ImpLord has some really cool stuff on the caste system for the sathar and I plan to borrow it whole hog but the super computer angle has some problems IMHO.<br /><br />One the clans are spread over huge interstellar distances with Clan Y deffinetly to the "East" of the Frontier and I like to presume Clan X being to the "Northwest" for a number of reasons. <br /><br />The authors of the Beyond the Frontier campaign gave us Clans X and Y and I would contend that there is the implication of a clan Z; people being people I would guess that the authors had rough ideas for a clan Z in latter modules and I'd even risk money in a bet on that.<br /><br />So What follows will be a departure from ImpLords material- and tie into the other stuff I've been musing on involving a klikk connection with the sathar.<br /><br />but first- <br /><br />Super computer? lots of difficulties with this and an interstellar empire- namely communication with it over vast distances. its a liability as its has to be located somewhere.<br /><br />AI- imagine an AI centuries old or if thats too difficult imagine your home computer and it being 15 years old and what you're still using- its slow and quirky and with all the scads of programs you've loaded its even slower and clunkier and gives you fits. Now imagine an AI centuries old. (it has to be centuries old IMO since the sathar visited the eorna 900 years before the voltunus modules). An AI running for 900 to 1000 years?!? that thing is probably certifiable.<br /><br />Now Since the Klikk and the Sathar have been around with overlapping star faring civilizations in the same quardrant I has to be assumed that they were in contact with each other. I'm playing around with the AI in question being a klikk AI that began to show some quirkiness in its programing and was scheduled for a purge and reload proceedure. the AI decided it didn't want to be purged and used its resources to "liberate" a klikk slave race, the sathar. For 300 years the klikk and the sathar waged war till the klikk were all be erased from memory and existence. The eorna got destroyed because the sathar became aware of them and feared that they would become slaves to the klikk and used against the worms. Under that scenario the sathar obelisk is actually not for detecting the rise of eorna space technology but rather the arrival of a klikk craft. This also explains why the pirate activity took quite awhile to trigger the transmitter as it was looking for specific klikk drive signatures and the subroutines in the transmitter needed to see an X,Y,Z list of triggers to get it to transmit concerning the rise of indigenous space industry and the pirate activity in Zebulon just didn't quite reach that level yet.<br /><br />At this point the AI was 400 years old and with the and it sees the threat to its existance erradicated with the downfall of the klikk but imagines that there could be other threats to its existence lurking out in the galaxy. it makes copies of itself and sends out seed colonies that are to set up shope 100-150 LY from the Clan Alpha's homeworld. in a plan to create buffer zones around itself and to jump start its total domination of the galaxy which is seen as neccessary to protect its existence.<br /><br />This is the origin of the other clans- each was founded with basic genetic stock and a copy of the AI but as centuries pass these copies of the original AI change and evolve as a personality which makes them different and even leads to different technology focus for different clans. As the AI copies evolve differnetly the develop different vision for how things should be done and this can lead to clan conflict. At the time of the first sathar war there had been 600 years of divergence between the original and the copies.<br /><br />Clan X was a week clan at the time of SW1 but was forced pressured by Clan Alpha to assist in attacking the Frontier and the Rim. It did this and managed to pull a sizable portion of its assets out of Pale after the two disasterous battles in Cassidine and Prengular wiped out 95% of all of Clan Alpha's expeditionary force. Since that time Clan X has risen to the top of the heap and been the powerhouse among sathar clans.<br /><br />One benefit of the AI is that it can be on every clans home world. it could even in theory invade UPF computer networks- and wreck havoc much like the cylons did in BSG (new series). <br />The above proposed material allows for a major UPF campaign against the sathar to wipe out a clan and yet it still leaves the sathar in the setting- lets face it Star Trek TNG sucked without the Borg and the Frontier without the sathar suck as well.<br /><br />Finally this explanation for the origin of the sathar clans can account for the much maligned Seesu ferengi/sathar as they came about as one of the seed colonies that suffered the loss of its AI somehow and have evolved themselves into the amoral users and traders that were presented in the Dragon magazine.
- Log in to post comments