Welcome Traveller Fans!
Hey hey, welcome Science Fiction Fans! This blog is being used in an effort to show my continuing work on a famous sci-fi game called "Traveller". My main Traveller Republik (TrR) website is located HERE. We want (and welcome) new people to work with us to create a galaxy wide Traveller set up. I work daily on TrR and have several other people helping me as well. We hope you enjoy this blog, that it may inspire you to greatness, and that you will possibly come and join us on the TrR team, excelsior!
The idea behind this website is that Traveller is so bogged down with "canon" that you can do very little with it. I myself have been playing Traveller for decades and now that every world within the Third Imperium seems to be claimed and a history written about it, there is no room for real creativity without someone screaming "that's not canon!". So lets do this instead: we have an entire galaxy to play with and in this universe the Third Imperium doesn't exist. Any stellar state in this new universe could be made similar to the 3rd Imp, but this allows us much more room to play with. We are looking for people who can contribute in small or large ways, and also HIWG or GDW members to help flesh out the overall expansion of humanity across the Milky Way, which took a little over 80,000 years. Feel free to look at the Traveller website URL I sent you. I am also blogging about what I am doing over there; check my blogspot below. Let me know if you are interested in any way. Thanks, Maxx
PS: this post will always remain on top, so please scroll down to see newer articles.
NEW Journal of the Traveller Aide Society (JTAS)
Introducing my very first Journal of the Traveller Aide Society (Kobra Worlds). This mini-magazine is done in the spirit of the old Traveller JTAS from 40 years ago. This is my very first work in a long time and much of it is ORIGINAL CONTENT. However, I have grabbed, stolen, and snagged many cool new interesting technology for this Journal from various other sources (too many to enumerate). Also included is original alien art work and ships. The next JTAS will be coming out shortly, so enjoy! Please click on this LINK to go to the page where my JTAS-K is being hosted and thanks!
LOWER ORION ARM
THE ANCIENE REPUBLIK
The Anciene Republik is the remnant of a galaxy-wide state also by the same name. When the Last Emperor of the Republik died, it slowly lost its hold on the millions of worlds in the Milky Way, shrinking dramatically and eventually stabilizing around the capital of Corfu and Olde Earth. Currently, the Republik stands at around 55,000 worlds and has one of the highest technology levels known to man. The head of the government of this massive state is the High Premier and the Republik is a very militant organization.
ARDENNES
A high-population world located in the Lower Orion Arm, the planet Ardennes rules only itself but has influence many nearby star systems. With a population of over one trillion people, Ardennes imports food from a dozen different nearby farming worlds, otherwise the population would starve. Its naval forces are ultra-high tech and have defeated any and all attempts to subjugate the planet.
SIXTH TEXAS REPUBLIC
This small interstellar nation is located near the Anciene Republik and it makes most of its foreign export cash from the sale of "stroon", a life extending drug that is grown only on the capital planet New Texas, which allows this polity to punch far above its weight. Nearly 100 worlds make up the Republic and all of its populations show the same independence streak and ruggedness that citizens of New Texas do. MORE HERE
CONCORDAT OF MANN
This civilization is ruled by a powerful AI overlord that is as ruthless a non-emotional computer possibly can be. The star nation it has built is totalitarian in the extreme, with all citizens and foreigners being monitored every moment of every day. For now the AI (MANN) seems content with its holdings but its many neighbors watch nervously for any changes in the mad computer. MANN has almost no trade relations with other space-going powers.
OON CONFEDERATION
The Oon Confederation is a medium-sized interstellar empire of over 8,000 inhabited systems, all owned and dominated by the Oon (a bug-like race). Since they are very territorial, other alien races are allowed to travel through Oon space, but lengthy stays are forbidden. Most of their worlds are very high-tech, with the capital planet Homehive being TL18. Its' Navy is very large and well funded, but the Oon have no serious external enemies. The neighboring Mercantile League has a significant trading relationship with the Oon.
MERCANTILE LEAGUE
A vast commercial entity that covers more than 30,000 inhabited star systems, the League is the galaxy's largest economic powerhouse. Merchants based in the League have weaved a web of mutual trade amongst most of the interstellar powers in the lower Orion Arm. Tens of thousands of its merchant ships ply the space lanes, sometimes with an armed military escort depending on the level of piracy in a trading region. However nearly one third of its shipping and trade has been crippled by the Hammerstar Supernova.
TRI-SPECIES COMBINE
This galactic power is a combination of three different and widely diverse races....
MATTERHORN FEDERATION
The planet Matterhorn has a population of one trillion people, making it a major economic powerhouse in the Lower Orion Arm. It is one of the largest producers (and consumers) of mass marketed technological goods in the galaxy. While it has numerous trade deals with nearby worlds for importing food, Matterhorn only controls its own solar system. The planets' defense forces are however very substantial, including many capital warships.
POICTESME LEAGUE
The Poictesme League is the most technologically and militarily advanced star nation in the lower Orion Arm. Heavily armed League battleships have often ended a conflict immediately by their sudden appearance in a war zone. Nearly 7,000 worlds make up this interstellar nation, whose citizens are mostly humans (although aliens are welcome in their space). Super-advanced science is....MORE HERE SOON
HEES DOMAIN
This alien race is.....MORE HERE SOON
HOLOT EMPIRE
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
THE IK'K
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF TZU
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
TRUNDIMOUX EMPIRE
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
HIVE WORLDS
NARAM POLITY
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
SABRE WORLDS
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
HERT FEDERATION
This alien race.....MORE HERE SOON
THE LUREN
The Luren are a bat-like race that can be found across the entire Lower Orion Arm. These scavengers....MORE HERE SOON
URBANOS SECTOR
Okay I worked up some Urbanos Sector details and thought I would share. The extremely high population world of Urbanos is located in the lower Orion Arm spur of the galaxy. It has an enormous population, well over 1 trillion people and is technically a "city-planet", with the entire surface covered with one gigantic sprawling city. Urbanos, along with the other Big Five worlds have built up an coalition of planets (the Oceanic Alliance) and all are extremely high tech. In addition, the Minervans and the alien Bushi race are above tech level 18, making this Alliance extremely powerful. Unfortunately, the entire sector is under attack from two different directions by two completely separate enemies. For now, here is a map showing the largest populated planets in the Urbanos Sector. MORE HERE
URBANOS SECTOR
The graphic shown below is the location of the homeworlds of the "Big Five", the five most powerful and populated planets in the region. The Big Five initially formed the Oceanic Alliance, with the help of the AI named "Ocean", and their forces continually wage war against the nearby threats that have been so successful against the adjacent sectors. Each of the Big Five worlds have a population over 100 billion people and they lead a coalition of planets against the invading "Riders" and raids by pirates from several adjacent sectors. These planets wield extraordinary power because of their high tech levels and high-populations.
THE ANCIENTS
Okay, so I have been working on an overall skeletal structure for what the Traveller Republik galaxy looks like, and why. There is an enormous amount of work to be done to fill in the 100,000 years of human history in TrR, and here is a little blurb of it. Remember, we are looking for team members to help create this universe; your contribution can be small, like telling us about the cool alien race you made and that now lives in TrR. Or you could contribute more, and we are looking for HIWG member-like people as well. Cheers!
=====================================================================
"The "Originators" are considered to be the oldest alien races known to exist, and there are over a dozen of them. The oldest of them all is known as "the Fathers", and its been proven over and over that the Fathers spread humanoid life across our galaxy. On thousands of worlds in the Milky Way, humans and near-humans are located; most can interbreed with humanity's main stock from Olde Earth. Why the Fathers did this is unknown, but many of their technofossils remain, mainly in the Orion Arm of the galaxy. The Father's homeworlds, located in the Orion Spur, still have advanced defenses that automatically fire on any approaching ship or small craft, therefore they are off limits to every race. Hundreds of star systems have also been terraformed by the Fathers, and many are unique like the Castle System (with five habitable worlds), the Halden Diamond (four habitable worlds in a rosette configuration), and the fantastical Tyree "Zoo" (two dozen low-tech alien homeworlds orbiting the red giant Tyree in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy).
The Fathers disappeared over a million years ago; theorists believe that they may have died out, wiped each other out in a war, are hiding out in a pocket universe, or just simply devolved into lower life forms. No one knows for sure.
Two additional alien races have colonized the Milky Way extensively and also left vast technofossils laying around, the P'zirr and the Mnxorn. Both of these races existed at the same time and apparently fought a genocidal war against each other. In the end, the reptilian Mnxorn were wiped out and the P'zirr Empire blasted back to a few dozen gas giant worlds, where they thrive to this day. Currently the P'zirr refuse contact with all other races, but the wreckage of their war can be seen across most of the galaxy.
The last known ancient race that was extremely powerful and held significant influence on the Milky Way galaxy were the Makers and a great deal of their technology is still around and functioning (and highly dangerous). They lived over 500,000 years ago, and Maker technology is organic in nature, able to pervert any living thing they come into contact with into monstrous forms. Maker technology is worth enormous amounts of money, and is incredibly lethal to be around.
THE INSPIRATION
So, I was watching another website (I forget where) and he developed some pretty nifty software on how to create sector and subsector maps instantly from data. I was thrilled and went ahead and did the ultra-modern sector of Urbanos, and below is what it generated. This map was so freakin cool it inspired me to work more on the TrR and its myriad of worlds.
As you can see from the map, the major high-population worlds (the Big Five) have enormous trade routes surrounding them, going to and fro from these high-tech civilized planets. The revenues for trading among this cluster of worlds is enormous and the super-tech goods and information sharing between these planets helps the region continue to grow in leaps and bounds in the technological fields.
MORE ABOUT URBANOS SECTOR HERE
KOBRA WORLDS
So I have been working on the Kobra Worlds map, this is the region that our adventurers in the Journal of the Travellers Aide Society (Republik) will travel, from Kobra World to the Jerlea Ringworld, to Urbanos. This whole area is the Collapse Zone (CZ) and it is in the lower portion of the Orion Arm.
The large circular area is the zone of devastation working its way outward from the center, where a hypergiant star went supernova. The "Hammerstar" was known to be unstable but very few people actually believed it would destabilize and even fewer realized that it would affect an entire area of the Milky Way Galaxy.
This explosion was seen as far away as the Andromeda Galaxy and has inflicted hundreds of billions of casualties up and down the lower Orion Arm. Very few areas in the Arm have been able to sustain their economy or technology.
THE MINERVANS
The Minervans are humans who settled in the Urbanos Sector tens of thousands of years ago. They have always been heavily involved in the region. Below is a photo of the habitable planets in their system; Minervans are expert terraformers and Minerva'At is still being transformed.
BELOW IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
HICKENLOOPERS' WORLD
This artificial mini-world was constructed by the Ssli as a engineering test, and was paid for by the trillionaire businessman Marko Hickenlooper. Located in the Anciene Republik, visits to this worldlet are by invitation only.
THE BUSHI
The Bushi are an ancient avian race that are highly aggressive and naturally xenophobic. Their homeworld is in the Lower Orion Arm, a jumbo-sized world with vast soaring mountain ranges and immense flat plains. Since they are flyers, the Bushi are mostly isolationist and and constantly engage in warfare amongst themselves. Finally, over several millennia, they united as a world and eventually ventured into space. Their interstellar empire grew until they ran across several species and using their superior breeding abilities they overwhelmed those three races (the Krim, the Alo, and the Barabo). They utterly destroyed them, feeding more and more into the social xenophobia of the Bushi race. Over the next 400 years they made huge leaps in science and expanded their militant empire even further until they ran into the the human-dominated "Golden Empire" in _____, sparking the Starflyer War.
At first, this devastating conflict was fought at long distances using automated weaponry by both sides but it was the Bushi Starflyer weapons that inflicted the most damage (and terror) on humanitys' side. The Starflyers' were long-ranged ultrafast drones armed with planet-shattering warheads and they could be fired at any planet within 1,500 light years of the Bushi Homeworld with a very good chance of hitting its target. Over 75 human worlds in the Lower Orion Arm were badly damaged or destroyed by Starflyer strikes, but in the end humanity's enormous population advantage overwhelmed the Bushi by sheer numbers and ended the war in _____. As punishment, the Bushi were reduced to forced isolation on their homeworld for thousands of years while humans slowly eroded their inward-looking xenophobia. Eventually the Bushi were allowed to join the new Anciene Republik and became an important member of that organization, making leaps and bounds in the organic sciences. They became expert terraformers and sold their skills to the highest bidder. In their home system, they realigned the environment of Bushi Prime and converted a smaller world (Bushi Minor) to a habitable one, with a future world (XX8f8) to be refashioned sometime in a few hundred years.
When the Hammerstar Disaster struck, the Bushi Homeworld was cut off from the Republik and joined the newly formed Oceanic Alliance as one of the Founding Worlds. By that time, interstellar trade was important to the Bushi and keeping their local region economically and politically stable was in their vital self-interest. By ______ their technology level had reached TL20 along with several other worlds within the Alliance, forming a growing synergistic hope for the future.
THE TYRANCY
Living almost a thousand years due to nanotech and advanced whole-body cloning, Orlando Zhu ruled with an iron fist and he also bribed various leading officials with life extension drugs which nearly doubled their lifespans.
Sadly, these officials would die rapidly if they were taken off the drugs, making blackmailing and bribing them extremely easy. During his reign, Zhu was assassinated several times but a new clone would just replace the old one, ensuring governmental continuity and his tyranny. A military genius and brilliant economist, he eventually moved the capital to the jumbo-world Corfu, which was at the time an up and coming economic giant since the world bigger than Olde Earth and had a much larger population. Eventually, in 7790 AD officials within the government that were continually brutally subjugated by the Tyrant rose up against him and he was killed for the last time. To do this, his half-dozen dispersed cloning facilities were discovered and destroyed, and a new civil war broke out to try and fill the role of leader. Ultimately a advanced AI named "MANN" forcibly took over the reigns of government and ruled for the next 1,000 years, with disastrous consequences for mankind!
