Droynes outside of Droyne society (M2e)

[Sigtrygg]

Are Chirpers playable?

If a player wanted to play one i would let them. There are enough rules out there to generate them.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I'm sure one of the previous editions had a line about Chirpers being able to cast, and after that being indistiguishable from other Droyne of that cast (think about it, if Chirpers couldn't cast then when Yaskie Baby came back and gave them coyns, they would have ALL remained Chirpers)

Chirpers are the original race - sort of.
Grandfather invented casting and augmented the droyne
At the end of the Ancients war the droyne grandfather abandoned began to lose the ability to enable a successful casting ritual
Droyne worlds that could no longer caste become chirper worlds
Grandfather returmed and modified the castiing ritual, introducing coyns, which allowed droyne to once again complete the ritual.

Spoiler: what could have been and may still come to pass

One of the things Don and I discussed was the meta of the casting ritual:
it originally involved grandfather, psionics and genetic modification
the ability was taught but without grandfather became less and less successful over time
the coyne ritual was introduced by grandfather as a psionic focus

 

[Sigtrygg]

Chirpers are apparently non-sentient (even though the first one presented in Research Station can talk...)

This is another bit of fanon that is not canon, or rather it is people unaware of previous canon just reading current library data and think they are being told truths...
Chirpers are fully sentient. Probably worth mentioning that the 1105 start date means that Research Station Gamma has not happened yet, and that discoveries about the droyne and chirper relationship are made during the 1105->1120 era.

It could even by PC scientists that make the discoveries

 

[Sigtrygg]

CT AM had this to say:

"Chirpers: If Droyne do not caste, they do continue some development, though much more slowly. Sexual differences eventually emerge, but casteless Droyne tend to remain small and semi-intelligent and continue to resemble immature Droyne in appearance. Those Droyne groups which have lost the ability to caste (and these are fairly common) generally live as primitives.

Chirper. Semi-intelligent minor race native to many worlds in and outside the Imperium. Chirpers are omnivore/gatherers in the 25 kilogram mass
range. They have vestigial wings (chirpers on some small worlds can fly short distances) and opposable thumbs. Living in small groups with limited social organization, they follow age-old patterns of foraging for fruits and berries, supplementing their diet with occasional small animals which
they catch and kill with crude tools.
Chirper intelligence is at the low end of the scale and ranges from a few points above animal levels to a few points below average human.
Chirpers are named for the sharp, bird-like chirp which characterizes their speech. They can learn human speech, often handling a large vocabulary with ease, but their conversation retains the chirping overtones.
Chirpers are recognized by the Imperial authorities as intelligent and, as such, enjoy the protections and responsibilities of intelligent species within the Imperium. Most chirpers live in established reservations with only limited intercourse with humans.

Note that this AM came out long after Research Station Gamma and Secret of the Ancients, so the truth was already known to Traveller players and referees, but in game the Secret of the Ancients is safe and Imperial scientists are still studying Droyne and chirpers.

 

[Terry Mixon]

When was Bu cast out of the family?

No clue of his history. All I can say for sure is that he is roaming about, sane, well educated, intelligent, and seemingly well adjusted. That’s an example of a droyne out and about town in imperial society.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chirpers are the original race - sort of.
Grandfather invented casting and augmented the droyne
At the end of the Ancients war the droyne grandfather abandoned began to lose the ability to enable a successful casting ritual
Droyne worlds that could no longer caste become chirper worlds
Grandfather returmed and modified the castiing ritual, introducing coyns, which allowed droyne to once again complete the ritual.

Spoiler: what could have been and may still come to pass

One of the things Don and I discussed was the meta of the casting ritual:
it originally involved grandfather, psionics and genetic modification
the ability was taught but without grandfather became less and less successful over time
the coyne ritual was introduced by grandfather as a psionic focus

While that might be true in previous canon, the Ancients books in Mongoose have Grandfather emerging in an advanced society of Droyne. According to Wrath of the Ancients, the Droyne were TL10 when Grandfather came onto the scene.

I realize this is the point for the inevitable comments about previous canon and fanon and so on, but this is what Mongoose has done and is it their canon. For those playing this game that want to use the Droyne, it follows we use their canon. Others can do as they please, of course.

 

[Sigtrygg]

No clue of his history. All I can say for sure is that he is roaming about, sane, well educated, intelligent, and seemingly well adjusted. That’s an example of a droyne out and about town in imperial society.

So he may not have been cast out of his family, just decided to go wandering.

 

[Terry Mixon]

So he may not have been cast out of his family, just decided to go wandering.

It is indeed possible.

 

[Sigtrygg]

While that might be true in previous canon, the Ancients books in Mongoose have Grandfather emerging in an advanced society of Droyne. According to Wrath of the Ancients, the Droyne were TL10 when Grandfather came onto the scene.

The less said about Mongoose re-write of canon by authors who didn't study previous canon well enough the better. But I digress.

For example Gareth has an interesting take on "sons" - according to canon he had 20 but according to Gareth 50 survived...
ok he does say Grandfather had 20, and each of those had around 20 so 1 becomes 20 becomes ~ 400 and he counts all these as "sons".

Nothing in canon suggests grandfather cloned himself to make his sons, Gareth introduces this and MJD runs with it.

The chirper/droyne were TL10 when grandfather was born, bothe agree on that. His great contribution to the Droyne was genetically uplifiting them via the casting ritual he invented, this is not mentioned in the adventure, it doesn't go into chirper/droyne history in the detail that CT and GT provide. Had Don's Droyne Mongoose Alien book ever reached print it would have retained this, at least the drafts I saw still had it in.

I realize this is the point for the inevitable comments about previous canon and fanon and so on, but this is what Mongoose has done and is it their canon.

Lol, I am nothing if not predictable.

There isn't really a conflict, Gareth doesn't mention much about droyne history so the previous canon is still the best guide.

For those playing this game that want to use the Droyne, it follows we use their canon. Others can do as they please, of course.

Which is one of the reasons I don;t use much MgT "canon" before checking with CT, GT, MT, TNE... if the MgT canon doesn't directly overwrite anything than previous canon is good to go.

 

[rinku]

Most of everything happened so long ago, and Grandfather's actions are so infrequent that any history is largely academic. The previous canon that's most relevant are those that deal with character generation and how Droyne and Chirpers operate here and now.

Given that pockets of Droyne could be found anywhere, and hundreds of thousands of years is more than enough time for local conditions to speciate creatures, it's not impossible that rare varieties of Chirper might have developed somewhere, although the deus ex machina of Grandfather always looms large. Maybe a heavyworld Chirper offends him and those planets get blown up.

Or, those sorts of experiments were done well before they even started meddling with other creatures and he sees no need for such things (and so those planets get blown up).

 

[GypsyComet]

Per CT, Grandfather emerged from a Droyne species who already differentiated by caste. He probably fiddled with that process, so both approaches can be valid to some extent.

Also, the Mongoose "Secret of the Ancients" tells us some important things about Grandfather and his Sons. The first and foremost: Grandfather LIES like a rug, and so do his kids. Any information learned from him is therefore suspect.

 

[rinku]

Indeed. And any information that comes from other sources is as fragmentary as any other historical or archaeological record.

 

[boggo2300]

just looked at Aliens of Charted Space 2 and in MGT Droyne and Chirpers are separate species, with a common ancestor, not a huge fan of this as it removes some of the Alien Kookiness and makes the relationship Homo-Sapiens to Homo-Neanderthalis