New worlds to conquer (LONG)

     Many people have expressed their discontent with the fact
that the Third Imperium is surrounded by other interstellar
empires, leaving it no direction in which to expand.  As a
result, there are no completely untouched worlds for the Scouts
to explore, and very little chance for first contact with a
sophont race, except perhaps for sophonts of Tech Level 0 who
live in networks of burrows forty kilometers beneath a planet's
surface.  As this sort of stuff is a mainstay of science fiction,
and the very sort of thing we'd expect to find Scouts doing, this
lack of new worlds is very much a problem.
     There are a few obvious solutions to this problem, though
they are not very satisfying.
     The simplest is that we can assume that any world that is
not a High Population world is only incompletely explored, and
that any world that is a Low Population world has barely been
explored at all.  This idea appears to be the one usually assumed
by GDW and DGP (remember Tel Duramon, who spent his career in the
Scouts exploring Seven Sisters Subsector?), but it does may leave
one to wonder what the IISS Exploration Branch has been doing for
the last eleven centuries.  Of course, the Imperium does contain
a great deal of territory, and it would take a long time to
explore it all.  After all, it is only in the last few centuries,
out of ten thousand years of recorded history, that we have
thoroughly explored the Earth.
     Another solution to the problem is to roleplay members of an
interstellar empire that does have unexplored worlds on its
borders.  The Vargr and the Aslan are both in this position.  The
Solomani are, as well, and it should be fairly straightforward to
roleplay their situation.  But this solution has the strong
disadvantage of leaving our Imperials completely out of the
picture.
     There is one other solution, one which I think could be very
interesting, although it is much more problematic, and I propose
that we spend some time discussing it on the TML.
     We know that the Zhodani will launch another Core Expedition
"soon," but I have not heard a specific date mentioned.  We know
that relations between the Consulate and the Domain of Deneb have
warmed considerably.  What if, as a diplomatic gesture of
goodwill, or perhaps simply on a whim, the Consulate invites the
Domain to participate?
     Obviously, Scouts from the Domain could only play a minor
role.  The Domain of Deneb, struggling with Vargr and Aslan
incursions and a serious economic recession, could not really
match the performance of the large, harmonious, and prosperous
Zhodani Consulate.  But perhaps the Domain could scrape together
a "base ship" and a flotilla of Scout/Couriers and Surveyors.
     The Imperial contingent would, presumably, be asked to
explore systems peripheral to the main thrust of the Core
Expedition.  The Zhodani would not want the Imperials to know
what they were really after.  This enigma, and the tensions
inevitable between Zhodani and Imperials, would serve well as
background for the exploration of worlds.
     The greatest problem I see in this scheme is that it would
seem unlikely for the Imperials to interpret the Core Expeditions
as anything but the preliminary explorations for future Zhodani
expansion.  Perhaps someone else can see a way around this.
     This, then, is my suggestion.  Do with it as you will.

                              Brian G. Vaughan
                              [email removed]