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

 

[GypsyComet]

Consider it an "in-universe" source, and inherently unreliable. Problem solved.

Also consider the internal date. Droyne didn't start Chirper Uplift operations until the Rebellion era, IIRC, so Imperial scientists of 1105 would see the two ignoring each other if they ever crossed paths. Also, the idea that all Droyne are *one* species is still a fairly recent idea in-universe, so considering the Chirpers, who are rarely seen much less captured for testing, as a primitive offshoot is right in line.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Every narrator in the extended Traveller universe is unreliable. The only truth is what the referee decides at their table.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Consider it an "in-universe" source, and inherently unreliable. Problem solved.

You mean like everything in Charted Space? Just out of curiosity, is anything written in published material, that is actually an out-of-universe source for Charted Space? In-universe sources are great for story for the players but are bad for the setting when you have no sources that are actually definitive.

As it stands right now, I am not even aware of a definitive source that says the Third Imperium exists. All of the sources seem to be in the form of "historical records". The Referee needs both but is never provided with anything definitive in Charted Space, so instead Referees have to write the entire history of Charted Space on their own. Which would mean that there is no such thing as the OTU, but that is a different conversation.

 

[Whitehart]

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

There are still those anthropologists out there that believe Neanderthals were a h. sapiens subspecies. The two did interbreed greatly, after all. Even if they are separate species by the biological definition, both could be considered “one species” socially or even physically as they are so similar.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Well technically the Third Imperium may never refer to itself in that way in universe. In LBB:4 and LBB:5 it is simply the Imperium...

The Ziru Sirka was the Imperium, it's management tier was replaced by Terrans. Some call this the Rule of Man, some the Seconfd Imperium, to the Vilani it was a continuation of the Ziru Sirka...

Fast forward to when Cleon declared Empire, he used the authority of hisTerran/Solomani descent to claim legitimacy for the incorporation of empire, when the "Third" Imperium eventually absorbed Vland it was effectively a continuation of Empire...

Then there is that strange statement in the original Spinward Marches that refers to the Imperium (not Third Imperium) as the third human empire to rule this region, which is a little odd, since the Ziru Sirka never made it this far...

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are still those anthropologists out there that believe Neanderthals were a h. sapiens subspecies. The two did interbreed greatly, after all. Even if they are separate species by the biological definition, both could be considered “one species” socially or even physically as they are so similar.

There is too much politics in human ancestry to have a reasonable debate. Suffice to say the term species is an often misused term in human evolution since inter-fertility was a feature for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.

At one particular instance it is reasoned that there were several human "species" on Earth at the same time - Erectus, Sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Floresiensis. All bar Floresiensis have a genetic legacy in some human populations in existence today, but the exact genetics are a hidden secret because the genetics that it reveals are politically sensitive. For example scientists have the evidence of erectus/sapiens hybridisation but have obfuscated it by claiming an unknown ghost lineage to avoid a sensitive hypothesis. Note that Erectus is the odd one out in that there is no genetic sequence available for it, the ghost species DNA in modern african populations is often referre to as Erectus, but other papers use the term unknown, ghost or precursor.

European - sapiens+neanderthal
North Africa/Middle East - sapiens + nenderthal + "archaic african" (may be "erectus"
Asian - sapiens + denisovan + neanderthal
Oceania - sapiens + denisovan
African - sapiens + unknown (may be erectus")


Everyone knows it was Anunnaki bioengineering that bred the different human species as workers after all...

 

[CordwainerFish]

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

It also completely discards the obvious parallels between the Droyne and the Pak, from Niven's Known Space. And for what benefit?