Strange New Worlds

[OIT]

I'll take a shot...

OK, here's my stab at New Konigsberg:

New Konigsberg is a small, airless captured planet in a highly elliptical orbit around a massive red giant star. The intense solar bombardment of countless passes near the system's primary has resulted in New Konigsberg's crust having a higher than normal concentration of He3 and Deuterium. When New Konigsberg was settled, two thousand years ago during the long night, both elements were in high demand for fusion reactors. Additonally, when New Konigsberg was settled the planet was near the farthest point on its' elliptical orbit. Even so, it was still within the star's 100d limit, but only by a week or so at 1G.

As the sector pulled itself out of the Long Night, fusion technology improved to the point where the performance deficiency of using simple hydrogen was overcome. Therefore, New Konigsberg's primary export, and the colony's raison d'etre, became less and less valuable to export. In addition, the planet was beginning its' long fall back to the star. As the distance to the 100d limit increased, the starships came less and less often. Eventually they stopped coming at all. As children on New Konigsberg learn in school, "We didn't turn our back on the galaxy, they turned their back on us".

At this point another geological trait of the planet became of critical importance. Although rich in many elements, New Konigsberg's crust is almost singularly lacking in Silicon (necessary for many industrial applications) and Sulfur (very important for industrial chemistry). As the planet's surface temperatures rose over the decades, the population moved underground into caves. Everything containing either Silicon or Sulfur was looted from the surface, including the starport and almost all computers, and moved underground. Now deep within the primary's jump shadow, effectively cut off from the universe and with industry crippled by the lack of Silicon and Sulfur, the population hunkered down in the caves.

Proximity to the system's primary was a curse to interstellar communication, but a blessing to the colony's agriculture. With ample sunlight and low gravity, crop yields exploded and the colony's population, hitherto modest, bloomed. Light tubes made from scavenged Silicon provided ample sunlight to the colony and solar heating of the surface was used for `hot rock' geothermal energy. Under the wise guidance of the Council of Elders, sculpture, music, poetry all flourished in the caves.

Now the planet is outward bound again. Each passing year brings New Konigsberg closer and closer to the 100d limit. But each year also brings New Konigsberg farther and farther from the star. Crop yields have dwindled to subsistence levels and the once bright halls of the central cave are growing dimmer and dimmer...

I see several points of campaign interaction with such a world:
1) The Dark Secret. The colony was founded by a megacorp/nearby polity to mine the He3/Deuterium. Once the corp/polity realized how much it would cost in time a money to pull the miners off New Konigsberg they just stopped sending ships to the colony. Even though it happened over one thousand years ago, the corp/polity don't want their harsh decision public. The corp/polity might hire the PCs to contact the Council of Elders to bribe/persuade them to spin/rewrite history.
2) The Council of Elders. In a tough political position. Need to feed the populace, but have very little to trade since the planet's only export is now worthless. Might not want to re-integrate with the Imperium, but might feel pressured to do so. A vile Councilor might back a human slavery ring from behind the scenes to get hard currency. The players would be contacted for a smuggling job, only to find out after the fact the cargo is people.
3) Scouts Forward. The IISS contracts the players to make first contact with the planet as it nears the edge of the jump shadow. They are accompanied by a pain in the butt noble, arrive on the planet to find the colony abandoned and everything stripped, have to find the cave entrances, navigate them, and deal with people whose customs and norms in a claustrophobic underground environment over 1500-2000 years are probably quite different than those of the PCs. Plus, they may not be greeted as heros...

Anyway, that's all I've got off the top of my head. Hope it helps.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

The problem is getting from 'most of the domes smashed, manufacturing capability destroyed, TL9 (or whatever) life support system failing' to 'caves sealed, TL4 life support system established and functioning' without going through 'no oxygen for the next couple of months' in between.

The TL4 life support system in underground caves, could already have been in place. You don't need to waist your TL9 stuff underground because they could do it at TL4.

If you go with this scenario they would most likley be food and oxygen producing facilites feeding the inhabitance of the TL9 domes topside.

TL9 'domes smashed, manufacturing capability destroyed' kind of suggests that they have a significant die off leaving the survivors to work out haow they live in their already up and running TL4 food production caves.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Ewan

 

[epicenter00]

To develop on E.D.Quibell's post:

I've always loved the idea of "space squatters" and thought they would be a significant force in sci-fi universes where travel between planets is as commonplace as Traveller. In short, "space squatters" are "unregistered and undocumented populations" that sort of show up in any society: low-grade criminals, refugees, the poor, transient workers, and so on.

Along with these people might be your equivalent of mildly anti-government people - various "alternative lifestylers" who, while not violent terrorists but due to personal philosophy, they dislike being tracked, taxed, and enumerated. While most of us dislike these things, these people go the extra step in deliberately vanishing from records. Populations in the old Key Islands in the US, parts of West Virginia, and upstate New York for instance would qualify for this (for a non-US example, the people in Sealand before they become Sealand). Importantly, unlike the first group, the second is often a choice of philosophy implying that some segment of these people will be highly educated and possessing unique skills they feel they need to survive.

It's entirely possible that some community might exist on an airless rock that you'd think most people wouldn't live on out of choice:

* Mining operations - the obvious answer.
* Chemical synthesis/refining operations - You could engineer the operation for maximum efficiency of the refining operation instead of the "environment" because nobody cares about the environment on some dray world.
* Military depot/base - again, fairly obvious.
* Corporate-owned "caravansary" - Allows crews to R&R and to refuel in some otherwise worthless system, etc. The crews will spend their money in corporate facilities, so the corporation can get them "coming and going."

Now, these kinds of places all tend to have populations with "shallow roots" - they have less sentimental reason to stay where they are. Rich mineral veins run out, companies reorganize or go bankrupt, market demand patterns shift, strategic realities change, and trade routes dry up. Without the organization to keep them there, the bulk of the legitimate populations move elsewhere, leaving these squatters behind. The economic reality of these kinds of places (especially in a universe geared around conspicuous consumption and capitalistic as Traveller) is that it's usually cheaper to just leave facilities in place and buy and install new stuff than it is to move equipment to a new location (or a warehouse) and demolition to deny squatters is very expensive so looks bad on the bottom line.

So now you have these TL12 facilities, be they enormous caves, orbiting space stations, surface installations, or some combination of the three that are just sitting there, designed for humans but perhaps missing key points. While not viable in the long-term to live this way, I'm sure it's possible for functional TL4 society to dwell in a place for quite a long time at a lower tech level. Such scavengers might make a living going through the leavings of the previous (legal) occupants and selling the stuff to passing scrap dealers and merchants in return for high-tech necessities. Eventually crafts and low-tech artisan work would replace this industry.

 

[Icosahedron]

I like that space squatters idea, Epicenter, it's neat and it's not a one-off - it explains a number of anomalous worlds across the universe. Consider it borrowed.

Only one problem with it - government being what it is, somebody, somewhere would decide to step in, regulate and tax these independents. "You can't have those people remaining untaxed, our people might get ideas..."

 

[epicenter00]

Only one problem with it - government being what it is, somebody, somewhere would decide to step in, regulate and tax these independents. "You can't have those people remaining untaxed, our people might get ideas..."

Perhaps, but who?

The Third Imperium is not a government in the way we think of it now - they don't tax everyone in the Imperium. In fact, where the TI gets its money to build these fleets of enormous kilometers-long battleships is a bit murky and open to a bit of debate. Most people assume the TI gets its money from tithes from nobles, by taxing corporations, and tariffs on goods and services passing through starports. But the TI, doesn't seem to raise taxes from Amber Zone or Red Zone worlds, for instance, nor does it seem to tax member worlds directly so I wonder if these lines of income are really in line with the massive military the Imperium is often portrayed to possess.

So the TI isn't going to tax such places directly. Planetary governments wouldn't have any jurisdiction in some separate star system. I'm sure corporations who technically still own some abandoned mineworks on a world (they own it in the same way that "someone" owns the decayed houses in Detroit) might resent squatters living there, but again, without some economic impetus to go in there, kicking these people out would just be throwing good money after bad, so would probably leave them alone. A noble might control such a system (perhaps the noble of a neighboring system) but again when the money the world generates is negligible and the people don't want you there anyway, the noble is probably not going to bother.

Remember, the thing with such squatter populations is that they might be migratory themselves and love their freedom more than anything else, but may not be willing to fight for it (perhaps being realists and realizing that they're never going to win TL14 Imperial Marines). So someone comes in, starts raising a ruckus, and these people leave. First in dribbles, then perhaps in torrents.

I've often imagined a kind of "shadow imperium" that exists of in the form of chains of such places and unregistered deep-space habitats whose coordinates are only known to a select few - like from "Snow Crash" - someone gets a few old hulls of bulk freighters, jumps them one jump out from an inhabited system into an "empty hex" around some brown dwarf or some star without any significant planets and lives there.

It'd support an entire shadow economy of smugglers, fugitives, freedom-lovers, spies, MOJ agents, and so on.

 

[Icosahedron]

Well, three thoughts on that:

IMTU the Imperium does directly tax worlds, taking a percentage of the GWP in return for the 'benefits' of incorporation.

The tax has to exceed the cost of collecting it (unless you are content to suffer a small loss in order to set an example) but the collection cost doesn't have to be huge. A small office with a handful of paper-shufflers and a couple of police patrols could 'govern' a population well into the Pop-4 band and would probably be cost-effective down to the lower end of Pop-2, so I think any population over 100 heads would find someone chasing them for tax - if not the Imperium, then some nearby world, and if not some nearby world, then some organised crime group...
('Jurisdiction' requires only the will to impose it and an inability to resist it)

A 'shadow imperium' would need some form of self governance, if only to prevent getting buried in its own trash - who pays the guy who empties the fresher?

 

[epicenter00]

('Jurisdiction' requires only the will to impose it and an inability to resist it)

By their nature, people like the ones I'm discussing wouldn't be able to resist in a united way towards outsiders imposing their will - they're freedom addicts in the truest sense of the word. I'd imagine a lot of worlds in the TI started like this, but were eventually subjugated and made more normal, especially more populous ones.

But the continued existence of worlds like those that originally sparked this thread suggests that the TI's interest in worlds, even ones with significant populations (in the millions) is inconsistent. This suggests that the way that worlds are incorporated into the TI probably isn't as uniform as many believe. It's not like these worlds are unknown - the world data (IIRC) is supposed to have been generated by the Scout Service and then provided as maps by the TAS.

I think in many cases, especially in the case of smaller groupings, anyone trying to impose order will simply find the people getting up and leaving at the first opportunity only to coalesce somewhere else - hence why I call them "space squatters." Larger groupings (like the world of the OP) might have some "alternative lifestyle" population that is considered not worth exploiting by the TI (hard to believe, but apparently these TL2 worlds do exist, flanked by TL15 and TL12 worlds without travel restrictions, which is hard to believe as well).

A 'shadow imperium' would need some form of self governance, if only to prevent getting buried in its own trash - who pays the guy who empties the fresher?

The "shadow imperium" isn't actually united in any, way, shape, or form across member stations. It's more of a description used by agencies looking for a thrilling soundbyte. It's essentially the knowledge that the MOJ and other groups who study such quasi-legal groupings have that it's possible to travel from one end of the TI to the other without ever visiting a legitimate, accredited Starport and still get repairs, refuelled, resupplied, and layover for R&R. Each of the groupings would have different rulers - organized crime, religious groups, near-anarchies, wild technophile cyborg societies, and racial or ethnic exclusionists, and so on. Their only common theme would be that they're willing to provide certain basic services for travellers coming by who have money (and can find them, in some cases).

 

[Icosahedron]

I'd recognised that your shadow imperium wasn't a coherent entity, I was just saying that each such world, once it got beyond say Pop-1, would need to appoint its own government since compelxity would cause the student/hippy shared-duty rota priinciples to break down at that scale.

A government needs taxes to function, and once a government exists, that government can be taxed by a bigger government.

As you obviously recognise :

I'd imagine a lot of worlds in the TI started like this, but were eventually subjugated and made more normal, especially more populous ones.

So presumably, these worlds will generally have a very low population and low GWP that is beneath the radar of 'interested parties'. However, that would make it difficult for such a world to provide useful services - particularly things like starport facilities.

Nevertheless, I can see a number of 'squatter' worlds trading with other worlds that are hovering on the borders of legality and respectability, where "What the Imperium doesn't know is nobody's business but ours."
I assume this is how your shadow imperium works? It'll probably be how mine works.

 

[epicenter00]

So presumably, these worlds will generally have a very low population and low GWP that is beneath the radar of 'interested parties'. However, that would make it difficult for such a world to provide useful services - particularly things like starport facilities.

Nevertheless, I can see a number of 'squatter' worlds trading with other worlds that are hovering on the borders of legality and respectability, where "What the Imperium doesn't know is nobody's business but ours."
I assume this is how your shadow imperium works? It'll probably be how mine works.

Partially.

I may have a very different view of the TI from a lot of people, though I believe (of course) that mine is more grounded in "reality" than other people's. While Traveller presents space travel like the Age of Sail and most players sort of go along with this, I disagree with this view. There was the Viliani Imperium that lasted for thousands of years in most of this space and more. Then there was the Long Night. Then there's the Third Imperium that's provided at least another thousand years more of civilization in much of "known space."

That's a lot of civilization. So I disagree with lot of posters here about the nature and character of colonization and space travel. Space travel in the Imperium isn't like taking a sailing ship of old somewhere. It's hardly even taking a jetliner somewhere these days. I liken it more like taking a long roadtrip in a car or RV and probably about as common. I see that a lot of people on TL12+ worlds (the majority of the HiPop worlds the TI) have probably traveled to some nearby star system at least once in their lives, just to sightsee. The majority of the populations of those worlds have left their planet to go somewhere within their own system.

So with that background, it's time to stoke the campfires:

"It's a darn pain the arse, I tell you. See, those squatters, that's where Shipjump Spice comes from. Squatters? Yeah, they're one week out in Gyonnci. Never heard of it? It's a star about a parsec out from here. There's not much out there, doesn't show up on any maps because nobody lives there anymore. Thing is, history books say that back during the Villani Imperium, our ancestors went out first to mine the heck out of the other planets in this system. Then once we tapped all that out, we did the same to Gyonnci once the easy stuff here ran out. Then, once stuff got hard to find, they brought in Vargr, poor saps. I guess they used 'em up like slaves to do digging, blasting, and mining out there. Treated 'em horribly. During the Long Night, the Vargr there died out, because they didn't want to come live here, understandably and when the last ships stopped going out there, they ran out of supplies and died out. Horrible stuff.

"Then once Cleon's Imperium got started, my family bought new techniques from the Z-corp, and along with some Tukera subsidiary, we started mining the moons in this system using quanto-magnetic ore separation and all that. Starting-up wasn't so bad though, you know, the old Villani-era mining camps and greenhouse orbitals and all that were still there from way back when. And you know, it's not like putting stuff on the surface of a world. There's no air and waay out there, after a while, habitats get darn cold, the oxygen and stuff turns to ice so it's all preserved until someone turns on a heater again. The Tukera guys just brought in some in-system tugs and got to work and we just used the old Villani stuff. Though of course, people wanted zero-g shockball arenas and stuff so we built those out there, adding to the orbital clutter. Stuff went on until the ore ran out, then we did the same thing to Gyonnci. Again, it wasn't worth it to move the stuff. We just left it there and forgot about it.

"Thing is, these squatters, they know that too. You know the Imperial Navy estimates there's like 30 million sentients living in the outsystem? There's hundreds of old hulks and stuff out there, just abandoned, like half of from the Villani Imperium, half of it from the Third Imperium, just gathered over thousands of years. They stuck ion engines on the old orbitals and stuff and push 'em around into new orbits, lash them together and make space stations and junk and live out there.

"Track 'em down? Blow up 'em? Make 'em pay taxes? Who? Who's gonna do that? Like those guys over in Gyonnci especially. Imperial Navy will do it, they say there's an estimated 750 "free orbitals" in that system alone, which is Navy-ese for space stations, abandoned ships, and stuff like that, but they want us to pay for it. They've done it before, and tell us the cost would be like two-point-five trillion credits to chase them all out, then a few billion more per year to patrol the system for a few years to make sure they don't come back soon, then more credits to imprison the criminals and the MOJ would want to then move in there get the guys wanted for stuff in other systems and ship them back, and guess who's paying for that? Yep, it'd come back to us in taxes. Thing is, provided those guys keep a low profile, no noble is going to want to pay out to get the Navy and Marines to do this stuff since it's their money. Hiring more police is just a few hundred million per year on the planet, and that's considered a lot cheaper than having the Navy and all that.

"Make 'em pay taxes? Someone has to track them down and would have to make them cough up at gunpoint. They don't like revenuers out there and hop from orbital to orbital. Yeah, all those people, they're not in one station. It's like a few hundred here, a couple of thousand there. If you don't go with a few cruisers and at least a platoon of Marines in battle dress, these guys will shoot at you to make you go away. Oh yeah, you laugh, you know all those 'inferior' TL12 Solomani weapons from the Rim war? Or all that TL13 junk from the Zhodani border conflicts? And all the stuff our boys and girls dropped when one of those two groups cacked one of 'em? That kind of stuff ends up in the hands of these people. Not tons of it, but only takes one Fusion gun to ruin the day of a lot of Marines."

 

[Icosahedron]

Interesting stuff.
I've learnt enough to set up something like this IMTU, cheers.
MTU is a bit different from the OTU and I think taxes would be as 'certain' as they are in RL. They'd take the long view that a bit of cost up front would be outweighed by the eventual revenue, and as I said, my Imperium would take it out of the direct taxes they already get from the nearby systems, but there's certainly some mileage to be got from your space squatters idea.

 

[rancke]

Once you have the tunnels filled, it's not "airless"... just dark.

Actually, if it's dark, it will be airless too. You need photosynthesis to keep a biological life support system running. You also need balance. An ecosystem that would keep 32 million people alive won't keep 100 people alive (unless you introduce animals equal to the biomass of 32 million people).


Hans

 

[aramis]

Actually, if it's dark, it will be airless too. You need photosynthesis to keep a biological life support system running. You also need balance. An ecosystem that would keep 32 million people alive won't keep 100 people alive (unless you introduce animals equal to the biomass of 32 million people).


Hans

Non-photosynthetic Chemosynthesis of sugars is quite possible; many bacterial species have been discovered doing so in lightless environments. Most of them are anaerobic but not oxygen-releasing. However, it's not beyond the realm of possibility to have oxygen-releasing chemosynthesis of sugars.

As long as the net surface solar input keeps the temperature in the correct range, the interior will be at or above that point; if the body is not tidelocked, subsurface temperatures will remain at or above surface for many centuries, until it's uniform ± the day/night surface differential.

 

[splicer]

Due to some advice given to a poster in another thread, I purchased a download of T4ocket Empires to help me work out the background for a campaign area. While I was in the e-shop, I grabbed a copy of TNE:World Tamer's Handbook on a whim. I skimmed through most of the text last night (but I didn't really read it in detail) and it occurred to me that this might be a starting place for someone who wants to game the survival of an experimental low-tech colony.

Just a passing thought. I'm sure that, on a closer look, I will realize the level of mechanics tinkering involved.

 

[aramis]

TNE WTH is pretty much task system driven, and readily adaptable because of it.

 

[splicer]

Well, that's good news! I'll have a closer look at it this week. I don't mind tinkering with things so much when they're amenable to tinkering.

 

[Peter Schutze]

i remember mixing WTH with the tech from ff&s and getting some clashes

overall though between the 2 you should have everything to tailor a colonising campaign

 

[Icosahedron]

I toyed with this some years ago. I found the mechanics of PE and WTH were ok provided you had a largeish colony with enough up-front supplies to get themselves established. However, if you had a small starship crew marooned on a habitable but uninhabited world, the rules couldn't handle it. The crew was invariably doomed to extinction.

Maybe that's realistic?

But it doesn't make for a good game, so I had to tweak the rules to allow a handful of reluctant hunter-gatherers to survive long enough to interbreed and establish a colony.