Gents,
Well, Ewan asked the 64 CrImp question so I suppose I'll put my musings out there.
Pleae note, these are musings and little more. Just odd notes I've jotted down over years since TNE appeared, GDW retired, and Traveller turned it's collective back on it's own in-game future.
What would M:1500 look like? A lot like Europe in 1500 CE I'm thinking. However, before I can discuss M:1500's present I need to tackle it's past. As for that past and generally speaking, everything already mentioned through 1248 happened as described or pretty much as described. The particular parts of the past we need to address, however, are Virus and the Empress Wave.
Virus in 1500: What's happened to Virus? Putting it simply, the Singularity happened.
Virus and it's works, good, bad, or incredibly vile, were a type of transhumanism. Couple that transhumanism with a lifeform that can "geneer" itself by re-writing computer code while also evolving at CPU clock speed and the Singularity should come roaring in like a rocket sled on rails. Thanks to this Viral Singularity, Virus has "ascended" or "moved on" on whatever other terms you feel comfortable with. There are a few examples left in a few odd corners, some of the more eccentric Mother, God, and Hobbyist strains which simply weren't interested in passing through the Singularity, but Virus has essentially left our plane of existence.
While Virus is basically gone in M:1500, it's handwork remains behind.
The Empress Wave: Oddly enough, tackling the Wave is much harder than dealing with Virus and that's because we know so little about it.
The Wave was a cosmological event, a "reality quake" if you will. Something or some things triggered it in the core of our galaxy and it propogated outward from there. A large part of the Wave involved a "flutter" or "spasm" in the boundary between the dimension that contains normal space and the dimensions that contain jump space. And, because psioincs and jump space are somehow linked, the Wave also effected minds.
The Wave resembled a tsunami in a way. Just as a tsunami is a ripple in the deep ocean and is only noticed when it approaches land, the Wave cold be only be detected when it effected jump travel and minds. Unlike a tsunami which slows as it approaches land, the Wave sped up it encountered minds and especially actively psionic minds. so, the Wave didn't propogate along a perfect wavefront. Minds tugged it hither and thither, stretching it's front into bulges and pockets. The more sentient the minds and the more psionic the minds it met, the more the Wave was tugged out of shape and the more it sped up.
Sadly, this also meant that the Zhodani Core Route drew the Empress Wave faster towards Charted Space just as a candle's wick draws liquid wax to the flame.
The psionic aspect of the wave ranged far ahead of it, just as a storm can raise huge waves on a distant beachs which are still under blue skies. It was this far ranging psionic upset which began to tear the Consulate apart and which Jon Crocker imprinted into Strephon's mind at Longbow II.
The psionic upsets caused by the Wave were only a small part of it's passage however. It's disruption of the boundary between normal and jump space stopped FTL travel for generations. As the Wave's effects built towards a peak, jump first became increasingly difficult and finally completely impossible.
As the Wave moved across Charted Space, FTL travel was lost for generations, was lost for centuries. That’s why no warnings arrived from the Core Route, no vessel could jump past a wave front that was tens or perhaps hundreds of parsecs thick.
From perhaps 1250 onwards a curtain of silence swept across Charted Space. Traveling faster than light, the Wave sundered the interstellar links binding every polity, every trade group, every fleet, and everyone. Worlds were alone, travellers stranded, fleets and ships trapped in the systems where the Wave found them. This was no loss of trade, no financial collapse, no inward turn. This was an impossibility instead. No matter how much they may have wanted to, no one could use jump ships because jump drive no longer worked.
Sure, a few worlds managed to maintain a few interstellar links by STL ship, lasers, or radio, but the vast majority of Charted Space was cut off from the rest. Each of those worlds was forced to develop in isolation, to progress, regress, succeed, fail, survive, or die on its own. Thousands of worlds across Charted Space became individual “sociological terrariums” as the Wave prevented jump for year after year decade after decade and on into the centuries.
Then, perhaps a century or so before the year the Third Imperium would mark as 1500, the Wave’s effects began to diminish. The wall cutting off all these worlds from each other first faded, then disappeared, and their inhabitants began to explore what the galaxy the Wave and Virus had left behind.
That’s it really. That's my first suggestion for M:1500. I could go on for thousands of more words describing the growing polities, the trade networks, the wars, the explorations, the re-contact, the re-learning of all the things lost while the Wave raged. There’s no need to do that however because you’ve all got enough imagination to fill in the huge blank canvas I set in front of you.
Try this thought experiment. Take out any sector map you wish and place a penny on every “shirtsleeve” system. That is every system in which a population could exist for years without any outside contact. Those worlds are the ones who will begin looking outward once the Wave recedes. More importantly, those worlds will contain any society, tech level, and government you care, or dare, to dream about.
Regards,
Bill
