Don't consider this a return to regular Traveller Tuesdays; they might happen, they might not. But playing in All Ones' Traveller campaign has me thinking about the system and setting again, so here's a notion which I've had for a long time and I've finally decided to write out.
 |
| My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises. |
The crux of my argument that jumpspace is psionic stems from two canonical pieces of information. I shall use links to the Traveller wiki to support my thesis.
- Continuous observation of jumpspace has been known to drive intelligent beings insane, so starship viewports are shuttered during jump.
- Yes, I am aware that this sounds a lot like Warhammer 40,000's Warp, but WH40K came out in 1987 and Traveller came out in 1977, and WH40K has a reputation for unabashedly stealing ideas from elsewhere for their setting.
- There must be at least one living being (definitely sentient, presumably sapient) onboard a ship to successfully jump.
- If this weren't the case, then player characters wouldn't get contracts to deliver mail to planets, because mail ships (such as X-boats) would be automated. Instead, the IISS has at least one human being aboard an xboat per jump.
- Jump torpedoes were a thing which existed in the early days of Traveller, but they have since been de-canonized. J-torps would be perfect for delivering non-physical mail to systems.
Why? Again, the easiest answer from my perspective is that jumpspace is psionic in nature. This means that any species which is capable of manifesting psionics -- and so far as I know, that's any sapient (self-aware) species -- needs to observe the jump in some manner.
That these observers don't themselves need to be psionic means that they aren't causing the jump to happen. This means that there's something about the nature of jumpspace itself that prevents entry to ships without a sapient observer on board, resulting in a misjump.
This must be linked to jumpspace's quality to cause insanity, which is presumably a psionic effect of some sort.
(Whether or not a long observer in cold sleep would count as an observer is an argument I'm not ready to have right now. I could see it going either way, frankly.)
Traveller GMs: yes, I am absolutely suggesting that a powerful Ancient device (maybe the undiscovered Ancient homeworld) is keeping jumpspace active. Which means that jumpspace could be controlled... or amplified... or even turned off.
Want to have an instant disaster on par with or exceeding the Long Night, but not the Empress Wave or Virus? Here's your solution.
Have fun.
PDF
.png)
