Black Vulmea
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Years ago I ran a Traveller campaign, and one of the players, taking the piss, announced he wanted to run 'a dwarf fighter,' and it got me thinking about the game's implied setting. Early Traveller chargen included many opportunities to earn or take skill in various sorts of edged weapons, most notably the automatic Cutlass-1 skill gained by Book 1 Marines. Daggers, foils, cutlasses, swords, spears, pikes and halberds are among the options a player can select, a call out to Traveller's origins in mid-century sci-fi; think about how common fighting with blades is in RAH's work - frex, Starship Troopers, Orphans of the Sky, and Tunnel in the Sky - as well as dueling in Herbert's Dune. Supplement 04 introduced the Barbarian career and with it bows, crossbows and the sling as weapon options.
As Traveller aged, blades became more 'ceremonial' in the setting, rather than something characters were expected to use in actual in-game combat - consider how few illustrations included characters with swords or polearms - which is a shame, particularly given the nature of law levels in the game: merchants with sheathed swords and daggers followed by a guard of pikemen or halbardiers walking through startown would actually make a fair amount of sense on worlds where firearms are strictly controlled, or not widely available. But mostly, a Baroque sci-fi universe is kinda cool, like Lando Calrissian's cape.
So, a dwarf fighter, then. Traveller introduced 'space dwarves,' a Minor Human race known as the Geonee - detailed in Travellers' Digest 11 - and I'd already situated an old Vilani penal colony for rebellious Geonee on one of the mainworlds; the mainworld has its own planetary navy which is part of the subsector fleet. All I needed was an axe, which was conveniently provided in the form of a boarding axe in Traveller20. Boarding axes became the melee weapon of choice for Geonee serving in the planetary navy and marines, and bam, there he was, a dwarf fighter.
This got me to thinking, then, about playing up that early, Baroque implied setting, so I looked at D&D tropes, and what they might look like in Traveller.
First, magic: Marc Miller carefully dodged magic in the Traveller portion of the Thieves World box set, but the obvious expression in Traveller is psionics; psionicists became the witches and wizards of the setting, feared and reviled by society but secretly succored in their 'magical colleges,' the Psionics Institute. As my campaign was set in the de-canonized Judges Guild Ley Sector, I also brought in the psionic space merchants of the Anubian Trade Coalition from the adjacent Hinterworlds sector as detailed in Challenge 52, trading along the Imperial fringe.
Next, 'monsters': I created the 'rakshasas,' psionic Aslan far from their Hierate, hedonist deceivers who emulate Hivers manipulations but twisted to their own decadent, self-interested ends. Chirpers - degenerate Droyne - are 'fairies' on a number of garden worlds, mischievous but not malevolent and occasionally friendly and helpful. Androids and robots are 'golems,' remorseless guardians and assassins. 'Merfolk' are biomod sophonts, closely allied with intelligent dolphins.
Then there are 'undead,' including 'wraiths,' avatar computer programs which come close to but don't quite rise to the level of AI, 'haunting' old installations and starships, and 'liches,' cyborg psionicists, a brain-in-a-jar on a robot or android body.
And there are all the Baroque trappings inherent in Traveller already: barbarians, space pirates, knights and nobles, starship hulk and lost space station 'dungeons,' defense installation 'castles' and 'keeps' - see the excellent example in Chris Moeller's Iron Empires: Faith Conquers for what a meson gun and shield and nuclear damper complex might look like. Sprinkle in ritual combat 'jousts,' merchant 'fairs,' star pilgrims, noble palaces. From this vantage, wearing a sword and a dagger - and a cape, gotta have the cape - doesn't seem so odd or impractical after all.
And neither do space dwarves with boarding axes.
As Traveller aged, blades became more 'ceremonial' in the setting, rather than something characters were expected to use in actual in-game combat - consider how few illustrations included characters with swords or polearms - which is a shame, particularly given the nature of law levels in the game: merchants with sheathed swords and daggers followed by a guard of pikemen or halbardiers walking through startown would actually make a fair amount of sense on worlds where firearms are strictly controlled, or not widely available. But mostly, a Baroque sci-fi universe is kinda cool, like Lando Calrissian's cape.
So, a dwarf fighter, then. Traveller introduced 'space dwarves,' a Minor Human race known as the Geonee - detailed in Travellers' Digest 11 - and I'd already situated an old Vilani penal colony for rebellious Geonee on one of the mainworlds; the mainworld has its own planetary navy which is part of the subsector fleet. All I needed was an axe, which was conveniently provided in the form of a boarding axe in Traveller20. Boarding axes became the melee weapon of choice for Geonee serving in the planetary navy and marines, and bam, there he was, a dwarf fighter.
This got me to thinking, then, about playing up that early, Baroque implied setting, so I looked at D&D tropes, and what they might look like in Traveller.
First, magic: Marc Miller carefully dodged magic in the Traveller portion of the Thieves World box set, but the obvious expression in Traveller is psionics; psionicists became the witches and wizards of the setting, feared and reviled by society but secretly succored in their 'magical colleges,' the Psionics Institute. As my campaign was set in the de-canonized Judges Guild Ley Sector, I also brought in the psionic space merchants of the Anubian Trade Coalition from the adjacent Hinterworlds sector as detailed in Challenge 52, trading along the Imperial fringe.
Next, 'monsters': I created the 'rakshasas,' psionic Aslan far from their Hierate, hedonist deceivers who emulate Hivers manipulations but twisted to their own decadent, self-interested ends. Chirpers - degenerate Droyne - are 'fairies' on a number of garden worlds, mischievous but not malevolent and occasionally friendly and helpful. Androids and robots are 'golems,' remorseless guardians and assassins. 'Merfolk' are biomod sophonts, closely allied with intelligent dolphins.
Then there are 'undead,' including 'wraiths,' avatar computer programs which come close to but don't quite rise to the level of AI, 'haunting' old installations and starships, and 'liches,' cyborg psionicists, a brain-in-a-jar on a robot or android body.
And there are all the Baroque trappings inherent in Traveller already: barbarians, space pirates, knights and nobles, starship hulk and lost space station 'dungeons,' defense installation 'castles' and 'keeps' - see the excellent example in Chris Moeller's Iron Empires: Faith Conquers for what a meson gun and shield and nuclear damper complex might look like. Sprinkle in ritual combat 'jousts,' merchant 'fairs,' star pilgrims, noble palaces. From this vantage, wearing a sword and a dagger - and a cape, gotta have the cape - doesn't seem so odd or impractical after all.
And neither do space dwarves with boarding axes.
. And guns can be unwieldy on a ship, in cramped fighting...especially if someone is already close to your mates
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