BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Catalyst Game Labs => Ask the Writers => Topic started by: BrokenMnemonic on 04 August 2011, 04:20:48
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I've been reading the details on the Far Looker group and their activities in the 2nd Edition of the Periphery and Handbook: Major Periphery States, and between those and the gorgeous maps in Handbook: House Davion and Handbook: House Liao I'm a little confused so I'm hoping someone can set me straight.
In the 2nd Edition of the Periphery, the Far Lookers had founded a number of colonies in the early part of the 31st century through official government funding, some of which had actually survived and been useful to the state, but which aren't reflected on any of the 3025 maps, presumably because they were small-scale or largely insignificant at the time. After Edward Calderon died in 3034 Thomas Calderon pulled most of the colonisation and exploration budget and redirected it to the military, which led to Far Looker members/sympathisers embezzling funds to use for exploration, founding 6 successful colonies by the end of 3035, and seventeen by 3037, at which point they were basically rumbled, people were sacked, and so forth.
The post-colonisation era 3040 map of the Concordat in Handbook: Major Periphery States shows 24 new colonies, on Aea, Regis Roost, Argos, Carthage, Spitz, Davetal II & III, Hellspont, Gant, Celano, Cadiz, Micros III, Orkney, Charleston, Carvajal, Mirfak, Tyrrhenia, Erod's Escape, Marknick, Gaul, Diik, Oscar and Lastpost. The maps from Handbook: House Davion which show parts of the Concordat show new colonies within the area covered the War of 3039 map, but not the End of the Fourth Succession War (3030) map. Celano is mentioned in the original periphery sourcebook and TRO 3058 (although spelt Celeano) and seems to have been deliberately kept secret by the Concordat.
Handbook: Major Periphery States isn't as specific about dates when talking about the Far Lookers embezzling funds to continue exploring, although it does give some nice background detail on them using leased JumpShips to do it.
The maps in Handbook: House Liao don't jive with those in Handbook: House Davion, though, which is where a lot of my confusion is coming from. The Handbook: House Davion map for 3030 covers the region of the periphery below the entire lower border of the Capellan Confederation, and shows no colonies outside the 3025 border of the Concordat other than Herotitus, Rockwellawan and Detroit. The Handbook: House Liao map for 3030 shows the Aea, Regis Roost, Spitz, Argos, Carthage and Hellspont colonies - all of the colonies that fit within the area shown according to the 3040 maps - although it has them all outside the border of the Concordat.
Does the presence of these colonies on the 3030 Capellan map but not the 3030 FedSuns map indicate that these were the early 31st century colonies founded by the Far Lookers before they started actively embezzling, and that the Capellan map reflects them actually being given accurate information on the founding dates of the colonies by their then-allies in the Concordat?
I'm not sure if this is related to the same issue, but the 2366 and 2571 maps for the Capellan Confederation show the New Vallis system in the Taurian Concordat, but that system doesn't appear on the Handbook: Major Periphery States and Handbook: House Davion 2571 maps. On the other hand, the 2822 and 2864 maps in both Handbook: House Davion and Handbook: House Liao show worlds within the periphery starting to vanish, which is a really nice way of highlighting the decline of the Concordat, and indicates that although the Concordat isn't the focus of the maps it's definitely received some attention.