#Zhodani

[retrocgads]

USA 1990

[foxgirlchorix]

Salesmen

The most important resource for a budding star empire is, of course, buy-in. Many will quantify and qualify, noting hard resources like material and materiel, but if anything a star empire needs social resources. The hammer of a warfleet cannot be swung if the arm that moves it is atrophied, after all. Thus, if a star-state wishes to become a contender on the local stage (I refuse to call it galactic, it's too small for that!); it must have a dedicated cadre of explorers, traders, and salesmen.

Ask someone from Terra, and they'll say it was a sad story of bureaucratic mismanagement. Ask someone from Vland, and they'll blame the Terran upstarts. Ask someone from Zhdant, and they'll tell you about the interplay of stabilizing desires and the need to temper violent insurrection- though they're not really an expert, they just have a passing interest and you should really ask someone more knowledgeable. Regardless of the truth, the Rule of Man- the initially Terra-based successor to the rapidly-corroding Vilani Grand Empire of the Stars- quietly slumped into what is referred to by Imperial-era scholars as the Long Night in a shower of tiny successor states and claimants.

Anyone not from what is now Imperial-Solomani space will look at the claim of a vast and nigh-unending dark age with a look of suspicion. For nearly two thousand years, from the Rule of Man beginning its slow splinter up until- well, we'll get to it, the region from Deneb to Antares to Spica to Canopus was full of the sort of sea of miniature empires common everywhere a larger star-state has not established itself. In that span of time the four other vastest empires of Charted Space, each spanning several of what the Imperium would call Domains, were either already established or rapidly expanding (don't tell the person from Zhdant this generalization, they'll go on a long tirade about the kiloyears of stability of the Zhodani Consulate and how even their erstwhile and utterly infuriating counterparts in the Hive Federation had only been sector-spanning barely a millenium before even that earliest mark).

One is driven to ask, then- what was so special about Sylea? One of over a dozen worlds with direct claim to the collapsed Rule of Man, and not even one with a particularly impressive trade network or political philosophy. Interstellar travel, despite the moniker of "Long Night", boomed to the degree that one can point to three separate Terran interstellar expeditions that made journeys across mainless space dozens of sectors long. The Sylean Federation, newly reinventing itself or not, was not unique. To answer our question, then, we turn again to the salesmen.

A star-state needs buy-in, but with the right carrot it might be easier to get than one might anticipate. After over a thousand years of war between tiny empires, with vast and terrifying rumors of carnivorous centaurs, manipulative plants, and raiding fleets of lions and wolves; the populace of many of the small star-states of the Long Night wished for some return to the glory days of true, domain-spanning Empire. Meanwhile, the rulers of those worlds wished for some return to the days of constant and uninterrupted trade income- nevermind the overbearing and inefficient Imperial governments of those times. The Sylean Federation managed to stake its claim as the Third Imperium of Man simply because, and only because, it had good marketing.

[vintagerpg]

FASA, which would later go on to do stuff like the Star Trek RPG and Shadowrun, got its start producing third party material for Traveller. Ordeal by Eshaar (1981) is an adventure set during the Fifth Frontier War, in which the players travel to an extremely hostile planet (hot and toxic) where Imperial and Zhodani interests are competing for mineral rights important to the war efforts on both sides. Both have embassies on a Scout Service dome on the planet (as do the Vargr). Players get to participate in the wrangling of the diplomats, then safeguard an imperial survey mission, which the Zhodani sabotage. That leaves the Imperials in poor standing with the natives, who demand the survey team participate in an Ordeal (essentially, a long, purifying survival run through the planet’s hostile environment) to atone. It’s pretty good and it feels pretty much like a GDW Traveller product!

And it should be, because it is written by the Keith brothers (J. Andrew and William), who had previously written material on contract for GDW. J. Andrew wrote so much for the Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society that he used two pseudonyms so it didn’t look so obvious he was writing everything. The brothers were prolific freelancers, so when FASA started producing Traveller material, they were right there, writing most of it.

[arconinternet]

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (DOS, Paragon Software, 1990)

The game of the tabletop RPG. You can play it in your browser here, and download the map and two versions of the hint book (the one with the colored cover may be a pre-release version) here.

[teratocrat]

imperial navy can't keep up my pace / chasing a cock into zhodani space

[smiteworks]

New Release The Spinward Extents Mongoose Publishing

The Spinward Extents are the border between the familiar and the unknown. Pioneering and adventurous Imperials, Zhodani, Aslan, even Vargr, have reached the Extents; some have dwelt there for centuries or millennia, but they are far from their ancestral homes. Native races have forged their own empires across these stars. In the Extents the daring can make their fortunes, gain fame or infamy, and influence the course of events for entire worlds or distant governments. Alien races, forgotten mysteries, bitter rivalries and great opportunities await under the light of inconstant, giant, and dead stars.

[oldschoolfrp]

Hmm, our troopers’ body armor is cool, but we haven’t painted in here since the ‘70s  (David Deitrick cover art, Zhodani, Traveller Alien Module 4, GDW, 1985)  This book like many others credits the artist incorrectly as “David Dietrick”

[sophiasartandgaming]

[amberzonedcomix]

More Zdetl for you

[nelc]

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

Zhodani on the Thrust

[retrocgads]

USA 1990

[foxgirlchorix]

FUCK the spinward marches. thats right i fuckingsaid it. fuck the sword worlds. fuck the goddamn darrians. FUCK REGINA. i like the zhodani though. they can stay

[vintagerpg]

The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society number 9 (Summer, 1981?) takes the subtle metaplot of a moving fictional date and a quarterly news report and ups the ante significantly. This issue’s news report details the outbreak of war between the Duke of Regina and a new alien species, the Zhodani. Much of the issue is given over to fleshing out aspects of the conflict, which play out fully in the Fifth Frontier War wargame. The effects of this war are felt all over the Spinward Marches campaign setting materials for years (the war itself continued through 1984, ending around the same time as the Journal ceased publication). This is the sort of stuff TSR would experiment with in the DL-series Dragonlance modules (1984 on) and with the Avatar modules/novels (1989) that transitioned Forgotten Realms into second edition, but Traveller was light years ahead of them.

Cover again by William H. Kieth. Reminds me a bit of the Terran Trade Authority stuff.

[memecucker]

when i say i like how traveller has space-empires but also understands how massive a galaxy is i mean that that small red blob at the bottom is basically the “known worlds” where campaigns take place by default and all other things on this map are the equivalent of “Here Be Dragons” with like one sentence descriptions (except for Zhodani Core Expeditions which are a series of secret expeditions from one of the major human factions to reach the galactic core and since the way FTL works you travel 1-6 parsecs a week so those expeditions to the core have been going on for centuries)

[teratocrat]

"meanwhile in Zhodani space / imperial flagships swallow me" - High Passage / Low Passage if Mike Scalzi really wanted to sing a song about vore