Whatever is "Anomaly One?"

[alex_greene]

I was looking at the Traveller Map site, having pulled back all the way to see the entire Galaxy. Somewhere on the other side of the Galactic Core, there's a large caption which reads "Anomaly One."
What is it, and how do sophonts on our side of the Galaxy know about it?

 

[G'Naakbusters]

I don't think they do. The full galaxy map shows some of the civilizations/whatever-they-may-bes from the 1900 Galaxiad setting (er, that's their 1900, of course, not ours...). They're "out there" but as yet Charted Space doesn't know about them... sort of.

Basic facts about the Esseray and the Barren Arm seem to have filtered through, according to "Agent of the Imperium"; maybe some refugees from the 2nd Edition starter adventure showed up and filled them in?

Other than that, they're things that Humaniti gets to deal with eventually... in the future...

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are a couple of answers that spring to mind.

1. They don't, it is metagame info
2. The IISS long range missions have gained info from much more advanced races within their exploration range
3. The Zhodani have psionically mapped the galaxy as shown on the metagame map of the galaxy and Imperial Intelligence have found out.

 

[G'Naakbusters]

4. The map is actually a long-term Hiver manipulation to reshape the galaxy through reshaping our perception of the galaxy, and so our actions in relating to it.

 

[alex_greene]

I don't think they do. The full galaxy map shows some of the civilizations/whatever-they-may-bes from the 1900 Galaxiad setting (er, that's their 1900, of course, not ours...). They're "out there" but as yet Charted Space doesn't know about them... sort of.

Basic facts about the Esseray and the Barren Arm seem to have filtered through, according to "Agent of the Imperium"; maybe some refugees from the 2nd Edition starter adventure showed up and filled them in?

Other than that, they're things that Humaniti gets to deal with eventually... in the future...

We know something about the Essaray from The Fall of Tinath. MWM gave us a species of replicating robot ships in Names and The Red Ship, and I don't know if those are the Essaray. Secrets of The Ancients gave us yet another swarm of hostile Neumann machine ships called the Dyabyuse.

There seem to be an awful lot of these horrid robot fleets around the Galaxy, and that isn't including the Deepnight Entity in its own tiny corner of the Milky Way.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Are the Essaray the same as the Esseray though?

 

[Geir]

'SRA' either way

 

[WHULorigan]

MWM gave us a species of replicating robot ships in Names and The Red Ship, and I don't know if those are the Essaray.

They are. A footnote in the annotated PDF version of Agent of the Imperium explicitly identifies the robots/androids encountered at Dathsuts as such.

Are the Essaray the same as the Esseray though?

'SRA' either way

The early version of the map on the T5 Beta CD called the Essaray region "SRAL"
Essaray = Ess-Ar-Ay = SRA

My best guesses:
Sentient
Replicating -or- Robot(ic)
Androids (?) -or- Artificial (?)
(L)ife

Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Geir]

They are. A footnote in the annotated PDF version of Agent of the Imperium explicitly identifies the robots/androids encountered at Dathsuts as such.




The early version of the map on the T5 Beta CD called the Essaray region "SRAL"
Essaray = Ess-Ar-Ay = SRA

My best guesses:
Sentient
Replicating -or- Robot(ic)
Androids (?) -or- Artificial (?)
(L)ife

Anyone have any other ideas?

Well what Maksim-Smelchak put on the wiki is:
S = Self
R = Replicating
A = Artificial (?) / Android (?)
L = (Life) (?)

But for all I know it stands for 'Some Robotic A**hole(s) (Lunatics)'

 

[Sigtrygg]

I don't think the Dathsuts robots are the same as the Essaray that occupy the distant part of the galaxy and are part of the Fall of Tinath. They appear to use wafer technology and artificial bodies.

“Tell me your evaluation?” I already knew the probable concept: self-replicating
automatons174 who land, build more of themselves, and send those off to do the same
again. Meanwhile, the robots left behind would eventually consume this world building
more of themselves. The empire’s secret archives had records of now-dead worlds with
surfaces converted to vast robot cities. Who knew where their robot citizens ultimately
went?
footnote
SRA or Essaray. The secret archives hold reports of vast swaths of star systems whose
worlds have been strip-mined for resources for projects such as we see here. There are
also entire world surfaces populated by robots such as these.

On the subject of the black ships/red ship - they are a different threat altogether...

 

[alex_greene]

I blame the Ancients, myself.

 

[WHULorigan]

Well what Maksim-Smelchak put on the wiki is:
S = Self
R = Replicating
A = Artificial (?) / Android (?)
L = (Life) (?)

But for all I know it stands for 'Some Robotic A**hole(s) (Lunatics)'

Maxim got that from my post on the COTI Board. I speculatively worked that out staring at the IISS Secret Report to the Emperor attached to the 1065 Second Survey.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I blame the Ancients, myself.

The big boys on the galactic map likely predate the Ancients...

 

[alex_greene]

The big boys on the galactic map likely predate the Ancients...

The Primordials, and Deepnight.
Of course, the fun would start if you, as referee, decided to escalate and introduce some sort of Eternals.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I will take the opportunity to post this again:

The First Starfarers
We place the age of the universe at more than fifteen billion years.
The oldest stars in Charted Space are dim red dwarfs some ten billion years old.
Intelligent life first appeared in Charted Space more than two billion years ago.
Intelligent life first began sublight travel between the stars more than a billion years ago. Short-lived beings found sublight travel tedious and frustrating and contented themselves with confinement to a few star systems. Longer lived races ranged far and wide using generation ships, cold sleep, and even electronic personality transfers.

So generation-ships plied space long before the Ancients. Even if these ships were limited to a small fraction of c, the galaxy is only 100,000ly across...
Similarly the coldsleep approach...
But electronic personality transfer - to the transferred individual it is instant, the infrastructure set up would be the same scale as the above.