The Travellers

The Travellers are a loose coalition of nomads, bound only by a few common traditions and pieces of technology. They began as a sort of counter-cultural movement during the height of pre-Imperial colonization, choosing to remain on their ships rather than settle on new worlds. Over the years they have established a network of outposts, though only a few are known to outsiders. The locations of the rest are known only to the Travellers - all that is known for sure is that they are located in deep space. As far as anyone knows, there have only been three instances in recorded history where a non-Traveller ship has happened upon a Traveller outpost. In each case a follow-up expedition was mounted, and in each case nothing was found at the coordinates except empty space.

Along witht he United Empire of Sol and Proxima, the Travellers are one of the main sponsors of the GalWik project.

Scientific Endeavours
The Travellers are known for their scientific curiosity, and have contributed enormously to the STARCAT database of all stars and the HABCAT database of stars with planetary systems. There no known stars within 100 light years of Sol that the Travellers have not charted, although the veracity of the HABCAT database is questioned by some. While the Travellers are dedicated to free and open access to their data - even going so far as to launch military action against any individual, organization, or government that attempts to suppress or restrict access - there is a sizeable minority of the galactic population that believes that the HABCAT database is "incomplete". They argue that it is in the Travellers' best interests to hold back the location of a few habitable planets in the event that some unforseen cataclysm forces them to abandon their nomadic lifestyle, at least temporarily.

A few conspiracy nuts believe that the Travellers have found evidence of alien life, either in the form of a living, thriving civilization, or the ruins of a long-dead race, and so are suppressing that information as part of a diabolical plot to enslave the human race. The only people who take these claims seriously are the ones who are making them.

In addition to the basic information contained in the STARCAT and HABCAT databases, the Travellers also operate and moderate StarWik, a wiki which contains detailed data on all the stars in STARCAT. This data is gathered via automated sensor platforms that the Travellers leave behind in every system they visit. Some of the more "popular" destinations may have multiple platforms, but since each Traveller ship's platforms contain different sensor packages, they see no problem with this. The data is consolidated into StarWik, which has centuries of observational data about every single star in STARCAT. StarWik also has data from at least two dozen deep-space telescopes, which have been gathering information on astronomical phenomena for several hundred years.

StarWik was the main inspiration for the GalWik project.