It appears that there was some change made to the travel time somewhere along the way. Encounter 3 begins with 'Seven days later, the Liberty's Fortune pops out of the jumpgate in the Levana system.' An eight day travel time is also mentioned elsewhere prior to this, rather than three, while is the value Anderson gives, at the same time suggesting that a week's leave should cover the trip.
This immediately presents another problem, however, as T'lad'tha is an enormous distance from Epsilon Eridani, a mere stone's throw, relatively speaking, from Llort space, so I can't see it taking another seven days to get there - even two seems rather a lot.
All I can conclude is that somewhere along the way it was decided to change the travel time, but that this didn't get altered all the way through the book. Either way, though, it doesn't seem to make an awful lot of sense.
There are one of two other things in this campaign that don't seem to make a vast amount of sense, especially the hyperspace travel. Take the trip to Quadrant 37 in Module 4. You're told it's a three-jump trip, which makes sense - Epsilon Eridani to Quadrant 14, Q14 to Q24 direct, which is actually not a standard jumproute, but possible within the rules, then Q24 to Q37. But what I don't understand is why the ship has to drop out of hyperspace at each location. In Q14, all that happens is that the ship exits the jumpgate, says hello to some Narns, and then jumps straight back in. If hyperspace travel is simply a case of following beacons, why the need to drop out and then head back in? You will, presumably, end up in exactly the same spot in hyperspace. So, why not just ride from one beacon to the next until arriving in Q37?
I don't know if anyone here has played it, but the demo of the B5: I've Found Her space sim (
http://ifh.firstones.com) has just that interpretation of hyperspace. Beacons are connected by tachyon beams, and these correspond to jump routes to fly from Epsilon Eridani to Q14 you enter hyperspace, lock onto the beacon of your destination, and ride the tachyon beam all the way there. This also explains being 'lost' in hyperspace - if you stray too far from the tachyon beam and lose track of it, and are swept around a bit by hyperspace currents, then your chances of finding the beam again are virtually nil. The problem with this model is that navigating without following established jump routes is impossible, as you haven't a clue where you are. The main rulebook talks about using a grid of detectable beacons to track one's position, implying the ability to detect beacons from some way off. Though this then begs the question of how an Explorer class ship gets lost so easily...on the other hand, Shadow ships travel in hyperspace along very strange vectors, according to Warren Keffer, so perhaps that argument is invalid, if the Explorer unintentionally moved along such a vector, or something similar.
Either way, though, I don't see the need to drop out of hyperspace at each gate.
The only major quibbles I have about this campaign are about the hyperspace travel. There are one or two other odd things (what's a Drazi outpost doing in T'lad'tha, which is the other side of the Narn Regime from the Drazi Freehold?), but they're relatively minor. When I've been through the whole book, I'll probably shoot off an e-mail to the Mongoose guys, asking for clarification on a few things. Glad to know that there seems to be some behind-the-scenes work going on to get the missing map to us.
Oh, and hello, by the way
