Trade Pioneers(?)

[Garnfellow]

Undeveloped sectors along the edge of the Imperium – sectors like Reaver’s Deep – are the hunting grounds of the Trade Pioneers. Scotian Huntress is one of these, an Empress Marava-class far trader owned by the mercantile firm of Caledon Ventures. Manned by an experienced trade team, the ship has been probing along the rim of the Great Rift, searching out new markets, resources, and products that might put Caledon ahead of the competition (Flare Star).

The Keith Brothers wrote an interesting series of "Flare Star" adventures set along the Great Rift in Reaver's Deep featuring the trade team of the Scotian Huntress. The adventures have a convoluted publishing history: published as folio adventures by their imprint, Marischal Adventures in 1981, as serialized adventures in Space Gamer 46, 48, 50, and 53, and collected again as a free PDF by Steve Jackson Games for GURPS Traveller (2004).

The adventures are clearly inspired by Andre Norton's "Solar Queen" series of books, in which human traders explore strange new worlds in search of markets and products.

It's a great premise, but how viable is this really for Reaver's Deep during the Golden Era? Even assuming the Peace of Ftahalr has kept the sector mostly wild, Humans and Aslans have been kicking around the region for hundred, if not thousands of years.

 

[tjoneslo]

The two core elements discovered by the crew were a derilict sub-light ship drifting out of deep space, and a world with an eccentric orbit which came back close to the star only every few decades or centuries. No one generally thinks worlds on eccentric orbits will develop intelligent life, let alone be capable of a trade agreement.

 

[Spinward Flow]

No one generally thinks worlds on eccentric orbits will develop intelligent life, let alone be capable of a trade agreement.

Perhaps not natively.

Transplanted life however, bringing in technology, can set up shop as an invasive species that is capable of trading.

 

[GypsyComet]

We call the peak invasive species "Major Races"

 

[SpaceBadger]

One solution if you =really= want Trade Pioneers in Reavers' Deep: instead of the Golden Age of 1100-ish, set your game during the Long Night, in particular the period around the year 3731 AD (-787 Imperial) during the Long Night, which is when I set my SBRD (SpaceBadger's Reavers' Deep) campaign back in 2013-14.

I put in a lot of work "rolling back the clock" on the systems data for Reavers' Deep and Daibei sectors to what I thought appropriate based on 1) "current" data from TravellerMap; 2] every scrap of history or legend I could dig up on those two sectors before, during, or after the relevant time period; and 3) my own notions of what would make an interesting Long Night setting to play in. So Daibei Sector, which had been the furthest rimward extent of the Vilani Ziru Sirka, retains some degree of civilization in the Imperial Remnant, a subsector+ size polity that claims direct descent from the Rule of Man, and several smaller interstellar governments. Across the spinward sector border into Reavers' Deep itself, civilization never really took hold after the Interstellar Wars, so that even during the Rule of Man there were border wars and problems with pirates, reavers, and rebels.

All of the above is backed up with historical notes and period-adjusted sector and subsector maps, all probably best accessed through the SBRD Campaign Wiki (sadly incomplete in many areas due to my disastrously failed brain surgery in January 2015, but still a good basis for adventures if you don't mind filling in the rough spots).

Another rather obvious idea, if you want your Trade Pioneers to operate in the Golden Age with the wealth of background data available for that period and no need to use special (and quite unofficial) maps and wiki entries, is don't send them into Reavers' Deep but rather someplace much less explored, at least by Imperials! Off to the edges of Imperial territory they go, and out into the wilds of pocket empires and single-system governments! Sure, it isn't really unexplored space, for that you'd have to go much further abroad, but these inhabited systems are the people you want to make new trade deals with, to buy their goods and sell them Imperial stuff. What fun!

*

 

[Garnfellow]

At one point I wondered if the Flare Star adventures had been set in an earlier period, but based on a review of other Keith brothers material, it seems clear they thought that Reaver's Deep was still wild enough in 1105 to support trade pioneer teams. Here's a list of worlds in the Deep that were canonically opened up after 1000 Imperial:

• 1030 - Gaajpadje (Reavers' Deep 1124)
• 1058 - Roakhoi (Reavers' Deep 1224)
• 1080 - Lajanjigal (Reavers' Deep 1721)
• 1109 - Htalrea (Reavers' Deep 1226)

So now the question is, how to justify having so many worlds remaining so wild for so long.

Here's my working theory, and would be glad to hear other ideas. The Peace of Ftahalr demilitarized much of Reaver's Deep, but also restricted the signatories' holdings and economic interests in the region. The signatories, their allies, and vassals/proxies could not directly own properties or businesses in the Buffer Zone. Companies with any ownership interests from the Imperial family or signatory clans could not do business in the Buffer. This means the largest corporations in Aslan and Imperial space were blocked, and the penalties for circumventing this ban were just too great to justify the marginal benefit of circumventing the Peace.

All signatories were so scrupulous about respecting the treaty terms that they virtually abandoned the Buffer Zone overnight. As a result the Deep, which had only just begun to emerge from Long Night, crashed back into economic recession and technological regression following the Peace. Many worlds were abandoned or cut off again from the interstellar community. While neighboring regions were able to grow, the worlds of the Deep slid backwards until the mid 500s, when various interstellar polities began to form. These governments slowly expanded to neighboring systems, but isolated clusters and systems remained fairly untouched.

Meanwhile, the signatories spent considerable energy ensuring that third parties outside the Deep also respected the terms of the Peace. Both sides saw the benefits of maintaining a larger Buffer between them. While the IISS included the entire Deep in its Second Survey, the resulting dataset remains restricted in order to discourage exploitation.

While the signatories continued to abide by and enforce the Peace for outsiders, they increasingly exploited workarounds and loopholes themselves. The Imperium, for example, cultivated a few select client states -- though such moves were quiet and limited in scope.

By 900 the Solomani Confederation was beginning to poke around the Deep, spurring more interest from the Aslan and the Imperium. The independent polities of the Deep began to meet and compete, and after 1000 began to aggressively seek out trade with isolated or lost worlds.