What Was The Catastrophic Event That Caused The EW?

[mike wightman]

The 1248 resolution of the wave has some major issues...

 

[Spinward Flow]

The 1248 resolution of the wave has some major issues...

 

[Dragoner]

ISTR either Dave or someone else semi-official said it was looking for love in Alderaan places, similar to such that a civilization near the core had collapsed and this wave was them crying out, sort of like Kenobi felt when Alderaan was destroyed in A New Hope. It works ok, because then one doesn't have to spend a lot of time explaining it, most people will have picked up on that from the movie.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Jeff, Do you have the Year 1248 sourcebook Out of the Darkness? This details a reason for the EW, and is as good an explanation as any other. The cause is similar to your proposal in your first post.
I don't recall Marc's opinion on this sourcebook (by Avenger Enterprises, thus by Martin Dougherty), and whether he still considers it canon. But again, it's your game, and it's probably close enough to whatever canon Marc comes up with. (Personally, I don't like Marc's ret-con that the Wave is moving faster than light.)

OK, I've been reading up. It sounds almost exactly like what I dreamed up. Well, that ends this thread.

 

[MichaelSTee]

The thread's over? But Spinward Flow made popcorn... awww

 

[inexorabletash]

Would it help to reignite the thread by sharing that Marc has a different explanation for the Wave, but it is still secret?

 

[Murph]

A new edition of Traveller needed to be sold ... so ...

Agreed.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Would it help to reignite the thread by sharing that Marc has a different explanation for the Wave, but it is still secret?

No, that's cool though. I was mainly interested in what the catastrophe was that caused the Core humans to create the EW.

 

[mike wightman]

There are no core humans, nor did they create the wave. The wave makes no sense as a distress signal, slightly more sense as a signal for danger

Reading the original source material...

 

[mike wightman]

Regency Sourcebook

 

[Dragoner]

That was the pic I posted earlier.

 

[mike wightman]

And hidden away in the Zhodani entry

 

[mike wightman]

Sorry for posting them as images but the pdf is awful for copying text.
Some points to note:
the people calling for an FTL wave hadn't read the bit about the wave being half way across the Zhodani Consulate by 1119, which means the wave has been crossing Zhodani space for around eighty years, or sixty five-ish years at the 1105 start date of the typical Third Imperium campaign.
Zhodani society didn't collapse as the wave progressed, the panic began much later as the wave had almost crossed the whole Consulate
the wave has nothing to do with the DGP primordials.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

The whole wave concept has been redefined and discussed numerous times and moved back and forth with greater or lesser velocities and greater and lesser effects.

There are a few things that are fairly clear and really odd given either interpretation of the wave.

The 5th Frontier War was unrelated to the wave and has never been retrofitted as being a response to the wave. The whole character of the war (a military fight that could be fought to a standstill) denies that the war was a migration in the face of an existential threat.

The Vargr and Zhodani Peoples never see migration as a means of avoiding the wave - or as an opportunity for looting immediately after its passing.

The Longbow project can see the wave coming. Both wave forms are invisible even to long-baseline EM observation. So for Longbow to "see it" it must have FTL/Jump linked stations on the far side of Vargr/Zhodani space.

 

[aramis]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

(warning: TV Tropes rabbit holes!)

The second one is poorly worded...
A more true one would be, "Any sufficiently reliable magic is indistinguishable from technology"

 

[mike wightman]

The Longbow project can see the wave coming. Both wave forms are invisible even to long-baseline EM observation. So for Longbow to "see it" it must have FTL/Jump linked stations on the far side of Vargr/Zhodani space.

It did, I didn't clip the whole entry but there is a bit where it mentions Longbow stations built several sectors to coreward of the Vargr extents.

The issue with seeing the EMS wave and detecting the psionic component is that it can only be done as the wave hits you, or you are observing the aftermath of the wave in which case the wave has already gone over you.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

There are no core humans, nor did they create the wave. The wave makes no sense as a distress signal, slightly more sense as a signal for danger

Reading the original source material...

My understanding was that the EW was a warning to a domain sized interstellar nation near the core. As the EW progressed out into the main disk of the galaxy, it lost its coherence as a message, and the garbled psionic signal is what is causing the problems along its wavefront.

 

[Spinward Flow]

My understanding was that the EW was a

Plot Hole.

/thread

 

[rlmercad069]

So yeah, for people who feel they have to incorporate the EW, I would in fact recommend going for a Cthulhu crossover.

You mean you haven't done so already?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

So did technology come first, forming magic from folks that could use it or magic come before technology for folks that couldn't use magic?

 

[mike wightman]

It is described as "of great strength and coherence"
the psionic image is seen as a being of the race doing the observing (DN interview)
something about to happen (greatly increase psionics, allow contact with supraspace meta-intelligence(s) - DN interview)
it is an EMS wave, possibly with a gravity wave component (DN interview)
here is a bit more of what he wrote about it:

The wave is the physical manifestation in Nspace of an upheaval in Jspace/supraspace starting at or near the galactic core, or more specifically, the interface or “membrane” between Nspace and Jspace/supraspace. I had been thinking that it could be a variety of things from a gravity wave (if anyone ever decides the things actually exist) to simply an inferred wave because of the fact that the psionic events take place along a moving front. But I see that I described it as an EMS phenomenon. To the best of my knowledge, what I meant by that is that it is moving at the speed of light like an EMS (or gravity) wave. I don’t recall if the final answer would be that the wave would represent a one-time surge of energy that would expose access to new psionic possibilities, or that behind the wave would be a changed environment in which the membrane between Nspace and supraspace would be somewhat more permeable, evidenced by the presence of more psionic possibilities. Jspace physics would not be changed, but to the extent that Jspace and psionic supraspace were related, that supraspace would be “closer” to Nspace