Route of the Annililik Run

[robject]

Named after the Annililik, a ship owned and operated by Captain "Blackjack" Tanner back in Milieu Zero, the Annililik Run probably has the same sort of nostalgia attached to it as old Route 66 does for us here in the States.

That said, I don't remember the worlds visited in the Annililik Run. Does anyone have a list handy?

• Core 2118 Capital
• [...a bunch of worlds...]
• Vland 1717 Vland

And, does anyone have basic stats for the [FONT=arial,helvetica]Annililik?[/FONT]

 

[inexorabletash]

Named after the Annililik, a ship owned and operated by Captain "Blackjack" Tanner back in Milieu Zero

Conveniently, I just picked up a hardcopy...

The intro dictates that "Although there are three different scenarios in The Annililik Run, you as the referee should always donduct the course of the adventures from the Vland sector to the Core sector. The second and third scenarios can easily be modified into Core-to-Vland runs if you feel it's necessary."

Tanner's ship is actually the Phoenix, a converted luxury liner turned "freighter", featuring in Adventure #1 (The Cursed Run) in the book. The scenario (pp.11) is that Tanner is recruiting hands for taking the ship on the Annililik Run, so it's already gained that name before his time. If successful, the scenario ends with the characters transported to a Core world of their choice.

The Cursed Ship, adventure #2's scenario (pp.28) features the new starship Annililik, freshly built by Annililik Ship Yards, "designed just for the famous Annililik run". The route can be freely chosen, "...just as long as they travel from the Vland Sector to the Core Sector..." but the tentative route given is World 89377, Asteroid 11977, Space Station AA900, Asteroid G1100, Planet 72222, Military Base Zeta, Core World 11906, followed by a return of the ship to Vland Sector by any path. Tanner plays no part in this adventure, despite the text on the back of the book! (Quoted at http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Annililik_Run)

The third adventure (The Cursed Cargo) features "Tendorian Flora and Fauna", being transported from Vland sector to Core sector on behalf of the Annililik Foundation.

the Annililik Run probably has the same sort of nostalgia attached to it as old Route 66 does for us here in the States.

Nice...

That said, I don't remember the worlds visited in the Annililik Run. Does anyone have a list handy?

The above is basically it - it's a route from Vland sector to Core sector and Annililik itself is in Vland sector. But everything else is (intentionally) generic - asteroid clusters in inhabited systems well away from the mainworld starports due to the status of the cargo, or otherwise barely detailed locations with placeholder names.

And, does anyone have basic stats for the Annililik?

Now that, at least, is given. Sort of, in a partially filled Form 41:

Name/Type: Annililik
Mission: Subsidized Liner
2 Maneuver M0
4 Jump J 0
3 Power P 2
0 Armor Armor
Crew 9
Passengers 21
Low 20
Cargo 129
Tons Tons
1 Launch

Looks to be about 66m long by 16m wide by 3 decks and crawl space. The prose says "...29 large staterooms on Deck Two for passengers..."

...

The idea of sketching out the route is intriguing, but the intervening 1000 years haven't (apparently) left any mark on current maps. Is the run the same "... near permanent corridor... established between the two worlds [Vland and Sylea]" circa -480? (T4:M0 pp.26)?

You can't make it from Vland to Capital in 8 jumps at J-4. But you can make it between what would have been the outskirts of the pocket empires.

 

[inexorabletash]

Also, young future Emperor Cleon I spent a year on Vland in -33. Presumably he took the Annililik Run to get there. And I assume there is a museum on Capital dedicated to his selfies with spaceside attractions along the way, like asteroids bases carved into the shapes of dinosaurs.

 

[GypsyComet]

The M:0 Subsidized Liner suffers from the same fate that befell many of the M:0 designs: regrettable deckplans. I think at least two of us deckplan wonks have attempted to redo the M:0 Type M, though mine remains incomplete.

 

[robject]

Interesting that the Annililik was a Jump-4 vessel in a TL 12 milieu. And had a power-plant 3.

The route can be freely chosen, "...just as long as they travel from the Vland Sector to the Core Sector..." but the tentative route given is World 89377, Asteroid 11977, Space Station AA900, Asteroid G1100, Planet 72222, Military Base Zeta, Core World 11906, followed by a return of the ship to Vland Sector by any path.

[...]

it's a route from Vland sector to Core sector and Annililik itself is in Vland sector. But everything else is (intentionally) generic - asteroid clusters in inhabited systems well away from the mainworld starports due to the status of the cargo, or otherwise barely detailed locations with placeholder names.

[...]

The idea of sketching out the route is intriguing, but the intervening 1000 years haven't (apparently) left any mark on current maps. Is the run the same "... near permanent corridor... established between the two worlds [Vland and Sylea]" circa -480? (T4:M0 pp.26)?

You can't make it from Vland to Capital in 8 jumps at J-4. But you can make it between what would have been the outskirts of the pocket empires.

And I see that Annililik is not on Travellermap, so it may be a non-canonical system name at that. Garh!

 

[rancke]

Interesting that the Annililik was a Jump-4 vessel in a TL 12 milieu. And had a power-plant 3.

That's a blatant mistake.

And I see that Annililik is not on Travellermap, so it may be a non-canonical system name at that. Garh!

But that isn't. You just have to pick a world to be Annilikik and come up with a story of why the name changed between Milieu 0 and the Classic Era.


Hans

 

[robject]

As Hans points out, it's hard to do Jump-4 when your tech is a solid Jump-3. Not impossible, but it is highly unlikely to be a "route" in a typical "trade route" sense.

In T5, you'd need a "Prototype" Jump Drive-5 to get Jump-4 performance. And those things don't grow on trees: they're not mass produced.

So, I feel a retcon is in order. I assume a largely Jump-3 route, and that the ship has four parsecs of fuel on hand.

Actually, given the nature of the route as a smuggler's route, I might expect deep-space jumps to be a common thing. Although that may change as the times change -- in other words, the route isn't necessarily a fixed thing for all time. It might represent a number of worlds along the corridor, and the astrogator chooses the route from among its options.

You just have to pick a world to be Annilikik and come up with a story of why the name changed between Milieu 0 and the Classic Era.

Yes, of course you're right. Too bad that adventure wasn't written with more... erm... effort. Ah well.

 

[robject]

From Capital

GIVEN that the Annililik Run is not set in stone, but is rather a sort of "guideline" describing an historical smuggler's corridor from Capital to Vland,

GIVEN that the route, being smuggler-related, tends to shun quality starports and tends to stay off of major trade routes,

GIVEN that the route is a mix of Jump-3 and a "Jump-4" (requiring an initial jump into deep space and a subsequent jump to a destination),

THEN what worlds might circumscribe that corridor?

CAPITAL From Core 2118 Capital, I see Core 2014 Morii being a possibility: off the routes and it has water seas. Four parsecs distant, it requires two jumps.

MORII I think the best path from there is Jump-3 to Core 1713 Rison, and a gas giant refueling -- assuming that there was no naval base back in Milieu Zero.

RISON Jump-3 to Core 1610 Nagan, an agricultural world with a GG.

NAGAN Jump-3 to the water world Core 1508 Asmi.

 

[inexorabletash]

As Hans points out, it's hard to do Jump-4 when your tech is a solid Jump-3. Not impossible, but it is highly unlikely to be a "route" in a typical "trade route" sense.

In T5, you'd need a "Prototype" Jump Drive-5 to get Jump-4 performance. And those things don't grow on trees: they're not mass produced.

Only the Annililik itself - a bleeding-edge experimental technology ship - is quoted as J-4 and given an 8-stop route. As you note, the Run itself is likely more of a set of possible waypoints than a specific set of jumps.

 

[inexorabletash]

The Alpha quadrant of Core is the most interesting bit. Vland is full of J-1 mains but Core is sparse. I'd suggest a route that is forced to make a few key jumps there, and within Vland passes a choke point that gives the run its name.

Tidbit: it takes J-4 to go from Vland to Core. Anything less takes a deep space refuel or venturing into Lish or Dagu.

 

[rancke]

Only the Annililik itself - a bleeding-edge experimental technology ship - is quoted as J-4 and given an 8-stop route.

Is this from the adventure?

I find it hard to believe in a technology that doesn't mature for another 300 years already being in the functional prototype stage. Though it's true that Year 300 being the date historians say the Imperium reached TL13 implies that the first TL13 ship was built somewhat earlier than that. Nevertheless, I wouldn't put experimental J4 technology much earlier than 200, if that, with the first reliable J4 somewhere around 240-260.

But I suppose that if it's canon, I'll just have to believe in a couple of centuries of experimentation before getting it right.


Hans

 

[inexorabletash]

Is this from the adventure?

I think I captured the relevant details from the book above. It's quoted as J-4 (I think, the form is poorly designed!), and the route has 8 stops. In the book, the ship is presented as fresh off the yards and basically described as J. J. Abrams's Enterprise crossed with an Apple store:

Everything about the vessel is new, crisp and shiny. In fact, the lighting is too bright in all sections of the ship, forcing passengers to squint as they walk the corridors or sit in their cabins. ... Obviously, no expense was spared to make this craft perfect.

But it's a passenger ship, not a research vessel. Note that there are no (sensible) dates given in the adventures that I can see, so this one doesn't need to be considered M0. The onboard robots are TL-12, but the AI is supposedly quite advanced. *shrug* Maybe setting it circa 300 makes more sense. Or just discounting the ship stats. Or the whole thing.

BTW, "Last Modified" timestamps are given for in the intros to the 3 adventures as 152-1111, 151-1901, and 158-2207. Um... yeah.

 

[rancke]

Sounds like Robert has his work cut out for him to fit this adventure into the setting.


Hans

 

[inexorabletash]

Here's a map spanning Vland (top left) to Sylea (lower right). (File size is about 1 MB)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/inexorabletash-share/coti/annililik.png

 

[GypsyComet]

Those numbers don't make any sense when compared to the original T4 rulebook's Type M, either. They start to make sense when compared to the quite different numbers in the T4 Starships book, but the ship card in the adventure is mangled.

The deckplan is identical to the plan in T4 Starships, as are the cargo and stateroom numbers. That makes it all but impossible to change up the drive, and thus the fuel, numbers. The implication is that the Annililik is a bog standard M:0 Type M (per T4 Starships) aside from the computer. Jump 3, 1G, Power 3. The "0/0/2" boxes are the sensors, with one sensor mode mislabeled as "M" instead of "A".

But.
It looks like the author wanted to goose the drives but didn't understand the consequences of doing so. Both the Jump and Maneuver are listed as one higher than standard, but the power and internal volume list are not altered to fit. TL aside, this ship would lose two thirds of its cargo to just the jump increase.

Here's a map

That part of the Imperium is pretty dense. I was able to plot a 22 jump course at J3 with only one shorter leg. I'm sure others could do better, since there are very few places where J3 is not enough.

 

[robject]

I take a pretty loose view of the adventure. The premise is interesting; the execution is rather poor. The idea of an early route between Core and Vland -- that is cool, and there's salvageable material from the wreckage.

A Jump-4 vessel is going to be rare until many key class A starports are at TL 13. I can see Protoypes before TL 13, but as we know, there are very few -- on the order of a hundred of them -- and they're hand-built, and they're not particularly reliable, efficient, svelte, or safe.

 

[inexorabletash]

This may prove useful - original proposal for the Annililik Run adventure by David Burden.

At the end of the Long Night it was the first legendary route of trade. The Annililik Run. From Vland to Core a trading corridor a few parsecs wide found its way through pirate and alien territories to link together the two greatest powers of the age. The Run was a thing of daring, and it was a rare Trader who could take their craft along its whole length.

As he writes, the finished product - written by others - bore almost no resemblance to the proposal:

Maps are just for the worlds within 2 or 3 parsecs of the run. I visualise a narrow band of map running up the side or along the top of each page, the rest of the page containing the relevant library data. The hexes may well have to be skewed to put a diagonal route ( the run ) into the vertical/horizontal space.

Yes, that! Just what I was envisioning.

Full proposal on his blog (circa 2003) at:

http://www.converj.com/sites/gushemege/commentary/annililik_run.html

 

[GypsyComet]

As he writes, the finished product - written by others - bore almost no resemblance to the proposal

Recalling my one brush with the T4 team's approach to production, that does not surprise me at all.

 

[inexorabletash]

Here's a "strip" render of the path from Vland to Capital, rotated 60°:

Full size: https://s3.amazonaws.com/inexorabletash-share/coti/annililik+strip.png (~500kB)

It's a quick and dirty hack of the TM renderer to render each hex rotated by 60°. I then rotated the resulting image -60° and cropped it. Since this was done with pixels, the quality is rough.

(I'll toss a "render rotated hexes" item on the wish list that does it the right way and allows PDF output.)