Stuffed Crocodile on Nostr: [Traveller] Drinax pt.1: Where does King Oleb keep his armies?Art by Richard Powers ...
[Traveller] Drinax pt.1: Where does King Oleb keep his armies?Art by Richard Powers
So as I mentioned I am preparing to run a Pirates of Drinax campaign and as I talked about in the article one should not see the UWPs of certain worlds as holy writ.
Which is fitting, because the day after I wrote that I looked at the UWP of Drinax itself and realized it could never fit with the campaign as written.
That’s of course a bit of a bummer.
It doesn’t help that the numbers are different between different printings. That’s just Mongooses infamously shoddy quality control. But the UWP has been around for longer. The sector data came from the 1984 Atlas of the Imperium. Later it was worked out in the The Third Imperium fanzine.
Now the UWP isA33645C-F
Which translates to
Starport A Excellent: Starship Construction, Overhaul, Refined fuel
Size 3 Small (4,800 km, 0.24g – 0.34g)
Atmosphere 3 Vacuum (very thin)
Hydrographics 6 Wet World 60%
Population 4 Moderate (70 thousand)
Government 5 Feudal Technocracy
Law C Extreme Law (no privacy)
Tech Level F High Stellar (anagathics)
Ok, so what’s wrong with it? Or rather, where is the campaign wrong?
Issue 1: according to the Pirates of Drinax book the starport at the Floating Palace is almost an A class port, but it can’t build ships. Yeah, sorry, but then it’s not an A. It’s a B.
Issue 2: I don’t like the size. If that’s the actual size the world is tiny (mercury size). I’d prefer it to be a 4 (Mars size) or above, but that’s my own opinion. In any case this makes Drinaxian characters still low-gravity worlders, and according to the rulebook they might have issues with higher gravities.
The Floating Palace might have gravplates installed that easily might push the standard gravity up there to 1g (also collecting oxygen for a standard atmosphere), and Vespexers basically can’t go anywhere without either vacc suit or hazard suit, thus training themselves to a similar standard as normal 1g dwellers.
Some people also have suggested Drinax might be particularly dense due to rich metal content, therefore providing a higher gravity environment. This might also explain how it got so rich and important in the first place.
Issue 3: actual problem, atmosphere is a vacuum world, with a very thin atmosphere that should not allow anyone to live there, much less for plants and trees to grow (which according to the book they do). According to the text the tribes use hazard suits they get from the palace, but not vacuum suits. But they also survive from hunting and gathering. I would also put this one up to 4 so the atmosphere becomes thin and tainted.
Issue 4: Population 4, with 70.000 people in the already overcrowded Floating Palace. Which ignores the Vespexer tribes which are surviving on the planet. But this is a common problem with UWPs as counting population seems very hard to do. I would maybe bump that one up to 5 to account for multiple tribes/tribal nations among the Wastelanders.
Issue 5: Feudal Technocracy. Except if the description of the world is right it sounds more balkanized to me. On the other hand the tribes seem to get hazard suits from the palace so despite their pretensions of being independent they still depend on them technologically, which is kind of the definition of a Feudal technocracy.
Issue 6: Not really an issue, but technically law level only goes up to 9. But there’s enough exceptions. One has to assume the place has absolutely draconian rules and no privacy at all.
Issue 7: Technology level is 15 High Stellar. But is that really so? Clearly they are missing basically everything to actually BE a TL 15 civilization. They might have the knowledge, but it doesn’t seem like they can produce consistently at that tech level. But ok, let’s assume they have high stellar tech.
This all indicates to me that the author took the UWP and made the scenario without a care what the canonical data said.
That said, it seems the actual UWP is more like B44655C-F. And that’s a very careful approximation.
Here’s what prompted all this: my players recently made characters for Pirates of Drinax, and most of them went with Vespexer Army characters.
It’s even given as an option for Vespexers in the PoD book. Does the book indicate which army that is supposed to be?
Of course not.
Is it the imperial army? I doubt it, too far from the border.
Is it a Vespexer army? The book doesn’t indicate the Vespexers have enough infrastructure for that. It might be that certain communities have their own fighters, but one of my characters went all the way to the equivalent of Duke here, and his events didn’t fit with some small backwater army.
So I assume one of the few ways off the planet for Vespexers is to join the Drinaxian Starguard, as cannon fodder. According to the book the big conflict the starguard had over the last few decades was the invasion of Asim. But besides serving as an occupation force, what else were they doing?
I think they were engaged in the 57th ct. equivalent of peacekeeping missions to various planets around the Reach, and with that I mean they basically sold their military as mercenaries to the highest bidder, and then dropped them off back home not in the Floating Palace, but wherever hellhole they came from. No wonder the Vespexers hold a grudge.
tl;dr: in his sleevies!
So as I mentioned I am preparing to run a Pirates of Drinax campaign and as I talked about in the article one should not see the UWPs of certain worlds as holy writ.
Which is fitting, because the day after I wrote that I looked at the UWP of Drinax itself and realized it could never fit with the campaign as written.
That’s of course a bit of a bummer.
It doesn’t help that the numbers are different between different printings. That’s just Mongooses infamously shoddy quality control. But the UWP has been around for longer. The sector data came from the 1984 Atlas of the Imperium. Later it was worked out in the The Third Imperium fanzine.
Now the UWP isA33645C-F
Which translates to
Starport A Excellent: Starship Construction, Overhaul, Refined fuel
Size 3 Small (4,800 km, 0.24g – 0.34g)
Atmosphere 3 Vacuum (very thin)
Hydrographics 6 Wet World 60%
Population 4 Moderate (70 thousand)
Government 5 Feudal Technocracy
Law C Extreme Law (no privacy)
Tech Level F High Stellar (anagathics)
Ok, so what’s wrong with it? Or rather, where is the campaign wrong?
Issue 1: according to the Pirates of Drinax book the starport at the Floating Palace is almost an A class port, but it can’t build ships. Yeah, sorry, but then it’s not an A. It’s a B.
Issue 2: I don’t like the size. If that’s the actual size the world is tiny (mercury size). I’d prefer it to be a 4 (Mars size) or above, but that’s my own opinion. In any case this makes Drinaxian characters still low-gravity worlders, and according to the rulebook they might have issues with higher gravities.
The Floating Palace might have gravplates installed that easily might push the standard gravity up there to 1g (also collecting oxygen for a standard atmosphere), and Vespexers basically can’t go anywhere without either vacc suit or hazard suit, thus training themselves to a similar standard as normal 1g dwellers.
Some people also have suggested Drinax might be particularly dense due to rich metal content, therefore providing a higher gravity environment. This might also explain how it got so rich and important in the first place.
Issue 3: actual problem, atmosphere is a vacuum world, with a very thin atmosphere that should not allow anyone to live there, much less for plants and trees to grow (which according to the book they do). According to the text the tribes use hazard suits they get from the palace, but not vacuum suits. But they also survive from hunting and gathering. I would also put this one up to 4 so the atmosphere becomes thin and tainted.
Issue 4: Population 4, with 70.000 people in the already overcrowded Floating Palace. Which ignores the Vespexer tribes which are surviving on the planet. But this is a common problem with UWPs as counting population seems very hard to do. I would maybe bump that one up to 5 to account for multiple tribes/tribal nations among the Wastelanders.
Issue 5: Feudal Technocracy. Except if the description of the world is right it sounds more balkanized to me. On the other hand the tribes seem to get hazard suits from the palace so despite their pretensions of being independent they still depend on them technologically, which is kind of the definition of a Feudal technocracy.
Issue 6: Not really an issue, but technically law level only goes up to 9. But there’s enough exceptions. One has to assume the place has absolutely draconian rules and no privacy at all.
Issue 7: Technology level is 15 High Stellar. But is that really so? Clearly they are missing basically everything to actually BE a TL 15 civilization. They might have the knowledge, but it doesn’t seem like they can produce consistently at that tech level. But ok, let’s assume they have high stellar tech.
This all indicates to me that the author took the UWP and made the scenario without a care what the canonical data said.
That said, it seems the actual UWP is more like B44655C-F. And that’s a very careful approximation.
Here’s what prompted all this: my players recently made characters for Pirates of Drinax, and most of them went with Vespexer Army characters.
It’s even given as an option for Vespexers in the PoD book. Does the book indicate which army that is supposed to be?
Of course not.
Is it the imperial army? I doubt it, too far from the border.
Is it a Vespexer army? The book doesn’t indicate the Vespexers have enough infrastructure for that. It might be that certain communities have their own fighters, but one of my characters went all the way to the equivalent of Duke here, and his events didn’t fit with some small backwater army.
So I assume one of the few ways off the planet for Vespexers is to join the Drinaxian Starguard, as cannon fodder. According to the book the big conflict the starguard had over the last few decades was the invasion of Asim. But besides serving as an occupation force, what else were they doing?
I think they were engaged in the 57th ct. equivalent of peacekeeping missions to various planets around the Reach, and with that I mean they basically sold their military as mercenaries to the highest bidder, and then dropped them off back home not in the Floating Palace, but wherever hellhole they came from. No wonder the Vespexers hold a grudge.
tl;dr: in his sleevies!