Zett / Subsector / Foreven

Referee's Notes

Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises.
Portions of this material are Copyright ©1977-1996 Far Future Enterprises.

Contents

Player Information

The Unstable Star

The Red Zone

Zett and the Asteroid Belt

Conspiracy Theory


The Unstable Star

This story is a complete fabrication.  The blue-white main sequence star is stable.  This story is intended to sound reminiscent of the Darrian maghiz, the unintentional first use of the Star Trigger which ravaged almost all Darrian systems.

There is a rumour in Foreven that the Darrians used Zett as a test site for an early test firing of a tactical Star Trigger, a version designed to cripple just one system and thus usable in a war against a neighbor.  This rumour was planted by the Imperial FarSpace Service at the "request" of a classified office of the Imperial Navy, to lend credibility to the story of why this system is a Red Zone.

Foreven governments support this Red Zone, accepting the Imperial explanation at face value.

Aside from occasional IFSS visits (considered highly hazardous by the service), the Red Zone maintains itself.  No enforcement is usually present, as this would blow the cover of the story.  IFSS ships that visit here are randomly sabotaged to maintain a suitable loss rate.
 


The Red Zone

The real reason for the Red Zone lies in the asteroid belt.  A classified office of the Imperial Navy wants to keep anyone from investigating this system because of what it found here.

Acting on information obtained at other artifact sites, an initial survey discovered three Crusader ships here.  One of these appeared completely intact, while the other two had suffered extensive hull damage.  The damage on the two ships is apparently all from post-abandonment meteoroid impacts.

One of the damaged ships is the only known example of its kind -- fitted with very heavy energy weapons in limited-traverse forward-facing mountings, it is not clear what role it was intended to perform.  Like other Crusader ships, the hull skin is extremely thin and weak, which helped preserve the major structure over the millenia of micrometeorid impacts.

The other ships are the typical Crusader design, apparently identical to all those found at other sites.  The damaged ship is the source for the nuclear warheads that eventually were installed in the Kinunir at the Emperor's personal direction.  The intact ship has not been disturbed, except for close examination of course, and now all three are stored within heavy meteor shields to protect against unforseen impacts.  It has frustrated all attempts to determine how it works -- one such attempt triggered a trap that resulted in the total loss of a Navy team.  Further attempts are now limited to simulations -- the ship itself is to remain undisturbed.


Zett and the Asteroid Belt

The settlement on the planet Zett is clearly a degenerated mining colony.  It no longer mines, despite the name of the political unit.  The inhabitants have no record of their earlier history -- they have always been this way, they say.

It is believed that the original mainworld was in the habitable zone in orbit 6, now occupied by the asteroid belt.  Studies of the belt and the slightly odd orbits of the other bodies in the system have prompted the theory that the mainworld orbit originally contained a large world with several moons.  It is conjectured that it was destroyed by unknown means for unknown purpose during an assault by the Crusaders.


Conspiracy Theory

There is vast fodder for conspiracy theorists here.  A low-tech attempted reproduction of the heavy guns on the Crusader ship appeared on the Porcupine, the Sword World asteroid-based ship supposedly designed to cripple traffic in Glisten during a forthcoming hypothetical Fifth Frontier War.  Why were trials of the Sword World ship conducted in Imperial Space -- Zaibon / Lunion -- so close to major Imperial Navy bases?  Why did Norris push for conciliation rather than confrontation with the Zhodani when this "plan" was made public?  Was this conciliation with a traditional enemy really what motivated the Emperor to raise Norris to Archduke, or was it to keep him quiet?  Why was the Porcupine and her crew never heard from again?  What were the Imperial Navy doing in Foreven, a sector which supposedly has no Imperial presence except for the diplomatic and survey duties of the IFSS?  Why is there no record of the Imperial Navy ever having operated in Foreven, let alone all the way into Klarn sector?  Why when the Joint Expeditionary Force on their way to the Roach War reached Karakus, had Grand Admiral Winchester never even heard of the IFSS?  Why would the Emperor insist, by personal edict no less, that the Kinunir be fitted with recovered Crusader warheads when they are demonstrably the equivalent of regular Imperial warheads?  How was there time for all the messages to pass back and forth so the Emperor could indeed do what apparently he did?  Why were there three ships here, apparently abandoned totally undamaged?  Is it merely coincidence that one of these ships is a type never found anywhere else?  Who designed the Porcupine's guns, and given their effectiveness why hasn't anyone built more?

Why hasn't anyone asked any of these questions?