Colonization history of the Third Imperium

HalC

Banded Mongoose
Hello Folks,
A while back I started to compare the maps of the First Imperium against that of the Third Imperium. The reason being - is I'm trying to reconcile the history of settlements within the Spinward Marches with the history of the Third Imperium. My reason for doing this is because I want to run a campaign set in the year 99 (Milieu Zero). My problem is trying to "invent" details that are both reasonable, limited by the rules of Jump Transit times between known worlds and destinations, along with having the Third Imperium reach Mora by a given year.

Per the source books, Mora was settled by year 60. Just for giggles, I used the resources of TRAVELLERMAP.COM and checked the distance from Vland to Mora. The answer I got was 92 Parsecs using Jump-2 engines requiring 47 Jumps total. The map for the First Imperium shows that the First Imperium never got too deeply into the Corridor sector, but only colonized Subsectors D and H (and not the entirety of H either).

Ultimately, it may not require the full distance of travel to Mora from Vland, but the distance is not inconsequential. At best - Vland may have settled regions deeper into Corridor, and from there, into Deneb - but I have to ask myself the following question...

What was so important in Mora that could not be had closer in Deneb's sector? Why was the Spinward Marches such a heavy draw on the colonization effort within 60 years of the founding of the Third Imperium, that Vland (and ultimately the Third Imperium) would make a heavy effort to colonize the Spinward Marches in lieu of the Corridor, then Deneb? You would think that the effort would have been to claim territory that was close to Vland, consolidate the colonies, then push the frontier further into Corridor, then further into Deneb, and finally, into Spinward Marches. That expansion would have taken more than a mere 60 years.

For now, I'm re-reading my World Tamer's Handbook (for use with Traveller: The New Era) in an effort to see what is required for a colonization effort. If GURPS TRAVELLER GROUND FORCES postulates that each soldier needs roughly 5 dTons of consumables to wage war, I would hazard a guess that a civilian colonist probably needs twice that to try and set up a permanent colony.

POCKET EMPIRES indicates that it takes roughly 136 years to build a class A starport from a class X starport start point. the time can be halved if extra Resources Units are allocated towards the construction of the Star Port (halving it to 68 years at best).

For now, I'm scratching my head trying to make sense of it so I can build a reasonable background for my campaign set in the year 99 since Emperor Cleon staged his bloodless Coup and announced the birth of the Third Imperium. I want to start the game in the Deneb Sector in the Star Lanes subsector. This way, Mora as a settlement has been around for 39 years, and the presumption is/was - that subsectors nearest to Mora (ie Star Lanes) had to serve as a staging area for ships moving on to Mora.

Using rules I found at Freelance Traveller for converting 1105 UWP to something that could reasonably resemble year 0 UWP's - I found that the Star Lanes subsector is incapable of maintaining a concentrated push into the Spinward Marches. Not only do these worlds have to have a high enough technology for colonization elsewhere, they would likely need a decent star port to operate from. The results I was left with, gave me only two worlds with class A star ports, and the only world with a Population A value that would logically act as a resource for people, are from Askigaak with a TL 6 society. The worlds with a high tech level have either 500,000 population or 60 population (supposedly a teaching facility for starport personnel in 1105 - which doesn't make sense in the year 0).

Hmmm. A puzzle to be sure.
 
You could always write your own take on things, instead of searching for some common ground between all the various publishers.
 
I agree, especially since the 'official' story is so contradictory and not very believable.

The Spinward marches were originally described as a remote frontier sector, and details emerged to show that discovery was relatively recent. A world next to a subsector capital only contacted a few decades ago, subsectors adjacent to the marches which are unknown and ripe for exploration. Just these two points alone make the later vision of a Spinward Marches that has been colonised for over a thousand years completely at odds with original intent.
 
It tends to be a question of resources available to the original colonists, and information.

You can best that the wealthy ones would like to colonize a resource rich system with at least one garden world, and could afford to go further, compared to poor persecuted dissidents, who might be quite satisfied with a breathable atmosphere, water, and cultivatable soil, that's just far enough to be beyond the reach of what they're running from.
 
Sigtrygg said:
I agree, especially since the 'official' story is so contradictory and not very believable.

The Spinward marches were originally described as a remote frontier sector, and details emerged to show that discovery was relatively recent. A world next to a subsector capital only contacted a few decades ago, subsectors adjacent to the marches which are unknown and ripe for exploration. Just these two points alone make the later vision of a Spinward Marches that has been colonised for over a thousand years completely at odds with original intent.

First - let me thank everyone for posting a response. I chose THIS post to respond to as it pretty much is to the point.

Points of interest...

The game IMPERIUM put out by GDW wasn't expressly intended to be a forerunner of history for the Third Imperium. The board game was intended to stand alone as best as I can see. Then came TRAVELLER the role playing game, then came all sorts of goodies over the years, including GURPS INTERSTELLAR WARS supposedly intended to connect the First Imperium history with that of the Third Imperium (plus the rule of man etc).

But here is the problem. WWW.TRAVELLERMAP.COM diddn't exist back in those days, and I largely suspect that the questions I'm asking would have had to have been asked by the designers of the "history" and dealt with long before I started to ask such annoying questions. *teasing grin*

Data point: Distance from Vland to Mora: 92 parsecs.

Distance from Vland to Terra: 219 parsecs

Why on - oops, almost said "Earth" - would the Vilani keep expanding further and further away, thereby increasing their logistical tail towards Terra, when they could have settled in the Corridor section, then the Deneb Section, and finally in the Spinward Marches section?

The map at http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/File:Ziru_Sirka_(-2422).png put up in 2013 (or so it would seem) depicts the so called 1st Imperial boundaries. That graphic shows that the Vilani didn't penetrate all that much in the corridor sector, left Deneb untouched, and most definitely failed to reach the Spinward Marches. I don't know if that map is a "retcon" or was the intended limits of the First Imperium or what - but for now, that's all I have to go by. The Traveller overall history has refugees from Vland reaching as far as the Trojan Reaches. When and why seems unrelated to the discussion at hand with regards to the overall Third Imperium's history of colonization.

So - yeah, the material is poorly thought out out in the sense that there is no overall historical time line that makes HUMAN sense. As I mentioned to my wife - humans in general have a tendency to grab the low lying fruit off the tree before they invest time and/or energy to get the harder to reach fruit. Yes, role playing in a made up universe is an exercise in "fantasy" to be sure - but it is also an effort to role play what is essentially true about human nature transported to that magical time and/or place of the role playing universe. Humanity needs to be "believable" whether in a sword and sandal fantasy, or a Laser Pistol and Star ship fantasy.
t
In the end? I guess the biggest issue is that no one has sat down, used the extant rules regarding ship travel in TRAVELLER, and then determined just how long it would take to transfer a population of people (colonists) from a mother world to a colony - then grow the game universe in an organic fashion. First it was "poof - roll the dice, and this is what it looks like now" - then it was "History? We don't need no stinking history!" to "Ok, history? Let's retcon some things and call it Milieu Zero - but we can't change anything that was published prior to the creation of T4's material - sorry guys - SOL".

American History being what it is - we have the colonization of the East Coast of the United States by England. We have a historical record of people moving inland up to the Ohio Valley. Over time, we had people who wanted to move to the West coast - a process that was accelerated by the claim of gold, and thousands of people heading for the mining colonies to make their wealth. Absent something like that - one of the reasons people might have been in a rush to head for Mora during the year 0 of the Third Imperium's birth, was to get away from what the Third Imperium was becoming out of the ashes of the Sylean Federation (aka Pocket Empires). Perhaps rumors of "Ancients" technology were suppressed - but fueled a strong desire to reach Mora and the Spinward Marches. Instead of a "Gold rush" - maybe it was a determined need to reach some ancient's site before anyone else could get there.

Maybe Emperor Cleon the First, spotted something in the Archives of Vland

(if you don't have Don McKinney's Integrated Timeline TRAVELLER, free of charge - I suggest you get it now. It lists every bit of data Don could pull together from various sources as a historical type document - nicely done. I wish he were still alive today!)

"Cleon Zhunastu spends almost a year on Vland (Vland 1717) studying a variety of topics at the AAB and Vilani Imperial Library. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 75."



In any event, yup. The advice to create my own, and stop letting the odd inconsistencies ruin a good tale is good advice.

I could write up several paragraphs on my first adventure that I ran Saturday evening, but I tend to believe that like poetry, game runs should be kept private. ;)

I must admit however, I'm really intrigued by the two characters - one ex-Ministry of Justice Marshal (Based upon William O'Neil from Outland) and the other based on Susan Turner in JACK REACHER: NEVER LOOK BACK. Between the two of them, they are geared up for detective work, vicious close in hand to hand combat, and in one encounter - one player character had to face a crewman in engineering who was armed with a Plasma Lance welder (think a short short length Light Saber with a duration measured in seconds before the fuel runs out). She ended up putting the crew member wanna be assassin in an arm lock, leveraged his arm into moving in a controlled take down to the deck, where she proceeded to use her hand to good effect against his trachea - funny how losing one's ability to breathe when you think your throat is crushed takes the fight out of you!

Ah well, I won't talk any further on my plans for the campaign. I'm thinking long term here, which is why I wanted to work on the background. Before it was "Every world you visit is in Imperial Space, and an Imperial Member world". Now it is more like Firefly in that just about all of the worlds here are NOT Imperial, there is no XT line around the port - but that it starts/ends at the end of your gang plank. Merge THE PLANET PIRATES with THE SAND PEBBLES with some High Noon or Outland Moments - and with luck, the players won't be too bored.

;)
 
A couple of things to remember about the Vilani. They have been exploring space for a very long time.
Prior to their stagnation following the consolidation wars they were bold adventurers into the unknown, exploders, merchants and later conquerors.

During their early years they explored sublight, they built colonies with no more than sublight ships. Then they discovered jump. Their jump drive wasn't very good, it could move a ship up to a parsec at a time and was fuel hungry, but it allowed the Vilani to expand, explore, exploit, colonise... and contact other races and cultures.

The Vilani contacted many races and cultures, most of which were technologically inferior to the Vilani, but there were exceptions.
The Vilani sometimes encountered a race that was far above them technologically, but lacking one crucial tech - jump drive. So the Vilani, observed, catalogued, quarantined and in some cases exterminated these races - the knowledge of this was locked away in secret Vilani depositories along with information gleaned from alien ruins and the like. Then there was the Geonee. Another race of transplanted humans that also had jump 1 but a mush smaller empire. The Vilani and the Geonee were suspicious of each other and events lead to war, which the more numerous Vilani were able to win, the Geonee reduced to minor status and the spectre of racial superiority amongst humanity raising its ugly head once again

The Vilani plied space for several thousand years before they 'discovered' jump 2 drive (MWM has revealed the back story to this) and almost immediately began the consolidation wars that would last a thousand years. They had built their empire following jump 1 routes, the odd calibration point and deep space objects allowing for some crossing of 2 pc gaps. Note that there were Vilani from the exploration to consolidation wars era who made it to the Marches.

The Vilani empire didn't push into Deneb and the marches for two reasons, one autographical -Corridor- and the other lupine. The Vargr were a threat to the Vilani, they were raiders, traders, scavengers, pillagers, mercenaries and they were in some instances more technologically advanced. Distant Vilani provincial governors would hire Vargr mercs to keep the peace, bribe other Vargr groups to stay away.
 
HalC said:
Gonna have to keep in mind the Vargr as a potential threat in future games. :)

I wonder if there’s a canonical timeline or map of the growth of Vargr Extents over the same period you’re examining here. Might give some insight into Imperial expansion in the area, or at least a few solid adventure/campaign hooks.
 
NOLATrav said:
HalC said:
Gonna have to keep in mind the Vargr as a potential threat in future games. :)

I wonder if there’s a canonical timeline or map of the growth of Vargr Extents over the same period you’re examining here. Might give some insight into Imperial expansion in the area, or at least a few solid adventure/campaign hooks.

Per TravellerIntegratedTimeline by Don McKinney, it states the following:

"-2800 c Dissident Vilani flee the Ziru Sirka to settle in Corridor and Deneb Sectors. Vilani and Vargr, the Coreward Races, DGP, 1990, p. 20."

So that makes it that the subsectors will likely have Vargr settlements earlier on - since the subsectors are being "fled to" nearly 3,000 years prior to the founding of the Third Imperium.

"-2400 c Vargr bands begin to move into the Corridor Sector. Planetary Survey 5 - Tobibak, SJG, 2001, p. 05."

The material from SJGames tends to be viewed as "alternate Universe" material for many, me? I accept it for those things that predate the "Divergence Event" where it stops being the Official Traveller History, and becomes the alternate History. The only time I really discard SJGames material is when/where it contradicts things BADLY or where subsequent material published in T5 contradicts it. Your miles may vary however. ;)

The more I read the material regarding "Corridor" in the TravellerIntegratedTimeline source book, the more I see it answers the question as to why the Vilani avoided going through the Corridor and Deneb sectors. As early as -2400 before the founding of the Third Imperium, the Vilani were experiencing quite a few "Raids". There is one minor inconsistency in all of this though...

When you have to fight a war of any kind, the length of your supply line matters. Corridor campaigns would have been no less different than the wars of consolidation in that territory gains would have been the primary goal. Why? If your core "Homeworld" sector is experiencing raids, wouldn't you make it a point to get a buffer zone between your vulnerable home world subsectors and that of the raiders? If you have to devote military resources to keep the raiders in check - you have sufficient resources closer to home to invest in counter raids. If you are engaging in scouting the enemy positions, you are also scouting the various star systems in the more "traditional" sense of learning what is where, and what is worth taking and holding.

I have to wonder - from my vague recollections, it seemed as though the Vargr were "handicapped" in that they couldn't unite under one unifying government for any real length of time. I wonder if that would have had any impact overall in the "grand scheme of things". Granted, their raids would have been a problem, and if it were sufficiently a problem as to halt all expansion in that general direction, that would imply that they were seen as a MAJOR menace at that point in time. Perhaps their "Raids" weren't actual territory grabbing raids, but they would have destabilized trade and freedom of movement to where "something has to be done" kind of thing. Gonna ponder that one for a bit...

These two things do NOT make sense. :(

"-2219 With Terran forces within 20 parsecs of Vland (Vland 1717), the Igsiirdi send word for all remaining provincial governors to cease hostilities. Vilani and Vargr, the Coreward Races, DGP, 1990, p. 20."

"-2219 Nth Interstellar War ends in the collapse of the Vilani Empire, with Terran Confederation forces having reached as deep as Massilia sector. Supplement 08 - Library Data (A-M), GDW, 1981, p. 10, 28."

The reason they seem contradictory is because the Terran Forces get within 20 parsecs of Vland/Vland. 20 parsecs is 2 subsector's worth of "height" (each subsector being 8 parsecs wide by 10 parsecs deep). Vland is 2 full sectors coreward from Massilia, which means for the Terran confederation forces to be within 2 subsectors reach of Vland/Vland 1717, they would have been likely somewhere around 1737, placing that somewhere in Nulisad Subsector. Clearly, that is further from Terra than is Massilia.

Much of what I was able to search on the key word "Vargr" didn't really turn up much more that was pertinent to the question of Vargr settelment of the Deneb and/or Corridor subsectors. What is perhaps of minor annoyance is the fact that by 1105 - Corridor and Deneb are fated to become fully Imperial, without saying much more on the matter. What is the percentage of population of those sophants who are Vargr as opposed to Human based? <shrug>

When I ran my first "campaign" set in they year 99, the players were jumping three times a month - with intent to try and reach Mora as quickly as possible. At 47 jumps required, they would require about 16 months transit time. Roughly 6 months into their transits - they had a bomb go off in their Jump Drive, disabling it for nearly 4 weeks. They were frantically looking for any Class A starport capable of helping to repair their ship. THey had "jury rigged repairs" - but weren't certain how well the repairs would hold up.

Now the reason I mention this is simple enough...

For the Vargr to raid into First Imperium's territory, they would have required worlds that had Star-port based capabilities necessary for repairs. Now, unless you can have small ships (raiders) who can be met by a space going space dock, they are going to need starports for not only repairs, but also for supplies and possibly R&R functionality. I think what I will likely do is set up some "garden worlds" capable of functioning as bases - having been temporary bases that later on were either abandoned, or were forcefully destroyed by anti-raiding First Imperium ships. Over time, the Vargr retreated, and if any worlds were "Forgotten" or what have you, those worlds would later become overrun with human settlers in the Third Imperium.

For now - that seems to be about all I can ascertain with respect to the Vargr in those two sectors. :(

EDIT: For what it is worth, I was able to play with TRAVELLERMAP.COM and download the source file data for Milieu Zero as well as for 1105 for the Corridor Sector. What I did next was to import both Milieu Zero census data (First Census) along with the Second Census data (year 1105) onto one sheet where I could have the First Survey information in the first columns (Columns A through P and the second survey in columns S through AE. Then I did a comparison between the UWP values on a one for one basis so I could determine what changed and by how much.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Corridor Sector is sufficiently different from the 1107 data that I likely can use it unmodified (I thought I'd have to work on each entry and "degrade" it from the 1107 values. Truth is - there is no FIRST SURVEY file available for Deneb or Spinward Marches, so I have to degrade those from their 1107 values to their year 0 entries. The nice thing is, I can compare the rules I got from Freelance Traveller against what is in the First Survey values for Corridor Sector. For those interested in the rules I'm talking about, they're at Freelance Traveller (see link below).

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/convert/1100to0.html

In all, the project moves a wee bit at a time...

:)
 
The Vargr don't strike me as the type to take logistics seriously, and I'm going to guess the Vilani didn't have local planetary defence systems.
 
Condottiere said:
The Vargr don't strike me as the type to take logistics seriously, and I'm going to guess the Vilani didn't have local planetary defence systems.

Valid considerations or questions to ask...

If that observation were true - one would wonder how the Vargr Extant functions as it does - along with the overall size it has become. In addition, the Vilani may not have had planetary defense systems, but that doesn't match the background information available on the Vilani. They had engaged in wars of conquest, and were still conversant with how to wage interstellar war. Bear in mind too, that the Vargr issue precedes the issues they would later have with Humans a sector that was about 152 parsecs distant.

Not that I put too much credence in the board game IMPERIUM - planetary defense systems were common on those worlds held by the Imperials. In all? I suspect that while a possibility, it isn't one I'd give too high a probability of being correct.
 
Condottiere said:
The Vargr don't strike me as the type to take logistics seriously, and I'm going to guess the Vilani didn't have local planetary defence systems.

Resulting in quite a porous border region I would imagine. I'll bet the Extents is littered with lost Vilani colonies and outposts, probably some that have survived into the 1100's, much the same way we accept Vargr populations on Imperial worlds.
 
With the Vargr, it's probably trial and error, and survival of the fittest and/or luckiest.

And each generation has to relearn those lessons.

They're Moties.
 
Condottiere said:
With the Vargr, it's probably trial and error, and survival of the fittest and/or luckiest.

And each generation has to relearn those lessons.

They're Moties.

What are those things in 2300 AD that are dumb until threatened, smart during the crisis, and dumb again? The Vargr and that race seem to occupy the same niche storytelling wise.
 
If you look at the SF material that inspired Traveller colonisation tended to be driven by private enterprise - traders forging new trade routes, idealists and heretics refugees seeking new worlds to settle etc.
and

Only when something worth absorbing has been established do empire's move in.

So Mora does not need to have been established by the Imperium in year 60 - it can have started as a trade station, a refuge for exiles etc etc.
 
If you look at the SF material that inspired Traveller colonisation tended to be driven by private enterprise - traders forging new trade routes, idealists and heretics refugees seeking new worlds to settle etc.
and

Only when something worth absorbing has been established do empire's move in.

So Mora does not need to have been established by the Imperium in year 60 - it can have started as a trade station, a refuge for exiles etc etc.
 
RogerMc said:
If you look at the SF material that inspired Traveller colonisation tended to be driven by private enterprise - traders forging new trade routes, idealists and heretics refugees seeking new worlds to settle etc.
and

Only when something worth absorbing has been established do empire's move in.

So Mora does not need to have been established by the Imperium in year 60 - it can have started as a trade station, a refuge for exiles etc etc.

Per Traveller's Wiki...

"Mora was settled in 60 by Ling-Standard Products in order to exploit its riches. Over the years it grew into a thriving trade centre, building new ships, overhauling old ones, and producing other manufactured goods on the side. Sitting astride the trade routes to the Sword Worlds and later the Darrians, Mora became known as the "Gateway to the Marches"."

The problem remains the same either way...

Why is Mora being settled over those worlds that are closer. Corporations tend to go for the low hanging fruit as that leads to a better bottom line (ie profit). To involve the corporation in a colonization effort with its own funds, would imply that Ling-Standard products had the money to burn in the year 58 (keep in mind the distance involved here), but also the motivation to do so.

Eventually, Mora would become a major population center, a major administrative center, and so forth. Question is - what? Me? I'm going with the idea that Emperor Cleon noted something important from his Visit to Vland. As a consequence, one of his many projects included a rapid thrust into the Spinward Marches. Was it the information of ancient's sites left unexplored? If so, why not simply go there with expeditions instead of a colonization attempt? Maybe it was a vague but reliable bit of evidence (maybe an artifact?) where the answer was "We just don't know for certain, you may need a base to operate from to find it".

Mora is so far away from the borders of Vland that there would be no economically viable reason to spend resources out there instead of closer to home.

It would be interesting to determine just how expensive it is to actively colonize a world.

Let's keep it simple using the same information as to what happened with Darrian's settlement. Same number of hulls, same number of escorts. How many dTons of "Freight" did the colonists require for its 30,000 people? How large did the ships have to be to transport 30,000 people. Who paid for the hulls and what is the business model required for that model to succeed? What is the profit motive of such a colony to justify that level of expenditure?

It is one thing to write "And they did it, and everyone was prosperous" - it is another thing to say "Ok, how - using only the Traveller mechanics of the rules as written?"

;)


OOpsie - forgot to add this last thought/Question "Do you mean to tell me that there were not CLOSER worlds within Deneb alone, that could have matched the profitability of Mora in year 60?"
 
Direct and indirect government subsidies can encourage colonization and economic exploitation of fringe territories.

Like tax exemptions.
 
HalC said:
What are those things in 2300 AD that are dumb until threatened, smart during the crisis, and dumb again? The Vargr and that race seem to occupy the same niche storytelling wise.
Those would be the Kafer. It is worth noting that every time their intelligence is stimulated they retain a very small amount of that uplifted Int. Sufficient number of stress situations later and you have a permanently smart Kafer. Kafer leadership is made up of these permanently smart Kafers.
 
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