Alien Module: Vilani?

[SJE]

I know it wasnt in the original series, but given that we've had Alien Modules on Zhodani, Solomani & Darriens (and a supplement on Swordies), can we expect an alien module on the Vilani too?

I for one can never pronounce some of those Vilani buro names, so could come in handy- perhaps with an option for 1st Imperium play?

SJE

 

[SJE]

A question - can you tell the difference between a Vilani and a Solomani just by looking at them? And is there difference genetic (only Vilani have green hair and mauve eye colour, Solomani dont) or is it just cultural - only Vilani wear mumu's and berets?

And are not most citizens of the Imperium descended from both Vilani and Solomani, or are most people 'purebloods' ?

Thx.

SJE

 

[2330ADUSA1]

They are the humans with the extra two bumps on their forehead...correct<VBG>!!!

Penn

PS: That is a Poke at Star Trek fans...LOL

 

[hdan]

Physically, I've always pictured Vilani as being somewhat like either Dravidians (who have sort of a Sumerian connection, though of course I'm fully aware that the Sumerian/Dravidian connection is tenuous and not generally accepted) or maybe Afghans.

However I figure by the 3I, "Vilani" is mostly a cultural thing, though certainly whole planets would exist with fairly "pure" Vilani inhabitants, just as there are fairly pure "Solomani" planets all over the place.

I think it might be even more fun to picture them as descended from Neanderthals or some other early hominid species. Interfertile with Solomani and other branches of Humaniti, but visually distinct. Modern thinking on Neanderthals is that they are light skinned and haired, with very heavy features. You could of course pick another hominid that was alive around the time of the ancients, like heidelbergensis or rhodesiensis. In general, those hominids all seem to have thicker features than modern man, but considering that Vilani would have also had a few hundred thousand years to breed, who knows what they might look like "now"? A lot would depend on their standards of beauty and such.

I do rather like the idea of going "anime", with Vilani being oddly colored and "elfishly" proportioned, but that doesn't go very well with their hyper-conservative culture. (I use Darrians for anime types). Neanderthal goes with that though.

 

[rust]

A question - can you tell the difference between a Vilani and a Solomani just by looking at them? And is there difference genetic (only Vilani have green hair and mauve eye colour, Solomani dont) or is it just cultural - only Vilani wear mumu's and berets?

Since Solomani and Vilani have about 300,000 years of independent
evolution in different planetary environments, there should be signifi-
cant genetic differences, although as far as I know these differences
have never been described in any detail in Traveller material.

And are not most citizens of the Imperium descended from both Vilani and Solomani, or are most people 'purebloods' ?

When Solomani and Vilani encountered each other for the first time,
the Solomani inhabited a single planet and the Vilani inhabited seve-
ral thousand planets. Therefore I think that the huge majority of hu-
maniti is of more or less pure Vilani stock, there simply were hardly
enough Solomani around to influence the genetics of the entire spe-
cies very much. Moreover, much of the time the Solomani preferred
to keep some distance from the Vilani culture by remaining separate
instead of becoming integrated.

 

[steelbrok]

So:

Solomani - Human
Vilani - Elf
Geonee - Dwarf
Suerrat? - Hobbit
Answerin? - Orc

 

[SJE]

Well the Darrians are the Space Elves - just look at the cover art!

 

[2330ADUSA1]

LMAO I always pictured Vilani as looking like ...Frenchmen...with those pastie white pointy features :lol:

Penn

 

[2330ADUSA1]

LOL honestly I have always defined Vilani as being taller than normal/average humans, and leaner body mass with a lighter skin color as well (Almost pastie white in color). I also give them black hair and black eyes, with pointy facial features as well. I always pictured them as having a society like that of the French Court before the French Revolution..."Let them eat Cake"...!

Penn

 

[GypsyComet]

Except that their native star is brighter than Sol. The Vilani have as much skin tone variation as Terrans, and supposedly get even darker than Terrans do.

As much as the Solomani like to crow about being the original branch of Humaniti, the numbers make it clear that the Vilani are the current genetic baseline, muddied as it may be. Several branches of Humaniti are capable of interbreeding, and the Vilani and Solomani occupy the center of that group, having already interbred extensively. Canon and near-Canon tell us that the Zhodani, Darrians, Yileans, Vlazhdumecta, and several others are part of the group, with the Yileans almost entirely subsumed by the Vilani, the Darrians heavily mixed with the Solomani, and large parts of the Vlazhdumecta subsumed by the Zhodani.

Culturally, both the Solomani and the Vilani likely view each other with the same connotations now attached to the term "Eurotrash", at least from their respective bastions of Vland sector and the depths of the Solomani Confed.

 

[Dunia]

According to the DGP module: Vilani & Vargr, the Vilani pureblood male averages about 1.7 meters in height and weighs approximately 70 kg, while their women tends to be about a dm shorter and a few kg lighter.
As they developed under a hot star, Vilani skin averages in light brown with skin tones that can alter towards darker and even black shades (as well as their hair colours). Eyes vary between gold and gray.
Vilani tend to have fine features, which includes thin lips, narrow, graceful noses etc. many consider Vilani women to be quite beautiful, even exotic.

Taken from Vilani & Vargr, page 2.

 

[Dunia]

Canon and near-Canon tell us that the Zhodani, Darrians, Yileans, Vlazhdumecta, and several others are part of the group, with the Yileans almost entirely subsumed by the Vilani, the Darrians heavily mixed with the Solomani, and large parts of the Vlazhdumecta subsumed by the Zhodani.

where can I find data on this?

 

[rust]

where can I find data on this?

A good source for many (but not all) of the subspecies of
humaniti is the GURPS Traveller Humaniti supplement.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Yileans are covered in the GURPS Humaniti book. What is left of their genetic base is out beyond the Julian Protectorate, as the Yileans are the people of the Gashikan Empire. Their culture survived the Vilani influx during the later Ziru Sirka and into the Ramshackle Empire because they were so far out and apparently off the Shadow Emperor's maps, but the secret bureau colonization of the area did dilute the Yilean genetic lines to near extinction.

The Vlazhdumecta get very little coverage, appearing as a paragraph in the original Zhodani module and getting no expansion of that in either the GURPS or Mongoose coverage. Located on the spin-rimward frontier of the early Zhodani Consulate, they were handed jump drive by the Zhodani and promptly created an extensive colonization and trade "empire" of their own beyond the Consulate border. The Zhodani, being big proponents of both slow growth and well-ordered borders, grew alarmed by this and squashed the trade empire of the Vlazhdumecta by annexing the homeworld and any other worlds they could reach. The Vlazhdumecta were, according the official sources, absorbed into the Zhodani populations and vanished as a race.

Unofficially, large populations of Vlazhdumecta remain in Afachtiabr and Yiklerzhdanz sectors and influence the politics of the area.

 

[Hans Rancke]

Canon and near-Canon tell us that the Zhodani, Darrians, Yileans, Vlazhdumecta, and several others are part of the group, with the Yileans almost entirely subsumed by the Vilani, the Darrians heavily mixed with the Solomani, and large parts of the Vlazhdumecta subsumed by the Zhodani.

where can I find data on this?

A lot of the information has been entered on the Traveller wiki. However, be warned that the cross-references are in a bit of a muddle and that some of the information is missing and some is non-canonical.


Hans

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Another point is that just because they are stated as being interfertile with Solomani doesn't mean that they are AS fertile as a Solomani couple.

Subspecies, while still being interfertile are often NOT as fertile as two beings from the same subspecies.

So a mixed Solomani-Vilani couple might have a much harder time becoming pregnant compared to their Soli-Soli neighbors. Their mixed blood offspring would be more interfertile with both Solomani and Vilani, but still not as interfertile as pure blood parents.

 

[GypsyComet]

Subspecies, while still being interfertile are often NOT as fertile as two beings from the same subspecies.

Certainly the interfertility amongst the branches of Humaniti is more complex than a simple yes or no.

It has been established that Imperial Humaniti is a broad mixture of mostly Terran and Vilani with extensive interbreeding. They dominate due to the reaches of the first two empires (the Terrans got all the way to Julian space and the Spinward Marches), and due to a number of the other branches of Humanity in the Imperial region *not* being interfertile with either of them. The Geonee and Dynchia are two examples that come to mind, along with the Loeskalth and the Florians, while the Darrians, Yileans, and Vlazhdumecta are all on the record as being broadly interfertile with the Terran/Vilani/Zhodani baseline. Most of the others are covered by GURPS, which (to some people) means that data is not sufficiently Canon to make an argument with.

 

[Hans Rancke]

A question - can you tell the difference between a Vilani and a Solomani just by looking at them? And is there difference genetic (only Vilani have green hair and mauve eye colour, Solomani dont) or is it just cultural - only Vilani wear mumu's and berets?

Since Solomani and Vilani have about 300,000 years of independent evolution in different planetary environments, there should be significant genetic differences, although as far as I know these differences have never been described in any detail in Traveller material.

It's mentioned in Vilani & Vargr. There are differences at the genetic level that can be detected by a blood test. The most significant difference is probably the Vilani Longevity Gene. There are also some cosmetic differences, but they overlap. Some Vilani can't be mistaken for Solomani and vice versa, but a lot can.

And are not most citizens of the Imperium descended from both Vilani and Solomani, or are most people 'purebloods' ?

When Solomani and Vilani encountered each other for the first time, the Solomani inhabited a single planet and the Vilani inhabited several thousand planets. Therefore I think that the huge majority of humaniti is of more or less pure Vilani stock, there simply were hardly enough Solomani around to influence the genetics of the entire species very much.

Folklore has it that Solomani plagues killed off enough Vilani to make them (the Solomani) the dominant race on many 1st Imperium worlds. This is untrue. But the Solomani bred faster and interbred a lot with the Vilani.

GT:Humaniti has this to say:

The Imperial Race

In the more than 10,000 years since the Vilani first encountered another Human race, considerable interbreeding has occurred and many Humans can no longer be said to belong to any particular subspecies of Homo sapiens. Some Imperial citizens have taken to identifying with their mixed-ancestry status, considering themselves to be of the "Imperial" race.

Some laymen even use the subspecies name Homo sapiens imperialis. This is, of course, a fallacy, since the Imperium incorporates every concievable mix of human races, from purebreds of every known human race to crossbreeds that are impossible to classify. Indeed, if any "race" can be said to be typically Imperial, it is the vast population of Humans with indeterminate (but thoroughly mixed) ancestry. [H:6]

Moreover, much of the time the Solomani preferred to keep some distance from the Vilani culture by remaining separate instead of becoming integrated.

There's no evidence of that AFAIK. Rather, not very many Vilani emigrated to Terra and Terran colonies, so these worlds remained resevoirs of pure Solomani stock (And so did the ethnic colonies set up during the Diaspora). Only when the Solomani movement arose did they (some of them) begin to segregate themselves deliberately.


Hans