 May 29, 2011 - 5:11am | If you dont have a problem with the existing Zebs timeline this is not the thread for you. The place to debate that is here: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/3649 I noticed an area of my timeline article that probably would have been written differently with even just a modicum of feedback stating a different view and since I'm working on a timeline for the Rim that mirrors my earlier timeline article in that it details the "Age of Colonization" for the Rim ending with the CFM's contact with the Frontier just after the First Sathar War, I thought I should seek some outside imput and feed back. In Zebs the timeline focuses on the Frontier then introduces the Rim and the CFM with no back story for them. This is of course illogical as a sub-sector civilization will not suddenly spring out of the grass. It will have history and culture. Or fluff that gives it the feeling of age. So I'm looking for feed back and imput rather than try to craft another timeline article in a vacuum. I plan to follow the pattern I used in the first article, with the "story" history, a bullet timeline, and some design notes if necessary, as well as differing calender systems based on planetary calenders of the various homeworlds involved with an eye to providing a referee with a source that lets him write game back ground for the PCs and be able to throw in a date that could require the PCs to look up what that date translates to in Galactic Standard time. That said this thread is about the "Story" as once you have that the other stuff falls into line fairly quickly. In the previous article the important story points, for me, were to explain the founding and discoveries of the various colonies, origins of a monarchy and by extention the founding of the Royal Marines, Explain how a fledgling civilization was able to mobilize and stop the sathar so quickly, and explain the seemingly artificial distribution of Yazirian clans from the SFman article on them; ie I felt it didn't make sense that clans were limited to one planet and didn't span multiple planets. working on the story of all that pushed me to use the Hatzk Nar Pirates and the Free World Rebellion to build a rising realization that military expeditures were a good idea So below I'm looking for the talking points as to what should be told in the story of the Rim's Age of Colonization. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 29, 2011 - 5:58am | To Start the ball rolling; some odd little points of cannon stand out to me: In the humma discription it mentions interspecies war, which then of course begs the question of WHO? now this one has been talked out over in the humma threads. and I've largely settled on 2 ideas: early in their contact there was a minor dust up between some humma houses and the CFM which would technically cover the interspecies war comment. By chance I noticed some similarities between the boon'sheh race and the humma and sent query to the author of that race asking If he minded if I recast his race as a separate branch of evolution on the planet Hum. The answer back was that he was gratified that I wanted to use it. Thus the boon'sheh were written into the story of the humma. So interspecies war needs to be one of the talking points in the Rims history. (luckily much of that work was already ironed out over in the humma threads) Another comment from Zebs that is significant is that the Rim has long suffered from attacks of the sathar before the sathar found the core four and attack the Frontier in SW1. War is always a significant event and the tone of the comment from Zebs would lead me to imagine a long history of repeated incursions. Looking at the astro catalog of the Rim there are 3 inhabitable worlds of the Capella system: Faire, Homeworld, and Ifshna yet Zebs tells us that the CFM seems to run the system from Faire not from Homeworld. This is odd in that you'd expect that Homeworld is the homeworld for the ifshnit and that any government would naturally be tied to traditional seats of power there. so the story that explains this aught to be tackled- I've worked on that a little but I'll have to check if I posted my ideas elsewhere. When the CFM discovers the Frontier there is an organized military organization in the Rim; the Flight. its founding story aught to be told as well but then it will be intertwined with the story of the sathar incursions. Another interesting fact stood out to me was that the Rim seemed to possess a high number of systems with multiple inhabited planets- I started a thread on this:http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/4384 asking how we could explain it and the concensus was that you just cant get that many planets into the inhabitable zones of stars. Some of those worlds will have to be inhabitable only with domed cities and enclosed habitats- the point is that the situation in the Rim is different from that seen in the Frontier so the answer to WHY aught to be answered- so far I've leaned to explaining it as a side effect of the constitution of the Rim Coalition where political power within the coalition is based on planetary populations thus the aggressive humma have aggressively sought to colonize every planetary body they can get their hands on, the ifshnit being whiley businessmen were not unaware of what the humma were upto and followed suit in their own system as well as engineering government programs to encourage colonization that would result in mixed race colonies that would be easier to control through normal political processes that were influencable by the natural asset of the CFM: money These are the talking points I've assembled so far; anyone have Ideas i've missed or should consider? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 29, 2011 - 5:44am | Sorry for the double post but I need to get this idea written down: In the Volturnus modules we learn that the peaceful eorna had sent out exploration ships which is probably how the sathar discovered them- this happened 900 years before the Volturnus adventures since Volturnus is close in proximity to the Rim what if one of those exploration ships landed on Hum? The Humma being what they are probably would have wiped out that crew and then what of the ship? Suppose this event actually sparked a technical revolution that lead humma lineages and houses to seek to compete for space so that they had a fledgeling space economy when the CFM contacted them. This would help to set up the interspecies conflict with the ifshnit as their space tech while not as good as the CFM's is not dependent on the CFM- they reverse engineered their space tech from the eorna though they dont go around bragging about that. I rather like this idea as it ties together odd little statements in the cannon material. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 29, 2011 - 1:53pm | Great start... I have also been bothered by glaring inconsistancies in the ZG timeline. In my campaign I used the "bug hunter" timeline for the beginings of human civilization, but never got arround to the other races. Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
May 31, 2011 - 5:03am | RE: the osakar The only races that get along with the them are the ifshnits (after centuries of trade and interaction) just caught this statement so any timeline treatment will need to reflect this fact- that the ifshnits and osakar have had centuries of trade and interaction I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 31, 2011 - 10:16pm | So, the Ifshnit and Osakar "get along" had centuries of contact and the Humma potentially 900 years of space travel. I like the idea of the Humma being the late comers to the Rim space age club. I am tooling with the idea that the Ifshnit and Osakar know of the Humma but consider them too wild to give space technology too. The Humma have had visits and have through that become aware of the potential for space travel. Throw in the Erona ship in their distant past and then you have a nice secret mystery. One clan has the ship sitting around for hundreds of years until the Ifshnit show up then they realize the potential of it. They spend the next hundred years weaseling info out of the infrequent visits of the Ifshnit and reverse engine the Erona ship. Suddenly the Humma are inserting themselves into the Ifshnit/Osakar Rim and you get some conflict. Throw in the Sathar to balance that out and you get the coalition. -iggy |
June 1, 2011 - 3:22am | I thought about it while at work after throwing out the idea of the eorna ship: that 900 years is a long time but if the ship was a relic and the tech was just not recognized and it sat around for a while (centuries) then it might not be the key to re-engineering but more of the key to jump starting an age of rapid development and advancement. plus if the arrogant and pushy humma found they couldn't get away with their usual stuff because of the ifshnit's superior tech it could be the catalyst to push them into reaching for the star. I like the mystery of a "lost ship" I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
June 14, 2011 - 6:35pm | On further thought concerning the eorna exploration ships going out into space 900 years ago It seems that 900 years is way to long of a time to introduce space tech into the mix. I still like the idea of picking up the thread of the eorna explorers and having them reach the Rim before they brought the rath of the sathar down on them. It also begs the question of what is going on that draws the attention of the sathar toward the eorna and not the ifshnit, osakar or humma at that time period? 900 years prior to SW1 could mean that there was no radio emmissions from Rim races homeworlds and since the eorna were just becoming a space faring race they would have had radio emmissions. So I think the thing to do with the eorna explorers reaching the Rim systems is a ship crashed on Osak or Homeworld, Capella. It was an enigma and the artifacts left from it are fragmentary and only currious footnotes to the historic record OR they landed on a planet and took off an left some evidence/artifact/plaque that may point to where they were going to head to: this makes for a mystery- the modern eorna will want to contract a team to go looking for them. Question: Why didn't the sathar just move into the whole area 900 years ago? I think the reason they didn't is that they have a pathological compulsion to erradicate space faring competition and came looking after detecting the radio emmissions. Which would be the reason why they came after the UPF and the Rim. So I think the implication is that the sathar are some distance away to the West of the Rim or West by Northwest. Another Question: if the sathar were an interstellar space faring race 900 years would they not, after 900 years have tech that blows the doors off anything the Rim and UPF currently have? They should but they dont. The implication there is that they have maintained the same level of tech for 1000 years with little to no change or improvement. This it very telling. It suggests, to me, that they actually inherited their tech from a master race that had been the inovator. They can maintain and build to the specs the equipment they inherited but they just cant innovate. It suggest a reason for why they wanted to steal the Osprey in WoWL module since the statement in the modules was that they had no answer for the assualt scout. it also suggests a reason for decades of using spies, infiltrators and agents to weaken the Frontier- it may have been to acquire the innovative tech the comes naturally to the Core 4 and the Rim races. If the above is true about the sathar then the good news is that in another 40 years after SW2 they wont be able to stand against the combined might of the Rim and the UPF. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
