Another Empress Wave theory

[EvilDrGanymede]

One thing that few people seem to have commented much on (unless I've just missed it) is the destructive power of the Empress Wave - it seems to have destroyed several Longbow stations (ones located beyond the Vargr Extents) and presumably is destroying more as it approaches. That seems to imply that while the initial 'warning' wavefront may be psionic in nature, whatever is following it (the Empress Wave proper) itself might not be.

Another thing to point out is that the RS indicates (on pg 83) that at least some psionic effects can travel instantaneously across space (not limited by lightspeed) and may also be related to jumpspace. Putting this together, I have concocted another wild theory about the EW.

My own feeling (IMTU) is that the 'psionic image' of 'the Empress' is something that will vary from person to person - i.e. psionic images are themselves probably inherently subjective. I think the image of the 'Empress' is probably just how the visual part of the brain interprets the signal, and given that the signal is alien in origin there's no guarantee that the human interpretation would actually be correct. The feeling is what's important, and that was that it was 'one of those moments when the birds stopped singing for no reason'.

I think the Ew is not an artificial phenomenon - it's a natural, huge perturbation in jumpspace. It's divided into two phases: the warning stage - the psi signal - is the extreme leading edge of the wave. Think of it like a bow shock, if you know of such things. I'm not sure when 'birds suddenly stop singing', but I'm pretty sure that sort of feeling is what you get before something cataclysmic happens - an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, or something. The 'pregnancy' of the moment in the image implies something big is on the way. Since jumpspace is apparently linked to psionics, the 'turbulence/noise' created by the second phase building up manifests a psi signal propagating ahead of it that can be interpreted as the warning/image that something is on the way.

The second phase - the meat of the wave - is following behind the psi front, and here's where it gets more armwavy. One thing that strikes me as odd (assuming I'm understanding the timing correctly) is that the Empress Wave apparently wasn't as powerful while it was far away from the Imperium - otherwise Longbow would have noticed some of its effects on the earlier Core Expeditions. So what I think is happening is that the wave is growing in power like a wave in the ocean gets higher as it enters shallow water - even a tsunami is merely a low swell in the deep ocean, it's when it hits the shore that it grows to a huge height. In this case, the huge concentration of psionically aware minds ahead of the wave (in the Consulate and to a lesser extent the Imperium) is 'shallowing the slope' of jumpspace, and the wave is building in amplitude as it approaches to the extent that it can physically affect (i.e. damage/destroy) things in realspace as well as jumpspace as it approaches Charted Space. When the Imperium first detects it, the wave is at the stage where it can damage/short out equipment (hence the loss of the Longbow stations), but won't damage larger things like planets. Yet.

It would only take a single jump-capable ship to leave a Longbow station that has recorded the 'warning' ahead of the 'blast wave' - this would head back at top speed (J6) to the Imperium to deliver the signal to Jonathan Crocker at Depot/Lishun, who in turn pipes it into Strephon's mind. This would be how the Imperium gets its warning of the EW some 90 years before it actually hits.

By the time the Empress Wave does hit Charted Space, it has built up to huge power. The wave itself is probably not very wide - it may only take a few days or weeks to pass over a point. But in the days/weeks leading up to that time, jumpspace becomes more and more chaotic (much greater chance of misjump and ship destruction), and as it 'passes over' jumpspace would be completely inaccessible. Psions would be in extreme discomfort/pain as the warning crescendos into an scream in their minds, and even non-psions may feel some discomfort. Furthermore, the spatial/EM distortions associated with the wave would fry electronics, damage ships, and possibly even shatter asteroids and cause surface damage on planets (probably comparable to a hurricane) in realspace. The effects would be very dangerous for exposed spacecraft in realspace, instantly fatal for anything in jumpspace, crippling for any psionically aware individuals and superficially damaging to planetary/stellar bodies.

However, as the wave hits the rimward edge of the Zho Consulate, it starts to break. The greatest damage is done in the Consulate, which has to endure the double whammy of the psi signals panicking and possibly even crippling any psions, and the physical effects of the 'blastwave' which do the most damage to ships in space and surface facilities and cities on planets.

As the wave passes through the Consulate (and the Vargr Extents too, which are also affected just as badly, albeit possibly without so much psionic side-effects) it breaks as it goes, decreasing in power/damage as it travels rimward. By the time the wave reaches the Imperial border, it has largely broken and is continuing largely through the equivalent of 'momentum'. That's not to say that the effects are totally inconsequential - psionically sensitive individuals still feel general discomfort as the remains of the warning wavefront hits, jumpspace is still unpredictable and misjump chances become much higher temporarily, and some minor electrical shorting and structural damage may occur... but most of the power has been depleted from the wave.

By the time it reaches Reference, the wave would have petered out completely, and be largely undetectable - the Aslan, Solomani, and Hivers may not even notice it at all. The K'Kree would be hit by the weak, breaking part of the Wave, but that might still be enough to affect their alien minds in such a way as to incite some of them to say, form the Dominate and go on a rampage

.

As to what causes the huge perturbation in jumpspace in the first place... if the wave does indeed originate from the galactic core then it's conceivable that it's related in some way to the supermassive black hole(s) there. Perhaps the black hole merged with another one, or hiccuped in some dramatic way, causing a massive gravitational wave to spread out through realspace (possibly at least partly explaining the physical effects in realspace) but dumping most of its energy in jumpspace as the 'Empress Wave'.

So.... assuming anyone is still awake after all that, does that sound at all feasible or consistent, or did I miss something really obvious? That's probably how I'd explain it IMTU anyway

(MJD - am I warm? cold? not remotely in the right ballpark? )

 

[MJD]

In places you're even swinging at the right ball, and certainly you're playing the same sport, though probbaly in a different stadium.

There is actually a physcial phenomenon involved here, but not quite the way described. The Wave itself will not be smashing asteroids, cool though that would be.

The point about different perceptions is reasonable.

 

[TheDS]

Ive been looking at this problem now and then, and I think you've perhaps unwittingly uncovered something I totally missed: There are TWO waves.

First, consider that the "wave" is hitting Imperial "shores" in 1205. If traveling at light speed, 90 years prior to this, the wave was NOT EVEN a sector's length away. The Vargr Extents are almost completely done passing through it.

Second, consider that in the description of Longbow 2, it says the observation stations are many sectors COREWARD of the Extents (though they use the Imperium's width as a baseline), implying to me that the wave should be SEVERAL centuries away.

There is no evidence that the Zho Core Expeditions encountered anything like this (indeed, they couldn't have since it wasn't "invented" until long afterward). THAT lead me to believe that the source of the wave was a LOT closer than the core, that it had originated in the Extents, and spread coreward to the Longbow stations and Rimward toward the border of the Imperium.

Since the Vargr have given NO indications that anything was amiss (other than the now-non-canon "Baddies from the Core" idea, whatever that was), and the Zhos only JUST STARTED to have problems when the wave was supposed to be half-way through their property, this supports that the wave does NOT come from the core (and is why the ZCE didn't encounter it) and that it only affects psions. For Longbow stations to suddenly go silent, either they were attacked by a 3rd party (not likely, and by Vargr even less-likely) or they had significant incorporation of psionics in their systems. Seeing as how they wanted to track the ZCE's, this is not entirely surprising.

What little I know about the wave comes from Survival Margin, and I think there's stuff in the TNE mainbook, and a teeny bit in Regency. I also have a thing from Dave that some one was kind enough to share with me, that says WRT the topic, that the wave (or the Zho problems) is "massive psionic upheaval". I also recall a speculation (on TML?) about what was hapening in Zho space, and I recall commenting (after becoming conviced of this Zho civil war) that the wave might be forcing the Psi-overlords to abandon their worlds, and when they come back many years later, the normals have tasted the fruit of freedom of thought and found it much more appealing, leading to widespread war to retain it.

If there's any other sources of info about the wave, I don't recall where. I certainly don't recall anything about an effect on jumpships, or Psi being jump-related (perhaps MM recently decided this?) so if any one's got any links to share, I'd be happy to click on them.

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

MJD - oooh. Your vaguely approving noises tantalise me

.

Really my idea sprang from the fact that the Longbow stations were being destroyed (or at least, contact was being lost) by the EW, so whatever explanation is concocted should explain that, and a simple psionic message probably isn't enough to do that.

TheDS - the jumpspace link was one I came up with, I don't think anything's been mentioned in the books about that, beyond the fact that researchers think that jumpspace is linked to psionics (RS, page 83).

The LBII description doesn't mention any stations to coreward of the Imperium - those are the Longbow I stations. Page 82 of RS says that Longbow was an umbrella organisation for a lot of smaller projects, including "smaller versions of the Longbow VLB array, placed much closer to the core many sectors to corewards of the Vargr Extents". Before I noticed that line, I was somewhat perplexed as to where the LB stations that were being 'destroyed' were located, since the text otherwise implied that they were all found in one system (Depot/Lishun). Even the LBII stations were spread out along the width of the Imperium, and officially at least were not spread out into the core/rim direction.

I also got the impression that Longbow II didn't pick up any useful data because the Civil War came along.

But that's a good point about how the wave should be less than a sector away from the Imperium when Strephon gets the warning at Depot. Which means that Zhodane and Lair should have already been hit by it. That might mean that the psionic 'bow shock' is travelling quite far ahead of the main 'shockwave' - the psi wave might have hit Zhodane and Lair already, and will hit the Imperial border in 90 years, but perhaps the 'shockwave' is three or four sectors behind that? Either that or the psi wave isn't itself travelling at the speed of light, though the text does say it is...

 

[John Ross]

And here I was , going to justify the fall of the Spinward Marches ala TNE, (Virus and Fall affects) using the Empress Wave Idea. It blocks J-Drive, was several LY deep and was travelling at light speed. That way systems would be cut off from the rest of the Regency, and using the ARmwave that many systems are not truly independent from the others (economically and socially) you would have panic, ships trying to outrun it,survival groups, mass hysteria etc...
Then we could have a New Era type of campaign, as those systems out of the wave first start to make contact with those just recently out of the wave.
And if the the effects are more than just a few light years in depth,(say a sector or so) it could be really wild.)
John Ross

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by Balthazaar:
And here I was , going to justify the fall of the Spinward Marches ala TNE, (Virus and Fall affects) using the Empress Wave Idea. It blocks J-Drive, was several LY deep and was travelling at light speed. That way systems would be cut off from the rest of the Regency, and using the ARmwave that many systems are not truly independent from the others (economically and socially) you would have panic, ships trying to outrun it,survival groups, mass hysteria etc...
Then we could have a New Era type of campaign, as those systems out of the wave first start to make contact with those just recently out of the wave.
And if the the effects are more than just a few light years in depth,(say a sector or so) it could be really wild.)
John Ross

Nothing's stopping you from using that idea

Actually, an 'on the run from the Empress Wave' campaign might be nifty... perhaps (ignoring my own theory) it might only peter out when it reaches the edge of the galactic disk, but otherwise causes all sorts of deadly havoc in the areas it passes through. A rag-tag fugitive fleet (TM) of ships is cobbled together when it reaches the Imperium, and heads straight out to rimward, barging its way through Solomani Space and beyond into the unknown, never able to settle down for long since the wave will catch up eventually, even if they're so far ahead that it would arrive decades down the line...

 

[Whipsnade]

Evil Dr Ganymede wrote:

"The LBII description doesn't mention any stations to coreward of the Imperium - those are the Longbow I stations."


Dr. Thomas,

Longbow II is nothing but a collection of Longbow I stations spread along the width of the Imperium. The signals recieved by these scattered stations are sent by courier to Depot/Lishun(1) and then calibrated together. The Longbow I stations being destroyed coreward of the Extents are copies of the same stations that make up Longbow II.

"Page 82 of RS says that Longbow was an umbrella organisation for a lot of smaller projects, including "smaller versions of the Longbow VLB array, placed much closer to the core many sectors to corewards of the Vargr Extents"."

Exactly. The original Longbow I project produced sufficient results with it's 'tiny' system-wide collection array that the construction of an Imperium-wide Longbow II array consisting of individual Longbow I stations all reporting to a central information nexus was begun.

"Before I noticed that line, I was somewhat perplexed as to where the LB stations that were being 'destroyed' were located, since the text otherwise implied that they were all found in one system (Depot/Lishun)."

No. They're copies of the original Longbow I system which had been built and operated in Depot/Lishun.

"Even the LBII stations were spread out along the width of the Imperium, and officially at least were not spread out into the core/rim direction."

Officially? The deepest, darkest, burn-before-reading secret of the Third Imperium? And there's going to be any official comments on it? Again, Longbow II is a collection of Longbow I stations spread across the width of the Imperium.

There are additional Longbow I-style stations sectors coreward of the Vargr Extents. Those are the stations 'going off line' and being 'destroyed'. Note, those two terms are what the Longbow Project personnel in the Imperium percieve to be happening as all actual communication from the coreward Longbows is lost without warning. The Imperium doesn't know exactly what has happened to its coreward Longbow I stations and fears the worst.

"I also got the impression that Longbow II didn't pick up any useful data because the Civil War came along."

The initial calibration and corelation of the data being collected was expected to take a 'century'. Each Longbow I station in the Longbow II system transmiited its data via jump courier to the Lonbow II nexus at Depot/Lishun. There, the data was calibrated through the use of astronomical objects visible in each Longbow stations field of view. IIRC, pulsars were mentioned in that respect.

"But that's a good point about how the wave should be less than a sector away from the Imperium when Strephon gets the warning at Depot. Which means that Zhodane and Lair should have already been hit by it."

Yup, DS has the timing down well here. And that's the major problem with our knowledge of the Wave, it's timing. If it's only a sector away when Strephon gets his peek at it, then Lair and Zhodane have already been smashed - but we know they haven't. If it is working along your 'ground swell' method (very nifty idea, btw), then what destroyed the Longbow I stations coreward of Lair but then left Lair and Zhodane untouched? If the ground swell needed a certain 'mass' of psionic minds in which to 'bottom out', why didn't the various fleets and colonies along the Zho Core Route offer it enough 'purchase' to build in strength there?

I think DS' idea about the EW epicenter being located between the Extents and coreward Longbow I stations deserves examinination. With the epicenter located in that region, and with you idea of a psionic 'bow shock' travelling ahead of the actual wave front, we can have the coreward Longbow I stations destroyed and Lair and Zhodane remaining untouched at the precise point in time Strephon visits Depot/Lishun. By the time reports of the Wave's physcial effects would begin being reported; as it moves through the Extents and Consulate, the release of Virus would prevent any interstellar communication with the effected regions in the Extents while the Consulate's vague problems would already be known.

"That might mean that the psionic 'bow shock' is travelling quite far ahead of the main 'shockwave' - the psi wave might have hit Zhodane and Lair already, and will hit the Imperial border in 90 years, but perhaps the 'shockwave' is three or four sectors behind that? Either that or the psi wave isn't itself travelling at the speed of light, though the text does say it is..."

Or the 'bow shock' sprang into being some parsecs from the epicenter of the 'shockwave'? The 'Event' occurs and the 'Wave' is created. Thanks to oddities of jump space, a 'bow shock' occurs ahead of the actual Wave itself. Maybe the 'bow shock' expanded ahead of the wave at FTL speeds until it reached an equilibrium point at which it dropped back to the Wave's own lightspeed.


Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - Depot/Lishun, the sector 'twixt Vland and Antares wholly overrun by the Vargr. Look at the maps in MT, the Vargr plunge into the Imperium in this neat, sector-shaped salient. Did the Imperium evacuate Longbow II in time? What did the Vargr do with what they found at Depot/Lishun? What did Virus do with what it found at Depto/Lishun? And what about all the other Longbow I stations that made up Longbow II? They're spread from the Marches to Antares. The number is unknown, but at three are needed; one on each end and one in the middle. Was there a Longbow-Vland? Longbow-Corridor? Longbow-Deneb? What did their post-Imperial discoverers do with them?

 

[kaladorn]

Pardon my ignorance, but:

1) Why do we assume the progress of the EW is uniform in velocity? We know at one observation it was moving at lightspeed, but this may or may not reflect overall velocity trends.

2) Why do we assume the wavefront is equally distributed? Perhaps it doesn't propagate into the ZC as easily as it does in through the extents to the 3I, or perhaps some other localized conditions affect the strength of the effect?

If you've watched tides, one part of a beach can be experiencing whitecap waves coming in while another is in troughs.... and not all places get pounded equally. Now, obviously space or whatever presents different aspects, but do we know that what we're seeing is *really* a phenomenon primarily in realspace? No. It could be propagating through some non-Euclidian space, perhaps a higher jumpspace or whatever, and the effects we see might be in realspace. So this could explain why a wave might pass through two regions of realspace at differing rates, despite surficial similarities - maybe in the space the wave is *really* occuring in, the realspace points have different properties so progress is at different rates.

Just offering some random ideas....

 

[Whipsnade]

kaladorn wrote:

"Pardon my ignorance, but: [snip of logical and wholly appropriate questions]


Mr. Barclay,

Both of your points; varying EW speeds and different regions in which it 'breaks', are well made. We know very little about the Wave and should not make too many assumptions about it.

The phenomena Strephon and Crocker observed was moving at light speed at that moment, it's speed in the past or future are open to debate. However, Strephon, briefed by the Longbow II bigwigs, felt certain that, whatever the Wave is, it will reach the old Imperium-Vargr border around 1200. He planned on the Wave moving at a certain speed and made certain preparations; Avery, the Jumpstart caches, and others. With our few crumbs of information, we've been using Strephon's expectations; the Wave is a lightspeed phenomena and will reach a certain point around 1200.

What we know about the Wave is this:

- From the Imperium's viewpoint, it originates from the Core.
- The Wave somehow 'destroyed' or knocked off line the Longbow I stations the Imperium had built 'sectors' coreward of the Varge Extents.
- Although these coreward stations are destroyed, the various fleets and colonies along the Zho Core Route appear to be unaffected. Indeed, the portions of the Consulate that would be 'even' with the coreward positions of the destroyed Longbow I stations appear to be unaffected.

The last bit is the most important. The Consulate is many sectors closer to the Core than Imperium is, yet there are no intimations of EW related difficulties within the Consulate until the time period of the Regency Sourcebook. If the Wave were a lightspeed phenomena; something Strephon planned on, and if it were to arrive at the Imperium-Vargr border around 1202; something else Strephon was planning on, then the Wave *should* have already been washing across most of the Consulate at the time Strephon visited Depot/Lishun.

Why hasn't it? Dave Nilsen knows, but he won't talk. A few others from GDW know something, but how much is open to conjecture and, besides, they've promised not reveal anything(1). MJD 'knows' too. His answer may be part Nilsen and part Dougherty, but his answer will have one undeniable trump card; It will be published. People will be able to learn MJD's answer and, once that occurs, Dave Nilsen's answer becomes moot.

Set aside some pin money 'cause M:1248 will be here soon!


Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - I am not privy to the 'whys' of Mr. Nilsen's extraction of a non-discloser pledge from his fellow GDW-ers. However, it having lasted so long seems very, very strange. It has been a decade since GDW closed up shop and the pledge was made. If Mr. Nilsen wanted the pledge as a way to protect some Traveller ideas he had and felt could still be sold, then the pledge makes sense, but the pledge lasting for 10 years does not.

If Mr. Nilsen was planning on a TNE follow-on product wouldn't he have done something by now? Traveller is currently at one of it's peaks, many people are interested in it from many angles; T20, GURPS, the Reprints. A tell-all TNE product would have sold like... well, sold like M:1248 is going to sell. But 10 years of silence is odd. Use it or lose it. Seeing as Mr. Nilsen hasn't used it, he will definitely lose it once M:1248 arrives.

I'm afraid we'll soon be placing Mr. Nilsen in the 'Sanger' catagorey. That fellow has sat on his bits of MT for so long that they are slowly being overwritten. Mr. Nilsen's TNE IP will disappear even faster than Mr. Sanger's MT IP. One book, M:1248, will put paid the Dave Nilsen's vision. A few books will be needed to do the same with Mr. Sanger's materials.

 

[William]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
(snick)
Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - I am not privy to the 'whys' of Mr. Nilsen's extraction of a non-discloser pledge from his fellow GDW-ers. However, it having lasted so long seems very, very strange. It has been a decade since GDW closed up shop and the pledge was made. If Mr. Nilsen wanted the pledge as a way to protect some Traveller ideas he had and felt could still be sold, then the pledge makes sense, but the pledge lasting for 10 years does not.

If Mr. Nilsen was planning on a TNE follow-on product wouldn't he have done something by now? Traveller is currently at one of it's peaks, many people are interested in it from many angles; T20, GURPS, the Reprints. A tell-all TNE product would have sold like... well, sold like M:1248 is going to sell. But 10 years of silence is odd. Use it or lose it. Seeing as Mr. Nilsen hasn't used it, he will definitely lose it once M:1248 arrives.

I'm afraid we'll soon be placing Mr. Nilsen in the 'Sanger' catagorey. That fellow has sat on his bits of MT for so long that they are slowly being overwritten. Mr. Nilsen's TNE IP will disappear even faster than Mr. Sanger's MT IP. One book, M:1248, will put paid the Dave Nilsen's vision. A few books will be needed to do the same with Mr. Sanger's materials.

I left much of this message intact because I wish it to be understood just what I am responding to.

I do not believe that Mr. Nilsen, annoying though his past may be at times, will ever be in the same boat as Mr. Sanger's. If nothing else, he fails the pathological greed test.

No, for some utterly unfathonable reason - at least as far as you and I are concerned - he extracted a no tell pledge from LKW and unknown others. There is only one person more important to Traveller than LKW and we do not know what his status in this regard is. However we do know this:

Mr Nilsen has asked those who know what he wished to do to not say anything.

Mr. MJD has a license from MWM to continue the timeline far beyond whatever Mr. Nilsen had planned. Thus we will have an "official" explaination of all the things that Mr. Nilsen may have decided to cover.

OTOH, Mr. Sanger's property will forever be in limbo (and I choose this word advisadly) due to a very specific sin - greed. He feels these properties are worth far more than they really are - even to those of us who enjoy SOM or WBH. This greed can not ever succeed, hence, we will never see these products again in any legal manner.

There will be a legitimate end to Mr. Nilsen's conceit. There never will be to Mr. Sanger's. That is all the difference in the world.

I do hope this meandering muddle makes some sense.

William

 

[kaladorn]

My only advisory to William, who may in many particulars be better informed than myself, is to keep in mind two things:

1. Never is a long time. A very long time. Bandying it about in such a manner is... perhaps a little problematic.

2. You never know, an MT fan might just win the lotto...

 

[TheDS]

I think in the beginning, Dave had hopes that he could refound TNE, and MWM hated so much what was done that he flat out refused to extend any rights. Dave kept hope that one day MWM would come to his senses, not realizing that the guy meant it. (Perhaps Marc was wishy-washy all the time, I don't know the man.)

Marc may also have thought there was a lot of value in Traveller, and threatened Dave with legal action if he revealed the plan.

And certainly there were the people that hated his ideas, and by extension hated him, and perhaps he decided that he wanted to put no further fuel in the fire, and just let it die (which it still hasn't).

Nowadays, there is indeed some value in Traveller, and for Dave to suddenly come out after all this time and say what he's got to say might take some of the thunder from MJD. There would be those who would think that it would completely invalidate Martin's plan, and thereby not take him seriously and not buy the upcoming book. There would be other backlash if this were to happen. I know I would not want to be blamed for the failure of the book any more than I would want to be that Cubs fan tonight who may be blamed for the Cubs not winning the World Series if they fail to win tomorrow. The Billy Goat has certainly gotten a lot of blame in the last 58 years, ya think?

Maybe I'm unique, but I thought Dave was funny, and I am one of those (hopefully not rare) people who are capable of hearing two or three different things and making my own opinion. For instance, I would have no problem buying MJD's book and appreciating it even if it was completely invalidated by Dave the day after I got it.

But there are people out there (canonistas?) who insist only on playing by the "official" rules in the "official" setting and only in the "official" campaign. This is certainly a cause of neverending strife in their gaming lives, as there hasn't been an "official" anything for quite some time. I personally prefer to make my stuff up. I appreciate the "official" campaign as an interesting story, like from a novel, and may draw inspiration from it, but I never feel the need to constrain myself or my players with anything "official". (Unless I want them to be able to read up on something and try to outguess me; hard to do that if I have to make the whole universe before they can read it.)

Regarding the topic, I'm sure I wrote this somewhere (here, in fact), but I'll write it again. One of my thoughts is that the wave originated in Vargr space, or coreward of it. I don't have the FULL FULL charted space map from CT Encyclopedia of the Imperium (Why is it so FROGGING HARD for some one to republish that map?!?!), so I'm going to have to guess here, but if the wave originated BETWEEN the Vargr and the Longbow stations, it would be catching them "from behind"; the wave would seem to them to be coming from behind.

The wave would not touch the Core Expeditions because it hasn't traveled far enough Spinward. It may only now be getting to Zhodani space. It may not be so big as we are led to believe.

This leads me to a further thought: what if the wave was created AT one of the longbow stations? What could have caused it? Some kind of invasion? Some weird experiment? Some black hole colliding with a star and causing it to nova, and the most powerful psion in the universe died?

sigh. Man, I wish Martin would get the book written already.

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by TheDS:
But there are people out there (canonistas?) who insist only on playing by the "official" rules in the "official" setting and only in the "official" campaign. This is certainly a cause of neverending strife in their gaming lives, as there hasn't been an "official" anything for quite some time. I personally prefer to make my stuff up. I appreciate the "official" campaign as an interesting story, like from a novel, and may draw inspiration from it, but I never feel the need to constrain myself or my players with anything "official". (Unless I want them to be able to read up on something and try to outguess me; hard to do that if I have to make the whole universe before they can read it.)

I can't see the logic of saying that what Dave might say at a later (or prior?) date is "official" regardless of what MJD says. If MJD gets his ideas on the EW in print in an officially-sanctioned Traveller product then as far as I'm concerned that's what's "official", and Dave missed the boat. I doubt that Dave could officially publish his ideas before MJD anyway, since nobody has shown any interest in publishing them.

 

[MJD]

Dave Nilsen can't invalidate anything. His is no longer the 'official' version. I tried to work with him to get it in print but sadly it didn't pan out.

The 1248 version is the official one now.

And, just to be cryptic: yes.

 

[Rupert Boleyn]

Originally posted by TheDS:

Maybe I'm unique, but I thought Dave was funny, and I am one of those (hopefully not rare) people who are capable of hearing two or three different things and making my own opinion. For instance, I would have no problem buying MJD's book and appreciating it even if it was completely invalidated by Dave the day after I got it.

You're not unique. I liked Mr Nilsen's authorial/editorial tone/voice. Yes, the santa claus hats were a bit over the top, but he did good work IMO, and I miss it greatly.

I'm looking forward to MJD's take on 1248 though - even if I don't like some of it I'm sure it'll be mineable for ideas. If nothing else it'll have all these nice new states for me to have fail (or whatever).

 

[Whipsnade]

William wrote:

"I do not believe that Mr. Nilsen, annoying though his past may be at times, will ever be in the same boat as Mr. Sanger's. If nothing else, he fails the pathological greed test."


Sir,

Please be assured, I was not placing Mr. Nilsen in the "Pathological Greed" boat with Mr. Sanger. The boat I was placing him is the "Overwritten Into Irrevelence" boat. Mr. Sanger is in that boat too. I was not referring to why his materials had not seen the light of day, I was referring to the effect of his materials not seeing the light of day.

Yes, Mr. Nilsen and Mr. Sanger have very different reason for not releasing their materials. However, the results of that non-disclosure is exactly the same; irrelevence. MT is slowly being papered over and Mr. Nilsen's vision of TNE will become moot with the publication of M:1248. Ten years is a long time and Nilsen may not be in the "Pathological Greed" boat, but he definitely missed another, more important boat.

"No, for some utterly unfathonable reason - at least as far as you and I are concerned - he extracted a no tell pledge from LKW and unknown others."

Yes, I refer to that in my opening sentence.

"Mr. Nilsen has asked those who know what he wished to do to not say anything."

Yes, he did. And I offered one suggestion about why that pledge was extracted; Mr. Nilsen wished to release a product or products set in the TNE mileau. Even if the chance of any product being released was nil, Mr. Nilsen could have still made his vision known in the same we all share our hobbyist materials; by posting it on the 'Net. He has not, his reasons are his own, and his vision will soon be rendered moot.

"Mr. MJD has a license from MWM to continue the timeline far beyond whatever Mr. Nilsen had planned. Thus we will have an "official" explaination of all the things that Mr. Nilsen may have decided to cover."

My point exactly. Traveller is dealing with it's own future again. We've waited ten long years for the man with that future to step up to plate. Now we will move on without him.

"OTOH, Mr. Sanger's property will forever be in limbo..."

Mr. Sanger's property is slowly sliding into the non-canonicity; WBH and SOM too. Like the Judge's Guild and Paranoia Press materials for CT, Mr. Sanger's MT properties will be made irrelevent. Just as Mr. Nilsen's vision of the setting he helped create will be made irrelevent.

"I do hope this meandering muddle makes some sense."

I believe it did. I do hope you know understand that I was not trying to cram Mr. Nilsen into a Sanger-suit. The 'whys' and 'hows' of each situation are very mcuh different. However, the results of both situations are the same; irrelevence.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
My point exactly. Traveller is dealing with it's own future again. We've waited ten long years for the man with that future to step up to plate. Now we will move on without him.

Or more precisely, the 'man with that future' is actually MJD, and we're moving on WITH him.

 

[robject]

Gentlemen,

I want to thank you for setting down your theories, reasonings, and suggestions. It has shed light on a milieu that is so mysterious to me, and I find the dialogue, process, and revelations fascinating. I am now keeping my eye out for the M1248 book. Good show, and please keep it up!

Rob

 

[Whipsnade]

Evil Dr Ganymede wrote:

"Or more precisely, the 'man with that future' is actually MJD, and we're moving on WITH him."


Dr. Thomas,

Thank you. The is exactly what I should have wrote!


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[TheDS]

The wave would not touch the Core Expeditions because it hasn't traveled far enough Spinward. It may only now be getting to Zhodani space. It may not be so big as we are led to believe.

And, just to be cryptic: yes.

Obviously, this is the intended meaning.

Mr. Sanger's property is slowly sliding into the non-canonicity; WBH and SOM too.

WHAT?!?! These are like the most awesome books! Sure, the system and world generation in WBH has been superceded (First In does this best, I think), but there's plenty of useful stuff in here to keep them in my list of greats for some time. I mean, the Vilani captain's commentary alone is priceless! And there's no hint of that ridiculous jump-masking to be found in either!

((I learned today that there is a maximum of 8 smileys allowed in a message.))