I'm speculating in this post about something different from what I talked about in Virgle, about one sort of a group or another establishing a small-scale colony with the intent of serving as a backup, lost colony or otherwise.
There may well be a least one or two secret outposts or even colonies hidden who knows where on the Near Star Map, and/or--as anyone familiar with Santa Maria can arrest--at least one or two colonies which have failed and been absorbed into another surviving one. I'm thinking more along the lines of something happening to some sort of interstellar vessel with the ability to plant a surviving colony that removes it from contact with the Core. Such a colony can't exist among the known stars of the space of the Near Star Map, at least not in the area stretching from from Vega to Procyon to Eta Bootis, so it would have to exist elsewhere.
How? A Star Trek "spatial anomaly," maybe, or perhaps more likely and somewhat less clichéd a drive malfunction that leaves the vessel stranded near a planetary system with an inhabitable planet, or a one-way colonizing vessel traveling to a new planetary system with a garden world via a brown dwarf (or in orbit of a brown dwarf) that they thought the Core had to have catalogued already. These long-range missions would be viable early on: The Manchurians were able to travel 49.5 light years to explore Chengdu in 2182, and from 2167 colony ships were able to travel the 28.9 ly to Beowulf. Someone (the Pentapods?) could intentionally ship (transplant) the colony ship to another environment far from the Core for unknown reasons (backup?).
One amusing possibility akin to a lost colony might be to have a starfaring government early in its history discover a convenient brown dwarf connecting Sol to some area of space otherwise unaccessible to stutterwarp drive, perhaps to the 61 Cygni Cluster. (Hey, it happened before.) Secretly, and carefully, a large and self-sufficient exploration/colonization mission was sent to find and settle the garden world closest to the brown dwarf. Sooner or later, when the brown dwarf's existence was discovered the government in question would already have a functioning colony on the other side that would be ready to support further efforts. Unfortunately, some sort of political change happened and the "destroy the evidence, silence the witnesses" protocol was activated. (And on the new world, people wonder ...)
The isolated population wouldn't be large without any follow up immigration. If we assume that a colony vessel was stranded with 1000 people in 2180, assuming population growth of 2% per annum the colony would host one hundred thousand people by 2300 and 160 thousand by 2320. This total would of course vary if we assume higher or lower rates of population increase, or better or worse preparations. In terms of playability, there could be everything from a situation like that of the low-tech tens of thousands living on Blue Planet's Poseidon and communing with the mysterious yet visible native biosphere after eighty years' isolation to, at the other end of the scale, a quarter-million angry people at TL 8 asking why they never heard anything from Terra while your science officers point out that their vintage corvettes might be old but still good.*
The lost colony could also fail. Cut off from civilization with only a minimum of supplies in an environment of dubious attractiveness, it would probably be more likely to fail than not. This could also be quite playable. Did they discover anything, or at least know what killed them? Who sent them all this way? Were they looking for anything in particular? Are the discoverers at any risk themselves?
The final set of adventure possibilities would relate to the colony's reintegration into the human community. Whether discovered by blind chance or by somehow overcoming stutterwarp's 7.7 light year limit, a sizable human population inhabiting a shirtsleeves-habitable garden world has been found. Everyone will want in: anthropologists and sociologists interesting in examining an isolate population, traders who'd want to take advantage of the local[strike]s[/strike] trade goods, scientists interested in examining the world and discovering how they got so far, politicians and military types who might try to claim the colony and mollify its inhabitants ("We tried to get in touch with you, see, but ..."), people of any profession who'd like to take advantage of a crack somewhere ...
Thoughts?
* The problem with a high-tech lost colony that retained radio technology is that they would know where Sol was and could conceivably start sending radio transmissions back. This could be a problem if they wanted to be heard. Then again, they might make for interesting background news. ("The Texans at Austin's World have sent their latest news compendium of transmissions from the Stalo colony at Pi 3 Orionis planetary system . . ." "The Staloites have discovered a lovable new pet land cephalopod." "They've stopped transmitting." "Oh, they're back online." "Oh, the Land Cephalopods--the X!!t1--have gotten the vote after they were discovered to, in fact, be sentient." ...)
There may well be a least one or two secret outposts or even colonies hidden who knows where on the Near Star Map, and/or--as anyone familiar with Santa Maria can arrest--at least one or two colonies which have failed and been absorbed into another surviving one. I'm thinking more along the lines of something happening to some sort of interstellar vessel with the ability to plant a surviving colony that removes it from contact with the Core. Such a colony can't exist among the known stars of the space of the Near Star Map, at least not in the area stretching from from Vega to Procyon to Eta Bootis, so it would have to exist elsewhere.
How? A Star Trek "spatial anomaly," maybe, or perhaps more likely and somewhat less clichéd a drive malfunction that leaves the vessel stranded near a planetary system with an inhabitable planet, or a one-way colonizing vessel traveling to a new planetary system with a garden world via a brown dwarf (or in orbit of a brown dwarf) that they thought the Core had to have catalogued already. These long-range missions would be viable early on: The Manchurians were able to travel 49.5 light years to explore Chengdu in 2182, and from 2167 colony ships were able to travel the 28.9 ly to Beowulf. Someone (the Pentapods?) could intentionally ship (transplant) the colony ship to another environment far from the Core for unknown reasons (backup?).
One amusing possibility akin to a lost colony might be to have a starfaring government early in its history discover a convenient brown dwarf connecting Sol to some area of space otherwise unaccessible to stutterwarp drive, perhaps to the 61 Cygni Cluster. (Hey, it happened before.) Secretly, and carefully, a large and self-sufficient exploration/colonization mission was sent to find and settle the garden world closest to the brown dwarf. Sooner or later, when the brown dwarf's existence was discovered the government in question would already have a functioning colony on the other side that would be ready to support further efforts. Unfortunately, some sort of political change happened and the "destroy the evidence, silence the witnesses" protocol was activated. (And on the new world, people wonder ...)
The isolated population wouldn't be large without any follow up immigration. If we assume that a colony vessel was stranded with 1000 people in 2180, assuming population growth of 2% per annum the colony would host one hundred thousand people by 2300 and 160 thousand by 2320. This total would of course vary if we assume higher or lower rates of population increase, or better or worse preparations. In terms of playability, there could be everything from a situation like that of the low-tech tens of thousands living on Blue Planet's Poseidon and communing with the mysterious yet visible native biosphere after eighty years' isolation to, at the other end of the scale, a quarter-million angry people at TL 8 asking why they never heard anything from Terra while your science officers point out that their vintage corvettes might be old but still good.*
The lost colony could also fail. Cut off from civilization with only a minimum of supplies in an environment of dubious attractiveness, it would probably be more likely to fail than not. This could also be quite playable. Did they discover anything, or at least know what killed them? Who sent them all this way? Were they looking for anything in particular? Are the discoverers at any risk themselves?
The final set of adventure possibilities would relate to the colony's reintegration into the human community. Whether discovered by blind chance or by somehow overcoming stutterwarp's 7.7 light year limit, a sizable human population inhabiting a shirtsleeves-habitable garden world has been found. Everyone will want in: anthropologists and sociologists interesting in examining an isolate population, traders who'd want to take advantage of the local[strike]s[/strike] trade goods, scientists interested in examining the world and discovering how they got so far, politicians and military types who might try to claim the colony and mollify its inhabitants ("We tried to get in touch with you, see, but ..."), people of any profession who'd like to take advantage of a crack somewhere ...
Thoughts?
* The problem with a high-tech lost colony that retained radio technology is that they would know where Sol was and could conceivably start sending radio transmissions back. This could be a problem if they wanted to be heard. Then again, they might make for interesting background news. ("The Texans at Austin's World have sent their latest news compendium of transmissions from the Stalo colony at Pi 3 Orionis planetary system . . ." "The Staloites have discovered a lovable new pet land cephalopod." "They've stopped transmitting." "Oh, they're back online." "Oh, the Land Cephalopods--the X!!t1--have gotten the vote after they were discovered to, in fact, be sentient." ...)
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