Sword Worlds from Mongoose

What has Mongoose done to the Sword Worlds? Do I need this book? These are the questions that I will try to answer here.

The cover of the book is quite cool, but it doesn’t look like the soldiers in the image are Sword Worlders at all.

Interior art is not bad either. I just feel it is too much Viking themed, and not really showing the hi-tec spacefaring culture that I wanted to see. The deckplans are fine and the 3D rendering of the Jarl is ok. It can be seen in colour at Biomass Art.

There are a few contradictions in the introduction of the book. Are the Sword Worlds a dangerous place or a popular place to visit? Are there no physical differences from original Solomani or is the average male weight 105 kg, and the females pregnant for 10 months? Then there is also (a likely) bug in the naming rules, since the female surname possessive form is missing, but not the male possessive form.

How did the come up with the Army Ranking table? I don’t think that matches any Scandinavian army. (SWE, NOR, DEN)

There are 3 new careers. The first one is the Aesirist Church. This isn’t something that I like. It is too Viking themed. I will not use it in MTU. The next one is The Patrol. From old JTAS #18. This is a good idea to include. The third is Jäger Command. I think it should really be part of Marines or Army, as special forces.

The origin of sagamaal and the vocabulary makes some sense. Currency and exchange rate was a good thing to include. History is a bit messed up. It’s interesting but doesn’t match the previous publications.

In the Worlds chapter, the world listing of the subsector is missing the worlds outside the Sword Worlds. The atmosphere of Enos is explained in the same way as in the GURPS SW module. (To keep Traveller fun, these things should be ignored so that the referee can deal with in a different way.) Mithril matches the old adventure Mission on Mithril.

The equipment list is nice, but there are some items that are just too Viking themed. There is a nice selection of ships. Some parts of the encounter tables are fine, and the animals are interesting. The miniphants has been changed. They are not the same miniphants as in JTAS #16.

There are some proofreading errors (as usual). There are some extra-large apostrophes. There is a reference to a class III starport. (That is what a type C starport is called in GURPS.) There are some talk about the Border Worlds (that shouldn’t exist in 1105). I get an error message in the end of the pdf. Please Mongoose, do a better job!

So, I think that parts of the book is good, and other parts are not so good. You can buy it for the good parts. Maybe you like the other parts as well. The alternative would be to use JTAS #18 and read Space Viking for free, and form your own opinion about the Sword Worlds.

This problem leads to silly explanations. Like the one in both the GURPS and Mongoose Sword Worlds modules where a planet (Enos) is made of Osmium. Other explanations might be terraforming by the ancients.

These silly explanations might explain how a few (very unique) worlds got their atmospheres. But it seems unlikely that these explanations can explain every world equal or smaller than size 3 with an atmosphere equal or greater than 2. In an average sector with standard stellar density there are about 80 such worlds. (In the Spinward Marches, there are 73 worlds with this problem.)

I usually ignore this problem, since our group of Traveller players don’t care about details like this. They want to play the game. But if the question is asked, I now have a solution. Instead of explaining every world or changing the UWP, I use this table.

As can be seen is this table, the problem is solved by making the smallest planets big enough to retain a breathable atmosphere. (The original table can be seen at Traveller Map.)

Terraformed Mars: File from wikimedia. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

At Wikipedia, there is an entry about asteroid mining. Planetary Resources will go after the Near-Earth objects, and take small steps and learn along the way. That seems like a nice business plan (as long as you can wait for any results and profits).

Asteroid mining, Image from wikimedia. Public Domain.

Planetary Resources are far from first to think about Asteroid mining. A snapshot from 1998 at the wayback-machine proves that the BeRKA corporation was in the asteroid mining business 14 years ago.

GDW has thought about asteroid mining even longer than the BeRKA corporation. In the “Consolidated Classic Traveller Reprint Errata” you can find the old “Asteroid Mining flowchart” from JTAS Issue 3.

In the TTA books, there was also some cool images of asteroid mining space ships. Have a look at the PC1 191 Gourmet or the AC3 Stag Beetle. The PC1 191 Gourmet has inspired asteroid mining in MTU. That ship is so much cooler than a Scout Ship with a mining laser.

Except for the flowchart in JTAS #3, a lot have been published about asteroid mining for traveller. To generate belter (asteroid miner) characters for your game, you’ll need Supplement 4. For some fun asteroid adventures, you’ll need Beltstrike! (You can also get Beltstrike for Mongoose Traveller.)

Asteroid Mining Vehicule - Image from wikimedia. Public Domain

There are also some games about Asteroid Mining. From GDW, there is Belter that is about asteroid mining in the solar system. A cheaper alternative is Asteroids from Radioactive Press, and a fun alternative is Asteroid Racers from Avalon Game company.

You can play the classic Asteroids arcade game at the Atari website. What is your High-Score?

Subsector History

The first inhabitants of the Derry system were travellers from Earth, distant descendants of the crew of the ESA generation starship Niall Noigiallach. Funded by the European Union member-state of Ireland, the Niall Noigiallach was–like the other generation starships of its class–modelled on the three vehicles of the European Space Agency Long-range Colony Mission launched in the mid-21st century. Carrying two thousand passengers and ten thousand embryos, the Niall Noigiallach was launched in 2089 with the goal of establishing an Irish colony world hundreds of parsecs to rimward of Sol, in a cluster on the fringes of the Local Arm.

Unlike many other Terran generation starships of that era, the Niall Noigiallach survived to reach its destination, in 4688 CE decelerating into orbit of the most clement garden world in the Dublin binary system (0706 Eire). The mainworld of Baile Átha Cliath and its ancillary worlds were colonized successfully, implementing the long-dead social planners’ design to create a distinctly Irish interstellar-capable society. Completely isolated from their home system and its interstellar civilization, by the 49th century CE the Dublin system supported a thriving civilization capable of mounting secondary colonization and expeditionary missions of its own.

Among the first launched was to the Feabhal system four parsecs away, where an unusual double planet had been detected during deceleration by the Niall Noigiallach, orbiting in the life zone of a young BY Draconis star. On arrival, the Bréanainn V expedition determined that the scans by the founding generation starship were accurate. Six planetary bodies orbited the K5 star Feabhal, four rocky planets and two gas giants. Two rocky planets shared the second orbit, 0.49 AU from the primary, one a high-gravity waterworld with an ammonia-water ocean, the other a desert world larger than Mars in the Sol system with some glaciated seas, both orbiting a common centre of gravity in a bit under two months. Although the system was only fifty million years old and the Feabhal system’s worlds were geologically unstable, both worlds in the life zone–Doire and An Ghealach, in Galanglic “Derry” and “The Moon” did support basic microbial life, while the planets and smaller world of the system were rich in mineral resources. In the end, the Dublin government chose to concentrate its colonization efforts on more Earth-like worlds such as An Baile Meánach (Ballymena), Béal Feirste (Belfast), Corcaigh (Cork), and Gaillimh (Galway), where fully-fledged daughter civilizations could be settled, but the worlds of the Ferbhal system did receive more than their fair share of research settlements, whether floating on the oceans of Doire or anchored on the sea floor, or on the dryer surface of its moon.

Dublin and its interstellar community were brought roughly into distant contact with Sol and its interstellar community in 5346-49 CE, when the prosperous but technologically backwards subsector was conquered by Solomani migrant fleets fleeing instability in the Banners and Ahriman Sectors and attracted to a promising human civilization free from the instability of home. Equipped with jump drive and otherwise vastly more advanced than the worlds of the “Eire” subsector–Baile Átha Cliath itself was only tech level A and most other worlds substantally behind, while the Solomani were at tech level C–the migrants were easily able to overwhelm the peaceful subsector. The proclamation of the Empire of the New Marches in 5351 established a fully-united interstellar state for the first time in the sector’s history.

The coreward worlds of the subsector were soon overwhelmed by Solomani migrants, the world of Béal Feirste becoming the Solomani’s new homeworld in the subsector, while a Solomani military elite established itself elsewhere. In the more than three millennia since the departure of the Niall Noigiallach, the people of the Eire subsector had come to diverge strongly from the Solomani norm, knowledge of the English ancestral to the Galanglic spoken by the Solomani literally becoming academic to people who spoke only one dialect or another of Irish, with the natives knowing nothing and caring even less of what had happened to their ultimate homeworld and its people since their departure. The biology of the humans of the Eire subsector, too, had come to diverge sharply from the Solomani norm, the genetic engineering that had adapted the settlers of Dublin to life on a low-gravity world with a thin atmosphere and an unusual number of allergens creating a variant human race. Various of the secondary colonization missions brought Dublin colonists to new worlds with unique conditions meriting further engineering. In all, the Empire of the New Marches identified three broad classifications of subsector natives which would each count as separate variant human races. As elsewhere, the biologically and culturally distinctive subjects of an aggressive empire were treated badly, often exploited as labour on many of the secondary systems (like Derry’s) opened up by the Empire’s superior technological base

By the end of the 55th century, internal squabbles in the Empire’s governing classes along with a native resurgence on Dublin and the worlds to rimward led to the Empire’s collapse. Solomani retreated to the coreward quarter of the Eire Subsector, where they founded a Solomani-supremacist Empire of Man centered on the world now known to its Solomani majority as Belfast. After some disorder, in 5599 CE the freed worlds united in their Republic, the Poblacht, governed once again from Dublin but now possessing a technological base capable of standing up to their nearest neighbours. Tensions between the Empire of Man and the Poblacht persisted, as irredentists in the Poblacht lay claim to the worlds in the Empire of Man taken by the Solomani, particularly worlds which retained native majorities of population like Doire. Full-fledged war is distant, as neither polity feels strong enough to invade the other, but cross-border terrorism is becoming distressingly common.

Derry and Derry Beta

Doire/Derry Prime is a hostile world, nearly sixteen thousand kilometres in diameter and with a surface gravity of 1.24g and surface temperatures below freezing. The world’s original settlements were located on equatorial seamounts located beneath the surface of the water-ammonia ocean, protected from the storms of the surface below the microbial mats that initially prompted settlement. The Empire of Man sharply accelerated settlement, sponsoring the migration of tens of millions of people from across the subsector to new habitats anchored on the bottom of the cold oceans devoted to the mining of the world’s rich mineral deposits. Life in the undersea arcologies is almost universally grim, with an ill-functioning panopticon state trying to keep track of a quietly hostile native population. Terraforming has been occasionally proposed by rejected: no plausible schema for terraforming could change the atmosphere or reduce the overwhelming oceans to create a more tolerable world.

An Ghealach/Derry Beta is, while still non-habitable, considerably closer to the Solomani (and Dublin) norms, with a gravity half that of Terra, a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, and small glaciated water seas on the equator. The world has frequently been proposed as a target for terraforming, and millions of Solomani migrants have settled in the equatorial arcologies. Life for the Solomani of Derry Beta is better than for the natives of the system’s mainworld, with a higher level of technology and a more responsive civil-service goverment in a less unforgiving planetary environment. Many of the Empire of Man’s industrial combines have set up their spinward regional headquarters out of Derry Beta. Recent terrorist outrages have caused an atmosphere of panic to envelop affected arcologies, however.

Derry People

240 million people live in the system known as Ferbhal to the subsector’s natives and “Derry” to the Empire of Man, making it the second system in the Empire of Man by population and fourth system in the entire Eire Subsector. Of these 160 million live on Doire/Derry Prime (CABA89C-5), 85 million live on An Ghealach/Derry Beta (C43178C-7), and the remainder live in settlements on various other bodies–smaller rocky planets, moons of the gas giants, and habitats built on and out of asteroids and icy bodies. The system has a very complicated population mixture. 56% of its population is of “native” ancestry and belongs to one of the subsector’s three native variant races, whether the original Dublin race (10% of the native population), the native Derry race (85%, adapted for high gravity and low-slung but with denser musculature than even the Solomani norm), or the low-gravity-adapted “floaters” who live in the system’s planetary belts. An Ghealach is known as “Derry Beta” to its overwhelmingly Solomani population.

The Struggle

“The Struggle” (“An Streachailt”) is the term used by members of all four of Derry’s human races, in both their major languages, to refer to the terrorist conflict rooted in the desire of most of the native population’s desire for the transfer of the Feabhal system to the Poblacht, on the grounds of its majority-native population and its history. Literally dozens of different terrorist movements, many operating with covert support from within the Poblacht’s governing institutions but all with substantial support from the Feabhal system’s native populations, operate within the system, operating campaigns of assassinations and bombings against the Empire of Man and prominent Solomani individuals. Already, this has led to the designation of the system as an Amber Zone by subsector travellers’ agencies.

On current trends, the Struggle will come to an end only after the conclusion of war between the Empire of Man and the Poblacht. The Empire is unwlling to concede any worlds or systems to the Poblacht, even systems like An Srath Bán/Strabane (0503 Eire) and Inis Ceithleann/Eniskillen (0504 Eire) with overwhelmingly native populations, out of a combination of racist contempt for the variant humans of the Eire Subsector and a legitimate fear that any territorial concessions will ultimately lead to the Poblacht’s destruction of the Empire and the Solomani of the subsector. The idea of abandoning Derry is a complete non-starter, since apart from the system’s considerable economic importance the ninety million Solomani of the system–many descended from refugees from the worlds of the Poblacht–simply cannot be abandoned. The idea of keeping An Ghealach for the Empire while conceding the rest of the system of the Poblacht is just as impossible. If the Empire can continue to consolidate its strength, perhaps drawing support from other Solomani civilizations within reach, it might be able to hold on; if not, the continuing modernization of the Poblacht will leave the Empire mortally vulnerable within a generation. A downwards spiral of violence has begun in the Derry system, and where it might end no one will know.

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• Infinite Stars
• Stellar Reaches
• Freelance Traveller
• Into The Deep

The winner of the category “Best Fanzine” is;

Freelance Traveller.

Freelance Traveller has delivered a new fine issue every month. The page-count may be greater in the other fanzines, but they haven’t delivered 12 issues in 2011.

• The Beast of Karridan’s Hollow
• Spinward Encounters
• 21 Plots Too
• Secrets of the Ancients

The winner of the category “Best Adventure” is;

Spinward Encounters.

Spinward Encounters is a very fine product that I have written about before. If used correctly, it will give you lots of fun over many gaming sessions.

• HIMS The Pretty Penny
• 40-ton Slow Pinnace
• Fat Cat
• Starter Pack

The winner of the category “Best Deckplans” is;

HIMS The Pretty Penny.

HIMS The Pretty Penny is a very good looking deckplan that I have written about before.

• Ley Sector
• Simba Safari
• JTAS #16
• JTAS #23

The winner of the category “Best PDF Re-Release” is;

JTAS #23.

Issue #16 is also a very good JTAS issue, but since this is the Zhodani Base Awards, JTAS #23 had to win.

• Netherell
• Cascadia
• Outer Veil
• A Primer

The winner of the category “Best ATU Product” is;

Cascadia.

There are now lots of new Alternate Traveller Universes. This is a very interesting development. The winner starts small and presents one sub-sector, but it is presented in great detail.

• Robots
• Sword Worlds
• Zhodani
• Spinward Encounters

The winner of the category “Best OTU Product” is;

Zhodani.

Hey, what did you expect?

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Funeral Escort by Cheesy_Nacho
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The Builder by Alegis Downport

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Players’ Information:
The party is approached by a gang of builders (numbering eight including the leader) who need transport whilst on Urnian/Ovdyo; they have won a contract to refurbish a nobles penthouse and party is asked to transport the gang of burly builders to Urnian/Udika, their materials and equipment to site. They have several tons of equipment (enough to fill the PC’s cargo hold to capacity), including tools, heavy plant gear, bricks and other materials.

If the party asks why they can’t use local construction materials, the lead builder replies that the noble has expensive tastes and specified particular materials for the construction. Examples can be presented to the party, eg. special internal bricks that display soothing, coloured patterns when illuminated.

Image from wikimedia.  Public Domain.

Referee’s Information:
1. The job is as described and once the builders are on site, the party will be paid 25,000 Cr once their equipment and materials have been unloaded.

2. As described in 1, except that whilst unloading the equipment, one of the gang is injured. As this could delay the start of the job, the party is asked for additional help to set up the equipment. They are paid an additional bonus of 3000 Cr. The referee may judge for a roll against dexterity to ensure the PCs are not also injured, whilst helping to set up the unfamiliar equipment.

3. As described in 1, but the party is asked if they would like temporary jobs as labourers, as the deadline for completion of the job has been shortened by the noble. They will be paid 200 Cr per day each, players with appropriate electronics skills will get a slightly higher rate of an additional 50 Cr per day.

4. As described in 3, except that one member of the builders gang is an assassin and whilst working on the job, there is an attempt on the noble’s life. The party has the opportunity to stop the attempt and gain favour. The other builders are innocent and will help the party in the capture of the assassin. If the party is successful in their mission, the noble will reward the party with 50,000 Cr and arrangements to service and refuel their ship.

Assassin: UPP AA9987, ex-Scout, Dagger-1, Brawling-1, Rifle-2, Streetwise-1
Weapons - throwing dagger, auto rifle, mesh armour.

5. As described in 3, the builders are actually mercenaries hired to kill the noble. Rather than going in with an all out assault, their approach is to gain access to the site under the guise as builders, which gives them unhindered access to the building. The mercenaries also look at it as an opportunity to steal from the noble before killing him. The party notices something suspicious, or they discover the mercenaries’ plans just before the assassination takes effect.

6. As described in 3, but the builders reveal themselves as freedom fighters fighting against commercial operations which the noble is in charge of, on Udika. The freedom fighters capture the noble and the party is asked to transport them and the noble back to their base elsewhere on Udika, where the noble will be held to ransom. It will be sold to the party as a just cause, rather than a criminal act. It will be up to the PCs to decide on their course of action, accept the ‘builders’ story or attempt to rescue the noble and retain Imperial favour.

Builder NPC     UPP 988766     ex-Army
Jack-o-T -1, Dagger-1, Auto Pistol-1.
Weapons: dagger, auto pistol.

Builder Leader     UPP A88767     ex-Army
Vehicle-1, Leader-1, Blade-1, Auto Pistol-2, Shotgun-1, Tactics-1.
Weapons: blade, auto pistol, shotgun.