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Description
[2300AD]
An independent trader either uses his own ship, or rents space on
other ships, for mercantile activities. The merchant’s goals are to
purchase strange, exotic materials on the fringes of human space for
sale to the hungry masses at the Core.
Spacecraft travel
routinely between stars in the year 2300. Because there is a great
deal of time involved in space travel, most crews on starships learn
to serve many different functions
[Dark Æther]
Spacers are the men and women who crew the ships plying the
ether-lanes of the Solar System, whether those vessels are tramp
freighters or massive cruise liners.
[Traveller (TNE)]
When Virus drove a billion computers into howling insanity, when
thousands of ships burned up in atmospheres or opened their airlocks
to let hard vacuum consume their crews, only the decrepit and
obsolete tramp merchant vessels — with computers too stupid to be
infected — survived. For nearly a century, that tattered network of
ramshackle ships was all that remained of interstellar trade in most
of human-settled space. The men and women who crew the Free Traders
are a breed unto themselves, as stubbornly self-reliant as they
come.
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