Far Frontiers Sector
- Thread starter mserabian
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The Oz
SOC-14 1K
The Far Frontiers Sector was originally set up as a "referee's reserve" that would never be detailed by any single company, so that referees could do whatever they wanted there.
However, the Keith brothers set many of their adventures there (the famed "Sky Raiders" trilogy being the best-known) and they did create and publish at least part of the sector.
I'm not sure if anyone ever officially published the entire sector.
However, the Keith brothers set many of their adventures there (the famed "Sky Raiders" trilogy being the best-known) and they did create and publish at least part of the sector.
I'm not sure if anyone ever officially published the entire sector.
daryen
SOC-14 1K
Not quite.
Foreven was set up as the referee's preserve. Foreven is directly spinward of the Spinward Marches. Far Frontiers is one more sector spinward of Foreven and was the domain of FASA.
Some of the Far Frontiers sector was described in the various adventures and magazine produced by FASA. However, there was also a pre-release writeup of the sector that still occasionally pops up on eBay now and then. (I have never bought it, so I cannot vouch for its quality or utility.)
Foreven was set up as the referee's preserve. Foreven is directly spinward of the Spinward Marches. Far Frontiers is one more sector spinward of Foreven and was the domain of FASA.
Some of the Far Frontiers sector was described in the various adventures and magazine produced by FASA. However, there was also a pre-release writeup of the sector that still occasionally pops up on eBay now and then. (I have never bought it, so I cannot vouch for its quality or utility.)
G K Zhukov
SOC-11
"The Traveller Chronicle" detailed parts of the sector (at least the eight rimward subsectors IIRC). The information provided in these modules was integrated in the traveller map (a glorious cartographic resource for Traveller).
The authors of the UWP data took good care to fit the worlds created by the Keith Bros. in the FASA modules mentioned above.
The authors of the UWP data took good care to fit the worlds created by the Keith Bros. in the FASA modules mentioned above.
I was just reading the Sky Raiders and I believe the Far Frontiers is near the Zhodani Consulate, but I don't recall exactly where.
If you come up with more info, post it.
G K Zhukov
SOC-11
The sector is the one to spinward (left) of Foreven (which in turn is one sector to spinward of the Spinward Marches).
Do check www.travellermap.com, as I suggested above.
Which is just what I'd planned to do, but via one of the book's "big map".
I'm slightly surprised you don't have multiple versions of the "big map" with the page offering selectability in viewing (standard or canon, all names for sectors, etc).
There I go, dreaming up extra work for already awesome stuff
Nice site!
I'll have to see if my wGet or HTTrack mirroring software can duplicate your site locally on my hard-drive (I have a number of local mirrors already). Just curious what's the size of the entire site ? I don't want to choke your bandwith if that's a problem.
I'm slightly surprised you don't have multiple versions of the "big map" with the page offering selectability in viewing (standard or canon, all names for sectors, etc).
There I go, dreaming up extra work for already awesome stuff
Nice site!
I'll have to see if my wGet or HTTrack mirroring software can duplicate your site locally on my hard-drive (I have a number of local mirrors already). Just curious what's the size of the entire site ? I don't want to choke your bandwith if that's a problem.
G K Zhukov
SOC-11
I just took a piece of the map corresponding to the Far Frontiers sector and uploaded it to the gallery here at the CotI boards:
http://www.TravellerRPG.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=181
BTW, the author of the map is Joshua Bell, who also maintains a blog at:
http://travellermap.blogspot.com/
http://www.TravellerRPG.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=181
BTW, the author of the map is Joshua Bell, who also maintains a blog at:
http://travellermap.blogspot.com/
There are also elements floating around eBay of an unpublished manuscript which promised to do more for Far Frontiers, as mentioned before quite a number of FASA was set in FF and I have a feeling if they had not persued other venues/licences, they would have fully developed Far Frontiers as a Keith playground, so read carefully through all of Keith's stuff, and I always find echoes of his Traveller work...my personal take is the Far Frontiers, like the Marches remain a classic area for adventure save the major polities are reversed. The major power in the area is the Zhodani Consulate and the Imperium in a minority, lots of room to do an East European type spygame...
I must confess I always thought the Zhodani were the Soviets in Space but never said so in so many posts. The political officer in Hunt for Red October screamed Tavrchedl ! <chuckle>
It might be fun to have SuSAG encroach on Zho psi-drug territory out there under the guise of a front company. See what kind of tradewar that might develop. Adv 7: Broadsword mentioned the Sword World firm New Frontiers Trading Partners had operations out this way. They owned 10 Broadsword-class cruisers, so they must have other significant investments to protect.
Sounds like a fun mix.
Well, if you want to be particularly EVIL try reading or watching the spy books/films that were made on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Most are quite simple and formulaic but so were so many, many of ours...in roughly the same time. Have your players assume the role of Tavrchedl or even just the security forces of a Pocket Empire nominally aligned to the Imperium (however, people within your organization, including yourselves think that it would be better aligned with the ZC).
well too bad, look at the last post in this thread...
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=438&highlight=far+frontiers
it looks like the guy hasn't posted in a while. that info might be interesting even to the point of where he left off with it.
I was reading Rescue on Galatea yesterday and it's not bad, and has a fair amount of information on the sector in it's Library Data section.
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=438&highlight=far+frontiers
it looks like the guy hasn't posted in a while. that info might be interesting even to the point of where he left off with it.
I was reading Rescue on Galatea yesterday and it's not bad, and has a fair amount of information on the sector in it's Library Data section.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
I generated the "original" coreward half, as Dale Kemper never got around to publishing that half of the sector. Dale was the creator of the rimward half, though whether he filled in what FASA started or was borrowed by FASA is unclear to me even now. My work followed the reprint of Dale's in the pages of The Traveller Chronicle. I no longer recall the exact process, but if there was a previous dotmap I used it. I don't think there was, however. The history and UWPs in TTC were entirely mine, based on extrapolation of the Sky Raiders trilogy, Dale's half of the sector, and the CT Zhodani Alien Module.
In cooperation with the HIWG-Australia development team for adjacent Yiklerzdanzh Sector, I did not designate a homeworld for the MHR the Zhodani absorbed in the region, but their cultural stamp is all over the sector. The reason for not designating the homeworld was that the Zhodani had 'erased' it as part of the absorption. If you are interested in archeological mysteries, the general consensus put the world in either Yiklerzdanzh-D or Afachtiabr-A, if memory serves, due to the heavy influence of the race on both sectors during its brief rise to interstellar state-hood.
In cooperation with the HIWG-Australia development team for adjacent Yiklerzdanzh Sector, I did not designate a homeworld for the MHR the Zhodani absorbed in the region, but their cultural stamp is all over the sector. The reason for not designating the homeworld was that the Zhodani had 'erased' it as part of the absorption. If you are interested in archeological mysteries, the general consensus put the world in either Yiklerzdanzh-D or Afachtiabr-A, if memory serves, due to the heavy influence of the race on both sectors during its brief rise to interstellar state-hood.
well, I went and visited your site, but you don't seem to have anything other than the dot-map.
I think I've got an access database with some 32 planets of the Jungleblut subsector (and I think it's canon) but I compiled it several years ago and don't remember how I came upon it.
If you've got more info on Far Frontiers, I'd like to see it. Send me a PM and I'll send you back my email, if it's not for public consumption.
Interesting looking at your Zhodani dictionary, I may have to download/steal that page !
One thing I noticed in GURPS AR1 was that there was no word for "jump" meaning the time spent in space, so while working on an outline/background for a Core-Expedition adventure years back...
*****************************************************************
Note: strangely lacking in GT: AR1 p38 the Zhodani Calendar would
be the Zhodani equivalent of a week, mainly due to Traveller's
preoccupation with a week in jumpspace. We'll take the opportunity
to coin the phrase: CHEKLZAZHD, "Jump Time" or "Jump Period" for the
period of ~168 hours, or 6.22 Zhdanstial (days).
*****************************************************************
Wrote a Zhodani word generator script off the tables in AR1 too.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
The generator I used for the sectors I worked on back in the day probably won't run on any working machine in the house at this point.
My site wasn't really intended to be a sector repository. The dotmaps were as far as I wanted to go when I built the site, and AOL's ad-free site size limits were (and are) such that the site is static at this point. I could go looking for more space elsewhere, or hand off my material to one of the bigger sites, but I not inclined to at this point. Maybe I'll get the web-page bug again someday.
All of what I wrote for Far Frontiers (aside from the working correspondence with HIWG-Australia) ended up in The Traveller Chronicle. Dale's material for the rimward half was published whole twice (in TTC and in Ares), partial piecemeal in the FASA adventures, and turns up on eBay periodically.
The subsector names listed in the Traveller Wiki (today, at least, Wikis being what they are) are from Dale's and my material. The UWPs listed at the JTAS site (which came up first on a Google search) are NOT mine.
As for my email address, the fact that I have a webpage on AOL should be a dead giveaway. My handle also exists as a GMail account.
no that was for my email addy !
I posted it out in the open (well sorta name at dot com; and even split it over several lines, and my spam jumped over the next few weeks noticeably).
Well Gypsy, now you've gone and done it... I'm starting to dream up an adventure set in the Far Frontiers and I'll probably make it a Zho-based adventure, at least to start. Sometimes I start the adventure, put together a basis for one side, the flip it over and get the details on the other side too.
I'm thinking along the lines of:
Zho Company sends a relief team to take over a beachhead on a non-zho world. Violence has wreaked havoc in the past.
Run-in with Genem and their TIPs over some real-estate acquisition. The zho backup teams don't show and the team is forced to make an alliance from scratch. There's a Sword World company that does business in the area...
An imperial firm is licensing psionic shield designs in Zho territory with the assistance of Genem (maybe I need to change it). Local consulate officials see this as imperial meddling, even though they're trying to remain in the background.
I'm thinking along the lines of:
Zho Company sends a relief team to take over a beachhead on a non-zho world. Violence has wreaked havoc in the past.
Run-in with Genem and their TIPs over some real-estate acquisition. The zho backup teams don't show and the team is forced to make an alliance from scratch. There's a Sword World company that does business in the area...
An imperial firm is licensing psionic shield designs in Zho territory with the assistance of Genem (maybe I need to change it). Local consulate officials see this as imperial meddling, even though they're trying to remain in the background.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
One of the reasons I don't use that grammar for masking my address anymore. I know just enough programming to know that parsing an address around the "at" and "dot" was a matter of minutes.
(ahem)
A "dent" in the Consulate border, particularly a persistent enough dent to make it onto long-lived maps, is one of those features that can drive the feel of the region it's in (or avoids). As I had run with the ideas of cautious alien contact protocols and Consular "Unabsorbed" worlds when I did Tienspevnekr, I took the same approach to the coreward half of Afachtiabr. The Zhodani war machine is *very* efficient, and that much open border would not have slowed them down *if* the Qlomdlabr thought they could rule the conquered space. The "dent" told me that the Qlomdlabr did *not* have any confidence in their ability to absorb and administer that region. I ran with that, helped along by the already established presence of a pro-Imperial client state spanning the mouth of the Dent. A three-subsector area dominated by a people who hate imposed ideals so deeply that it has almost become genetic. Ironically, these people will jump on a cultural bandwagon with near fanatic abandon, but only voluntarily. The recorded history of the region shows that this has happened twice since the Zhodani were forced to retreat from the region thousands of years ago. The first time came as a complete surprise to the Zhodani, as the so-called Sky Raiders caused a wave of xenophobia followed by a wave of what can best be described as "Ooo, Pirates are neat!". Many years later, a thoroughly lost pre-Maghiz Darrian expedition caused a ripple of fascination with Darrian culture, both real and imagined.
This phenomenon completely frustrates the Zhodani, who have been trying to foster Zhodani cultural ideals in the region for millenia with very little success. Considering the thousands of years of experience the Zhodani have in cultural assimilation, the failure in Afachtiabr is bewildering to them, particularly since they *did* successfully assimilate many of the Vlazhdumecta (the genetic dominants among humaniti in the sector) at one point.
What the Zhodani DO know, however, is that they can't afford to have the worlds of the Dent be serious space-going powers. The unpredictable waves of fanatic reaction that sweep the region could turn a small space-going power into a serious threat overnight.
So the Zhodani remain deeply involved in the Dent, largely as diplomats and merchants. Their goal is to keep the region's powerhouses on a razor's edge of stability. Not stable enough to develop peacetime economic power, while not so unstable that they trigger a war footing technological boom. The larger worlds have gone to war before, and the signs can be seen all over the region. The heirs of the Vlazhdumecta and the Sky Raiders do not play nice when it comes to war. And so the Zhodani play the most dangerous game on a scale of several subsectors.
So, too, do the pro-Imperial forces of the Protectorate, spanning the rimward mouth of the Dent. Keeping the Zhodani AND the peoples of the Dent busy is their goal, in the hopes that Imperial sympathies will eventually dominate the states further rimward without being rolled over by either of the cultural juggernauts to coreward.
The goals of the Consulate and the Protectorate are similar (if opposed), but it is inevitable that such goals will get scrambled somewhere between the grand scheme of things and the nitty-gritty of diplomacy and espionage. As such, the Great Game of Espionage in the Dent ranges from horrific to comic. That the native governments are, in some cases, more aware of the Game the outsiders play than those players would be comfortable with just adds to the mess, and ensures that the peoples of the Dent will not be joining either side any time soon.
--
Ethnographically, the Dent is dominated by Vlazhdumecta, followed closely by ethnic (but not cultural) Zhodani and a significant population of hybrids of the two. The descendents of the Sky Raiders are a significant minority, and there are small Darrian, Solomani, and Vilani (the last via much more recent Imperial presence in the region) populations as well. The Vlazhdumecta are the genetic wildcard in the mix, able to cross-breed with all the others, though not always viably. The results are surprisingly cosmopolitan in appearance, and outsiders can generally pass unremarked if they dress appropriately.
(Yes, it's a region perfectly suited to typical Traveller play)
I can't say my notion of the Zhodani are anywhere as detailed/complete as your own
but I do see some similarities, such as the "efficient war machine" and their need
to total control most areas they bother with.
can't win 'em all! sorry for the over-simplification.
but is the social/political environment that strong ? I mean in challenging the Zhos ?
there's many factors which make a power strong and usually it takes time. even if such an
event requires military force or response, it'll tax the newcomer more than the Zhos, no ?
However, reading some of the descriptions in the Library Data for Rescue on Galatea
several of them, like GENEM, FARADAY and COHAIN FUTURES already have a substantial presence
in the sector. I'm not sure how that equates to your mentioning "space-going powers" but
they have enormous influence and presence. I'd have to think something as large as the
consulate would have their own counterparts to these in some way/shape/form, also making
it's way thru the sector.
ah, well, makes sense and for good gaming.
I'd be interested in your take on their merchants. Part of me says it's just the same
as something done in the 3I. I've introduced the Zhodani once in the Outrim Void where
they cooperated with a group for rights to certain worlds (no tradewar against their
operations and declaring certain worlds off-limits, basically you stay on your side and
us on ours).
I don't know the region like you do, so I'll take your word for it.
I see GENEM as an excellent threat to the Zhodani. I'm borderline on all-out war, and
their actions make survivors tremble a bit. However they're smart enough not to become
entrenched and be forced to fight the zhos head to head (there's that war machine again).
I think I'll come at from an unknown point, meaning it's not GENEM waving a flag and
declaring things out in the open, rather the Zhos are having a tough time of things
and it eventually is discovered that GENEM's at the heart of things. What frustrates the
Zhos is when they do bring in their war machine, GENEM withdraws and usually follows
it up with another attack someplace else. Might be too simplistic and need some adjustment.
I'm tempted to top it off with a Fifth Frontier War type of scenario where Zho fleets
move into GENEM's safe waters and really take the battle to them. However I need to
find out who GENEM considers allies and if I've gone too far afield.
Well, you've got me on the details, since I'm so new to the area. But I do see the Imperials
playing a part at least in the shadows. I think they can show just enough of themselves
to frustrate the zhos and make them wary. They're the logical choice for GENEM supporters
but not in a capacity that they're formal political allies.
Still much to think over, eh?
