[Pentapod Progression] What would the Pentapods learn from the Kafer War?

[Kilgs]

[Spoilers] What would the Pentapods learn from the Kafer War?

SPOILERS ON PENTAPODS FROM THE DIRECTOR'S BOOK BELOW!!


I’m fairly new to 2300AD. Got into it a couple years ago and have been messing around with it ever since. I’m moving my timeline about 70yrs forward, using the real NSL from Evil Dr. Ganymede’s charts (with Astrosynthesis) and using a different system.
I only have Aurore, and the main two books. So maybe this has been addressed in later books.

But I keep coming across this notion:

-The Pentapods are adaptive and in the process of learning everything they can from humans.

-As “bullets” of their dominant entities, the Pentapods are capable of being “born” to match their tasks. The book indicates that some of the Pentapod forms are highly customized for particular roles due to the entity perceiving a need for the role to be filled.

-There is no information on war, violence, or militarism amongst the Pentapods.

-There is no information on how these entities respond to dangers or hazards. Do they
create bullets that are designed to overcome these threats? Do they not learn of them because the afflicted bullets don’t return?

Could it be that war and conflict are “alien” notions that they are simply not versed in? If that’s the case, then it would be something that the humans have not inflicted on them yet. So far, all interactions have been peaceful between the two species.

But the Kafer War will change all of that… the Pentapod Enclave on BCV is attacked, destroyed, not sure if there are any survivors. If there are survivors, do they return to their god-entities with knowledge of this new threat? Any survivors would have witnessed first-hand the ground warfare in liberating the planet in addition to the atrocities inflicted by the Kafers.

What if the Pentapod gods recoiled in fear and shock? What if they began retooling some bullets to be bio-military units? Organic weaponry, armor and uniform efficiency. What if the Pentapods having witnessed Kafers and humanity at war decide that they both represent threats to their survival. A new wariness, protectionist and militarism wave sweeps over the Pentapods. Not that they would decide to be warlike but only super-vigilant and very wary of these humans who destroy so quickly.

 

[aramis]

Conflict can't be alien to any natural species - predator/prey is inherent in ecospheres with animal life. The same for competition for resources.

Organized warfare, perhaps could be alien to the 'pods.

It's also worth noting that 'pod bullets can be naïve in the extreme even when fully intelligent.

It's a fairly safe bet that bullets not sending reports back would be seen as grounds for a more cautious reconnaissance - perhaps recon in force, even - and suitably violence enabled bullets would likely be used if deemed needed.

ISTR that 'pod bullets usually originate on the homeworld and are shipped out. Also keep in mind that humans have never met an actual Pentapod - only bullets of various complexities.

 

[McPerth]

IIRC the Pentapod ships may be armed, with some kind of biological lasers. That makes me think they are not that alien to warfare, as they are not to weaponry (and quite powerful one).

 

[Kilgs]

It's a fairly safe bet that bullets not sending reports back would be seen as grounds for a more cautious reconnaissance - perhaps recon in force, even - and suitably violence enabled bullets would likely be used if deemed needed.

ISTR that 'pod bullets usually originate on the homeworld and are shipped out. Also keep in mind that humans have never met an actual Pentapod - only bullets of various complexities.

"Natural" species being relative. We really don't know much about the gods/Pentapods.

But you hit on what I was thinking of... they may never have experienced organized warfare with armor/aircraft/powered armor on such a scale as that which the BCV bullets will have experienced. When they return to their makers to "report," it could be that the gods decide to build their own army...

 

[mike wightman]

Some random musings from my very old Traveller2300 campaign.

I got very tired of the Kafer conflict very quickly and so became much more interested in the provolutionists.

Cyberpunk body mods were easily integrated into provolutionist agents, and many a fun evening was had hunting down the cyborg assassin of the week .

It became a bit more involved when the players found out the provolutionists were intently studying the pentapods and their bio machinery.

What they never discovered was the pentapod bullet manufactured to exactly mimic a human...

If only GURPS Transhuman Space had been around way back then.

 

[LemnOc]

I’m moving my timeline about 70yrs forward...

Generally I agree with mike wightman that the Kaefer Mary Sues get tiresome real quickly, and they tend to screw up almost everything else cool going on in the French Arm.

My hunch would be that 70 years on, their threat would be largely eliminated—whether with the Pentapods, or without them. The minute Earth forces tumbled to the realization the Kaefers were marching Coreward up the Arm, Kaefer days would be numbered. The human intellect, applied relentlessly, murderously to the task of total destruction, has proven most effective over the centuries, greatly superior to the Kaefers' haphazard detachment and lack of focus. Orbital bombardment would ruin them.

The big problem with the Ks is a Final Solution appears the Only Solution, another element that makes them tiresome. Based on the acceleration of events in the original timeline, a Showdown with them is inevitable and soon in coming in the opening decade of 2300, no going back. Once beaten back, they'd have to be run down and eliminated. And I doubt you'd find much sympathy on the Arm or Coreward for other options.

The starving people of Berlin essentially wiped out the city's rat population in the closing days of WWII. Those poor critters proved no match for human ingenuity focused without mercy on their capture and consumption.

The Pentapods might provide the biological agent that makes total Kaefer genocide unnecessary.

 

[McPerth]

Does anyone know how was it treated in 2320AD?

I've never read it, but, AFAIK it's after the kafer crisis and winning the war against them.

 

[mike wightman]

Someone once solved the kafer problem with coffee...

a variation would be a pentapod developed stimulant (or gland) to produce permanent smartness.

Introduce it to the kafer using kafer bullets while quarantining their worlds and wait for them to see sense.

The kafer never worried me as much as what a warlike faction of the Ylii may get up to...

 

[LemnOc]

My own campaign assumed K interstellar capability was not native to the species (maybe Ylii, maybe Eber... PC mystery) and once that was smashed their existential threat was eliminated.

I also treat their biology as more that of bedbugs, almost parthenogenetic, because I could never much stand the canon-view of Kaefers as parents. Saw them as much more insectlike and alien. That means that even though they're apparently eliminated, like bedbugs nasty infestations can still crop up in order to terrorize and delight PCs.

My campaign assumes Kaefer racial memories and skills/abilities are stored like RNA. Their eggs are laid in Kaefer corpses (or sometimes in the living, like digger wasps) and their larvae can digest and absorb this RNA.* Hence they can be “born” into adult stage with living memories and abilities.

Helps keep them at the periphery, but still a very dangerous threat.

* (this also helps flesh out the "Kaefer Rot").

 

[Kilgs]

So far, IMATU, the Kafers are the perpetual Bugs... humans push further and further into their space and then run out of logistics, hold the line against random suzerains, then push forward again. The colonies and people back home support it for awhile then it winds down until another attack. Humans follow behind and colonize some of these worlds but it's dangerous and more of a relocation project for France and a couple other nations.

Their back has been broken but (like the bedbug analogy) they tend to keep coming back around. So I have a few extremely intelligent suzerains who have been isolated and hold their own but the will to go in and exterminate them is lacking that far out on the Arm.

I also don't like the borrowed technology premise making them dependent. They may take slaves for labor/specialized labor but they have their own gear. Some of the groupings have lost the ability to maintain it due to non-activity in succeeding generations (as the Kafer description indicates, successful civilizations atrophy and are conquered).

With high reproduction, evolution, and a constant struggle against the humans, I'm theorizing (IMATU) that some of them have managed to become quite intelligent. The random attacks are the acts of various younger suzerains or hopefuls seeking to make a name for themselves or just get a combat-high. The more powerful suzerains have turned their attention to other conquests and avoid contact with the humans.

Granted, I am going to have some alternate routes for Kafer attacks/raids... this leading to a more powerful United Nations (defense forces). But that is primarily a setting thing to allow independent colonies to survive out on their own. I did write in the Kafer Wars as a plot device to move some of the nations prestige around, bring the French back into prominence on the French Arm and so forth...

In my ATU, the Kafers are raiders and reavers. They make your life miserable out on the far reaches but no big invasion is likely to happen ever again. Kafer Space is still an unknown factor. Who knows how far it extends?

 

[epicenter00]

What if the Pentapod gods recoiled in fear and shock? What if they began retooling some bullets to be bio-military units? Organic weaponry, armor and uniform efficiency. What if the Pentapods having witnessed Kafers and humanity at war decide that they both represent threats to their survival. A new wariness, protectionist and militarism wave sweeps over the Pentapods. Not that they would decide to be warlike but only super-vigilant and very wary of these humans who destroy so quickly.

Go with whatever works best in your game world. However, to play Devil's Advocate...

If you think about Pentapod "gods" and how they just casually create "bullets" without concern for creating self-directed entities effectively as slaves let's take this a bit further. What if the "gods" themselves don't have a sense of "self" and "independence" like we do, especially if Pentapod "gods" themselves are collective organisms...

* Humans just defeated the Kafers at great cost and hardship but they shouldered the burden alone.

* Humans seem pretty amenable to Pentapod contact and after a few early missteps, are enthusiastic consumers of Pentapod products.

* Humans also show traits of being both "gods" (countries and corporations) and "bullets" (individuals).

The Pentapod gods realize pretty simply that right now the relationship between humans and Pentapods is parasitic: the Pentapods sell humans goods (giving up treasure), but aren't buying anything in return. Eventually the human gods are going to figure this out. There's a whole lot of humans on dozens of worlds and individual humans are crafty and a few are paranoid of the Pentapods: any plan to enslave the human race or wipe them out is likely to end in failure and the blooming of dozens of thermonuclear warheads over the Pentapod homeworld.

The solution is obvious: move the relationship between Pentapods and humans from a parasitic relationship to a mutualistic or even symbiotic relationship.

Pentapods start using money earned through selling humans their biotech goods in return for human machines, finding uses for these machines without which Pentapod civilization would collapse. It baffles a few human analyists why Pentapods would willingly become so dependent on humans; only a few notice that Pentapods have cornered the market on certain key areas of human civilization, such as garbage recycling and management of waste heat and without Pentapod products human civilization would be in equally dire straits. Pentapod bullets, while once found a variety of forms strangely enough become limited in variety to those able to survive on human worlds. Some Pentapod gods emigrate to Earth and Alpha Centauri in great pageantry and ceremony after years of biological tests and PR campaigns, being installed in the oceans of the primary human worlds, with the "god" off of Baja California becoming a popular tourist destination. Meanwhile, Pentapod products are increasingly used to extend lifespans, replace worn out organs, educate our children, rehabilitate criminals...

 

[Kilgs]

Hmm... bio-organic war machines or creepy, insidious fleshy social reformers... so much creepiness to choose from

 

[Whipsnade]

Does anyone know how was it treated in 2320AD?

Poorly. Very, very poorly.

The Kafer War was won when...

Spoiler:

...the Pentapods gave humanity a bioweapon which blocked the effects of the Kafers' intelligence adrenaline analog. Once it was infected with the bioweapon, no amount of fear would produce an intelligence "spike" in a Kafer and the infected Kafer would remain permanently stupid. Kafer civilization quickly imploded.

The metagame failure began when it was felt that 2320AD players still needed a few Kafers around to shoot at. In order to provide targets for PCs, 2320AD baldly stated that humanity decided not to deploy the Pentapod bioweapon against all Kafer worlds out of squeamishness. Allegedly, humanity felt inflicting a "Twilight" on another species was beyond the pale even though that species, among other things, ate humans.

Making matters worse, 2320AD stated that the decision to spare several Kafer colony worlds was made on Earth and respected by the colonials actually who carried out the bioweapon deployment. That's right, the same people who saw their worlds invaded, homes destroyed, and families eaten by the Kafers had no problem with a decision to spare the Kafers made by bureaucrats safely sitting their offices weeks away on Earth.

Yeah, right. And pixies make the flowers grow too.

A partial deployment of the bioweapon - and Kafers for the PCs to shoot at - could have been the result of the Pentapods giving humanity only a limited amount of the weapon. Instead, we were insulted by a dippy, belief suspender snapping "decision" based on sophomoric "moral" issues.

As I said, very very poorly.

I've never read it, but, AFAIK it's after the kafer crisis and winning the war against them.

While 2320AD is set afterwards, it perforce had to "deal" with the Kafer "problem". Sadly, it dealt with the Kafer "problem" in a wholly implausible manner.

 

[LemnOc]

While 2320AD is set afterwards, it perforce had to "deal" with the Kafer "problem". Sadly, it dealt with the Kafer "problem" in a wholly implausible manner.

Yes; this ain't Star Trek.

Given the Balkanized, non-centralized, competitive and highly fractious setting of 2300AD, it does stretch credulity that humanitarian, forbearing solutions would be broadly and universally embraced across the Arms. Undermines the richness of the human squabble.

The important thing IMO is for PCs to occasionally encounters Kaefers as PCs against Kaefers. Five against dozens. It's an expected trope of the game. Their starfaring capacity is a problem, however, because wherever Ks show up, they ruin. And the campaign devolves into the pursuit of GDW's Mary Sue menace. Gets boring.

The 2300AD setting is not really set up for massive starship engagements, as the mechanics of stutterwarp makes these engagements somewhat (but not entirely) implausible.

For these reasons, M2300TU assumes that by 2310 Ks were smashed down to T8. But they still pop up every now and then in all-too-personal encounters.

 

[Kilgs]

Their starfaring capacity is a problem, however, because wherever Ks show up, they ruin. And the campaign devolves into the pursuit of GDW's Mary Sue menace.

I've seen people reference Kafers as Mary Sues before... am I not understanding the reference or is there something about Kafers I'm missing?

 

[Whipsnade]

Yes; this ain't Star Trek.

Nicely put.

Given the Balkanized, non-centralized, competitive and highly fractious setting of 2300AD, it does stretch credulity that humanitarian, forbearing solutions would be broadly and universally embraced across the Arms. Undermines the richness of the human squabble.

And betrays a vast ignorance of both human behavior and human history.

I completely understand that 2320AD felt it was important for some Kafers be available for PCs to shoot at, it's just that they went about achieving that goal in a completely implausible manner.

 

[Whipsnade]

I've seen people reference Kafers as Mary Sues before... am I not understanding the reference or is there something about Kafers I'm missing?

I've seen the phrase change somewhat over the years, especially in the last decade or so and most likely because the 'net has brought it to so many peoples' attention.

It first only referred to blatant authorial inserts found mostly in fan-fic. The phrase then changed to encompass any "perfect" character who always manages to triumph of which Weber's cringe worthy Honor Harrington in a good example.

Lately I've seen it used to refer to any "perfect" character or aspect. Thus the Kafers are "Mary Sues" because they're "perfect" villains; i.e. technologically advanced yet perpetually barbarous, cannot be redeemed or saved because they cannot choose to change, etc., etc.

 

[McPerth]

TY for your explanation, Whipsnade. I was also thinking about asking the sam question.