]

I'd say to #1: technically TL 13 was the max, but not all worlds kept it (some from choice, some from population or world type), and to #2: several hundred years have passed since the local Night, I'd say about 500-600; humans arrived another approximate half-millenium before and formed their own somewhat-less-than-sector sized empire, while the present location of the Duchy is not on the edge, but having it visible from there.

Most convoy action would be against in-cluster pirates or rogues left over from integration - Selena itself has had starflight for about a century and the rest of the worlds have been integrated for about a decade (and I do need a reason for that).

 

[Golan2072]

So, if I understand your correctly, the old empire lasted about 500 years and was followed by 500 more years of local Long Night, of which 100 had Selenian starflight. Am I correct?

 

[Jame]

Okay, thanks for pointing out that. Make that 50 years or less of Selenan (not selenian) starflight. Otherwise yes.