The Mirror Universe

[Werner]

Star Trek has one, what about the OTU? What would the Mirror Universe of the OTU look like using the same principles for constructing the Star Trek Mirror Universe?

Instead of the Third Imperium, we'll call the the Third Empire, or perhaps someone could suggest another name. What if the Solomani Sphere ruled instead, instead of an Emperor, we have a General Secretary, technically it's the United Nations of a version of the Rule of Man which never fell, the Second Imperium. The Capitol of is of course Terra, or shall we call it Earth? Like in the OTU the Terrans conquered the Vilani, but the Long Night was averted. The Solomani rule from Earth, from the City of New York from a palace in what is today Central Park, the General Secretary resides, but the real rulers are the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats are the equivalent to the Nobility in the Imperium, most of the positions in the Bureaucracy are passed down from parent to child, so technically this whole Empire is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, there are some elections for legitimacy, but they have long since failed to mean anything many thousands of years ago. Elections are once per decade and all citizens are required to vote in them, of course their choice of candidates are rather limited, government approved bureaucrats.

 

[robject]

The early bits about the Imperium -- Adventure 1, for example -- had overtones of Mirror-ness:

I might call it the Hegemonic Imperium, in honor of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I got the impression that things are authoritarian. The nobility system is a firmly-ensconced oligarchy to keep power concentrated towards the top.


1. General Shipyards is in the Imperium's pocket. Their steady incompetence with the Trimkhana Brilliance the the Kinunir only goes to show that nepotism -plus- centralized power costs lives.

It also casts Oberlindes Lines as the patsy for whatever Agent contacts the players in the name of espionage. Whoever that is, he certainly doesn't work for Oberlindes. And so we learn that the Hegemony has enemies, but also has its ears everywhere. You can't trust anyone.


2. Military hulks are used to put political prisoners on ice, or perhaps just as a special high-security gulag when a penal colony won't do. So there is an opposition party, but they are not treated well at all.

So yes, a firmly authoritarian government.

 

[Werner]

The early bits about the Imperium -- Adventure 1, for example -- had overtones of Mirror-ness:

I might call it the Hegemonic Imperium, in honor of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I got the impression that things are authoritarian. The nobility system is a firmly-ensconced oligarchy to keep power concentrated towards the top.


1. General Shipyards is in the Imperium's pocket. Their steady incompetence with the Trimkhana Brilliance the the Kinunir only goes to show that nepotism -plus- centralized power costs lives.

It also casts Oberlindes Lines as the patsy for whatever Agent contacts the players in the name of espionage. Whoever that is, he certainly doesn't work for Oberlindes. And so we learn that the Hegemony has enemies, but also has its ears everywhere. You can't trust anyone.


2. Military hulks are used to put political prisoners on ice, or perhaps just as a special high-security gulag when a penal colony won't do. So there is an opposition party, but they are not treated well at all.

So yes, a firmly authoritarian government.

I think the name of the Imperium sounds already Imperial, since this is the Mirror Universe, I figure something more "democratic sounding" would be in order, but something that is not democratic in reality. Maybe we can just use the United Nations, the Solamani Sphere has government organs named after the General Assembly, and a chief executive called the General Secretary, so I figure that would be a good Title for what to call the Emperor in this universe. Like the Emperor in the OTU, the office of General Secretary has evolved into a hereditary position, although there are elections held every ten years, they are a mere formality the person occupying the position of General Secretary always wins.

The Solomani Sphere in this Universe is what we would call socialistic, everything is run by the government, and private property rights are not recognized, the General Secretary is named Strephron, he resides on Terra however in the Central Park Palace on the Island of Manhattan. Through much toil and sacrifice, the Sphere has managed to reverse global climate change and the ocean levels are back where they were in the 21st century, and they even managed to terraform Mars.

 

[gchuck]

Certainly would give Sol-Sec a much more sinister appearance.

Kind of a Gestapo in space.

Kind of a 'Man in the High Castle' vibe.

 

[Werner]

Certainly would give Sol-Sec a much more sinister appearance.

Kind of a Gestapo in space.

Kind of a 'Man in the High Castle' vibe.

Yeah and there is secret police too, that is a branch of the Scouts, there is the Party, and there is the official opposition. The official opposition exists mainly to give the Party legitimacy in supposedly contested elections, they in fact get paid to be the opposition by the Party, and they aren't supposed to win. The Opposition is a number of small political parties designed to split the opposition vote many different ways so the have no chance to win. On occasion when their is no Party member candidate that wants a particular post, a selected Opposition candidate is allowed to win. The Opposition candidates are fairly well paid to throw an election to the Party candidate, they have to be careful, not to do too well or to "accidentally" win an election they weren't supposed to, such candidates have often met with "unfortunate accidents" or were murdered, with the murderer never being caught, in some rare cases the victorious candidate went into hiding and often joined the Robin Hood Rebel Group, a band of pirates/revolutionaries.

These rebels are basically outlaws, some had respected prior careers but then went afoul of the authorities and joined the Robin Hood Rebels, they often steal government starships and conduct piracy and smuggling operations against government merchant ships, they also run the black market, some illegal items are found here as well as items that are out of stock or simply unavailable in government run stores. The maximum tech level for Sol Sec is 13, even though there was no Long Night, technological advancement has been somewhat retarded by the socialist government run economic system. Shortages of many common items are often unavailable to many citizens who do not have Upper Party Status, or some hard currency to pay under the table at black market rates. There are some smaller kingdoms on the periphery of Charted Space which mint gold and silver coins as hard currency, and that is often used for making purchases on the black market.

 

[robject]

...I figure something more "democratic sounding" would be in order, but something that is not democratic in reality.

....

Yeah and there is secret police too, that is a branch of the Scouts

Ohhh! There's a joke that the names of countries are opposite of what they really are. So something like:

The Glorious People's Democratic Republic

As for the "secret police", I would refer you to Paranoia Press' Scouts & Assassins, as well as T5's Agent career.

 

[Grav_Moped]

If you want to mirror it, go for structure.

The hegemonic power structure is democratic, egalitarian, and has strong institutional forces discouraging accumulation of individual or familial power. Social mobility is high. There is nothing analogous to the Imperium. Massed military power, when needed, is contributed by individual worlds (with standardization for interoperability).

Local governments tend to converge on representative democracies or responsive bureaucracies, and there are far fewer repressive stye governments.

Technology is more widely and evenly distributed.

Corporate power is restricted by a regime of managed competition (a level playing field managed by agreement of planetary and regional governments).

Thrift and hard work do pay off. Audacity and straddling the limits of the law tend to get one in trouble.


Basically, I'm inverting the premises underlying the Imperium and Traveller world generation. I've probably missed a few of them... and intentionally left a really big one out.

It's probably a nicer place to live than the Imperium. It's also pretty boring as an RPG setting.

 

[robject]

Ha! Of course we don't want boring. We want a curve ball to throw at players.

 

[Werner]

Ha! Of course we don't want boring. We want a curve ball to throw at players.

There is a recent historic example that I am not going to mention, because of the politics rule, basically the idea is that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. The opposite of the United Federation of Planets is the Terran Empire. The Imperium is also an empire, just not one as vicious as the Terran Empire of Star Trek fame, so I need something that is not Imperial in name, but which is oppressive and evil in deed, it is a tale of a revolutionary republic gone wrong, it was founded with the noblest of intentions, but the people designing this government were idealists and not realists, and because of this, some unethical people took advantage of the mess that was created and turned it into their own tyranny, this republic does some good, it has worked hard to reverse global warming, it has terraformed Mars, which is something the Third Imperium never accomplished.

Mars is kind of like what Siberia was to Russia in that a lot of political prisoners were sent there to labor camps, Venus has similar programs going on, but it is a tougher but to crack, the Venus of this universe has oceans, but it is still way too hot for human habitation of its surface, but liquid water can now exist. People can live under domes under six atmosphere of pressure, but it is still a kind of hell for those living there. Mars is a sort of low gravity paradise now, a park for the privileged, they isolate themselves from the hardships of those they rule, most of the political prisoners that used to work here were moved to Venus to finish work on terraforming that planet.

 

[Condottiere]

It's Forty Kay.

 

[Grav_Moped]

... The Imperium is also an empire, just not one as vicious as the Terran Empire of Star Trek fame, so I need something that is not Imperial in name, but which is oppressive and evil in deed, it is a tale of a revolutionary republic gone wrong, it was founded with the noblest of intentions, but the people designing this government were idealists and not realists, and because of this, some unethical people took advantage of the mess that was created and turned it into their own tyranny, this republic does some good, it has worked hard to reverse global warming, it has terraformed Mars, which is something the Third Imperium never accomplished.
...

Ok, I'll put in the one aspect of the Imperium I left out:

Psionics.

The mirror Imperium is Zhodani society with democracy and egalitarianism rather than rule by a psionic elite.


But more directly to your point, the Imperium isn't necessarily the good guys, nor are they necessarily the bad guys. They're the guys with the guns and money.

The opposite of the Imperium isn't an Evil Empire or a Good Empire. It's NO empire. That doesn't make a useful Big Bad for a campaign, though. The logical campaign in that setting is "Wow, this universe is just begging for Benevolent Dictators! And we're just the player characters to do it!"

Low SOC PCs: "There's got to be an angle here -- I can get rich if I can find it!"
Mid SOC PCs: "Seems nice enough."
High SOC PCs: "This isn't sustainable. They don't have real leadership. We have to help them!"

The problem the PCs would encounter is that it is indeed sustainable for some subtle reason that they won't find out until they've gotten well into their scheme to destabilize things. Psionics? A religion or secular cultural belief system? Unity against a common external threat that's presently in abeyance? Some Foundation that's engineering society from behind the scenes? In any case, it'll turn the initial "wishing for a global renunciation of violence in order to conquer the world with a butter knife" situation into something much more daunting.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Ha! Of course we don't want boring. We want a curve ball to throw at players.

Precisely. The thing is, as my intervening post describes, it shouldn't be stable. Democracy has to keep winning every time, while authoritarianism only has to win once (decisively enough to make the "last move" in a democratic system by using State power to foreclose further democratic change).

Yet, in order to be a true mirror of the 3rd Imperium, it has to be stable. This means there's some subtle thing going on that keeps it from either collapsing into pocket empires or coalescing into an Empire.

That's the curve ball. It should be easy to corrupt and take over part or all of it, if anyone ever realized that nothing stands in their way. The story is in finding out why it's not that easy there.

In an ordinary Traveller campaign, this could just be a world-of-the-week or maybe subsector-of-the-month setting, and nobody would bat an eye. The difference here is the scope of the thing.

 

[Werner]

Precisely. The thing is, as my intervening post describes, it shouldn't be stable. Democracy has to keep winning every time, while authoritarianism only has to win once (decisively enough to make the "last move" in a democratic system by using State power to foreclose further democratic change).

Yet, in order to be a true mirror of the 3rd Imperium, it has to be stable. This means there's some subtle thing going on that keeps it from either collapsing into pocket empires or coalescing into an Empire.

That's the curve ball. It should be easy to corrupt and take over part or all of it, if anyone ever realized that nothing stands in their way. The story is in finding out why it's not that easy there.

In an ordinary Traveller campaign, this could just be a world-of-the-week or maybe subsector-of-the-month setting, and nobody would bat an eye. The difference here is the scope of the thing.

Well it's an Empire it just isn't labeled as such. The Soviet Union for example is a continuation of the Russian Empire under a different name, its had a number of emperors who didn't wear crowns or call themselves emperors. So the Analogy is the Third Imperium is more like the Russia of the Czars, it has a leader who calls himself Emperor, the Soviet Union had the trappings of democracy, it was an empire that pretended to be something else.

So imagine Stephron without his crown, he doesn't call himself Emperor, instead he bears the title of General Secretary, all the Nobles of the Imperium are instead high party officials in this one-party state. Now what happens to PCs that somehow end up in this Universe, say by a misjump of something? They show up in an unregistered starship with a bunch of worthless Imperial credits and some technology that may be more advanced than this setting, TL 13 being the technical maximum. They will probably be assumed to be foreigners, some officials might wish to check their papers, and the borders of this alternate Imperium will be tightly controlled, I imagine at this point the PCs might get into some trouble.

Oh I know just the classic example, in Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, we were introduced to an entity known as The State, The State is a Socialistic Empire, in this setting there was no FTL, only sublight drives, in particular the Interstellar scramjet. The State is oppressive and tyrannical, and it doesn't care about the individual rights of its citizens, they exist to serve The State, the Mirror Imperium could be something like that, and we could call it "The State" if you like. The State also made its appearance in novels such as Integral Trees and the Smoke Ring.

 

[whartung]

Yet, in order to be a true mirror of the 3rd Imperium, it has to be stable. This means there's some subtle thing going on that keeps it from either collapsing into pocket empires or coalescing into an Empire.

That's the curve ball. It should be easy to corrupt and take over part or all of it, if anyone ever realized that nothing stands in their way. The story is in finding out why it's not that easy there.

In an ordinary Traveller campaign, this could just be a world-of-the-week or maybe subsector-of-the-month setting, and nobody would bat an eye. The difference here is the scope of the thing.

The trick here is that there is this ILLUSION of stability. Everything looks great, but as you learn more and dig deeper, you find it's really a house of cards. Not really an Emperors new clothes thing, but not the bastion of security the surface view provides.

 

[Condottiere]

Successor states tend to keep the bureaucracy, though not necessarily the trappings, of the previous one.

Basically, the Mandarins and eunuchs ran the Middle Kingdom, superceded by the Communist cadres, led by the Son of Heaven.

With the Russians, I think it was the secret police and a bunch of privileged aristocrats.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The trick here is that there is this ILLUSION of stability. Everything looks great, but as you learn more and dig deeper, you find it's really a house of cards. Not really an Emperors new clothes thing, but not the bastion of security the surface view provides.

But that's making it like the Third Imperium, not its opposite. After all, the canon 3I was eventually destroyed by a single assassination! Its opposite should be resilient, not fragile.

 

[Werner]

But that's making it like the Third Imperium, not its opposite. After all, the canon 3I was eventually destroyed by a single assassination! Its opposite should be resilient, not fragile.

Depends on which opposites you want to go with. Basically the situation is the PCs get trapped in this alternate universe and need to find a way to get back, naturally the authorities in this Universe are going to give them some trouble, otherwise what's the point?

 

[coliver988]

Depends on which opposites you want to go with. Basically the situation is the PCs get trapped in this alternate universe and need to find a way to get back, naturally the authorities in this Universe are going to give them some trouble, otherwise what's the point?

The goatees are the point....

 

[Werner]

The goatees are the point....

Sorry, no logical green-blooded elves in the OTU or its mirror Universe.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Depends on which opposites you want to go with. Basically the situation is the PCs get trapped in this alternate universe and need to find a way to get back, naturally the authorities in this Universe are going to give them some trouble, otherwise what's the point?

The point is that it's different, with different social and cultural forces and norms. It's a "planet of the week" situation, except you can't leave it by jumping to the next system because it too is in the same overall society -- you have to get back to the "normal" universe somehow. But if you need help, who do you even ask?

The trouble comes from being in an unregistered ship (3I registration is irrelevant) with no money (Credits are just Monopoly^TM money) and absolutely no understanding of the local culture. And obtaining gainful employment with your skills could be severely complicated by the lack of recognized credentials (depending on how close you want to play the "mirror" aspect, they might well seem to be forged documents from institutions that have mirror-universe counterparts).