BARD PAPER: OPAL3050 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
BARD PAPER: OPAL3050 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
Vendtup Station is a pleaseant earth sized worlds with a standard atmosphere and 90% water coverage. Its land masses are made up of numerous island chains. There are no major landmasses. In imperial times it served as a gateway world linking the hinterworlds trade entering the subsector coming down the Beverly Run, with the coreward side of the sector and onwards to the imperial core. It also served as a jump off point across the mini-rift in the bottom half of the Ile sub-sector. With the withdrawal of the sector fleet at the start of the Rebellion, the world was quickly taken by large solomani forces advancing coreward from its conquest of the sector naval depot. It was used as a jump of point by the solomani to attack the rest of the sector and eventually Margaret's faction. With the significant victories inflicted by Margaret on Solomani forces advancing through the Hinterworlds, the entire solomani flank was exposed and the solomani disabled the startport to prevent its use by Margaret. At this point of the war, Lucan's blcak war tactics had not yet appeared, and the disabling of the startport was conducted with precision and no civilian casualties (the solomani hoped to regain the world and nuke bombing cities would only turn the planet against them). The solomani counterthrust never occurred in sufficient strenght and the starport was never rebuilt (it would be too much of a strategic liability to both sides).
Hard times did not have a significant effect on the world, the coreward rift protected the planet from the troubles in the Ile Subsector, and the loss of trade had occurred early, when the infrastructure was still intact. This gave the population time to adjuct to a more self sufficient lifestyle, and the planet had settled into a self supporting TL8/9 society. The fuedal technocracy having dealt with the restructing quite well.
The appearance of the virus had only minor effects on the world, the TL8/9 industries failed, but the starport was already gone, and agriculture was already well established. The planet soon stabilised at TL6 mainly by converting the automated TL8/9 plants to manual operation (with reduced efficiency). Things seemed to be going well. However in 1164, a contagion appeared which wiped out approximately 60% of the population. When the disease had run its course, over 50% of the remaining population was under 16 (the population had spent its efforts of saving the next generation). The surviving adults were hardpressed to support this young population and keep the infrastructure going.
It was at this time that "Tarin" appeared, and proclaimed himself supreme ruler and prophet. At another time this would have been dismissed as the ravings of a madman, but after such a major plague, he found willing listeners especially amongst the young. But a few displays of divine wrath plus his ability to move between towns more quickly than can be explained convinced the masses (all 10,000 of them), Tarin has ruled eversince.
Tarin does not excerise day to day control and leaves the population pretty much to their own, his only commandments are to obey when required. Each year every 18 year old is blessed at the Temple of Tarin, and once every few years the small priesthood will recieve a visitation by the spirit of Tarin, requesting one of the blessed be sent to him as a servant. These servants never return and are said to have ascended.
Tarin is actually an imperial era government official from the environmental department. He owned a TL14 Cloud Nine Grav Houseboat from which he lived and worked. The effects of the plague and the death of his family unhinged him. The divine wrath is a small laser weapon attached to the underside of the houseboat (salvaged from a government storage depot) powered by solar cells and batteries. The blessing consists of the priesthood running a medical scanner over the blessed. Visitation by the spirit of Tarin is a holographic projection from a projector hiden in the temple. The blessed servants are more sinister, they are picked up by the grav houseboat from the temple at night and then given drugged food and drink when aboard. The servants are all tissue matches for Tarin, and the unfortunate servant is broken down for parts and organs by a TL14 autodoc and stored in a low berth for future use to replace Tarin's failing body (the transplant being performed by the autodoc), as he was unable to obtain or produce anti-aging drugs.
The Grav House Boat is a TL14 grav vehicle, displaces 30dtns, has an armour of 4, with a 4mw fusion power plant and over a years worth of fuel. It has a 5000km radio, 8 searchlights, a small laser cannon with solar cell and battery power system, basic environmental systems and a water distillation system. The house boat can move at a top speed of 300kph, and holds 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, 2 offices and a lounge. Tarin has added a TL14 autodoc and a low berth.