I used Aslan population data to build a random family generator that can determine the composition of an Aslan family. The generator outputs a family patriarch, his wives, all of their children, and other household members. The generator calculates the year each family member was born and married, enabling me to identify the male heir.
But as I was tinkering with the results, I realized that being able to determine if any of these family members had died would be a useful addition to my generator. Based on examples from the Classic Traveller books Aslan (1984) and Alien Realms (1986), the Aslan are biologically and culturally a “live hard, die young” species. Male aggression probably results in plenty of untimely deaths by misadventure via duels, feuds, or clan warfare, but many other dangers exist in Aslan space. The “Syareahtaorl” adventure, for example, describes a clan heir badly weakened by a common virus and then subsequently murdered.
In order to develop a “survival function” for Aslan family members, we can turn to actuarial science, a real-life discipline that uses mathematics and statistics to assess risk, often for insurance purposes. We can apply basic actuarial concepts to develop crude life tables for Aslan.
But first, let’s consider what we know about the Aslan life cycle. CT Aslan explains that
Aslan characters begin their careers at 16 Aslan years of age (about 14 standard years). At this point, as untrained and inexperienced Aslan, they embark upon a career in order to gain skills and experience. Careers are resolved on the basis of Aslan terms of service which are eight Aslan years (seven Imperial years) each (8).
* * * * *
Aslan aging is slower in its onset but more severe in effects than in human characters. The first roll on the aging table is not made until age 56 (after five terms of service have been completed); thereafter, it is checked every two Aslan years (10).
MT Solomani and Aslan (1991) adds that
The Aslan growth cycle seems “compressed” to humans. Newborn Aslan grow rapidly to young adulthood. Once an Aslan reaches 24 ftahea [Aslan years]—21 years in human terms—his or her strength gradually begins to decline, until they enter old age in their fifties—again, mid-forties to mid-fifties by human standards.
Typically, Aslan males live to be 70 ftahea old—61 human years—while females tend to die sooner at age 67—age 58 to humans (43).
Similar information is contained in GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 2 (1999) and Mongoose Traveller Aliens of Charted Space 1 (2020), though MgT uses conventional four-year career terms for Aslan rather than seven-year terms.
With this information we can construct Aslan life tables. Example tables for the 20th and 21st century are readily found online, as this data is used by governmental agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control, or Social Security Administration. As described above, Aslan appear to generally follow similar aging patterns as Humans: infancy, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and old age. The largest difference seems to be that Aslan mature earlier and stay in their physical prime longer, but then rapidly decline.
GT: Alien Races 2 explains that most Aslan clans have access to items of Technology Level 9–11 (45), and Tlaukhu members would be able to produce items as high as TL14. I’m not sure that technology advances would have quite as large an impact on Aslan medical care as on Humans: the Aslan are notoriously conservative about embracing tech, perhaps even moreso than Vilani. For example, Solomani and Aslan notes that “Use of anagathics is rare among Aslan” (71). While I would imagine that Aslan doctors would be very good at traumatology, I suspect they would not be nearly so good about basic preventative medicine, going back to the “life fast, die young” ethos.
Given all this, I thought it made sense to adopt actuarial data from the mid-twentieth century United States for the Aslan. This mid-century data reflects enormous improvements to infant mortality, but not all of the life extension benefits brought about by lifestyle and pharmacological interventions. I compressed this data to produce Aslan tables with average lifespans of 58 for females and 61 for males. I then translated the actuarial data into the probability of survival to each age, as seen in the following survival curves.
These curves show Aslan males with a significantly higher chance of dying at younger ages than Aslan females. Imagine reckless, aggressive males, engaged in more dangerous careers like combat infantry or fighter pilot, compared to Aslan females, who are usually in military support roles. But once aging begins to set in, the females begin to fail more quickly than males. Perhaps those males who survive five or six terms are disproportionately the same ones likely to become head of a family and, as such, are the individuals most likely to lead lives of relative privilege with the best medical care available.
This data can then be summarized into a table with a nice percentage chance of survival for an Aslan of either sex:
| Career Term | Age | Proportion Surviving | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aslan ftahea | Imperial Years | Male | Female | |
| – | 0 | 0 | 100% | 100% |
| – | 0–1 | 0–1 | 95% | 97% |
| – | 2–8 | 2–7 | 93% | 96% |
| – | 9–16 | 8–14 | 93% | 96% |
| 1 | 17–24 | 15–21 | 91% | 94% |
| 2 | 25–32 | 22–28 | 90% | 93% |
| 3 | 33–40 | 29–35 | 87% | 91% |
| 4 | 41–48 | 36–42 | 84% | 87% |
| 5 | 49–56 | 43–49 | 78% | 81% |
| 6 | 57–64 | 50–56 | 70% | 68% |
| 7 | 65–72 | 57–63 | 58% | 48% |
| 8 | 73–80 | 64–70 | 42% | 18% |
| 9 | 81–88 | 71–77 | 23% | 2% |
| 10 | 89–96 | 78–84 | 8% | 0% |
| 11 | 97–104 | 85–91 | 1% | 0% |
| 12 | 105+ | 92+ | 0% | 0% |
For my Aslan family generator, I use this table to check each family member to determine whether or not they are still alive. The results have already begun to pay off in story ideas, which is the whole point of the exercise. For one family, the patriarch’s first wife died young in the very first year of marriage. For another family, the only heir was killed in his first term, probably serving in the clan military—kicking off a succession crisis.
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