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Fourth Frontier War

Blue Ghost

SOC-14 5K
Knight
Where is the history of the Fourth Frontier (false) War? Is it on line somewhere, or is it in a supplement?

Thanks much for any help.
 
Blue,

What little is known canonically can be found in CT's A:1 Kinunir, S:8 Library Data, and Spinward Marches Campaign.

- It seems to have been a case of someone some place 'jumping the gun' or, perhaps more accurately, several someones in several places jumping several guns. The war is said to have been the result of escalating border tensions with the concurrent incidents. Neither party is said to have planned to go to war at that date.

- It didn't last too long, less than two years between 1082 and 1084. The war was over and a ceasefire in place well before any response to the news that hostilities had begun was recieved from Capital.

- It featured one of the few named naval battles with any specific details we know of in OTU history. The Battle Of Two Suns is mentioned several times in CT's A:1 Kinunir as two of the Kinunir-class were lost there. The same battle is also mentioned in the SMC, specifically in the section dealing with the battlerider squadron's history. Just why the Consulate and Imperial navies were fighting in deep space between Yres and Menorb has never been adequately explained.

I'm sure you'll be able to google up any number of fan-written 'histories' of the war. Of course, those histories will only be as good or as bad as the authors' abilities.


Have fun,
Bill
 
Hey Bill; informative as always. Thanks much for the reply. I want to write some adventures, and since our group (back in the day) started after the 4th Frontier war, I thought it might be a kick to explore that brief history a few years before and during the conflict.

I have the Kinunir and library data LBBs lying around somewhere... I thought there might be some official write up that I missed.

Thanks again
 
There's also references to the war in Adventure 4 (Leviathan):

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  • A "rumor" (p.9) from a guy whose destroyer had several clashes with the Zhodani in the Outrim (of all places).</font>
  • The Manoeuvre of Ganulf, which involved a skirmish between Imperial and Zhodani (of all things) forces in the Egyrn subsector (of all places).</font>
Of course, this may or may not be considered canonical material...
 
Blue,

You're welcome but, as Robject correctly points out, I missed plenty of other canonical tidbits concerning the war. For reasons discussed in Robject's current 'Classic Adventure Design' thread, GDW's various CT products are just crammed full of interesting tidbits, some of which may have nothing to do with the product they're found in!

After nearly 30 years, Our Olde Game is full of knooks and crannies with delightfully odd bits. For instance, are you familar with DGP's Starship Operator's Manual and the advice sidebars featuring the 'Old Timer'? Well, that character is also in A:1 Kinunir! He's the 'rumor' with the maintenance hatch key. He also missed INS ALLAMU's last flight due to sickness and thus wasn't lost with the rest of the crew at the Battle of Two Suns.

Nice little easter egg, huh?


Have fun,
Bill

P.S. The Old Timer has another odd claim to real world fame. His 'portrait' is based on the USN's VADM McCain of WW2 fame. 'Popeye' McCain was a carrier boss and is also the grandfather of the current Senator and former Vietnam POW John McCain of Arizona.
 
Originally posted by robject:
Of course, this may or may not be considered canonical material...
Robject,

A:4 is a tough one. Despite it's date of publication, it definitely has a pre-HG2, pre-Big Imperium, pre-old Imperium feel to it. Then there are those jump torpedos... sigh

Still, I'll follow Hans Rancke-Madsen's advice concerning supposedly 'troublesome' canon; Try to make it work and don't chuck it out unless it has been explicitly overwritten.

Following those guidelines, IMTU A:4 is more canonical than not.


Have fun,
Bill
 
Bill; a-yup! I sure do have DGP's Starship manual. It was a little wordy when I first bought it, but now it's one of my prized Trav possesions. Thanks for the tidbit about the Old Timer. I thought he looked a little familiar


I think I'm going to just strike out and write something. If I come into a snag I'll gloss over it until I can find a workaround. Thanks for the input guys!
 
Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
I think I'm going to just strike out and write something. If I come into a snag I'll gloss over it until I can find a workaround. Thanks for the input guys!
That's the way to do it!
 
Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
I think I'm going to just strike out and write something. If I come into a snag I'll gloss over it until I can find a workaround. Thanks for the input guys!
Blue,

Start writing! And be sure to share with us what you come up with!

The Battle of Two Suns has been nothing but a head-scratcher for me ever since I first read about it. I've heard other's takes on it ranging from the blase to the weird(1), but I've yet to hear an explanation that sits well with me. Can't wait to hear your's!


Have fun,
Bill

1 - "Lovecraftian" is the best adjective I can come up with.
 
Here are my explanations. Which one is true depends on my mood.

1. (Serious). The battle was fought around a calibration point, which was intended to allow Outworld Coalition forces to strike into the rear of the Imperial fleets. The story of its discovery was made into a major holovid movie after the war. (Or could be used as a scenario, either "then" or during the 5FW.)

(Obviously this raises the whole spectre of why deep space jumps are generally ignored in descriptions of Traveller naval warfare, but you can't have everything. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!)

2. (Silly). The battle was fought around a near-C rock which was the base of a all-female band of Vargr corsairs with a peculiar identification with Aslan culture. The Vargr were allowing the Zhodani to use their base in return for psionic testing and training.
 
a secret deep-space zhodani or vargr base is a great idea. blue ghost's story could revolve around the intelligence operations that uncover its location. lots of room there for dramatic individual action that will contrast nicely with the resulting vast wagnerian fleet battles.
 
Originally posted by robject:
Hey Bill, this would be an ideal location to rehash and summarise them...
Robject,

Alan pretty much covered the serious answer to the Battle of Two Suns, the Zhodani were out in the Deep Dark and the Imperium beat them. It's when we begin asking things like Why? and How? that things get screwy.

The blurbs say something along the lines of the Imperium's victory meant the barbarians' (sic) advance could no longer continue and Efate was saved. Pretty straight forward stuff but it makes no sense when you look at the map. You see, Yres and Menorb are four parsecs from the nearest Consulate system.

During the Fifth Frontier War a big chunk of the Consulate Navy is still comprised of jump3 vessels. So much of the fleet was still jump3 that seizing Louzy in the opening stages of the war was a major prerequisite for the Consulates' drive on Efate because Louzy's position allowed jump3 vessels to move between Farreach and Efate. (The Imperial SDB commander at Louzy is hailed as a hero when, instead of going down with guns blazing, he uses his assets in guerilla fashion continually harassing the Zhodani as they transit the Louzy system and thus discomforting their plans to use Louzy as a safe staging area.)

If enough of the Consulate Navy in 1107 is jump3, than a good portion of it in 1082 should be jump3 also. So, what they hell are they doing in deep space four parsecs away from their friendly nearest system? If they staged out of Foelen, they would have had make two deep space space jumps to get to the site of the battle. If they staged out of Farreach, they could either make two deep space jumps or jump via Louzy. The Zhodani are fighting at a calibration point they reached either via another calibration point of via an Imperial system! Weird, huh?

(Of course, these are the same guys who built a secret base on Fulacin 17 parsecs from their nearest border. Go figure.)

The Imperial side of the battle is just as baffling, mostly on two counts.

First, unlike the majority of naval actions we know of in canon, we actually know some of the vessels that were involved. We know that at least two Kinunir-class 'battlecruisers' were present because we know two were lost there. We also know that the battlerider squadron detailed in SMC was present; the 214th(?).

The presence of the Kinunirs is troubling. Those vessels belong no where near any line of battle, they're too small and slow besides being poorly armed and armored. There's a metagame reason they were there(1), but there are precious few in-game reasons for their presence.

Second, the Imperium has interdicted the site of the battle because it is "littered with debris". When you remember that vessels fighting battles in space are moving along a wide variety of vectors and that any debris created will remain on those vectors, you realize that there is no actual 'battlefield debris' to warrant an interdiction because any debris is long gone. The Imperium doesn't want people jumping into the area where the battle was held for other reasons.

(People's suggestions regrading those other reasons generally involve the 'Lovecraftian' themes I referenced earlier.)

My 'explanations' for the battle are poor:

Realistic: Border incidents become more common and, without planning by either side, the Consulate and Imperium find themselves at war. Most of the border incidents revolved around scouting locations for and delivering supply caches to various deep space calibration points.

The Consulate's overall plan is to riddle the coreward half of the Regina subsector with caches to support a combined Zhodani/Vargr offensive in that region. (The canonical description of the battle mentions that the coreward half of the subsector would have been 'lost' if the battle hade been lost.)

The Imperium becomes aware of this plan, mostly through espionage efforts among the Vargr. Because the caches are in Imperial space, the Imperium has no compunction in dispatching forces to seize and/or destroy every cache they know about. When the Imperium launches this effort, the 'border incidents' canon refers to kick off. The Consulate, Vargr, and Imperium are tussling over deep space supply caches with the naval forces they already have on hand.

That's an important bit. The Kinunirs are involved because there isn't time to summon better ships for the job. The englobed Kinunirs can also (hopefully) deliver Marine strike teams to seize the enemy personnel and records at each cache.

The Two Suns cache is the mother load of all the caches. It was placed to allow one parsec 'hops' to all four of the worlds in the Pixie cluster; Yres, Menorb, Pixie, and Boughene. The seizure of that cluster will not only threaten Efate but will also threaten the Kinorb group and the Enope trace. What supplies the Zhodani have been able to move from other caches in the region before their destruction by the Imperium have been stockpiled at the Two Suns cache, but removing that cache has been difficult due to it's distance from the border.

The rest we already know. The Imperium arrives, the battle is fought, the two Kinunirs are lost, the Consulate gets whipped, the end. The ‘war’ sputters on for a few more months in other places before the news and new orders can arrive, but the important ‘campaign’, the seizure/destruction of the Outworld supply caches is all over. The Two Suns cache also featured a rogue interstellar body of some sort; a planet, planetoid, KBO, cometary fragment, whatever. Because it is a fuel source and because it obviously bears watching in the future, the Imperium interdicts the ‘battlefield’ to prevent anyone from snooping around. Cap’n Blackie and the crew of the Sufferin’ Bastard won’t be able to use it to smuggle toupees between Yres and Menorb.

Silly-Conspiracy-Lovecraftian: The battle and indeed the Fourth Frontier War are a sham. The entire affair is part of some elaborate cover-up. The Consulate and the Imperium did fight a battle in deep space between Yres and Menorb. However they fought it as allies. Something ‘Man Should Not Know’ was out there in the Deep Dark. Take your pick; Baddies from the Core a bit early, one of Grandfather’s ‘leftovers’, Cthulu 5700, an immense inflatable Liza Minelli, you can’t get too weird or too bizarre. Afterwards, the region is interdicted for ‘obvious’ reasons.

Like I said, my explanations for the battle aren’t too good. :(


Have fun,
Bill

1 - That reason is that the battle was described and the Kinunirs designed before LBB:5 High Guard was written. After the release of HG2, the Kinunirs are worthless in the role A:1 presented them in.

P.S. - Sorry forgot this bit: the length of the 4th FW. It runs from 1082 to 1084, but that doesn't mean it ran from 001-1082 to 365-1084. It also doesn't mean that the Imperials and Zhodani living in 1082 picked up a newspaper and read "War Begins Today".

Like the dates for the real world 'fall' of Rome and the OTU 'fall' of the Rule of Man, the 1082-1084 dates are those generally agreed upon by historians. They point to some date in the year 1082 and say: "Okay, the number of border clashes have reached a certain level so the war began at this time.". They then point to a certain point in the year 1084 and say: "Okay, the number of border clashes have fallen below this amount so the war ended at this time."

We know the Battle of Two Suns occurred in 1084, we know there was no formal declaration of war by either side, and we also know that an armistice was put in place between each side. I figure the Imperium and Consulate play 'chicken' with each other along their border all the time. Pick a week and there most likely is an incident occurring somewhere. In the case of the 4th FW, things that had been on a slow simmer suddenly came to a fast boil.
 
Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
The Imperium becomes aware of this plan, mostly through espionage efforts among the Vargr.
Yep. This stuff is sounding more and more gameable.

Basically: small groups of adventurers find information critical to thwarting a Nefarious Plot. This is followed by Epic Space Battles.

Better yet...
The englobed Kinunirs can also
(hopefully) deliver Marine strike teams to seize the enemy personnel and records at each cache.
A highly dangerous, but critical mission involving small strike teams. Using Battledress and FGMPs, of course. PC heaven. ;)

This stuff is a campaign just ready to be written up. It's perfect - the PCs get to do stuff that is meaningful in the Big Picture. That's exactly what you want.

You might have to contrive things a little to have the same PCs who did the espionage being in the final assault, but that's manageable if you don't look too hard at the logic. Or you could just ignore it and play the assault with some bunch of random Marines, maybe even using Striker.

You could even run it with each player running multiple PCs. That way you could run the escalating border skirmishes as a background for the espionage game, and have an established party of Marine PCs to handle the final showdown. About 8 episodes would probably do - four for each group of PCs. More if you want a longer game, but that reduces the chance of you actually getting to the climax.
 
Originally posted by alanb:
You might have to contrive things a little to have the same PCs who did the espionage being in the final assault, but that's manageable if you don't look too hard at the logic.
Alan,

Well, to get around that I'd strongly hype the 'fact' that the suddenly 'hot' Cold War erupting in the coreward half of the Regina subsector is a Come As You Are-type of party. Both sides are using assets that are already in place, there's no time to send for reinforcements:

- The Imperium has to strike now before the Consulate moves the caches and any hope of capturing personnel/records for intel purposes is lost.

- The Consulate has to act now before the Imperium seizes the caches and gains intelligence from captured personnel/records.

So the players, who were involved in the original intel job against that Vargr that revealed the Consulate project, get 'volunteered' to help the Imperial Navy because they're one of the few Imperial 'assets' in the region who could do the job.


Have fun,
Bill
 
So the players, who were involved in the original intel job against that Vargr that revealed the Consulate project, get 'volunteered' to help the Imperial Navy because they're one of the few Imperial 'assets' in the region who could do the job.
or the reason could be more personal. one of the vargr has a relative or ship or something on the depot that he wants retrieved, and the players agree to help him.

or finding the depot could be part of the undercover operation. there are two stations - one is the depot, and the other is the front door where all transfers/interactions take place. the players have found someone who knows where the front door is, but have to go there to get the location of the depot itself.
 
Fly,

Both good excuses/reasons.

Another might simply be language proficiency. One or more of the players speaks Zhodani or whatever Vargr dialect is involved and the IN/Marines find themselves in need of more Zhodani/Bow-wow speakers than they have on hand.

Congratulations, you just volunteered. ;)


Have fun,
Bill
 
(I'm in tears at work over the "immense inflatable Liza Minelli" image. That's just godawful.)

Something else a bit off-topic, but important to keep in mind about the Fourth Frontier War. The men and women who fought in that war and achieved its outcome would have become the mothers and fathers of those military personnel who would then fight in the Fifth Frontier War. These are the only two Frontier Wars which have a direct gernerational connection.

What that means is up to the referee, but I think it is significant.
 
Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
(I'm in tears at work over the "immense inflatable Liza Minelli" image. That's just godawful.)
Jeff,

What else would make the Consulate and Imperium work together? ;)

These are the only two Frontier Wars which have a direct gernerational connection.
Uhh... First and Second also? 589 to 604 and 615 to 620?

What that means is up to the referee, but I think it is significant.
It is, it most definitely is. The 4th and 5th Wars should be part of the 'background' for any Classic Era player-character; their parents fought in the first and they fought in the second.


Have fun,
Bill
 
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