The Reach

Between the Spinward Marches of the Third Imperium and the rimward holdings of the Aslan Hierate lies an expanse of wild space called the Trojan Reach. A narrow ribbon of stars, the dust-spice trade route, links these two empires. Every day, ships brave the perilous crossing from Imperium to Hierate, navigating a circuitous route from Fist (Tobia subsector) to Tyokh (Tliowaha subsector). Between these two worlds is a sea of lawless, dangerous planets.

During the long night, a petty empire arose here – the Empire of Sindal. The Sindalians were descendants of a Terran colony; barbarian raiders who crowned themselves kings and then emperors, conquered several dozen worlds and ruled for hundreds of years before their subjects rose up against them. Today, all that remains of Sindal is the ruined world Noricum (Sindal subsector) where a few dirt farmers scratch out a living whose ancestors once ruled all the night sky. The Sindalian empire is remembered in confused tales of a golden age and of wars amid the stars.

When the Empire of Sindal collapsed, outlying regional capitals became the seats for even lesser kings. The longest-lasting of these was Drinax (Tliowaha subsector, previously Drinax subsector). Drinax’s kings claimed half the worlds in their subsector for generations. The Drinaxi were wiser than their cousins; they learned to hide the iron fist of orbital bombardment behind a velvet glove of trade and protection. Drinax itself became a garden world, fat and plump, an oasis of culture and technology in a dangerous and barbaric sector. The floating palace of Drinax – a huge citadel of beauty and art, suspended on a grav platform of prodigious size – was a wonder of Known Space.

Then, another empire came to the Trojan Reach. The Aslan were numerous, hungry, aggressive and confident, and the Star Kingdom of Drinax was fat, lazy and wholly unaware of the sheer numbers and might behind the clans of the Hierate. The Aslan trade routes to the Imperium ran through the Kingdom of Drinax, and Drinax became greedy. They demanded tolls, taxes, bribes… and the Aslan were incensed. In a single bloody war, the Aslan shattered the last surviving remnant of the old Empire of Sindal. Drinax’s subject worlds were either conquered by the Aslan or revolted. Drinax itself was blasted to ash, leaving the floating palace as the only remaining property of the King of Drinax.

One palace… and a few ships. That was a hundred years ago.

Today, the trade ships from the Imperium and the Hierate pass by broken, beggared worlds. The worlds once claimed by Drinax realise they have exchanged one master for another, and that the Aslan have even less regard for them than the kings did.

The Imperium and the Hierate pretend to be friends while they jockey for position. The sector stands on a knife edge. The right pressure could push half the Trojan Reach into the claws of the Aslan, or force an already overstretched Imperium to extend its forces deeper into the sector, or permit Drinax to rise again – to carve out a new kingdom in blood and steel...

A Brief Timeline

Thousands of years ago

Terran colonists, some using low-passage slow ships to bridge the Great Rift, spread across the systems of the Trojan Reach. These were refugees and political exiles from the great Solomani project of the Second Empire; ignored by the major realms on the other side of the Rift, a number of independent colonies, star nations and pocket empires rose and fell over the millennia.

A thousand years ago

The Empire of Sindal was perhaps the greatest of the Terran star nations in this sector, but it could not avoid collapsing in an orgy of civil violence when the oppressed satrapies of the Dragon Throne rose up against their overlords. The capital world of the empire was plague-bombed by the rebels and is now the post-apocalyptic wilderness of Noricum (Sindal subsector).

Five hundred years ago

The first Aslan traders and scouts cross the Great Rift and establish colonies rimward of the Trojan Reach. A group of ultra-conservative refugees fleeing a lost civil war in the Hierate establish  the first Aslan polity in the Trojan Reach proper – The Glorious Empire – a raider state, whose slave-ships have ravaged the scattered worlds of the Reach ever since. At around the same time Imperial scouts and military units from the Spinward Marches start to establish a presence along the coreward edge of the sector.

Two hundred years ago

Clans of the Aslan Hierate start to move into the Trojan Reach from rimward in large numbers. The Imperium is highly concerned by Aslan encroachment but does not want to divert resources from their frontier with the Zhodani. Their solution is to negotiate the Treaty of Ftaharl with the Aslan Hierate which establishes a 30 parsec neutral zone around their forward base at Pax Rulin (Pax Rulin subsector). The treaty is only binding upon the major clans of the Tlaukhu however, so colonisation, trading and raiding by minor and unaligned Aslan clans continues unhindered.

One hundred years ago

The Tlaiowaha, a major Aslan clan strong in the Imperial trade resolved to move against the Glorious Empire and Star Kingdom of Drinax in order to break their stranglehold on the trade routes to the Imperium and the Florian League. They were bound by the Treaty of Ftaharl however so instead of acting directly they funded one of their vassal clans to mount a lighting attack against systems across the Goertl and Drinax subsectors. The invasion destroyed all resistance in less than 12 months but during the course of the war Drinax was subjected to a prolonged orbital bombardment with nuclear weapons, gengineered plagues and chemical warheads. The Aslan spared the king’s floating palace however, and so a meagre fragment of the population survived the holocaust. The story is that the current King’s grandfather jumped from the floating city in despair at what had happened to his people (although some whisper that he was killed by a defective grav-belt).

Twenty years ago

A catastrophic infection in the hydroponic bays threatened the Drinaxi survivors with starvation so King Oleb XVI mustered all jump-capable ships in the system into a flotilla in order to buy food from their neighbours at Asim. When the Foundation of Asim refused to co-operate, the King angrily ordered his ships to take the planet by force. Although the Asimen outnumbered the forces of Drinax on the scene several thousand times over, they were completely outclassed technologically. Slug rifles and rocket-propelled grenades were no match for Hawk warriors armed with plasma rifles and FGMPs.

Today

The Aslan tide continues to build – younger landless sons of the Hierate (the Ihatei) now range a few parsecs from Drinax, looking for territory so that they can advance in their clan; while the systems bordering the Glorious Empire are a zone of constant brushfire wars and slaver raids. Humaniti has raiders of their own as well – the barbaric Khans of Oghma are reviled across the Reach even though their raiding flotillas rarely stray beyond the Marduk cluster, while ships owing allegiance to the semi-legendary Pirate Lords of Theev strike at merchants across the Outrim Void then fade into the black whenever a punitive fleet sweeps through on a sortie from Pax Rulin or Tlaiowaha.

A clash of empires is imminent, but in the tense moment before the mighty fleets break orbit there is an opportunity for brave spacers to snatch what they can. With bold action and a little bit of luck they might be able to take enough plunder to build a refuge against the coming storm…

Backstage

Text in italics like this is where I write about running the game. There may be spoilers and GM secrets here, so players or prospective players beware.

Firstly I based the description at the top of the post on Gar Hanrahan's intro to Pirates Of Drinax, so credit where credit is due - a lot of the words are his.

Secondly keen-eyed readers will have spotted that I have collapsed the background timeline for the fall of Sindal and Drinax by half (to 100 years and 1000 years in the past respectively). I did this for two reasons: 

• I want there to be usable remnants of these precursor states available to be found and in my opinion rpg designers (and indeed fantasy/sf authors) underestimate how quickly stuff degrades to uselessness - so bringing old Drinax and Sindal closer to 'the present day' of the campaign won't tweak my suspenders of disbelief so much when I introduce salvage as loot. 
• I don't buy the 'frozen tsunami' image that the CTU paints for the Aslan presence in the Trojan Reach, where the frontier of Aslan space has been static for several centuries - it doesn't jibe with all the colour text about Ihatei freebooters carving out new estates for themselves and Imperial paranoia about Aslan expansion. So IMTU the Aslan are comparitively recent arrivals in the Reach who are expanding scarily fast, which means that their attack upon Drinax needs to be more recent also.

Vocabulary
CTU    = classic traveller universe
IMTU   = in my traveller universe
Ihatei = literally 'younger sons', landless Aslan looking to found new estates either through peaceful colonisation or, more usually, war.