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.

 

[Uqbarian]

I meant to mention before re the seven trillion figure: it may be worth noting that that's the estimated population of the Hierate as a whole, so it includes some proportion of non-Aslan. At a glance, I can't find any breakdown of the population on travellerwiki. Garnfellow at their blog makes an assumption of 25% non-Aslan within the Hierate.

Just for fun, I went through the twiki and tallied up the estimates for the coreward portion of the Hierate to get 579 billion. Of these, the main 'blob' (Trojan Reaches, The Beyond, coreward trailing Touchstone and coreward Riftspan Reaches) has an estimated 461 billion. Again, these are Hierate subtotals, so they include non-Aslan.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I meant to mention before re the seven trillion figure: it may be worth noting that that's the estimated population of the Hierate as a whole, so it includes some proportion of non-Aslan. At a glance, I can't find any breakdown of the population on travellerwiki. Garnfellow at their blog makes an assumption of 25% non-Aslan within the Hierate.

Just for fun, I went through the twiki and tallied up the estimates for the coreward portion of the Hierate to get 579 billion. Of these, the main 'blob' (Trojan Reaches, The Beyond, coreward trailing Touchstone and coreward Riftspan Reaches) has an estimated 461 billion. Again, these are Hierate subtotals, so they include non-Aslan.

How many Aslan worlds have the Population % of other races? For the ones that don't, that means that a max of 4% or so of the population is non-Aslan.

Here is Hlakhoi Sector

and another

and another

and another

Out of 17 sectors the first 4 I looked at that were 100% within the Heirate, I don't see anywhere near 25% Non-Aslan. I can keep on looking. Where did the 25% number come from?



That is 7 of them and I am still not seeing anything close to 25% Non-Aslans

 

[Uqbarian]

How many Aslan worlds have the Population % of other races? For the ones that don't, that means that a max of 4% or so of the population is non-Aslan.

I didn't look at individual worlds because my lunch break finished. The 25% is Garnfellow's guesstimate on their blog at Great Dungeon of the North, 21 Dec 2021 -- as far as I can tell, it's an arbitrary figure. It could be just as reasonable to assume the population of the Heirate is 97%+ Aslan.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I didn't look at individual worlds because my lunch break finished. The 25% is Garnfellow's guesstimate on their blog at Great Dungeon of the North, 21 Dec 2021 -- as far as I can tell, it's an arbitrary figure. It could be just as reasonable to assume the population of the Heirate is 97%+ Aslan.

Okay. Thanks! I was thinking that I had missed that little tidbit of Aslan lore.

 

[MasterGwydion]

@Garnfellow Can you chime in here? Where did you get the 25% number for Non-Aslan within the Heirate?

 

[Endie]

I meant to mention before re the seven trillion figure: it may be worth noting that that's the estimated population of the Hierate as a whole, so it includes some proportion of non-Aslan. At a glance, I can't find any breakdown of the population on travellerwiki. Garnfellow at their blog makes an assumption of 25% non-Aslan within the Hierate.

Just for fun, I went through the twiki and tallied up the estimates for the coreward portion of the Hierate to get 579 billion. Of these, the main 'blob' (Trojan Reaches, The Beyond, coreward trailing Touchstone and coreward Riftspan Reaches) has an estimated 461 billion. Again, these are Hierate subtotals, so they include non-Aslan.

Total side note: if you're made enough to give Petyr Vallis the 24 plague bombs from Treasure of Sindal and if he successfully (big ask) drops 8 each on three worlds (Layeaukhtyei, Hreahrya and Irlaiw, all industrial worlds with a combined 240 billion occupants and no significant non-Aslan population noted) he will halve the Aslan population of the trans-Rift Aslan. Given the nature of those three worlds you probably halve the industrial capacity, too. More than halve, at first, if Aslan do supply-chain logistics across systems.

Although if I was feeling war-crimey and had the magical fleet of highly stealthy, long endurance ships required I'd be keen to take out Aulryakh instead of Irlaiw to limit the ability of the rimward Aslan to chip in. That and some of the 24 city buster nukes going off in the Aulryakh port facilities might mean you had a decade or two before that link was really up to full capacity again.

Only someone mad as a badger like Petyr would do it, though.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Total side note: if you're made enough to give Petyr Vallis the 24 plague bombs from Treasure of Sindal and if he successfully (big ask) drops 8 each on three worlds (Layeaukhtyei, Hreahrya and Irlaiw, all industrial worlds with a combined 240 billion occupants and no significant non-Aslan population noted) he will halve the Aslan population of the trans-Rift Aslan. Given the nature of those three worlds you probably halve the industrial capacity, too. More than halve, at first, if Aslan do supply-chain logistics across systems.

Although if I was feeling war-crimey and had the magical fleet of highly stealthy, long endurance ships required I'd be keen to take out Aulryakh instead of Irlaiw to limit the ability of the rimward Aslan to chip in. That and some of the 24 city buster nukes going off in the Aulryakh port facilities might mean you had a decade or two before that link was really up to full capacity again.

Only someone mad as a badger like Petyr would do it, though.

Look what happened when the Dulinor killed one clan's ambassador. You think there would be a lesser response to genocide or a greater response?

 

[Endie]

Look what happened when the Dulinor killed one clan's ambassador. You think there would be a lesser response to genocide or a greater response?

"Only someone mad as a badger like Petyr would do it, though." - The post you quoted.

 

[MasterGwydion]

"Only someone mad as a badger like Petyr would do it, though." - The post you quoted.

and I agree entirely.

 

[Garnfellow]

@Garnfellow Can you chime in here? Where did you get the 25% number for Non-Aslan within the Heirate?

Is there such a thing as an "educated wild ass guess"? My estimate was grounded a bit in some T5 statements about the non-human population of the Imperium. I can't remember if the figure came from T5 itself, an Imperiallines issues, or Agent of the Imperium, but somewhere there's a statement that something like 50% of the Imperial population is non-human.

Traveller assumes that "life is everywhere," and T5 further assumes that sophontic life is far more common than anything we have ever seen depicted in canon. Like, multiple worlds per subsector harboring Native Intelligent Life.

The Imperium seems open to granting citizenship to any culture able to pledge fealty to the Emperor, no matter how weird. The Aslan are probably much less open: while they will accept any people who assimilate into their culture, they are also fierce cultural chauvinists. (Remember, the whole Cultural Purge was because they felt many biological Aslan weren't Aslan enough!)

The lower limit for the non-Aslan population is something more than 0%, as a handful of these non-Aslan races have been mentioned in canon. I think I went with 5%, which was approximately the number currently shown in Traveller Map data.

To get to 25% I assumed that (1) Many sophont species are not currently reflected in Traveller Map data, (2) these species were initially distributed relatively evenly across Charted Space, (3) those species who could/would not assimilate were either interdicted, exterminated, or driven out, resulting in (4) the Hierate having a much lower percentage of non-Aslan species than the Imperium.

So if the lower limit for non-Aslan was 5% and the upper limit was 50%, with no good reason to go higher or lower I think I just arbitrarily landed on 25% as somewhere in the middle.

 

[Endie]

Is there such a thing as an "educated wild ass guess"? My estimate was grounded a bit in some T5 statements about the non-human population of the Imperium. I can't remember if the figure came from T5 itself, an Imperiallines issues, or Agent of the Imperium, but somewhere there's a statement that something like 50% of the Imperial population is non-human.

Traveller assumes that "life is everywhere," and T5 further assumes that sophontic life is far more common than anything we have ever seen depicted in canon. Like, multiple worlds per subsector harboring Native Intelligent Life.

The Imperium seems open to granting citizenship to any culture able to pledge fealty to the Emperor, no matter how weird. The Aslan are probably much less open: while they will accept any people who assimilate into their culture, they are also fierce cultural chauvinists. (Remember, the whole Cultural Purge was because they felt many biological Aslan weren't Aslan enough!)

The lower limit for the non-Aslan population is something more than 0%, as a handful of these non-Aslan races have been mentioned in canon. I think I went with 5%, which was approximately the number currently shown in Traveller Map data.

To get to 25% I assumed that (1) Many sophont species are not currently reflected in Traveller Map data, (2) these species were initially distributed relatively evenly across Charted Space, (3) those species who could/would not assimilate were either interdicted, exterminated, or driven out, resulting in (4) the Hierate having a much lower percentage of non-Aslan species than the Imperium.

So if the lower limit for non-Aslan was 5% and the upper limit was 50%, with no good reason to go higher or lower I think I just arbitrarily landed on 25% as somewhere in the middle.

Like you, I did think that the Aslan hold a lot of space that had a lot of previous occupants, but they're in the "less tolerant than humans, more tolerant than Tezcats" zone of how many they let live.

There will, judging by everywhere else in known space, have been a lot of humans in the original area that the Aslan have occupied. We only know about one human "clan" (the Zodia), but we're faced with either most of the Aslan being up there with the Ahroay'if, the Seieakh, the Akatoiloh, the We'okurir and the Glorious Empire in terms of willingness to commit genocide (certainly possible but maybe a bit too extreme for the evidence in the clans book and Exodus); the Aslan being impossible to live with so that most other sophonts fled or emigrated (seems unlikely since the Zodia manage, and since mass emigration over any sort of distance is extremely difficult and expensive using Traveller shipping rules); or there being a fair population of humans and other sophonts in at least parts of Aslan space (seems like the default).