The Hive Federation has not been very well detailed. Yes, we got Aliens of Charted Space 2, but the description of the actual Federation itself was just 5 pages. For a civilisation with 170 different races, that is only the most superficial of overviews. Who are all these intelligent races (aside from the Gurvin, Ithklur and Za'tachk)?
Traveller is great for playing campaigns set inside Charted Space, but I am also interested in exploration campaigns into the great unknown. I think Mongoose did a great job giving the Third Imperium an exploration option in the Deep Night Legacy series and I am greatly looking forward to the Zhodani Core Expedition book that is (fingers crossed) coming out in February.
Mongoose has released the Rim Expeditions detailing Solomani activities in that direction. But I am also curious about the Rimward and Trailing borders of the Federation. Do the Hivers have similar activities?
Traveller Map has sketched out the member races, their locations, numbers and relative prominence, and I've uploaded most of it to the wiki. Unofficial, thus far, but it's there.
So we have 180-odd cultures and races about which we know:
* Their name (well, the Gurvin label, anyway, which is apparently often the same name used for their homeworld. Actual names, who knows?)
* The environmental conditions of their homeworld
* Whether they have sizeable colonies
* (Loosely) Their preferred governmental systems
And not much else. All sorts of extrapolations and interesting stories can be teased out of it; pick a race or five and go nuts!
On the wiki I gave some bare-bones basic descriptions taken from the Traveller Map data and extrapolating logically, but that only gives the very vaguest picture.
I've long said that I'd love a Hive Federation sandbox campaign, with various Manipulations tracked and reworking themselves as they play against each other. It would be a great opportunity to have weird, odd and humorous events that are still meaningful, since anything and everything could be part of some Vitally Important Scientific Investigation by a bored Hiver who's decided it wants to poke situation A with stick B and watch what happens.
We're getting there slowly in terms of sketching out the relevant players. The Hivers, Ithklur, Gurvin and Za'tachk all finally have detailed write-ups, we got one culture of Federation Humans in the latest JTAS run (the Weregre), plus we have neighbours like the Lithkind, Krotan and Dynchia well-depicted in various Traveller editions.
It's time to plunge into the madness and try to make sense of the place!
