Mercurian and Apollonian peoples

[jason taylor]

I just finished the Jewish Century and I was thinking that some of the ideas could be applied to Traveller. The book, among other things has the conceit of dividing cultures into Apollonian(territorial food producers) and Mercurian(diasporan service providers). I was wondering how this could be used in Traveller, specifically creating a people who have no home world or political allegiances outside their bands, and living by trade.

Now we already have peoples like this from Freelance Traveller as well as a few Mercurian peoples like the Wurlana and the Bwaps in canon. We also have Apollonians like Swordies, and Azhantis. But I was wondering if this idea could be used for traveller.

[whswhs]

Sounds related to Jane Jacobs' distinction between taking and trading modes of survival and the associated guardian and trader moralities.

Bill Stoddard

[Mike Wightman]

I'm toying with an ATU campaign set in the Imperial core sector during the golden age.

The twist will be that the Imperium many centuries ago became a space based culture, leaving the self governing planets a market places for their goods.

The terms you have provided are a pretty nice description of it.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Sounds related to Jane Jacobs' distinction between taking and trading modes of survival and the associated guardian and trader moralities.

Bill Stoddard

I noticed that too and mentioned it in the amazon review. I also mentioned Chua's "market dominant minorities". Slezkine applies it ethnically. Also Jacobs puts farming(small farming anyway rather then plantation farming) with "trading" because most farmers aren't subsistence farmers.

Neither Slezkine nor Jacobs seem to have enough to say about warlike merchants like Dutchmen, Norse, or Hanse. Though Jacobs would call that a "flexible" society as opposed to a "caste" one. Unfortunately I couldn't get Systems of Survival on Kindle; hopefully it is on it's way.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Mike Wightman

I'm toying with an ATU campaign set in the Imperial core sector during the golden age.

The twist will be that the Imperium many centuries ago became a space based culture, leaving the self governing planets a market places for their goods.

The terms you have provided are a pretty nice description of it.

Those were Slezkine's terms.

[jason taylor]

One thing I had was to have "ambigs" as a term for people who perform high-demand services of ambiguous respectability that many clans are unwilling to officially recognise and are thus best performed by people who are clanless or belong to specialized clans and guilds. The usual types; courtesans, spies sometimes(stringers at least), assassins, bounty-hunters and private investigators(sometimes), executioners, butchers. Then too, sometimes people in these jobs, while not quite considered exactly honorable are sometimes assumed to have a CoH peculiar to their trades and therefore not to be total outcasts. They also sometimes have a paradoxical celebrity status to buy off their Social Stigma.