
Variant 1  /  Introduction
--------------------------

Sorry for the unimaginative name. I guess I'm just the sort of
person who writes the book first and then tries to think up the
title. In any case, the point behind this little exercise is that
I haven't refereed a Traveller game in years, and since I'm just
now getting back into it, I figured I should write this little
program to help me get my notes organized.

The basic idea behind this particular setting is that we've got
yet another empire-in-rebellion type of situation. I know, too
reminiscent of MegaTraveller, but it's just as similar to
StarWars, so what's your beef?

In any case, what started this little shebang is that the
Emperor's son got an itchy trigger-finger and decided to kill
Daddy and make himself King of all Kings (never you mind what he
did to his Mother). We might have called our little starling
Oedipus, except that his name was actually Vesthar (Imperator
Vesthar to you, Bucko!), and he had a very good reason for his
actions (though we don't need to go into that either). The short
of it is that this form of succession isn't quite universally
recognized just yet, and since the Empire is still young (only
seventy-one years to be exact), there are many starsystems which
long for the golden age of the republic.

Aha! So it _IS_ a StarWars take-off!

Okay, ya got me. But hey, they always say: if you don't have
anything original to say, quote somebody else.

Right now, the war is just starting to get moving. The various
dukes and business interests are busily choosing sides and/or
placing bets as a wide assortment of star systems are
simultaneously declaring mutual solidarity, independence, and
allegiance to whomever has the scariest space fleet.

As for some of the basic standards and assumptions:

Religion: By and large, it doesn't exist too much anymore, though
   occasionally there will be some freak who declares himself
   the omnipotent one, and people being people tend to cower down
   and make the best of it.

Technology: We're talking pretty standard-Traveller except on a
   few items.

   * Making a hyperspace jump takes about a day instead of a
     week. Basically 20+d8 hours. Time passes normally while in
     transit.

   * Jump-dampers are available at lower tech levels, allowing
     big ships with the appropriate facilities to project a field
     of particles so that enemy ships can't jump away when the
     going gets tough.

   * Bio-engineering is quite advanced so that the modification
     of a life form's genetic code has become relatively simple
     (still painstaking, but possible if you have lots of money).

   * There are some super-tech artifacts which were created by
     some alien civilization which disappeared long before humans
     ever made it into space. Who the aliens were and where they
     went is still quite a mystery.

Aliens: On the topic of aliens, there aren't very many in this
   setting, at least not starfaring ones, unless they attained
   their technical expertise from human colonizers. It is assumed
   that the hurdles to the stars are so difficult to surmount
   that the galaxy is rather vacant in terms of technical
   civilization. Lots of planets have full blown ecosystems, but
   very few have "intelligent life".
      However, humans have created other "strains" of humanity
   via bioengineering. Most notable are the "waterfolk" who are
   essentially amphibious mermen. Unfortunately, one of the
   downsides of bioengineering is that the species created is
   usually a little dumber and more prone to various illnesses.

I'm sure I could go on for hours, but this seems like enough to
get started.

