Barely There: Ursa Worlds of the Imperium

[aramis]

Miss this bit?

(emphasis mine)

Nothing "Occasional" about it. Every spring, for about 2-3 months solid.

 

[aramis]

Bears can hibernate...
add to their natural solitary nature and I would have made them long range explorer types.

Technically not a hibernation. close enough for most casual purposes, except that it is a different physiological state.

 

[mike wightman]

Science has moved on.

Although traditionally reserved for "deep" hibernators such as rodents, the term has been redefined to include animals such as bears and is now applied based on active metabolic suppression rather than based on absolute body temperature decline.


Historically there was a question of whether or not bears truly hibernate, since they experience only a modest decline in body temperature (3–5 K) compared with what other hibernators undergo (32 K or more). Many researchers thought that their deep sleep was not comparable with true, deep hibernation. This theory has been refuted by recent research in captive black bears

They hibernate.

In researching stuff about bears I have found a lot that reinforces Whipsnade's point - they have an awful lot of characteristics that could have been used to make a more intriguing race. They still could be since there isn't all that much written if T20 about them.

 

[Whipsnade]

In researching stuff about bears I have found a lot that reinforces Whipsnade's point - they have an awful lot of characteristics that could have been used to make a more intriguing race.

Exactly. The Ursa could have been something, could have been unique, could have at least had a hook.

I cracked open my copy of GURPS:Uplift, squinted at T5, and paged through a few Field Guides. Bears are fascinating and should have been the basis of a fascinating uplift species.

Instead the Ursa are nothing but furries.

 

[Aramais]

Exactly. The Ursa could have been something, could have been unique, could have at least had a hook.

I cracked open my copy of GURPS:Uplift, squinted at T5, and paged through a few Field Guides. Bears are fascinating and should have been the basis of a fascinating uplift species.

Instead the Ursa are nothing but furries.

These are all excellent ideas...and T5 does not discourage refining material. You guys should write the article.

I'm not sure quite what would best be done with the hibernation. I sometimes suspect that I had hibernating forebears...we know so little about humanity prior to 5,000 or 10,000 years ago. Once we change our "climate" by housing, making fire, so on, we alter ourselves, too. Some modification is fast, as I understand has been discovered.

Socialization...higher intelligence and more reliable food may allow more grouping and socialization, but Ursa should be seen as less social. That would make them excellent scouts.

Roland and Gabrielle may be in a minority, Ursa who have developed a close family relationship...or perhaps uplifting included (intentionally or not) something that altered it to a degree.

 

[GypsyComet]

These are all excellent ideas...and T5 does not discourage refining material. You guys should write the article.

If they don't, I might.

Ursa culture, as opposed to remnant instinct, is only 2800 years old by the late Imperium. That culture is going to have arisen from the things that threatened them, the dangers they survived, and the means they used to survive those dangers. That last element includes those who helped them, and will ensure that the Corridor Ursa are different from the Ursa of Ley and Fornast in some ways even without the black/brown split. I suspect the many worlds of Ley have also had differentiating effects, as the Ursa were dispersed early on for both protection and in accordance with their need for room after years in flight cooped up in human starships. At that point the entire extant population came to sentience in either a GenAssist facility or as a child during the flight. Their being an uplift program in progress at the time of their flight (and the sense that they were a failed project) strongly suggests that atavistic behavior is going to be common, but the learned behaviors that allowed them to flee and survive would have been strong as well.

There is a lot of cultural mileage to be found there, but these events were also as far back as the Bronze Age is to us...

 

[LeperColony]

I've never really found practical explanations very satisfying. The need for Heavy-G workers or armored war bears can hardly justify the expense of an uplift project.

Personally, I tend to see such things as ideologically driven, or else the results of experimentation into the Ancients. Learning exactly what sentience is and how to cross into it has to be one of the most profound scientific discoveries of all time. Possibly on par with the Jump Drive. '

One of the issues with this approach, though, is that scientific research would seem distinctly less likely to explain why there are entire planets populated by self-aware bears.

 

[Garnfellow]

There is an odd ambiguity in the source materials as to just when the Ursa were created and when the GenAssist purge occurred. Part of this problem goes all the way back to MegaTraveller’s Solomani and Aslan and its description of GenAssist, an organization that was active during the Terran Confederation and again much later during the Solomani Confederation. It is sometimes unclear whether S&A is referring to events that occurred during the earlier or later period. Here I'm going to tease all of this apart and try to reassemble it back into a coherent narrative.

"The Terran Confederation established GenAssist during the Interstellar Wars to promote colonization by adapting native Terran lifeforms to alien environments" (S&A 14). During the Interstellar Wars GenAssist developing cloning, forced growth, and memory implantation to help rapidly expand Terran colonies (S&A 20).

But GenAssist—or at least a corporation using the same name—is also active in the Solomani Confederation millennia after the Interstellar Wars and by 1120 has become "foremost" of the Confederation's "huge corporations" (S&A 12). "Besides geneering lower lifeforms, GenAssist also participated in the uplift of over two dozen alien species, each of which is now a loyal member of the confederation. GenAssist is also widely known for its human and animal cloning technologies. The company mass-produces humans of specific genotypes and manufactures a wide variety of androids" (S&A 14).

There is a garbled passage on S&A page 2: "GenAssist (The Solomani Confederation Ministry of Genetics) and other similar organizations, have modified human genes for toxic atmospheres, extremes of temperature and gravity, and specific utilitarian functions." I would guess this should read something like "GenAssist and similar organizations, working under the direction of the Solomani Confederation Ministry of Genetics . . ."

The Gene War is not mentioned in S&A's in-setting "History of the Solomani People" (19-26) but rather is only described in the Referee's Section. There we learn that the origins of the War go all the way back to ancient Terra, before the Interstellar Wars, and a failed project to uplift orangutans and gibbons to sentience. "Centuries passed, and the simian project was largely forgotten. Eventually, it caught the attention of a clique of Confederation researchers, who secretly completed the project" (28).

Somehow a panic over the potential creation of human supermen—think Khan Noonien Singh—ensued, resulting in the Gene War, which unsuccessfully attempted to purge the results of the Solomani Confederation uplift project. The War was evidently so traumatic it was largely scrubbed from the history books and pushed the Solomani government to embrace increasing secrecy and paranoia. While no date is specified for the Gene War, a close reading shows that the event occurred at some point during the Solomani Confederation (871-1120). Interestingly, GenAssist is not specifically named in the description of the Gene War.

The Ursa are first introduced in T20’s Traveller's Handbook, where they are clearly a product of GenAssist and both their creation and attempted purge occur during the Rule of Man:

The Solomani corporation GenAssist, established to adapt Terran native lifeforms to alien climates, saw a need for creatures that could assist in colonizing and developing various types of worlds for the Rule of Man. . . . The Ursa were developed fairly late in the project. It was anticipated that they would be used on higher than normal gravity planets or worlds with many hostile and dangerous lifeforms.

The project was declared a failure and dropped in favor of more promising species, and the experimental colonies were scheduled for extermination. The inhabitants of one Ursa colony succeeded in defeating the GenAssist death squads and seizing a number of starships. . . . GenAssist hunted the Ursa for a time, but eventually found more productive activities to engage in. The whole incident was quietly forgotten about—at least by GenAssist and the Rule of Man.

So, the Ursa creation and purge are clearly different from the Gene War. Different eras, different events. But in T20’s Gateway to Destiny, written by Martin J. Dougherty, we get this:

The Solomani are known to have also attempted genetic manipulation of humans beyond what was necessary to fit them to harsh environments. Reports of a "gene war" between humans and some sort of "supermen" persist, though even within the Solomani Confederation little is known about exactly what happened, outside of secret government archives. It is thought that the Solomani became nervous of any race that could replace or supplant humans in their normal environment—the so-called "Supermen," the Apes and the Ursa, among others—and took steps to eradicate them. These efforts were not 100% successful in all cases.

Gateway is set at the outset of the Rim War, so this helps us date the Gene War as occurring at some point between the creation of the Solomani Confederation (871) and the start of the War (990), and I would put it somewhere in the 940s or 950s. This same line is picked up by the 1128 supplement Out of the Darkness, also written by Martin J. Dougherty:

As a result the Solomani, who created the Supermen, felt threatened and decided to exterminate them. The resulting Gene Wars were a nasty business and resulted in the near-total extinction of the various uplifted animals that seemed to pose a threat, and of course the Supermen.

But the extinction was only near-total. Not only did the Ursa (among other uplifted animals) survive, but so did some of the Supermen (112).

As I wrote elsewhere with respect to uplifted apes, we can reconcile these sources if we assume there have been several different uplift projects over the course of human history, and unfortunately for the Ursa, at least two attempted purges of these projects—one during the Rule of Man, specifically targeting Ursa, and a second during the Solomani Confederation’s Gene War, which targeted the supermen and almost all other uplifts, regardless of origin, in Solomani space. (Why dolphins escape all of these purges is hard to explain.)

 

[Condottiere]

Because they were never uplifted by humans.

Once a reliable means of communications was established, it turns out they were nearly as intelligent as we were, but since they were fervently communistic, rejected contact with a mostly capitalistic primate species.

They thanked the Terrans for the fish and left to colonize other water majority planets.

 

[mike wightman]

Why are cephalopods always ignored in these uplift discussions.

They would be ideal for zero g workers, not to mention all those water worlds. With extreme bio-mods they may even be useful for gas giant farming.

And the space kraken has to come from somewhere :devil:

 

[Condottiere]

There was an unfortunate event in the Dai Nippon Laboratories that had to be hushed up.

 

[Whipsnade]

As I wrote elsewhere with respect to uplifted apes, we can reconcile these sources if we assume there have been several different uplift projects over the course of human history, and unfortunately for the Ursa, at least two attempted purges of these projects—one during the Rule of Man, specifically targeting Ursa, and a second during the Solomani Confederation’s Gene War, which targeted the supermen and almost all other uplifts, regardless of origin, in Solomani space. (Why dolphins escape all of these purges is hard to explain.)

Your excellent explanation for the oddities in canon surrounding uplifted apes works equally as well for the Ursa: multiple uplift projects, multiple outcomes, and multiple previous instances of backlash from the populace.

That last bit is an important one, IMHO.

In Gateway to Destiny Mr. Dougherty explains - quite correctly I believe - that Solomani uplift projects have always operated under a cloud of suspicion. On the one hand, the Solomani take great pride in creating various servitor species and "chopped" humans to fill niche positions and locations within the Confederation. On the other hand, the Solomani have a great fear about being replaced as the top dog in their racial hierarchy they created.

Making servants in one thing. Making replacements is another thing entirely.

Over the centuries, every uplift or geneering project has been viewed as both a source of pride and a potential threat. Over the centuries, for good reasons or not, logically or not, accurately or not, there has been backlash against uplift and geneering projects. While those earlier incidents are limited in time, space, and violence compared to the Gene Wars, they still caused the cancellation of projects and, in some cases, termination of the test subjects.

It's a poor analogy, but think of these earlier, smaller, regional purges being related to the Gene Wars as Bleeding Kansas and Harper's Ferry are related to the US Civil War; smaller previous outbreaks of violence sparked by many of the same underlying factors which caused the later larger conflagration.

Finally, as to why dolphin uplift didn't suffer the same backlash as the uplift of apes, bears, and others, perhaps it's because people perceive that anything learned while geneering dolphins is less likely to be useful in improving or replacing humans. Dolphins also can't compete with humans for the same "real estate" unlike apes, bears, and others.

 

[Whipsnade]

If they don't, I might.

Please let strongly encourage you do so.

Much like how I usually design "tail sitters", my ideas regarding the Ursa are too personal and thus only of use to me. I have my idee fixes which limit the utility of my ideas for others.

You, however, would be able to create something far more useful for far more people.

 

[Condottiere]

The trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes is out; I would guess that the Terrans were well aware of the pitfalls of uplifting.

 

[kilemall]

Why are cephalopods always ignored in these uplift discussions.

They would be ideal for zero g workers, not to mention all those water worlds. With extreme bio-mods they may even be useful for gas giant farming.

And the space kraken has to come from somewhere :devil:

The ugly vertebrate only club raises it's speciesist fishhead.

 

[LeperColony]

Does Traveller indicate any of the other major races tried or succeeded in uplifting (other than the Ancients, of course)?

 

[tjoneslo]

The Major races of the Aslan, Droyne, Vargr, K'kree, no.

It's arguable about the Hiver. There isn't any canon writings of them doing the kinds of direct genetic engineering the way GenAssist was doing. But the Hiver have absolutely altered races through their social engineering and selective breeding. The TNE Aliens of the Rim book has the best descriptions of this kind of work. And the Ithklur attempting to undo it.

There are several other examples of engineered races. The Prt' from Challenge 26 (another furry race). The Aion from GT:First In (The GT Scouts book).

 

[LeperColony]

I wonder what makes humans so much more interested in uplifting.

 

[Condottiere]

We like playing God.

 

[mike wightman]

Disney - we are so used to anthropomorphising animals that once the technology to do so exists it's a no brainer.
Killer robots on the other hand...