The Legion

Posted by Bryant on December 23, 2003 at 11:52 PM

This is a rather ancient piece that I wrote back in 1997, and I'm not entirely sure it's 20 by 20 Room fodder, but xiombarg reminded me of it just now and I figured I'd err on the side of more posts rather than less. Thus, I offer up Trinity imagined as classic space opera.

I just reread Jack Williamson's classic Three From The Legion, which is a collection of three shorter novels telling the tales of those brave men who fought against unknown dangers to preserve the safety of the planet Earth. (Although not the moon; that got blown up early on.)

So OK, Trinity is a neat whizbang setting which you can do a lot of things in. Er, in which you can do a lot of things. I'd love to see someone playing around with this kind of classic space opera. Aeon Trinity sets up a neutral space force which is tasked with providing an honorable presence in the Solar System -- vitally important given the lack of any real governing body! If a man kills a man between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, who has jurisdiction? Why, the Aeon Patrol, of course!

The Patrol is young yet, unsurprisingly. It is divided into three main branches: There is first the Marshals, which is what most people think of when they think of the Patrol. This branch provides a neutral court of law out on the frontier. Marshals patrol the solar system either alone or, more commonly, in groups of two or three. They will not attempt to enforce their decisions, or even make them when not invited, but when good men need a strong hand to deal with scoundrels, the Marshals will be there.

Secondly, there is the Watchers. The Watchers spend their time in the far reaches of the system, out even to the Oort Cloud in the most extreme cases. Watchers are more likely than Marshals to work alone, although there are some who prefer company -- but the type of man and woman who dedicates a life to watching for unknown menaces from beyond the stars is often not one who needs much company. While it's true that ISRA obviates much of the need for these Patrolmen, Aeon Trinity argues that clairvoyants can't watch everywhere and that even in the age of the psion, the non-Gifted are not redundant.

Finally, there are the Scientists. (Every space opera setting needs 'em.) The Scientists are exactly what they sound like; working out of research labs all over the solar system, they produce the technology that keeps the Patrol running. But don't get the idea that these brains can't take care of themselves in a fight. Every Patrolman goes through the full Patrol training at the Patrol Academy on the Moon.

The head of the Patrol is the much venerated Jason Grimes, known as the Commander to those who serve under him. He is big, gruff, taciturn; a brilliant leader, his soft heart is shown only to his closest friends. These include Maria Hsung, the cool-headed commander of the Marshals; Jonno Saint, the quiet self-effacing commander of the Watchers, and Patrick Grady, the engineer who keeps the Scientists in line.

Few commanding officers of the Patrol (which does have a semi-military structure) are psions, but there's no bias against them. Aeon Trinity appoints the overall head and the three sub-commanders, and while at present none of them are psions this is simply a coincidence.

Patrol campaigns are most likely to have the PCs as Marshals, although the other two branches are not impossible. Scenarios range from discovering an abandoned ship with a deadly mystery on board to resolving a dispute between two asteroids before it boils over into violence to an all-system alert regarding a deadly escaped prisoner. This writeup postulates a light-hearted wide open tone, because that's what I love about classic space opera, but this is not an absolute necessity by any means.

Besides the Jack Williamson book mentioned above, good references include anything by E. E. "Doc" Smith and any of the Legion of Super-Hero comics that have been published over the last umpteen years.