Hey Gang,
Well, I threatened to do so before, and soon I will actually start putting up
a Traveller story I have been working on. James suggested I put it out in 20K
chunks about once a week. This may go on for a while...
(I'll probably put it up on weekends. That seems to be the time when traffic
is at its lowest)
The 4.5th Frontier War
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Just a few notes about background in the story:
Date: 1102. Well before the 5th Frontier War. Back in the old days of
Classic Trav :-)
Setting:
Iakr sector. Foreven to you Imperials. Just spinward of the Spinward Marches.
As far as I know, there never has been offical sector data for that sector.
The map I have is one I partially generated, and partially stole. At the time,
I was finding a lot of worlds in Amber Zone articles that were not in the
Spinward Marches. Thus I took all I could find and stuffed them in Foreven.
I took entire subsector maps from FASA & others. Alien races were transported
lock stock and barrel from other sectors.
The Dynchia (JTAS 24?) are supposed to be on the other side of the Imperium!
Noteable stuff that got stolen: Jungleblut subsector from FASA. Horltheur
is a world that was outlined in Dragon Magazine. Other subsectors got
mysteriously transported in from Reaver's Deep. At least one world went
through a worm hole and came all the way from the Solomani Rim.
Characters:
Primarily Zhodani. The other ref in our group had us constantly fighting the
Zho's. I decided it was time for the Zho's to fight back. :-)
House Rules: Psionic Variants
Not all my psionic rules quite mesh with standard Trav. I made the
determination that a Teleport of exceptional strength can carry another person
on a teleport. It's tiring, but it can be done.
Also, if a character is trained in telepahy, awareness, and has some
medical training, that character can induce regeneration in another. It costs
more, but it can be done. The reasoning: Well, the healer knows how to take
total control of their own body. They can also read and send thoughts into
another mind. Thus it seems acceptable that they could induce regeneration in
that person if the person was amenable to the psi contact.
A person with awareness training can, given time, can change their
body by regeneration. Thus, they could change their eye color, the length of
their legs, their fingerprints, their retinal patterns, etc. etc. BUT, that
person can not suddenly regrow an arm in the blink of an eye. Regrowth of
limbs takes special diets of protiens and stuff, and TIME.
Also, awarness is a Very nice skill to find in ones lover... Intimate
contact has a tendancy to funcion as a psi-boost in that it will allow psi
points to recover faster (though it does tend to reduce endurance slightly...)
(With psionic enhanced endurance in such situations, one runs into near
violations of the second law of thermodynamics... Perpetual motion...)
Inconsistancies:
Well, I started writing this four years ago. Since then, articles have been
published which contradict some of the assumptions I made in the writing.
Where possible I have tried to make corrections. Where an assumption was
important to the plot or the make up of the characters, I did NOT change it.
For instance: in 1988, as some have pointed out there are NO good drawings of
Vargr females. I remeber a discussion on the list about that particular
point. And I point out that at the time of writing, there was only ONE drawing
that was of a Vargr female that showed the rib cage at ALL. It was not clear
what was there. I will NOT re-write the story on that subject.
Another thing, I know is inconsistant: when the Darrians Alien
Module came out, it gave guidelines on creating Darrian-Aslans. All it said
was to change the physical stats. It said nothing about an Aslan subculture.
Thus (though it doesn't make MUCH difference in this story) I always assumed
that the Darrian-Aslans acted like Darrians. There is no provision for male
Aslan who gets female skills. It is not mentioned AT ALL. I therefore assumed
that these Aslan had been TOTALLY caught under Darrian culture. This was a
LOT of fun when I ran a male Aslan who carried a hand computer and was an
engineer with a strong interest in science! He also was something of a
gambler, things got REALLY interesting when he got into a traditional Aslan
duel and made a wager on the outcome... Traditional Aslan found him
Quite Strange. (Zdeldi appears here in a very Minor role)
Now, Cats & Rats says Darrian-Aslan follow the traditions of the Aslan.
(Sigh)
Undoubtedly, there are other things that don't quite click with MegaTrav as
we have come to know it. Well... Tough! But if any of you all find something
I haven't spotted, lemme know.
Thanks,
Scott Kellogg
Question: Why did the Imperium collapse?
Answer: Mark Miller left Stimpy the cat guarding the history eraser
Happy! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! Joy!