Toward a New Understanding of Major Races

[Aramais]

"What a bunch of silly chatter. A race is Major if it has enough of what Professor Miller -- a Solomani, but otherwise a fine fellow -- called 'the Traveller Gene.' It's that thing that makes us more likely to get out there and leave our little solar systems."

--Aramais P. Lee

 

[mike wightman]

There's more to it than travelling.

You have to be motivated as a race to colonise other worlds, build up a multi-world economy and over time grow to at least a couple of sectors in size.

You have to be willing culturally to dominate other intelligent races you encounter, either by aggressive trading practices, military action - whatever is necessary.

 

[simonh]

There's a saying that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Perhaps that's how it is with Major Races as against any other races.

What has always bothered me is that there seem to be basically two different cannonical reasons for categorising a race as major in the OTU. One is the independent invention of Jump Drive. The other is being on a Coyn.

Since the Ancient Coyns were manufactured millenia before any race in the OTU invented Jump Drive, these are two independent criteria that don't seem to have any influence on each other. And yet, module othe Aslan, the two criteria match each other exactly 1:1 even though we know there are many other sophont species in the OTU known space region that appear to be perfectly capable of developing Jump Drive. At least, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with them that would prevent them from doing so. Also, the species that did develop Jump Drive all did so within a fairly narrow historical window, compared to the time that has elapsed since the time of the Ancients.

That all seems far too much of co-incidence to actualy be co-incidental. Of course now we know Grandfather has actualy been around the whole time, so the possibility that there's nothing co-incidental about it is definitely on the table.

Simon Hibbs

 

[rancke]

Since the Ancient Coyns were manufactured millenia before any race in the OTU invented Jump Drive, these are two independent criteria that don't seem to have any influence on each other.

The simplest explanation is that the major races are not all on the Ancient coyns. They're on the Modern coyns, the set that Yaskoydray introduced to a selection of Droyne and Chirper worlds 76,000 years ago and continued to tinker with ever since¹. He last visited Charted Space around -1000, which is presumably when the Aslan were added.

¹ The only ones we know for certain were in the 'Medieval' set are humans and Droyne.​

Hans

 

[Aramais]

The simplest explanation is that the major races are not all on the Ancient coyns. They're on the Modern coyns, the set that Yaskoydray introduced to a selection of Droyne and Chirper worlds 76,000 years ago and continued to tinker with ever since¹. He last visited Charted Space around -1000, which is presumably when the Aslan were added.

¹ The only ones we know for certain were in the 'Medieval' set are humans and Droyne.​

Hans

Regardless of the timing, the Coyns are an interesting part of the theory that the "Traveller Gene" (which in my other cranky persona I didn't mention includes colonization as part of the deal) are certainly indicators of "Major Race Status." Whether Grandfather intended that they be seen as major races is or simply observed that these were races likely to be met is not actually the issue for me. A related whole can be built without TOO much speculation or additional writing.

The Coynes could INDICATE dabbling by Yaskodray, or they could just be "Yep, you'll deal with a lt of these, so some of you should be interested in them."

 

[mike wightman]

Ever study the Drake equation and consider the Fermi paradox? {note that this is not to be taken too seriously for obvious reasons}

Without third party interference the chance that so many different intelligent species (major and minor) would reach roughly the same level of technological progress so close to each other in the galaxy is so very small as to be non-existent.

If you add into the equation a term for races modified by grandfather or his progeny and you get...

 

[rancke]

Regardless of the timing, the Coyns are an interesting part of the theory that the "Traveller Gene" (which in my other cranky persona I didn't mention includes colonization as part of the deal) are certainly indicators of "Major Race Status."

There are no doubt races that would not have used the jump drive to expand if they had invented it (the Droyne is strong evidence of that). But otherwise the main difference between major and minor races is that the major races got there first. A minor race per definition got the jump drive while someone close to them (astrographically) had a trememdous head start. They don't have big empires, not for lack of ambition, but because they didn't have room to expand. The Terrans came within an inch of suffering the same fate despite having invented the jump drive themselves; the Aslans avoided it because the Long Night meant that for over a millenium they never faced any alien state big enough to prevent their expansion.


Hans

 

[Frankymole]

Since the Ancient Coyns were manufactured millenia before any race in the OTU invented Jump Drive, these are two independent criteria that don't seem to have any influence on each other. And yet, module othe Aslan, the two criteria match each other exactly 1:1 even though we know there are many other sophont species in the OTU known space region that appear to be perfectly capable of developing Jump Drive. At least, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with them that would prevent them from doing so. Also, the species that did develop Jump Drive all did so within a fairly narrow historical window, compared to the time that has elapsed since the time of the Ancients.

There's no problem with Yaskoydray (or his children) creating prescient inventions, though. The core route map device thing that the Zhodani found shows some future events so the Ancients had the ability to see into the future.

 

[rancke]

There's no problem with Yaskoydray (or his children) creating prescient inventions, though. The core route map device thing that the Zhodani found shows some future events so the Ancients had the ability to see into the future.

To me there is a huge problem: I find causality violations extremely belief-straining¹. There's nothing I can do about that darn Zhodani device² (believe me, I tried to persuade Don to retcon it), but I can fight tooth and nail against introducing other causality violations into the OTU, especially when they're completely unnecessary. (Of course, I have no power to affect anything except my powers of persuasion).

¹ It has always puzzled me that people make a huge to-do about some piddling physical law violations but swallow the Zhodani device with nary a murmur. :nonono:
² Except establish that in my TU it's a put-up job. For some ineffable reason Yaskoydray manipulated events to conform to the visions. Or perhaps he psychohistory-predicted that they would happen. Or both.​

I repeat: There is no reason to believe that Yaskoydray didn't introduce the Vargr, Hiver, K'Kree and Aslan coyns after those races became spread over big territories.


Hans