Freelance Traveller

Bryant’s World, Amberstar System

by Ken Pick

This article originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of the downloadable PDF magazine, and wqs reprinted in the July/August 2023 issue.

Located at the end of a secondary Jump-1 route, Bryant’s World is a typical low-population, moderately high-tech colony world; its Class A starport and Scout base are the best facilities for two parsecs around.

The system consists of Amberstar, a K0 main-sequence sun (“orange dwarf”), with six planets.

Planets I and II, Cinder (XS0000-0, Orbit 0) and Scarlett (DS00468-A, Orbit 1), are tiny Mercuriforms baking in inner-zone orbits. Cinder is in a “torch orbit”, too close to the sun to be of any use; Scarlett, however, has a population of 30,000 working a major mining industry.

Planet III, Bryant’s World (A557588-B, Orbit 2), is the main world with a population of 300,000, Scout Base, and the only Class A starport in the immediate area. Its two small moons, Amber (ES00268-A) and Aki (AS00368-A), house the highport elements of the Starport, Scout Base, and shipyards with a combined population of 6300.

Planet IV, Fiddlestan (E440118-A, Orbit 3) is a twin of Mars with one small moon, an inert atmosphere, and a 30-man outpost investigating the planet for possible future T-forming.

Planets V and VI, Travertine and Topaz, are two large gas giants of nearly-identical size (150 T-mass “half Jupiters”), each with a ring system and nine moons. The inmost moon of each is a sulfur/water volcano world similar to Io; the second moon of each is a larger tidal-melted iceworld like an enlarged Europa with a thin inert atmosphere. The gravitational effects of these two gas giants have swept the inner system pretty much clear of asteroids.

Travertine (LGG, 150 T-mass, Orbit 4) is almost completely covered by white clouds with some breaks showing the sapphire-blue of its lower atmosphere; like Saturn, its brilliant ring system has two distinct rings with a large gap between, caused by resonance from its inner moons. Two of the outer moons have small populations (3000 and 300) of Belters doing miscellaneous ice/chemical extraction.

Topaz (LGG, 150 T-mass, Orbit 5) is a pastel yellow with pinkish and white cloud bands with a single thin ring well away from the planet. The second moon (the super-Europa) has a population of 30,000 doing mining and chemical extraction from the exotic ices.

Outside of Topaz is a “clear zone” where tidal effects of the two gas giants have swept the orbits clean; a moderate-density Kupier belt of comets and iceballs begins about 15 AU out. Due to the same “sweeping” effect and apparent age, the system has little close-in asteroid/comet activity.

Bryant’s World A557588-B Ni S 302
(Amberstar III)
Eaglestone Trade Index 3

Bryant’s World is a typical small surface-habitable world with one peculiarity: an axial tilt of just over 40°. This tilt results in extreme seasons – for half the year, one hemisphere is under constant sun and the other in constant darkness, with the hemispheres alternating. The thermal differences cause extreme wind, weather, and ocean current patterns on surface for much of the year and limit the settled area to along the equator.

Planetary Geography

Being a smaller world with a thicker crust, Bryant’s World has low seismic/tectonic activity, with a geography dominated by many small, mostly-volcanic landmasses scattered around a planetary ocean. The largest landmasses, five small continents and eight large islands, center around mega-shield volcanoes whose peaks and calderas rise out of the breathable atmosphere.

Surface Conditions/Sky Picture

The day is 20 hours long, with a year of about 282 local days. Climate at the equator is a cool temperate, with severe wind and weather conditions prevailing about 100 days of the year, clustered in two 50-day seasons at hemispheric summer and winter. Seasons become pronounced immediately upon leaving the equatorial regions – 90-day springs and autumns alternating with 50-day extreme summers and winters. Above 30° N and S latitude, the seasons become so extreme as to be uninhabitable; above 50° N and S, the sun never sets in summer and never rises in winter. Hemisphere summer is fifty days of steaming seas, desiccated land, and hurricane storms beneath a sun that never sets; hemisphere winter is a fifty-day night of blizzards and iced-up seas as thermal convection draws moisture from the bright hemisphere and deposits it on the dark. At these times, Bryant’s World has only one polar icecap, a temporary icecap on the dark pole extending down to 40-50° latitude that melts away as the hemisphere takes its turn under the sun. All that keeps the world from “snowballing” – freezing over completely – is that only one pole at a time is icecapped.

The first thing a visitor will notice is the gravity – only about 62% of standard. The second is the atmosphere – as thin as that atop a high mountain, almost enough to cause a subliminal feeling of suffocation upon any exertion and definitely enough to trigger altitude sickness. Then the “yellowed-out” color shift from the sun, distinctly amber-colored and 30% larger than “normal” in a deep sea-blue sky that becomes almost indigo at the zenith. Then the two moons, each about ¹/₃ the apparent diameter of the sun, just large enough to show visible disks, hurtling through the sky like the fabled moons of Barsoom.

Then the weather; hemispheric summer and winter manifest on the equator as storm seasons and rough sea conditions from the thermal-driven airmasses sweeping from one pole to the other. Spring and autumn, the iced-up seas of the former winter hemisphere thaw and break up, raising sea level by a couple meters and sending icebergs drifting clear into the settled tropics.

In the night sky, each of the three outer planets has its own unique color – Fiddlestan a rust-red, Travertine a warm off-white, and Topaz the yellow of its gemstone namesake. Any set of binoculars will reveal the larger moons of the two gas giants – four for Travertine, five for Topaz. The inner planets, Cinder and Scarlett, are normally not visible – too small and too close to the sun, though Scarlett makes occasional appearances as a morning/evening star.

Peculiarities

The Law Level of 8 applies to the starport town of Bryantsport and the outer moons and outpost worlds; law level is lower the farther away from the port, to effectively Law 0 way in the Outback.

Sea level varies between three and four meters depending on time of year; lowest during hemispheric summer and winter (equatorial rainy season), highest during spring and autumn (equatorial dry season). This results in an extreme “intertidal zone” along all the coasts, swept by frequent monsoon rains and occasional hurricanes when above water.

Native Life

Unlike most life-bearing worlds, Bryant’s World flora and fauna have evolved well beyond the usual bacteria; both land and sea are home to complex multicellular life, and the huge seasonal intertidal zone from the changing sea levels helped the transition from sea to land.

Bryant’s World native plants are leggy and tall in the low gravity, with massive dark grey leaves for maximum gas exchange in the thin atmosphere. Common equatorial biomes are forest and scrub (medium-to-dense swamp along the coasts), both growing during the summer and winter rainy seasons and going dormant during the spring and autumn dry seasons.

Native animal life are pseudo-arthropods and various invertebrates, with high-efficiency respiratory systems unlike their Terran counterparts. Most land life is amphibious, with their biggest concentration in or around the intertidal zones on the coast.

Animal Descriptions

Animals on Bryant’s World fall into four general “phyla”: Pseudoarthropods, pseudochordates, beaked invertebrates, and general invertebrates. Encounter stats for representative animals for each pseudophylum can be found in the table below.

Land Trilobites: most common land and sea-bottom animal on Bryant’s World, especially outside the tidal zones. Small to medium grazers and gatherers. Some species are purely aquatic, some are amphibious.

Whipscorps: armored amphibious grazers, relatives of the Land Trilobite; resemble a cross between trilobite and scorpion with long whip tails for defense.

Tigerscorp: main predator of the intertidal zones, carnivorous relative of the Whipscorp. No tail, but large pincers and poisonous bite. Solitary or pack predators depending on species; generally solitary species are more likely to be poisonous.

Great Swamp Stomper: largest of the amphibious beaked slugs and king of the intertidal swamps. Massive mountain of wet flesh with massive beaked head surrounded by sensory cilia. Becomes very aggressive (A3 F7 S3) at random times during the year.

Whipslugs: omnivorous smaller relatives of the Great Swamp Stomper, with thrasher tails like Whipscorps. Use their tales for defense and to corral aquatic prey.

Bryant’s World Kraken: apex ocean predator; a massive nest of thrashing tentacles with a miniscule central body. Claws represent squid-like sucker-teeth.

Lesser Kraken: smaller kraken, shallow-water/reef predator. Lurks in natural para-coral mazes in shallow water. Blade represents stabbing claws on specialized tentacles.

Sea Eel: aquatic swimmer resembling a cross between worm and eel; closest thing Bryant’s World has to a vertebrate. Swims in packs; venomous stinger in head.

Cautions and Hazards

Bryant’s World has a thin atmosphere, near the lower limit of human breathability – 500 millibars at sea level, about that of Earth at 3500m altitude. Because of the thin atmosphere, visitors from standard or dense atmosphere worlds will definitely suffer from altitude sickness (aka Mountain Sickness) – headaches, exhaustion, and shortness of breath – until they acclimatize. Above 1000 to 2000m above sea level, the air becomes too thin to be breathable, and compressor masks or supplemental oxygen masks must be worn. All vegetation hugs the lowlands, leaving the equatorial mountains lifeless barren rock and the hemisphere mountains under intermittent glaciers. Seasonal forests are common, growing during the rainy seasons (hemispheric summer and winter) and going dormant during the dry season. Much of the coastal intertidal zones are thick trackless mangrove-like swamps littered with hurricane-downed logs, irrigated by the rising sea during the dry season, and crawling with Great Swamp Stompers.

Hemispheric summer and winter manifest along the equator as extreme weather conditions, including monsoon rains, river floods, and occasional hurricanes along the coast, their storm surges supercharged by the maximized sea levels.

Population and History

Amberstar has a unique position in the astrography of the subsector – at the end of a Jump-1 “chain of stars”, it provides a jumping-off point to Jump-2 and Jump-3 routes to the rest of the sector. A compact planetary system with two gas giants plus a surface-habitable world with two small moons to serve as highports made this orange dwarf prime real estate.

Accordingly, as the subsector was being explored and settled, the Scout Service selected Amberstar system as the site for a modest Scout Base. Base facilities were located on the outer moon of Aki, with secondary facilities and support settlements on Bryant’s World itself. As the sector developed, the base took on a secondary role as starport support for the jumping-off point. This attracted more settlement insystem, which in turn spun off the starport into an independent operation and improved it to Class A to service the through traffic, which in turn attracted more settlement.

At present, the population of Bryant’s World is about 300,000 with the largest concentration at the world’s only city, Bryantsport. Bryantsport grew up around the Class A downport and surface-Scout Base facilities, and has a population of 80,000. Other towns on-planet are less than 10,000 and Class E ports (no facilities for starships).

The main Class A highport and Scout Base is on the outer moon of Aki; this highport handles all through and insystem traffic and customs, with the downport primarily handling shuttles and small craft. The attached shipyard is mostly scaled around through traffic repairs & maintenance, but can build ships of up to 1000 Dtons, mostly for local use.

Economy & Trade

Trade Class: Non-Industrial
Eaglestone Trade Index: 3 (200 passengers, 2000 dtons/wk)
Exports: Special Alloys, Chemicals, minor Gems, occasional Liquors.
Imports: Just about everything else except foodstuffs.
Services: Resupply of through traffic, starship maintenance and repair, (minor) space/starship construction, (optional) Psi Training.

Though classified “non-industrial” because of its small population, the system has three major and two minor export “industries”. The majors are exotic alloys and gems mined on Scarlett, cryogenic chemicals extracted from Topaz’s largest moon, and port services/resupply for through-traffic starships. The minors are wines from Bryant’s World proper and overground psionic training.

This results in unusually heavy traffic for such a small-population world – an Eaglestone Trade Index of 3, translating into around 200 passengers and 2000 dtons of freight traffic per week, which in turn translates into 1-2 small ships a day and a medium-to-large ship once a week.

The mainstay of the system’s economy is on Scarlett, a tiny mercuriform one orbit in from Bryant’s World. Scarlett is a metal-rich world about 600km in diameter, in a tidal lock that keeps one side eternally facing the nearby sun. Exotic alloys and isotopes are mined here by a partnership of local and offworld corporations, refined using solar furnaces, and shipped via insystem lighters (non-starships of 4-500 tons or so) to Aki for warehousing and shipment. This mining industry is enough to support a population of 30,000, mostly dug in along Scarlett’s librating twilight zone. (The geography, “climate”, and physical setup is similar to that in the GDW scenario Across the Bright Face, except Scarlett is much smaller and lower-gravity – about 5% of standard – than the world in the scenario.)

A similar mining economy, but in cryogenic chemicals and exotic ices, is based on the largest moon of Topaz (Amberstar VI). This moon (Topaz Beta, D634466-A) is a Europa-style crackled iceball larger than Bryant’s World and sporting a thin inert atmosphere. The supporting population of 30,000 is dug in on the few actual rocky mountain chains that break the otherwise-icy surface. Chemicals extracted from the under-ice, geothermally-melted oceans are shipped to Aki in insystem fuel lighters of 4-600 tons and refined enroute.

Starport services are based on Aki, which has a population of 6000 in domes and dug-ins around the small Class A highport and Scout Base. Fuel is skimmed from Travertine by fuel lighters and refined on the return trip. All incoming traffic stops at Aki Highport for customs and direct loading of Scarlettese alloys and Betan chemicals; only shuttles and the occasional overflow (small Scouts and Free Traders) continue to the downport.

Bryant’s World proper has a small agricultural economy, mostly in small amounts of wines and the like. In addition, a regulated overground Psionics Institute – the only one in the subsector – provides evaluation and some training for potential psis from throughout the subsector. (Optional – this assumes psionics are not universally outlawed as in the Third Imperium; attitude towards psis may vary from world to world, or frontier systems like Amberstar might not be as strict about it.)

Society

Still a young colony, Bryant’s World is very much a frontier society, with the advantage of TL11 transportation and communications.

Bryant’s World society is composed of “claves”, quasi-feudal quasi-corporations based around an extended household. A typical clave consists of one or more extended families plus non-related associates, normally with a common profession/trade, normally living together in a clave compound. Claves are usually named after their dominant extended family, geographic area, dominant profession, or occasionally at random. Major claves include:

Clave Bryant: oldest and largest clave, a corporate extended family that sponsored its namesake settlement of Bryantsport.

Clave Pard, Clave Wanderer, Clave Shinjinrui, Clave Laycan: subordinate branches of Clave Bryant with their own clave names

Clave Stitt, Clave Mardahl: claves usually associated with Clave Bryant

Clave Highlander: “hermit clave” who settle the higher lands at the limits of atmospheric breathability.

Clave Alarion: owns the shipyards and most of the downport; effectively the Starport Guild.

Clave Kelron: largest agricultural clave and dominant clave in the Bryant’s World wine industry.

Clave Vondon: the local Psionics Institute in all but name, under its clave-owned company of Psidetics.

Many additional minor claves exist beside these major ones, from specialized craft-guild or service-guild claves in Bryantsport to “hermit claves” far off in the Outback, Outsiders Keep Out.

Though claves normally get along in a business-like relationship, feuds, trade wars, and outright skirmishes are not unknown. The system is still shaking down in this young colony.

And then there are the Claveless, those who do not belong to any Clave. Claveless have a SOC of –2, representing their lack of access to Clave resources or support. All but the lowest SOC of Claveless are usually attempting to join a Clave or group together into their own new Clave.

Starport

Grouped around the main downport on an equatorial floodplain near the coast, Bryantsport is the “big city” of Bryant’s World, with a population of some 80,000.

At the center of the city is Bryant’s Downport. A circular reservation some five kilometers in diameter, the downport is only 25% built up with three main clusters of port facilities: the commercial port, the military/mercenary base, and surface elements of the Scout base. The remainder of the Port is undeveloped land with scattered local forest trees.

The downport is listed as Class A, though shipyard facilities are primarily on the inner moon of Amber. On-surface facilities are primarily geared around ships of 600 dtons or less, though there are a couple unimproved landing areas for ships of up to 6000 dtons. Heavy ships primarily route through the Highport, where the major system exports ship out.

The military/mercenary facilities service system defense assets – SDBs and small craft – as well as ground force basing and support. The Scout Base is set up to service up to 400-dton ships – Type S Scouts, Type SD Deep Scouts, and modified Type P Heavy Scouts.

Downport traffic averages some 300 passengers and 500 dtons of general freight per week; the remainder of the freight traffic is export traffic from Scarlett and Beta, handled completely by the Highport. Half the passenger traffic is insystem personnel rotation from the industrial outposts on Scarlett and Topaz Beta, with round-the-clock surface-to-highport shuttle traffic.

Four gates pierce the circular downport grounds – two to the commercial port, one to the military/mercenary base, and one to the Scout Base. Immediately outside this XT line, a mass transitway connects the gates, running in a ring completely around the port. Around this ring stretches Bryantsport proper, a city of some 80,000.

Both Downtown and Startown extend around this ring, with Startown centered outside the military and Scout base gates and combinations of Central City and import/export warehouse districts centered outside the commercial port gates. Like the downport itself, this ring is not completely built-up.

Major streets (with accompanying flood-control channels) extend out from this inner ring, dividing the city into irregular pie-slice wedges filled in with various neighborhoods including clave compounds of the major Claves. Buildings are low and sprawling – concrete-and-steel prefabs at the downport, mostly concrete in the Downtown ring, with primarily wood construction in the wedges taking advantage of local vegetation. “Log Cabin” construction is a popular style for smaller structures. The wedges peter out in sparse “suburbs” along the main roads with detached wooden houses (including log cabins), primarily occupied by the Claveless.

During rainy season (hemispheric summer and winter), flooding in low areas is a major problem; the city has extensive flood-control channels and levees to divert the intermittent seasonal rivers which flow through the plains during rainy season. A hurricane comes through the area every few years, with lesser tropical storms a regular rainy-season occurrence.

Two main roads lead out of the city, one deep into the Outback, the other to the coast where a small seaport is built on floating “mulberries” to handle the seasonal variations in sea level. At hemispheric summer and winter, the Ocean Road runs on a landfill causeway through klicks and klicks of tidal flats in the rain, fragrant with the organic “Bryant’s World Aroma”. In hemispheric spring and autumn, these tidal flats are submerged, shallow salt marshes crawling with amphibious land trilobites, whipscorps, tigerscorps, and the occasional Great Swamp Stomper.

Outside the city is a flat floodplain, dotted with agricultural land and vineyards and divided by seasonal rivers. Though most of the area around the city was cleared by lumbering and is kept cleared for agriculture, one large stand of native forest extends like a finger to the outskirts of the city, kept in its natural state. Like most Bryant’s World forests, this counts as “light forest”.

Government

Bryant’s World is a single political entity, officially a loose association of claves. Day-to-day administration is by a separate civil service bureaucracy, hired by the Association of Claves as an administrative contractor in the manner of a “city manager”-style municipality. This insulates the day-to-day administration from any friction between the claves.

Law level is a bit high (8 in Bryantsport itself), due to the natural tendency of bureaucrats to micromanage their fiefs. This is countered by a generally-pragmatic attitude; the environment of a growing colony works against top-heavy or “pointy-haired” bureaucracy, and claves that don’t like the law level migrate out into the Outback. The farther you get from Bryantsport, the lower the law level.

The civil service runs the starport, shipyard, and municipal administration of Bryantsport, with most of their staff drawn from Clave Alarion, Clave Bryant, and Bryant’s subordinate claves. Armed forces are technically under the authority of the civil service, but their personnel are drawn from all the claves as a militia levy, and will probably rebel if the bureaucracy attempts to use them against the claves.

Armed Forces

Planetary defenses total a little over 1000t of dedicated SDBs – currently three 300-ton Torpilleurs and a couple 200-ton Spotscouts that double as search-and-rescue, backed up by basic armament on regular insystem craft and surface-based missiles and antimissile lasers. SDBs and most “shore batteries” are based on the moons to avoid drawing fire onto the world itself.

Ground forces total three reinforced battalions, equipped to Tech Level 11. One battalion is full-time Regulars, airmobile in G-carriers with attached air assets; the other two are part-time militia reserves, equipped to TL10-11 but without a lot of the dedicated heavy stuff.

“Wet Navy” forces are primarily patrol/rescue craft, more along the lines of a Coast Guard than a true navy. Grav/air assets and hovercraft are used as well as basic patrol/rescue boats; though submarines would be useful transportation in Bryant’s World’s rough and iceberg-prone seas, the colony is too small to really afford or support them. The “Navy” also maintains much of the air and satellite assets, including hurricane and iceberg watch throughout the settled areas.

Besides Bryant’s World regulars and militia, two mercenary companies have Bryant’s World as their permanent base world:

One mercenary unit is company-sized on a long-term security ticket, handling port security in the Downport, Highport, and on the lunar habitats, more an independent-contractor police and constabulary than anything else.

The other is a full mercenary regiment, for hire through the immediate subsector, who maintain their base in an undeveloped section of the central Downport (and are major customers of the adjacent Startown). On-world personnel are normally the administrative offices and training cadre; under their basing contract, no more than one line battalion can be on-world at any time. The training cadre is on separate long-term contract to train the world’s regular armed forces, and line battalions rotating back to Bryant’s World often serve as “OpFor” for the regulars and militia during maneuvers.

Mercenaries are encouraged to marry into the Bryant’s World population and retire/settle down into the Claves, in an attempt to develop an identity as Bryant’s Worlders, tying them into the world. Despite this, ex-mercenaries do tend to stick together, there is talk of them forming their own Clave.

Language

Bryant’s Worlders speak standard Galanglic; the constant contact with traffic through the system keeps the local dialect from drifting too far from standard.

The Moons (Amber & Aki)

Bryant’s World’s two small moons house the various highports – commercial, military, and Scout base facilities, including the main shipyards. All facilities are dug into the surface of the moons, with only landing and ship-handling facilities breaking the surface. Highport facilities are built around servicing and repair of ships in-transit through the system and/or shipping the exports; all other functions are secondary.

Underground, the highport habitats are compact, with a lot of ship-like facilities. Local gravity is less than 8% of standard. Except for one three-star hotel on Aki, transient accommodations are refitted ship staterooms, common areas, and low berth-like slotshops.

Aki, the inner moon, holds the civilian/commercial highport, shipyards, and extensive storage/warehouse areas for exported Scarlett-refined alloys, Travertine/Topaz-skimmed fuel, and Topaz Beta-mined chemicals. Shipyard capacity is 1000 dtons maximum ship size for builds and rebuilds; anything larger is limited to repair and refit of through traffic. The main Scout Base facilities – basing and service for Scout ships of 400 dtons or less – are also located here, in a separate habitat. Total permanent population is around 6000, mostly of Clave Alarion. Additional transient population – in-transit, personnel to and from Scarlett and Topaz Beta, Belters – normally boosts this to 8-9000 at any given time.

Amber, the outer moon, is more sparsely settled, with primarily-military outposts – SDB basing, system defense missile sites, and backup Scout base elements. Total permanent population is about 300, under more Spartan and claustrophobic conditions than on Aki.

Both moons have Belter support facilities; most Belters in the system work out of Aki or Topaz Beta.

Scarlett (Amberstar II)

The claustrophobic environment and industrial-outpost atmosphere on Scarlett would be similar to that on Topaz Beta, except Fire instead of Ice – industrial outpost on an inner-zone Mercuriform, an airless rock baking under a mega-sun that never sets (except in the Twilight Zone’s libration band). Again, the old GDW double-adventure Across the Bright Face could be used for geography and situation, adjusted for the smaller world size.

Topaz Beta (Amberstar VI-B)

The ice-mining and chemical-extraction industry on Topaz Beta would be very similar to Io in the movie Outland, with various Claves (or Clave-offworld Megacorp partnerships) substituting for the movie’s Corporation.

Adventure Nuggets

A clave could function as a long-term patron – either one of the Major Claves or a minor one seeking some advantage in becoming a major one. Said characters would probably have to base themselves on Bryant’s World (or at least call back regularly), but the system’s not a bad one to base in, and characters might end up married or adopted into their patron Clave, becoming naturalized Bryant’s Worlders.

Clave Vondon would be an ideal patron for a psionics-related campaign, from seeking out psi evaluation and training to covert operations for Psidetics on other worlds where psionics isn’t as accepted as Bryant’s World.

Clave Kelron tries to promote their wines in the offworld trade, and Clave Alarion is always in search of privateers to aid system defense; both would hire detached-duty Scouts (or even active-duty Scouts not averse to a little side income) for their various offworld promotional and exploration interests.

As a jumping-off point between a Jump-1 “chain of stars” and Jump-2 to 3 routes in a frontier subsector, there is always through traffic – and opportunities for frontier adventures returning to Bryant’s World as a high-tech secure base world. (After all, at least one mercenary regiment thinks so.)

On-world, adventures could leave the forests and swamps of the equator to the barren, unbreathable highlands. Or go off the Equator for some pressing reason (disaster relief of a hermit clave?) into the wild Outback, delving into the cold and dark of a hemispheric winter or the scorching orange brightness of hemispheric summer.

Or a major corruption scandal could break in the office of the planetary manager/civil service, and said office and officials are trying to get mercs on their payroll for a coup to make sure the Claves can’t kick them out.

Designer’s Notes

Bryant’s World proper (named after one of two co-referees in a 1982-vintage Traveller campaign) was rolled up as part of a Traveller subsector for that campaign but never actually came into play. The system was rolled up later under Book 6: Scouts, with four rockballs and two half-Jupiter gas giants in a compact system. System nomenclature followed local convention of gas giants being named for their appearance, with other system features named after the fan names of people associated with the co-referee. Other features (such as the social organization into “claves”) were accreted over the years from various subsequent FRP campaigns.