Polities of the Long Night

[TheDark]

What do we know in officially published sources about the political groupings that existed during the Long Night? The ones that I can think of:

Union of Sufren - from Astrogator's Guide to Diaspora (MegaTraveller) - four worlds (Sufren, Haze, Gamov, Troy) that maintained the only "interstellar culture" during the Long Night. Integration into the TI is implied to have been peaceful, and the whole sector was incorporated into the TI by 330.

Interstellar Confederacy - from Milieu 0 (T4) - 32 systems in the Bunkeria and Cemplas subsectors of Core. Cleon convinced some systems to begin leaving the Confederacy in -17 and it had pretty much collapsed from apathy by -1. By 5 all of its systems were part of the TI.

Chanestin Kingdom - Mileu 0 - 25 worlds in contact with the Sylean Federation from -107. At war with Sylea off-and-on until -44, then a brief peace until Cleon's expansionism was seen as a threat in -25. Defeated in 2.

Santry and Cordova - Milieu 0 - a pair of multistellar powers, with Cordova closer to Sylea than Santry. They were originally one nation, splitting in -75 and fighting for a dozen years, ending in an armistice but not a peace treaty. Sylea reached Cordovian territory in -16. Santry tried to ally to resist Sylea, Cordova held off to try to gain new technologies from Sylea. In -7 Santry attacked, and in 0 Sylea began a conquest of both groups.

League of Antares - Milieu 0 - noted as an "autonomous region" that appears opposed to integration with the TI. Imperial Encyclopedia says it was forcibly incorporated into the TI in 89.

Sylean Federation - Milieu 0 - the polity that would become the TI. Has 21 member worlds in -112. The survey of Core in M0 lists 19 members. Presumably there are also some members in other sectors, particularly given the VC's membership in the Federation.

Vilani Confederation - Milieu 0 - of unknown size, agreed to join Sylean Federation in -30 in return for a promise not to interfere with Vilani culture.


The Empire of Seven Stars from Pocket Empires is of interest but technically doesn't count because that book states its examples are for illustrative purposes only and not intended to depict the actual history of the systems involved.

So, what have I missed (and what sources are they in)?

 

[McPerth]

You forgot the Old Earth Union, the easter Concord and the Dingir League, all from the Solomani and Aslan MT book (not sure if they also appeared in CT, and I cannot dig for the books right now)...

 

[TheDark]

You forgot the Old Earth Union, the easter Concord and the Dingir League, all from the Solomani and Aslan MT book (not sure if they also appeared in CT, and I cannot dig for the books right now)...

Thank you, I'll pull that off the shelf and take a look. Hilariously, the Traveller Wiki doesn't list that as a source for two of the three:

Old Earth Union - MT Solomani & Aslan, CT Solomani, Traveller Chronicle 6
Easter Concord - CT Solomani
Dingir League - GT Rim of Fire, MgT Solomani Rim

Just more justification for why I ask questions here rather than try to rely on the wiki.

 

[jec10]

Vilani and Vargr (pp61-62) mentions the Empire of Gashikan and the Second Empire of Gashikan which "dominated" Gashikan and Mendan sectors during the Long Night and battled against the Vargr.

 

[McPerth]

And, as 3I had to fight it, it's to assume the Julian Protectorate was founded while the Long Night.

ITTR there's a challenge that eplains its history... I'll dig for it ASAP...

 

[TamsinP]

"The Third Imperium" from Mongoose has a a fairly extensive history section which covers most of the polities still extant at the end of the Long Night and first century or so of the 3I.
I don't recall offhand how much detail is given for the bulk of the Long Night.

 

[TheDark]

And, as 3I had to fight it, it's to assume the Julian Protectorate was founded while the Long Night.

ITTR there's a challenge that eplains its history... I'll dig for it ASAP...

Challenge #49. At the time of the Julian War, Mendan Sector was split into "dozens" of independent confederations, which rallied under the banner of the Asimikigir Confederation and Menderes Corporation during the Julian War and formalized that relationship as the Julian Protectorate in 191, at roughly the same time that the League of Antares became a thing again.

It's unclear in that article how long the Second Gashikan Empire lasted. The last date where it's mentioned in Challenge #49 is -1000, at the end of the Vargr Race Wars.

 

[TheDark]

The encyclopedia article for Old Earth Union in The Traveller Chronicle 6 is pretty good (and I got lucky - that and issue 9 are the only two I have). The OEU as described in its entry existed from -1110 to 588 and consisted of Terra, Barnard, Calgary, Dismal, Ember, Fenris, Forlorn, Hades, Heiphaistos, Inferno, Junction, Loki, Midway, Peraspera, Prometheus, Sirius, and Ys. It had fleet bases at Aggida (balkanized) and Markhashi and Meshan (both abandoned). A trade war with the Dingir League between -1106 and -1098 is mentioned, but there's not an entry for the League in that issue.

The only other group relevant to the Long Night mentioned in issue 6 is the Celestial League, a precursor to the Union of Harmony settled by Solomani of Chinese ancestry along the spinward side of Reavers' Deep. They maintained Jump through the Long Night and occasionally spawned Reaver fleets. The League disintegrated after the Peace of Ftahalr (380) removed external pressures from the Aslan and fought amongst themselves until reconstitution as the Union in 856.

 

[TheDark]

From looking through the CT Alien books, a lot of the major polities are fairly static (which may have been mildly retconned later, I'm just going through source-by-source):

The Zhodani Consulate is pretty much at its current size by -1000 and makes first contact with the TI in 50.

The Two Thousand Worlds of the K'kree are implied to have been mostly stagnant since the Hiver War of -2029 to -2013.

The Hivers also seem to have maintained Jump since they acquired it in -4698. The last pre-Imperial historical event mentioned in their book seems to be the same war with the K'kree.

The Aslan acquired Jump around -1999, a little less than a century after the Hierate formed, and expanded from then until the Peace of Ftahalr.

Nobody's really sure about the Droyne since they tend to get overlooked by the TI, and there were Vargr states that had Jump, but nobody really remembers what they were because (like most Vargr states) they existed for roughly five minutes before disintegrating into factions.

A much looser Darrian Group exists as a trade alliance after Mire's regaining TL-10 in -275, but it's not a single interstellar government like the modern Darrian Confederation. The Darrians were still the Darrian Group when they encountered the TI in 148. It's unclear (at least from this book) exactly when the transition to the Confederation occurred.

Solomani states that the Easter Concord was most worlds within 10 parsecs of Easter and the Dingir League was all worlds within 5 parsecs of Dingir. The Easter Concord was absorbed into the TI in 426.

 

[Spinward Flow]

JTAS 18, p13:

HISTORY
The Inhabitants of the Sword Worlds are descended from Solomani exiles which arrived in the subsector ea. -400.The first settlement In the region was on Gram in - 399. By - 200 the settlement of the area was largely complete, and the first interstellar government in the region, the Sacnoth Dominate, was formed In -186. Consisting of the twenty worlds settled up to that point, the Domlnate lasted until -102, when rebellion split the region into several smaller governmental bodies.

During the ensuing centuries, various Sword World governments rose and fell, sometimes coalescing all the worlds under a single world's domination, sometimes splltering into several small states. Contact with Imperial traders in 73 brought increased trade and had a stabilizing Influence on the region, but the stability was short-lived. During this period, lmperial alllances with the Darrians provoked Sword Worlds suspicion and paranoia, leading to the participation of the Sword Worlds in the Outworld Coalition, and to the long standing opposition to the Imperium which prevalls to the present time.

In other words, the Solomani were able to launch a wave of exiles ... DURING the Long Night ... who migrated to the Spinward Marches 400+ years before Emperor Cleon established the Third Imperium.

Furthermore, by year 73 ... the newly established Third Imperium trade routes had reached all the way to the Sword Worlds and Darrian subsectors in the Spinward Marches ... multiple SECTORS distant from the Core sector. Considering the distance from the Sylean Federation to the Spinward Marches, that's an almost INSANE rate of expansion ... especially after the "stagnation" of the Long Night!

In year 73, the reigning emperor was Artemsus.

 

[TheDark]

This is getting a bit far afield from discussing Long Night polities (and might be worth a separate thread if there's more to discuss about the exploration/settlement of the Spinward Marches), but the contact in 73 probably needs to be viewed as free traders, to reconcile/remain consistent with what's stated in the later Alien Module 8 Darrians:

Scouts of the Third Imperium pushing its explored borders farther and farther out, eventually reached the Spinward Marches, and in 148 contacted the Sword Worlds and, immediately afterward, the Darrian Group...Before 148 the Marches had just a few small settlements. After the arrival of the Imperials, the development of the Marches began in earnest.

This seems to restrict government-to-government contact to 148, but leaves open the possibility of unofficial contacts in the earlier period.

Since the Vilani Confederation, centered on Vland, had joined the Syleans in -30, the Marches weren't quite as far away from the early TI as they are from Core. On the flip side, Library Data N-Z rushes the timeline a little more since it has the first Imperial settlement in the Marches being Mora in 60, likely following what would become the Spinward Main and skipping over Dojodo because that system has no gas giants and its mainworld's water is almost entirely frozen.

Darrians also a little more explicit that the "largely complete" settlement of the Sword Worlds by -200 was most of the worlds within 4 parsecs of Gram. That would exclude Narsil and the Metal Worlds. It may imply some of the Sword Worlds weren't settled yet, or could be phrased as "most" because Margesi and Saurus are within 4 parsecs but aren't part of the Sword Worlds.

The last sentence of the JTAS quote is probably stretching "during this period" a bit. According to Darrians, the alliance with the Imperium didn't happen until the invasion of the Entropic Worlds by the Sword Worlds in 593. Until then, the Darrians had been steadfastly neutral in dealing with other polities, but had been a more reliable trade partner for the TI than the politically unstable Sword Worlds. While the timeline of events doesn't line up entirely, it still works as a "this is how each side saw it" set of explanations, it's just half a millennium later than the events of the previous sentence, which seems a bit long to be "during this period."

Honestly, the timeline would probably be a little cleaner without Darrians' details about what happened when, but it's mostly possible to reconcile the different sources.