Originally posted by Bhoins:
The big question isn't why the K'kree went to space, more like how.
Bhoins,
Oh, sorry, I misread you. They
supposedly jumped straight to gravitics and fusion power without all that messy (and small) mucking about in aircraft and chemical rockets. Having a moonful of G'Naak hanging over their head
supposedly gave them a great R&D impetus.
Naturally, being a Whipsnade, I have a low and cunning mind. Traveller has always been wheels within wheels, look at the Aslan/Pathfinder stuff for example. Take another squint at the canonical K'Kree In Space Story.
Kirur's moon is full of the same G'Naak that so recently were eating K'Kree alive, so what? Why did the K'Kree feel that the solution included the necessity of landing
infantry there? Wouldn't a hundred thousand or so nuc-tipped ballistic missiles and a few spy sats get the job done? No need to recruit 'crazies', no need to work out all the psychological bits that help their AFV/spacecraft crewmen stay just this side of sane; i.e. odor generators, subliminal sounds, optical illusions, etc. Why go through all that bother?
Unless the K'Kree never really developed gravitics and fusion power
on their own.
The G'Naak on Kirur's moon had been using Kirur proper and the K'Kree on it as a hunting preserve and/or religio-social rite of passage site. Something happens to the parent society on the moon (their generation ship had already moved on)and the G'Naak on Kirur are suddenly stranded. The K'Kree slowly gain the upper hand, exterminate the Kirur-based G'Naak, and are left with all this
stuf; i.e. air/rafts, small arms, powerplants, etc. They also know the moon still holds more G'Naak, G'naak that may be returning soon.
So, the K'Kree launch (pun intended) a crash (pun intended again) program to use the bits the G'Naak left behind to get to the moon and put an end to the problem. They are simply
copying whatever was left. They don't understand it beyond a blackbox level and have none of the intermediate knowledge. Slagging the moon with nuc-warheads aboard chemical rocket boosters isn't an option beause the K'Kree don't know anything about nucs and rockets! All they do know is how to fight that G'Naak as infantry and kill them the old fashioned way; with bullets, hooves, and blades.
Every read Poul Anderson's
High Crusade?
After finishing off the G'Naak with the help of copied G'Naak technological goodies, the K'Kree went back and began filling the
rest of their technical knowledge.
How does a claustrophobic race that can't stand to be alone and hates artificial environments develope space travel, especially interstellar space travel?
Exactly how hard-wired are those limitations? CT's Hiver book suggests the Hivers were able to manipulate certain K'Kree societies into using meat sauces, enjoying solitude, and other habits seemingly at odds with the K'Kree's built-in, biological traits. (TNE has a much different story, one that I tend to believe first.)
So, how much of that claustrophobia is
innate and how much of it is a
cultural artifact? Ask the same question for all those other K'Kree behaviors. Are there really that many crazies in the K'Kree gene pool? Or is their behavior a bit more malleable, it bit more of a cultural artifact, than they care to admit?
How do they survive combat with another technological interstellar race that don't have those limitations?
Very, very, very poorly. That's why it's takes the effects of Virus on Chartered Space and a herd of Borgified Cows (blecch) for the K'Kree to become any threat whatsoever to the Chartered Space. Even then, the efforts of a clutch relatively minor polities - plus the rabbit-from-a-hat, D&D-ish, Incrediably Cinematic Series of Heroic Events(tm) - still stop the K'Kree cold.
GT:AR has the Vargr estimate of the K'Krees' chances and if anything it gives the K'Kree to much. The Hivers got hammered at first because they didn't have an army or navy. As for the other cases, happily for the K'Kree and unhappily for most of the sophonts they've met, the K'Kree always held the technological whip hand. Still, there are those omnivore/carnivore refugee polities to trailing that the 2000 Worlds hasn't been able to deal with.
Obviously how a fanatical threat that is on your doorstep can be ignored, is lack of belief or political will. (The Ostrich syndrome.) [/QB]
In CT, MT, and TNE, they aren't the threat you believe them to be. In M:1248, they are a threat because of the shattered nature of Chartered Space and, even then, they get handled.
Sincerely,
Bill
