Lon Beon

Lon Beon is the name given to a legendary human domain that lies far to spinward of the Distant Fringe.

Description / Specifications

A mythical or fictional state that supposedly lies far to spinward, within the Centrum Cluster, around the Maw of The Rift, far beyond even the fabled realm of the Slavers. It is said to lie at the point where the river without suns meets the ocean with no stars, upon infinitys shore, at that place where the stars end. The quote, the opening monologue of the popular sci-fi show "Infinitys Shore", has become the accepted location.

Astrographic charting has located the positions and types of all the stars within Centrum Cluster, the greater grouping of stars that Lon Beon is a part of. The region identified as Lon Beon contains an unusually high number of Received Signal Sources, further fuelling the debate over whether there is a kernel of truth to the Lon Beon myth.

History & Background / Dossier

The core of the Lon Beon tale is that it was founded by the Dissident Fleet, those elements of the Last Armada who decided to continue onwards rather than settle the Demon Cluster, today's Distant Fringe. The crews of those vessels are supposed to have met the Slavers on their journey and recovered extremely advanced artifacts, which they were able to reverse-engineer and utilise, granting them incredibly high levels of technology.

Popular Culture

Lon Beon is a popular sci-fi trope within the Distant Fringe:

• Within the various stories, Lon Beon is opposed by the evil Empire of Thrax, a domain controlled by cyborg-worm Sophonts and their symbiote allies, who have a comparable degree of technology and an urge to wipe out the plucky humans.
  • Lon Beon and the Empire of Thrax are reckoned to lie somewhere between TL18 to TL23, depending on the writer of the story and the nature of the deus ex machina required to conclude the tale.
  • The technology of both Lon Beon and the Empire of Thrax relies on the Centrum Device, located in the Centrum system, a trinary star system centered on a pair of white dwarf stars. The Device has varying abilities and functions depending on the story, but primarily allows ships to travel tens of parsecs with a single jump. The Centrum Device has occasionally served as an ansible. The Device also serves as a jump inhibitor, precipitating vessels out of jumpspace within a parsec of the system.

Lon Beon is ruled by The Technocrat, an immortal, all-powerful leader with his own dark agenda and aims.

Artefacts and Devices

A number of devices are known to be employed by Lon Beon:

• Doormakers: suspension capsules containing a substance referred to as Grey Goo, made up of nanos in a nutrition/dispersal gel. It can be sprayed onto a surface in order to melt a hole through it. The nanos will not interact with living biological materials, unless the plot really calls for it.
• Quantum Tap: a self-sustaining power plant that draws on the mathematical substrate of the universe. It produces tremendous power but consumes no fuel; it requires an external power source in order to start.

References & Contributors / Sources

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master Scout Emeritus Adie Alegoric Stewart of the IISS
• Author & Contributor: Tom Chlebus
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science