History of the RimWorlds #7 – The Klarthur Confederacy: scratching at the surface.

“And later in the bulletin, we will have an extended interview with Lord Saaroi hault-Creaso, Vice-Regal Minister for Exploration, on the implications of Klarthur Confederacy claims to systems in the Riinu and Daltharmai Subsectors to further Imperial expansion in the RimWorlds Sector. But first, results just in from the Berimar’s Sceptre Aeroball League …”

In spite of resistance by the Klarthur Confederacy, the Imperium continued to expand into the RimWorlds. Following the path of least resistance, Imperial colonisation moved Rimward from Berimar’s Sceptre Subsector into Thurgandarn, and then into Nolgor Subsector. The Perrsherrik Rift halted the march to the Rim for a few years, but by 552 Imperial forces under Sector Duke Kolin II Venuraski had penetrated the Coreward end of the Gazul Subsector.

Design Notes:
And this brings us back to the thorny issue of the Klarthur Confederacy. After some thought, I have come to the following conclusions:

The Klarthur Confederacy is named for a nebula – the Klarthur Nebula - in Aemilor Subsector.

The dominant species in the Klarthur Confederacy is the H’ran, an aggressive bipedal reptilian race that were originally raised to sentience under the Thongaloros Empire. Serving as ground forces and shipboard marines for the Empire, the H’ran secured sufficient interstellar shipping during the collapse of the Thongaloros Empire to extend their sway over several systems in the Aemilor Subsector. The H’ran State was on the verge of collapse, as it lacked the industrial base to construct its own starships, when it overran the Gherlach, a much less aggressive but technology-savvy reptilian race.

The Gherlach were assimilated into the H’ran State as a servitor-technician caste but, soon, the Gherlach began to dominate the councils of the H’ran as they were in contact with an isolated clan of Tsalur, the ruling race of the Thongaloros Empire. The Tsalur were content to rule the expanding Klarthur Confederacy through their Gherlach servants, while the H’ran were directed to, initially, wage wars of expansion, and then to resist Imperial expansion where they could.

Droyne and Hivers

GURPs Traveller: Alien Races 3

by David Pulver, David Nilsen, Andy Slack, and David Thomas

Volume 3 of this series examines the Droyne and Hiver Major Races, considers the links between the Droyne and the Ancients, and presents the Inheritors and Lithkind Minor Races. Amongst the general information on the Hiver Federation, we are given very limited snapshots of the Ithklur (Federation Reptilian Stormtroopers), Gurvin (providers of the Federation spoken and written language) and Za’tachk (the Federation’s Bwaps) Minor Races, plus the tantilising hints that there are human-settled worlds within the Federation, and that there are a number of other Minor Races (the Young Worlds) settled along the Federation’s Rimward subsectors.

I’ve always quite liked the Droyne – what’s not to like about Psionic winged reptiles with compound eyes that prefer living in a pre-Industrial Age bucolic paradise, and may just have access to serious God-Tech? I’ve always liked how GDW first introduced the Chirpers, and then the Droyne, and then hinted at a link between the two until that became canonical.

The Secret of the Ancients Adventure from GDW tied the Droyne to the Ancients and the mysterious figure of Grandfather, though as an adventure, it quickly turned into a magical, mystical railroad ride in that the players had few options except to follow mysterious guides around or get destroyed. Story-wise, fascinating set points; adventure-wise, dull. I can just imagine some of the players from my old group attempting to steal something or blow something up just so that they’d feel like they were doing something, only to then invoke a Total Party Kill from the 300,000 year-old defence systems made by a guy who could disassemble planetary systems and create folded space-time.

If the concept of Elder Races, or Ancients, is your thing, but you dislike the Ancients as laid out by GDW, then I would recomend David Brin’s Uplift series of novels. The basic idea that a sponsor race will uplift a client race to sentience and beyond is quite fascinating. The idea that these sponsor/client relationships can form a chain stretching over millions of years is mind blowing. And the fact that there might have been a Progenitor Race seems totally logical.

The biggest attraction for having Ancients in your campaign is the opportunity to introduce limited quantities of God-tech – matter transporters, disintergrators, ships that use other forms of drive to cross interstellar distances.

So, does your Progenitor Race have to be the Droyne? Of course not. Cannonically, the Geonee Human Minor Race are convinced that they are the Ancients. In my Traveller Campaign, there was a mysterious Interstellar Empire, ruled over by hexapedal reptilians, which dominated local space but collapsed completely 500 years before Humaniti from the 3rd Imperium arrived. As this empire controlled Jump technology in the volume of space my campaign is set in, its fall destroyed any over-all picture of what the empire as a whole was like and so there are conflicting memories amongst the Minor Races who outlasted it as to the nature of the Empire. But you can still have fun sending your players chasing off after Droyne, looking for the missing link to mysterious Progenitor Races, if you so wish.

The Hivers have never been a favourite Race of mine – cannocially too far away from where I set my games, and just plain weird. The Hiver Federation, on the other hand, is quite a fascinating area of space. You have a bunch of curious, voiceless, non-aggressive starfish-like dudes whose main strength is their ability to analyse other people/species and then work out how to persuade them to follow a different set of goals to those held beforehand. It must work, as the Hiver Federation controls some 16 Sectors and has fought only one external interstellar war in the last 3000 years, which it won by turning militant vegetarians into meat-eaters, much to the horror of the K’kree Major Race.

Of the two Minor Races presented in detail, the Lithkind, apart from some rather gruesome practises that make me seriously wonder about them as a viable, high-tech species, are not that really exciting or new – forest pixies have been done elsewhere – though they are presented in quite a logical manner.

The Inheritors, low-gravity Chinese dragon-like creatures, I actually find more interesting. That is, apart from the fluorine-based metabolism. The latter is just so hard to fit into a campaign that, to me, it rather limits their usefulness. If they had been methane breathers, then the whole C.J. Cherryh Compact Space story arc could have kicked in. But fluorine? Having said that, I may adapt them for my game anyway, if only by crossing out "fluorine" in the text and writing in "methane".

So, a bit of an uneven book, but the snippets of information on some of the supporting cast for the Hivers is well worth looking at, particularly if you are contemplating a campaign in the Crucis Margin or Glimmerdrift Sectors.

I seem to recall that I got my copy from Steve Jackson Games’ Warehouse 23, as it came with a separate sheet of Droyne Coyns, printed on light card. I believe that this book is no longer available from there, and it does not seem to be available from Steve Jackson Games’ e-23 ebook repository, either, which is a shame. I would suggest either bugging SJG until they put the ebook up, or watching ebay for a copy to come up.

Alien Minor Race: The Johdari

During a couple of days holiday out at the beach at Maraetai, I finally had a chance to play around with “Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation” that I reviewed back here.

It is a very quick and simple system to use, and I really enjoyed playing with it. I did find that having a vague idea of the alien race you wished to create enabled you to visualise the created alien more easily. Below is the second alien race I created – the Johdari – a member species of the Outrim Alliance and the race of the character Kephar Oanneshhu, the Engineer in the Webcomic “The BurrowWolf”.

The Johdari
Johdari are a humanoid Minor Race descended from nocturnal arboreal Omnivore/Hunter stock and are native to the planet Johunshhizair/Entorth A-886883-C.

Johdari are warm-blooded, have two genders and are egg-layers. Of Medium Build, though smaller and slighter than humans, they possess bilateral symmetary; have a pair of arms ending in two-fingered hands; and a pair of legs ending in two-prehensile toed feet, each with an apposable gripping spur. They are Fast, moving at 9m, Natural Climbers with Notable Dexterity (2d6+1), and posses a prehensile tail. Built for short, quick chases, they soon tire, having a Weak Endurance (2d6-1). Razor sharp teeth (Natural Weapon – Teeth) and Low Light Vision enabled primative Johdari to dominate the jungles of Johunshhizair, traits that their star-faring descendants still posses.

Maturing at Age 18, Johdari start aging around Age 38 (5 terms) and then slowly (DM+1 to aging rolls). All Johdari benefit from their government’s advanced education system and have Notable Education (2d6+1).

Skin colour ranges from dark brown to jet black and the skin is covered with a fine, downy, fur of a similar colour.

Aliens Ate My Baby - Part 2: Bring me my rubber suit and latex eyeridges

Recently I saw a discussion on either The Miniatures Page or one of the Traveller Yahoo groups where a poster was asking after an article on alien construction that appeared in Dragon Magazine back in the 1980s. I remember the article, and I think I actually have a copy of it in my box of RPG stuff. It was quite an innovative article for its time in some respects, in that the physical characteristics of an alien race were defined by a series of dice rolls on a sequence of tables. The idea was to get away from the Classic Star Trek aliens ‘with latex brow ridges or different coloured skin paint’, and generate aliens that were, well, alien.

Of the Classic Traveller alien races, the Zhodani were just tall, turban-wearing psionic human, the Vargr were dogmen (and usually played as anarchic sociopaths), the Aslan were mock-samurai catmen and the Droyne were little guys in rubber lizard suits. No one really played K’kree in my group and it is only in retrospect that I discover they were fanatical genocidal vegetarians. Only the Hivers were truly alien in both appearance (giant starfish) and motivation (cliques of manipulators). Now this all sounds a bit harsh, and I’m still very fond of the Traveller Major Races but, back in the day, that was how things were.

I’ve just finished reading Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation by Jason “Flynn” Kemp, a little, ‘compatible with (Mongoose) Traveller’, product put out by Samardan Press and available from Lulu.

Using a 14-step checklist, Jason examines homeworld factors, ecology, size, movement type, senses and alien traits and uses these to round out an existing alien concept, as well as create an alien race from scratch. At $US 4.99 for a PDF, a booklet of this quality is a bargain. I am very impressed with this product and cannot wait to begin using it to define the alien races in my Traveller campaign.

Jason puts in an occasional appearance on the SFRPG boards where you can also find his very excellent Stellar Reaches fanzine if it isn't available from his site.