Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Aslan Clans and Prides

Several Aslan families combine into a pride, and several prides combine into a clan. We can estimate 4,000 clans and 9.1 trillion clan members at one end of the scale, and approximately 1,200 billion families at the other end, but there’s no clear indication how big prides are or how many there might be in the Hierate.

If Aslan families range from Pop 0 to 1, and Aslan clans from 4 to A, prides must fall in between with some potential for overlap. In fact, given the lack of specificity perhaps prides could range from as small as Pop 1 to as large as Pop 6 for a Tlaukhu or multiworld clan. A large pride, then, might be larger than a small clan and might well command similar resources. The one hard and fast rule should probably be that a pride cannot be larger than its clan’s Pop -1.

Random Pride Size
1D	Clan Size
1D	4	5	6	7	8	9	A
1	1	2	3	4	4	5	5
2	1	2	3	4	5	5	5
3	2	3	4	5	5	5	6
4	2	3	4	5	6	6	6
5	3	4	5	6	6	6	6
6	3	4	5	6	6	6	6

Relatively little canonical detail is available about prides, but the adventure “Ahriy Uprising” from the CT module Alien Realms gives us a tantalizing glimpse of internal clan politics at the pride level. As the name suggests, the adventure involves an Ahriy (pride) vying for rule of their clan.

Prides are probably much more regional in scope than clans. Even a pride of a Tlaukhu clan might be restricted to a sector, a pride of Mulitworld clan to a subsector, prides of vassal clans a world or two, and a pride of a Single World clan might be limited to a single continent or region.

Given the immense scope of the very large clans, prides offer tremendous potential for development as well as opportunity to make interacting with a Tlaukhu clan a bit more manageable. For a player with an Aslan character belonging to one of the Twenty-Nine, their pride identification might be much more meaningful than their clan affiliation.

Just as clans within the Hierate constantly contend for status and power, so do prides within clans and families within prides. Inter-pride politics are probably every bit as messy and fraught as inter-clan relations, but with many more complications of kinship and marriage. Civil wars, after all, are some of the fiercest and bloodiest conflicts.

Copyright Information

The illustration at the top of the blog is by D. J. Barr in the adventure “Ahriy Uprising” from Alien Realms (1986).

The Traveller game in all forms is owned by Far Future Enterprises. Copyright © 1977 – 2022 Far Future Enterprises. Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises. Far Future permits web sites and fanzines for this game, provided it contains this notice, that Far Future is notified, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use only. Any use of Far Future Enterprises’s copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any program/articles/file on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author who contributed it.

Materials produced by Digest Group Publications (DGP) are copyright © Roger Sanger. Any use of Digest Group Publications’ copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this Web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights. Usage is intended to follow the guidelines announced by Roger Sanger on the Traveller Mailing List for preserving the overall Traveller milieu.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

A Death in the Aslan Family

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.

Figure 1. Aslan 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:

Aslan Survival
Career Term	Age		Proportion Surviving
Career Term	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.

Copyright Information

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Prides and Prejudice: Aslan Families and Society

In my last post, we developed estimates of an average Aslan family, and then constructed a theoretical population of one million Aslan families:

One Million Aslan Families
Category	Numbers
Patriarchs	1,000,000
Wives	2,500,000
Female Children	3,125,003
Male Children
Htatei	535,558
Ihatei	506,110
Other Household Members	1,000,000
Total Population	8,666,671

Wiykhearl (DARK 0335 E100646-7), the gas giant moon homeworld of the Wioarlil clan, which coincidentally comprises approximately 1 million Aslan families.

These numbers contain critical implications for Aslan society. Although our theoretical pool of one million families produces more than one male child for each family, because they are distributed unevenly nearly half of all families have no heirs, and the pool has nearly as many ihatei as htatei. A common proverb among Aslan females can be translated as Males: always too many and never enough.

Many of these ihatei are destined for lives on the margins of Aslan society, becoming mercenaries, travellers, outcasts, or even outlaws. But other options are available.

Because births are based on the number of wives, which is related to social class, lower class Aslan families would be expected to produce fewer children, and thus be more at risk of not having a male son to inherit any family holdings. Higher class families, in contrast, are much more likely to have both ihatei sons and larger holdings that require vassals to administer. For such families, many ihatei may elect to “stay behind” and serve as vassals to their htatei brother.

A significant number of ihatei could find careers in the clan military forces. A million Aslan families is the equivalent of a Population 6, and nearly Population 7, world. The ground defenses forces of such a world at TL10, the Aslan average, would be the equivalent of 15 to 150 battalions, or 7,500 to 75,000 troops. If we assume that the clan space forces have similar staffing needs, then perhaps as much as a quarter of these ihatei could be gainfully employed by the clan.

Another option is for a second son to join a clan migration fleet, also called an ihatei fleet. The MT Rebellion Sourcebook (1988) explains that “Migration fleets carry excess population in search of new worlds to settle and exploit. These are the instrument by which the Aslan clans expand their territory. lhatei fleets are raised by the clan, with their ships and equipment paid for by the families of those who will travel with it” (29).

Although the Sourcebook holds that “Every Aslan clan periodically organizes an ihatel fleet” (58), such an expedition represents an enormous undertaking. Even for clans of population 8+, TL 9+, and access to the shipyards of a class A starport, an ihatei fleet is probably a once-in-a-generation event. CT Aslan describes how the Loakhtarl clan established an ihatei fleet that consisted of “ten armed 50,000 ton ships, each capable of jump-3 and 3-G. Each ship carried 10,000 tons of cargo (primarily colonial supplies), a crew of 300, and a colonial force of 1,700 and represented some of the best shipbuilding the clan could obtain” (38). Smaller, less technologically advanced clans might require multiple generations to set aside enough resources to sponsor a modest fleet of their own.

The large number of “surplus” sons and the large number of sonless families does create an interesting social opportunity for addressing this “market inefficiency”: adoption. CT Aslan describes families adopting orphaned children of blood relatives, and GT Alien Races 2 notes that “Some clans will admit clanless outsiders, even non-Aslan, who have done them a great service. Whether they are ‘associate members’ with limited rights or full clan members depends on local custom” (11).

A family adopting an ihetai to continue the family line is probably fairly rare, despite its inherent rationality. A family would be very reluctant to name a male of lower status as its heir, though an ihatei of higher status might gladly “adopt down” to a lower status family. Having any landhold of one’s own would probably be better than having nothing. An ideal candidate for adoption might be a distantly related male of higher status, from within the same clan or even the same pride.

The 1:3 sex ratio of males to females creates additional tensions within Aslan society. Because of the extreme division of labor between the sexes in Aslan culture, females are every bit as important to the success of a family as males. A son is needed to inherit the family’s holdings, but spinster aunts, unmarried daughters, and daughter-in-laws are all required to actually run the place. If a male Aslan can’t even handle money, someone needs to keep the books, manage the household, and direct any business interests.

Marriageable daughters help build or solidify alliances with other families, and competition between females and their families for a small number of potential husbands is likely intense. If we assume that the 535,558 htatei in our pool of 1 million families each take 2.5 wives, that still leaves 1,786,108 unmarried females, or nearly 23% of the population. Such a large number of unmarried females would create a significant workforce and again, competition between these females within an Aslan corporation must be every bit as intense as the competition between males for territory.

If a highly skewed sex ratio was a beneficial biological adaption for early Aslan, it might be much less adaptive for a society with stellar technology and correspondingly lower mortality rates. All of the competition between males, between females, between families, prides, and clans can easily become unproductive if not outright destructive with nuclear technology. The extreme social conservatism of Aslan culture, with an emphasis on tradition and ritual, might be an important way to channel these potentially destructive tensions into safer and more regulated outlets.

Aslan history has shown that when competition gets out of hand, Aslan societies can career right up to and beyond the point of mutual destruction, as seen in their three world wars from the pre-spaceflight era. While the infamous Aslan touchiness might seem designed as an excuse for conflict, the elaborate codes of honor and conduct are intended to regulate conflict into predictable, non-lethal rituals like the duel. Similarly, primogeniture is a way for Aslan culture to regulate natural conflicts over inheritance.

Although not explicitly described in canon, Aslan culture likely regulates marriage and reproduction into fairly rigid channels of tradition. But just like violence, sometimes passions spill over the banks of these channels. The adventure “First Son, Last Son” from the CT module Alien Realms (1986) hinges on an unfaithful Aslan wife. An emotional, sometimes impulsive species caught within a very rigid culture of tradition makes for inherent tension—and great potential for drama. Aslan literature is probably filled with stories of unhappy marriages, star-crossed lovers, ruined daughters and wastrel sons, tragic rivalries between families, and profound anxieties over property, social status, and inheritance.

Sounds familiar, right? Although the Aslan have been long described as a “Proud Warrior Race,” as I was looking at the demographic numbers I did not find myself thinking about samurai movies or Klingon episodes of Star Trek. Instead, I was thinking about 19th century novels. In particular, I was struck by how well Jane Austen’s novel of manners Pride and Prejudice would work as an Aslan scenario. Consider this summary from Wikipedia:

Mr. Bennet, owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire, has five daughters, but his property is entailed and can only be passed to a male heir. His wife also lacks an inheritance, so his family faces becoming very poor upon his death. Thus, it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well to support the others, which is a motivation that drives the plot.

Mr. Bennet’s plight is an all-too-common one in the Hierate. Elizabeth is in many ways a model female Aslan: intelligent, discerning, and resolute, just as Mr. Darcy is a model male: proud, moody, and artistocratic. Of course, an Aslan Mr. Darcy would not be forced to chose between Elizabeth and Anne, the daughter of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as both would make excellent wives.

I also found myself thinking of Anna Karenina or The Age of Innocence (published 1920, but set in the 1870s), where different characters are torn between their personal desires and the constraints of their social obligations. Through these lenses, the equivalent of an Aslan drawing room is far more perilous than any battlefield. While not every group of players may be interested in a social maneuvering, role-play heavy “adventure of manners,” understanding this vital aspect of Aslan society can add considerable texture to any Aslan scenario, and help make an alien race considerably more relatable to humans.

Copyright Information

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Aslan Family Structure

In one of the best Dungeons & Dragons games I ever played in, each player character was a junior member of an extended noble household, similar to the Starks of Winterfell from Game of Thrones. There were brothers, illegitimate half-brothers, cousins, children of retainers and allies, and hostages. The genius of this setup was that each character began the game with an inherent relationship with all of the other characters as well as the major NPCs in the household. And since almost everybody has a family and can relate to familial issues, the players could easily identify with and engage in this rich, complicated, and occasionally messy situation. I think any kind of Aslan game would greatly benefit from adopting such a setup, since the family is so central to Aslan identity. So understanding the composition of a typical Aslan family becomes very helpful.

CT Aslan (1984) provides some useful insights into the structure of Aslan families (ekho). We know that the average family includes 2 to 12 individuals under a patriarchal leader (3). We know that the average male has 0–5 wives, or 2.5 on average (5). Finally, we know that approximately three females are born to every male born (9).

CT Aslan doesn’t detail how many children each wife is expected to produce, but if we assume each wife produces 0–4 children (1D - 2), or an average of 1.67 children, the average family will have 4.17 children in a total household of 7.67 individuals, which falls within the range described in CT Aslan. With 4.17 children, most Aslan families would have at least one male child, which is vital for the continuance of the family. If we adjust that average number of children per wife up or down even slightly, we can end up with so few males that most Aslan families would not have heirs, or else the average family is larger than the upper range given in CT Aslan.

The number of wives (ekhiy) is generally related to the Social Standing of the patriarch (ekaw, or tao’): higher status males would be expected to have more wives than lower status males. The following table could be used in lieu of 1D - 1 for generating the number of wives:

Number of Aslan Wives
Patriarch SOC	1D
Patriarch SOC	1	2	3	4	5	6
0	0	0	0	1	1	1
1–2	0	1	1	2	2	3
3–5	0	1	2	2	3	4
6–8	0	1	2	3	4	5
9–11	1	2	3	3	4	5
12–14	2	3	3	4	4	5
15+	3	4	4	5	5	6

The number of children in a family is, obviously, related to the number of wives.

Average Number of Aslan Children
Children	Wives
	0	1	2	3	4	5
	0.00	1.67	3.33	5.00	6.67	8.33

The following table lists the number of D6 combinations that result in X wives producing Y number of Aslan children. For example, a single wife has a 2 in 6 chance (33.33%) of producing no children, while two wives reduces the odds of no children to 4 in 36 (11.11%), three wives to 8 in 216 (3.7%), and so on. The aggregate probability of an Aslan family producing no children is roughly 25%, while the probability of 20 children is 0.002%.

Distribution of Aslan Children
Number of Children						Aggregate Probability
Number of Children	1	2	3	4	5	Aggregate Probability
0	2	4	8	16	32	24.97%
1	1	4	12	32	80	6.14%
2	1	5	18	56	160	7.54%
3	1	6	25	88	280	9.22%
4	1	7	33	129	450	11.19%
5	0	4	30	148	601	7.36%
6	0	3	28	162	745	7.23%
7	0	2	24	164	855	6.72%
8	0	1	18	151	905	5.73%
9	0	0	10	120	865	4.17%
10	0	0	6	92	781	3.32%
11	0	0	3	64	655	2.46%
12	0	0	1	39	505	1.66%
13	0	0	0	20	355	1.02%
14	0	0	0	10	235	0.63%
15	0	0	0	4	141	0.35%
16	0	0	0	1	75	0.17%
17	0	0	0	0	35	0.075%
18	0	0	0	0	15	0.032%
19	0	0	0	0	5	0.011%
20	0	0	0	0	1	0.002%
Total	6	36	216	1,296	7,776	100%

Households with no wives might represent a young, newly installed patriarch who has not yet taken a wife; a poor, luckless male who has not found a suitable mate; or perhaps an older patriarch whose wife or wives have died or left the household. Although the table assumes that households without wives have no children, that may not always be true.

An Aslan household may include additional members beyond the patriarch, his wives, and their children. GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 2 (1999) has an evocative description of a typical Aslan household:

The ekho includes the patriarch, his wife (or wives), the patriarch’s unmarried siblings, aged parents, orphans of blood relatives adopted into the family, and perhaps members of allied or conquered clans exchanged for one’s own relatives. This last allows future comrades-in-arms to train together while young, and provides hostages for the good behavior of new vassals (10).

Let’s assume a typical Aslan household contains 1D - 3 additional members. The number of additional members is probably correlated to the number of wives. A patriarch without a wife likely needs significant assistance from female blood relatives to keep the household running, while adding extra members to a household with many wives might only add headaches. The following table can be used to determine the number of additional family members based on the number of additional wives:

Number of Additional Family Members
Wives	1D
Wives	1	2	3	4	5	6
0	2	2	3	4	5	6
1	0	1	1	2	3	4
2	0	0	1	2	3	4
3	0	0	1	1	2	3
4	0	0	0	1	2	3
5	0	0	0	0	1	2
6	0	0	0	0	0	1

The following table can be used to determine the nature of each additional household member.

Additional Household Members
2D	Relationship
2	Patriarch’s father
3–4	Patriarch’s unmarried brother
5	Exchanged child from allied clans
6	Patriarch’s mother
7–8	Patriarch’s unmarried sister
9	Patriarch’s aunt
10	Adopted orphan of blood relatives
11	Patriarch’s uncle
12	Hostage from conquered clans

So let’s consider a hypothetical pool of one million Aslan families. The following table details how many children of each sex this pool of families would be expected to produce:

Population Distribution per 1 Million Aslan Families
Children per Family	Number of Families	Patriarchs	Wives	Female Children	Male Children	Other Members
0	249,657	249,657	122,771	0	0	249,657
1	61,385	61,385	117,627	46,039	15,346	61,385
2	75,446	75,446	161,694	113,169	37,723	75,446
3	92,164	92,164	216,478	207,369	69,123	92,164
4	111,883	111,883	283,565	335,649	111,883	111,883
5	73,581	73,581	247,021	275,929	91,976	73,581
6	72,295	72,295	255,766	325,328	108,443	72,295
7	67,194	67,194	250,064	352,769	117,590	67,194
8	57,335	57,335	225,587	344,010	114,670	57,335
9	41,688	41,688	177,576	281,394	93,798	41,688
10	33,200	33,200	144,912	249,000	83,000	33,200
11	24,584	24,584	110,061	202,818	67,606	24,584
12	16,611	16,611	76,496	149,499	49,833	16,611
13	10,181	10,181	48,332	99,265	33,088	10,181
14	6,323	6,323	30,328	66,392	22,131	6,323
15	3,537	3,537	17,168	39,791	13,264	3,537
16	1,736	1,736	8,552	20,832	6,944	1,736
17	750	750	3,751	9,563	3,188	750
18	322	322	1,608	4,347	1,449	322
19	107	107	536	1,525	508	107
20	21	21	107	315	105	21
	1,000,000	1,000,000	2,500,000	3,125,003	1,041,668	1,000,000

Our theoretical pool of 1 million families has a total population of 8,666,671, including additional household members.

Within Aslan society, the entire family landhold is passed from the father to the eldest son, or htatei. Younger sons, ihatei, inherit nothing. As detailed in the following table, the more children in a family reduces the possibility that no male heir is produced, but also increases the chance for ihatei.

Probability of Sons
Total Children	Number of Sons
Total Children	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
1	75%	25%
2	56%	38%	6.25%
3	42%	42%	14.1%	1.6%
4	32%	42%	21.1%	4.7%	0.39%
5	24%	40%	26.4%	8.8%	1.46%	0.10%
6	18%	36%	29.7%	13.2%	3.30%	0.44%	0.02%
7	13%	31%	31.1%	17.3%	5.77%	1.15%	0.13%	0.01%
8	10%	27%	31.1%	20.8%	8.65%	2.31%	0.38%	0.04%	0.00%
9	8%	23%	30.0%	23.4%	11.68%	3.89%	0.87%	0.12%	0.01%	0.00%
10	6%	19%	28.2%	25.0%	14.60%	5.84%	1.62%	0.31%	0.04%	0.00%	0.00%
11	4%	15%	25.8%	25.8%	17.21%	8.03%	2.68%	0.64%	0.11%	0.01%	0.00%	0.00%
12	3%	13%	23.2%	25.8%	19.36%	10.32%	4.01%	1.15%	0.24%	0.04%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
13	2%	10%	20.6%	25.2%	20.97%	12.58%	5.59%	1.86%	0.47%	0.09%	0.01%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
14	2%	8%	18.0%	24.0%	22.02%	14.68%	7.34%	2.80%	0.82%	0.18%	0.03%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
15	1%	7%	15.6%	22.5%	22.52%	16.51%	9.17%	3.93%	1.31%	0.34%	0.07%	0.01%	0.00%	0.00%
16	1%	5%	13.4%	20.8%	22.52%	18.02%	11.01%	5.24%	1.97%	0.58%	0.14%	0.02%	0.00%	0.00%
17	1%	4%	11.4%	18.9%	22.09%	19.14%	12.76%	6.68%	2.79%	0.93%	0.25%	0.05%	0.01%	0.00%
18	1%	3%	9.6%	17.0%	21.30%	19.88%	14.36%	8.20%	3.76%	1.39%	0.42%	0.10%	0.02%	0.00%
19	0%	3%	8.0%	15.2%	20.23%	20.23%	15.74%	9.74%	4.87%	1.98%	0.66%	0.18%	0.04%	0.01%
20	0%	2%	6.7%	13.4%	18.97%	20.23%	16.86%	11.24%	6.09%	2.71%	0.99%	0.30%	0.08%	0.02%

We can then apply these numbers to our million families to estimate the number of htatei and ihatei, as well as the number of families without any male heirs:

Male Children
Children per Family	Families	Htatei	Ihatei	Families without Male Heirs
0	249,657	0	0	249,657
1	61,385	15,346	0	46,039
2	75,446	33,008	4,715	42,438
3	92,164	53,282	15,841	38,882
4	111,883	76,483	35,400	35,400
5	73,581	56,120	35,856	17,461
6	72,295	59,429	49,014	12,867
7	67,194	58,225	59,365	8,969
8	57,335	51,595	63,075	5,740
9	41,688	38,558	55,240	3,130
10	33,200	31,330	51,670	1,870
11	24,584	23,546	44,060	1,038
12	16,611	16,085	33,748	526
13	10,181	9,939	23,149	242
14	6,323	6,211	15,920	113
15	3,537	3,490	9,774	47
16	1,736	1,719	5,225	17
17	750	745	2,443	6
18	322	320	1,129	2
19	107	106	402	0
20	21	21	84	0
Total	1,000,000	535,558	506,110	464,444

In a pool of 1 million families, 535,558 male children (roughly 51.41% of males) are first-born htatei, and 506,110 (48.59%) are ihatei. If we assume that each htatei will take 2.5 females for wives, that translates into 1,338,895 marriageable females and 1,786,108 unmarried females. In this same pool of 1 million, 464,444 families (46%), have no male heirs.

In my next post, I’ll consider the interesting social and cultural implications of these numbers.

Copyright Information

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Aslan Clan Populations

Aslan society is organized into three distinct tiers. The atomic unit of Aslan society is the ekho, or family, which consists of a single patriarch plus 2 to 12 individuals. Several families combine into an ahriy, or pride, with one family dominant. And several prides combine into a huiha, or clan, the largest unit of organization in the Hierate.

Estimating Aslan Clan Size

So how big are clans? We have previously assumed that the Aslan Hierate constituted approximately 6,300 to 7,000 worlds and a total population of 10.7 to 11.97 trillion, based on an average world population of 1.71 billion.

We know that not all inhabitants of the Hierate belong to a clan: some might be biological non-Aslan sophonts who are unwilling or unable to assimilate to Aslan culture, while others might be biological Aslan outlaws or outcasts, and depending upon the source, ihatei might be technically considered clanless. For simplicity, let’s assume about 20% of the Hierate population are not members of a clan, leaving 9.1 trillion clan members in the Hierate. With 4,000 clans that works out to an average clan population of 2.27 billion.

This seems rather large to me, but what if clan populations exhibit a range of populations so extreme as to skew the median result—just like world populations. Consider the average Imperial, Solomani, or Hierate world: all three generate world populations using 2D-2, creating a range of 0 to 10. The mathematical mean and the median result are the same: 5. However, the population rating is exponential in scale: each increase in rating represents an increased population by a factor of 10. A population code of 0 is 10⁰, or 1. A population rating of 10 (A) is 10¹⁰, or 10 billion. This base population is then multiplied against a population multiplier ranging from 1 to 9, with an average of 5.

The following table shows the mean world population associated with each population rating as well as the percentage of worlds that would be expected to have that rating. The prorated population is simply the percent expected multiplied against the mean population.

Distribution of World Pop Codes
Pop Code	% Worlds	Mean Population	Prorated Popuation
0	2.77	5	0
1	5.55	50	3
2	8.33	500	42
3	11.11	5,000	556
4	13.88	50,000	6,940
5	16.66	500,000	83,300
6	13.88	5,000,000	694,000
7	11.11	50,000,000	5,555,000
8	8.33	500,000,000	41,650,000
9	5.55	5,000,000,000	277,500,000
10	2.77	50,000,000,000	1,385,000,000
Total	99.96	–	1,710,489,840

Add these prorated populations together and you get the mean population of a Traveller world: 1.71 billion, in contrast to the median population, which is 500,000. Although most worlds in a Traveller sector will have populations well below level A, because of the exponential progression just a handful of high population worlds skew the average result. As is often noted, in Traveller over 97% of a typical subsector population lives on less than 10% of the worlds.

For discussion purposes, let’s assume we can apply the world population ratings to Aslan clans. Note that an average clan population of 2.27 billion is the same order-of-magnitude as the average world population. What if Aslan clans follow a similar population distribution as Aslan worlds? This would suggest that the largest clans would have populations in the tens of billions, the equivalent of a world population rating of A. A very small number of Tlaukhu clans might reach populations in the low hundreds of billions. As this would be fairly rare¹, there’s probably no need to establish a population code of B—we can just assume that the Pop A code covers all populations of 10 billion or higher.

Here we need to consider how small the smallest possible clan could be. In theory, if the smallest Aslan family is 3 individuals, and we assume “several” means three or more, then three families of three individuals could constitute an entire pride, and three prides of three families could form a clan of 27 individuals, which seems a little ridiculous.

As there is no central government in the Hierate, a clan has to be large enough to provide basic services, to maintain a landholding, and to defend that holding against all comers. The smallest countries on 21st century Terra number in tens of thousands, excluding the Vatican City. I am inclined to think the smallest viable clan size would be the same, or Pop 4, though I could be persuaded by 3 or 5 ². But let’s work with Pop 4. By modifying our world population table to proportionally redistribute the Pop 0, 1, 2, and 3 results, we can get the following clan population table that lines up with our other estimates:

Distribution of Clan Pop Codes
Pop Code	% of Clans	Number of Clans	Mean Population	Prorated Population
4	19.23	773	50,000	9,615
5	23.08	928	500,000	115,406
6	19.23	773	5,000,000	961,485
7	15.39	619	50,000,000	7,696,038
8	11.54	464	500,000,000	57,702,965
9	7.69	309	5,000,000,000	384,455,528
A	3.84	154	50,000,000,000	1,918,814,076
Total	100.00	4,020	–	2,369,755,113

As we can see, with this distribution the median clan population is 50 million, but the mean population is 2.37 billion. By tweaking the average population multiplier slightly downward from 5 to 4.71 we could get this mean population to 2.27 billion.

It is certainly possible to create tables to randomly generate clan Population codes based on clan type—and I did so to test whether my overall math was working. And although I could make the numbers fit, the distribution of Population codes across different clan types felt rather arbitrary. A better way, I think, is to generate clan Population codes using the clan Holdings rating.

This is based on a couple of observations: first, because Population codes follow an exponential progression, a clan Population code is likely the same as the Population code of the highest population world directly controlled by that clan. Assume X is the highest world Population code controlled by a clan: that clan's Population code is also likely to be X, and can’t be less than X. Even if that clan controlled more than one world of population X, the total clan Population code might reach X+1, but would not be expected to reach X+2 or higher. So rather than attempting to count up the populations of all the worlds controlled by the clan, we need to instead focus on just identifying X, the Population code of the highest population world likely controlled by that clan.

Second, as a clan controls more and more worlds, X would be expected to increase in a predictable way, as Aslan world Populations codes are distributed across the familiar 2D curve. This allows us to calculate the odds of the highest population world based on the total number of worlds controlled. Only 2.77% of worlds have a Population code of A (tens of billions), so a clan that only controlled one world has only a 2.77% chance having a clan Population of A (tens of billions). A clan that controlled ten worlds, however, has a roughly 25% chance of having at least one Pop A world. A clan that controlled 20 worlds has a roughly 43% chance of having at least one Pop A world.

All Tlaukhu clans should be assumed to have Population A. A Single World clan would be normally have a Population code equal to the Population code of its homeworld. However, many worlds with the On-World Clan Control allegiance (AsWc) have Population codes of less than 4 (tens of thousands), which we had previously set as the likely minimum clan size. In such cases, the bulk of the clan's population must be found somewhere else: perhaps scattered on other On-World Clan worlds or Split Control worlds. In any case, there must be a good story why most of the clan doesn't actually live on the homeworld.

The following table can be used to randomly determine a clan Population code based on the clan’s Holdings code:

Random Clan Population Code by Holdings
2D	Holdings
2D	0–4	5	6	7	8	9	A
2	4	4	4	4	6	7	8
3	4	4	4	5	6	8	8
4	4	4	4	5	7	8	9
5	4	4	5	6	7	8	9
6	4	4	6	7	8	9	9
7	5	5	7	8	8	9	A
8	5	6	7	8	9	A	A
9	6	7	8	9	9	A	A
10	6	8	9	9	A	A	A
11	7	9	A	A	A	A	A
12	7	A	A	A	A	A	A

If more details about the clan’s population are desired, the following table can be used to randomly determine a clan’s population multiplier:

Random Clan Pop Multiplier
2D	Multiplier
2	1
3	9
4	3
5	5
6	8
7	7
8	8
9	6
10	4
11	9
12	2

For example, let’s say we wanted to determine the population of a clan with Holdings 7. Rolling 2D we get 8 for a Pop Code of 8, or hundreds of millions. Rolling 2D we get 9 for a population multiplier of 6, for a clan population of 600,000 million.

The following table summarizes typical populations for different Aslan clan types.

Summary of Aslan Clan Size
Sovereignty	Clan Type	Number	Pop Codes			Mean Population
Sovereignty	Clan Type	Number	Min	Max	Median	Mean Population
Sovereign	Tlaukhu (AsTX)	29	A	A	A	62.5 billion
	Multiworld (AsMw)	76	4	A	8	21 billion
	Single World (AsWc)	930	4	A	6	2.2 billion
	Small	1,200	4	7	5	6.7 million
Vassal	Tlaukhu, Direct (AsTv)	102	4	A	7	5.6 billion
	Tlaukhu, Indirect (AsTv)	254	4	A	7	4.5 billion
	Vassal, Direct (AsVc)	190	4	A	7	3.4 billion
	Vassal, Indirect (AsVc)	380	4	A	7	3.4 billion
	Small Vassal	861	4	7	5	6.7 million

Footnotes

¹ The average Tlaukhu clan would be expected to directly control 36 worlds across the entire Hierate. Population A worlds occur at a rate of approximately 2.77%, so each Tlaukhu member would be expected to only have one such world. Given the vagaries of random worldgen, a Tlaukhu member might have more than one world, or—more likely—some Tlaukhu members might directly control no Pop A worlds.

² If one wished to have a Hierate with larger numbers of smaller clans, clans of smaller than size 4 could easily be added back in—they are just too small to be counted in the “more than 4,000 clans” estimate from CT Aslan. A million Pop 3 clans only amount to a population of 5 billion, barely a rounding error in the total population of Hierate.

Copyright Information

The illustration at the top of the blog is by William H. Keith from Travellers’ Digest 17 (1989).

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Aslan Clan Holdings

A deep-seated territorial instinct causes male Aslan to have an inordinate… concern for the acquisition and control of land. The ownership of land is a major goal in the lives of most Aslan males. An Aslan’s stature is determined by the amount of land he (or her husband) controls, and the amount of land controlled by his family, pride, or clan (CT Aslan 4).

A landscape from Iywaiwofu (DARK 0337 A654349-C), the starkly beautiful, low-population homeworld of the ancient Erleihku clan.

In order to develop an Aslan clan profile that summarizes a clan’s capabilities and resources, it makes sense to begin by developing a new characteristic that defines the extent of landholds controlled by the entire clan.

The Classic Traveller government codes for Aslan worlds demonstrate a distinct clan hierarchy based on the clan’s sovereighty and the number of worlds controlled:

Tlaukhu
Multiworld
Single World
Small clan
Tlaukhu Vassal
Independent Vassal
Small Vassal

These categories undoubtedly overlap. A Tlaukhu Vassal, for example, might be much more powerful than a Multiworld clan, and a Multiworld clan might have less esteem than an ancient Single World clan.

A Holdings characteristic for an entire clan has some precedent in individual character generation. In the CT Alien module, Aslan characters can acquire landholds as a mustering out benefit during character generation; the amount of land is based on the Aslan’s SOC score. Aslan of higher social levels gain larger and larger landholds. (MgT uses a different mechanic.)

Although Traveller⁵ does not have Aslan-specific character generation details, a character can win a Land Grant as a mustering out benefit, which is similar in concept. Each grant conveys economic control over 1 Land Hex, which is 10 km across, or 8,700 sq km in area. (Although the text says 6,500 sq km, I don’t think that’s correct.) Economic control is the ability to collect taxes, fees, rents, and so on. The Grant also provides outright ownership of one Local Hex, which is 100 km across, or approximately 87 sq km in area. (again, the text says 65 sq km.) This is more akin to the Aslan benefit and we can translate the CT Land Benefit into Traveller⁵ Local Hexes:

Aslan Land Benefit
SOC	Local Hexes
9	1
A	2
B	12
C	120
D	1,200
E	12,000
F	120,000

Traveller⁵ details even larger units of area than the Land Hex: the World Hex, which is 1,000 km from the center of one hex to the center of an adjacent hex, or approximately 870,000 sq km in area. And World Hexes seem like an appropriate basic unit of measurement for Clan landholdings. The following table assigns clan holdings on a familiar scale of 0 to 10 (A):

Clan Holdings
Code	Description	Notes
0	up to 11 world hexes	–
1	12–41 world hexes	–
2	42–91 world hexes	–
3	92–161 world hexes	–
4	162+ world hexes	Maximum for Small clan
5	1 mainworld	Single World clan
6	2–3 mainworlds	Minimum for Multiworld clan
7	4–7 mainworlds	Maximum for Independent Vassal clan
8	8–15 mainworlds	–
9	16–31 mainworlds	–
A	32+ mainworlds	Tlaukhu clan

This table describes only those holdings directly controlled by the clan, and does not include those holdings held in fief by vassal clans. A clan typically possesses additional holdings on non-mainworlds comparable to their mainworld holdings. A Multiworld clan, for example, that controlled 3 mainworlds would also control 3 secondary worlds, such as a gas giant moon or a small mining world.

Clans with holdings of 5 or more typically have landholds on a number of split control worlds equal to the number of mainworlds they wholly control, and perhaps many more. A clan that controlled 5 worlds outright, for example, would also have landholds on 5 or more split control worlds.

A clan’s holdings can be randomly determined by rolling 1D and consulting the following table:

Random Clan Holdings
Sovereignty	Clan Type	Allegiance	1D
Sovereignty	Clan Type	Allegiance	1	2	3	4	5	6
Sovereign	Tlaukhu	AsTX	A	A	A	A	A	A
	Multiworld	AsMw	7*	8	8	9	9	A
	Single World	AsWc	5	5	5	5	5	5
	Small	–	0	0	1	2	3	4
Vassal	Tlaukhu, Direct	AsTv	5	6	6	7	7	7
	Tlaukhu, Secondary	AsTv	4	5	6	6	7	7
	Independent, Direct	AsVc	3	4	5	6	6	7
	Independent, Secondary	AsVc	3	4	5	6	6	7
	Small vassal	–	0	0	0	1	2	3

* Roll 1D; on 1–2, Holdings = 6, on 3+, Holdings = 7.

Copyright Information

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Aslan Clan Profiles

We have estimated the holdings of Tlaukhu clans, as well as the number and holdings of their vassals. And we’ve estimated the number, types, and holdings of independent clans. So let’s recap:

Estimated Number of Hierate Clans by Type
Sovereignty	Clan Type	Allegiance	Number
Sovereign	Tlaukhu	AsTX	29
	Multiworld	AsMw	76
	Single World	AsWc	930
	Small	–	1,200
Vassal	Tlaukhu, Direct	AsTv	102
	Tlaukhu, Secondary	AsTv	254
	Independent, Direct	AsVc	190
	Independent, Secondary	AsVc	380
	Small Vassal	–	861
Total			4,022

A little more than half of the clans in the Hierate hold only a part of a world or worlds, which structurally feels right to me.

Now that we’ve sketched out the potential number of various Aslan clans in the Hierate, why not develop some additional details for each clan type? Several years ago the late Hans Rancke-Madsen had an interesting piece in the Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society Online, then published by Steve Jackson Games to support the GURPS Traveller line. His scenario focused on the Loaktarl * clan and their recent setbacks:

The Loaktarl clan is a venerable old clan fallen on hard times… Around the time of the Great Conclave, the Loaktarl clan was ranked 31st and was a serious contender for membership in the Tlaukhu. It dominated almost half of Ealiyasiyw Sector and was active in parts of Reavers’ Deep, trying to prevent other clans from settling worlds the clan lords had their eyes on… Two years ago, the Loaktarl ranked 271st, with about 11 billion members and seven vassal clans totaling another 9 billion. They owned eight worlds outright and had landholds on another 19. Today they are ranked 730th, with roughly 2 billion members scattered on 16 worlds. They control no worlds outright and all—or, arguably, all but one—of their vassals have deserted them. All of their holdings are menaced by greedy neighbors (The Loaktarl and the Hkastahistoti).

Ilekhakhe (Ealiyasiyw 2828 B567552-A), the ancient homeworld of the Loaktarl clan.

I remember being struck by how useful it would be to know any clan’s population, holdings, vassals, and rank. Although many of these details were probably developed merely to illustrate the depth of the Loaktarl’s fall, knowing Hans I am sure he thought very carefully about what numbers to use here.

Within the Hierate, each clan is essentially an independent government. As such, I use a system to describe individual clans that builds on an ingenious idea from Andy Slack: Traveller’s Universal World Profile could be adapted to describe entire interstellar governments.

Utilizing UWP-style codes to define a clan provides a general sense of a clan’s characteristics and capabilities, but is also abstract enough to offer lots of wiggle room. UWP codes allow us to compare different clans on a relative basis.

While the planetary data in the UWP doesn’t make sense for describing an interstellar state, the social data—population, government type, law level, and technology level—certainly does. Since all clans embrace one variation or another of feudalism, a government code is unnecessary. But Population, Law Level, and TL all could be useful.

What other characteristics might be useful for defining an Aslan clan? As land is a critical differentiator for clans, a stat that captured the size of a clan’s holdings seems natural. This also provides an indicator of the resources a clan commands.

A characteristic that describes the clan’s relative reputation or social status could also be useful, akin to an individual’s Social Standing score. A clan Status characteristic should be correlated to clan Population and Holdings, but should probably be separate. A small clan, its holdings reduced to a string of islands, might have a relatively high status if it had a prestigious lineage and history of honorable conduct. In contrast, a large and mighty parvenu clan that gained its wealth by betraying allies might have relatively low Status.

Two other “outlook” charecteristics—let’s call them Aggression and Traditionalism—can be used like D&D alignment to help define a clan’s general perspective and attitude.

In the next few posts I’ll lay out the key characteristics that can help us define a clan.

* The Aslan clan Rancke wrote about in JTAS Online is obviously the same one at the center of the “Syareahtaorl” adventure from CT Aslan. I am not entirely sure why Hans used variant spellings for the names of the clan and its homeworld—Loaktarl instead of Loakhtarl, Ilekhakhe instead of Ilekhahke. His spellings are a little simpler, eliminating a redundant “h.” I would be very surprised if he didn’t post some very definitive opinions on Trokh orthography at some point.