CT Only: Imperial Citizen

[Supplement Four]

Imperial citizens are a mix of Vilani and Solomani. Those are cultural backgrounds.

Why is it that there are no sourcebooks on the standard Imperial Citizen? We can apply Solomani more strongly to the Solomani Rim and the Solomani Confederation.

Is there a Vilani write up in JTAS? I know the Vilani and Vargr Sourcebook from DGP is an MT product.

Isn't it interesting that there's not a book that covers the culture of the modern Imperial Citizen in any edition of Traveller?

Am I missing something here?

 

[GypsyComet]

Treating CT and MT as completely separate ignores the reality that MT was written in.

That said, I think you're stuck with Library Data and the language article by Marc in JTAS if you insist on being a strict editionist.

We can apply Solomani more strongly to the Solomani Rim and the Solomani Confederation.

The intent was, I think, to present the extreme view within the Solomani Sphere because the hybrid and remnant Solomani/Terran populations that spread across the entirety of the Ziru Sirka are really "just us". The setting pointedly ignores a more "realistic" projection of technology specifically to remain relatable, while at the same time being so vast that every player's interpretation of People From The Future will be valid on some rock somewhere.

The Cultural Zones map in MT also makes it clear that the undiluted Vilani experience is a lot more constrained than the folks on Vland want to admit. The average Imperial citizen is not as Vilani as Vland would like, and vast swaths are Suerrat, Sylean, or some shadow of Old Terran, not to mention the rest of the minor Human races, of whom only a few remain completely Vilanized after so long.

 

[sabredog]

Maybe Vilani are boring?

I never bought any of the alien books or others that support the GDW house universe so I don't know anything about them outside what I get from here or maybe in the Traveller Adventure book. From those alone they seem annoying endeared to bureaucracy and byzantine social stratification for its own sake. Almost as an art form.

And they have frequent and bad gas from what they eat. You wouldn't want to share a Scout bridge with one. Maybe that helped start the wars the Solomani had with them?

 

[Supplement Four]

Maybe Vilani are boring?

Not at all. I am a pretty strict editionist, as GypsyComet remarks, but I'd have no trouble looking to MT's V&V for a CT game if it were important.

But, the modern day Imperial Citizen isn't really a Vilani. He's a mix of Vilani and Solomani with a different culture.

It's akin to an American of Italian ancestry who grew up in the Bronx and doesn't speak Italian.

And, the culture presented for the Solomani in that Alien book is geared towards the Solomani of the Solomani Confederation--not Imperial Citizens.

So, I'm just curious about your everyday Imperial Citizen.

 

[GypsyComet]

Maybe Vilani are boring? ... they seem annoying endeared to bureaucracy and byzantine social stratification for its own sake. Almost as an art form.

And they have frequent and bad gas from what they eat. You wouldn't want to share a Scout bridge with one. Maybe that helped start the wars the Solomani had with them?

If you got stuck with one of the old "build 'em anywhere" TL9 Scouts, that's the whole ship, not just the Bridge.

Undiluted Vilani *are* kind of boring outside of a certain social standing range, I think. The actively mercantile types that have to be disruptors to survive are going to be the fun ones to be around.

 

[Supplement Four]

The actively mercantile types that have to be disruptors to survive are going to be the fun ones to be around.

That's the same spirit that destroyed the First Imperium.

You're now talking about Solomani blood, there, m'boy!

 

[GypsyComet]

That's the same spirit that destroyed the First Imperium.

You're now talking about Solomani blood, there, m'boy!

While not explored in detail under CT, later editions make it clear that the borders of the Ziru Sirka were leaky when it came to mercantile traffic. It seems to have varied by district, given the official non-interference with Terra, but there was significant aid flowing to the Yileans, and there were Vilani noodling around Gateway long before the ZS fell.

I'm also convinced that the modern rules against Trade War go waaaaay back, and that the ZS dealt with more internal mercantile strife than official histories would ever admit. The megacorps don't like Trade Wars they didn't start for good reasons, and they have the dusty market numbers from millennia ago to make their point.

So the Vilani absolutely have internal disruptors. They may not look like what a Terran would recognize as a market disruptor, but they do exist, and always have.

 

[mike wightman]

Imperial citizens are a mix of Vilani and Solomani. Those are cultural backgrounds.

Nope, not even close. :devil: :CoW:

The Third Imperium was founded based on Sylean culture, which had had 1776 years to diverge from the Vilani base with Terran overlordship. There are not many places here on earth that maintain a cultural paradigm that goes back that far.

Why is it that there are no sourcebooks on the standard Imperial Citizen? We can apply Solomani more strongly to the Solomani Rim and the Solomani Confederation.

Because the game was never set in the core sectors of the Imperium where you would meet such people. The default setting was originally the Spinward Marches where planets in the same subsector as a capital have only been re-contacted for a few decades, local populations have their own cultures, the Imperial government is corrupt and authoritarian. You end up with planet of the week just like the fiction Traveller was originally based on.

Is there a Vilani write up in JTAS? I know the Vilani and Vargr Sourcebook from DGP is an MT product.

Hmm, now that is a good question...

Isn't it interesting that there's not a book that covers the culture of the modern Imperial Citizen in any edition of Traveller?

It is something that is long overdue and also something that I would hate to ever see. MWM's novel Agent of the Imperium (great book) describes an Imperium that is very different to the one DGP imagined in their Digest magazines and later MegaTraveller.

Am I missing something here?

Yup. The average Third Imperium 'citizen' is from a planet that has had 2881 years to diverge culturally from how it was prior to the long night. For the last 1105 years or so it has been influenced by Sylean/Third Imperial culture. Harking back to Vilani or Solomani supremacy was a political move within the Imperial court.

 

[Condottiere]

Politics are local, and the vast majority of sophonts in the Imperium are likely to never leave their own solar system.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Am I missing something here?

I would argue that what you're missing is that their is no such thing as a consistent "imperial citizen" , but a diverse collection of regional variations on a baseline so broad as to be meaningless.

It would like trying to define a stereotype for a citizen of 21st century earth. Any comment you could make would either be full of exceptions, or so vague as to be useless. ("The people of earth wear clothes... except when they don't ")


I would say we can talk about stereotypes at sector or maybe domain level, but above that not really
,

 

[Supplement Four]

MWM's novel Agent of the Imperium (great book) describes an Imperium that is very different to the one DGP imagined in their Digest magazines and later MegaTraveller.

That's the first thing I've heard about that book that makes me want to read it.

Yup. The average Third Imperium 'citizen' is from a planet that has had 2881 years to diverge culturally from how it was prior to the long night. For the last 1105 years or so it has been influenced by Sylean/Third Imperial culture. Harking back to Vilani or Solomani supremacy was a political move within the Imperial court.

But, it's clear that the Syleanians themselves were of Vilani/Solomani stock.

 

[Supplement Four]

I would argue that what you're missing is that their is no such thing as a consistent "imperial citizen" , but a diverse collection of regional variations on a baseline so broad as to be meaningless.,

And, I would reply that, although I see your point, your view is too micro. We've got sourcebooks on Solomani and Zhodani and other alien races which are macro views of the race and culture. The macro view of the Imperial Citizen is what I'm talking about.

 

[mike wightman]

The problem is that DGP goofed big style with their take on the Vilani and as a result the setting should be very different.

The average Imperial human citizen - and player character that doesn't express a preference - is most likely pure Vilani genetically, with a much smaller percentage of hybrid Vilani/Solomani/Other human race. very few within the Imperium will be pure Solomani unless you are close to the Solomani sphere.

That means the aging throw table in CT should produce results that fit Vilani long life rather than Solomani age spans. They don't - therefore the CT rules do not match the setting in a pretty major way, all thanks to a bit of DGP invention.

 

[mike wightman]

That's the first thing I've heard about that book that makes me want to read it.

It is a good book.

But, it's clear that the Syleanians themselves were of Vilani/Solomani stock.

Yup, 1776 years ago.
A lot changes in that time. Sadly board rules prevent me going any further.

 

[robject]

Musings here which may be wrong at any or all points.

Seems to me that Sylean culture, even assuming the Confederation was culturally "Sylean", is still a drop in the bucket compared to the populations dispersed from the Ziru Sirka, and then seasoned by the rampant Solomani during the Ramshackle Imperium.

Note the infighting during the Barracks' Emperors times and thereabouts. Note the internal politicking done to the Deneb sector. The Humbolts on Vincennes. It was the inner versus outer, Vilani versus Solomani, old money versus new money, so to speak, jockeying for power. And the Solomani are rabidly loyal to their space... And what happens during the late Rebellion? The "New Ziru Sirkaa".

So even if only taking the pop culture angle to Traveller, it's apparent that the Syleans are not major movers in the Third Imperium: they're Vilani variants or proxies, just as the Sword Worlders and Darrians are Solomani variants or proxies, depending on what's going on in any particular game.

It's the old tensions between the Solomani and the Vilani.

Thus, our Citizen (and the REAL Supplement 4, as well as Traveller5, show us what Citizen careers are like) is a mix of "traditionalist" and "disruptor", symbolized as part Vilani and part Solomani.

Consider the metaphor in Traveller itself. Players are fixed within a class system, but one result of playing the game is that the player team itself breaks that class system to discover things and solve problems. The class system "is" the Vilani Ziru Sirka. The breaking-down of the institutional class system "is" Solomani.


So all Citizens, whether human or not, regardless of their DNA, are a mix of "Vilani" and "Solomani", since the Third Imperium is a "mix" of the First and Second.

 

[GypsyComet]

it's clear that the Syleans themselves were of Vilani/Solomani stock.

The Vilani all but drowned the Syleans genetically over several thousand years, but there was reportedly some original Sylean blood left in isolated communities. The Terran genetic contribution on Sylea was relatively minor, but the cultural contribution was significant.

It is worth remembering that the Vilani genetic stamp is widespread not because they outbred everyone else, but because they *interbred* with everyone else. The minor human races that remain distinctive in Imperial space do so because they were not completely (or at all) interfertile with the Vilani.

While a proper survey of the Ziru Sirka hasn't been done, and would be of only academic interest, it was a J2 empire comprised of J1 neighborhoods. Populations were probably more patchy compared to the Third Imperium, with the commercial hub and source cloud model that we see implied in the trade rules more explicitly visible. A lot of systems that weren't economic to develop or trade with would have been left unexploited.

Then the Terrans came along. Between the Interstellar Wars they were aggressively spreading out and settling on just about any rock they could find. The history of Diaspora and Old Expanses is explicitly one of ninja colonization, and we know from the Solomani module that they were also expanding into Daibei, Magyar, and Dark Nebula. That went on for centuries while the Ziru Sirka still stood, so it is a safe assumption that nearly a third of ZS territory was already heavily Terran by the time the empire fell. The Solomani then spend significant effort getting populations pushed all over the old empire.

If a subsector read leaves you wondering why anyone would settle on such forsaken worlds, the answer "crazy Sollies" works better than many others.

 

[Supplement Four]

This discussion has turned into something a lot more interesting than I originally thought it would be.

Keep the comments coming!

 

[Supplement Four]

The problem is that DGP goofed big style with their take on the Vilani and as a result the setting should be very different.

By what standard? Just MWM's take in the novel he wrote?

 

[mike wightman]

No, the default human stats of the setting.

Original CT generated characters that, as per the aging table, have a life expectancy similar to Terran humans.

DGP made Vilani very long lived and forgot one major fact - the vast majority of player characters in the Third Imperium setting are of Vilani heritage rather than Solomani.

Thus the CT aging tables do not represent the typical inhabitant of the Third Imperium.

We have been playing it wrong for years - or alternatively there need to be a retcon to make Vilani aging similar to Terran - and all human minor races - aging rates.

 

[Supplement Four]

DGP made Vilani very long lived and forgot one major fact - the vast majority of player characters in the Third Imperium setting are of Vilani heritage rather than Solomani.

Thus the CT aging tables do not represent the typical inhabitant of the Third Imperium.

We have been playing it wrong for years - or alternatively there need to be a retcon to make Vilani aging similar to Terran - and all human minor races - aging rates.

You're making one mistake with your take on this. We haven't been playing it wrong for years. The CT aging tables are correct.

What you are missing is that the MT Vilani aging bonuses pure Vilani blood and close to pure Vilani bloodlines.

The average Imperial citizen is not of pure Vilani blood.




Look at the table on page 26 of V&V. A character rolls 2D to see how much Vilani blood he has within his veins. Rolling a 10- means no aging modifier. (There are modifiers to the 2D check--the closer the character is to original Vilani space, the more likely he has a good measure of Vilani blood.)

That says that only 8% of the population has a significant amount of Vilani ancestry in their genes.

It's a 92% (modifiers can change this) chance that a character does not get the benefit of an aging modifier.