Polities of the Long Night

[GypsyComet]

T4 has ships already in Corridor during Cleon I's reign, mentioned in Missions of State. I was looking at that book today because I remembered it had an oddball one. The Vrast are Neanderthals that were placed on worlds by the Ancients, located somewhere in Diaspora Sector (it's south of Massilia in what's then Enigma Sector). They're TL-11 and Jump-capable when encountered during Cleon I's reign.

Much of T4 is a bit squirrelly when it comes to Canon. This was apparently on purpose, according to the launch seminar at Gencon, as they were trying to loosen the gatekeeping grip of so much *stuff* already published over 20 years. Even with that, some of the adventures and other writing is a bit more out there than we were accustomed to at the time. Exhibit A would be the decidedly odd collection of local alien sophonts in T4, and Exhibit B some of the adventures with eyebrow raising hardware, critters, etc. One of the adventures, written by Jim Ward, is easily more comfortable in a Metamorphosis Alpha setting than in Traveller.

Keep a salt shaker handy when reading T4 closely.

That said, the settlement year for Mora has been established for a long time, I think, with Rhylanor and Regina no more than 25 years later. Fleets in Corridor and high risk expeditions through Deneb and into the Marches under Cleon I is to be expected.

Relevant to the main topic of the thread, the Lancians are a late-era Long Night Jump-capable polity.

Been a while since I've read their founding article in Signal GK (the fanzine), but I think the elements that make up the Lancian cultural region go back much further, and they are not big Vilani fans.

 

[whulorigan]

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.

Note that the Old Earth Union formed from the earlier (and larger/much looser) Terran Mercantile Community.

 

[whulorigan]

JTAS 18, p13:

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.

The ancestral origin of the Sword Worlders was an Old Earth Union warship that was on the wrong side of an internal conflict that had lost a battle . . . and the war. The commander and crew decided to get out of the region altogether and fled OEU space as fugitives to Spinward to find their own place and destiny far enough away that they would remain unmolested by the victors, encountering resistance first by other Terran-affiliated cultures and polities and then by early Aslan territorialists, they eventually discovered the J-5 Route and slowly (via multiple jumps) made their way into unclaimed space in the Transrift, eventually ending up in the Sword Worlds Cluster.

 

[mike wightman]

The Long Night is an Imperial designation, there was no Long Night for the Terrans, the Vargr, the Hivers etc.

It refers to the collapse of interstellar government post Imperial crisis. This crisis had practically no effect of the aforementioned polities.

 

[Black Vulmea]

Just a "There And Back Again" voyage would take 7.4 YEARS to complete (assuming nothing went wrong along the way, of course).

So, roughly two terms of service.

Frames of reference matter.

 

[jec10]

T4 has ships already in Corridor during Cleon I's reign, mentioned in Missions of State.

Can you give a page reference for that? I can't find it in a quick look through Missions of State (which, anyway, is written by a collection of authors, and is a mixture of adventures rather than a setting book).

T4/M0 says (page 3) that Cleon insisted that the first exploration of the Third Imperium was to Spinward "towards, and possibly beyond, the Great Rift".

Sylean expansion seems to have been rapid along the 'near shore' of the Great Rift - Gushemege, Verge, llelish and Zarushagar are listed.

The Vilani were more conservative according to M0, and only expanded slowly towards Deneb. They weren't keen to back the expansionist plans of Cleon, apparently (p.40) and rivalries between the Vilani bureaux and Sylean megacorps were strong.

"By Year 20, the Imperium seems destined to encompass about half of Dagudashaag, Ilelish, Massilia, Fornast and Antares, as well as a wide corridor to Vland though Lishun."

M0 says that towards Dawn the Aslan have been expanding "around the edge of an offshoot of the Great Rift, into Zarushagar and Massillia
sectors, with some Aslan outposts (mostly trade outposts) less than fifty parsecs from Core". (p.70)

 

[TheDark]

Much of T4 is a bit squirrelly when it comes to Canon. This was apparently on purpose, according to the launch seminar at Gencon, as they were trying to loosen the gatekeeping grip of so much *stuff* already published over 20 years. Even with that, some of the adventures and other writing is a bit more out there than we were accustomed to at the time. Exhibit A would be the decidedly odd collection of local alien sophonts in T4, and Exhibit B some of the adventures with eyebrow raising hardware, critters, etc. One of the adventures, written by Jim Ward, is easily more comfortable in a Metamorphosis Alpha setting than in Traveller.

Keep a salt shaker handy when reading T4 closely.

I'm probably a bit weird, but I find it fun to try to reconcile some of T4's weirdness with later (chronologically) settings. I haven't gotten to it yet, but for the Vrast in particular I figure they'd be on an Amber or Red Zone world in Diaspora, since the Psionic Suppressions would have led to a freakout about their inherent abilities. Likewise, the Ancient transit system from Gateway!/Long Way Home could be the source of higher-order Jump drives after lots (and lots and lots) of research.

T4 can also be hard to read closely since it's often vague regarding where adventures are set (probably in that "less gatekeeping" mindset). Quite a few only get what sector they're set in and maybe some planetary characteristics that matter to the adventure, which is both a boon since they can be shifted around at need and a problem since it means it's harder to get consensus on where they occur.

What I find funnier is that occasionally authors slip up with regard to what's known in-setting. The core books establish pretty strongly that the early TI has basically no information on Hivers or K'kree, but Anomalies has an NPC refer to a cliff as looking like a K'kree's butt.

Can you give a page reference for that? I can't find it in a quick look through Missions of State (which, anyway, is written by a collection of authors, and is a mixture of adventures rather than a setting book).

Pg. 17, left column, second paragraph: "The conquest of more advanced planets has already spread from Core through the Corridor Sector, and Massilia is almost completely absorbed."

 

[TheDark]

Looking for a place for the Vrast just to see if there is anything that doesn't wildly violate canon, the best Red Zone option might be Shelaghyote/Kushga (Diaspora 1620), with the Vrast being the "Minor Human Race" called Shela in the MegaTraveller era (Challenge #66 has an adventure there when Droyne appear unexpectedly). It has some problems, since the Shela were contacted by the First Imperium and the Red Zone is because of Ancient ruins discovered in 217. It's probably the best available Red Zone, but it's still not an option that makes me happy.

The other option, I think, would be an Amber Zone with a bad starport (E, maybe D), and there are a few options where I'm not aware of any disqualifying features (i.e. not vacuum worlds or hellworlds, not listed as homeworlds for other sophonts, etc):

Shareduu/Khavle (Diaspora 2609)
Erobi/Kushga (Diaspora 1612)
Khuugar/Shadigi (Diaspora 0518)
Kyzyl/Shadigi (Diaspora 0220)
Prosser/Shumisdi (Diaspora 1536)
Genevens/Madoc (Diaspora 2440)

The best option might be Kyzyl and its also-Amber neighbor Tomsk (Diaspora 0120), although Tomsk has a Class C starport. The only other neighbor to those two is their mutual neighbor Cod, which the wiki describes as a mostly-uncontrolled world of nomad bands. Kyzyl and Tomsk are just barely in the northern half of Diaspora, reasonably close to expeditions coming down from Massilia, and they're a rare case of neighboring Zone worlds that are both inhabitable without technological assistance. From those three worlds, the only other worlds within J2 distance are Yidii (Class E), Skebo (Class E), and Bobonong (Class A mostly inhabited by Evantha), which seems like enough of a backwater for the Vrast to be tucked away.

I now eagerly await someone pointing out a source that makes this impossible.