>>Makes perfect sense to me, actually. He was nearly assassinated by one of
>>his own admirals (Santanocheev, I believe) and had to take control of the
>>Navy to save his own hide, to say nothing of the Marches.
>Hmmm... I obviously missed a turn here. I am a new ref, to all new
>Travellers- is the above background regarding Santanocheev & Bolden-Tukera
>pre-MegaTraveller? If so, are the publications concerned still available?
>From what I can gather from "The Spinward Marches Campaign" and the board game
"Fifth Frontier War", at the time of that war Santanocheev was Sector Admiral,
in charge of defending the Spinward Marches. He was a complete incompetent, and
had obtained the position more on the basis of social standing and court
connections than any real ability. (In the board game, he's actually a
liability to any fleet that gets him - they're better off with no admiral at
all!)
Before the war, Naval Intelligence (in which Norris was then a minor officer)
had produced a report which was very critical of Santanocheev. Unfortunately,
it criticised him wrongly. As a result, Santanocheev set up a new organisation
to take its place, comprised mainly of yes-men and bootlickers. Being the more
competent organisation, and not being actually disbanded, Naval Intelligence
was the one that got wind of what the Zhodani were planning, and because of his
former connection, Norris received that information. He knew what an idiot
Santanocheev was, and asked the Emperor to do something about the situation,
e.g. sack Santanocheev and put Norris in charge. What Strephon did was to send
Norris an Imperial Warrant, which basically says "This person can do what he
wants because he's doing it in the Emperor's name". Unfortunately, the warrant
didn't reach Norris. He eventually learnt that the ship carrying it had crash-
landed on Algine, which was interdicted, therefore he was forbidden to go
there. He went anyway, his reasoning being that if he found the warrant, it
would allow him to override the interdiction. If he didn't, he was in deep
trouble, but that was a risk he chose to take. Meanwhile, he put about rumours
that he was ill, he was dead, he'd been assassinated or deposed, etc., to
cover his disappearance. Eventually he found the warrant, came back, kicked
out Santanocheev and saved the Marches.
That's the sort of man Norris is. Another of his schemes was the funding of an
"Azhanti High Lightning" class cruiser by getting all the school children of
the Spinward Marches to make donations out of their lunch money. The ship was
named "Children of the Marches" in their honour.
Now, what I want to know is, has anyone written an adventure based on Norris'
expedition to Algine? It looks like a hook just waiting for someone to hang a
plot on it!
"Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott
Adrian Hurt | JANET: [email removed]
UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: [email removed]