Editing Long Night

[[File: RuleOfManIcon128.png|right]]
([[-1776]] to [[0]]): [[Long Night]] 
* The Long Night was a period of intense anarchy, widespread tragedy, and interstellar disaster between the fall of one major polity, the [[Second Imperium]] or [[Rule of Man]], and the succeeding polity, the [[Third Imperium]].
* Also called an ''interregnum'' and represents the historical period extending from the [[Second Imperium]] to the [[Third Imperium]].
* A timeline in <i>Traveller: The New Era</i> gives 2992AD or -1526 as the start date of the Long Night [p.9].

== Description ([[Specifications]]) ==
The period of interstellar decline and anarchy between the fall of the [[Rule of Man]] (also known as the [[Second Imperium]]) and the establishment of the [[Third Imperium]] by [[Cleon I]]. 
* The [[galaxy]] is only just emerging from this period which is commonly held to be from [[-1776]] to [[0]] according to the [[Imperial calendar]].

== History & Background ([[Dossier]]) ==
It was a period where worlds were cut off from one another, technology was lost and the population on many worlds simply failed to survive. 

It could be said that the [[First Imperium]] was "meta-stable": stable, but only because of active effects enabled by its stability.  Disrupt it (such as by the slow decay that was already occurring prior to the [[Interstellar Wars]], or by said wars themselves), and it would not naturally return to its prior state.

The main facilitator of this meta-stability was trade.  Many worlds depended on routine import of components - manufactured things, rare ores, or the like - not locally available.  Once routine import was disrupted, the colony's capabilities deteriorated (in many cases, life itself became impossible, resulting in a [[Dieback World]]), so it could not in turn supply its unique components that other worlds depended on.  There were a few worlds with all the basics to support their own technologically advanced civilization, but as the worlds around them collapsed, supporting them - previously a profitable activity - often became unprofitable, then unsustainable, and in those cases such efforts eventually ceased.

Many of the "false dawns" were centered around a brief resurgence in interstellar trade that turned out to be unsustainable.  The birth of the [[Third Imperium]] was as much about financial engineering (learning from over a thousand years of failed attempts all across the [[First Imperium|former]] [[Second Imperium|Imperiums]]) as about [[Fusion+]] or any other specific factor.

== References ==
{{Intermediate}}
{{Sources
| {{Ludography cite|name=Library Data (A-M)|page=6}}
| {{Ludography cite|name=The Solomani Rim|page=5}}
| {{Ludography cite|name=Solomani|version=Classic Traveller|page=8}}
| {{Ludography cite|name=Imperial Encyclopedia|page=6}}
| {{Ludography cite|name=Traveller: The New Era}}
| {{Ludography cite|name=The Third Imperium|page=60}}
}}

{{LE|History}}