** ACTI Spoiler ** Hints on discovery of the Junction

Brigade XO wrote:We don't have "information from the database (not the pirates, not the mercenaries and certainly not any of Axelrod's) about the wormhole? We have the report from the scientist pushing the theory that all the resonance problems might be from a wormhole. And, while Axelrod is one of the groups being invited to send representatives, there has already been discussion about how to keep the invitees away from the real reason for the conference,----which is to pick their minds.

There wasn't any information about the wormhole in any of the Volsungs database because they didn't know that, Llyn never told them. None of Axelrod's ships were captured and even then the only that would have had any hint was that freighter that confirmed the existence of the Junction back in 1532. None of the others would have carried it because it was need to know.

However, the Axelrod group being invited could bring some extra equipment, which could in turn break open the case. That freighter didn't conclude the examination for sure, they had needed more time. So Axelrod could take the opportunity to send a ship to send a special type of ship.

On the other hand, it is POSSIBLE that the Axelrod representatives might have a copy of the data they are hiding with them. Ok, probably not very smart but how about they come with a lot of equipment that is more "wormhole centric" in terms of measurements and research that what other attendees bring---who is going to turn down the "mark's" offer to study the thing close up---and SIS might be able to get into that data.

Agreed, it's not very smart to bring the information you don't want Manticore to have. But those representatives would have been briefed on the possibility, if they are to detour the discussions from concluding there is a Junction. If they aren't, they could end up helping Manticore instead. But even then, because SIS knows what to look for, they can also tell what those attendees are deliberately doing.

Mercenaries are available but so far Axelrod has been somewhat cagey about the deniability of the people it sends to do the hard work of taking Manticore. Mostly they want to avoid Haven and the League from taking an interest in what is going on. The League is almost certainly going to react to a potential "junction" as something they want to control out to the "Haven Quadrant" and would, of course, take over the management in the interests of helping poor backward Manticore lot lose such a strategic asset and probably allow it to fall into nefarious hands. This sounds like a job for OFS!!

They don't have a legal standing to control the Junction, short of invading the Manticore system. And since the Beowulf terminus will be the first one opened, Beowulf would take a distinctly negative view of that. Remember, Beowulf has veto power over that operation.

Though that's probably why the Junction Treaty of 1590 PD was so generous: it removed all ability for the SL to claim the Junction was being poorly administered and it gave Beowulf all the reasons to support Manticore keeping its control.

We have been told in the background the the 1st wormhole of what became the Junction ran to Beowulf. Beowulf was a founding member of the SL but has always had strong opinions about who can do or should do what in a lot of things.
I'm going to speculate that Beowulf saw the wormhole as a good thing for itself (not the League) to control but also saw a need to make sure that Manticore retained ownership of it's own end. By ending up agreeing to the terminus treaty at the Beowulf end, they were ---guessing here- arranging it such that the League couldn't move in to take control given that it was already owned by Beowulf and Manticore with Beowulf's standing in the League meaning "hands off out stuff".

A different question is the military defense posture on both ends of the wormhole at the start. Manticore would have shared more information - Beowulf should have heard about Manticore's long running invasion problems- and opening the wormhole would be a really good motive for all that attacking. So it is POSSIBLE that at the start Beowulf SDF partnered with RMN in posting a guard force on the Beowulf end while RMN had to beef itself up to cover the other end. Either way, they were going to need at least Customs Enforcement at each end to handle traffic that would be going to the respective owner systems along with local Astro Control. Fairly sure Beowulf would have been willing to lend Manticore the funding (and build a lot of the equipment etc) to outfit the stations at each end. Transit fees can reasonably be expected to be a good income stream.

Brigade XO wrote:A different question is the military defense posture on both ends of the wormhole at the start. Manticore would have shared more information - Beowulf should have heard about Manticore's long running invasion problems- and opening the wormhole would be a really good motive for all that attacking. So it is POSSIBLE that at the start Beowulf SDF partnered with RMN in posting a guard force on the Beowulf end while RMN had to beef itself up to cover the other end. Either way, they were going to need at least Customs Enforcement at each end to handle traffic that would be going to the respective owner systems along with local Astro Control. Fairly sure Beowulf would have been willing to lend Manticore the funding (and build a lot of the equipment etc) to outfit the stations at each end. Transit fees can reasonably be expected to be a good income stream.

It's possible. The Junction Treaty could have had a temporary provision that Beowulf kept 75% of the fees instead of 50% while it was helping guard the Manticore side too.

But that's speculation. I think we'll see instead that the RMN managed to beef up before the Junction was officially announced, so the BSDF would never have needed to guard the Manticore side.

Another question is whether they managed to transit before announcing. That is, if they managed to get a survey ship and keep its conclusions under wraps. If they did, they would have known the Junction connected to Beowulf and it would then be a good idea to let the Board of Directors know beforehand too. They could even get a good loan from Beowulf.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:.<snip>

Another question is whether they managed to transit before announcing. That is, if they managed to get a survey ship and keep its conclusions under wraps. If they did, they would have known the Junction connected to Beowulf and it would then be a good idea to let the Board of Directors know beforehand too. They could even get a good loan from Beowulf.

You never know what destination is on the other side of a wormhole until you make the first transit. So why would Beowulf be involved (other than for their intellectual expertise?) prior to that first transit? As far as Manticore knew, the wormhole went to Haven, or Earth, or New Madrid, or ............, or the middle of nowhere. Even 350 years later, they had no idea where the Lynx terminus would end up, until the first ship went through.

Theemile wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:.<snip>

Another question is whether they managed to transit before announcing. That is, if they managed to get a survey ship and keep its conclusions under wraps. If they did, they would have known the Junction connected to Beowulf and it would then be a good idea to let the Board of Directors know beforehand too. They could even get a good loan from Beowulf.

You never know what destination is on the other side of a wormhole until you make the first transit. So why would Beowulf be involved (other than for their intellectual expertise?) prior to that first transit? As far as Manticore knew, the wormhole went to Haven, or Earth, or New Madrid, or ............, or the middle of nowhere. Even 350 years later, they had no idea where the Lynx terminus would end up, until the first ship went through.

I think that was ThinksMarkedly's point.
Do you go through and see where it goes, and coordinate with any relivant polity on the other side before the public annoucement; or do you tell the universe about the discovery as soon as your survey ship confirms it's a wormhole; while they're presumably still working to nail down the approach vector(s).


Manticore almost certainly could have kept the discovery and even the first transit under wraps for a while. The Junction at Manticore and terminus at Beowulf are both far enough out that it'd be extremely unlikely for anybody in either system to notice that first transit out and back. So, if they wanted, Manticore could have then dispatched a private delegation to Beowulf's government to coordinate plans regarding the wormhole before making the public announcement and filing claim to it.

(And that seems like a much better plan than either announcing a wormhole before you know where it goes, or publicly blindsiding the destination by making a public announcement before privately alerting them to the new route into their star system)

I did say that it MIGHT be that Beowulf agrees (from a necessary abundance of caution) to see a guard on the Beowulf end of the wormhole) while Manticore secured the other end. I'll expand on that.......Once Manticore opened discussion with Beowulf about the wormhole, they would have certainly shared what they knew and suspected about "somebody" attempting to take over the Manticore system several times and that they had a thread of at least one individual being involved in much of the related problems from the outside and mercenaries. Putting a strong picket on the Beowulf end would have secured that end as well as organizing the Astro Control and setting fees and procedures.

We will just have to see what actually developed in the pining down of the wormhole and what happened with the first transit but I can go ahead and speculate. Somebody is going to have to go along to represent the Manticore Government but we already know what -over the centuries- had developed for initial procedures. 1st thing you do is take every reading you can and start surveying from that new end to make sure you can get back through to home....presuming you don't have an engineering casualty that would make you take the long way home. At the same time, your astrogator team is working like demons to determine exactly where they are in relation to ANY recognizable navigation criteria like quasars, pulsars, and other landmarks in the galaxy. Given that we know that they come out essentially next to the Sigma Draconis System and Beowulf, you have a quandary. Do you go say "Hello, we just opened a wormhole and are giving you notice it's ours...(humm, not exactly neighborly) or do you compleat your sensor mapping and run back through the wormhole to deliver your news- and let the Government set up a mission to Beowulf (possibly three ships, one "diplomatic" and two warships- at least one to then sit on the terminus) and go make a formal approach to Beowulf to work out some agreement on the operation of the terminus?
A great deal would depend on what the then-current protocols were (and Manticore would have been doing a lot of legal research while the search/survey was going on) and Beowulf is already a mature Star Nation with the probability of going into some level of partnership operation of that end of the wormhole. Clearly such an economic asset would be of great value to Beowulf- this is a major shorting of travel to and from the Haven Quadrant and even Silesia- and I would presume Beowulf already has an active merchant marine so it would be able to be at the head of the curve (and getting preferred/ownership level rates for transits). So, go make nice, make a deal and secure this new asset for both Star Nations.

Brigade XO wrote:I did say that it MIGHT be that Beowulf agrees (from a necessary abundance of caution) to see a guard on the Beowulf end of the wormhole) while Manticore secured the other end. I'll expand on that.......Once Manticore opened discussion with Beowulf about the wormhole, they would have certainly shared what they knew and suspected about "somebody" attempting to take over the Manticore system several times and that they had a thread of at least one individual being involved in much of the related problems from the outside and mercenaries. Putting a strong picket on the Beowulf end would have secured that end as well as organizing the Astro Control and setting fees and procedures.

That's a possibility. The other is that they find out it is Axelrod and that the Axelrod data confirmed the existence of the Junction before the termini were explored. If that's the case, then the known danger may be past already.

Of course, there will likely be others who would gladly do what Axelrod tried to do and take over the Junction. Especially once it's revealed to connect to Beowulf and to Trevor's Star, meaning it suddenly cuts a trip from the SL Core to Haven from ~8 months to ~2. So either way, when they approach the Beowulf Board of Directors, they'll know that there are people who would want to take over.

We will just have to see what actually developed in the pining down of the wormhole and what happened with the first transit but I can go ahead and speculate. Somebody is going to have to go along to represent the Manticore Government but we already know what -over the centuries- had developed for initial procedures. 1st thing you do is take every reading you can and start surveying from that new end to make sure you can get back through to home....presuming you don't have an engineering casualty that would make you take the long way home.

Yes, that is the most important task that they need to accomplish, but not necessarily the first. They have to figure out how to return because a wormhole that only goes one way has less than half its value. But the first thing they would do is figure out where they ended up, especially if they ended up in someone's backyard, because they could be considered trespassers. Also probably because it's completely automated and the computers will tell you soon where you are, as soon as they can measure the pulsars.

At the same time, your astrogator team is working like demons to determine exactly where they are in relation to ANY recognizable navigation criteria like quasars, pulsars, and other landmarks in the galaxy. Given that we know that they come out essentially next to the Sigma Draconis System and Beowulf, you have a quandary. Do you go say "Hello, we just opened a wormhole and are giving you notice it's ours...(humm, not exactly neighborly) or do you compleat your sensor mapping and run back through the wormhole to deliver your news- and let the Government set up a mission to Beowulf (possibly three ships, one "diplomatic" and two warships- at least one to then sit on the terminus) and go make a formal approach to Beowulf to work out some agreement on the operation of the terminus?

Right, I don't know what they'd do. If the wormhole terminus were in an uninhabited system, like Lynx or Gregor-B, there's little danger. Harvest Joy didn't need to go to Lynx before returning, actually, but they had a diplomatic/government team aboard so they did.

But we know the survey ship (which may or may not be Pathfinder) will find itself in Sigma Draconis. They may have a diplomatic delegation aboard, but once they realise just where they are, they might decide it's over their pay grade.