[jason taylor]

Lampyridae:

An episodic series about a Free Trader on the lawless frontier between the Terran Confederation and the Ziru Sirka during the last phase of the Interstellar Wars. It features a ship named Lampryidae, after the bioluminescent Terran insect of that name.

The main characters includes a veteran captain, and a second mate both of which had military experience in a separatist rebellion. The second mate is married to the helmsman/navigator. Other characters include the perky young engineer, a Terran doctor and his sister who are in hiding after he rescued her from detention for a secret facility with an eye to producing psionic assassins. Then too there is a courtesan and a chaplain in ironic proximity. Equally ironic there are hints that the chaplain might be a veteran of Terran secret service. A final character is the weapons officer who is agreed to be not the best of influences for the young.

Adventures run the gamut from normal trade, to smuggling, to privateering and piracy. The focus however is on character interaction.

Lampyridae has become a cultural phenomenon and has been adopted as a theme by Free Traders across known space. Modern technology has made possible the submission of episodes fashioned after this series and some Free Traders as a hobby have made episodes by computer. There is no longer an Imperial Copyright but it is common for Merchant's and Spacer's guilds and similar organizations to secure a planetary copyright to make sure approved episodes are sold. Usually guilds buy amateur episodes and resell them to other spacers or sell contractors the right to do so.

References to the series are well known in Spacer slang and a knowledge of them is supposedly one of the signs of being a brother spacer. Not by chance it is an easy way to fake being such for the benefit of other nonspacers.

Lampyridae is based upon a drama series with a similar name produced in Pre-Starflight Terra at the beginning of technologically assisted drama when it was more difficult to produce electronically and live actors were still a necessity rather than an artistic choice. The original is considered a cultural treasure on many worlds and often maintains a permanent copyright. The Imperium is of two minds about that because of subversive elements, but suppressing it would be more trouble than is worth.