Kill Lucan!

[Carlobrand]

Discussions elsewhere inspire me to start a little game here. The object is to kill Lucan - or protect him. Idea is to come up with a way to get at him and remove him from the Imperial gene pool before he makes a royal mess of things. And, in counterpoint, to come up with a defense that blocks that way from succeeding.

Starting position: Lucan lives in the Imperial Palace. He is protected by an Imperial Guard who, having failed once, are strongly motivated not to fail a second time. The palace itself is protected by powerful sensors and a nuclear damper against both nuclear attack and intrusion by unauthorized fusion-powered vehicles. Advanced point defense systems further protect the palace from attack by missile or mortar. Airspace around the Palace is tightly controlled, and offensive systems can bring down an intruder in short order. The palace grounds are designed to prevent something like a car-bombing from being effective anywhere except at the perimeter gates themselves, and they in turn are well defended if someone sets a bomb off there and tries to force entry. We will assume planetary defenses and spaceborne defensive forces and sensors are adequate to prevent the infamous high-speed-ship-impacting-the-planet scenario; this is after all the most important planet in the Imperium.

He is opposed by a divided Imperial nobility. Some are reflexively loyal no matter what he does, offended by Dulinor's acts and willing to back the Emperor come what may. Some are circumstantially loyal - it serves their interests to not offend the person who sits on the throne, and perhaps to curry favor and obtain advancement by giving carefully calculated support. Some are greatly disturbed by the rumors and by his disbanding of the Moot but reluctant to act assertively against him in a time of war, especially if it might put themselves or their prerogatives at risk. Some - a growing number - are quite willing to do whatever is necessary to end the threat he poses, but identifying like-minded colleagues and acting in concert without being identified and arrested as traitors is a major challenge.

He has the resources of the TL15 Imperial military and bureaucracy at his disposal. To a lesser extent, so long as their allies and agents are cautious about it, so do they.

How does one kill an Emperor who's seen his predecessor fall and knows he too is a target?

 

[mike wightman]

Turn someone close to him.

Get hold of their family and threaten them, use a personality overlay machine to brainwash them, maybe try just bribing them.

Better yet turn a few so you can have some decoys.

Method of assassination - poison, biological pathogen, really sharp writing stylus, take your pick. If the assassin is suicidal then there is much less chance to stop them.

As an aside.

What if Lucan's story is the truth?

Despite the hints that there may have been an adventure or two (lol - adventures for MT) following up this trail, are we ever actually told definitively that yes Lucan killed his brother or no he didn't?

 

[aramis]

Kill:

• train a noble as a telepath.
• Get them an audience.
• Have them Telesend the image needed to arrive.
• Teleport in with the needed weapons.
• If still alive, teleport out with the noble.

Defense:
1) psi-shield the audience chamber.
2) have the audience chamber equipped with high autonomous combat systems that fire on anything teleporting in.

 

[epicenter00]

I don't think it'd be that hard to kill Lucan if you really set your mind to it. The closer you (or someone in your cabal) is closer to Lucan, the easier it gets. If you're just some guy on the street, you probably don't have much chance to kill Lucan. The likelihood of success goes up dramatically if you're resigned to the fact you will be caught/killed; having no care for your own safety opens up many avenues that were closed before. Like almost all things in life, it's also easier if you're rich.

Lucan (like any target of this sort) doesn't just sit in a single room in the center of his web of protective devices and bodyguards like some video game villain. He does things - he sleeps, he has to use the bathroom, he bathes, he eats. No doubt he works out and probably has business or things he likes to do that require him to leave the Palace.

The thing that really makes him vulnerable is that he will have a routine. Human beings are creatures of routine. Once you can predict where he is going to be at some time or another with reasonable accuracy, it becomes easier to kill him. For instance, assassins often strike when someone is going to or from work. If you're in danger, you'll always be told to take a different route to get to the office every day. While Lucan is likely to work in the same place as his home, he probably still leaves the Palace every now and again for whatever reason. If you have an insider and Lucan has a particular grav car he likes to use...a bomb appears in it.

Even if you're an outsider, if you can nail down his routine, you could do something vile like ... build a Meson Gun. I'm serious. Build a Meson Gun. While the Palace I'm sure is shielded against such things, what about his grav car? I'm sure all of Capital might have Meson Screens...against stuff from orbit. However, those screens are likely it's not even on unless there's a concern there might be an attack. In a high-tech subsector like Core has any number of worlds you could slowly assemble the parts to make a starship-scale Meson Gun. Or you could strip one off of a "war grave" or something in the Spinward Marches, break it down into sufficient innocent parts, and reassemble it on Capital. Or likely a combination of the two. With a Meson Gun you don't need to have a clear line of fire. You could build your gun underground in the sewers or in the archtypical "large warehouse" a few thousand kilometers away (since the Meson Gun and fire through the planet to hit Lucan's car). Now if you look at the efforts by various IRL groups to use "garage" weapons to do stuff, it doesn't take much time to realize that homemade rockets (which this is essentially the TL15 equivalent of) have a pretty mixed rate of success. You can't really test-fire your Meson Gun and so there's a good chance it won't work the way you want it to.

However, as they say: Lucan needs to be lucky all the time. All you need to be is lucky once.

(as a side-note, "terrorist meson guns" are one of those things I wonder why you don't hear mentioned in Traveller. You'd think the Rule of Terra, the Racheleians, or the Ine Givar had to have thought about this.)

 

[McPerth]

Even if you're an outsider, if you can nail down his routine, you could do something vile like ... build a Meson Gun. I'm serious. Build a Meson Gun. While the Palace I'm sure is shielded against such things, what about his grav car? I'm sure all of Capital might have Meson Screens...against stuff from orbit. However, those screens are likely it's not even on unless there's a concern there might be an attack.

I'm pretty sure those meson screens are not usually on, at least if they want meson communicators to work (and I guess they have several of them in constant use in Capital).

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

To defend against the meson threat, you could use multiple decoys, with several identical grav cars all setting off at once on several different routes, if possible by multiple gates from the palace. The only people who would know which car is the target would be the staff in the security staff' so a attacker would have to plan to hit all or most of the cars to be sure

 

[Uxi]

The logical question is motive. Ultimately the political problem for those in Lucan's Imperium is bigger: who takes his place, which is what the Rebellion factionalization is about to begin with: there's no clear choice and for most of those at Capital, every other choice is almost worst from that perspective, either surrendering to the Assassin or mentally putting oneself in the crosshairs of the Zhos or Solomani or barbarians at the gates (Aslan and Vargr).

Strephon & Vland would be the most logical but Lucan has made damned sure noone is coming from the former. Outright fighting with the latter never really seemed logical to me and I imagine it was more the Vlani decision to stay as far away from the lunatic as they could and mostly worried about their own problems. Maybe Capital was a little "too Solomani" in a sort of reactionary sort of way that reinforced it. Lucan's reactions would probably more security/espionage/sabotage oriented with his heavy frontline units going to the meatgrinder with Dulinor.

 

[Major B]

Kinetic solution

If you can predict his schedule with reasonable certainty then the kinetic solution seems the best but I think that goes against some efforts to make canon mitigate the kinetic threat.

I would suppose that there is also another mitigating factor - the consideration of collateral damage.

From one extreme, if you know what planet Lucan is on then you could arrange to destory that planet by finding an object of sufficient mass and propelling that object toward said palnet with sufficient velocity that the energy released on impact would ensure Lucan dies. If you are operating at this extreme then maybe the rest of the planet dies with him.

This will be hard to do in most if not all core systems given the level of scrutiny given to traffic control plus the time needed to generate the desired speed, but this can be mitigated given that an object emerging from jump retains the same relative velocity it had when entering jump.

I think I have that right - maybe velocity is the wrong term of reference.

But I think that means you can take a scout, load it with enough fuel, start it along a calculated vector under constant acceleration for the required amount of time, order it to jump into the right system where it's vector will cause it to impact in roughly the same hemisphere containing Lucan, and you will have achieved your objective.

But it may destroy enough around it that this method isn't an option - and that is the only defense I can come up with since most defensive weaponry will only miiagte the damage to the extent that they can dissipate the mass of the incoming object causing less of an energy transfer on impact.

 

[jcrocker]

But I think that means you can take a scout, load it with enough fuel, start it along a calculated vector under constant acceleration for the required amount of time, order it to jump into the right system where it's vector will cause it to impact in roughly the same hemisphere containing Lucan, and you will have achieved your objective.

I'd bet that the Emperor of the Third Imperium has a few pretty good 'storm shelters' around for his use. I don't think 'same hemisphere' would cut it. There would be a contingency plan to get him off-planet and into a battleship in short order so that no matter what happened to the luckless citizens of Capital, he'd be breathing just fine, as long as he wasn't in the impact crater.

But it may destroy enough around it that this method isn't an option - and that is the only defense I can come up with since most defensive weaponry will only miiagte the damage to the extent that they can dissipate the mass of the incoming object causing less of an energy transfer on impact.

True, but since things precipitate out of jumpspace at 100 diameters, that would still give some reaction time for the protection detail to realize that if they can't stop the inbound, they can move Lucan on his personal high-speed subsurface grav tube.

I like the homebrew meson gun, but I seem to remember there were multiple Throne Rooms in the Palace, so already your chance of a first-shot success is at most 1 in 3. Besides, if I were a paranoid security director, I'd run the meson screens 27/7 and have the meson comms run from outside the Palace's screen coverage, with hardline datalink so the Palace was never out of touch. Multiply redundant of course.

It seems to me you'd have two basic options.

For 'up close and personal' I don't think brute force would work. You'd have to figure a way to get your assassin in the same room as Lucan, either as part of an official function or in Lucan's personal schedule, then either make him a Zhodani mindripper, deadly martial artist, or smuggle a weapon past the best security TL15 [and some TL16] can offer.

(I suppose something that would require stealth might work. A nasty germ or tailored bioweapon delivered by Mrs. Lucan du jour, for example, but it would have to be pretty fast-acting to defeat the medical staff.)

Or, for the 'hammer of god' approach, steal the Darrian Star Trigger and wipe out the whole system.

 

[Carlobrand]

The logical question is motive. Ultimately the political problem for those in Lucan's Imperium is bigger: who takes his place, which is what the Rebellion factionalization is about to begin with: there's no clear choice and for most of those at Capital, every other choice is almost worst from that perspective, either surrendering to the Assassin or mentally putting oneself in the crosshairs of the Zhos or Solomani or barbarians at the gates (Aslan and Vargr).

The Zho, Solomani and barbarians are distant threats to the folk in Core, who seem comfortable enough to draw away the very fleets intended to stop those threats so they can hurl them against Dulinor and Strephon - on which subject, see below.

...Strephon & Vland would be the most logical but Lucan has made damned sure noone is coming from the former. ...

Ah, yes, the other unlikely bit. Pragmatically necessary: it's hard to imagine Lucan's available force not crushing Dulinor without some distraction to bleed off resources. However, the IN just seems way too eager to go vaporize their fellow shipmates.

Strephon learns of his "assassination" 7 weeks after the fact, but instead of revealing himself right away at Depot or heading back to Core, gives in to some idiot's idea to take him out to the Imperial Boonies, then waits a year to announce himself. We're not sure how long it took to get from Depot/either-Core-or-Lishun to Usdiki, but it ain't a year unless the man was taking his sweet time about getting there. The local IN - who had to have some inkling when he showed up and took residence at the Usdiki Imperial Palace - make not the slightest effort to verify his bona fides or to alert their command at Core that someone very Strephon-like just took up residence at the Imperial palace. Instead, they allow him to wait and then to make an announcement which - in the midst of full scale war between the Imperium and a rebellious domain - could very obviously only serve to sow confusion and division.

And nobody in Usdiki thinks, "Well, maybe he is the Emperor, but he's been sulking in his bedroom for the past year while another man sat the throne and his kingdom was going up in flames. Perhaps we should confer with the Admiralty in Core before trying to sideline a seated emperor 75 parsecs away on the word of a man who everyone thinks has been dead for over a year."

And then the message reaches Capital, and the Admiralty says, "What the hell! We saw Strephon's body. What can be going on over there?" And then Lucan says, "Like hell that's Strephon! No way!" And somebody reminds him that it would be easy to prove that he's not the real Strephon - even if he's a clone, he won't have the same fingerprints or retinal pattern. "We'll send orders to the Admiral at Usdiki to check his prints and scans against those of the real Strephon," they tell him.

But, that doesn't happen. Or if it does, the Admiralty at Core seems oddly unwilling to accept the word of their fellows at Ushdiki that this guy does indeed have Strephon's prints and retinal pattern - or the fleet in Gushmege seems oddly eager to follow a clone into war against fellow shipmates who are already in the midst of struggling to preserve the Imperium against a revolt by the murderer and his treasonous Domain.

Strephon's near abdication is not something to reward but, all the same, I have to suspect that if word came to Capital that his prints and scans had checked out, that would be a wickedly difficult secret to keep quiet and would have undercut the morale and loyalty of those forces dedicated to keeping Lucan alive, especially after he started acting all crazy-like.

(And what the heck is all that "Rosebud" muttering about Pentecost and Longbow?)

...But I think that means you can take a scout, load it with enough fuel, start it along a calculated vector under constant acceleration for the required amount of time, order it to jump into the right system where it's vector will cause it to impact in roughly the same hemisphere containing Lucan, and you will have achieved your objective....

Game rule:

... We will assume planetary defenses and spaceborne defensive forces and sensors are adequate to prevent the infamous high-speed-ship-impacting-the-planet scenario; this is after all the most important planet in the Imperium. ...

It's been a bit quiet, but I'd still prefer it not sideslip into another planetkiller-ship thread.

 

[Vladika]

But, that doesn't happen. Or if it does, the Admiralty at Core seems oddly unwilling to accept the word of their fellows at Ushdiki that this guy does indeed have Strephon's prints and retinal pattern - or the fleet in Gushmege seems oddly eager to follow a clone into war against fellow shipmates who are already in the midst of struggling to preserve the Imperium against a revolt by the murderer and his treasonous Domain.

Strephon's near abdication is not something to reward but, all the same, I have to suspect that if word came to Capital that his prints and scans had checked out, that would be a wickedly difficult secret to keep quiet and would have undercut the morale and loyalty of those forces dedicated to keeping Lucan alive, especially after he started acting all crazy-like.

I wonder if the IN is more realistically thinking about external treat at this point? I mean, who care who is, or is not emperor, if there is no Empire left to rule?

You are certainly right in questioning the behavior of the IN factions.

If it was me (and it not) I'd fight the external treats, back channel an investigation into the validity of Strephon, then knock off Lucan at the appropriate time.

At any rate, the guy in charge of this will end his career, or even his life. Strephon might be grateful, but will he ever really trust a guy who played "king maker" or "held the reigns of power", even briefly?

You are certainly right in questioning the behavior of the various IN factions involved!

 

[rancke]

And somebody reminds him that it would be easy to prove that he's not the real Strephon - even if he's a clone, he won't have the same fingerprints or retinal pattern. "We'll send orders to the Admiral at Usdiki to check his prints and scans against those of the real Strephon," they tell him.

Given TL15 surgical techniques, a surgically altered double might have the same fingerprints and retinal patterns.

(And, no, I can't think of any reason why Strephon would go to such lengths as to make his doubles absolutely identical to him (And at least one excellent reason not to do so).)

Hans

 

[Uxi]

The Zho, Solomani and barbarians are distant threats to the folk in Core, who seem comfortable enough to draw away the very fleets intended to stop those threats so they can hurl them against Dulinor and Strephon - on which subject, see below.

Ah, yes, the other unlikely bit. Pragmatically necessary: it's hard to imagine Lucan's available force not crushing Dulinor without some distraction to bleed off resources. However, the IN just seems way too eager to go vaporize their fellow shipmates.

Only hard to imagine if you see the IN as a modern nation-state military instead of the semi-feudal system it's supposed to be. The IN effectively is the factional nobles siding with their high nobles (Dulinor and his vs Lucan and his, etc). What the Rebellion really shows is that the Third Imperium had to be largely a collective delusion where those in Illelish didn't really see that they had the same interests as those in Core, to say nothing of those on the Rim or Behind the Claw. Mishmash of Solomani & Vilani heritage and common economic and political system sure, but that the loyalty to the Iridium Throne isn't very deeply ingrained. All politics is local seems to ring a bell.

Strephon learns of his "assassination" 7 weeks after the fact, but instead of revealing himself right away at Depot or heading back to Core, gives in to some idiot's idea to take him out to the Imperial Boonies, then waits a year to announce himself. We're not sure how long it took to get from Depot/either-Core-or-Lishun to Usdiki, but it ain't a year unless the man was taking his sweet time about getting there.

Imagine consolidation radiating out from Core. If the rumors about Varian arrive at the same time (or shortly enough after) as the news of Lucan mobilizing against Dulinor, then it would make sense they would... discretely ensure increasing control out from Usdiki. I can't recall off the top of my head if/when Gushemege's fleet was ordered to mobilize but doesn't seem implausible that Strephon's people made sure it was loyal to him before Lucan settled down. At the very least, it's plausible that there would be a healthy skepticism on Lucan's legitimacy and Strephon becomes a convenient canard to refuse.

The announcement after year would not have been spontaneous without ensuring his relative security and loyalty of the surrounding sub-sectors and military forces first, in any case.

(And what the heck is all that "Rosebud" muttering about Pentecost and Longbow?)

In micro about the Empress Wave. In macro, the initial comments show Strephon knows the Imperium is being pulled apart which is part of the reasoning for having revived the Domains as a real power and Dulinor in particular. He simply didn't forsee the assassination as starting the avalanche even earlier.

 

[rancke]

Only hard to imagine if you see the IN as a modern nation-state military instead of the semi-feudal system it's supposed to be.

The IN has always been portrayed as similar to a modern nation-state military. Indeed, even though the Imperium is called a feudal structure, it is described as an autocracy with pseudo-feudal trappings.


Hans

 

[Uxi]

The IN has always been portrayed as similar to a modern nation-state military. Indeed, even though the Imperium is called a feudal structure, it is described as an autocracy with pseudo-feudal trappings.

Yet impossible to exercise anywhere near autocratic control with the speed of communication (even by J6 Imperiallines "secret" communications much less official X-boat). Pseudo-feudal delegation of semi-autonomous authority is plausible while modern nation-state style control is anything but.

Besides which the canon storyline of the fragmentation of the nobility (and the Navy to each faction) also happens to fit. The admirals in the fleets are the nobles taking side in the factions. In an undisputed succession, they would stay unified, but by definition each faction is putting down Rebellion by the rest.

 

[rancke]

Yet impossible to exercise anywhere near autocratic control with the speed of communication (even by J6 Imperiallines "secret" communications much less official X-boat). Pseudo-feudal delegation of semi-autonomous authority is plausible while modern nation-state style control is anything but.

I said that the IN was supposed to be similar to a modern nation-state military, not that the Imperium is a a modern nation-state. The Imperium is more analogous to an Age of Sail European empire. Empires have exercised autocratic control over great distances for thousands of years. Far greater distances (in terms of communication time) than feudal realms have, I believe, though I could be wrong there. Though admittedly not as great as the Imperium is supposed to manage. Imperial dukes are more akin to hereditary royal governors than to feudal lords.

Besides which the canon storyline of the fragmentation of the nobility (and the Navy to each faction) also happens to fit. The admirals in the fleets are the nobles taking side in the factions. In an undisputed succession, they would stay unified, but by definition each faction is putting down Rebellion by the rest.

The key words are 'disputed succession'. Just what do you think that a modern nation-state military would do in the case of a disputed succession that turned violent? I think most of them would follow their local military commander.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

Only hard to imagine if you see the IN as a modern nation-state military instead of the semi-feudal system it's supposed to be. ...

Nope. Hard to imagine. Nation-state or semi-feudal, it still boils down to logistics and power. For that very reason, MegaTrav went to some lengths to try to deny Lucan his full strength and to give him alternate targets to waste resources on. Note that the Solomani Sphere is - was - several times as large as the Ilelish domain and still managed to lose a quarter of its space and its homeworld before the Imperium decided to call a halt, despite being the same "semi-feudal system" and likely riddled with folk who are related to or friendly to the Solomani. There was none of this people-sitting-on-their-thumbs or fleets-leaving-borders-unprotected business on the Imperial side despite it being a good deal tougher fight.

Dulinor's Domain of Ilelish comprised Ilelish, Zarushagar, Daibei and Reaver's Deep. (Presumably he could draw on Verge as well, though that apparently proved problematic.) Reaver's Deep has little to offer, and Daibei very quickly became preoccupied with their own problems. In neighboring Gushemege, Dagudashaag, Core and Masilla, Lucan had twice the population and twice as many fleets. Dulinor simply did not have the strength to stand up to what could be mustered from the neighboring sectors unless some of those sectors were neutralized in some way. Without Strephon popping up and siphoning off Gushemege and part of Dagudashaag, the war becomes a gradual wearing down of Ilelish and Zarushagar until Dulinor is eventually defeated - not the scenario they wanted.

However, having Strephon pop up over a year afterward and create yet another fracture in the Imperium is unlikely as hell. It's just too easy to prove who he is, and the Admiralty in Core that once swore fealty to him has no particular reason to remain loyal to the madman Lucan, not once they have solid proof of Strephon's identity. My thought is it's just another Trav science gaff - either the writers didn't realize clones aren't perfect duplicates or they needed that second front too badly and decided the average player wouldn't question the story.

... Imagine consolidation radiating out from Core. If the rumors about Varian arrive at the same time (or shortly enough after) as the news of Lucan mobilizing against Dulinor, then it would make sense they would... discretely ensure increasing control out from Usdiki. I can't recall off the top of my head if/when Gushemege's fleet was ordered to mobilize but doesn't seem implausible that Strephon's people made sure it was loyal to him before Lucan settled down. At the very least, it's plausible that there would be a healthy skepticism on Lucan's legitimacy and Strephon becomes a convenient canard to refuse. ...

Again, no.

Strephon was at a Depot with loyal officers around him when he received the announcement. The idea that the fleet at that Depot is going to do anything but obey and protect him is absurd: they've just received word of the incident, the Emperor is among them and able to prove who he is. At that point, there is no reason to question the loyalty of anyone but Dulinor - this was two months before Dulinor even made it back to Dlan, long before the fleets started mobilizing. As for the fleets at Capital, the idea that any fleet, anywhere but the Ilelish domains, might be loyal to a second-string heir who had not been expected to inherit the throne, 7 weeks after the assassination and with the real Emperor able to prove his identity, is absurd - but even if it weren't, Strephon's safer and more useful at a Depot than at a hinterlands palace 75 light years from the center of everything.

The idea that ANYONE is going to suggest moving him to the hinterlands - look at Usdiki on the map - when he's in the middle of the safest place any emperor can be, is absurd.

The idea that they are going to keep his survival quiet and allow another emperor to be crowned in his place, let alone allow people to continue to believe he is dead for a year while his empire is wracked by civil war, is absurd.

First time I heard about the Strephon faction, I figured it had to be a fraud. A year after Strephon's death, one faction in the hinterlands is not happy with Lucan OR Dulinor and decides to create their own Strephon - a doctored fake to rally the people around, surrounded by loyalists who could keep him from being examined too closely. If they could bring down Lucan by force of arms, they could present the nobility with a fait accompli and rally the Imperium around their Strephon to turn and defeat Dulinor. Fighting in that scenario is a must - the fake Strephon won't pass close examination, so the only route to success is by force.

Then I recently got my hands on Survival Margin and realized they were playing him as the real Strephon. Worse, they're playing him as the real Strephon who sat back and let things go to hell before revealing himself - in a universe where the science to prove his identity is as easy as asking for fingerprints. And yet, the Imperial administration that was once loyal to him would rather go to war with him than ask for this little bit of TL5 science? Not likely.

 

[mike wightman]

IIRC the real Strephon was a fan requested outcome - the original plot was to have the "real" Strephon be a TL15 surgically modified body double/clone.

If they had stuck with that then Survival Margin could not be written.

 

[Carlobrand]

IIRC the real Strephon was a fan requested outcome - the original plot was to have the "real" Strephon be a TL15 surgically modified body double/clone.

If they had stuck with that then Survival Margin could not be written.

Why not?

 

[aramis]

Why not?

Because much of it is Strephon's POV journals.

The same information could have been presented in other ways, but so much of SM is Strephon's POV that it wouldn't feel at all the same. IMO, of course.