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Toning down the Virus

Golan2072

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DISCLAIMER (sp?): This thread is intended for discussion of TNE-based "MTU" variants (not my main TU, to which I dedicate far more time than this) and for certain "what if" speculations. It does not intend to challange or insult TNE:1248 (which I'll probably buy once it'll be out, depending on my economic situation at the time). It isn't TNE:1248 and would probably take a different road from it. ALSO, IT IS NOT, I REPEAT, NOT INTENDED FOR FLAME WARRING. IT IS NOT AN ARGUMENT ABOUT WHAT TNE CANNON IS BUT ABOUT WHAT IT COULD BE.

Now that we've got over that bit, I am messing around with a variant on the TNE background (to be played with CT rules, probably) for the case I'll end up running OTU games (sorta of). I wish to make human stupidity, human hubris, human pride, and human economies as the main source of the Fall; stagnation, social contradictions and conflicts of interests lay the groundwork for the Rebellion's transformation into the Final War. I see the tragedy of the Third Imperium as that of rulers who could not see much further than the ends of their noses and pockets, of the masses decieved, manipulated, blinded and put to sleep by a stagnant, complacent system, of a Short Night which was not inevitable - the writing was on the wall, and it was human blindness, combined with a rotten human society, that failed to heed the warning. Dulinor was a little less shhort-sighted; but nevertheless he failed to understand that what was needed was a revolution and not a few reforms, that the dying body of the Third Imperium could not be saved by the mere replacement of its head.

I also wish the former Imperium to be more than a constant plain of greyish devastation, speckled with many sickly TEDs. Yes, devastation is an integral part of the setting. Yes, TEDs will exist in my variant as well. But what I wish to change is the uniformity of this devastation, to make it more akin to the original spirit of Traveller, where radically different conditions exist on different worlds, where the devastation, desolation and TED government type are not a uniform blanket put over the entire space that was the Imperium. If you have Survival Margin, look at page 48: See how devastated the former Imperium was already in 1125. TNE cannon transforms this much further to the extent that almost everything is desolated Wilds; I wish to keep it closer to that map, with tiny pockets of light (small safe areas) still remain in the dark Night, with deep frontiers radiating from them into the Wilds, and with a wider variety of worlds even in the Wilds - after all, not everything suffered the same damage from the Black War.

For that purpose, I seek to tone down the Virus. I thiught about eliminating it completely, and leaving the Final War and the following economic collapse as the sole reason for the Short Night, but I still see potential in the Virus; I think it was overused and overdone in TNE cannon.

So I seek to make it spread in a slower pace and over a smaller region, encompassing what TNE considers to be the Black Curtain and a little more as a "high infastation" zone, a circle of the eight surrounding sectors as a "moderate-to-low infastation" zone, and the rest of known space to have a very low rate of intection. I might be using an earlier-date variant of Kafka47's Fourth Imperium as the main source of "vampire fleets", rather than having them roaming as a menace all over space; evolution and countermeasures would've probably weeded out most Virus strains, leaving a dominant strain combined with the remains of Lucan's Imperium, as well as a few much rarer strains.

My question is: How such a scenario could be justified? One possible answer is to limit the Virus to communications only, rather than to all kinds of energy emissions; making it a high-tech (proto- or ful-AI) self-replicating software virus rather than a physical Cymbaline (sp?) chip might also help. Another explanation is an earlier leak of information about the Project, allowing the various power centers time to prepare counter-measures.
 
Commo transmission only is probably a good bet. The other thing I've pondered is a larger minimum computer level to be able to be infected.

You'll also want, if you don't already have it, "Hard Times". That supplement will give you a very good grasp on how to present the wilds in a universe where Virus is less powerful.

Virus was only, if very spectacullarly, the last coffin nail. Play up the utter horror of the black war and it's consequences saving Virus for special use.

William
 
Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
My question is: How such a scenario could be justified?
Increase how complex a computer needs to be in order to provide a proper host environment for the Virus. Say that, for instance, TL 9 or TL 10 computers are too simple to be infected. They can still be hacked, so Virus can still mess about with them, but they can't spread the infection further, and TL 9 and 10 worlds don't get nearly as messed up as the higher-tech worlds. At least noty directly. High-population TL 9 and 10 worlds are still tempting targets for Virus-infected warships, but most medium-population worlds escape fairly unscathed and can serve as nucleuses for recovery.


Hans
 
Start with devistating the X boat system. Once communication is down the Empire as a whole will suffer from lack of unity and direction.

Next have each Sector head (military and Imperial) decide which side they are on in the rebellion and play their reactions accordingly.

Then work your way down the sub sector leaders and then system leaders the same way. Worlds which need technology at high levels for survival will suffer the greatest from war as well as a crash of their technology.

I supose the best idea would be to start with what and where you want to set up your pockets of resistance/ lone surviving pocket empires and high technology bases. Start small. Chose according to your view of the maps you have for the rebellion. Then take apart their surrounding systems, sub sectors and sectors.

There will be less for you to worry about running this way and more areas for your adventurers to explore, fight, win, and rebuild or take over.

Well, this is just a sample of what I did before TNE came out and I started over again as a member of the RCES. Then we were all fighting the Guild as well as te Vampire Fleets as we expanded out into the universe. (My players loved being Viking/Pirates).
Same idea but more support was available for TNE at the time.
 
What you are suggesting is essentially a "Hard Times" scenario with a new "Virus" faction replacing Lucan's faction. I see a lot of potential in that.

However, remember that one of the main (metagame) purposes of Virus was to wipe out everyone outside the Imperium. If you have a fragemented, crippled Imperium it will not take long for its neighbors to move it. If the Aslan, Vargr, and Solomani are not taken down, too, they will simply overrun vast sections of the former Imperium, crushing many of the factions you want to preserve.

(Without provocation, the K'kree and Hivers are probably too far away to take much advantage of the situation.)
 
Originally posted by daryen:
However, remember that one of the main (metagame) purposes of Virus was to wipe out everyone outside the Imperium. If you have a fragemented, crippled Imperium it will not take long for its neighbors to move it. If the Aslan, Vargr, and Solomani are not taken down, too, they will simply overrun vast sections of the former Imperium, crushing many of the factions you want to preserve.
Most non-imperial polities in the OTU were entangled hand, foot and tail (literally for some!) in the ultra-messy Final War except for the Zhodani (who have their own problems with the Empress Wave), the Hivers (far away, but they WILL meddle one way or another, but not overtly or directly except for in the Dawn League) and the K'Kree (too far away to attack without provocation you say?). That is, alot of Vargr and Aslan took part in invasions of imperial space and thus their polities (if you can call the Extents that way) would probably still be in a weak position due to economic deplition, the loss of centuries worth of materiel value (especially starships), casualties (sp?) and probably deep-penetrating Black War retaliatory strikes into their territories, especially in clandestine form.

The Solomani were so deeply involved in the war that they suffer the fate of the Imperium - just look at the Survival Margine maps.

Also, the SolParty did not survive the War intact in my TNE variant - they found themselves facing an anti-Confederation, anti-Imperial revolution led by the Solidariti group, joined by the parts radical pan-sophonist "left" flank of the SolParty as well as by the Gaianist movement. This was joined by some of the few remaining Solomani Confederation forces who were sick of the uber-bureaucratic, hyper-centralized Party and its fascist police state and wanted change. Sure, the resulting Unity of Gaia (a 9-subsector faction in my TNE variant centered on Gaia, their name for Terra) is sometimes iron-fisted and isn't an utopia - nothing in the post-Fall universe is - but its far more democratic than the Confederation and far less opressive (democracy and opressiveness are relative values, ofcourse...). It falls under my "leaders with good intentions who eventually find themselves comitting atrocities because the harsh conditions leave no other way around to keep their pocket-polity alive as a whole" category.

Now, there is still a pocket-empire that calls itself the Solomani Confederation in my TNE variant. It encompasses two subsectors to the rimward from the Unity of Gaia and is ruled by the (anagathized) remnants of the Hardliner faction of the Secreteriat; their worlds and population would have been liberated by the Unity if not for other threats that the Unity had to face and for the highly militarized and fanatical Confederation forces.
 
That's cool. Just wanted to make sure you keep the other polities in mind for your variant.

Irrespective of the Empress Wave, the Zhodani aren't going to do anything. They aren't interested in expanding, just protecting their borders. The Domain of Deneb/Regency is just the type of border client state they like to have around them.

The K'kree are complacent, stagnant, fat, and happy. Well, not really happy, but close enough for it to work. The leadership of the 2000 worlds are pragmatic enough to let things go on around them as long as they keep to their place. The only way they would do anything is if the Gnaak do something offensive (like unlease a superweapon that affects them) or if young fanatical firebrands take over.

As long as the old leadership remains in place, the K'kree ain't going anywhere.
 
Sounds to me you're not far off what I thought the "official Canon" was anyway. I mean by 1129 how many subsectors even had one A class starport left in them. How many references are there throughout the MT texts to the huge reduction in shipbuilding capabilities?

The x-boat network you say? Was that seriously still functioning anywhere by 1127-28? No seriously... which "Faction" would have still funded it for starters? Who replaced the lost and damaged and destroyed (either by deliberate acts or accident) X-Boats, X-Boat Tenders, X-Boat relay stations?

Vampire Fleets you say? I could have sworn I read somewhere that the final fleet Dulinor led as far as Celetron was only about 100 ships and even if it was 1000 ships, most died via suicide strain. Seriously most peoples failing with TNE (IMHO) has allways been overdoing it with Virus and over attributing every little broken, damaged, and destroyed thing solely to Virus.

Heres a quote from Path of Tears that I think too few people took notice of back in the day:

"Frequency: Finally, and most importantly, avoid filling your campaign with Virus. The effects of Virus are omnipresent, but the actual reality of Virus should be very rare, for two reasons.
First, if the characters encounter Virus everytime they turn around, they will either routinely defeat it or they will die alot. If they routinely defeat it, it will have very little percieved danger value, and will instead become an annoying nuisance. If, instead, they die alot, you are likely to have some very unhappy campers on your hands.
Second, there are limits to your creative energies, no matter how imaginative you are. Each active Virus should not only be dangerous, it should be unique and fascinating. So keep them rare to enable you to lavish the time and attention on them they deserve, as well as keeping your players guessing."

So yeah I'm right there with you in spirit in your desire to lessen the effect, or at the very least, the "percieved" effect of Virus in your TNE universe. Hell I even claim that that approach is truly embracing Canon. That is, MegaTraveller Canon. Thus I don't even think you have to bend any rules etc to reach your goal, just re-evalute your history.

If you want a game mechanics way of doing it I think CT or CT+ rules give you the perfect tools too. Just simply declare that a)it only spreads via communication (which I pretty much do anyway)and b) Declare it cannot propagate itself in anything less than a Model 3/Bis or whatever.
Too easy. Enjoy the setting.
 
My intention is to create the effect of a long twilight, not a universally pitch black night. The light is dim, the shadows are long and deep, the claws of the night reach deep into known space, but not all is dark, not all is ruined, not every government is a reactionary TED. Beyond the reach of the Virus (which I limit to the Core sector and, to a more moderate degree, the eight sectors surrounding it, with very light contamination reaching outward), some worlds recover slowly from the hell that was the Black War and the Hard Times; now, in 1200, there are several sharp points of light against the slowly proceeding Dawn. The problem is that each such point of light has its own idea about how the future should be built... Making the players' life VERY interesting, to say the least...

I also don't want to overdue the Virus. Far from it: like the previous Long Night, the Long Twilight was brough about by social and economical problems within the Imperium. The Virus just adds insult to injury and add variety; it also makes the Long Twilight different from the Long Night. But it doesn't have to be the centerpiece of the setting: it is a feature of the setting, a monument to human hubris, a rare but terrible horror lurking in the midst of the Black Imperium and in old, abandoned ships, bases and worlds near the Core, one of several great threats but not the Threat with a capital "T". And it isn't the only AI around - remember that some worlds in the pre-rebellion era had TL16. In the "ecological niche" of high-tech computer networks the Virus finds competitors, some of which it can overcome, some which triumph over the Virus, and some which enter into symbiosis with it.

One such competitor is Hecate (also called "The Goddess") A cutting edge computer bordering on TL17, that has gone insane due to a cyber-fight against the Virus; now "She" thinks herself as a Goddess destined to inherit the stars. "She" rules a few systems not far from the Black Imperium. While the masses under "Her" rule live in meek TL4 conditions, which are slowly improving, except for the Priestesses who could "commune with her" (i.e. are implanted a commlink when they are "ordained") and "summon angles" (i.e. call forth high-tech cyborg or robot assault squads); the High Priestesses who could "perform miracles" (are trained and equipped in high-TL equipment and techniques); the Templars who posses "supernatural powers" (cyber modifications and battledress); and, ofcourse the Angles themseves (cyborgs and robots who serve the Goddess). "Hecate" controls several fully-automated TL15 factories with which "She" produces "Her" nescery high-tech equipment. "She" has sent some of her Angles aboard a few repaired starships to nearby devastated systems to build lower-quality (TL15 instead of almost TL17) copies of herself and to convert the sorry bunch of surviving locals into her Flock...
 
I don't see anything wrong with the vision that you have highlighted. Partially because my own take on the Fourth Imperium was cited...

Now, I now this next statement will open up the flamers on this board but some mercy for rational discussion, first, please.

Now, we know that GT constitutes an officially sanctioned parallel universe. Who is to say that there are not other parallel universes. One where the Crucible Campaign collides with the Wounded Colossus. Where a Fourth Imperium is corrupt and threatens to put a stranglehold on the stars by reinforcing serfdom over freedom. The possibilities are endless. Now, we also now that through psionic action (Varan's & the Hivers visions) that some sort of connection can be established between them, "to see but one possible future".

Further extrapolating from that in the Far, Far, Far Future that Marc has postulated after the story of the Fourth Imperium has been told. Perhaps, we are dealing with a galactic civilization that GT postulated with the Kiloparsec Drive has uncovered what has long stayed dominant in the galactic Core and now it is coming, with what was known as the Major Races have now had to unite under the banner of the sunburst, once again, but this time it represents the hopes and fears against an all powerful enemy.

The question that everyone wants to know now, "How fast can kafka run?" as begins to feel sting of flamethrowers revving up.
 
Good variation employee 2-4601. Should work nicely. As for me I have a TL 17 system that defended a world from various attacks. A TL17 system capable of defending itself from Virus. Virus should not be impervious. Mine are hard to kill but more numerous and far from perfect as the new cylons appear to be.

Good luck
Savage
 
Petroleum shipment arrived, good. Got the tar right here. *mutter mutter kafka47 grumble grumble sniff* Feathers. Feathers! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE CHICKENS!!!? :mad:
 
Tar & Feather, me Yankee? I ain't no loyalist but stand in the Painite traditions of the Republic which is why I raised such heretical concerns.
 
Originally posted by kafka47:
Now, we also now that through psionic action (Varan's & the Hivers visions) that some sort of connection can be established between them, "to see but one possible future".
Sliders in the Traveller universe? Or is that, spelljammer
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Further extrapolating from that in the Far, Far, Far Future that Marc has postulated after the story of the Fourth Imperium has been told. Perhaps, we are dealing with a galactic civilization that GT postulated with the Kiloparsec Drive has uncovered what has long stayed dominant in the galactic Core and now it is coming, with what was known as the Major Races have now had to unite under the banner of the sunburst, once again, but this time it represents the hopes and fears against an all powerful enemy.
Seems like Babylon 5 and the new Alliance ("conspiracy of light") they've established against the Shadows. But ofcourse, in my variant, the Regency might play the role of Londo Mollari in this case - striking a deal with darkness to restore their former glory... ::pats the invisible spiderlike "keeper" on my shoulder::
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To say the truth, in my variant the main threat is that of the Fourth Imperium, ruled by the Lucan-Virus merge, which sooner or later will try to invade. Not the Shadows, not the Borg, but more like the Ganglions of the Dark Skies cult classic... Why attack when you can infiltrate?
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I see no need for a flamewar here, especially not in MY thread ::sprays everyone with a big firehose:: :D
 
Another change to my TNE variant: after re-reading the main TNE book, I've descided that the Unity of Gaia I've originally imagined was too large. I'll reduce it to 2 subsectors instead of 9.
 
Originally posted by Savage:
As for me I have a TL 17 system that defended a world from various attacks. A TL17 system capable of defending itself from Virus.
There is a canonical TL 17 world in Antares sector. It's called Sabmiqys. It is inhabited by a bunch of TL 17 Artificial Intelligences, and was interdicted by the Imperium.

That's canon. What follows is IMTU.

My assumptiom was that it was able to defend itself so successfully during the Collapse that Vampire fleets seldom if ever go within several parsecs of it! The result of that avoidance is that some of the worlds around it have been able to recover sufficiently to form a small Pocket Empire.

The AIs themselves still prefer to avoid interstellar contact and aren't part of the Pocket Empire. In other words, they're just as much a plot device as Virus.

I never got to actually make use of this idea.
 
"Last night was thickly cloudy though no rain & not a bit of light from the twin moons somehow got through.

Things were pretty bad & I think the end is getting near in spite of all we had hoped. After midnight something landed on the roof of the house & all the dogs rushed up to see what it was. I could hear them snapping & tearing around & then one managed to get up on the roof by jumping from the liw wall.There was a terrible fight up there & i heard a frightful buzzing... ...in the morning I found great pools of blood..."


The events from behind the Black Curtain are where Biotech is taken to its extreme insane limit.

The hybrid that became Lucan was directly inspired by the image in Fire, Fusion and Steel for psionic drives. Whereby, Lucan is pumped with agathatics, his brain is wired into the Capital mainframe which in turn is infected with several competition strains of Virus. When Lucan appears or nears death, a clone with memory transfer is initiated. Out of this midst, a robotic/hybrid army is spawned.

Worlds with high industrial capacity fall first. Agricultural worlds provide sustenance in a grotesque parody of what was once the Third Imperium. Slavers transport human hosts to feed the machine on Capital.

All is black. All is dark.

What creatures have been spawned from Lucan's twisted and insane imaginations are the stuff that nightmares are made of.
 
I have used Sabmiqys in my TNE Antares campaign where they were at war with Black Fleets and were using local Vargr & Human survivors as both knowing and unknowing proxies, giving them high tech in the fight against the virus. I have considered resurrecting this campaign (which was set in 1155) in light of 1248 which fit in nicely with some of my other TNE campaigns.

Still I like the idea of the K'kree Virus hybrids rampaging through the galaxy. Unstoppable, unfathomable and decidedly easy to dislike. Real baddies.
 
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8575

Nanoscale magnets promise more-shrinkable chips

"Better still, the function of the magnetic logic gates can be changed after the hardware has been built, meaning that hardware could be “reprogrammed” – potentially making gadgets that use them far more versatile."

These are the kind of thing that Virus could use!
 
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