You know, all this talk of the beached Tigress has got me thinking about the *alternative* scenario.

Generation ship!

The Tigress misJumps 36 parsecs, J-drive totally shot, M-drive fine.  But in this case there isn't a handy planet to put down on or no emergency requirement to do so.

Knowing they were out on the fringes, and knowing rescue is unlikely, they decide to go home the long way.

Perhaps leaving some crew behind as colonists (either because not everyone wants to go or because of overcrowding problems later on), with 20,000 of them there's plenty of gene pool for both.

This would be an interesting environment 100+ years on either for PCs aboard the ship or for PCs encountering it. (Or both if you're following the model we tried out at TravCon last March!)

While the military discipline might hold things together for longer than otherwise might be the case, I can still imagine quite a 'different' sort of society aboard after a fair bit of time and several generations.  And of course there's always the traditional complete breakdown after mutiny, conflict, disease or whatever if you want to head in a more Metamorphosis Alpha sort of direction.

I wonder if its too late to add this seed to my submission of _Generation X_ to Mongoose?

Consumables would presumably be the biggest problem given the lack of planning for this, perhaps making the journey back even longer as they stop off to replenish and/or drop off more would be colonists.

But is there anything such a 'city' in space would be missing from its initial set up as a military fighting machine not exactly planning for such a trip?  (I'm assuming a normal mixed crew and not a p/matriarchal culture of only one gender in the military).  Or is it self-contained enough that this actually wouldn't be too hard for them?  Or maybe the IN plan for just such a contingency.

tc