Pirates of Drinax - GMs thread

[Uqbarian]

Could be if that number is by planetary population, that number is per generation and not per year. That would mean 4,000 per year from that one planet. Much more reasonable given how the setting is described. It is still a lot once you add up every planet in the Heirate.

I took Geir's calculation as essentially adding a generational aspect by spreading Garnfellow's values over 30 years of activity.

What does that math work out to for 7 trillion total Aslan?

Following Garnfellow and Geir with 90% drop-offs (so 300 'ihatei' per million), 7 trillion Aslan might generate roughly 2.1 billion 'ihatei' (which includes some landless htatei) who go a-roving each year. (The population includes about 408 billion ihatei in the narrow sense, most of whom find gainful employment inside the Heirate.) Some proportion of the 2.1 billion will presumably be doing their ihatei thing inside the Heirate because of the distances involved; some (possibly the majority?) will be heading to the rimward frontier. Though at this scale we'd probably be looking at billions more Aslan moving in clan-sponsored or corporation-sponsored colonisation efforts.

 

[Uqbarian]

Though I'll be honest here, I'm not sure how anything resembling traditional Aslan society could sustain 20 billion people on a planet, so that's part of the problem.

Related to this, I did just think of another solution Aslan authorities might have to all these ihatei on their high-pop worlds. This is where Claw-ton Heston is dragged away roaring, "Soylent Green is ihatei!"

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are several things the Mongoose portrayal of Aslan changes from previous canon...

1. size
2. ihatei are reavers, raiders, vikings...

Aslan rarely conquer, they usually squat or purchase

rather then bloodthirsty invaders they are more akin to irish travellers...

most Aslan warfare is actually inter clan conflict within the heirate

 

[Condottiere]

Saxons.

I suppose that's their Angle.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Did you watch the video? The amount of 'floor space' is not the limiting factor.

Put a trillion humans on Terra with 100 floor-tall arcologies, and you have covered less than 2% of the planet's surface. Build a 100 layer 'shell-world' with a trillion inhabitants and they could all have more than 500000 square feet (152400 square meters; 15.24 hectares) to themselves.

No listed Aslan world actually has a trillion inhabitants though -- and more than 100 layers of 'shell world' is certainly possible. With 20 billion inhabitants, everyone has 762 hectares; so an Aslan male (assuming just one wife) will have 15.24 square kilometers. That is plenty of elbow room.

From Alien Module 1 page 41


This would seem to imply that an archology type thing would not work for the Aslan. Seems like Aslan living in an archology would have a SOC penalty as a way to show them as receiving less respect from their peers due to the quality of their Territory.

 

[J. L. Brown]

From Alien Module 1 page 41

View attachment 6523
This would seem to imply that an archology type thing would not work for the Aslan. Seems like Aslan living in an archology would have a SOC penalty as a way to show them as receiving less respect from their peers due to the quality of their Territory.

Again, did you watch the video?

Spaces set aside for pristine wilderness are certainly possible -- and for Aslan built ones, inevitable; an ecumenopolis is an arcoloogy at the scale of a entire world, and arcologies grow their own food as a matter of definition. No part of a shell-world / ecumenopolis would ever be airless wasteland -- the whole point is that it is built to be suitable for the inhabitants. What part of '7+ square kilometers per Aslan' implies no room to run or hunt?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Again, did you watch the video?

Spaces set aside for pristine wilderness are certainly possible -- and for Aslan built ones, inevitable; an ecumenopolis is an arcoloogy at the scale of a entire world, and arcologies grow their own food as a matter of definition. No part of a shell-world / ecumenopolis would ever be airless wasteland -- the whole point is that it is built to be suitable for the inhabitants. What part of '7+ square kilometers per Aslan' implies no room to run or hunt?

It is a megastructure. I get it. What is the TL required to build an ecumenopolis? I am not familiar with any existing in Traveller. Can you point me to a Canon example so I can check it out?

Edit - As for Aslan worlds, this would only be possible on worlds entirely owned by one clan as multi-clan worlds would have issues cooperating to maintain the structure. I am guessing that if you use the ship construction rules, this is also way beyond the capabilities of the Tlaukhu Blocs to afford such a thing.

 

[Endie]

For those discussing the distribution of Ihatei vs Htatei and the number of Ihatei in a generation, luckily we have a pretty detailed investigation in https://greatdungeonnorth.blogspot.com/2022/02/aslan-family-structure.html and then hid follow-up in https://greatdungeonnorth.blogspot.com/2022/03/prides-and-prejudice-aslan-families-and.html

Basically, with the data we are given there are a lot of Ihatei in a generation: he reckons a few thousand more than half a million per million families. But, importantly there are also a huge number of families without male heirs: 464,000. The allocation of second and later sons to these will not be perfect, but it will cut down significantly on the number of Ihatei in the generation.

There are a lot of tables and calculations in his assessment, so please don't just skim this table and have a go without reading the surrounding sources and assumptions he gives in his very detailed posts! I just give this table as an example.

Once you discount the marries-into-wealth cohort you then have to remove those many, many low-class/low-wealth Ihatei who will never have the chance of getting the investment needed to go seizing wealth, who are unsuitable candidates for a rich Ihatei's warband etc. I suspect that the tradition of going off to sieze land is not very strong on the Reaver's Deep worlds with 80 billion occupants: you don't get to that size if a significant proportion of each generation is heading off to start new colonies. And those worlds make up almost the entire population of any given sector.

 

[Uqbarian]

For those discussing the distribution of Ihatei vs Htatei and the number of Ihatei in a generation, luckily we have a pretty detailed investigation in <snip>

Thanks for linking to those, Endie -- those were among the sources I wanted to link to in my earlier post.