Starviking
SOC-13
Any more info on this book?
Question about minor races
- Thread starter Theophilus
- Start date
Any more info on this book?
captainjack
SOC-13
Hmmmm. Seems to me what we need is a good old fashioded judges guild style random minor race generator for those pesky questions like that....
Ow ! Ow! Ow ! please stop hitting me !
Theophilus
SOC-13
I'm not sure if this was for "Black Duke" or another book, I'll have to check thru the HIWG documents.
Well I started to scan some old Challenge stuff into my computer last night, One of them was Contact! Prt'. When I re-read the article I realized I'd missed another Minor race, the article reference's a second Sentient racr from planet 4 that the Hasst'kor eradicated with crude antimatter weapons. Plus I decided to add the Hamaran from the Signal GK fanzine, which raises the total to 134!
Still digging.
There's no official answer to that question. All we can do is speculate. My take is that there are 100 minor non-human races with homeworlds inside the Imperium's borders and another 300 outside. This figure does not include human races, variant races of any kind, or extinct races.
For all we know, the 439 figure could be a misprint or a mistake (After all, the source is viewpoint writing). But taking it at face value, it would include the 100 minor non-human races with homeworlds inside the Imperium, the 15 or 20 minor human races with homeworlds inside the Imperium, variant human races living inside the Imperium, variant non-human races living inside the Imperium, and human and non-human races who have emigrated from their homeworlds outside the Imperium to worlds inside it. It does not include extinct races.
The 170 races living in the Hiver Federation would be a highly disproportionate number out of the 300 figure if it only included races with homeworlds inside the Federation. I'd say that it includes races with homeworlds inside the Federation, variant races, and races that has emigrated to worlds in the Federation.
YMMV.
Hans
Starviking
SOC-13
The Traveller Navigator Program also had at least one Alien Race referenced - The Gonzans of Gonzu in Karse Subsector (Old Expanses K). I quote:
"The research team that was studying the minor alien race on Gonzu was stranded by the Collapse. Their eventual death of old age was the only notice that this low tech race even had of the Collapse. The Gonzans have legends of a human child who still lives among the people."
I think this stuff might be attributable to Geo Gelinas.
Theophilus
SOC-13
I decided to pull out MTJ 1 and see exactly how the reference is worded...
"The Imperium included 429 distinct, intelligent races, but as a majority, humans dominated the political power base."
The Imperium included 429 disticnt, intelligent races. Not Minor Races, Not Major Races, Not Human Minor Races, 429 distinct intelligent races.
Based on the wording, using standard hermeneutical principles I must conclude that the number 429 includes Aslan, Vargr, Hiver, Geonnee, Lurian's, Seurrat, Etc, and so forth. So as Ranke has postulated for the Hive Federation, so to for the Imperium, this number may include all variant minor races, as well as emigrant races.
Still that's leaves quite a few more races to list. An many races located farther away would not have emigrated to the Imperium. Such as the Addaxur.
Also this would seem to preclude extinct races, since it's hard to include the dead dry bones of an ancient civilization in anything. After all, how can an extinct races have political power?, As the majority humans seem to do!
Well, that's throwing a monkey wrench into the works!!!
"The Imperium included 429 distinct, intelligent races, but as a majority, humans dominated the political power base."
The Imperium included 429 disticnt, intelligent races. Not Minor Races, Not Major Races, Not Human Minor Races, 429 distinct intelligent races.
Based on the wording, using standard hermeneutical principles I must conclude that the number 429 includes Aslan, Vargr, Hiver, Geonnee, Lurian's, Seurrat, Etc, and so forth. So as Ranke has postulated for the Hive Federation, so to for the Imperium, this number may include all variant minor races, as well as emigrant races.
Still that's leaves quite a few more races to list. An many races located farther away would not have emigrated to the Imperium. Such as the Addaxur.
Also this would seem to preclude extinct races, since it's hard to include the dead dry bones of an ancient civilization in anything. After all, how can an extinct races have political power?, As the majority humans seem to do!
Well, that's throwing a monkey wrench into the works!!!
I wonder if there are any minors of other majors?
We know from the Coyn changes that the Aslan are not Yaskodray's handiwork... so there shouldn't be any for them...
But if he spread humans far and wide, he probably dropped a few Vargr elsewhere, too... and may have zip-yanked a few K'Kree and Hivers to experiment with...
We know from the Coyn changes that the Aslan are not Yaskodray's handiwork... so there shouldn't be any for them...
But if he spread humans far and wide, he probably dropped a few Vargr elsewhere, too... and may have zip-yanked a few K'Kree and Hivers to experiment with...
Well, him or his kids and grandkids.
I've always imagined that there may have been Vargr on a few other worlds, only the Vargr that first discovered them never realized that they were separate races. Or if they did, the records are lost or were ignored. (Come to think of it, that's a splendid idea for a spacer legend. "The Vargr of <world> is really a separate race; they were planted there by the Ancients!" It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's just the kind of thing Vargr could come up with[*]).
[*] And before someone accuses me of imaginary racism, I've used that specific story for two human populations; both claim to be true minor human races, but both are wrong.
There may or may not be K'Kree and Hiver offshoots, but it's no more (and no less) likely than that there are offshoots of minor races. Or of Aslans, for that matter. All it would require would be an Ancient setting up a project and the subjects of said project surviving down to the present day. There's no reason they would choose one of the races that eventually became major rather than one of the ones that didn't.
In my own TU I have a race of uplifted Terran otters.
Hans
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Theophilus
SOC-13
Actually, there are several vargr minor races listed in Vilani and Vargr. I've got a list from another site for these, but I didn't list them in the minor race list, since they were just varients on the standard Vargr genome.
captainjack
SOC-13
You sir, have obviously never been exposed to politics in Chicago, Florida or Louisiana.
Theophilus,
Sounds good to me and it gives you a hard number inside a hard astrographical limit.
Now you know what to look for and where to look for it.
Not are they just variants, they're also pretty lame designs. One is nothing but the Big Dumb Strong trope who are Honorable Warriors too, another is just a repeat of the Small Intelligent Weak trope, the third, with their mysterious psionic powers, fills the Spooky Magical category.
True, Yaskodray or any of his Kids and Grandkids didn't have a "hand" in the development Aslan. However, Yaskodray did add them to his Coyn sets during one of his walkabouts. That means he noticed them and noticed they were a Major Race, so he could have grabbed some samples for who knows what purposes, just as he could have done with the K'Kree and Hivers.
A Yaskodray-manipulated Aslan minor race or two could be plausible. Not dozens or several mind you, but one or two.
Regards,
Bill
And no one would believe for a moment that the Ancients had a hand in the geneering, since the Ancients disappared much longer ago.
Presumably the Aslan weren't added to the coyns until they'd become a major race. Around -1000 I'd say.
Hans
Wil,
That's very true. An Aslan Minor Race would far younger than the Human and Vargr versions. However, as I'll explain below, that's precisely why they'd be fascinating to the sophontologists and other scientists of the 57th Century.
They won't have speciated because, as you note, the Aslan wouldn't have been worth noticing before that. However, Yaskodray & Co. didn't wait for Humaniti to become a Major Race before sampling humans. The Aslan would not have shown up on the Coyns until -1000 IE or so, but the Aslan could very well have been "interesting" before that
They'd be obviously geneered Aslan, think Geonee or Floriani, and that's why their discovery would be absolutely shattering.
Follow the steps with me. The Aslan are a relatively "young" species and this recently discovered Aslan Minor Race would be younger still. More importantly, the Aslan Minor Race would have been geneered, geneered at a level of sophistication only previously associated with the Ancients. Are you beginning to see the implications?
The Ancients disappeared 300K years ago, but here's a geneered variety of Aslan, geneered in a manner that suggests Ancient intervention, which is only a few tens of thousands of years old. The discovery of such a Minor Race would be as important as the discovery of the six fingered neo-Vargr at Antiquity during that early DGP Four Knights adventure.
The discovery of a geneered Aslan Minor Race suggests that, while the Ancients may have disappeared, they haven't exactly left...
Regards,
Bill
Theophilus
SOC-13
Well, I don't live in Chicago, but I think the same people vote here!!!
Which would run very much counter to other elements in canon... no, I thing we can write them off, because Yaskodray apparently had a major epiphany 300KYA that ended his experiments' active phases entirely....The discovery of a geneered Aslan Minor Race suggests that, while the Ancients may have disappeared, they haven't exactly left...
Regards,
Bill
In short, if such a race existed, it' be something Canon would have told us.
Alien Module 5 has this to say
Thats it verbatim, bar the two sentences of double take that round off the paragraph.
Can you feel the weight of heavy handed mystical front loading? Your Traveller Universe May Vary. Damn right!
Adv 12 establishes a cutoff point for Yaskodray on p32... 250,000. years after creation of the pocket universe, itself defined as "more than 300,000 years" old... (p.31).
This also means that the Aslan either were either: added by somedroyne else pretending to be Yaskodray; added by yaskodray before -48,000; added by yaskodray after he thought he'd ordered the contact with the prime universe cut off; or added by the Droyne in the prime universe themselves.
MT Ref's Companion sets the introductory date, too, BTW.
This also means that the Aslan either were either: added by somedroyne else pretending to be Yaskodray; added by yaskodray before -48,000; added by yaskodray after he thought he'd ordered the contact with the prime universe cut off; or added by the Droyne in the prime universe themselves.
MT Ref's Companion sets the introductory date, too, BTW.
Recovery: On about 20 worlds, however, this did not happen.
Around -75,000, the Droyne on these worlds seem to
have almost simultaneously undergone a “renaissance.” The
key to this recovery was a revival of the ability to caste; this,
in turn, seems to have been based on the introduction of a set
of small gold disks, called coyns, which became the basis for
many aspects of Droyne culture.
(MT RefComp, p.54)
Around -75,000, the Droyne on these worlds seem to
have almost simultaneously undergone a “renaissance.” The
key to this recovery was a revival of the ability to caste; this,
in turn, seems to have been based on the introduction of a set
of small gold disks, called coyns, which became the basis for
many aspects of Droyne culture.
(MT RefComp, p.54)
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Wil,
Why? Did the discovery at Antiquity of the six fingered neo-Vargr or the dolphin with tentacles really change anything? What would the discovery of a primitive planet-bound Aslan Minor Race in Theron or Fulani really change?
There'd be some more speculation about the Ancients and when their theorized demise actually occurred, but no one is going to start beating the bushes looking for Yaskodray's pocket universe. If anything, the Ancients picture is just going to be muddied further when a bit of 30K BCE geneering with alleged Ancient hallmarks pops up despite the "fact" the Ancients seemingly disappeared around 300K BCE.
30K or 300K, the activity is still very far in the past.
No active experiments? The dissemination of the Coyns and the research required for the continual update of the same isn't "active"? Regularly intervening to prevent the collapse of technological civilization on Dryone worlds for hundreds of millennia isn't "active"? Planting the Core Route projector where the Zhos will find it and monitoring their progress isn't "active"? That Vargr android still monitoring the Vargr race across the Extents isn't "active"?
Just what has Yaskodray been doing for 300K years? Just where has he been going during his walkabouts? And just why has he been taking those walkabouts?
It may simply be something canon hasn't told us about yet.
It changes nothing on the meta-game side. The Final War still happened, Yaskodray is still mostly "chillaxing" in his pocket universe, no new Major Race appears, no new interstellar power is created, nothing is overwritten, nothing gets broken, nothing is lost.
All we get are a few million Minor Race Aslan on a distant planet whose obvious geneering may bear Ancient hallmarks and all that means is that the paltry in-game knowledge of the Ancients gets muddied a bit. Scientists across Charted Space have one more ill-fitting piece in their scanty Ancients jigsaw puzzle and that piece isn't going to lead anyone anywhere.
Regards,
Bill
What you quote is viewpoint writing. It describes the mystery as seen by contemporary Imperial scientists in-universe. If those scientists have even heard about Grandpop, it's as an obscure Droyne legend.
Hans
