Nobles in T5

[Dagrill]

In Imperiallines 7 it states the majority of the Nobles in the Imperium are non human and cites Vargr, Aslan, Bwaps and Suerrat as approaching 5% each.

I am puzzled as to how this is arrived at? I've always assumed that the Nobles were mainly human (of one group or another) and that a human Governor/Noble was routinely installed on most planets.

Secondly who are the Suerrat and where do they live?

Kind Regards

David

 

[Hemdian]

Secondly who are the Suerrat and where do they live?

According to the Traveller Wiki:

The Suerrat are a minor human race transplanted to Ilelish (Ilelish 2907) by the Ancients. The Suerrat claim to be a Major Race as they independently developed interstellar travel. However this was based on generation ships, not jump technology, so the claim is not generally accepted by other races.​

 

[rancke]

In Imperiallines 7 it states the majority of the Nobles in the Imperium are non human and cites Vargr, Aslan, Bwaps and Suerrat as approaching 5% each.

Sounds like something the author didn't think through.

Incidentally, Suerrat are humans, so there's 5% moved from the non-human to the human column.

If you want any race to contribute 5% of the Imperial nobles, you'd either have to posit that they constitute a disproportionately large number of the nobility, which seems highly implausible to me (I would think it far more likely that they were underrepresented), or you'll have to have them be the entire population of 15 subsectors or half the population of 30 subsectors or some equivalent distribution.


Hans

 

[rancke]

I am puzzled as to how this is arrived at? I've always assumed that the Nobles were mainly human (of one group or another) and that a human Governor/Noble was routinely installed on most planets.

Not unless T5 changes the Imperium even more than I had thought. The Imperium doesn't install any government on member worlds. That would be completely against ts fundamental principle of its members having internal autonomy. Imperial high nobles and legates are installed to manage Imperial affairs involving the member worlds, but not internal affairs. In theory, anyway; practice may be different on some worlds, with the autonomous government listening very carefully to the "advice" it gets from the noble or legate.

The Imperium does violate its own principles to the extend of elevating some planetary rulers to the Imperial nobility (e.g. Delphine of Mora). But that's making an existing ruler selected by internal processes a noble, not installing a noble as a ruler.

I'm not sure how the interaction between a noble with a fief on a world and that world's government is envisaged. Hopefully the second half of the essay will deal with that comprehensively.


Hans

 

[Reban]

In Imperiallines 7 it states the majority of the Nobles in the Imperium are non human and cites Vargr, Aslan, Bwaps and Suerrat as approaching 5% each.

David

It says roughly half of the nobility of the Imperium is made up of non-human and minor humans (that are far from the baseline human).

It says no one race is greater than 5% but the Vargr, Aslan, Bwaps and Suerrat often approach 5% each and the Vargr have exceeded it at times.

It says the result of this is that no single race has a majority.


In fairness its not a very clear article on a less than clear subject. Hopefully Part 2 puts everything down in table or chart form.

 

[rancke]

It says roughly half of the nobility of the Imperium is made up of non-human and minor humans (that are far from the baseline human).

Ah, that's different. It still sounds a bit on the high side, but better. I think I would have halved that number.

It says no one race is greater than 5% but the Vargr, Aslan, Bwaps and Suerrat often approach 5% each and the Vargr have exceeded it at times.

I think this overlooks the Imperial bias towards pure-bred Solomani and Vilani and the home court advantage the Syleans would have.

Though it occurs to me that if you include knights in the numbers, a lot of the bias is rendered inoperative.

I think there would be a glass ceiling with honor barons and marquesses below it and all high nobles above it. Below it, Imperial nobles would be closer to the actual racial distribution; above it only a few rare exceptions are not Imperial¹, Solomani, Vilani or Syleans.

¹ The "Imperial race" is a highly unscientific appelation that applies to the vast number of indeterminate (but thouroughly mixed-ancestry) humans in the Imperium. [GT: Humaniti, p. 6]​

Hans

 

[Reban]

Hans I think also from my reading of the article that this refers to all nobility not just the Landed Nobility that has a vote in the Moot.

I'm not sure how the interaction between a noble with a fief on a world and that world's government is envisaged. Hopefully the second half of the essay will deal with that comprehensively.

What it does say is that the Landed Knight that every Imperial world gets represents the Imperium to that world. How he does that varies greatly, but one role it mentions is that the Knight is often the "Port Warden" the director of the starport. Knights are usually natives of their world. So I'm guessing there are a lot of non-humans in the knightly rank and not so many in the higher ranks which would also re-balance things in favour of, as you put it, the Imperial race.

The Barons and higher nobles are supposed to represent the interest(s) of their world(s) to the Imperium.

 

[rancke]

The Barons and higher nobles are supposed to represent the interest(s) of their world(s) to the Imperium.

<sigh> Which, since high nobles are not answerable to the government of their world, would tend to not work very well, if at all. I hope Part 2 will explain how the high noble and the government's actual emmisary (whatever his title) work with each other if they have different agendas for their world.

I much prefer the old arrangement where the high noble was the Imperium's 'ombudsman' for his world. Ah, well, fortunately I can just ignore the changes.


Hans

 

[Dagrill]

Hans I think also from my reading of the article that this refers to all nobility not just the Landed Nobility that has a vote in the Moot.

Thanks, I assumed it meant the Moot Nobility, but if it refers to ALL nobility it makes more sense, didn't realise there was more to come either.

Thank you

David

 

[whulorigan]

This is a response to a post made in the "Can ships change their real space vector in Jump?" Thread (Posts #100 & #101):

Thanks for providing this nice spreadsheet. But I do have a question. Is this just a list of ALL the members of the forum staking out their claims to being Nobles in "their systems" or is this derived from the canon?

The ones corresponding to forum members were assigned (and I don't know the process) as rewards for contributing to a T5 kickstarter and/or beta testing that game years ago, I think. Some of these may have been linked to a "land grab" on the ancient Traveller Mailing List (pick a planet or few, roll it up, write it up in detail, and it was "yours"...) but not all.

I ended up with the crew of a Free Trader (character cards at about credit card size, one name personalized) from a later one.

@whulorigan -- among others -- should have a more complete answer.

Also, you seem to have replied into the wrong thread somehow... I think.

To begin with, the link in my signature : " Link: Traveller5 Noble Patents Registry " is to a spreadsheet that was initially created by a Moot-member on this forum with username "Bloo", so I do not want to take credit for his initial arduous work in doing the initial compiling. I have since reformatted some of the pages and expanded the cover pages, as well as maintained and updated the list with additional data as it became available.

All of the members listed in the spreadsheet are people who were assigned Noble Patents by Marc Miller in the form of Noble Patent Cards associated with the T5 Project. Some of them went to T5 kickstarter-backers and beta-testers, some were given out as rewards to Moot-members on this forum commensurate with their paid Moot-nobility level in supporting the Board, and some were given out as bonus swag to people who bought products off the FFE website as long as the supply of T5 Cards lasted. There are a few linked to the "land grab" on the ancient Traveller Mailing List (such as Don McKinney's).

Some of the cards are actually issued in a person's (or character's) actual name, others are issued generically. Some are issued with an order or style (i.e. "of the Third Imperium" or "of the Solomani Rim", others are not so styled, and just show "<NOBLE TITLE> of <WORLD NAME>". Marc Miller has basically said that they are for us to use however we want, and are therefore for fun and are non-canonical (and several examples in the list would clearly overwrite canon unless they represent different eras).

Note also that under T5 there are different general classes of Imperial Nobles:

1. Honor Nobles - These are nobles who have been granted a title as a reward for and/or recognition of significant service to the Imperium by the Emperor;
2. Ceremonial Nobles - These are nobles who have been granted a title as a minimum required standing and perquisite to holding an Imperial office or position as a high-level functionary or bureaucrat in the Imperial government administration;
3. Landed (& High Landed) Nobles - These are the nobles who are the official Imperial representatives to a world (in the case of Landed Knights), and the official Imperial representatives of a world at the interstellar level and before the Imperial Moot (in the case of Landed Baronets and higher). Only Landed Nobles may be styled "<NOBLE TITLE> of <WORLD NAME>".

In T5 World write-ups (and on the Traveller Map Noble Extensions), note that only the Landed Nobles for a world are listed in the Noble extension. Any number of Ceremonial or Honor Nobles (or none at all) may reside on a world (and this does not necessarily include any local/planetary nobility of the world government's political/social-structure itself).

While individuals can do whatever they want with their cards/patents (obviously), the general understanding that seems to have arisen on the public forum is that cards styled "<NOBLE TITLE> of <WORLD NAME>" represent Landed Nobles, whereas cards styled in any other way (e.g. "<NOBLE TITLE> of the Third Imperium", "<NOBLE TITLE> of the Spinward Marches", "<NOBLE TITLE>" with a character name, but no other specification", etc.) represent Honor and/or Ceremonial titles.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Nobles in T5 completely change the Imperium's political structure
1) Even Gentlemen (SOC:A) have land grants. There needs to be a lot more land to make that work well
2) Imperial rank is hereditary. But the character generation system has an incremental system of position increment [OK not a T5 issue per-se]
3) The political ranks originally described were Knight (11), Planetary Ruler(12-13), Cluster Ruler (14), Subsector(ish) Ruler(15), Sector Ruler (more), Domain Ruler(more, but added later), Emperor(much more). These had prescribed (but ill-defined) responsibilities.
3a) Knights seem to have various sub-ranks (with an ill defined relationship to SOC)
4) There was no clarity on how the SOC of heirs worked. Technically they would be gentle-persons (SOC:10) unless they had a proper title in their own right - but the heir to a duchy would be superior to the heir to a county which suggests office and SOC aren't really prescriptive. Which is contrary to the letter of the rules.
5) T5 (OK earlier really) has replaced this with Knight, Baronet, Baron, Marquis, Viscount, Count, Subsector Duke, Sector Duke, etc. All are tied to estates (the Wiki is effectively invalidated by the T5 plethora of estates).

Curiously, T5's notional setting in 1900 has pretty much blown the whole Nobility thing up completely anyway.

Additionally, the history of the Imperium in the published sources no longer ties to the listed nobles in the Travellermap as the two have evolved separately.

So, unless you enjoy driving yourself mad, make your own rules to match the imperium as you see it!

 

[bookwyrm]

@whulorigan , I took a look at that link, and it's pretty cool!

I was wondering if anyone has used any players on the list as an NPC in their Campaign/Adventure. You know, an unexpected meeting, a Patron, the origin of Lots of Red Tape, the puller of strings from the shadows, local background color, having to choose between two feuding player nobles, stuff like that.

It just seems like a really good resource to me, so it's also been bookmarked. I tend to stay away from the Noble side of things as it looks kind of complicated (in so many ways) but now I kind of want to dip my toe into the Politically Noble side of Traveller (using Player Noble NPC's makes it kind of fun, especially as the more posts they have in CotI, the more interesting the Noble can be, at least from my point of view).

 

[whulorigan]

@whulorigan , I took a look at that link, and it's pretty cool!

I was wondering if anyone has used any players on the list as an NPC in their Campaign/Adventure. You know, an unexpected meeting, a Patron, the origin of Lots of Red Tape, the puller of strings from the shadows, local background color, having to choose between two feuding player nobles, stuff like that.

It just seems like a really good resource to me, so it's also been bookmarked. I tend to stay away from the Noble side of things as it looks kind of complicated (in so many ways) but now I kind of want to dip my toe into the Politically Noble side of Traveller (using Player Noble NPC's makes it kind of fun, especially as the more posts they have in CotI, the more interesting the Noble can be, at least from my point of view).

I do not know specifically of anyone who has (other than possibly the owners of the characters in question in their own campaigns, of course), but a few people had those characters put up on the Traveller-Wiki and fleshed out as non-canonical PCs ^* . You can always do a search by last name of the character on the wiki and see.

^* Sometimes by other people - I discovered that someone had put my PC's name up on the wiki based on the name and patents I had listed underneath my CotI signature at the time, so rather than take it down, I decided to correct and flesh out his full CharGen history and Travellog under the entry (but I made sure to clearly note it in the header in bold that it was a Non-Canon PC). If you want to see it, click on Lord Rhovanion's name under my signature, and then click on his name again on the subsequent "about" page - that will take you to the wiki entry . (BTW, this is also what led to me getting initially involved with working on more general entry write-ups and editing on the wiki, oddly enough). ​

If you are going to do anything that is likely to be published or go beyond your gaming table, however, I would definitely seek the permission of the owner of the character/noble before you use him in anything, and/or find out if there is a character-concept for him already fleshed out, simply as a courtesy (since the character in question is technically somebody else's intellectual property). I know I would not be happy if Lord Rhovanion all of a sudden popped up in a publication (and thus I would have lost copyright over my own character), especially if he were portrayed in a completely out-of-character fashion.

 

[Krikkitone]

<sigh> Which, since high nobles are not answerable to the government of their world, would tend to not work very well, if at all. I hope Part 2 will explain how the high noble and the government's actual emmisary (whatever his title) work with each other if they have different agendas for their world.

I much prefer the old arrangement where the high noble was the Imperium's 'ombudsman' for his world. Ah, well, fortunately I can just ignore the changes.


Hans

High nobles don’t represent the government (or citizens) of their world. They represent their land holdings on their world. Which generally means that they want their world prosperous.

 

[bookwyrm]

Gaming table is good enough for me, but yes, we should keep in mind getting permission from the Characters owners for anyone who wants to publish.

 

[Grav_Moped]

High nobles don’t represent the government (or citizens) of their world. They represent their land holdings on their world. Which generally means that they want their world prosperous.

I assume (at least IMTU) that they represent their world to the Imperium (indirectly for knights) -- that is, they're the official point of contact. They aren't officials of that government, though. In this role, they're sort of like UN Representatives, but hereditary and imposed from above.

 

[whulorigan]

I assume (at least IMTU) that they represent their world to the Imperium (indirectly for knights) -- that is, they're the official point of contact. They aren't officials of that government, though. In this role, they're sort of like UN Representatives, but hereditary and imposed from above.

In T5, Marc (or at least Imperiallines, which is licensed by Marc under FFE and T5) has imagined that it is Imperial Landed Kinights who are the ambassadors of the Imperium to the worlds of the Imperium (and hence why ALL worlds have an assigned Landed Knight) and who speak on behalf of the Imperium to the world government (and people, when appropriate) and advise. It is the higher Landed Nobility who are assigned to specific worlds for specific Imperial interests (usually economic or strategic), and which are therefore only assigned to worlds which the Imperium deems sufficiently important to warrant it. Those Landed Nobles are the local overseers and administrators of Imperial-level concerns on the world and potentially in the region, and represent those interests before the Imperium in both local regional politics in Sector Moots and before the Imperium as a whole in the Imperial Moot.

In neither case above, however, is the Landed Noble in question the local Planetary Governor or an Official that rules the world locally, unles it is purely by coincidence or other local "politicking" (i.e. the "Sovereign of Obliviax Prime" has also managed to secure for herself the Imperial Landed Barony of Obliviax Prime as well, and will pass both titles (independently) down to her heirs).

 

[Baroun Tardis]

IMTU...

The Imperial Nobles are the liason between the local government and the Imperium. They're the descendants of the guy Cleon I put in as the business liason to bring more growth and money into the Imperium, and the practice of their KPI being 'what good have you done for the Imperium?' is still in place

The Noble is also responsible for the safety of the system, especially out on the edges of the Imperium. They're expected to be the ones pushing for the appropriate amount of planetary navy, subsector navy and Imperial Navy presence, and trying to work out what to do when the resources aren't available. As part of that, the Noble's also the one responsible for nuclear weapons in the system - they sign for them being loaded onto local SDB's, and are the ones who sign off on them being used.

The Noble's on the hook for the 'good war' events described in Mercenary. He's the one who makes the call on when things are permissable and when they're getting out of hand and the Marines need to come stomp out the fire. Similarly, he's the one who makes the call on when balkanized worlds are getting out of control and the planet is about to stop bringing growth and money into the Imperium, and thus the Marines need to come spank some sense into the local governments.

The Noble is under nobless oblige - they're supposed to make the Imperium look good during natural disaters and plagues and such by stepping up to the plate and helping out. If the local government is pro-Imperium, he should work through them and make them more pro-Imperium. If the local government isn't helpful to the Imperium, he should, if possible, work around them and make the populace more pro-Imperium so that they're motivated to change the government. The Noble may eventually get reinbursed for the cost of what he did, but probably not: it's part of the job.

The Noble is expected to make the Imperium look good - no behavior that the locals are going to find horridly offensive and thus associate with the Imperium. No scandals. Any dirt you splash around is indirectly splashing on the Emperor and that is just not cricket.

The Noble's Fief is extraterritorial. It's Imperial Land, like a starport, and is under the Noble's control. All of the above about scandals and behavior apply. The Noble is expected to make their fief the place that everybody else on the planet really wants to live if only they could move there. It's a showcase of how incredibly awesome it is to be an Imperial Citizen rather than just a Subject, and why those who live in the unenlightened parts of the planet should either enlist or nudge their local government to be more compliant with whatever the Imperium wants to do. I mean it's obvious that Baron So-and-So must know what they're doing since the people on his fief are so happy, and thus the Imperial Way is better than the local Grand Poobah's Plan.

Unlanded Nobles are supposed to do the same thing, but on a personal scale. A Marine knighted for valor is supposed to step up when the pirates appear. The Professor knighted for their breaktrough in biotech is supposed to show up and donate their time and skill at the hospital when the plague hits. The Merchant Prince turns the power of their fleet to bringing in food to stop the famine. They're the "one sophont immediate action team" that gets there to help before word of the problem arrives at the subsector capital, and thus shows the people that the Imperium has its act together.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

High nobles don’t represent the government (or citizens) of their world. They represent their land holdings on their world. Which generally means that they want their world prosperous.

Maybe. The local major land owner moved his home (a few centuries ago) by a few hundred metres because in doing so he changed from being one of many nobles in a district to becoming the dominant one in its neighbouring district...Prosperity be d****d: Independence and Power was what mattered!

 

[Condottiere]