I’m wondering about cold berths, and not about the survivability angle.
A little background:
So, in the excellent Traveller novel Agent of the Imperium we see where the cold berth used quite a bit in certain chapters. At one point the main character Bland describes the process of sending “used up” copies to all corners of Charted Space via cold berths; if memory serves the longest of these trips took over ten years, from Reference to Lair.
A while ago I wrote a supplement about Stewards ( of all things ), and memories of the above bits rose a few flags for me. I’ve gone half blind tonight following conversations here and other places searching on “cold berths.” Apparently, someone starts talking about them and it always leads to talk about survivability. And dice mechanics. And survivability. And more dice mechanics, and more surv… well, you know.
I don’t care about any of that right now. At the moment I’m wondering – if I purchase cold berth passage and ship myself from Reference to Lair ( as one does ), from what I read in AotI I’m under ( sleeping/frozen ) the whole way there. This is kind of a logistical thing. Also healthier, given the Low Lottery silliness.
Someone in one of the many discussion threads I researched mentioned that all corpsicle containers are standard and interchangeable.
Hmmmm, okay.
Maybe. Let’s say that’s true. How does the hand off work, do you think?
I’m pretty sure the ship I board at Reference isn’t going all the way to Lair so at some point, probably a lot of points, my bod gets transferred. Have you ever lost luggage when flying? Yikes. Even if that never happened, and no one ever decided to reroute me somewhere terminal to get cut up for parts, ransom, or other awful ends… I’m wondering how the hand off works.
The far trader Professor Bananas drops me at Proytheyath, 2 parsecs away from my origin on Reference. Do I get put into some sort of storage until someone along my probable route passes by and accepts me? How do they get paid? Who pays for storing me? Who’s watching over all of this handing off and being paid?
In My Traveller Universe, the Steward ( who takes care of all sophont passengers, animate or otherwise ) would see my frozen bod to… someone on Proytheyath. The Steward of another ship? Maybe in Core that works all the time, but I suspect in the further reaches I’m left chilling out (I could not resist ) somewhere.
I’m just wondering how all that works. I’ll put a bit more thought into it and see what I can come up with. I hear there’s a Traveller’s Digest article out there somewhere about suspended animation that can help in this.
For the record, I think the whole Low Lottery idea is hard to swallow given the amount of time and tech and all that. It stretches realism a bit too much, and I feel like it was added into the game because Back in the Day it played so well in inspirational books.