As an aside, in my ponderings on the immediate future of the RC I created a 'Democratic Diasporan Star Empire'. This was formed when the RC-supported rebels went 'off message' and made a deal with a faction of Arturo Loyalists. Arturo was kept as Emperor, with a Loyalist as his consort - on Lefiguura. The idea being to keep him from the direct levers of power, but satisfying the Loyalists.
The DDSE was intended to be an RC ally, with major equipment supplied by the RC*, but with a friendly rivalry on the Khulam Main as to gaining new members for their polities.
Eamon
* Yup, sounds unlikely. However, I thought that with the RC destroying/appropriating a PC from Arturo, the new govt. might have leverage to obtain replacement(s) from the RC.
--------------------------------------------
---In ,
<dcndcn13@...> wrote :
I was thinking of a PE like
the "Diasporan Star Empire" (Kide), centred around
a single main planet, and ruled by an obnoxious despot. Take
him, her or it out, and the rest would fall into line,
perhaps with some resistance - which just means more
scenarios!
Eamon said:
> As an aside, in my ponderings on the immediate future of the RC I created
> a 'Democratic Diasporan Star Empire'. This was formed when the
> RC-supported rebels went 'off message' and made a deal with a faction of
> Arturo Loyalists. Arturo was kept as Emperor, with a Loyalist as his
> consort - on Lefiguura. The idea being to keep him from the direct levers
> of power, but satisfying the Loyalists.
There's nothing wrong with that. Logically they are going toy have to make
compromises here and there, or at least accommodations or common cause
with existing PEs like Sufren. We didn't have that many stone scripts, but
were writing the story organically.
Nonetheless, if I had to make an "official" call on something like that, I
would have to say they wouldn't put up with it. They are supposed to
establish themselves as vigorous hard-asses, where the net benefit of
their vigor allows us to say that the hard-assedness went along with it.
When people 150 years later want to write about whether the SVs were thugs
or saints, there have to be things for them to hang the "thug" label on.
The RC eventually will have to accept the fact of client states or buffer
states that they can tolerate (for now), but these would be peripheral
(left, right, and rear boundaries) rather than in the middle of the main
path of advance, and also come later on in the narrative, after it has
become much clearer that they can't expend effort all over the place if
they want to focus on the main thrust.
I am still chewing on the point you raised about Sufren (and the more I
think about it, the more it intrigues me), and thinking that there would
have to be some kind of confrontation over the right way to do things.
While I enjoy the idea of the RC saying, "we are simple men, when we say
no dictatorships, we mean no dictatorships, meteoric assault!" that would
be wasteful and non-sensical. But I could see them trying to coerce CofS
into complying with some nominal standards as the cost of joining the RC
effort. Either that or being told, "here's this line, everything on this
side belongs to us, you can go that way if you don't want to abide by our
standards." Even that middle position seems kind of fatuous and
doctrinaire, though. Maybe more like always being put under RC command and
being disdained, given the dirty jobs.
In a round-about way that takes us back to the political divisions in the
RC. While I've said that was added as color, and not as a major plot-line,
the nice thing about color is that you can come back to it later and pull
it into the plotline when you realize it fits. But between Solee and
Frank's contact dates in VF, there is not a lot of time to waste on
political sidetracking when we've got a scheduled collision with the
Regency. All of that stuff would have to happen at the same time as the
uninterrupted advance, which basically demonstrates that it is merely
color: a distinction without a difference.
> The DDSE was intended to be an RC ally, with major equipment supplied by
> the RC*, but with a friendly rivalry on the Khulam Main as to gaining new
> members for their polities.
>
> Eamon
>
> * Yup, sounds unlikely. However, I thought that with the RC
> destroying/appropriating a PC from Arturo, the new govt. might have
> leverage to obtain replacement(s) from the RC.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> ---In ,
> <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
>
>
> I was thinking of a PE like
> the "Diasporan Star Empire" (Kide), centred around
> a single main planet, and ruled by an obnoxious despot. Take
> him, her or it out, and the rest would fall into line,
> perhaps with some resistance - which just means more
> scenarios!
>
>
I can't see any version of an independent Kide surviving. As Dave noted, they're just too close to the RC to be allowed to get away with anything.
That's a shame, of course, since Kide is exactly what I think most Pocket Empires would look like, TED government and all. And nicely Player Character sized too - if you only have a handful of smallish starships, and one of them is crewed by the PCs, they are big fish in your small pond. Or they could be leading the mission to the other inhabited world in your "empire", or...
I put a bit of effort into finding an alternative location for an "empire" of that type, but nothing really jumped out at me. Part of the problem was that potential locations are just too common!
A bigger problem was the effort involved in designing the worlds around it. Path of Tears, and the RC in general, was a hard act to follow. Even stealing worlds from it and gluing them into "my" setting would have left a vast amount of work to be done.
Incidentally, I was particularly fascinated by the article on Hiver Client States, and I would love to have run a game based on the one in the Hinterworlds. It could have been an interesting variation on the RC - similar in some ways, but with different priorities and attitudes, and of course with both greater dependence on the Hivers and lower levels of assistance from them.
I'd see such a game combining "corridor clearing" missions aimed at protecting and broadening the communication routes between the Hivers and the RC, and a bit of slightly rebellious independent expansion/exploration into the core of the Hinterworlds.
There was mention of a failed hiver bootstrap state somewhere before the RC. A great hidden hiver secret.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...
> On Apr 4, 2014, at 14:02, <> wrote:
>
> I can't see any version of an independent Kide surviving. As Dave noted, they're just too close to the RC to be allowed to get away with anything.
>
> That's a shame, of course, since Kide is exactly what I think most Pocket Empires would look like, TED government and all. And nicely Player Character sized too - if you only have a handful of smallish starships, and one of them is crewed by the PCs, they are big fish in your small pond. Or they could be leading the mission to the other inhabited world in your "empire", or...
>
> I put a bit of effort into finding an alternative location for an "empire" of that type, but nothing really jumped out at me. Part of the problem was that potential locations are just too common!
>
> A bigger problem was the effort involved in designing the worlds around it. Path of Tears, and the RC in general, was a hard act to follow. Even stealing worlds from it and gluing them into "my" setting would have left a vast amount of work to be done.
>
> Incidentally, I was particularly fascinated by the article on Hiver Client States, and I would love to have run a game based on the one in the Hinterworlds. It could have been an interesting variation on the RC - similar in some ways, but with different priorities and attitudes, and of course with both greater dependence on the Hivers and lower levels of assistance from them.
>
> I'd see such a game combining "corridor clearing" missions aimed at protecting and broadening the communication routes between the Hivers and the RC, and a bit of slightly rebellious independent expansion/exploration into the core of the Hinterworlds.
>
>
I'm not sure if this scratches your Kide itch or not, but what if you took
Kide right where it was and set up the PCs so that they could be standing
around when some kind of coup against the TED happened and gave them the
opportunity to take over the coup and put themselves in power? Then, as
fast as they could, they would have to re-arrange the government, restore
freedom to the people, dress things up, and then when the RC gets there
they would say, "Greetings, heroic and fair Star Vikings, welcome to the
Kide Participatory Democracy, we have heard of you from afar, and long
awaited your coming."
And then they try to convince the RC to give them some kind of independent
operator's license, bring them some bootstrap/uplift help, etc. They would
have to come up with some kind of justification, "well, don't you know,
people around here will only accept a ruler with (XX arbitrary
characteristic), which we already have, but you will be hard-pressed to
replace. We will happily administer this small realm according to your
rules, which will save you all the trouble of an invasion.
As with the other scenario, if I had to put on my Official History of the
New Era hat I'd probably have to say, "nope, probably didn't happen," but
if it's fun, your game, your rules. Besides, any more "realistic" PE you
could create elsewhere in the former 3I is also unlikely to wind up in the
official TNE history. In fact, it already didn't. But borrowing a page
from bimbob's book, you could find some account in the 1248 book and say,
"History records a falsified story of how the XX PE contributed to New Era
history, completely sanitizing the hijinks of the True Lord Protectors."
Given these historical results (this much expansion by this date), get as
close as you can.
Is the Hiver client state/Hinterworlds article from Challenge? I know I
had to read, edit, and develop all of those, but don't remember that.
> I can't see any version of an independent Kide surviving. As Dave noted,
they're just too close to the RC to be allowed to get away with
anything.
>
> That's a shame, of course, since Kide is exactly what I think most
Pocket
> Empires would look like, TED government and all. And nicely Player
Character sized too - if you only have a handful of smallish starships,
and one of them is crewed by the PCs, they are big fish in your small
pond. Or they could be leading the mission to the other inhabited world
in
> your "empire", or...
>
> I put a bit of effort into finding an alternative location for an
"empire"
> of that type, but nothing really jumped out at me. Part of the problem
was
> that potential locations are just too common!
>
> A bigger problem was the effort involved in designing the worlds around
it. Path of Tears, and the RC in general, was a hard act to follow. Even
stealing worlds from it and gluing them into "my" setting would have
left
> a vast amount of work to be done.
>
> Incidentally, I was particularly fascinated by the article on Hiver
Client
> States, and I would love to have run a game based on the one in the
Hinterworlds. It could have been an interesting variation on the RC -
similar in some ways, but with different priorities and attitudes, and
of
> course with both greater dependence on the Hivers and lower levels of
assistance from them.
>
> I'd see such a game combining "corridor clearing" missions aimed at
protecting and broadening the communication routes between the Hivers
and
> the RC, and a bit of slightly rebellious independent
expansion/exploration
> into the core of the Hinterworlds.
---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
> Is the Hiver client state/Hinterworlds article from Challenge? I know I
> had to read, edit, and develop all of those, but don't remember that.
The article on Hiver client states was in the last issue of Challenge. From the nice index I found online: 'Gelinas, Mark "Geo", Notes on Collapsing
Worlds, 77-22', with an introduction probably from you.
A truly inspiring article - a fitting end to Challenge. :(
The fact one was located in the Hinterworlds was from Survival Margin, IIRC. It was marked on a blob map, which matched the actual worlds in the area to a degree that it was possible to guesstimate an exact location. And after that, the details of the individual worlds probably wouldn't have varied that much between individual referees' versions.