The Deep and the Dark: errata

[Garnfellow]

So, this is a 300 ton hull and we're going for a Jump Drive with range 3; Looking it up on Page 16 of HG2022, it shows us that J-3 requires Hull * 7.5% + 5 = 300 * 0.075 + 5 = 22.5 + 5 = 27.5 tons.
"A jump drive must be a minimum of 10 tons," okay, we're above that so no need for worry, "and they cost MCr1.5 per ton." — 27.5 Tons of Jump Drive times MCr1.5, that gives us MCr41.25.

Tallying up all of the Type-U's gubbins:

Hull (300 Tons, Streamlined)	—	18
Armour (Crystaliron, 4)	18	3.6
M-Drive (Thrust 3)	9	18
J-Drive (Jump 3)	27.5	41.25
Power (TL12 Fusion, 240)	16	16
Fuel (J-3, 4 Weeks)	92	—
Bridge	20	1.5
Computer/15	—	2
Sensors (Civilian Grade)	1	3
Weapons (Trip. Tur. Missile Racks) x2	2	6.5
Weapons (Trip. Tur. Beam Lasers)	1	2.5
Docking Space (4 tons)	5	1.25
Air/Raft	—	0.25
Fuel Processor (60 tons/day)	3	0.15
Medical Bay	4	2
Standard Stateroom x16	64	8
Low Berths x4	2	0.2
Software (Jump Control/3)	—	0.3
Common Areas	16	1.6
Cargo:	(300 - 280.5) = 19.5	—
Total Cost:	—	MCr126.1

I'm mostly sure I got it right, but a sneaky mistake could have made its way in, so double-checking the above can't hurt.

Thanks again -- I was rounding down tonnage for the drives and cargo. When I don't, my numbers line up with yours.

 

[Seffix]

P. 193 -- Purity
An important, high-population human world located on the edge of Buffer,
All other references I've seen have called it the Buffer.

 

[Seffix]

P. 135-136 vs. P. 197-198
FWIW, These feel like they should have the same structure, but they don't. P. 135 has a text box covering about a quarter of the Reavers Deep map and no page for an into to the sector on P. 136, whereas P. 197 just has the sector map and P. 198 has the introduction.

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Quoth Matthew McConaughey: "All right, all right all right...!", I've read the book up to Page 197 so it is now time for a new batch of Errata, covering everything from the end of the High Guard chapter up to the start of the Dark Nebula section.
As always, entries where I'm not sure if there's an actual mistake or not will be preceded with a [?].

---

• Page 88, 'Imperial Nobility', 2nd paragraph: "(...) which in turn belongs to the greater Domain of Ilelish, ruled by the Archduke Dulinor Astrln llethian." - Once again a strange capitalisation of Astrin.
• Page 112, 1st paragraph: "I’aheako, the Aslan name for the Dark Nebula, is the beating heart of Aslan space despite it sits on the trailing periphery of the Hierate." - 'despite it is' doesn't sound right. Likely missing a 'the fact that'.
• Page 115, 'Eakhtiyho, Tlaukhu Clan': "See Hrasua page 114." - Should point to page 120, not 114.
• Page 120, 2nd paragraph: "During the final conflicts of the Aslan Border Wars, Hrasau leaders argued strenuously (...)" - Hrasua leaders, not 'Hrasau'.
• Page 143, 1st paragraph: "Accordingly, Imperials worlds in Gulf are represented by Duchess Nessa of St. George and protected by the 47 th Subsector Fleet and Nightrim Imperial Army." - Imperial worlds, not 'Imperials' worlds.
• Page 149, 3rd paragraph: "Many theories have been proposed to explain the interdiction,and the most plausible is that the Lokivirus has shown (...)" - Missing space between the comma and 'and the most'.
• [?] Page 156, 3rd paragraph: "Eventually, although, sufficient guarantees of independence and good faith were offered and the Principality agreed to withdraw from the conflict." - Should this not be 'though' instead of 'although'?
• [?] Page 162, 'Merisun', 4th paragraph: "That year a nuclear device was nearly detonated in the capital city of one of the larger nation-states and complete disaster only averted due to the quick thinking of Lali Alarara, (...)" - probably missing a 'was' between 'complete disaster' and 'only averted'.
• Page 171, 1st paragraph: "The same world also lends its name to the Drexilthara Main, an astrographic cluster of 11 worlds located centrally in the subsector." - Is "Drexilthara Main" correct, considering the world and subsector are both called Drexilthar?
• Page 174, 'Daken', 1st paragraph: "This colony life spreads over large areas of Daken’s erg deserts, utilising a chemosynthetic process for energy." - ... what's an 'erg desert'?
• Page 174, 'Daken', 4th paragraph: "They have grown accustomed to life at the edge of the world’s harsh deserts and make their primary living harvesting goldsand and selling it to offworld markets Several companies, including the megacorporation SuSAG and the Dakaar Corporation, have attempted to cut out the locals (...)" - Missing a full stop between 'offworld markets' and 'Several companies'.
• Page 177, 2nd paragraph: "Several Imperial corporations work the deserts of Tashrakaar, including the megacorporations Sternmetal Horizons and Delgado Trading The naval base at Outpost provides protection to these Imperial companies when they request it, (...)" - Missing full stop between 'and Delgado Trading' and 'The naval base at'.
• Page 181, 2nd paragraph: "The Imperial has a single client state in Urlaqqash, the harsh, high-population desert world of Araby." - Surely the Imperium, not 'Imperial'?
• Page 185, 'Lyo', 1st paragraph: "An Imperial client state in the Uhtaa Cluster, Lyo, like Kea, is a high population world with a majority Aslan population:" - Khea, not 'Kea'

---

Beyond the above typos, there are a couple of things I noticed. One of them is an astronomical nit-pick, the other is not a serious problem and should be easy enough to rectify. Starting with the latter:

Sometimes the descriptions of the planets are not reflected on Travellermap; as an example, Iyaiah (Dark 1925) is said to be a moon of a gas giant (Pg.: 116) but it lacks the Sa trade code, or Lyo (Reav 0534) being said to be tide-locked (Pg.: 185) but lacking the Tz code. This should be easy enough to fix, being a matter of compiling these instances and sending an update request to Mr. Bell. After I'm done reading the book, I might very well go and do that myself, even.

As for the astronomical nit-pick...
The entry about Rejhappur on page 152 states the following: "The system’s planetoid belt has a highly eccentric orbit, making it virtually certain this belt constitutes the shattered remnants of a world;"
This, however, doesn't make much astronomical sense. An asteroid belt having "a highly eccentic orbit" is sinonimous with it having a large breadth, covering a large swathe of the star system. That's because while the individual objects in the belt might share the same eccentricity value, their arguments of periapsis (how far away, in degrees, their closest approach to the star is from a reference direction) will almost certainly not be the same, even after a mere 300,000 from the belt's creation from a planetoid:

As the two illustrations above (hopefully) make it clear, once you have thousands or hundreds of thousands of asteroids with different arguments of periapsis sweeping the entire range from 0° to 360°, even if their orbits have the same eccentricity, the end result is just a really wide asteroid belt, not an elliptical belt, alas.

 

[Geir]

their arguments of periapsis (how far away, in degrees, their closest approach to the star is from a reference direction) will almost certainly not be the same

Probably true in general, but the 'evidence' used to posit Planet Nine in our own solar system is based on the similarities of orbits of certain outer system bodies (was going to type Kuiper, but they're more accurately scattered disk or detached objects), so it's possible that another body in the system is pulling the majority of the asteroids into similar arguments of periapsis.

 

[Seffix]

Hey, umm... has anyone else noticed a slow, jerkiness in displaying pp. 246 & 267?
I'm using Chrome on a Mac with Monterey, and the rest of the PDFs are fine.

The IT guy in me suspects it is some sort of artifact with how the Cecella Nebula texture is being processed, but the Fortean in me wants to assume there is some sort of nebula-associated curse that has managed to infect my file.

 

[AndrewW]

Hey, umm... has anyone else noticed a slow, jerkiness in displaying pp. 246 & 267?
I'm using Chrome on a Mac with Monoterey, and the rest of the PDFs are fine.

The IT guy in me suspects it is some sort of artifact with how the Cecella Nebula texture is being processed, but the Fortean in me wants to assume there is some sort of nebula-associated curse that has managed to infect my file.

Seems fine here, Linux using Atril.

Yes the nebula is done a little differently but no issues comes right up on here.

 

[Seffix]

Seems fine here, Linux using Atril.

Yes the nebula is done a little differently but no issues comes right up on here.

And it's smooth on the Mac using Preview or Firefox. I might get around to testing Chrome on Windows or I might not...

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

As of this morning, I have officially finished reading the book from front to cover! And it's just confirmed what I already though, this is certainly one of the best sector books of the lot so far. My hat's off to you, @Garnfellow!

This doesn't mean my work's over though; I've finished combing the book for typos, but now comes my favourite part — adding its info to my timeline document, so it's time to see (pun very much intended) if there are any timeline inconsistencies and/or errors.

But first, this last batch of errata, covering the entire section on Dark Nebula, plus a couple of things I missed on pages 3 and 6.
As always, entries with [?] appended are ones I'm not sure if there's actually been a mistake.

---

• Page 3, 'GRADUALLY, THEN ALL AT ONCE (-3000 TO -2000)', 4th paragraph: "By -2205, just as the Aslan of Kusyu were emerging from their first great age of enlightenment, and in the Cygnus Expanse beyond Terran Confederation borders lay a series of independent Terran settlements, perhaps 15 or 16 in Reaver’s Deep and at least three in the Dark Nebula, on worlds now known as Kahkeheas, Rosal and Ahaiehea." - The way this paragraph is structured, it seems that the 'and' between '(...) age of enlightenment,' and 'in the Cygnus Expanse' is a typo and should be deleted.
• [?] Page 6, 'THE REAVERS', 4th paragraph: "The Reaver’s Alliance was shattered with the defeat of a large Reaver fleet at Jarslav in the Solomani Rim in -1118." - Is it really 'Reaver's Alliance', or should it be Reavers' Alliance, as in the possessive of the plural 'Reavers'?
• Page 198, 4t paragraph: "The Peace of Ftahalr, executed in 380 between the Third Imperium and four of the Hierate’s most powerful clans, incorporated a large swath of coreward the Dark Nebula, along with almost all of Reaver’s Deep, into another buffer zone." - Should probably delete the 'the' between 'a large swath of coreward' and 'Dark Nebula'.
• Page 205, 'HFIEAO', 3rd paragraph: "Although outnumbered, the Tiylaa coalition, aided by the Hrawoao, had a significant technological edge over the Sosan Alliance." - If as stated on the previous paragraph 'The two sides agreed to fight using weapons of no more than Tech Level 8', then how come the Tiylaa coalition have a technological edge? If they have intentionally violated the agreement, it should be made explicit.
• Page 209, 'AOWOIKTES', 1st paragraph: "A poor, independent Aslan world in the Samarorn Cluster, Aowoiktes is currently dominated by a coalition of seven clans so conservative in outlook they emigrated out of the Hierate rather than renounce their principals." - Rather than renounce their principles, not principals, unless it is meant they're unwilling to leave the amount they've borrowed from a lender.
• [?] Page 227, 'EHOIOI', 2nd paragraph: "The clan company Eiktyesaeaa established a state-of-art shipyard on Ehoioi to build small starships for export to human markets." - Surely 'state-of-the-art'?
• Page 250, 'TENARNA', 3rd and 4th paragraphs: "Control of Tenara was turned over (...)" & "Notably, the Oul were allowed to retain control of Tenara, (...)" - Both instances should read Tenarna, not 'Tenara'.
• Page 251, 'THE DARK NEBULA', 2nd paragraph: "(...) the nebula is much colder than surrounding interstellar space, averaging 15°K, yet it is not actually a dark nebula as understood by astronomy." - The Kelvin scale does not use 'degrees', such that '15°K' is incorrect; the correct form is simply 15 K. I suggest changing the passage to '(...) averaging 15 Kelvin, yet (...)', fully spelt out.
• Page 254, 4th paragrath: "In 825 the Imperial Navy was ordered to withdraw from the Dark Nebula, ceding the region’s defences to Solomani colonial fleets." - This should be 835, not 825; see Aliens of Charted Space Vol. 2, Page 24.
• Page 271, 'BRIMATE', 1st pargraph: "Despite the lack of a habitable planet, the system has two planetoid belts and two gas giants each have several moons with easily extractable mineral wealth." - It feels as if there is a missing 'and' or ':' between 'and two gas giants' and 'each have several moons'.
• Page 274, 'ANGELA': "Onboard, the derelict the team found the ship had carried two different lifeforms, both unknown, and appeared to have originated from a nearby system designated 300–207." - The comma is misplaced, it should either go between 'the derelict' and 'the team' or deleted altogether.
• Page 275, 1st paragraph: "The extremists use their influence and wealth to stockpile equipment and arms, and in hiring offworld mercenaries (for Ildrissar was poor in manpower, but could afford to hire the best in technology and service." - The parenthesis was never closed.

---

Other than the above, I have a few stray comments, remarks, nitpicks and thoughts, which I'll share below:

• Page 249, 'SAFTAHFEAL', 3rd paragraph: "One particularly intense rivalry pits the Imperial ambassador, Sir Ishir Aimu Dagadkua, against the Solomani ambassador, Mustafa Fonseca." - I thoroughly apologise for the rather unbecoming behaviour of my wayward (great)¹⁰⁰-grandson.
• Page 268, 'YOHKUI', 1st paragraph: "The shipyard is capable of producing advanced starships of up to 10,000 tons." - Using the World Builder's Handbook starport build capacity rules (Page 199) and running the numbers for Yohkui, we find that the minimum total capacity for it is 10,000,000 tons (maximum of 12,000,000). Keeping in mind that '(...) Maximum construction bay size of any shipyard does not normally exceed 10% of total shipyard capacity', this would mean that the Yohkui shipyard should be able to produce starships of up to 1,000,000 tons. This is admittedly not nescessarily the case, especially considering that the Aslan as a whole lean towards smaller ships than the Imperium so while I don't think the smaller build size is a problem, I felt I might as well point out the 'Rules-as-Written' case if only for completeness' sake.

The last thing I want to bring attention to is separate because it doesn't pertain to Mongoose-published materials, or even technically canon, but I thought I'd again point it out for completeness' sake: on page 251, on the The Dark Nebula box, it is stated that 'The name might be a Terran mistranslation of the Vilani word buuksus, which literally means ‘dark cloud’, particularly if the Vilani were using this word figuratively to mean ‘loss or absence of information’.'
I decided to go and check the wiki to see if there was a pre-existing entry for the term, and there was none (which is not unusual). Failing that, I whipped out Rob Eaglestone's Vilani Grammar and Glosary, which whilst technically not canon, I believe was used to create the dictionary entries that preface the Traveller 5 books.
While 'Buuk' does indeed mean 'dark' (page 60 of the PDF), 'sus' came up as an intransitive verb meaning 'dry up' (page 152). As far as I can tell, a literal rendition of 'Dark Cloud' in Vilani would instead be Buuksasu (from the adjective Buuk and the noun Sasu, meaning cloud - page 131).

Obviously, as I said, that document is not strictly canon and can therefore be ignored, especially so if the term 'Buuksus' has previously appeared in another published work, but I thought I'd point it out too — because frankly, I'm so goshdarn deep in this rabbit hole that I might as well lol

Once again, an absolutely astounding work on this book!

 

[Garnfellow]

Quoth Matthew McConaughey: "All right, all right all right...!", I've read the book up to Page 197 so it is now time for a new batch of Errata, covering everything from the end of the High Guard chapter up to the start of the Dark Nebula section.
As always, entries where I'm not sure if there's an actual mistake or not will be preceded with a [?].

---

• Page 88, 'Imperial Nobility', 2nd paragraph: "(...) which in turn belongs to the greater Domain of Ilelish, ruled by the Archduke Dulinor Astrln llethian." - Once again a strange capitalisation of Astrin.
• Page 112, 1st paragraph: "I’aheako, the Aslan name for the Dark Nebula, is the beating heart of Aslan space despite it sits on the trailing periphery of the Hierate." - 'despite it is' doesn't sound right. Likely missing a 'the fact that'.
• Page 115, 'Eakhtiyho, Tlaukhu Clan': "See Hrasua page 114." - Should point to page 120, not 114.
• Page 120, 2nd paragraph: "During the final conflicts of the Aslan Border Wars, Hrasau leaders argued strenuously (...)" - Hrasua leaders, not 'Hrasau'.
• Page 143, 1st paragraph: "Accordingly, Imperials worlds in Gulf are represented by Duchess Nessa of St. George and protected by the 47 th Subsector Fleet and Nightrim Imperial Army." - Imperial worlds, not 'Imperials' worlds.
• Page 149, 3rd paragraph: "Many theories have been proposed to explain the interdiction,and the most plausible is that the Lokivirus has shown (...)" - Missing space between the comma and 'and the most'.
• [?] Page 156, 3rd paragraph: "Eventually, although, sufficient guarantees of independence and good faith were offered and the Principality agreed to withdraw from the conflict." - Should this not be 'though' instead of 'although'?
• [?] Page 162, 'Merisun', 4th paragraph: "That year a nuclear device was nearly detonated in the capital city of one of the larger nation-states and complete disaster only averted due to the quick thinking of Lali Alarara, (...)" - probably missing a 'was' between 'complete disaster' and 'only averted'.
• Page 171, 1st paragraph: "The same world also lends its name to the Drexilthara Main, an astrographic cluster of 11 worlds located centrally in the subsector." - Is "Drexilthara Main" correct, considering the world and subsector are both called Drexilthar?
• Page 174, 'Daken', 1st paragraph: "This colony life spreads over large areas of Daken’s erg deserts, utilising a chemosynthetic process for energy." - ... what's an 'erg desert'?
• Page 174, 'Daken', 4th paragraph: "They have grown accustomed to life at the edge of the world’s harsh deserts and make their primary living harvesting goldsand and selling it to offworld markets Several companies, including the megacorporation SuSAG and the Dakaar Corporation, have attempted to cut out the locals (...)" - Missing a full stop between 'offworld markets' and 'Several companies'.
• Page 177, 2nd paragraph: "Several Imperial corporations work the deserts of Tashrakaar, including the megacorporations Sternmetal Horizons and Delgado Trading The naval base at Outpost provides protection to these Imperial companies when they request it, (...)" - Missing full stop between 'and Delgado Trading' and 'The naval base at'.
• Page 181, 2nd paragraph: "The Imperial has a single client state in Urlaqqash, the harsh, high-population desert world of Araby." - Surely the Imperium, not 'Imperial'?
• Page 185, 'Lyo', 1st paragraph: "An Imperial client state in the Uhtaa Cluster, Lyo, like Kea, is a high population world with a majority Aslan population:" - Khea, not 'Kea'

---

Beyond the above typos, there are a couple of things I noticed. One of them is an astronomical nit-pick, the other is not a serious problem and should be easy enough to rectify. Starting with the latter:

Sometimes the descriptions of the planets are not reflected on Travellermap; as an example, Iyaiah (Dark 1925) is said to be a moon of a gas giant (Pg.: 116) but it lacks the Sa trade code, or Lyo (Reav 0534) being said to be tide-locked (Pg.: 185) but lacking the Tz code. This should be easy enough to fix, being a matter of compiling these instances and sending an update request to Mr. Bell. After I'm done reading the book, I might very well go and do that myself, even.

As for the astronomical nit-pick...
The entry about Rejhappur on page 152 states the following: "The system’s planetoid belt has a highly eccentric orbit, making it virtually certain this belt constitutes the shattered remnants of a world;"
This, however, doesn't make much astronomical sense. An asteroid belt having "a highly eccentic orbit" is sinonimous with it having a large breadth, covering a large swathe of the star system. That's because while the individual objects in the belt might share the same eccentricity value, their arguments of periapsis (how far away, in degrees, their closest approach to the star is from a reference direction) will almost certainly not be the same, even after a mere 300,000 from the belt's creation from a planetoid:
View attachment 1525View attachment 1526
As the two illustrations above (hopefully) make it clear, once you have thousands or hundreds of thousands of asteroids with different arguments of periapsis sweeping the entire range from 0° to 360°, even if their orbits have the same eccentricity, the end result is just a really wide asteroid belt, not an elliptical belt, alas.

Good catches yet again, thanks so much for your keen eye! "Drexilthara Main" is intentional, originating with the Keith Brothers. (Though it could have been an error -- they didn't have the benefit of your review!)

The Traveller Map data has been updated, though note that Iyaiah (DARK 1925) already has the Locked "Lk" code, which indicates a satellite tide-locked to a planet. In T5 it's a little ambiguous whether a world with the Lk code needs a "Sa" code also or whether that is redundant.

 

[Garnfellow]

---

• Page 205, 'HFIEAO', 3rd paragraph: "Although outnumbered, the Tiylaa coalition, aided by the Hrawoao, had a significant technological edge over the Sosan Alliance." - If as stated on the previous paragraph 'The two sides agreed to fight using weapons of no more than Tech Level 8', then how come the Tiylaa coalition have a technological edge? If they have intentionally violated the agreement, it should be made explicit.

Yeah, that section is probably not clear enough. My idea was that the two sides were mostly "native" TL6-7, with some limited access to TL8+ equipment. The Hrawoao tipped the balance by providing a stream of TL8 materiel, allowing the Tiylaa side to contend with the larger Sosan side.

 

[Garnfellow]

The last thing I want to bring attention to is separate because it doesn't pertain to Mongoose-published materials, or even technically canon, but I thought I'd again point it out for completeness' sake: on page 251, on the The Dark Nebula box, it is stated that 'The name might be a Terran mistranslation of the Vilani word buuksus, which literally means ‘dark cloud’, particularly if the Vilani were using this word figuratively to mean ‘loss or absence of information’.'
I decided to go and check the wiki to see if there was a pre-existing entry for the term, and there was none (which is not unusual). Failing that, I whipped out Rob Eaglestone's Vilani Grammar and Glosary, which whilst technically not canon, I believe was used to create the dictionary entries that preface the Traveller 5 books.
While 'Buuk' does indeed mean 'dark' (page 60 of the PDF), 'sus' came up as an intransitive verb meaning 'dry up' (page 152). As far as I can tell, a literal rendition of 'Dark Cloud' in Vilani would instead be Buuksasu (from the adjective Buuk and the noun Sasu, meaning cloud - page 131).

For what it's worth, I do prefer buuksasu rather than buuksus, if only for aesthetic reasons. I blame the Interstellar Wars-era grammar book that I used for reference. Everyone knows that the 23th edition of the Qingling Vilani Primer (copyright -2343) is unreliable on a variety of linguistic points, but it's a good illustration of how an inaccurate term like "Dark Nebula" could have taken hold.

 

[Garnfellow]

Page 268, 'YOHKUI', 1st paragraph: "The shipyard is capable of producing advanced starships of up to 10,000 tons." - Using the World Builder's Handbook starport build capacity rules (Page 199) and running the numbers for Yohkui, we find that the minimum total capacity for it is 10,000,000 tons (maximum of 12,000,000). Keeping in mind that '(...) Maximum construction bay size of any shipyard does not normally exceed 10% of total shipyard capacity', this would mean that the Yohkui shipyard should be able to produce starships of up to 1,000,000 tons. This is admittedly not nescessarily the case, especially considering that the Aslan as a whole lean towards smaller ships than the Imperium so while I don't think the smaller build size is a problem, I felt I might as well point out the 'Rules-as-Written' case if only for completeness' sake.

Interesting. I had turned in the manuscript before World Builder's Handbook was out, but your shipyard capacity number is similar to what would be produced with MgT Trillion Credit Squadron: 11.2 million displacement tons. I had generated the 10k capacity number using GURPS Traveller: Starports, which I think is too small. I do think an Aslan shipyard is going to be considerably less efficient than an Imperial one of comparable size and 1 million tons seems too big. In lieu of an Aslan-specific rule, I would propose tweaking that section read "The shipyard is capable of producing advanced starships of up to 100,000 tons."