Originally posted by daryen:
First, can you please explain why Steel and Mitral were never settled? Here are two planets with breathable, untainted atmospheres and plenty of oceans that NO ONE lives on. But, elsewhere in the Sword Worlds, is a world with an exotic atmostpheres with tens of millions on it, and three worlds with very thing atmospheres (one tainted), two of which also have tens of millions on it. What can be so bad about Steel and Mitral to keep them empty?
First, keep in mind that most of this is not canon, nor is it going to be canon until (and if) it has passed unscathed through those editorial filters Jon Zeigler and Loren Wiseman (and Marc Miller?) and been published.
With that caveat: Steel was settled during the Sacnoth Dominate period. It had a rough time during the Fimbulwinter (the period between the fall of the Sacnoth Dominate and the rise of the Five States). It struggled along after that and had actually become fairly powerful in 500 (According to canonical settlement maps it is part of a pocket empire consisting of itself and the three other metal worlds). We plan to depopulate it in some way (not yet decided) between 500 and 589.
Mithril is rather cold. It could have been settled, but it got left alone by colonists in favor of other worlds until it became a ward of the Sword World Confederation. Maybe there were one or more attempts to settle it that failed. Basically Mithril could have been settled if events had turned out a little differently, but it didn't. After 589 the SW Confederation actively prevented colonists from settleing on any of the metal worlds.
Second, in the description of the Sword Worlds in the GT Sourcebook, the Sword Worlds are said to have captured four worlds from the Darrians in the First Frontier World, and then lost them after a short war with the Darrians in 788. While this is correct, the planets named are wrong. The planets listed are Terant 340, Torment, Trifuge and Cunnonic. The correct planets are Entrope, Winston, Anselhome and Torment.
I think what happened is that the first four planets were listed in JTAS 18, but, as things evolved, the captured planets were changed. For example, by the time they made Alien Module 8: The Darrians, the planets had changed to the Entropic cluster. Also, the various sector dotmaps for the Spinward Marches in Supplement 8 show this change as well. They also show that Cunnonic was always in the Sword Worlds until captured by the Darrians in the Fourth Frontier War. (Cunnonic was the only consolation prize for the Darrians in the otherwise bleak Fourth Frontier War.)
It's a little more complicated than that. It wasn't changed, it was bifurcated (if that the word I want). For many years, there has existed two mutually exclusive versions of which worlds were lost by the Darrians to the Sword Worlds during the First Frontier War, regained in the Darrian-Sword World War of 788 and lost again in the Fourth Frontier War. According to "Contact: The Sword Worlds" in
Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #18,
Library Data (N-Z), Imperial Encyclopedia, and, most recently,
GURPS:Traveller, it is Terant 340, Torment, Trifuge, and Cunnonic. But according to
Darrians, The Spinward Marches Campaign, The Regency Sourcebook, and
Behind the Claw, it is the Entropic Worlds. The maps in
The Spinward Marches Campaign also show Torment as part of the group. Furthermore, the text in
The Spinward Marches Campaign claims that Entrope, Winston, and Anselhome are occupied by the Sword Worlds from the end of the Third Frontier War even though the maps show that it is from the end of the Fourth. And to make the confusion complete,
The Spinward Marches shows the three Entropic worlds as belonging to the Darrians in 1105 and the UWP listings of
SMC and
RS show them as belonging to the Sword Worlds in 1110 and 1117 -- that is, the reverse of what the maps and the text show.
There is no possible way to reconcile these differences. My suggestion is that the Entropic Worlds and Torment were the four worlds lost by the Darrians in 593 and regained in 788. The Entropic Worlds (without Torment) were lost again during the Fourth Frontier War.
Hans
PS. Cunnonic is an interesting case, BTW. Although originally settled by Darrians, the settlement maps show that it has been part of the Sword Worlds since before 300. I wonder just how happy they were to be 'liberated' in 1084. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to include Cunnonic in the book. [Note to self: Item 117 on 'To Do' list: Write up Cunnonic for
JTAS Online 
].
