>From: Steven Owens [email removed]
>
> I posted asking about medicine in the imperium, and got some
>interesting responses. Now I'm curious about the rebellion. In the
>past I've played pre-rebellion campaigns or played apolitical
>characters. I'm currently playing a character who retired from the
>Interstellar Diplomatic Service, so I suppose he should have a clearer
>idea of where his loyalties lay. What's this whole rebellion about?
Nothing any more. It's all obsolete old history with no relevance to
Traveller:The New Era at all except as folklore.
What? Not satisfied? Okay, in a nutshell: Strephon was an okay but not
great Emperor, who did something stupid in re-establishing the Domains
(groups of four sectors under Archdukes) that had been disbanded (for
good reason) for centuries. The problem with Domains is that they made
the Archduke control too many resources, and allowed for an ambitious
Archduke to make a power play. One such Archduke was Dulinor of Ilelish,
who rigged a whole coup to occur simultaneously in his own Domain (where
prerecorded announcements would name him Emperor) and in the Core (where
he would personally shoot Strephon and the rest of the Royal Family and
seize the throne). Well, it ALMOST worked: Dulinor blew away the Emperor,
his wife, and his daughter (who only lived an extra two seconds because
the Aslan ambassador threw himself in front of her), and almost seized
the Palace, but his troops couldn't lock things down and the assassin
assigned to get the last two members of the family, the Twin Princes
Varian and Lucan, blew it. (Some say he got Varian and was killed by
Lucan; others say Lucan killed Varian and blamed it on the assassin)
Dulinor fled back to his Domain and went to Plan B, establishing an
empire of his own and trying to conquer the Imperium from there. Lucan
turned out to be a spoiled brat and a lunatic and started trashing whole
subsectors to get Dulinor. The Corridor Fleet pulled back to Core, the
Vargr swept in, and the Spinward Marches and the rest of the Domain of
Deneb were cut off from the Imperium (Norris forged his own appointment
to the Archdukedom to maintain order). The Terra Fleet pulled back to
Core, the Solomani swept in, and took over most or all of their old
territory minus a few bits and pieces. The Aslan used the death of the
Ambassador as an excuse to swarm over the border into the Deneb domain
and take worlds away from the residents. Various nobles dealt with the
crisis in different ways: Margaret of Delphi was named Empress by the
Moot, which Lucan promptly dissolved, and built her own Domain into an
empire. Ditto for Brzk, the Vargr Archduke of Antares, who was refused
consideration because a nonhuman "couldn't" be Emperor. Duke Craig of
Daibei pulled in his troops and closed his borders; the Vilani megacorps
pulled up stakes, went back to Vland, and declared the New First Imperium
(wrecking the economy in the process); in Gushemege, the "real" Strephon
appeared, and claimed to be the real item (is there anyone out there
who didn't KNOW he was the real thing, before it was announced way too
late this past year?). Oh yes, and the Zhodani just sat back and watched
it all happen, as did the Hivers and the K'Kree. Stir and simmer for
three years at full boil, then watch society collapse into another Long
Night, entirely without need for a Vir-- oh never mind. |-P
>What are:
>
> "feinberg machine"
The medical tricorder that you wave over someone and it tells you all
about their health, from Star Trek, was invented for the series in 1966
by the prop manager, Irving Feinberg. Any Trek doodad, but especially
the tricroder, was called a Feinberger.
> "tricorder"-like imager systems
> smart antitoxin
> enhanced smart cells
These are medicines that know how to track and destroy bad things without
harming good things. A smart antitoxin could eradicate nerve gas from a
man's body without throwing him into a coma the way current anti-nerve
agents do; smart cells could chase down and eat tumor cells while leaving
surrounding tissues alone.
ObMetlaySteenkiness: very few people have been crass enough to discuss the
more racy aspects of future medicine-- the fact that beyond a certain TL,
things like sexual endowment, sexual sensitivity, and even gender will be
a matter of choice, and will be easily and frequently changed. If you
don't like being a tubby, listless woman, turn yourself into a gigantic
male Greek god and dominate all the girls who used to hassle you in Gym
class. If you want BOTH sets of equipment at once, have them installed;
a single man can birth a baby all by himself if he wishes. And so on.
- --
mike metlay | "Einstein's arguments were unassailable
atomic city | --but they were ONLY arguments!"
[address removed] |
pittsburgh pa 15217-0675 | (p. stehle, "the reluctant acceptance
[email removed] | of the photon")