The Colonies Part III

2600-2750 Tensions Clashes and the Colony war.

But the Colonies were about to find that their road was not without bumps:

While the rate of population increase had dropped from the incredible 4 percent of the early years, it was still quite high, ranging from 1.2 to 1.4 percent.    Small numbers—until one realizes that by 2640, New Rio had over 650 million inhabitants.  Now, the best parts of the world were no longer an issue—it was the decent parts of the world, and a culture which had been based on the idea that land was cheap and available, found that it was nothing of the sort.  The successful corporations, such as MaxTech, rubbed their hands together as they constructed new transports—the visions of new colony worlds, and the fortunes they would create, made them eager.

The Colonies Pt. II

 

2500—Challenges and Opportunities

 

Internally, the rise of populations was beginning to lead to the rise of a professional class—universities were founded and the slow process of making use of hte still preserved libraries was started.

And a slow process it was.  Reading the documentation was one thing—turning it into machines was another.  For over 200 years most communities had done well enough with simple technologies, and technicians who were more or less apprenticed—now attempting to produce an industrial order proved difficult, indeed.

One of the largest issues was the simplest—the inhabitants by and large had what they wanted.  New Rio, even with it’s 85 million, had fewer people on it than had existed at any time after the age of bronze on earth, and in most communities, founding a new steading, or even a new village, meant hopping in a ATV and driving for an hour or so—true, the best sites might have been taken, but on a world with over 120% earth’s land area, “second best” was very good indeed.  Even so, their was a slow drive to start regaining the old technologies, and by 2520, Rio and at least five other colonies had once again gained the ability to enter orbital and system space.

But it was on Rio and later, Maxwell’s Landing that the first steps towards what would become a defining characteristic of Colonial society evolved:  The Corporation.

Most of the Colonies had little in the way of high level government—founded by those with every reason to distrust government, most Colonial charters were firmly against vesting too much authority in the hands of the planetary “authorities” and so they had little—the settlements were more or less independent.  But in order to re-establish some forms of the more advanced technology, more in the way of organization and resources were needed.  So, on both Rio and Maxwell’s Landing, groups started to form corporations—organizations where the founders, usually those bankrolling them but just as often workers, would contribute shares, in the promise of sharing in the benefits when the corporation became profitable.   Just as had been the case on Old Earth, the main benefit of these organizations was their longevity—they would endure beyond the lifespan of any particular founder.  This would have major implications for the future.

But in teh beginning, their influence was minor—investment wasn’t easy to come by, and only the best corporations endured.  New Rio’s MaxTech invested and worked hard to develop a line or rugged and inexpensive VTOL and ground vehicles, and by 2520 had also built the first fusion powered shuttles to be constructed since the arrival—although it only built 10 of them, their being little demand for more. In addition, MaxTech started the dlow and difficult process of determining how to reactivate the mothballed fleet of jumpships left in high orbit, a task of no mean difficulty.  On Maxwell’s Landing, Common Dreams, Ltd, did much the same thing, though they suffered from the fact that the colony ships had been parked in a lower orbit, and had long since fallen to earth.

But Three factors helped these nascent companies along  the first was that the growing populations now had a small but growing professional segment and their “major cities” while laughable compared to the far off inner sphere, were at least large enough to start to create a culture that prized growth—and luxury.  That was the second factor—with prosperity came a desire for luxury goods and the new corporations were increasingly able to fill that need—and that gave rise to a wealthy class of businessmen.

 

And there was the fact that with ever larger populations the dangers of disasters grew, as was shown by a series of major storms on Rio—which resulted in MaxTech and several other corporations showing a better face than the largely ineffectual central government.  No power was directly deeded to them as a result of this, but that prestige translated out into more money and more importantly more and more children from the (still very large) families migrating to the cities to try thier hands at a new way of life.  Given the still impressive growth rate, the worlds of the Colonies found themselves able to absorb quite a bit in the way of consumer spending.

 

But even so, it wasn’t until 2560 that the rebuilt jumpship Drake made the Journey to Maxwell’s Landing, there to exchange news and a few representatives—and not until 2600 were more than 10 jumpships operating, with a single new jumpship being produced at the Rio orbital yards every two years.  It was, however, enough.

The Colonies were no longer a group of independent planets, but a community, however loosely linked.

Working on a Deep Periphery Group

Battlemech is owned by Catalyst Labs, Inc. and No infringement is intended by this fan work.

 

Battletech is one of the oldest science fiction gaming universes out there that has been, more or less in continuous production—perhaps only Traveler can claim a longer period.  As such, it can be enjoyable to work on other settings, other ways of making use of our…Giant Stompy Robots.

Note that the Sarapha cluster setting had a problem, having to do with the group breaking up due to scheduling work, so I’ll be working on this right now.

 

 

 

The Deep Periphery.

 

The Deep periphery, starting well beyond the Innersphere and near periphery states is a nebulous concept—it essentially starts at the borders of the periphery states, but has no end. As terra incognita, it’s a wonderful place to put all sorts of worlds, and settings, comforted in the knowledge that we will never have to worry about what will the Davions say. (not that many people care about that, one way or another).

But the deep periphery has some questions that need to be asked—for example, with such a huge space, why would deep periphery nations ever even come into contact? If the universe is full of uninhabited worlds, why would you have them be close enough to each other in the deep periphery to have any meaningful contact?*

 

*This last can be a problem in many settings, not just battletech—a world, is a big, big place, and having people fighting desperately over other worlds when their own worlds are nearly empty can be…an issue.

 

 

Well, fortunately, the canon police won’t beat us about the head, so here we are:

 

The Alliance and the Jump Program.

 

The Terran Alliance faced increasing amounts of resistance as it become ever more ossified.  The leadership, like many dictatorial governments, desired to crush the resistance, but that wasn’t working and to many of the Alliance, the idea of shipping dissidents to colony worlds where they could make even more trouble was a bad idea…

But the development of the first KF drive sail, and long-term hibernation technology (which had actually been around for some time, but was largely unused due to the existence of FTL changed things…) changed the equation.

Now, the alliance could offer their dissidents a bargain—in return for cooperation and for not rocking the boat, they could be offered the chance to move far, far beyond the alliances borders…and incidentally out of the alliances hair.  Even during this period, The alliance had accepted that it would never rule “all of space” as even the most hide bound ruler could do math and look at the vast expanse of the milky way.

 

Equipped with small crews, and “volunteers” in deep sleep, the first KF driven ships, set sail for the far stars—the bargain was simple, the ships would not stop until they had moved at least 1500 light years away from sol.  Any attempt to return would be met with deadly force.

 

There was, of course an ulterior motive for this—anyone leaving would forfit all goods and property to the Alliance, and do so “voluntarily” avoiding any nasty complaints about  the seizure of property. The ships themselves were fragile things, equipped with drives barely capable of .1 G and ramshackle shuttles which would ideally work just about long enough to let the colonists land.  After all, whether they lived or died was of no importance to the rulers of the Alliance.

 

However, the first colonists had made the decision to leave, go far, far beyond the reach of the Alliance, or for that matter the colonies that were springing up around it.  They took the 1500 light year minimum and tacked another 700 light years on it, to a region of space that long range space-based telescopes indicated had a large number of planet bearing systems.

 

And so the first ship, the Freedom, left in 2150.

While some wondered how this worked with the Colonization Procedure Referendum, that the Alliance had passed, the answer was simple—these colonists were never expected to be seen again—and for that matter more than a few expected them to simply die out there in the trackless depths of space.

Regardless, carrying anywhere from 2500 to 10,000 colonists in cold sleep, the ships left on a regular basis, the Alliance benefiting from the expropriation of their property as they left.

The journey was very long—ships in that era did not travel the 30 light years a jump of modern jump ships and their “sails” were actually far more primitive than modern KF drive charge sales, which required them to spend more time charging and jumping.  But many, perhaps most of them made it to the region of space that would one day be known as the Colonies.

 

First Landings

 

The colony region started just over 2200 light years away from Terra and had much the same planetary and stellar density as did the regions around Terra—and the first few ships found garden worlds—at least in comparison to what they’d feared.

 

But even so, the landing period was hard—some died as their shuttles came apart, others died of disease and malnutrition and all the dangers that might lead to the death of a new colony, far from home.  Even today, their are still occasional finds of the nearly invisible ruins of some proud little colony that started…and vanished.

However most of the first wave found their way to what would become known as the 20 worlds, 20, more or less earthlike worlds that were within 100 light years of each other.  They largely settled in small groups, as new ships arrived, breaking down their shuttles and making use of the ship components they could not use on their worlds to serve as satellites for various purposes.  By 2230 most of the new settlers had arrived, just over 500,000 in total, although fewer than 400,000 survived the first few years, a testament to the hardship—and the forgiving nature of their worlds.  By 2235 most of the shuttles were no longer functional and it would be over 100 years before their was any more interstellar commerce.

 

The Colonists had had time to think before their departure, and they realized that the Alliance had little interest in seeing them succeed, and so planned for the most modest beginnings—and to do that, they turned to the most effective and self programming AI system known to man.

That is, they had children—lots and lots of children.  The garden worlds were able to support life, but they had no automation, not much in the way of tools and while they had records and libraries, a community of 400, or 4,000 can’t do much with instructions on how to build a fusion power plant, especially if they start with “found an electronics industry”

So the founders focused on the simple things, starting with basic education and a farming community, while working to maintain as much of a medical base as possible.  This wasn’t the policy everywhere—but it was the successful policy, and with the knowledge that their colonies could easily fall below the threshold of viability they worked to increase their numbers.

 

And they succeeded.  The average population growth of the Twenty Worlds peaked at 4 percent, and on most worlds was at 3 percent. It made sense—their was little in the way to prevent the colonists from taking their new worlds save the fact that there weren’t enough of them.  New Rio, the first settled world, started with a population of 35,000 men and women, and two hundred years later boasted just over 85 million citizens.  Most of the other worlds had the same stories.

 

Even so, it should be noted that most of the worlds were both largely empty and still unable to fully take advantage of their libraries.  Much of their population was scattered in small communities, with vast stretches of land in between them.  New Rio, for example, made use of solar and fuel cell technology, mixed in with hydroelectric and did not have the capability to construction fusion systems, even though they had the “technical” knowledge.

However, this would start to change as the Colonies celebrated the first day of 2500, major changes were coming to them… both internally and externally.

 

 

The Sarapha Cluster

Here is our baddies (or good guys) for the alternate invasion history.

The Sarapha cluster was first settled by groups fleeing the Terran Alliance– groups that kept on moving out.  Their leadership, under the Command of “President” Bill Michaels felt that they had to leave, had to go far, far away from Terra, and so they did.  In 2280, the 10,000 colonists on board their increasingly worn fleet found a cluster of star systems, in a “desert” of stars without habitable planets, just over 1500 light years from earth.

The first world they settled upon however was a garden world, one of those rare worlds where man could eat the food– and wehre the food didn’t eat man.  The population quickly dispersed from their ships and formed small villages, using the republican form of government they had left to preserve.  With vast lands to colonize, and little pressure, the populuation quickly increased– modern medical advancements coupled with agrarian social structures led to quick increase in population– a rate of about 3 percent. By 2580, the population of Newhome was nearly 70 million strong and growing.

But in 2600 something would happen to change their comfortable existence.  Noting the existence of some orbital infrastructure a new fleet of refugees settled into orbit, from the conquered Tauran Concordet.  With a few damaged frigates and a number of refugee stuffed jump and dropships the new arrivals were far from being able to threaten the Republic with invasion– and in fact they asked for asylum.

Their arrival proved two things and after extensive debriefing the Congress came to two conclusions.

1. The Inner Sphere had become more, not less rapacious than the old Alliance and this “Star League” was clearly determined to rule all human space– while it would collapse under it’s own weight (as every empire before had) that was cold comfort to the conquered.

2.  The Taurians had been defeated by numbers.  When the Star League got this far out, the Republic, in order to have any hope of survival, had to be able to match them at least locally.

2600-2800, growth and fracture.

For the next hundred years, the Republic focused on growth. The cargo ships of the Refugees were repaired and smaller colonies were put on other worlds, mainly to allow for a defense in depth strategy.  In addition, a stress was placed on increasing the population even more than it had.    Via a combination of benefits and social pressure, large families became the norm. Very large families.

By 2800, the Republic had nearly 10 billion inhabitants.  This led to two stresses. The first was simply the fact that now with multiple multi-billion population worlds, the issues an agrarian republic faced were no longer a problem– issues a major industrial power faced were.  Secondly, more and more groups were owing first loyalty to their home worlds, states or even cities. The fast population increase had led to a fracturing of social bonds, making the Republic’s “Unity” a joke.

2820: The civil war.

The republic had a problem– the fact was that the founders, still concerned by the tyranny of Terra, had specifically forbidden the central government to use force to keep people in.  That, coupled with the vast increase in population led to more and more groups having divergent opeinions of how to do things, and the central worlds, those first settled, while not overly crowded, were in a position where the best resources were no longer free for the taking.

In 2820, the City State of Clarkes Crossing went to war over water rights, and battle mechs intended to protect the Republic from the Inner Sphere were turned on each other. The Fleet refused to take sides– mostly descended from the ship crews, they by and large had little in the way of ground side connections, but neither were they willing to attack their brethren– so long as certain boundaries weren’t transgressed upon, mainly the US of WMD’s or targeting civilians.

This lead to a situation where the central government increasingly lost control over the general functioning of the “republic”.  RAther than being a powerful force, it slowly morphed into a force that had a striclty limited amount of authority, mostly having to do with maintaining interstellar trade and preventing the use of WMD’s– conflict on the surface, between other groups, ebbed and flowed, and increasingly, people found themselves referring to themselves as citizens of the “republic” second and citizens of their state, city or even family first.  The Republic remained an ideal– but not one that could claim unconditional loyalty.

This continued until 3010, with local forces growing, and the republic’s member states becoming a patchwork of nations, companies, clans and other such groups, many of which actually occupied the same spatial region– while battlemechs might clash outside of a city limit, inside, the city, it would be battles of a more covert nature.  So long, the popular wisdom went, as for the most part civilians not involved were kept of the firing line, this was acceptable.  Artillery barrages were out, directed firepower was in (warships and dropships were a different matter, but orbital bombardment was out save against isolated facilities).

Then, in 3010, the Washington Solar Observatory sent a jumpship to investigate the vast Type O star at the center of the Cluster, and made a horrifying discovery– it was very close to not simply a nova, but a supernova.

The second ship sent, in 3010 to confirm this, never returned, and neither did the third ship, conforming the fact that the star wsan’t only preparing to supernova, but had.

Now, the Cluster, and all its people, had less than 40 years to live…

The earth shattering Kaboom!

Now, let’s look at logistics– 500-1000 LY is a very long way to go with Btech jump drives, and that means that you have to have a very, very good reason to go. The Clan’s invaded for idological reasons, but these groups aren’t the clans.

So, if you’re not invading for ideology why are you invading.

For territory?  Not really– 11 billion people might make one world crowded, but not 10+

Trade?  Hardly.

What about…desperation?

Okay, but it can’t be due to aliens, and it’s unlikely you’ve angered ANOTHER human colony that badly, so what?

Remember that supergiant?

What do supergiants do?

They often go boom.  Yes, boom.

And remember, the worlds of the cluster are A. within 10 parsecs (well within it) and in a region where you don’t have a lot of other candidates.

So if the star looks like it’s going to go nova in 30 years, everbody dies in 20 years.  Unless they can get out.

Suddenly, those Ares rule conflicts get a lot more desperate.  However, a full scale war insures that nobody gets out, so the various powers come together in an uneasy alliance, to figure out what the hell to do.

The problem is that colonizing a world takes time.  Time you don’t have.

Not only that, but the Btech universe has no form of technology that can stop a star from going boom– or save you when it does.

So that thirty years is a hard cap.

Now, of course if a world has already existing infrastructure, it takes less time to conquer them– and if you say have 100 worlds, you can spread out your people, say 100 million to a world and come pretty close to evacuating your entire population– no doubt using those conquered worlds to build the ships you’re going to need.

And when last we left the inner sphere, one thing they had was industry.

So now, with the lash of desperation, our people’s beging to move back to the worlds they left so long ago– determined to capture them. There is no hope of negotiation here– they have to have a new place to live, or they die.  Equally, the IS may not like them, and they’re unlikely to accept what the Inner Sphere would accept– give us your goodies and we’ll let you live as dispossessed refugees.

So, now we have means, motive and opportunity…now it’s time to get a bit more detailed.

Next up, the history of the cluster.

Replacing the Clans, Part I: invaders.

The first thing we need is an invading force.

Now, we note that aliens are out.  It has to be humans.

Fortunately, we have a number of sources– humans were moving out from the age of warfare on.  If we assume a few thousand, or hundred thousand say, leaving in 2575, about the time of the Reunification war, that gives us a good deal of time.  If the invasion say kicks off in 3040, that gives us 465 years to build up our population.

So the exiles from earth– realizing that the periphery would never stand against the hordes of the star league drove far beyond the periphery, hoping to achieve what the periphery had failed to do– get far enough away that those $(#(@ spheroids couldn’t fallow them.  In late 2580, five years after leaving and with great hardship, they found a cluster of stars with habitable planets, losely associated with a central system with a supergiant star, though it had no planets.  Beyond the twenty or so worlds, it is in a fairly “barren” part of space, so they remain concentrated.

Remember that last– it’s important.

Now, as for population, we can assume that they intentionally built up their population, using a vareity of methods– starting with 100,000, and with a 3% rate of increase, that gives us, after 450 years…

We get about 58 billion people– which is pretty big, though we can assume that there were higher birthrates as they spread out over the small star cluster, making up for lower birth rates in the urbanized core. If you want to cut it down,  a growth rate of 2.5  percent gives us over six billion, but we’ll split the difference and say 12 billion total.

That’s a lot– until you realize that their are trillions in the Innersphere.

Still, it’s a population large enough to pretty much build anything they need, and be fully industrialized.

But as this group grows, it splinters (that’s a common theme in btech) and so conflicts break out among the cluster.  However, these are exiles from the era of the Ares conventions and so they more or less hold to them– conflict is common, but strikes on strategic targets, and especially the sort of WMD attacks that were so devastating to the Inner Sphere, are rare.  Warships exist, and are built– but the factions use them mainly to achieve space superiority– not to engage in mass bombardments.

Technology thus is maintained and slowly improves– that’s an important thing. It’s easy to think about nanotech or other wonder techs, but remember, the defining conceit of technology in battletech is that it is incremental rather than revolutionary.  Guns get smaller, but you don’t get phasers.

Equally importantly, a small starting point makes it easier to figure out where you go from there– one problem with Clantech as shown was that it remains the upper end of technology– even after decades have gone by. By keeping it out of the picture you can start lower– and thus move higher.

So we’ll assume that with a few exceptions, the cluster tech is roughly equal to the Star League not long after the reunification war– note that this doesn’t mean they have everything, (or that the The Star League had everything they do), but over all, they’re equal.

Note that without a major conflict, these forces have time to grow– it’s likely that warships are damaged and surrendered, not destroyed, and the same goes for factories, so by 3040, they likely have a fairly large and experienced, core of soldiers in the various factions.

Now, why would they invade the Inner sphere?

That’s next.

Battletech: replacing the Clans.

Note: Battletech and all related properties are owned by Catalyst Labs, no violation of their, or other copyright holders is intended. The material in this blog created by me may be freely used or reposted.

The Clans in Battletech:

The Clans have always been a problem for me.  For one thing, societies with modern communications and record keeping technology tend to have more, not less in the way of contniuity with the past. It’s more difficult to destroy information, and easier for resistance to form against such an attempt.  Even in our traditional “Year Zero” examples, such as Cambodia or the Cultural revolution in China, the old ways were not destroyed– they, not the leadership won– or at least formed a merging of ways.

Yet the Clans are a case where a completely alien culture not only was imposed from without, but imposed successfully.  Romantic love the institutes of marriage, the various religions of mankind, the social and cultural histories of all concerned were not only eliminated, they were elminated successfully, in favor of an artificial culture which oddly enough, didn’t self destruct.

As a historian, sadly, that trips my suspension of disbelief far worse than minor little changes to the universe like FTL do ).

Finally, while needed to make the clans a threat, their technology was both too advanced and not advanced enough. Too advanced, in the sense that even nearly a century later, for the most part the Inner Sphere hasn’t caught up (compare that to how quickly China’s caught up), and not advanced enough in the sense that it is, in keeping with the traditions of Battletech, very much incremental improvements.

But yet the idea an invasion from outside the sphere, smashing the comfortable ways htings have been working for the last several hundred years, has a tremendous appeal. It needs to be something different something world shaking, which rules out a simple attack from one or another faction, and it cannot be aliens– aliens are completely against the themes of Battletech, which can be summed up as: “humans are quite good enough at mucking up the universe, no aliens need apply.”

And the idea has resonance in history– from the Crusades, to the migrations of the nomadic tribes that were such a factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, to the invasions that plagued China through much of its history, the idea of the outsider, unstoppable and alien, is nearly as old as history itself.  (google: “people of the sea,” if you’re curious).

So, from here, we will (and paying projects permitting) explore redoing Battletech, with a different threat, one that is not like the Clans, but in some ways an even bigger threat.  I hope people will enjoy the ride.

 

Blog Calls: One World At a Time

A very nice blog by one of Catalysts designers/writers for the Battletech game– a game that has been around very long, but which probably shines brighter today than ever before.  Give him a look and remember: There’s nothing in life that a 100 ton assault mech can’t fix.

Scooby Doo, Mystery Incorporated, making a gonzo show dark (spoilers).

So, there be spoilers here, so you are warned.

Scooby Doo, Mystery Incorporated is the Cartoon Networks newest foray into what is a very old, and very successful cartoon franchise.  Seriously, how many cartoons have lasted so long, spawned movies and have as one of their main stars a talking dog with an unhealthy need for food?  Of there have been some stumbles as the years have gone by… such as a small puppy that we shall not name….

But on the whole it’s been a big success.

Now, we see in the newest incarnation, two interesting turns.

The first is to actually create a series spanning metaplot, something that is very common in more serious shows, but rarer– and often harder to carry off in more comedic venues, but that the writers have managed to do a very good job of handling, with a very good mix of “comedy” and metaplot, moving towards the more metaplot heavy episodes as we get closer to the end of the first season.

The second is to start using more drama oriented and yes, darker story threads, mixing them with the comedy.  Yes, we have the gonzo costumes (one very good decision that so far they’v ebeen sticking to is to avoid the temptation to let “real magic” into the setting.  That has been, IMO, a  very bad decision when it has been done in the past. Scooby Doo is not Call of Cthulhu, and part of the joke is that Mystery Inc, will never find the true magic, because there isn’t any (or at least not of the style they’re looking for).

In this new series the “darker turn” is to really play up the fact that people are willing to do some pretty scary things in order to claim their “treasure” and that among all the strange and harmless costumed freaks trying to protect a gator mill, or chase people away from a haunted lake– there are some who are willing to go far further, as the first Mystery incorporated (our hero’s predecessors) found out to their great cost, nearly 20 years ago.

In fact, Fred’s parents, part of the original team, have never yet been seen– because after Fred was kidnapped, they were wearned that for his sake, they never should return.  Again a fairly dark take on things.

 

Now, of course Japanese shows have been doing this pretty much since the very beginning of what we popularly see as “anime” but it’s interesting that more and more American series are doing the same– albeit in many cases with a less tightly scripted way of doing things.  Give the new Scooby Doo a Look see, and you like it, I think.

 

Oh, one very good spoiler: Scrappy Doo makes one appearance…but he doesn’t talk.

 

 

Exalted, Alchemicals and a great book that…has a hard time finding a place.

Exalted is one of the better games out there– if you’re into that sort of thing of over the top adventure, god like heroes, with equally great problems, and being able to change the world.

And one of the best books in the 2nd edition is, Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals, portraying magitech cyborg heroes in a dystopian setting of a dying god’s world body.

There’s just one problem– armies of magitech cyborgs radially alter the rest of the setting. Between their technology, the presence of hundreds of exalted, and the weakened state of most of Creations governments, it’s very hard to see any way that first contact could avoid becoming the dominant story of the setting.

Which is fine if you want that, but what if say, a single player wants to play an Alchemical, or say you want to have them show up, but not be the dominant factor of the setting?

Then you may have a little problem.  However, there’s a way to get around it, and in the next post we’ll start an AU setting (as far as Exalted has such things) that will allow you to have your magitech cyborg goodness, and yet not completely destroy the rest of your campaign threads…