Imperial Regional Cultures and Books Detailing Them: Continuation Thread

[-Daniel-]

At a predetermined time the machines triggered the banking collapse, and in the resulting confusion transferred their minds to newly built bodies, and then they left. [SNIP] It has even been suggested that they hid their presence and still walk among us.

Now this would be a novel I would love to read. A Sci-Fi version of 'Interview with a Vampire'. An AI tells the story from their point of view.

Not saying it has to be the real answer, just that it would be a fun read in my opinion.

 

[CordwainerFish]

You do realize that there are two worlds within Imperial space whose names are properly pronounced as noted above, both of which would require an Imperial Knight as representative to the world:

I used to perform this in public.

 

[Sigtrygg]

My best understanding is that the "Feudal" part has to do with the fact that the entire system is ultimately overseen by an appointed hereditary Noble Aristocracy, but rather than an agrarian system like the Medieval world, the vows per feodum are between worlds and the Imperial system to guarantee free-trade and provide raw-resources, industrial production, and markets to the Megacorporations who are headed by those nobles, and whose system is enforced by the upper-level commanders of the Imperial Fleet, all of whom are also Imperial Nobles within the system of allegiances and loyalties. Those worlds have appointed Imperial Knights who act as ambassadors to those worlds, and who also have one or more Imperial Landed Nobles appointed for them to represent them on the Interstellar Scale at the Subsector, Sector, and Imperial (Moot) levels based on their level of importance and input into the Imperial system (note that most worlds do not have an Imperial Noble, only an Imperial Knight - they are not "important enough" to merit a Noble representative off-world).

I think of it as akin to organised crime.

The Emperor is the Don, they grant status to those that deserve it, but can take it away just as quickly. The Emperor was originally a CEO of a corporation and also held high political office within the Sylean Federation, the original nobility were all "made men".

 

[Sigtrygg]

I don't want to hear about that! Those Europeans couldn't even keep their language the same from one side of the street to the other

I was talking about culture. The Vikings who settled in Normandy diverged from their Scandinavian roots in favor of local Frankish culture pretty quickly. And the Normans who conquered England got absorbed by the local Anglo-Saxon culture, especially once they stopped having land holdings in France. And neither of them were much like the Vikings (Varangians) who mingled with the Slavs to form the Rus.

Languages are a lot more persistently influential than most other cultural elements.

It took several decades after losing their french holdings for the norman rulers of England to become anglicised, the process having begun almost as soon as the 1066 conquest was complete, but then Angles, Saxons, Danes and Jutes were only a small part of the population post Roman abandonment and yet their cultural synthesis became dominant. It didn't take long in the scheme of things to absorb the Normans into the Anglo Saxon culture which a few centuries later would be called English. But I get your point.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Yeah, the Norman branch of the Norse tree had a way of going native - we have a letter from one Norman complaining about how poorly his sons spoke Norse and saying he was sending them back to the old sod for a while to get back in touch with their roots. And if some Saxon nobles hadn't risen against William a decade or so after the Conquest, the Anglo-Norman court would have probably ended up speaking English instead of keeping Norman French.

To be fair there were never enough Normans for anything other than absorption into the native culture, it was just surprising how quickly the Normans went native.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Speaking of linguistics, find out what terms the Vilani adopted for Terran culinary culture.

If it turns out to be completely Terran words, then it means the Terrans are the Normans.

Well the official language of the Third Imperium is galanglic...

 

[Sigtrygg]

Now this would be a novel I would love to read. A Sci-Fi version of 'Interview with a Vampire'. An AI tells the story from their point of view.

Not saying it has to be the real answer, just that it would be a fun read in my opinion.

There are a few more pages. I began with the first starfarers, the real secret of the ancients comes next, the the hidden history of the Vilani, and finally the rise of the machines and the Long Night.

There have to be some things behind the curtain, any player can read the Traveller wiki and the Twilight's Peak reveal and original Secret of the Ancients ruined the suspense. So there has to be something else.

 

[actionman]

I have always been a bit leery of the idea that the Solomani spread in a meaningful way across the Imperium in the 400 or so years that it took for the Rule of Man to collapse. Yes, Earth has teeming billions, but that's a lot of space to spread out to.

I tend to think of the Soloman influence as similiar to the Vikings. Vikings settled in England, Russia, France, and elsewhere. Mostly as boss types. That certainly had some influence. But, for the most part, they were absorbed by the local cultures. The Varangian Rus and the Normans aren't much alike. And the Anglo-Normans diverged from the Franco-Normans pretty quickly. And the local cultures dominate the fusion in each place.

I completely agree.

I've always considered the Solomani in the Imperium to be a little like the British in India or the Romans in Britain. They brought profound changes and new technologies, and they governed for a few centuries, but they were far too few, far far too few, to ever change the demographics of the former worlds of the Ziru Sirka. In the centuries of the Long Night, I think the Solomani would have disappeared as distinct populations on Vilani majority worlds, and where Solomani had large enough populations to remain distinct despite intermixing and assimilation, cultural and linguistic drift as well as founder effects would make them unrecognizable to the Solomani of the Sphere and unrecognizable to remnant Solomani populations on other future Imperial worlds. It would be like the Ptolemies telling Greeks from Athens "oh yeah, we're Greek" after centuries of being in Egypt or Irish-Americans who haven't even heard news from Ireland in 1000 years claiming to be Irish.

In the Third Imperium's case, one of those remnant Solomani populations founded a new empire, ruling over Vilani populated worlds. The cycle would repeat, with remnant-Solomani culture and population being spread even more thinly.

These are important reasons as to why I think innovation-averse Vilani culture would be dominant in the Third Imperium, and why I find it highly implausible that the Solomani Sphere would lag behind the Third Imperium in technological advancement.

 

[MasterGwydion]

But we do not have details of what happened during the Long Night (or during the latter years of the Rule of Man, for that matter), just some general statements as to its overall character, and some notes concerning several of the small multiword polities that existed at one time or another during the period. It is entirely possible that rapid technological advancement and innovation without sufficient concern for the long-term ramifications of what the interaction of the multiplicity of those innovations would unleash (either as a "mini-singularity", or perhaps just as old-fashioned human foolishness and corruption) may have actually led to societal collapses from which those polities needed to rebuild. There is nothing that says that the technological road of progress will be continuous and/or unbroken (or even that it won't come to a catastrophic end from which one needs to pick up the pieces).

The official statement is that the collapse of the Rule of Man was initiated due to a Financial Crisis brought about by a Banking Issue between the Central and Antares Branch Banks. But was that all, or was there more to the story, perhaps something darker that is less well-known or publicized that is buried in the murky records detailing the history as the situation evolved? Why don't Computers and AI (even non-sentient/heuristic AI) play a much greater role in the Third Imperium throughout its history at all prior TLs (from Cleon I to the present)? Why is there relatively so little automation running societies? Why do people still work jobs that could easily be automated and/or handed over to a Heuristic-AI system? What other technologies can one imagine should be in evidence in the Third Imperium (based on our modern 21st Century projection of things), but are mysteriously absent? Is the knowledge available, but kept carefully sequestered in top-secret Imperial archives and facilities for those with a "need to know"?

Perhaps that is the reason for the slow but conservative and measured innovation and change evidenced in the Third Imperium: The mixture of Solomani and Vilani cultural influence and lessons from history teaching the wisdom of the need for balance between innovation and progress on the one hand, versus measuring and understanding the implications of that progress before it is introduced wholesale into the larger society and culture at large.



Yes. Consider the above, and ask how much of the Reaver story is actually definitely known from this period when much historical knowledge was apparently lost (suppressed? / rewritten?)? How much is fact, how much is half-truth, how much is things-you-don't-really-want-to-find-out?

As a player at a table, this sounds awesome! As a Referee reading about the official setting, I want the real answer. I can change it if I want to, but give Me what actually happened. Without that, there is no OTU.

 

[WHULorigan]

You do realize that there are two worlds within Imperial space whose names are properly pronounced as noted above, both of which would require an Imperial Knight as representative to the world:

Ni (Antares 0939)
Nii (Vland 2508)

And since Marc Miller had T5 Noble Patent Cards made for all the Imperial Worlds of Charted Space based on the Traveller Map T5 Noble Extensions, and gave them out to T5 Kickstarter supporters, FFE product purchasers, and COTI Moot members as long as his supply lasted, there are a Knight of Ni and a Knight of Nii somewhere out there among the Traveller community. . .

I wonder if the former orbits the star "Peng", and the latter orbits the star "Wom"?

 

[Sigtrygg]

As a player at a table, this sounds awesome! As a Referee reading about the official setting, I want the real answer. I can change it if I want to, but give Me what actually happened. Without that, there is no OTU.

Your players will know it if it is written in a book.
The Alsan not being a major race was not written down originally, but was hinted at. GDW hinted at a lot of thngs and left it to referees to make stuff up. The collapse of the Imperium was foreshadowed from very early on.

The more setting secrets are revealed the more boring the setting becomes.

 

[Jame Rowe]

The Ancients wouldn't get out of bed without TL28+ gizmos...

So bioengineering a human would be easy!

 

[Sigtrygg]

These are important reasons as to why I think innovation-averse Vilani culture would be dominant in the Third Imperium, and why I find it highly implausible that the Solomani Sphere would lag behind the Third Imperium in technological advancement.

Innovation-averse Vilani would be the least likely to survive. Vilani who returned to their ancestor's drive for innovation, exploration and expansion would be most likely to rebuild.

Once again, the majority of the Solomani Sphere worlds had never been part of the Ziru Sirka or the RoM that followed. Individual Terran countries and companies explored, colonised and settled in the opposite direction to the Imperium. The Sylean Solomani may have claimed a unified Solomani Sphere as their birthright, but the truth was the Terrans didn't even call themselves Solomani. The Solomani Sphere is another fiction, the Solomani Confederation is of no concern to Terrans settled far to Rimward. It is an Imperial conceit that the Terrans even want to rule the Third Imperium.

By the way according to the wiki Syleans make up the majority of the population of Sylea:

"Eighty billion sentients inhabit Capital, mostly members of Humaniti, a number which has remained fairly constant through the entire Third Imperium.

• Of these, thirty-six percent are primarily racial Vilani, eleven percent are Solomani and fifty percent are native Syleans, and the remaining three percent consists of a mixture of various human and non-human minor races.
  • 50% Native Sylean
  • 36% Vilani
  • 11% Solomani
  • 3% A mixture of various human and non-human minor races"

 

[Sigtrygg]

So bioengineering a human would be easy!

Well the Imperium do it so yes.

 

[-Daniel-]

The more setting secrets are revealed the more boring the setting becomes.

I agree 100%. The need to remove all mystery and unknown from a setting is a mistake in my opinion. And no, a GM does not need to know 100% of everything in a setting in order to run a great game either.

 

[Condottiere]

All innovative native Vilani are transported to frontier colonies.

 

[actionman]

Innovation-averse Vilani would be the least likely to survive. Vilani who returned to their ancestor's drive for innovation, exploration and expansion would be most likely to rebuild.

Once again, the majority of the Solomani Sphere worlds had never been part of the Ziru Sirka or the RoM that followed. Individual Terran countries and companies explored, colonised and settled in the opposite direction to the Imperium. The Sylean Solomani may have claimed a unified Solomani Sphere as their birthright, but the truth was the Terrans didn't even call themselves Solomani. The Solomani Sphere is another fiction, the Solomani Confederation is of no concern to Terrans settled far to Rimward. It is an Imperial conceit that the Terrans even want to rule the Third Imperium.

By the way according to the wiki Syleans make up the majority of the population of Sylea:

"Eighty billion sentients inhabit Capital, mostly members of Humaniti, a number which has remained fairly constant through the entire Third Imperium.

• Of these, thirty-six percent are primarily racial Vilani, eleven percent are Solomani and fifty percent are native Syleans, and the remaining three percent consists of a mixture of various human and non-human minor races.
  • 50% Native Sylean
  • 36% Vilani
  • 11% Solomani
  • 3% A mixture of various human and non-human minor races"

Once again, the majority of the Solomani Sphere worlds had never been part of the Ziru Sirka or the RoM that followed. Individual Terran countries and companies explored, colonised and settled in the opposite direction to the Imperium. The Sylean Solomani may have claimed a unified Solomani Sphere as their birthright, but the truth was the Terrans didn't even call themselves Solomani. The Solomani Sphere is another fiction, the Solomani Confederation is of no concern to Terrans settled far to Rimward. It is an Imperial conceit that the Terrans even want to rule the Third Imperium.

I'm not sure how this paragraph relates to my post.

Solomani Sphere worlds that were never part of the Ziru Sirka / Rule of Man / Third Imperium should've continued to advance technologically, but they're still lagging behind half of Charted Space's empires for some implausible reason.

Maybe the Terrans of Terra didn't refer to themselves as Solomani until centuries later, but the Terran-descended humans of the Sphere started to refer to themselves as Solomani after Admiral Estigarribia used the word when he declared the Rule of Man.

I'm talking about Mongoose Traveller in the context of possible future Mongoose Traveller books, and the Traveller wiki articles you linked to have no Mongoose sources. I'm only using Mongoose sources. As much as I love the prior editions of Traveller, that's where I'm coming from.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Sadly a lot of Mongoose canon is invented on the spot rather than researched.

 

[actionman]

Sadly a lot of Mongoose canon is invented on the spot rather than researched.

That is very sad, and it bodes very ill for new and old players alike.

 

[Vormaerin]

I'm not sure how this paragraph relates to my post.

Solomani Sphere worlds that were never part of the Ziru Sirka / Rule of Man / Third Imperium should've continued to advance technologically, but they're still lagging behind half of Charted Space's empires for some implausible reason.

Maybe the Terrans of Terra didn't refer to themselves as Solomani until centuries later, but the Terran-descended humans of the Sphere started to refer to themselves as Solomani after Admiral Estigarribia used the word when he declared the Rule of Man.

I'm talking about Mongoose Traveller in the context of possible future Mongoose Traveller books, and the Traveller wiki articles you linked to have no Mongoose sources. I'm only using Mongoose sources. As much as I love the prior editions of Traveller, that's where I'm coming from.

So the answer to your question is... there's no answers. Seriously. Mongoose material is a tiny fraction of the total Charted Space material and something like 3/4 or more of it is just updated versions of previous edition material. Mongoose's signature region is the Trojan Reaches. And even the Trojan Reach was first written up in a Fanzine in the mid 1980s. Third Imperium and Rim Expeditions are the only regional books that are not updated versions of previous material, IIRC. They are just starting to break new ground. That's not a criticism, just a statement of fact.

And previous editions put a lot of content in magazine article format. A couple pages, often digest sized, on some topic like the Suerrat or the Luriani. Or something like GURPS Humaniti, which covers about 15 human subspecies.

What Mongoose has done uniquely up until now is write big sweeping campaigns. Pirates of Drinax. The Ancients. Deepnight Revelation.

Edit: Mind you, those updated versions are dramatically higher quality than the source material in pretty much every case.