DOC-03 · PLANETARY GUIDE · SYSTEM DOSSIER

Morven

TriStar Universe Divergence Notice

This article documents the TriStar Interstellar campaign universe. Canon records almost nothing of Morven beyond map data and a long-standing training-cadre garrison; this universe takes the hint and builds the school.

Morven is where the Periphery March learns to fight. Eighteen light-years from Memphis — close enough for the factories, far enough for the live-fire — the planet's high open steppes and hard-pan basins host the densest concentration of ranges, academies, and proving grounds in the rimward Federated Suns. The March's joke is that Morven has two seasons, gunnery and advanced gunnery. Morven's joke is that the March keeps sending it students, so somebody must be doing something right.

The Cadre World

Morven's identity was fixed by the AFFS itself: the First Albion Training Cadre garrisoned the world for a generation (3025–3050), running the Albion academy system's field phases across terrain that punishes carelessness and forgives nothing else. The March, in its quiet way, built around the cadre rather than beside it — Memphis Motive Works sited its vehicle proving grounds on Morven in the 3030s, the TSG leased range space, and the University of the Stars network added the technical colleges that turn range crews into careers. By mid-century, Morven was that rarest of arrangements: a world where AFFS instructors, corporate test engineers, and mercenary-registered soldiers shared the same firing schedules and the same three bars in Range Town, an intimacy the Quiet File both noted and, characteristically, filed.

The Grenadier School. Where Sherwood's Jabberwocky School teaches the war of the canopy, Morven's Grenadier School teaches the war of the open: massed fires, heavy formations, combined-arms gunnery at distances the forests never allow. Every Guards heavy company qualifies on the Morven basins; MMW's acceptance trials run on the adjacent ranges; and the annual TriStar Cup gunnery meet between Guards, militia, and (unofficially, persistently) visiting AFFS crews is the closest thing the March has to a planetary holiday that involves ordnance.

The 21st

When the Clans came, Morven's answer was waiting on its own ranges. The 21st Morven Grenadiers, raised 3050, drew its cadre from Grenadier School instructors, MMW test crews, cadre-trained militia, and the graduating classes of a world that had spent twenty-five years teaching everyone else — the newest regiment in the Guards with the oldest average tonnage and the least apologetic doctrine. The 21st exists to answer the question the rest of the brigade's communications culture prefers to defer: what if talking fails? On Morven, the regiment is simply "the faculty."

Morven in 3070

Forty-four million people, most of them within commuting distance of something that explodes professionally. The economy runs on instruction, testing, and the service trades of both; the exports are qualified crews, validated equipment, and range-certified doctrine. Canon's later history — Filtvelt accession in 3072 — never occurs here (see: D-009); Morven's students would have had opinions.

Differences from the Canonical Timeline

Cross-reference: D-009, D-010, D-011.

Range Hare — all Morven entries →