The Incredible Rhylanor Grand Reverse

Lyrell'e

Banded Mongoose
I've been seeing a lot of mentions of some sort of device/item/artifact/etc on Rhylanor that can allegedly shut off/stop the Empress Wave. What book is this actually mentioned in? I have been looking through Fifth Frontier War but have not found it yet. For the record though I agree that either the Zhodani Consulate would go to Norris and say "Hey, there's a galactic level cataclysm coming, we need to work together to stop it." Or they would send in 50% of the Consulate Navy, smash the defenders of Rhylanor into quarks, and then use the thing to stop the wave.

This is assuming of course that the thing even really exists...

Any solid information on the device would be helpful.

Hail Dezarium-uhh, The Consulate
 
Humor aside though, I have heard mention of a book that might mention/describe the Rhylanor Device, abbreviated as MTAM4. What does this stand for?
 
MegaTraveller computer game 2 Quest for the Ancients is where the Ancients facility is brought up.

The maguffin to solve the empress wave doesn't appear until decades after TNE ceased to be. I think it was Don's idea; you see the Traveller inner circle then as now do not know what the original empress wave was, who sent it, what it was meant to do, what it actually did (this was partially explained by Dave Nilsen in an extended Q&A on CotI). They all almost universally dislike TNE. I have never seen anyone ask Frank about it, and Marc was long gone from GDW so knows nothing about it either.

At this point it would probably be better if Mongoose never mentions it again. We will find out in Core Expeditions, possibly a FFW supplement.

I just hope it isn't linked to the 1248 "solution" which has more holes in it than a swiss cheese.
 
Mongoose Traveller Alien Module 4, unless some fanwork reused the acronym as a joke.

Correct. Don McKinney's description of the device is in there (somewhere).

It is called an Erdriap Chensh by the Zhodani, and is controlled by the Erdriap, which the Zhodani discovered and possess. There was one that they had discovered within their space (on Qrekrsha (1929 Zdiedeiant)), and then another that they had been able to determine was co-located with the Ancient Ruins on Rhylanor that could ameliorate the oncoming Wave, which was their objective in taking Rhylanor in the 5FW (in MgT 1e).
 
Don then used the Alien device on Rhylanor when writing MTAM4, despite him disliking TNE and not knowing anything beyond what was written for TNE, he also made the wave FTL because he got the location wrong when applying it to 1105
It is his idea that the Zhodani launch war after war to seize the device.

This is just so bloody stupid it defies all logic.

If the machine is needed then don't mess about, aim the entire fleet at Rhylanor and take it, then use the machine.
Or send a spec op group of agents (PCs) to take the machine and use it.

Or just show the evidence of the wave and what it will do to Norris, take him to see it first hand, and then get permission to use the machine.

The best solution is to just go back to classic Traveller roots, there is and never will be a wave. Mongoose Third Imperium already ignores Marc's novel so ignoring the wave shouldn't be an issue.
 
Don then used the Alien device on Rhylanor when writing MTAM4, despite him disliking TNE and not knowing anything beyond what was written for TNE, he also made the wave FTL because he got the location wrong when applying it to 1105
It is his idea that the Zhodani launch war after war to seize the device.

This is just so bloody stupid it defies all logic.

If the machine is needed then don't mess about, aim the entire fleet at Rhylanor and take it, then use the machine.
Or send a spec op group of agents (PCs) to take the machine and use it.

Or just show the evidence of the wave and what it will do to Norris, take him to see it first hand, and then get permission to use the machine.

The best solution is to just go back to classic Traveller roots, there is and never will be a wave. Mongoose Third Imperium already ignores Marc's novel so ignoring the wave shouldn't be an issue.
Agreed on the best solution. Wave was originally just a way to wreck the Zhodani Consulate to match what Virus did to wreck the former Imperium.
 
Some of this has been related before. Marc made the changes being attributed to Don, being reportedly unsatisfied with the weak Wave in 1248. It fell to Don to write up the new Wave for the Mongoose v1 book. The speed increase in particular is intended to get the Wave over with faster. At light speed it will take a VERY long time to grind through Charted Space, and would have been too close to the Imperium during the Golden Age to ignore. Bumping it up to roughly a parsec a year places it farther away in 1105, where it can be safely ignored unless you are set on playing far into the Vargr hinterlands.
As also related in that book, the Erdriap in Zhodani territory was shown to be capable of killing most life within a 30 parsec radius. The effects are still somewhat visible in Zhodani space. Norris knew that, so his reluctance to allow the Zhodani to tinker with the Erdriap at Rhylanor is rooted in distrust.
 
1105 Imperial: Strephon Aella Alkhalikoi wakes up, turns to Empress Iolanthe, and says "Honey, I just had a hell of a dream..."
 
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Some of this has been related before. Marc made the changes being attributed to Don,
Not according to Don himself. he changed it and Marc said ok because Marc didn't know what to do with it either.
being reportedly unsatisfied with the weak Wave in 1248.
The 1248 resolution is... not very good.
It fell to Don to write up the new Wave for the Mongoose v1 book. The speed increase in particular is intended to get the Wave over with faster.
And at a stroke invalidate TNE and 1248 as settings - just say it doesn't exist in the Mongoose Third Imperium
At light speed it will take a VERY long time to grind through Charted Space, and would have been too close to the Imperium during the Golden Age to ignore.
According to TNE and back tracking the wave would have been nearly half way through the consulate by 1120, the lightspeed wave was meant to hit the Regency long after the resolution to the Black Curtain.
Bumping it up to roughly a parsec a year places it farther away in 1105, where it can be safely ignored unless you are set on playing far into the Vargr hinterlands.
It was a totally unnecessary change.
As also related in that book, the Erdriap in Zhodani territory was shown to be capable of killing most life within a 30 parsec radius. The effects are still somewhat visible in Zhodani space. Norris knew that, so his reluctance to allow the Zhodani to tinker with the Erdriap at Rhylanor is rooted in distrust.
Something else invented for the book and safely ignored.

MgT 2ed has re-written Third Imperium "canon" from its 1e version. This is one of the few cases where I would welcome it, a retcon of a retcon of a retcon to return to the original CT and then invent something that doesn't have massive plot holes in it.
 
According to TNE and back tracking the wave would have been nearly half way through the consulate by 1120, the lightspeed wave was meant to hit the Regency long after the resolution to the Black Curtain.
The arrival at the (former) Imperial border did not change: c.1204-5

Invalidating casual mentions that weren't planned as part of the Wave when written is not as big a deal as all that. DGP wrote the Zhodani Exodus to reflect their next chapter: The Baddies From The Core, about which, less said the better.

Survival Margin and TNE (not 1248) established very few facts: arrival time at the Imperial border, the psionic effects on distant observers (which include the visual aspect which gave it its name and which is depicted on the TNE cover), the speed, and that advanced bases it passed over "went dark". 1248 largely ignored the last by making the Wave weak sauce. None of the effects described in the historical section made it to what passed for the mechanical description.

Don was the primary productive example of your earlier statement that Marc's Inner Circle disliked TNE, so I can maybe believe that he would have suggested to Marc that they speed up the Wave. Marc was also writing Agent by then, so some of the setting elements that were contentious needed pinning down. The location issue of the Wave at light speed was just one of them. The Imperium would have been seeing chaos across Vargr space and into Julian space for decades, and Gashikan would already have been thrashed. That invalidates a lot more MegaTraveller writing than a news item about Zhodani unrest.

This entire discussion is also why Mongoose didn't want to be tagged as Canon for many years.
 
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