Here's some ideas about the settling of the Sword Worlds:
What we know about the Swordworlder's ancestors:
They left Terra in -420.
They were of Germanic and Nordic stock, but these terms had only lin-
guistic meaning by this time.
Assuming that the present day official language of the Sword Worlds
still is fairly close to the the language spoken by the original
settlers, they spoke a variant of Icelandic borrowing heavily from
other Nordic languages as well as from Germanic tongues and from
Vilani (and the socio-political events that produced that little mix
is a facinating object for speculation in itself :-)
They arrived in Spinward Marches ca. -400.
They carried out a survey that detected the Darrian worlds, but did not
contact them as they wanted to create their own indpendent community of
worlds.
They settled the first Sword World, Gram, in -399.
They colonized 4 or 5 worlds in addition to the first one (Gram) in one
century and 12 more in the next.
(The selection of the first four worlds settled after Gram demonstrates
a typical "wargamer" attitude: Joyeuse, Colada, Tizon, and Hrunting. Not
the best worlds of the cluster, but the ones facing the Darrians, thus
preempting these worlds. Cunnonic must have had a viable population to
discourage settlement.)
Well, after some thought I've come up with something that uses most of
these elements. Here it is: The early history of the Sword Worlds:
In -420 the Old Earth Union was in the middle of a civil war. The Sword
Class troop transport GRAM had left Terra carrying 40.000 troops, part
of an invasion force. The capital ships had pounded the defenses into the
ground and the troop transports were moving in to unload when a relief
fleet jumped in and caught them deep in a gravity well. Most of the
invasion fleet was destroyed or captured. The Gram and a few lesser
escorts escaped by jumping from within the jump limit. On the way back
to Terra they learned that their side had lost, and that they had been
branded as war criminals. Eluding the pursuing squadrons they fled
towards the core because that happened to be the way where pursuit was
weakest. They avoided the Vegan Polity and the Easter Concord to avoid
being apprehended and turned over to the Union.
After some discussion it was decided to find a suitable planet or set
of planets and settle down there. Precisely why they decided to leave
the area of the Rule of Man completely is unclear, but that was the
alternative they selected. It became clear, however, that the engines
of the Gram would soon need a thorough overhaul. This presented a problem
since they did not carry much in the way of valuables. The solution was
to find an empty, mineral rich world and set up a small mining operation.
It took 18 years to dig out and refine sufficient precious metal to pay
for a complete overhaul of the Gram and its escorts. They then travelled
through Corridor and Deneb and eventually came to The Spinward Marches.
They might have travelled father yet, but during the jump to Spinward
Marches 1223 they experienced severe jump sickness. They surveyed the
worlds around them and despite detecting the Darrians decided against
risking any further jumps.
The Gram was a 100.000 T, Jump-2 Troop Transport with a crew of 756 and
the capacity to carry 40.000 troops in low berths and an additional 500
passengers (thus enabling staff members of the troops being transported
to be concious during flight). It had been carrying a michellany of units:
The 8th Scandinavian Army Unit[1], various specialist units, including a
mobile field surgery, an Engineer Regiment, and three German Jaeger
Battallions, and a colonial regiment from Agidda. Since Gram had been
sceduled to unload last all of the troops were still on board. The navy
element had a male/female ration of close to 1:1, but the army troops
had a m/f ratio of 4:1. It was therefore decided to allow women to extempt
themselves from dangerous jobs. This was the background for the male-
dominated society developed by the swordworlders. However, a sizable
fraction of the women naturally refused to avail themselves of this, thus
establishing the easy acceptance of females in "male" jobs that is also a
part of swordworlder society.
The common language of the first generation was the anglic of the Old
Earth Union armed forces, but with over 80% of the original settlers
speaking sagamal[2], anglic disappeared in less than a generation,
replaced by a mixture of sagamal, other nordic tongues, germanic, and
the vilani of the Agidda troops.
[1] An army unit is an intermediate step between a division and an army
used by the Old Earth Union at the time.
[2] "Saga-tounge", an artificial language based on the old Icelandic
sagas during the Cultural Roots Revival of the 10th Century PI
and spoken by all scandinavians in the 5th Century PI as a second
language and by many of them as a first.
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Well, let me know what you think.
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
[email removed]
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"A subsector official pompously states that the
subsector armed forces have four Kinunir class
ships in service, each with enough troop strength
to put down any military operations that threathen
the peace of the Imperium."
---Adventure 1, The Kinunir