Placing Tarlkin's Landing

Port O' Call: Tarlkin's Landing is a generic sci-fi setting supplement written by David Sering, author of much of the Gateway Quadrant Canon. This article is meant to serve as a guide to incorporating the Tarlkin's Landing setting material into the larger universe of the Quadrant.

Finding a Suitable World

By analyzing the material in the module, it is possible to construct an Universal World Profile for the Tarlkin's Landing. Then working from the assumption that "Tarlkin's Landing" is only the name of the spaceport/city, we can try to find a suitable world in the Quadrant that matches our UWP profile.

Starport: The Landing has no shipyard facilities, eliminating a class A or B starport from consideration. Parts and expertise for repair of ships is available, eliminating class D and lower. Tarlkin's Landing looks like a Class C starport. However, repair facilities aren't technically at the spaceport itself, so that might constitute a Spaceport D. On the other hand, you could stretch the point and argue that it just *might* be possible to build a small craft from parts in the scrapyard. That might allow you to scoot in with a B classification. PCs should be awfully surprised when they look around the tin shacks and junkyards of the Landing. "This is a class B starport?!"

Size: Examination of the planetary map and some simple math yield a planetary radius of 25,000km, which corresponds almost exactly to Size 5. It's a tad bit under Size 5, so if you read the diameters on the Size chart as minimums, then Size 4 works.

Atmosphere: A quick persusal of the module shows no mention of a non-standard atmosphere. Atmosphere 6 (standard) therefore seems most likely, though Atmo 5 (thin) or Atmo 8 (dense) would also work in a pinch.

Hydrographics: Counting land hexes and approximating partial land hexes yields a best-guess number of 80% water coverage, or Hydrographics 8. I may have overestimated the importance of some partial hexes and islands, so Hydro 9 will do if other criteria are met.

Population: Tarlkin's Landing itself looks to be Pop 2 or 3 (hundreds to no more than thousands of inhabitants) and there are no other major settlements on the map. Unknown quantities of farmers and prospectors live and work outside the city, but I doubt that there are enough farmers to qualify the planet for an Agricultural trade code, which would happen if we used Pop 5. Population 4 looks like the best fit.

Government: Tarlkin's Landing has a mayor, who appears to be the highest ranking government official on the planet. If we assume both that the mayor is elected and that the office has real local power behind it, then Government 4 (representative democracy) makes the most sense, but I'd take Gov 2 as an alternative.

Law: My impression of the local constabulary is that they understand that the Landing is a frontier town where folks might need to carry arms in self-defense. However, they're probably going to take a dim view to heavy weapons. I want to say Law Level 4, but Law 3 would probably work for me as well.

Tech Level: At the time of the first draft of this article I'm still examining the module for clues as to the local TL. Tech Level 7 seems the minimum, since some non-jump capable spacecraft are available to the local populace. I'd put the ceiling at TL 11, since grav belts become available at TL 12 and I don't see that sort of stuff available at Tarlkin's Landing. Tech Level 9, with lasers and low-end jump drives, seems about right.

So if I'm on the right track here, the ideal world for Tarlkin's Landing would be an unrestricted (no Red or Amber Zones) world with UWP C568444-9. The module also notes that there are 2 gas giants in the system, so we want a world with a 'G' notation as well. If we can't find this perfect world, we have some wiggle room. Most of our criteria have an alternative. And TL has a wide range of plus or minus 2, though I'd prefer lower TLs to higher.

If we look at allowing just one facet of the UWP to be less-than-ideal but still within our boundaries, we get the following alternative worlds:

B568444-9

D586444-9

C458444-9

C558444-9

C588444-9

C569444-9

C568344-9

C568424-9

C568443-9

C568444-7

C568444-8

C568444-10

C568444-11

Using all possible tweaks to the ideal UWP results in 1,728 possible near-matches. Hopefull we can find one of those in a likely spot in the Quadrant.

Allegiance Code

Astropolitical considerations will be another limiter for looking for a suitable hex for Tarlkin's Landing. The majority of the populace is human, so we can rule out worlds in the Sydymic Empire, the Krmyia Einarchy, Supraherd T'tnaree, the Zarian Realm, the Mandanin Co-Dominion, and Flock Ktani. The resident aliens do not appear to be oppressed by the local humans, so I would not look among the Rm Nai worlds for a suitable place.

Tarlkin's Landing lack the cultural inflections of Chhung Kuo, Ramayan, the Zultanate Al Amya, the K'Chemi Centralate, or Range Valyana. An enterpising GM may find it interesting to place the Landing within those polities and reinterpret the world through the local cultural lens, but such an exercise is outside the scope of this article. Similarly, the minimal role played by religion at Tarlkin's Landing makes placing it in the Marlan Primate problematic. The humans at Tarlkin's aren't particularly Vilani, nor do the aliens seem influenced by the K'Kree, so I would rule out the Taquari' Comnate as well. Hv'ika Kamlin looks like a poor pick as well, as nothing in the module protrays the humans as anything other than Solomani or standard Imperials of mixed Solomani/Vilani/whatever descent.

After eliminating all the above polities, we are left with the following possible homes for Tarlkin's Landing: the Imperium, the Krax Confederation, the Ginlenchy Concordance, Sphere Fenix, Maorin Stat, Stasmi Zanya, the Hlantae Trade League, Union Crucis and a non-aligned world. Of the major polities Union Crucis looks like one of the better choices, as alien races are specifically mentioned among its inhabitants. The Imperium is known to encompass many alien species as well.

The Parahuman Issue

Before using Tarlkin's Landing in your Traveller campaign, each referee will have to address a major issue. Several NPCs in the module are described as 'parahuman'. What exactly this label is meant to indicate is not fully explained, but each of the so-called parahumans appears to be a bipedal, bi-laterally symmetrical near-human. If I recall correctly "parahuman" was a term used by West End Games in their Star Wars rpg line as a way of indicating an alien that was superficially non-human but mechanically identical or nearly identical to humans. Think "guy with latex on his forehead". If you use this definition of parahuman then you incorporate a lot of new, unnamed alien races to your game if you take Tarlkin's Landing as-is.

I would propose an alternative explanation. I have seen it occasionally mentioned in the annals of Traveller that the Solomani possess skill and audacity in the field of genetic research well outstripping the reach of the Imperium. Some referees man the Solomani Confederation armies with clone troopers. I believe that some sources credit the Sollies with uplifting one or more Terran animal species to sentience. Therefore I propose that 'parahuman' be the designation for minor races of Humaniti engineered by Solomani (and possibly others) as 'designer races'. This explanation allows for great cosmetic divergence from norm, while keeping the parahumans fairly close to humans psychologically and culturally.

Welcome to Shanza

After going over the UWPs for the Quadrant twice, one candidate stands out as the best fit for the Landing. Shanza (0624 Glimmerdrift Reaches) is a member of the Krax Confederation located in the Even Subsector. With a UWP of B589536-B, Shanza fits the planetological data soundly. The atmosphere is merely dense instead of standard and the planet is just slightly wetter than my estimate. The deceptive class B starport may be slightly inaccurate, but that ought to be fun in the hands of a fiendish DM. The population of 5 is an order of magnitude higher than what I consider ideal, but it merely indicates that the hunters and miners are more numerous than I originally supposed. Government code 3 turns my idealized representative democracy into a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Maybe the mayor runs the planet and is elected as I guessed but the numerous people spread throughout the rural areas get no say in the matter, making the inhabitants of Tarlkin's Landing the ruling class. (Or maybe the situation is more sinister than that.) The law code and tech levels are higher than I would have liked, but still fully functional. Tech is at 11, the max of my acceptable range. And the cops at the Landing are more restrictive than my first guess.

Lookin at Shanza's position in the subsector, we find it at a major crossroads in the confederation. Perhaps Tarlkin's Landing is merely the downport and the highport sees a fair amount of thru-system traffic that never touches ground? Otherwise, the fact that Shanza lies on an X-Boat route raises some interesting issues. If Shanza has no orbital facilities, then Krax X-boat tenders would need to be atmosphere capable. To my recollection standard Imperial X-tenders are not. Until now I would have assumed that the Krax X-boat network was a direct copy of the Imperial system, but perhaps it has its own idiosyncracies.

According to Doom of the Singing Star, Shanza is one of the stops on the Emerald Line of routes plied by Brilliant Gem Class Coreships. Since Tarlkin's Landing is hardly equipped to handle the kind of traffic produced by regular Brilliant Gem visits, a space station outside the 100 diameter limit of the planet may be the only way to make the Landing fit with Shanza. A lot of traffic would go through this station, with very little of it filtering down to the planet.

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