Why the long night?

[Whipsnade]

where is the proof of significant local interstellar polities in the area of the 2nd imperium before about -100?

Sadly, most of it's in T4, in M:0 specifically, but there's quite a bit scattered about in MT era publications like DGP's Traveller Digest and GDW's own Challenge. Some of the DGP stuff found it's way into various GDW's MT products naturally. IIRC, the snippet about Martin II building his palace with an eye towards defense against jump troops appears in both DGP and GDW products.

During the MT period GDW, DGP, and others added quite a bit to our knowledge of the "late" Long Night era. We know that the Sylean Federation and early 3I had two major enemies, the Chanestin (sp) Kingdom and another polity whose name escapes me at the moment. A few other examples include the Old Earth Union which appears as early as CT's Solomani AM, the Turin Confederation which appears in MT, a fanatically genocidal anti-Vargr HMR empire which appears in Challenge articles about the Julian Protectorate, and a successor state around Vland whose acceptance of his offer of Imperial membership gave Cleon a huge PR boost. All of these polities were larger than subsectors and, in the case of the Chanestins and Unknowns, had to be be quite sizeable indeed if they were serious opponents for the late Federation/early Imperium.

Some of this information has been recycled in post-T4 versions too. For example, GT:RoF repeats the earlier information regarding the Old Earth Union and Pulver's new Solomani book for MgT does the same regarding the Turin Confederation.

The Third Imperium didn't expand into a howling wilderness no matter what it's own hagiography might claim.

 

[Gray Pennell]

I agree most of the materials come from M:0 but that makes sense. But I did see the first Aslan Boarder wars -1120 began in the middle of Long Night. This implies the Aslan's had to encounter a force capable of fighting them several times. I would think thats at least sector size power. Where there is one there is more.

 

[rancke]

Yes, there are various references to pocket empires during the Long Night in the Alien modules.


Hans

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

We know that the Sylean Federation and early 3I had two major enemies, the Chanestin (sp) Kingdom and another polity whose name escapes me at the moment.

You're thinking of the Interstellar Confederacy, a radically-decentralized, ultra-isolationist group of 32 worlds centered around Sketola (Core 0622). While quite advanced for the era (several worlds were TL 12), their pathological distaste for group coordination and general incompetence in military expeditioneering prevented them from ever being an existential threat to the Syleans. The Syleans didn't so much as conquer them as allow them to trip over their own shoelaces and then grab whatever they could while they were struggling to get back up.

A few other examples include the Old Earth Union which appears as early as CT's Solomani AM, the Turin Confederation which appears in MT, a fanatically genocidal anti-Vargr HMR empire which appears in Challenge articles about the Julian Protectorate...

This would be the Second Empire of Gashikan, arguably the most successful Imperial successor state during the Long Night era. It encompassed just under three sectors worth of territory at its height. Once they cleared the Vargr out, it was probably a very nice place for a human to live during the Long Night, if stability and order are your kind of thing. In fact, considering how things are up there now, the Gashikani very likely regard the period from -1500 to 300 as their Golden Age.

Nearer our way there was also the Dingir League and the Easter Concord, both neighbors of (and rivals to) the Old Earth Union. The Vegan Polity is described as surviving the Long Night essentially intact, and there was also a small Geonee Confederation throughout this time as well. Ral Ranta (a decrepit empire in the Hinterworlds sector) existed during this time too, although I don't know if it counts as former RoM territory.

And then there's the Darmine, a minor human race who ran the 'Darmine Corporate', a 5-subsector pocket empire in Zarushagaar sector -- although I confess I'm not sure how canonical it is.

The Third Imperium didn't expand into a howling wilderness no matter what it's own hagiography might claim.

For that matter, the Syleans themselves didn't exactly magically appear out of thin space. The Federation was the immediate successor to the Kingdom of Sylea, which in turn built itself out of the ashes of the Sylean Protectorate. The Protectorate originated as a territory of the Rule of Man; it lasted until -905, with its rulers continuing to cling to the Imperial torch until as late as -1500 or so.

I agree most of the materials come from M:0 but that makes sense. But I did see the first Aslan Boarder wars -1120 began in the middle of Long Night. This implies the Aslan's had to encounter a force capable of fighting them several times. I would think thats at least sector size power.

Not really. Aslan invasions aren't so much Awesome Battlefleet Pincer Movements as they are Intergalactic Oklahoma Land Rushes. They'll happily buy or barter for territory if you let them, and typically only resort to squatting or military conquest in the face of outright intransigence. A decently run sector-sized human polity could easily hold the Aslan at bay, if that was their state policy.

 

[rancke]

I agree most of the materials come from M:0 but that makes sense. But I did see the first Aslan Boarder wars -1120 began in the middle of Long Night. This implies the Aslan's had to encounter a force capable of fighting them several times. I would think thats at least sector size power.

Not really. Aslan invasions aren't so much Awesome Battlefleet Pincer Movements as they are Intergalactic Oklahoma Land Rushes. They'll happily buy or barter for territory if you let them, and typically only resort to squatting or military conquest in the face of outright intransigence. A decently run sector-sized human polity could easily hold the Aslan at bay, if that was their state policy.

CT:Aslan specifically states that Aslan are constitutionally unable to act together in agressive wars (as opposed to defending themselves against outsiders), so that any pocket empire more powerful than a single clan could withstand them; at that time it meant that any handful of worlds was well able to resist them. The reason why the trailing Hierate border is less than two subsectors from Kuzu (Dark Nebula 1226)[*] is that there were humans living on the worlds further trailingwards who were able to ward them off.

[*] Note that there are several different canonical locations for Kuzu; one of them has two of the worlds adjacent to Kuzu being neutral! More on that subject can be found here.​

Hans

 

[Whipsnade]

You're thinking of the Interstellar Confederacy...

That's the name, thank you.

... The Syleans didn't so much as conquer them as allow them to trip over their own shoelaces and then grab whatever they could while they were struggling to get back up.

Didn't they also suffer a devastating civil war? As incompetent as the Confederacy was, the Chanestins were still enough of a threat by the 2nd Century Imperial that Martin II built his famous palace with defense against jump troops in mind.

This would be the Second Empire of Gashikan...

Thanks for that name too. They're a Human Minor Race, right?

It encompassed just under three sectors worth of territory at its height.

Three sectors in size...

... the Dingir League... ...Easter Concord... ...Vegan Polity... ...Geonee Confederation... ...Ral Ranta... ...'Darmine Corporate'... ...Kingdom of Sylea... ...Sylean Protectorate...

Once again, there's what we're told about the Long Night and what we're shown about the Long Night.

 

[kafka47]

Then there is the quasi canon explanation in Cogs & Dogs that the Vilani spread their civilization along Mains. So, yes, they J-2 as the advantage but when the Terrans came up with J-3 they could spread roots plust the Terran/Solomani drive to even utilize marginal planets would account for many micro-polities.

We do not have much information on the Second Imperium but one thing we do know is that polities within had enormous power. For if a financial crisis that could then trigger a trade crisis because of one part not accepting a credit note from one part to another. I see it as a big balkanized mess of polities nominally stitched together. This is the impressions gained from Interstellar Wars - where I am inspired by Kipling and the movie - "The Man Who Would Be King" where there would be hundreds of Daniel Dravot and hundreds of Mutiny on the Bounty's Fletcher Christians - both of Terrans themselves and the Minor Races rising up. Again my sources are DGP.

So, yes, Virginia there was Long Night but it was not the apocalypse that the 3I presents it to be. Rather, it was akin to the Renaissance - different points of light (or civilization) surrounded by vast swathes of barbarism. And, that barbarism was largely self-imposed because it reached the crisis - where the old ways of doing things could not go on but the new could not be born - so in-between a large array mutated micro-empires jockeyed for dominance. Only the rise of an absolutist state, ie the 3I could sew these fragments together.

 

[Whipsnade]

As a programmer...

That explains quite a bit.

I was able to redo the project in half the time and make it much more efficient in the process.

Projects that involve ore than ones and zeros take far more time. Trust me.

There are times where having a 30-50 year old infrastructure in place blinds people to new possibilities.

And infrastructure that doesn't reside on a hard drive is somewhat different too.

Let me tell you about recent real world incidents which involved the manufacturing of seemingly inconsequential objects, actual objects and not electronic phantoms which only exist in the memory of some computer...

Late last year the Chao Phraya river flooded into the city of Bangkok along it's many canals. Nearly a thousand people died and a great many businesses were put out of operation. A single factory was among those shut down, not very large, seemingly not important, but it happened to make over 90% of the world's supply of hard drive motors.

Prices for hard drives more than quintupled overnight.

A current client of mine is a repair center for a major US cable company. They fix set top boxes after the warranty expires, thousands of boxes a week, and hard drives are vital parts of any DVR box. They'd been used to simply "plugging and chugging" any drives that gave them trouble and selling the suspect drives off to refurbishing outfits. Now they had to refurbish those suspect hard drives. We got a program in place that allowed them to limp along until prices dropped more towards normal, but supply situation is still not back to it's pre-flood condition.

(Other people using hard drives merely "ate" the temporary price rise knowing that the motor factory would reopen. The repair center didn't have that option because their reason for existence is that they save their company money.)

The same repair center experienced a smaller, but no less troubling, hiccup with regards to soldering iron tips after Japan's 2011 tsunami. As with the motors, a single factory in the effected region was destroyed and it supplied a huge percentage of the world's soldering iron tips to a huge number of manufacturers of soldering stations. Once again, the center had to refurbish used tips and husband new tips until the supply issue was resolved.

I'm talking about a planet of 6 billion with instantaneous communications and the ability to be anywhere in 48 hours and two relatively small factories being damaged had the effects I wrote about. Imagine what the situation would have been like if the factories were parsecs physically distant, months away in time, and employed techniques we knew nothing about.

Your assumption that any world of a sufficient population should automatically be self sufficient is not supported by events in the real world and events beyond the code writing you seem to think is manufacturing. Trust me, I've been intimately involved in heavy and not so heavy industries worldwide across several disciplines for over 25 yeas now. There's much more to the manufacturing than ones, zeros, and virtual objects.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

Didn't they also suffer a devastating civil war? As incompetent as the Confederacy was, the Chanestins were still enough of a threat by the 2nd Century Imperial that Martin II built his famous palace with defense against jump troops in mind.

The Chanestin Kingdom and the Interstellar Confederacy were long gone by the reign of Martin II. Both were defunct within a few years of each other, in fact, and almost exactly the same time as the Third Imperium was founded: the last Confederacy world was absorbed in -1, and the Chanestins surrendered in year 2.

Martin II likely had the Julian Protectorate in mind when he built those palace defenses. His reign began in 195, just four years after the disaster that was the Julian War. Most of the action in that conflict took place in Antares Sector -- immediately to core-trailing of Core Sector -- and with the Imperium on a decidedly defensive footing throughout all but the initial stages. The Julians also really spooked the Imperials by launching a secondary invasion into Ley Sector via the Lesser Rift.

The Julians rampaged through Antares, Empty Quarter, Ley and possibly Fornast Sectors throughout the latter six years of the war, in the process managing to wipe out both the Antares and Ley Sector depots. And when the war ended in 191, it was essentially on their terms (including the formation of the League of Antares).

Under those circumstances, the threat of a Julian invasion of Sylea would seem quite reasonable in the Imperial 200's.

Thanks for that name too. They're a Human Minor Race, right?

The Yileans are the HMR; Gashikan is their homeworld. 'Gashikani' isn't canonical, although there needs to be some differentiation between Yileans (the race) and citizens of the Gashikan Empire, since there are rather obviously a whole lot of Vilani up there too.

The Yileans were one of the more sociologically compatible humans the Vilani encountered, and were by all accounts quite content with life in the Ziru Sirka. I imagine that's at least one reason behind the long-term durability of the Gashikan Empires (they're currently on their third one).

Once again, there's what we're told about the Long Night and what we're shown about the Long Night.

If you ask the Julians, they might tell you that the Long Night never really happened to them, or if it was, it was very brief. On the other hand, the Geonee would likely say that their Long Night began in -4900, and hasn't really let up since.

 

[Whipsnade]

If you ask the Julians, they might tell you that the Long Night never really happened to them, or if it was, it was very brief.

Once again GDW's collective roots as wargame designers and, by perforce, autodidact historians shines through clearly.

The Long Night is a riff on Europe's so-called "Dark Ages" which weren't all that dark and which, from the point of view of people in Constantinople, never happened at all.

As for Martin II's palace, whether the threat was the Chanestins as my faulty memory claimed or the Julians as you correctly pointed out, the fact that as late as the 3rd Century Imperial a sitting emperor of the Third Imperium had to build his seat of government with defenses against jump troops firmly in mind speaks volumes about the actual strength of the Imperium circa 200 and what the Imperium circa 1100 says what it's strength was circa 200.

Traveller has always been about wheels within wheels and the dichotomy between what is said and what is seen. There's a huge depth of detail and nuance within the setting for anyone who cares to actually think.

 

[DangerousThing]

I'm talking about a planet of 6 billion with instantaneous communications and the ability to be anywhere in 48 hours and two relatively small factories being damaged had the effects I wrote about. Imagine what the situation would have been like if the factories were parsecs physically distant, months away in time, and employed techniques we knew nothing about.

I'll ignore the insults about programmers/systems analysts, given that computer programs when done right are among the most complex systems that humans have ever developed.

And strangely enough you're proving my point. This factory is 48 hours away. Previous to it being damaged, anybody could order motors knowing (incorrectly) that they could get more by FedEx when they needed them.

If, on the other hand, it took two weeks (consistantly) to get motors, it would be less expensive for the hard-drive manufactuers to build a local factory or encourge one to be built.

Your assumption that any world of a sufficient population should automatically be self sufficient is not supported by events in the real world and events beyond the code writing you seem to think is manufacturing. Trust me, I've been intimately involved in heavy and not so heavy industries worldwide across several disciplines for over 25 yeas now. There's much more to the manufacturing than ones, zeros, and virtual objects.

Silly you. More of our economy is imaginary than is held in physical assets.

And I don't define myself as a programmer any more, if you read previous posts. I have been involved in industry (AmTrak - and the railroad is heavy iron), the government, and now that I'm my wife's full-time caregiver (for almost 10 years now I'm heavily involved in the US medical system and nursing.

Do *not* dis programmers as just people pushing 1s and 0s (sometimes we run out of 1s). Like it or not, but programmers and systems analysts are keeping our economy together.

Just my, er, two bits.

 

[mike wightman]

I'll ignore the insults about programmers/systems analysts, given that computer programs when done right are among the most complex systems that humans have ever developed.

Congratulations, you just earned a keyboard kill - LOL LOL LOL

And strangely enough you're proving my point. This factory is 48 hours away. Previous to it being damaged, anybody could order motors knowing (incorrectly) that they could get more by FedEx when they needed them.

If, on the other hand, it took two weeks (consistantly) to get motors, it would be less expensive for the hard-drive manufactuers to build a local factory or encourge one to be built.

And you are missing the point that the Vilani wouldn't allow such factories to be built to allow local manufacture. More than that, the engineers and technicians capable of building such a factory were kept a long way away too.

Silly you. More of our economy is imaginary than is held in physical assets.

And that is precisely the reason for the economic armagedon we face now - especially in Europe.It is a collapse of the imaginary economy which brings down the curtain on the Long Night.

 

[Shonner]

Do *not* dis programmers as just people pushing 1s and 0s (sometimes we run out of 1s). Like it or not, but programmers and systems analysts are keeping our economy together.

There are good computer programmers. And there are bad ones. Few are lucky to make fortunes doing it. Many are paving the road to Hell with the best of intentions.

 

[DangerousThing]

And you are missing the point that the Vilani wouldn't allow such factories to be built to allow local manufacture. More than that, the engineers and technicians capable of building such a factory were kept a long way away too.

In other words, as has been said here earlier, it was an artificially managed economy. Once the Imperium fell, it took a lot of time for some of the worlds to retool. Some seem to have weathered things just fine.

And that is precisely the reason for the economic armagedon we face now - especially in Europe.It is a collapse of the imaginary economy which brings down the curtain on the Long Night.

Yes. However, this seems to have happened because of an economy managed by people with a single goal rather than more realistic people.

On the other hand, it appeared the "Long night" was not as bad as historians say, at least once the economies settled down.

However, what most people forget is that these imaginary credits usually mean something to people, and artificially managed economies hurt people when they fall. I am willing to bet that *many* billions of people died when the start of the long night hit them.

 

[DangerousThing]

There are good computer programmers. And there are bad ones. Few are lucky to make fortunes doing it. Many are paving the road to Hell with the best of intentions.

Agreed. When I was a programmer/systems analyst I worked for Penn State. Twice the work of corporate with half the pay.

And I never had the aggressiveness to create my own company (or else I was smart enough not to). OK, I did have a company, but we never got around to selling anything except for a few web consults that resulted in very little income. So I kept my day job.

 

[Carlobrand]

The fall of the Roman Empire is generally considered to herald the period that we call the Dark or Middle Ages. The Roman Empire is generally dated to have "fallen" with the first sack of Rome - but it had been declining for quite a while before that, there remained emperors in Rome for a while after that (though the meekest shadow of Rome's past power and glory), and the Eastern Roman Empire continued to flourish for centuries - through the beginnings of the Renaissance - as the Byzantine Empire. Some of Rome's distant frontier cities and settlements struggled, some failed, some did well under new management. The people who lived through it, with the exception of a few nastily ugly periods (Justinian's Plague, etc.) mostly didn't think of it as a dark anything - one set of distant masters had fallen, a new set were in town. Mostly, for them, it was just change.

The "Long Night" strikes me as similar. The First Imperium fell to the Terrans, they couldn't quite manage it all, that fell apart, and everything breaks up. For some regions, that might have meant as much to them as the fall of Rome meant to a Byzantine farmer - little or nothing, as smaller sectorwide or subsectorwide governments or other polities stepped into the breach. For others, it may have been devastating, involving war between tiny collections of systems or the loss of key trade partners as economic dislocation set in. Some systems struggled, some failed, some did well under new management - with a key factor most likely being the extent of local resources for retooling (and how aggressive their neighbors were). A century or two past Twilight, the region of the Imperium might not have looked too terribly different from the way it looked at the time of the 2nd Imperium - just rather badly balkanized and more violent.

The next several centuries weren't so much about restoring jobs and economies for Joe Plumbers - they'd have stabilized within a generation. They were about the various governments that evolved out of the collapse vying jealously to protect and expand their prerogatives as independent entities: building trade links with neighbors, preying on neighbors, joining and breaking alliances, conquering or being conquered by neighbors in an ever-changing pattern that would have made it difficult for a stable interstellar economy or polity to establish itself for very long, until one group or another had the right combination of resources, circumstances and sheer luck to grow big enough to dominate.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I'll ignore the insults about programmers/systems analysts, given that computer programs when done right are among the most complex systems that humans have ever developed.

Very true - they're so complex nobody truly understands them and it's impossible to fully test them...:toast:

 

[DangerousThing]

Very true - they're so complex nobody truly understands them and it's impossible to fully test them...:toast:

Yes. Of course, most managers don't understand that the testing and fixing phase should be at least as long as the original programming phase.

And most managers seem to think that if a server-side program works with a hundred people, it's ready to hit the real world.

And of course, part of the reason for the recent US recession was that almost all the big financial institution were using the same algorithm for choosing stocks. This led to two problems. One of the assumptions used by the algorithm was the somewhat random nature of the stock market which changed when everybody was using the same algorithms. And another of the problems was that the algorithm had a bug in it about penny stocks.

So putting an extremely difficult to test algorithm together with an extremely difficult to test science (economics), we get something that never really was tested until it hit the real world.

And this leads into Traveller economics: the multiple stock markets must look very different than the current world markets. Now, we can check out the real value of most companies in minutes, or maybe a 24-48 hour trip. The jump delay in Traveller changes all that. I can think of several stock frauds that might work, plus there are problems with getting the information and using it before your competitors do.

 

[Shonner]

part of the reason for the recent US recession was that almost all the big financial institution were using the same algorithm for choosing stocks

This is the first I've heard about this.

 

[Carlobrand]

... part of the reason for the recent US recession was that almost all the big financial institution were using the same algorithm for choosing stocks. ...

Yeah, I was under the impression the massive real estate bubble bursting played the bigger role.