Non OTU: Traveller ATU How To #3: Norton's Forerunners universe

[robject]

Useful tips, features, color, and rules to help your Traveller players adventure in an "Andre Norton" setting.

CHARACTERS

The standard careers seem to exist normally.

Humanity exists in many many different variations to handle specific world conditions. Similar to Jonkeereen, Geonee, Vegans, Darrians, and so on, but with a wider variety of forms. "Pure-Terran" humans is likely a distinct minority.

Differences are likely to fall along environmental lines:
(1) low light levels (Faltharian human)
(2) stellar spectra
(3) climate conditions (heat, cold, humidity etc)

There are also psionic humans from worlds such as
(1) Arcturus Three
(2) Ylene

There are also nonhuman sophonts:

Reptilian humanoid Zacathans.
Bird-like, feathered Trystians.

...and doubtless a bazillion others.


PSIONICS

Psionics appears to be species-based: most humans lack psi skill. Certain human stock from certain worlds have a certain psionic potential. For most worlds, that potential is low or zero.

To guesstimate from Star Rangers, it seems that there is a range granted based on your species. If you are Arcturan Human, the value might always be a 7. If a Ylene Human, it might be a range from (say) 3 to 8 (1D+2). If you are a "typical" human, it's a zero. If a Zacathan, it's a 9 or 10.



EQUIPMENT

Trader common defenses include "sleep rods", which are hand-held stunners, and the prized, locked-away "blasters" which I would guess are expensive and deadly plasma weapons.

 

[robject]

STARSHIPS

This setting favors Small Ships, but I wouldn't discount big stuff.

Two differences:

1. All starships in Norton's settings are tail-sitters. This could be simulated by simply standing ships on their ends, but if you're really serious about it you'll design a dozen small decks, orthogonal to the M-drives.

2. The M-drives are likely to be something like fusion rockets. Stay clear.



TECHNOLOGY

Traveller technology appears to be fine here.

There is some kind of Ansible, though it might be limited to large installations.

There are robots -- but no A.I.

 

[robject]

BACKSTORY

0. Forerunners are ancient space-faring civilizations that went extinct long before Humans took to space. Some of those civilizations had a more advanced technology level than the current one. Such advanced-tech artifacts could be extremely valuable.

Many Forerunner worlds are now burnt-out cinders, due to their internecine war.

Forerunner ruins are spooky.

...the Forerunners were not a single civilization, either—even a single species. Ask the Zacathans—they can count you off evidence of perhaps ten which have been tentatively identified, plus fragments of other, earlier ones which have not! The universe is a graveyard of vanished races, some of whom rose to heights we cannot assess today.

0a. The First Atomic Wars on Earth, ca. 2600 AD.

0b. Psi-talents appeared on Earth ca. 2900+, after the first atomic wars. Espers were increasingly oppressed.

1. Humans are latecomers to space. When a ship with a reliable stardrive ventured beyond their own system (~3600 AD), they met up with and were adopted in a vast multi-species galactic Confederation. Less than 3 centuries after First Contact, Terrans had already circumvented the limitations imposed upon them and secretly colonized 1000 planets. After that, they quickly spread ever-further to become one of the dominant races. This is the Star Guard era.

2. THE WAR OF TWO SECTORS (somewhere between 4000 and 4500 AD) was a five-year, devastating civil war that tore up entire sectors of the galaxy. Terra's influence was greatly reduced after the War of the Two Sectors. Contact with distant colonies was lost. Many did not survive. Others wouldn't be rediscovered until many centuries later.

3. The League of Free Traders was founded ca. 4000 A.D. to protect Free Traders’ interests from the interstellar Trading Companies and piracy.

4. 5000 AD: The Stellar Patrol developed into a galaxy-wide police and military force to maintain Peace, Law and Order. This is the founding of the First Galactic Empire, run by Central Control, which is managed by a Council.

Without their planet of origin to rally to, Terran colonies were assimilated by their respective sectors. Trade and the Patrol consolidated and unified the colonies, leading to the 1st galactic empire and the Pax Galactica.

A period of peace follows, 4500-7500 AD. The Solar Queen is probably ca. 4700-5000 AD.

5. There is an equivalent of the Scout Service which surveys systems and worlds. They look for potential colony worlds and Forerunner ruins.

6. The major trade routes in the Inner Systems are monopolized by huge Trading Combines / Companies. Free Traders compete for their leftovers and operate mostly in the Outer Systems.

The laws of economics applies. Many systems are effectively isolated with only the occasional Free Trader or Patrol ship as off-world contact, which makes them vulnerable to pirate raiding.

Many planets have reverted back to feudal societies where access to interstellar trade and technology is limited to a small privileged group.

Technology varies considerably between systems, planets and even between population groups on a single planet.

7. The Zacathans are long-lived reptilians, a race of scholars, especially about Forerunner lore.

8. The Guild of Thieves is a very powerful galaxy-wide criminal organization. Jacks are localized groups of space pirates.

9. Terra has become a legend or myth. It is currently a TL 1 or TL 2 world, in the forgotten backwaters of civilization. Probably a post-nuclear barbarism, but it has healed and is a "garden world" by 8000 AD.

10. AD 7500-8500. This is the Star Rangers era.

The First Galactic Empire was breaking up. Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets to gorge on spoil plundered from this wreckage. As CC fades, many of the Patrol go rogue, and the Great Galactic Library is destroyed. It was a time in which only the ruthless could flourish...

The decline of a galaxy-wide empire does not happen overnight. Long after distant regions have separated, the empire still stands, withdrawing and consolidating its power around the center of government.


READING LIST
Sargasso of Space
Derelict for Trade
Star Rangers


And any sequels.

ADVENTURES

Plenty of fodder for adventures in Norton's books.

 

[Timerover51]

The following comments are not at all meant as a criticism of Robject, but as added background information and simply another viewpoint. I have been reading Andre Norton back when she was writing under Andrew North, so somewhat on the order of 60 years or so, and I still reread her books. Quite a few are on Project Gutenberg for those interested in reading her work.

Andre did not write "Derelict for Trade", so I would be quite reluctant to use it, as I am using a lot of her ideas, and in some cases, planets, in my Piper-Norton Out Rim Sector.

I am not sure that I would have the "Solar Queen" series as written by Andre that late in dating, but would put in much closer to Mankind's first expansion into the Galaxy. "Star Guard" I view as a one-off book, unrelated to the rest of her works. "Star Rangers" I do place far into the future, as the location of Terra has been lost long before.

The standard weapons of the Solar Queen's crew are the sleep rods, literally energy rods capable of knocking out the target for a varying period of time, depending on susceptibility. Blasters are the locked up backup weapons, but do not require a massive power pack to burn through a rock door in "Sargasso of Space".

I use the "Solar Queen" as the basis for my standard small Free Trader with a hyperspace drive to give the needed range. Do not look for a whole lot of technology in Andre's works, but she does have some future ideas. While the "Solar Queen" uses crawlers, which sound like cargo-carrying bulldozers, she also has "flitters" which would approximate air rafts. FTL communications exists, as in Plague Ship, word of the "Solar Queen" infestation had already reached Terra well prior to the ship's arrival. Psi talents do show up, but not really in the "Solar Queen" books, except for Voodoo Planet. She has a lot in some of her other stories, however.

What you do have with Andre's writings are a wide range of memorable planets and backgrounds, along with a second group of prior Spacers in the Bald Space Rovers, aka the Baldies, who were operating and visiting Earth during the last Ice Age, which is great for putting Terran creatures on other planets, along with colonies of abandoned humans. In her "Time Trader" series, there is time travel, which also has its problems. In Catseye, you have a Terran intelligence operation using mutated animals, somewhat akin to the Beastmaster books, or Shann Lantee on Warlock, which series does turn into Forerunner books.

Recommended reads on Project Gutenberg are: The Time Traders, Storm Over Warlock, Plague Ship, Star Hunter, Voodoo Planet, The Defiant Agents.

Other Recommendations: Sargasso of Space (Solar Queen), Catseye, Judgement on Janus and Victory on Janus, Beastmaster and Lord of Thunder, Galactic Derelict (Tine Trader), Sea Siege, Star Rangers, Star Guard, and of course, The Witch World series.

 

[robject]

I built the timeline from a fan website, who tried valiantly to integrate Norton's variant series together based on similarities. With that sort of task, at some point you have to face the inconsistencies.

Andre did not write "Derelict for Trade", so I would be quite reluctant to use it

Sherwood Smith wrote it and the next one... however, I found them both excellent pulp SF, and the characters seemed reasonably the same. Your Mileage May Vary.

The standard weapons of the Solar Queen's crew are the sleep rods, literally energy rods capable of knocking out the target for a varying period of time, depending on susceptibility. Blasters are the locked up backup weapons, but do not require a massive power pack to burn through a rock door in "Sargasso of Space".

You're so right. And I'll update my OP. The blasters themselves seem to be a kind of plasma weapon.

...the "Solar Queen" uses crawlers, which sound like cargo-carrying bulldozers, she also has "flitters" which would approximate air rafts. FTL communications exists [...] Psi talents do show up [...]

Psi does seem absent in the Solar Queen series.

Flitters appear in Star Rangers, as well.

What you do have with Andre's writings are a wide range of memorable planets and backgrounds, along with a second group of prior Spacers in the Bald Space Rovers, aka the Baldies, who were operating and visiting Earth during the last Ice Age, which is great for putting Terran creatures on other planets, along with colonies of abandoned humans.

I didn't know about the Baldies.

Thanks for the reading list.

 

[robject]

TR, if you have a timeline, I'd like to see it, since I'm pretty open to changing the prototype I wrote out.

 

[Timerover51]

TR, if you have a timeline, I'd like to see it, since I'm pretty open to changing the prototype I wrote out.

Let me think about that, as I have some ideas but nothing sketched out.

The Baldies show up right off the bat in The Time Traders. From information that the first book picks up, a small group goes back in time in Nevada and finds an intact small patrol-type ship. In trying to bring it forward, the automatic pilot is activated, and the group finds that the Baldies are no more, but Terra has an operating ship to work from That is the spoiler for Galactic Derelict, which can be found online. The follow-on books to that are Defiant Agents and Key Across Time, both on Project Gutenberg. With that operating star ship, the Time Trader series does not fit at all into the Forerunner series.

Note, the ships of the Baldies are spheres, and apparently use some form of contragravity to lift off, with no mention of a separate interstellar drive. Adapting that universe to Cepheus Engine would be fairly easy, using current weaponry, contragravity for lift, the Dean Drive for movement, and Piper's hyperdrive for interstellar travel. The Baldie ships used some form of fuel, which almost sounds like a liquid fission fuel, and had a lot of range. Terra has a number of voyage tapes to habitable planets, which would be the start of one heck of an adventure, as the tapes date from about 15,000 years ago, so you would have no idea what you might find.

The only book in the Solar Queen series from Andre where psi shows up in Voodoo Planet, which is one good read and is on Project Gutenberg. That also gives some background on the Solar Queen universe that I will need to look at again.

 

[robject]

Note, the ships of the Baldies are spheres, and apparently use some form of contragravity to lift off, with no mention of a separate interstellar drive.

Sounds kind of Piper-Space Viking-esque.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Solar Queen books show us the Salariki as primitives. They reappear, or are at least name checked, later in the timeline.

Integrating Witch World into a unified space timeline is challenging. Is it Earth during the lost period (and apparently not as lost as some think), or some other world that has fallen away in a Pern/Majipoor/Darkover/Gehenna scenario, discovered by some other race but lost to the majority of Human space?

Judith Tarr, herself a long accomplished author, is currently re-reading her way through the Norton books she grew up on.
https://www.tor.com/tag/andre-norton-reread/

 

[Timerover51]

The Solar Queen books show us the Salariki as primitives. They reappear, or are at least name checked, later in the timeline.

Integrating Witch World into a unified space timeline is challenging. Is it Earth during the lost period (and apparently not as lost as some think), or some other world that has fallen away in a Pern/Majipoor/Darkover/Gehenna scenario, discovered by some other race but lost to the majority of Human space?

I would not attempt to integrate the Witch World series with either the Time Trader sereis or the Forerunner Universe. That is clearly an alternative universe, inhabited by humans who probably got there through some form of intermittent cross-universe gate. You have medieval technology, along with some very potent dart guns and other advanced technology, combined with alien invaders (who are also bald, I do not think that Andre liked bald people), who are coming through another universe gate, bringing with them mind-control, submarines, and flyers. That does not even consider the magic or psi or both elements, especially in the later books. I am not even sure if the High Halleck series take place on Witch World. They may, or it might be another case of universe jumping.

If you really want to throw your players into something totally different, have them mis-jump to Witch World about the time Simon Tregarth arrives.

Judith Tarr, herself a long accomplished author, is currently re-reading her way through the Norton books she grew up on.
https://www.tor.com/tag/andre-norton-reread/

Some of those I have read, but a lot of them I have not. In case you have not noticed, Andre did LIKE cats.