[BRIEF NOTE] Aha!
Sep. 8th, 2005 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIn the original timeline of the Traveller RPG universe, on day 132 of year 1116 of the Third Imperium, in the middle of a formal audience requested by the Archduke Dulinor of Ilelish, Dulinor shot, in order, the stand-in for Emperor Strephon, the Empress Iolanthe, the Aslan Yerlyaruiwo ambassador, and the Crown Princess Ciencia Iphegenia. The Emperor seemingly and his two closest relatives actually dead, Dulinor went on to claim the throne of the Third Imperium. Most unfortunately for the whole of civilization, Dulinor could not keep the Iridium Throne. His attempted decapitation of the Third Imperium actually resulted in an exceptionally bloody decade-long multi-sided civil and interstellar war, this conflict ending only when one faction's accidental deployment of murderously insane self-replicating artificial intelligences ended civilization.
In GURPS' relaunch of the Traveller RPG universe, on day 132 of year 116 of the Third Imperium, as Archduke Dulinor of Ilelish was descending in his personal shuttle to a formal audience with Emperor Strephon of the Third Imperium, his shuttle exploded with the loss of all passengers. At Dulinor's official funeral almost a hundred days later, the Emperor Strephon delivered a somewhat unusual eulogy, concluding that "Dulinor died in the blackness that he wore in life, and as in that life, never being fully of it, but also not rejecting it. We will not see his like again."
The creators of the relaunch have admitted that something clearly happened to abort Dulinor's failed coup attempt. What this something is has never been explained, but a recent discussion on a message board elsewhere has suggested that the key might lay with Dulinor's daughter Isis. The only time that she appears in the original Traveller timeline, a half-dozen years into the nightmarish conflict that had already killed billions of people, she had tried to placate some restive subject worlds only to watch in horror as paranoid security forces massacred a crowd. She wasn't an enthusiastic political actor on her father's behalf, understandably, perhaps, given that not only did her father start this pointless war, but that he began it by murdering the Crown Princess, her best friend from childhood, and the Crown Princess' parents. In the GURPS revision, interestingly enough, not only is she given the title of Archduchess of Ilelish by the Emperor following her father's death, but she had arrived in secret at the Imperial capital at some point considerably before her father's funeral.
Now, I'm not saying that, hoping to save the life of her best friend and to prevent her father from committing treason, Dulinor's daughter told the Third Imperium's security agencies just what Dulinor was planning. It does make a certain sort of sense, though. If nothing else it's satisfying to imagine that you know what happened.
In GURPS' relaunch of the Traveller RPG universe, on day 132 of year 116 of the Third Imperium, as Archduke Dulinor of Ilelish was descending in his personal shuttle to a formal audience with Emperor Strephon of the Third Imperium, his shuttle exploded with the loss of all passengers. At Dulinor's official funeral almost a hundred days later, the Emperor Strephon delivered a somewhat unusual eulogy, concluding that "Dulinor died in the blackness that he wore in life, and as in that life, never being fully of it, but also not rejecting it. We will not see his like again."
The creators of the relaunch have admitted that something clearly happened to abort Dulinor's failed coup attempt. What this something is has never been explained, but a recent discussion on a message board elsewhere has suggested that the key might lay with Dulinor's daughter Isis. The only time that she appears in the original Traveller timeline, a half-dozen years into the nightmarish conflict that had already killed billions of people, she had tried to placate some restive subject worlds only to watch in horror as paranoid security forces massacred a crowd. She wasn't an enthusiastic political actor on her father's behalf, understandably, perhaps, given that not only did her father start this pointless war, but that he began it by murdering the Crown Princess, her best friend from childhood, and the Crown Princess' parents. In the GURPS revision, interestingly enough, not only is she given the title of Archduchess of Ilelish by the Emperor following her father's death, but she had arrived in secret at the Imperial capital at some point considerably before her father's funeral.
Now, I'm not saying that, hoping to save the life of her best friend and to prevent her father from committing treason, Dulinor's daughter told the Third Imperium's security agencies just what Dulinor was planning. It does make a certain sort of sense, though. If nothing else it's satisfying to imagine that you know what happened.
