2400AD Notes: 1
Dec. 24th, 2002 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldEarlier, I proposed a setting 2400AD. As I wrote, it would combine:
Here's some initial thoughts on the setting:
I've used the star lists of 2300AD located here, and Traveller star lists located here and here. I've defaulted to 2300AD's starmap, which is much more complete and accurate than Traveller's. In 2300AD canon, the Solar System and Tirane are located in the Sol subsector, while the Chinese Arm stretches from Esperance through to Capella, the American Arm stretches towards Vega subsector, and the French Arm would lie rimward and trailing in the Gemini, Kukulkcan, and Arcturus subsectors. The 2300AD universe appears, in Traveller terms, to be limited to the Solomani Rim subsector, in an area three sectors on a side stretching from Esperance to Capella in the X dimension and from Esperance to Banasdan in the Y dimension, with possible presences further beyond, in neighbouring subsectors of the Solomani Rim, Aldebaran, and Alpha Crucis sectors.
Insofar as I can determine, the alien races of 2300AD are distributed as follows:
These locations are for reference only, since the Traveller map bears little if any resemblance to 2300AD's much more accurate starmap.
One crucial note: Since Travellers' Vegans would be located just off of the American Arm from Hermes (Mu Herculis is associated with Ashtagz Tyui just two parsecs from the Vegan homeworld at Muan Gwi), they don't exist. This is bad for the Vegans. On the other hand, it's quite good for the humans and the other intelligent races in the area. About -4450 Imperial (roughly 70 CE), the Ziru Sirka, expanding down the Rim Main, came into contact with the Vegans, and completed the conquest of the Vegans by roughly 120 CE. It was only the presence of the Vegan Polity which attracted the Ziru Sirka's attention in the general direction of Earth, since the Vegans were the last independent civilization to Rimward. Further, it was only the massive rimward expansion precipitated by the conquest of the Vegans that allowed for the establishment of a dissident state on the planet of Dingir in the Gamma Pavonis planetary system in roughly 1000 CE, conquered a century later and eventually bringing the Ziru Sirka's and its conquest a century later that attracted the Ziru Sirka closer to Earth, so that the first Earth jump-capable vessel met the Vilani at Barnard's Star in 2096.
A straightforward combination of the 2300AD timeline with the Traveller timeline would be disastrous. For starters, in the 2300AD timeline the first stutterwarp-equipped unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri was launched in 2137. Compare this to the Traveller timeline, where the Europeans launched their generation starship to Alpha Centauri as early as 2050, and by the time of first contact with the Ziru Sirka in 2096 Earthlings were expecting to hear back from the European colony at any time. It's open to question whether, equipped only with stutterwarp, the Earthlings would even be able to colonize Tirane; venturing further from the Solar System would infringe on Vilani territory, and probably result in Earth's conquest sometime in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, when in the Traveller timeline the Interstellar Wars were being fought with the Vilani. (At least in the 2300AD timeline Earth humans had a century and a half to build up dozens of colonies with a combined population of more than 1.3 billion people, including 1.05 billion on Tirane before the Kafers invaded.)
Getting rid of the Vegans, then, leaves the Solomani Rim sector free for 2300AD's history: the expansion of the Eber and their self-destructive final wars; the autonomous development of the Pentapods; the efforts of the Ylii to try to recover from their ancient and modern exposures to the Kafer and the efforts of the Kafer to conquer everyone; the progressive development of the Sung and the placid leaf-eating of the Xiang in the BD+04 123 planetary system. Oh, and for the humans of Earth to evolve and advance as best they can.
Thoughts?
- The
2300AD physical universe--stutterwarp, the location of planets, the location of alien species--more-or-less unchanged from Canon.- The
Traveller universe's broader astropolitical scope, featuring a Vilani-dominated Ziru Sirka. The Ziru Sirka hasn't penetrated the Solomani Rim sector but has, over the 2nd and 23rd centuries, begun to slowly decline under the weight of barbarian raids and its cumbersome interstellar economy.- The
Transhuman Space technological milieu (ubiquitous genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, a terraformed Mars, a densely-populated outer Solar System and belt).- And, my own
Tripartite Alliance Earth alternate history, projected to 2400.
Here's some initial thoughts on the setting:
I've used the star lists of 2300AD located here, and Traveller star lists located here and here. I've defaulted to 2300AD's starmap, which is much more complete and accurate than Traveller's. In 2300AD canon, the Solar System and Tirane are located in the Sol subsector, while the Chinese Arm stretches from Esperance through to Capella, the American Arm stretches towards Vega subsector, and the French Arm would lie rimward and trailing in the Gemini, Kukulkcan, and Arcturus subsectors. The 2300AD universe appears, in Traveller terms, to be limited to the Solomani Rim subsector, in an area three sectors on a side stretching from Esperance to Capella in the X dimension and from Esperance to Banasdan in the Y dimension, with possible presences further beyond, in neighbouring subsectors of the Solomani Rim, Aldebaran, and Alpha Crucis sectors.
Insofar as I can determine, the alien races of 2300AD are distributed as follows:
- The Ylii and Kafers would appear to be centred on the interface between the Solomani Rim and Alpha Crucis, with the Pentapods more in the direction of the Old Expanses sector.
- The ersatz Eber homeworld of Komoran, at 82 Eridani, would appear to be Mirabilis in the Capella subsector. Zeta Reticuli doesn't appear on the map.
- The Sung and Xiang home system of BD+04 123would appear to be located somewhere in the Jardin subsector.
These locations are for reference only, since the Traveller map bears little if any resemblance to 2300AD's much more accurate starmap.
One crucial note: Since Travellers' Vegans would be located just off of the American Arm from Hermes (Mu Herculis is associated with Ashtagz Tyui just two parsecs from the Vegan homeworld at Muan Gwi), they don't exist. This is bad for the Vegans. On the other hand, it's quite good for the humans and the other intelligent races in the area. About -4450 Imperial (roughly 70 CE), the Ziru Sirka, expanding down the Rim Main, came into contact with the Vegans, and completed the conquest of the Vegans by roughly 120 CE. It was only the presence of the Vegan Polity which attracted the Ziru Sirka's attention in the general direction of Earth, since the Vegans were the last independent civilization to Rimward. Further, it was only the massive rimward expansion precipitated by the conquest of the Vegans that allowed for the establishment of a dissident state on the planet of Dingir in the Gamma Pavonis planetary system in roughly 1000 CE, conquered a century later and eventually bringing the Ziru Sirka's and its conquest a century later that attracted the Ziru Sirka closer to Earth, so that the first Earth jump-capable vessel met the Vilani at Barnard's Star in 2096.
A straightforward combination of the 2300AD timeline with the Traveller timeline would be disastrous. For starters, in the 2300AD timeline the first stutterwarp-equipped unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri was launched in 2137. Compare this to the Traveller timeline, where the Europeans launched their generation starship to Alpha Centauri as early as 2050, and by the time of first contact with the Ziru Sirka in 2096 Earthlings were expecting to hear back from the European colony at any time. It's open to question whether, equipped only with stutterwarp, the Earthlings would even be able to colonize Tirane; venturing further from the Solar System would infringe on Vilani territory, and probably result in Earth's conquest sometime in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, when in the Traveller timeline the Interstellar Wars were being fought with the Vilani. (At least in the 2300AD timeline Earth humans had a century and a half to build up dozens of colonies with a combined population of more than 1.3 billion people, including 1.05 billion on Tirane before the Kafers invaded.)
Getting rid of the Vegans, then, leaves the Solomani Rim sector free for 2300AD's history: the expansion of the Eber and their self-destructive final wars; the autonomous development of the Pentapods; the efforts of the Ylii to try to recover from their ancient and modern exposures to the Kafer and the efforts of the Kafer to conquer everyone; the progressive development of the Sung and the placid leaf-eating of the Xiang in the BD+04 123 planetary system. Oh, and for the humans of Earth to evolve and advance as best they can.
Thoughts?
