From: Steve Higginbotham
^^^^^^^^^^^^ Hopefully this is correct :-)
Subject: Sword worlds
>Sulieman:
^^^^ its Sulaiman as it says in my post or you can use Ameer if
you feel informal :-)
>>About crossing the Reft...
>>To me the question that is raised is how and why? If they crossed the
>>Reft they did it for a specific reason i.e. they knew exactly where
>>they wanted to go and then took the "shortest" path. I don't know if it
>>is even viable to do it with J-2 maybe J-3 technology. Remember the
^^^^^^
>>Reft was only crossed in 1090 by a specialised Scout ship and that was
>>done in Corridor. If they did it I can see why it took them 20
>How and why? 1090? In my TCS game, there are at least two ships, one
>TL-10, one TL-12, that are theoretically capable of crossing the Rift.
Two out of how many? What's their total useful tonnage?
>Both can cross eight parsecs of empty space, and one (the TL10 one),
>can, with sufficient drop tanks, cross 21 parsecs without refueling. So
>it certainly is possible to build ships that can, and has been since the
>Ziru Sirka.
I think you missed the whole point of the argument. The problem isn't if
its possible, the problem is whether its VIABLE. What is the ratio of
useful cargo to fuel for such vessels? If you are transporting more than
10 people what is its size? If the original SWs had access to a very large
volume tonnage then they could have run over just about any opposition at
that time or atleast taken the less risky route. If they were exiled then
would the Terrans have let them go with oh a couple of hundred million tons
worth of shipping in the assumption that most of it would be used for fuel.
If on the other hand they built such ships then they were purpose built for
crossing the Great Rift.
That implies that the SW knew EXACTLY where they wanted to go. Which brings
us back to the original question of: Why settle where they did? Still
doesn't explain why it took them 20 years. If they
took the short-cut then they should have gotten there sooner not later by
14 years. As far as settling in the Trojan Reach goes, I would have thought
that they would stick around there for a few more years, IF they were trying
to settle, before running another half a sector into the Marches. One other
thing if your vessels have Riftspanning ability why cross the unknown Rift,
just skip from one backward world to another skimming fuel. No problem with
governments and its safer than the Rift i.e you can always find worlds that
can supply fuel AND food.
The other problem is that as my reference to crossing of Reft and the
original Aslan book reveals that the region was not mapped till recently.
While it may have been possible to cross the Rift, it wasn't done until
recently (as far as we know). Now if the SW crossed the Great Rift they
probably did so w/out the benefit of any accurate maps. This is probably
true in any case due to the state of interstellar commerce. This could
explain why they wandered around for about 20 years. However sanity would
suggest that after the first 5 years of jumping into deep space they would
have changed their minds and taken a route which allows them to use less
fuel.
>If they were racists, they probably would have settled somewhere with
>natives to feel superoir to/exterminate.
Maybe they were out to show how to build utopia. They preferred no
confusing interference from smarty natives. Otherwise all the Klansmen
would have settled in ghettos. And the suburbs would be free of all racism.....
>If they were isolationist, they should have settled well away
>from Darrian.
Too tired of travelling and possible that they did not think that the
Darrians would recover anytime soon. They were right in that regard
mostly. They did nothing to help them that's for sure.
>Personally, I think the knowledge of Darrian should be
>excised from the History of the Sword Worlds. It is difficult to
>reconcile with everything else.
I think it becomes worse if u assume that they did not know of Darrians.
Then u have a group of people who has travelled for 20 years
scouting for the best place to settle and they never noticed the Darrians
when they finally decide to settle! Its more likely that they thought
that the Darrians were too low-tech to be a threat and the unoccupied
SW subsector too good. There is no indication that any of the civil wars
made the SW lose the tech for jumps. They would have NOTED the Darrians
existence whether they really NOTICED or CARED TO NOTICE them is an
entirely different matter. I think its more likely that they underestimated
them.
>Perhaps the "Official History" says
>they knew of the Darrians, but they were really caught flat-footed when
>they discovered their next-door neighbors (whom they didn't really
>want), and changed history to imply that they had planned it that way
>all along. This would make a good line to feed their people ("Yes, we
>knew about them before we chose Gram, but we settled here anyway. We'll
>need a stong enemy to test us, to keep us strong, etc....")
This would be fine if we knew of what the SWs taught as history. Its
not the SW that claim to have contacted the Darrians, its Darrians who
claim to have been contacted. The source of info is the Darrians Alien
Module. Info on SW is rather scanty as far as pre-Imperial history goes as
you might have guessed.
Ameer