A Universe Without Earth | Star Frontiers

Recently this was posted: [quote=Imperial Lord]Bringing in Earth is always a sticky situation. On
the one had, you get the context of our own history and background.
This can be useful as a story foil, and convienient in terms of taking
for granted certain elements of knowledge. (I.E. Space Nazis are
eeeevil!) However, on the other hand, there is also a certain
"purity" to NOT having Earth involved in a SF campaign at all. The
desire to bring in Earth is understandable, perhaps even irresistible,
but there is also something to be said for building a vast Human
civilization, in the context of the Frontier, from scratch. Personally,
I prefer to avoid Earth. I enjoy the opportunity to create from the
ground up, to be free of the shackles of our history - let alone
explaining everything that takes place beyond today's era. [/quote]
 And while I can be very opinionated I do try to think about the arguements of the other side of an discussion and weight them out for there merit. I have certainly been one of the staunchest champions of putting Earth into the setting but I found Imperial Lords reasoning to have merit and be a little bit compelling on one point. So that said as an intellectual exercise I'd like to round table building up the Frontier from the ground up in a Universe Without Earth. The cannon statement of AD is that in a spiral galaxy there evolved a race of humans. And the designers of the game designed it without established homeworlds since the idea was to have a space western and established homeworlds would have established militaries and such. So we never got the homeworlds and supposedly d20 material or some such divulged material on homeworlds but I have never seen it. Two tracks can be taken here- 1. home worlds exist outside the setting (in this case the AD map) OR the exist inside the setting. If they exist outside the AD map we need a new and larger map but if they exist inside the AD map then they we can just get busy with working on stuff. Its always difficult proposing maps for spaces beyond the AD/Zebs map as its usually one fan's creation and we all come together here around the love of this game and the one thing we can all agree on is the AD map. A sub set hate the Zebs material and ignore the Zebs map and Rim but at the very least we can all agree on the AD map and material. For this reason I think the best path to take is to recraft a little bit and write the homeworlds (at least three of them) the AD setting. Down side is that in such a narrow space in space you had three sapient creatures evolve at the same time within 15 Light years of each other and at the same time. The odds on that happening are astronomically huge but its a game so like Han Solo said, "Never tell me the odds." No matter what we do the work will not be cannon so obviously this will be a bit of a alternate setting but one that should jive well with the established setting as long as you modify a few statements in the cannon. I will take the track of the homeworlds are in the setting and a few cannon statements fuel my decisions about things. [quote=Warriors of White Light module] The Leotus Line has held the throne for nearly 400 years,[/quote] Leotus is the 19th monarch of this dynasty. Obviously we need to account for a 400 year history on Clarion I was looking for the statement where a vrusk mining company discovered the dralasites and could not locate it in Zebs or in two modules nor in "The Volturnus Connection" RE: A Yazirian Home World (Yazira) [quote=Zebs guide] 270 PF Yazirian enter the Frontier[/quote] for the Zebs quote I really think that Yzira system should be placed outside the Frontier. However its jump route is not on the map so for some reason the Yazirians aint saying. Reasons why: 1. they are pilgrims fleeing religious persecution (not completely in character with how I veiw the warrior ethic of the yazirian- they aint meek pilgrims but more of a John Wayne who fight for his rights) 2. Homeworld is destroyed- been talked about quite a bit and the wandering brown dwarf a passing through the system was astronomical disaster that they could not aviod but would have enough warning to do something like a Star Exodus. I like the destruction of the planet and a star exodus as its simplist to deal with, the star route exists and Fo1 is not telling as the system is not considered holy ground. It also explains why the yazirians who were last to the table have managed to settle so many systems then the other more established races. Thus I really think Yazira should be South by Southwest of Guna Garu deep into the Great Expanse a lonely system 15-20 light years from Araks. Its possible to go there but it just aint easy to do so. RE: A dralasite and a Vrusk Homeworld Dralasites: these are the easiest IMO. Dramune. the name sounds dralasite-ish and there is no other exclusively dralasite colonized system with a High population density. I have a few reasons why I dont think its Fromeltar even though admittedly Fromeltar sounds like a dralasite name I like it for a vrusk home system. Terledrom is the only system with a high population density and vrusk, all other vrusk colonies have moderate or light populations. It would only make sense or perhaps I should say its most probable that a homeworld will have a high population. We can cetainly explain the names Fromeltar and Terledrom being dralasite names as being the that they were the names that got drawn into Gan Gal due to their ease of use since vrusk is an essentially unspeakable language by everyone but the vrusk. finally the fact that Kisk'Kar is the only colony explicitly stated to be controlled by another colony, Terledrom and that fact that Kisk'Kar is exclusively vrusk it suggests a vrusk power base in Fromeltar. I would opt for a story that large numbers of dralsites have immigrated to terledrom, prospered there and integrated into their society. RE: Humanity and Nova Terra Humanity become the sticky point. Only two systems on the map make sense: White Light or Theseus IMO. Truane's Star has a name that suggest it was discovered. its also too far away from the initial action of first contacts between the bugs, the blobs and the hairless monkeys. Clarion as such an extreme one sided environment and the system name is not what I would use for a name for a humanities home star. We need to incorporate some or all of the statements in ADKH-0, 400 year dynasty, planetary militia that has never been defeated etc. but 400 years or even 300 or 200 years of an active space age would give them access to star ship technology far in advance of KHs. so its a little tricky about what we do with clarion. Theseus and Minotaur. Sound Greek, Greek alphabet gets all sorts of play in this game- that could be significant. Clarion just doesn't have the right feel for a nova terra but by the very lack of hard info on Minotaur I can easily image it as a nova terra. So here's my idea on that Minotaur is the homeworld of humanity. a myriad number of cultures and nations arouse much like here on earth. One managed to send out a colony ship that took x number of years to reach White Light system however after that ship left World War Whatever happened (lets just call it 3) that wiped out the fledgling space industries and without brining about a gamma world, which is really a different game and I dont want to have to account for mutated intelligent trees though anyone wanting to use that material can certianly write it in. We need to write in a return to space by Theseus, perhaps under a new one world government at the right time, which would be about the time of first contact by humans with the vrusk and dralasites as that is 350 PF. This would be the time of the founding of the Leotus dynasty and the 400 year history of that dynasty would take you to about 50 FY which is about the time most of the modules probably run, more or less. So this will require some thought on how long that colony expedition to White Light will take to travel and we need to allow for the population on Clarion to grow some. A history point we should cover: The Royal Guard has never been defeated in 400 years. So who'd they fight? Options 1.Theseus 2. intervention in the Free World Rebellion 3. sathar in SW1 I kind of like the idea of a one world facists government arising out of the ashes of WW3 on Minotaur and when it returns to space it turns its eye on Clarion. By the time of the establishment of the Frontier and the UPF the facists state has suffered a collapse and something else has come about. Conditions on Minotaur had been oppressive but once the facists state collapsed and individuals began to experience greater personal freedom this fueled human colonization else where in the frontier. As for human culture I say lets keep a bunch of RW cultures in a broad fashion. With Greek names in play i think it would be cool to have an ancient Greek culture and star ships named for characters in Greek myth. clearly Clarion was designed with Great Britian in mind. Russian names are fun, There is a mega corp CEO with a Chinese sounding name, Chang Kim Lee so Chinese works as well. Map of minotaur does not need to look like Earth. and its history can take some broad themes from Earth history but doesn not need to follow that either.

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