Sociology

History of Trantor

Mid Interregnum Period

Trantor lay in ruins. Among the ruins, there lived a community of farmers, the who called themselves the Hamish. They produced the finest agricultural crops throughout the Galaxy. Once trade was re-established with Trantor, ironically enough by the Foundation. It was tentative at best, but the Foundation saw Trantor as a new market to be traded with, and Trantor blossomed as a far and ancient destination that attracted tourists and trade for her fine crops.

The Mule appeared on the Galactic scene with the conquest of Kalgan, the pleasure capital of the Galaxy. His conquest was a remarkable coup of the first order. Upon accession, he styled himself First Citizen of the Galaxy, and set to making this title real. The extreme nature of his mentalic abilities was not lost on Second Foundation agents on Kalgan, but poor communication with Trantor did not alert the Second Foundation as a whole to the threat that he posed, until too late. This error was to cost the Galaxy the Foundation, and nearly cost the Second Foundation the Seldon Plan. The First Foundation agent, Han Pritcher, Captain of the Foundation Navy, did learn gradually of the Mule's mutant powers, but only succeeded in communicating his knowledge by accident to the Mule, then masquerading as a menial servant of his own. Pritcher went back to Terminus in the company of Toran Darrell and his young wife, who were both heading back to the Foundation after a brush with Kalganian Security officers, which itself was a ruse by the Mule to get into their circle. Trantor was now in jeopardy as the seat of the Second Foundation when the Mule encountered Ebling Mis, who was the only psychologist of the Foundation, a rarity on a world whose specialty was physical science, a necessary requirement of the Seldon Plan. The Mule realised that the services of Mis were essential to the discovery of the Second Foundation and, in order to make use of Mis, the Foundation would have to be successfully invaded and beaten, for the first time in its recorded history. The Seldon Plan had been severely damaged, and the Second Foundation on Trantor scurried to make a contingency plan.

Under the Mule's manipulation, Mis was maneuvered to Trantor so that he could examine the Library Annex, which was open to the public of Trantor, get the records of the Seldon Convention, and try to find the location of the Second Foundation, for which the Darells searched, as aid to fight the Mule. Mis finally made the discovery of the location with the Mule's mental drive killing him in the process. But it was Darrell's wife, Bayta, that murdered Mis just before making his announcement, in front of the Mule. Mrs. Darrell was not under the Mule's 'Control', as the Mule so labeled it, and so could be manipulated at close range by the Second Foundation itself. Trantor was saved from the Mule's wrath this first time by the action of the Second Foundation.

The Mule after this defeat, returned to his Palace, and brooded before launching several more searches for the Second Foundation. By this time his conquests by the 'Converted' Admirals had made him ruler of a territory truly Imperial in scope; almost a third of the galaxy's population and at least a quarter of it's territory. All was maintained by the scientific power at the Mule's disposal in the form of the Foundation at Terminus.

Captain Pritcher, once the Mule's greatest enemy before conversion, was now the Mule's second in command. Conversion, as practiced by the Mule, was no ordinary process. Men converted were done so by the mentalic power of his mighty mind, and the form of this Conversion was a complete re-structuring of their entire mind set. The Mule's conversion was done at a distance, and maintained, to the Second Foundation's consternation, out of eyeshot. This power was completely out of the ken of men, and even to a Second Foundationer. Yet, the Second Foundation rallied against him still, and actually began tampering with the Mule's converted men, removing their initiative, which the Mule left untouched. The Mule's suspicions grew out of this tampering, as it naturally would, since there was only one power that could successfully thwart his plans : that was the Second Foundation, working to keep Trantor secure. Their continuous work had already nearly betrayed Trantor as their seat, and even the Mule did not conquer Trantor, which was in his grasp. Trantor was saved from suspicion by the incident of Bail Channis at Rossem, where the First Speaker of the Second Foundation managed, by supreme skill, to perform a modification of his own on the Mule This act changed the course of Galactic history  by making the Mule a man of peace, rather than war. Trantor was once more secure.

Trantor neatly disappeared from Galactic scrutiny, such as it was, at the Mule's death, when the Foundation and her Territories broke away. This breakage was monitored by Second Foundation agents in Foundation space.Trantor was safeguarded from any further attention as the Galaxy focussed on the re-emergence of the First Foundation. Scarcely as the Foundation embarked upon the course of Empire, than the first batch of psychologists appeared in Foundation scientific circles. They were a direct threat to Trantor and the Second Foundation. Yet, the chief of them,  Toran Darrell, jr., was manipulated directly by Second Foundation intervention, in the shape of Pelleas Anthor, and by the manipulation of his daughter, Arkady Darrell, later a noted author of mid-interregnum fiction.

The Stettinian war was a result of the Foundation breaking away from the Mule's empire. Lord Stettin, 12th Lord of Kalgan, started a war with the Foundation.  During the war, Homir Munn, a Foundation librarian an "Mule" expert, was held prisoner by Stettin in order that he might discover the Second Foundation's location amongst the records and memorabilia still housed in the Mule's palace on Kalgan.  Stettin hoped that if he, himself, defeated the Second Foundation, the First would crumble without their psychohistoric crutch. Arkady Darrell, grand daughter of Bayta, had originally accompanied Munn to Kalgan but was able to escape to Trantor with the help of Second Foundation agents and no less than the First Speaker, Preem Palver, himself. There she was delicately manipulated into believing that the seat of the Second Foundation was actually on Terminus itself, using very logical precepts. Despite the fact that there now existed a primitive form of psychology on Terminus, none were able to infer Seldon's glib statement of the position of the Second Foundation. This is because Seldon had true psychology as his backing, and they did not. Dr. Darell worked out a form of Magnetic Field Resonator that caused pain to mentalically trained minds. Dr Darell accepted Arkady's explanation that the Second Foundation was on Terminus, and could find no manipulative forces on Arkady's brainwave patterns, as a direct consequence of Leffert's theorem of frontal lobe analytical curves. The Second Foundation agents on Terminus, and the few on outer worlds, died for the Second Foundation's safety leaving the First Foundation's fledgling mental scientists without anything to do. Yet Trantor still managed to manipulate galactic affairs, and that was nearly to her undoing as the Interregnum approached it's mid point.