What do scouts do?

[castiglione]

What do scouts do in your Traveller universe?

What kind of duties they perform during the course of a typical month? Why is the scout service so hazardous?

Do they just orbit a newly discovered world, take some photos and fly back to the scout base? Or do they land, take samples of local fauna and risk getting eaten by the fauna? Or by the natives. What do they do if they run into natives? Do they say: "Hey, we're representatives of the Imperium...we're not gods, we just possess technology beyond your comprehension but don't worry, the Imperium's socialogists will do their best to ease your transition from a medieval, agragrian society to the Imperium." Or is it more along the lines of: "Behold! We are GODS!!!! Mine this uranium for us or we'll strike you down with our fire sticks!!!!"

I'm seeing scouts performing a myriad of duties like orbiting a world and taking photos, to taking actual samples of local fauna, to leading the navy and army as they land on a populated world and attempt to re-integrate the world into the Imperium to going back and scouting for the army if the local population takes up arms and decides that no thank you, we like living like savages so go back to whatever points of light in the sky you came from you demons!!!!

 

[Gadrin]

Little bit of everything.

Buy this http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-6605
it's cheap and very good. Nice amount of detail too.

Another good source is the Milieu Zero pdf over at
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=211&it=1

This offers scout missions from start of the 3rd Imperium and they're also applicable to more modern settings.

Both are excellent buys.

>

 

[Trent]

Boldly go where no man has gone before.

 

[Icosahedron]

Scout.

Looking at the organisation chart in LBB6, the operational scouts are divided into three main functional areas: Survey & Exploration, Communication, and Security (which has the longest branch write-up).

Survey & Exploration: I see these guys as landing, taking readings and samples, researching and blending in with the natives (travellers from distant lands) to learn about their culture. They will also monitor solar flare outbursts, volcanic activity, etc and provide predictive services within the Imperium for worlds that don't have the TL to provide their own.

Communication: The Xboat and courier fleet, but also a news/early warning system for natural disasters linked to above. Mayday response.

Security: An interstellar police force, a system of wardens supporting the needs of on-world representatives of the Imperium, a show of force less provocative than the Marines, an interstellar coastguard, a search and rescue service, showing the flag over a wider field than the Navy can manage.

 

[Merxiless]

DGP Covered it pretty well in Grand Survey.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Detached Scouts search for evidence of the Ancients, Zhodani conspiracy plots, and the best way to make a Jump-distilled Scout Stout...

 

[BlackBat242]

I keep hearing the song from the musical Camelot...

but instead of "What do the simple folk do?", it is...
"What do Imperial Scouts do?"


http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/camelot/whatdothesimplefolkdo.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxCNxEkcu3g

 

[coliver988]

What do scouts do? Change light bulbs! http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=16236&highlight=lightbulb

 

[su_liam]

Drink tokaj and read lots of ⌧ while delivering mail?

Or read ⌧ and drink lots of tokaj?

 

[jfetters]

I was just going to say "Drink".

 

[jatay3]

I picture them as sort of like the British Empire's intelligence back in the days of Kipling's Kim. They keep tabs on geographic intelligence and local politics. They also provide a picket line around the borders of the Imperium.

 

[far-trader]

So jaytay, kind of Lawrence of Arabia... esq? On the more noble end of the spectrum. Yeah, that fits for me too. How about the less noble end of the spectrum? Any thoughts?

 

[Vargas]

Scout.

Looking at the organisation chart in LBB6, the operational scouts are divided into three main functional areas: Survey & Exploration, Communication, and Security (which has the longest branch write-up) . . .

I think this covers it for me.

 

[kafka47]

Scouts for me are a combination Coast Guard, Ponyback Express and Surveyors of the worlds of the Imperium and Beyond. They also form an adjunct for Intelligence gathering...so in that way are like Kiplings' secret service. They are the ultimate: "Jack of All Trades...Master of None".

 

[aramis]

Cryton and I were discussing it last night, and for both of us, the Scouts are the 'counter-intelligence' and 'insurgency and insurrection detection' forces.

If a noble is going off the deep end, the scouts will notice.
If a world is going anti-imperial, the scouts will likely notice.
And when the scouts notice, they tell someone.

Some other things interpreted from CGen:
given...
1) lots of cash
2) no soc climb
3) a decent number of interpersonal skills
that leads to "no long term ties built up, and little chance to spend their paychecks, but lots of social action anyway."

 

[jatay3]

So jaytay, kind of Lawrence of Arabia... esq? On the more noble end of the spectrum. Yeah, that fits for me too. How about the less noble end of the spectrum? Any thoughts?

There was a project done by the Indian Political Service(the Raj's intelligence and local diplomacy organization) called the "pundits". They were natives recruited because they would mix more easily, and more sinisterly because if they got caught there would be fewer awkward questions about the fate of an Asian then a white man. The pundits explored large portions of Tibet, and much of modern maps were probably made by them.

 

[jatay3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

This is an idea of what the IISS would consider it's main mission, I think. Naturally it would have other jobs. All bureaucracies have a tendency toward turf-imperialism, and the courier service at least was justified by the needs of internal politics.

 

[jatay3]

It must be remembered that we haven't lived in a world in which geographic intelligence was a high priority in the needs of Great Powers since World War II. When we think of intelligence, we think of either the "shaken-not-stirred" motif or the LeCarre version*. However a third version of explorer-spies was quite common in the back-of-beyond parts of the world, back when governments sometimes needed to know what and whom was in a given area as much as figuring out what they were up to. In fact a number of notable explorers could best be described as spies or part-time spies. Ralph Bagnold(writer of the famous book on the geology of desert sand) was a recon officer during the war. Before the war he was on an Indiana Jones like quest to find a lost oasis, but in the process he was probing the border of the Italian colonies, and the British government took enough interest for Bagnold to be called a part-time spy.


*Surprisingly both modes exist in real life, though James Bond is to flamboyant to be believable. George Earle, an OSS agent who did try to act like James Bond finally provoked his boss into cutting his clearance and just using him as a decoy.

 

[jatay3]

Cryton and I were discussing it last night, and for both of us, the Scouts are the 'counter-intelligence' and 'insurgency and insurrection detection' forces.

If a noble is going off the deep end, the scouts will notice.
If a world is going anti-imperial, the scouts will likely notice.
And when the scouts notice, they tell someone.

Some other things interpreted from CGen:
given...
1) lots of cash
2) no soc climb
3) a decent number of interpersonal skills
that leads to "no long term ties built up, and little chance to spend their paychecks, but lots of social action anyway."

In border areas yeah. That would go with the picture IMTU. I don't think they would do that in well populated places; that's more Secret Police type of thing. I think the Imperium does have something of the kind, not like SolSec; less heavy handed, more genteel and smarter, and less intrusive, but doing nasty things when it is "necessary". The Grey Masks or something like them might even be a reality. I don't think it would use scouts for that as the Imperium would want most of it's system to have it's hands clean and the esprit de corps of the scouts is way to valuable to hurt their morale in that fashion. I think most of the scouts would do border-intelligence, not court-intrigue.

 

[Cryton]

Actually when scouts come in for the first/second/third/update survey (and they do this to EVERY world in the 3I), they ARE checking on the pop, gov and for lack of a better way of saying it, pro-imp feeling of the worlds government(s), and its population and comparing it to what its local Imperial noble has reported. Discrepencys are passed along. Reports are filed. Things get sorted out.

It does make them something of a check on the Local Imperial nobility and probably not well liked by world governments and nobles that want to do things that are against the Imperial law.

Spies or secret police? no. But they are an organisation thats set up to find out these things on an Imperial wide scale. Thats inferred from the Third Survey materials.

Might also be why they say "Once a scout, always a scout." as Im fairly certain no one will believe you've retired and aren't just on a covert misson to check up on things.

((by the way, sorry if I ramble, its a train of thought thing.))