TomB <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

It would seem--given bits like the (LBB) low passage canon--simply to be "the Imperium" setting.

Well, the early setting had a much more sparse version of the Imperium (and the Solomani) before we graduated to alien modules and more area modules. The earliest stuff didn't give you a huge amount to work with and just a hint at a lot of flavour (some inferred from rules mechanics).

Putting aside whether we should be thinking of just three booklets when we say "LBB" or the whole bundle of black-and-multiple-colors, pamphlet-sized CT materials--which, gave us our first views of the Imperium--it seems to me there was more which suggests the Imperium was "dark" than simply the Dumarest-esque low passage model, with the primary example being an autocratic aristocracy as the basic form of government.

The first glimpse we get of the Imperium is laid out by Frank Chadwick in the Introduction of ~Mercenary~ (1978):

"~Traveller~ assumes a remote centralized government (referred to in this volume as the Imperium) . . . unable, due to the sheer distances and travel times involved, to exert total control at all levels everywhere within its star-spanning realm."

Here the emphasis is upon the Imperium's remoteness, without any details about the character of its rule, and the description also seems especially focused on enabling the sort of campaigns described in ~Mercenary~.

In the January-February 1979 issue of ~The Dungeoneer~, Marc laid out a variety of options for the "central governmental authority" which is apparent in the Traveller background. Here again the emphasis is upon the limitations of interstellar travel and the implications for interstellar control rather than on any specific character of that government. Marc described three categories--Federation, Empire and Imperium--while suggesting that the "Imperium" of ~Mercenary~ is actually "an especially large empire." The Roman Empire is mentioned as a model for this sort of "empire."

The earliest conceptions of the Imperium seem to be an interstellar "Roman Empire" suited for small-scale mercenary campaigns. That might be a fun place for PCs to adventure but it doesn't seem like an especially attractive place to live as an ordinary person.

I always though, when I read library data and articles about the Imperium, that it sounded well run and something to be proud of being a part of. Maybe it was in some places, but not in others. Or maybe that was just the shine on the rotten apple.

As you've already suggested (and others have echoed), each of us brought our own culturally-based assumptions to what "the Imperium" is. The same holds for all of the follow-on co-creators who have expanded the Imperium setting. And all along the way, PCs (and referees) have held that this "Imperial society"--which, more often than not, unreflectively mirrored the mainstream society of the U.S. in the last quarter of the 20th Century--is an orthodox view of what's "normal" and perhaps even "good."

This is why the example of the Ine Givar is so interesting. Perhaps the Ine Givar "back story" which emerged later in the on-line ~Journal~ was not what the creators had in mind when they were crafting that TNS entry about sabotage at the Pixie shipyards way back in ~Journal~ No. 3, but the fact remains that the Imperium campaign had internal dissidents--who were seized with the stark absence of the sort of representative government that most players took for granted in their "real life" experience--long before Dulinor cooked up his plot to seize the Iridium Throne.

It would seem that many of the science-fictional inspirations for Traveller--Tubb, Piper, Anderson, Pournelle--portrayed "dark" empires, if we use "empire" in the way that Marc did in ~The Dungeoneer~. To me, this suggests that the "Dark Imperium," an "interstellar Roman Empire suited for small-scale mercenary campaigns," has been there since the beginning, it's just that so many of us weren't paying attention (when we weren't playing ~Striker~), assuming, like most PCs would, that the Imperium was basically a decent place, rather than a place where the aristocrats perhaps indulged in some Longshanks-esque ~prima nocta~ when they could get away with it.

This doesn't mean that "your" Imperium can't be one that's ruled by an aristocracy which takes its inspiration from Arthur's Round Table or Charlemagne's Paladins, but in making that choice ~Mercenary~ would seem to be about a rather different sort of folks . . . and you may have to dump the Dumarest-esque low passages. ;)

Cheers,

David

--

"The Ine Givar . . . were ahead of their time, striving for democratic reform and dramatic change." - Andrew Moffatt-Vallance, "Secrets of the Ine Givar," October 2, 1998

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