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\title{How the Imperium Really Fell}
\author{\copyright1991 Bertil Jonell}
\date{d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se}
\maketitle

{\it \noindent
{\Large I}t all started late last year when Traveller players across
the net heard an
ugly rumor. The Imperium, GDW's extraordinarily comprehensive setting
for the Traveller RPG, was going to fold because of a computer killing
virus so that the gaming company could launch it's new product, tentatively
called Star Viking, in a future, lower-tech extrapolation of the current
and well-loved
setting. Players, referees, and computer scientists alike were amazed,
astonished, dumbfounded, and otherwise cranky about the news, not
doubting GDW's willingness to smash it all (ala the assassination of Strephon)
just in order to stir things up. Despite the injury, however, players seemed
angrier over the affront to their intellect. ``If they want to destroy the
Imperium, why use a computer virus?'' Why indeed?
In his article, Bertil introduces a more creative and somewhat more believable
explanation concerning how the Imperium really fell. We all hope that GDW
will read it and use it!\\}


{\noindent I}t was 1116 on a cold planet in the Swordworlds. Emperor Strephon 
and The Chairman of the High Council for the Zhodani Consulate met in the 
utmost secrecy at the request of the Emperor. Two years previously, the 
Consulate had sent a secret delegation to Capitol/Core to inform the Emperor 
of the result of a test several centuries in the planning.

  In --7959, Imperial time, twenty years after their first orbital flights, the 
Zhodanis mounted an expedition to their planet's moon, Viepchakl. On the moon 
they found an extensive system of underground tunnels dating back to the time 
of the Ancients. It was still inhabited by Chirpers (regressed Droyne) similar 
to those found on Zhdant itself. There were also a small number of artifacts 
among those a psionic booster. This was a device that enhanced and focused the 
innate psionic power of teleporters so that one person marginally skilled in 
teleportation could teleport himself with full equipment or up to five other 
individuals (or warbots) over interplanetary distances. Furthermore, the device 
automatically compensated for differences in vector and potential energy 
between the two locations\footnote{This artifact was the reason for the 
devastating plague that hit Zhdant after their first moon landings: The 
meeting between Viepchakl and Zhdant Chirpers (the latter members of the 
expedition) activated the tailored plague sown by the Ancients as a part of 
their final war. During its incubation time, it was brought down to Zhdant by 
humans and Chirpers testing the device. Even though they knew what the device 
did, the Viepchaklite Chirpers had lacked the technical skill to energize the 
device themselves before the Zhodani landed.
When the first Chirpers began to die on the moon it was too late. The plague 
had spread to the Zhdant Chirper population and soon it targeted the humans on 
both Zhdant and the moon. All life on the moon was destroyed, and on Zhdant 
all Chirpers and 90\% of the humans died. It took the Zhodanis nearly a 
thousand years to drag themselves out of the dark age resulting from the 
plague.}.
   Now, in a manner similar to when the Imperium copied the first black globe 
screen from artifacts found on Knorbes/Spinward Marches, the Zhodani had 
succeeded in producing crude but working copies of the teleportation enhancing 
device.

  The Zhodani delegation to Core informed the Imperium of this up to then 
highly secret development. They assured that it would be used in the case of 
an Imperial attack upon the Consulate or upon states allied to the Consulate 
and asked the Imperium to scrap all strategic fleet assets and only keep the 
anti-piracy detachments. Their claims were proven in a demonstration where a 
volunteer Zhodani and five warbot dummies teleported from a Zhodani cruiser to
an Imperial cruiser over Jewell/Spinward Marches while both ships were 
engaged in heavy maneuvering at an interplanetary distance from each other.

  The Imperial High Command was terrified. Their age-old nightmare of 
teleporting Zhodani commandos \& warbots suddenly appearing in 
strategic locations inside Imperial ships had come true. With just one teleportation 
enhancer and a load of warbots, a lone Zhodani teleporter could immobilize 
scores of frightfully expensive Imperial ships.

  For several centuries, both nations had been locked in a deadly arms race, 
and with more area to protect and more enemies to defend against, the bloated 
Empire was on the losing side. To avoid alerting the Zhodani and other enemies 
that the Imperial economy was on the verge of collapse, a policy of 
artificially inflating planetary GNP figures and underestimating ship costs 
was begun. Official figures claimed that the Imperium around 1% of its total 
GNP for defense while the real figure was close to 60%. The Zhodani had soon 
penetrated the facade, but it still fooled the Solomani, the Aslan, and the 
Vargr. While creative accounting by IISS, the Department of Finance, the 
Navy, and several Megacorps could hide the reality, it couldn't overcome it.

  Emperor Strephon immediately ordered that a countermeasure to the Zhodani 
teleporters be found and installed on all Imperial warships. Navy scientists 
informed him that a countermeasure already existed: additional psionic 
shielding, but it was ridiculously expensive. The already existent shielding 
in the ships was one of the secret posts in the Navy budget. Repair and 
maintenance of the frail and experimental electronics sucked up immense 
amounts of money.

  Economists at the Imperial Department of Finance then revealed to Strephon 
that the Imperial economy simply couldn't handle the strain of equipping all 
or even the most important ships with this new, expensive, and even more frail
and hard to maintain shielding.

  Forced into a corner between the militant faction in the Imperial Nobility 
led by Archduke Dulinor of Illelish (``The Zhodani {\em will} attack us. It is 
just a matter of time. Any peace-treaty on their part is a scam, so we {\em 
must} have this new shield'') and the economic realities of the situation, 
Strephon had no choice except to start playing his trump cards.

  The first was the {\em Darrian Option}. A sizable fraction of the Corridor 
fleet was ordered to transfer to the Solomani Rim while a similar number of 
ships in the Rim were transferred to Corridor. This was officially called a 
``unit exchange maneuver''. In reality, however, the fleet that should of traveled 
rimward traveled spinward towards the Darrian worlds in Spinward Marches, 
gathering reserve units to boost its size along the way. Just outside the 
Darrian border this combined fleet stopped in deep space. A fleet courier 
continued on and delivered a message from Emperor Strephon to the Darrians.

  The message was an ultimatum. It asserted that unless the Darrians attacked 
a long list of Zhodani systems with their `Maghiz device'\footnote{The Maghiz 
device, also known by non-Darrians as the Star Trigger is a semi-mythical 
weapon that can induce sub-nova flares in a star. These flares will travel 
outwards at the speed of light and destroy all types of electronics within 
twenty light-years in a manner similar to nuclear EMP. Its accidental 
discovery set the Darrians back two thousand years.}, elements of the Imperial 
Corridor Fleet would sterilize all Darrian worlds with nuclear, chemical and 
biological weapons. The Darrian response was that unless certain coded and 
outwardly normal messages continued to be transmitted over the Imperial Xboat 
Network from Darrian to certain places in the Imperium, preplaced Maghiz 
devices would be triggered on several strategic locations in the Imperium.

  The fleet left.

  The second card was the {\em Ultraviolet Option}, an extension of the old 
Project Blackheart. Several Imperial deep penetration fleet intruders equipped 
with enormous deployable solar arrays would enter the Consulate. They would 
use their solar arrays to charge their jump drives. In conjunction with 
sporadic wilderness refuelings on cometary nuclei this would enable them to 
travel deep into the Zhodani Consulate without ever straying close to a 
system. Once at their planned locations, they would use the element of 
surprise to bombard Zhdant and several other core Zhodani worlds with nuclear, 
chemical and biological weapons. Hopefully this would disrupt the Zhodani 
deploying of the teleportation device long enough for the Imperium to invade 
and crush the Zhodanis once and for all.

  Just a few weeks after the five ships had departed, a new delegation from 
the Consulate arrived at Regina bringing proof that all five ships had been 
intercepted and destroyed before even leaving the Spinward Marches sector.

  Their message can be paraphrased as follows:  ``We expected about as much 
from you untrustworthy Imperials, and we will overlook it. But try something 
more, and we will be forced to invade and crush you for our own protection.''

  Strephon had secretly been on Regina to direct first the Darrian option and 
then the Ultraviolet option while avoiding the usual time delays. He now requested 
an immediate summit. The location agreed on was the Swordworlds, allied to the 
Zhodanis but almost inside the Imperial sphere of influence.

  Emperor Strephon traveled there to try to cut a deal not too unfavorable to 
the Imperium, but at least one person in his entourage viewed this as a 
capitulation and spilled the beans. Word about what was happening spread with 
a jump 6+6 fleet courier across the Rift to Illelish where Dulinor put in 
motion the plan he had prepared on the off-chance that Strephon would 
``chicken-out''.

  During the negotiations on that small, cold planet in the Swordworlds, Emperor 
Strephon tried every trick in the book. He promised a removal of all Imperial 
laws banning psionics. He promised a total demilitarization of Spinward 
Marches and Deneb. He promised the return of the areas the Imperium captured 
from the Swordworlds during the 5th Frontier War. He promised a cut-off of 
Imperial military support to their tenuous allies, the Darrians. He promised 
to open all Imperial military installations to Zhodani inspection teams. All 
this things demanded by the Zhodanis and refused by the Imperium in past 
negotiations. But every promise was dependent upon the Zhodanis not 
deploying their teleportation enhancer and that Imperial inspection teams would 
be allowed to ascertain that the Zhodanis held their half of the agreement. 
And the non-deployment of the teleportation enhancer was the only issue upon
which the Chairman refused to negotiate.

  In the end, Strephon had to yield. The enhancers would be deployed, but he 
managed to cut a much better deal for the Imperium than the original Zhodani 
proposal would have been. According to the final version of the agreement, the 
Imperium would permanently give up all claims for any area spinward of its 
current positions in the Marches, coreward of Deneb, and spinward of the 
Windhorn rift. The size of the Imperial fleets would be cut by 50\%, and the 
Spinward Marches would be transformed into a demilitarized zone.

  However, while Strephon and the Chairman of the High Council of the Zhodani 
Consulate signed the agreement, Archduke Dulinor traveled towards Core to 
perform the now infamous coup.

  Strephon got wind of the assassination when his ship was attacked in 
Corridor on the way back. He diverted to his retreat position in Gushemege 
to rally his forces and strike back. Meanwhile Dulinor's coup had run into 
trouble.

  Lucan, nephew of Strephon, third in line for the throne after the Grand 
Princess and Varian, his own brother, had promised to help back Dulinor by 
preparing incriminating evidence of Strephon's ``treason'' in exchange for the 
position as Archduke of Deneb. Dulinor's plan, as Lucan knew it, was that 
Dulinor would request an audience with the ``Emperor''\footnote{Strephon maintained
a secret policy of using an actor surgically altered to look and sound like him to cover 
for him when he didn't want his absence from Capitol/Core to be known.}, the 
Empress and the Grand Princess and shoot them. The Illelish Guard would then 
secure the throne room while Dulinor and Lucan presented the ``proof'' that 
Lucan had prepared. Dulinor would then denounce Strephon as a traitor to the 
Empire, assume the throne by Right of Assassination and declare war on the 
Zhodanis before they could declare war on him.

  Both co-conspirators had planned to double-cross each other from the 
very start. Dulinor planned to have both Lucan and Varian murdered after he 
had received the evidence, because as legitimate heirs to the throne they 
would be threats. Lucan, also aspiring for the throne, planned to have 
his brother Varian and the real Strephon, returning from the Swordworlds, 
murdered. He would then rally the Imperial Marine Guards to crush Dulinor 
after the assassination of the ``Emperor'', the Empress and the Grand 
Princess. Lucan would thus emerge as both the legitimate heir to the throne 
and the hero of the Imperium.

  So while Dulinor shot and killed the ``Emperor'', the Empress and the Grand 
Princess in the throne room, one of his aides went to fetch Lucan and the 
data-files containing the evidence. Lucan was prepared for his arrival and had 
arranged it so that Varian would be there at the same time. When the aide 
arrived, Lucan personally shot him, Varian, a friend of Varian and a Marine 
guard stationed in Lucan's apartment. He then alerted the Marine Guard that 
he had discovered a coup in progress in the palace.

   When Lucan and the evidence failed to turn up, Dulinor's plan fell apart, 
and he had to invent some other justification for the assassination on the 
spot. The alerted guard units meant that his own Illelish guard couldn't hope 
to secure the palace. Dulinor was thus forced to leave the palace for Illelish to rally 
his fleets. First he had to deal with Lucan. The war with the Zhodanis would 
have to wait.

  During the intense civil war that followed, both Lucan and Dulinor squeezed 
every last quarter-credit out of every world they could lay their hands on. 
They needed the money to prepare their fleets for the expected Zhodani attack, 
an attack that never came. When the Imperium fragmented, the Consulate decided 
that the danger from the Imperium was gone for the foreseeable future and sent 
a messenger to Archduke Norris of Deneb where they told him that if he'd feel 
like breaking the signed agreement and fail to implement a DMZ in Spinward 
Marches, they would have nothing against it since they wanted their flank 
protected. But if he ever tried to move against the Consulate\ldots

  The Imperial Economy that had a hard time supporting the enormous military 
spending normally, couldn't hope to survive the Civil War. Military 
expenditures increased to over 80\% of the GNP, an insurmountable load for any 
economy. It broke down as the Imperium fragmented. Lucan was hit least, 
because while he had raised the secret taxes like everybody else except 
Norris, he had left the actual economic management to the experts. Dulinor, on 
the other hand, had tried to control every last credit with disastrous 
results. Production everywhere fell through the floor, and the navies started 
to cannibalize commercial shipping when they couldn't afford to repair their 
frightfully expensive warships.

  The destruction of commercial shipping led to even lower productivity, even 
lower tax income and a greater need to seize commercial shipping and so forth. 
This fateful chain of events continued until vast regions of space which had 
formerly been part of the Third Imperium lay without naval protection and 
outside the routes of the merchant lines. And this, gentle reader, is the concise 
history of how the Imperium really fell.

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