Retrospective: Alien Module 6: Solomani

I was thinking about the next installment in my Traveller Distinctives series and thought I'd hit upon a good topic – until I realized that the topic in question was actually an aspect of GDW's official Third Imperium setting and not Traveller more broadly. However, I still thought it was a good topic, so I decided I'd discuss it in the context of Alien Module 6: Solomani, first published in 1986, which is quite late in the era of classic Traveller (Its successor, MegaTraveller, would come out the next year).

The Third Imperium setting does something I find quite interesting: it postulates that, at some point in the distant past, about 300,000 years ago, an advanced alien species known colloquially as "the Ancients," visited Earth (or Terra) and took from it small populations of its native species, which they then experimented upon and used as servitors. Among these were early homo sapiens. After the Ancients seemingly destroyed themselves in a war amongst themselves, many of the humans whom they brought to the stars were left to their own devices to adapt and evolve without further interference. Some of these lost children of Earth survived and prospered, while others did not.

The psionic Zhodani, rivals of the Third Imperium, are one group of transplanted humans who rose to greatness in the absence of the Ancients. Another group – perhaps even more significant to the history of the Third Imperium – were the Vilani, whose "Grand Empire of the Stars" once ruled more than 15,000 worlds at its height before coming into contact with the humans the Ancients left behind on their original homeworld. These humans, the Terrans, had just discovered jump drive and were expanding out into the galaxy, when they discovered, much to their surprise, that the Vilani had already laid claim to most of them. Undeterred, they launched a series of Interstellar Wars that, over the course of a couple of centuries, brought the Vilani empire crashing down. 

Like the Macedonians' conquest of the Persian Empire, the Terrans quickly established themselves at the head of a new hybrid regime, the Rule of Man, which laid claim to all of the Vilani's territory and more. To distinguish themselves from the humans of Vland (the Vilani), the Terrans began to refer to themselves as the Solomani, the men of Sol. The term Solomani thus refers to the descendants of those humans whom the Ancients did not take with them to the stars hundreds of millennia ago. Instead, they remained on Terra, to develop on their own, free from the meddling of other species.

I've always liked this aspect of the Third Imperium setting. Many science fiction settings include innumerable near-human species – Star Trek is notorious for this – that make little sense from an evolutionary perspective. By postulating that there are dozens of human species scattered throughout the galaxy by the Ancients, the setting sidesteps the need for such implausible aliens. Instead, we get three major human races (Vilani, Zhodani, Solomani), all of whom discovered jump drive independently, and a multiplicity of minor human races, who did not, but who might nevertheless have unique and interesting histories and cultures of their own.

Now, if you detect a hint of superiority in the major/minor human race distinction, you're not wrong. The question of what constitutes a major race is a contentious one within the Third Imperium setting and tinged with dark political overtones. This is especially true in the case of the Solomani, who, as the centuries wore on, came to see themselves as the "true" humans. Had they not, after all, been born on Terra herself, the mother world of all humans? Had they not achieved interstellar flight on their own and then, in short order, overthrown the Vilani imperium to found an even greater one? These attitudes eventually hardened into claims of outright supremacy over not just other humans but non-humans too.

Not all Solomani hold to these views, of course. However, a political movement, known as the Solomani Party, espouses them, even to the point of feeling that the Third Imperium – successor to both the Vilani Grand Empire of the Stars and the Solomani Rule of Man – is an illegitimate government and thus unworthy of ruling over Terra and its people. The result was the Solomani Rim War and the secession of a large portion of the rimward territory of the Imperium (though not Terra, which remained in imperial hands). Since then, the Solomani Confederation, with its human supremacist ideas, has been a thorn in the side of the Imperium, with irredentist groups on Earth engaging in terrorism and fomenting unrest.

Like all previous Alien Modules, this one provides everything needed to play and use Solomani characters in the Third Imperium setting. There's history, politics, technology, character generation, and even an adventure. Particular attention is given to the Solomani Party and its sinister enforcement arm, Solomani Security (or SolSec). Like the Gestapo or KGB, SolSec serves as both a secret police force and as a hedge against members of the Party failing to toe the official line. The Solomani government is thus set up as antagonistic both to the Imperium and any Solomani within the Confederation who hope to see it reform by moving away from its ideology. 

As enemies, I'm a big fan of the Solomani. I find them much more relatable than the Zhodani, who, despite being human, are quite alien in their thought processes and, therefore, society. By contrast, the Solomani are us – our descendants, twisted by an abhorrent ideology and seething at how far they've fallen from the glory days of their ancestors, who toppled the Vilani empire. It's a great basis for villains with intelligible motivations. They also show how to make use of the history of the Third Imperium setting to create fun adventures and campaigns – the true mark of a good setting element.