Speakest ye unto me of Kafers

[The Thing]

Ok, I know a little about the kafer in 2300, and am curious to know lots more. What can people here tell me about them, and are there any current products with them and their BG in it?

I like really alien aliens, and the kafes sound like a good one to drop into any decent SFRPG...

 

[aramis]

2320 has all you really need to know... But Kafer Dawn and Aurore Sourcebook provide more.

But in a nutshell: Hit or scare them to make them smart. Once they are smart, watch out. The more a given individual is smart, the higher his basal intellect is capable of being. The Smartest Kafer are the best warriors, too...

 

[The Thing]

I see there was a kafer sourcebook, was that any good?

 

[aramis]

Worthy. Not exceptional, but on par with the GDW alien modules for Traveller.

 

[yatima]

I'd echo everything Aramis says, and add some further details.

Kafer's where covered in the following original publications:
- Kafer sourcebook (Background details on Kafer society)
- Invasion sourcebook (military course of the Kafer war)
- Aurore sourcebook (a world invaded by Kafers)
- Kafer Dawn (adventure against Kafer troops on Aurore)

These are usually easy to pick up on eBay, or get everything ever published for the original game as PDFs on one CDRom from Marc Miller at Far Future Enterprises. Also available on RPGNow.com as individual PDFs, though it's comparatively expensive to buy them all individually this way.

The basic concept of Kafers is a race that is intelligent only part of the time, getting smart as a response to an immediate threat. When threatened, an adrenaline-like substance raises their intelligence until they feel safe again. When smart, they become superb tacticians, fearless, ruthless and resourceful foes. The rest of the time they are so dumb their machinery has to have protective cages as they bash equipment in blind, animal rage when they can't get it to work. Some are smart most of the time. These officers use pain and violence to make others smart enough to carry out useful work.

Politically, they are organised as a bunch of independent warlords, or Suzerains, who form shifting alliances. One of these attacked Humanity, as he thought they represented the Kafer culture's primal fear - Smart Barbarians. By attacking humanity, he hoped to get all Kafer's under his sway in a kind of great crusade. But he bit off more than his pedipalps could masticate.

That's the low down.

 

[The Thing]

See, I knew about the kafer's volatile intelligence and that a few were smart all the time, and they ran things.

That's what makes me love the kafer: a A society where intelligence, not brute strength, "charisma", popularity or some other dumb thing determines who runs things, but a society where intelligence is the prime virtue. You gotta love it!

 

[bikewrench]

The Kafer were really fun to run, watching the players when they realised that they had disappeared and were flanking them after behaving like rabble was priceless.
The Kafer Sourcebook is very important imho, not really enough info elsewhere.
Introduce them gradually, in small numbers, then bigger numbers, then introduce the permanantly smart scouts and leaders etc.

 

[Colin]

See, I knew about the kafer's volatile intelligence and that a few were smart all the time, and they ran things.

That's what makes me love the kafer: a A society where intelligence, not brute strength, "charisma", popularity or some other dumb thing determines who runs things, but a society where intelligence is the prime virtue. You gotta love it!

Yes, but Kafers get smart through violence. The smartest among them tend to be the biggest, nastiest, most brutal of the lot. Even the permanently smart ones still get a buzz from violence.

 

[GJD]

The rest of the time they are so dumb their machinery has to have protective cages as they bash equipment in blind, animal rage when they can't get it to work.

They also hit stuff to try and MAKE it smarter. If an engine or a computer or a gun isn't doing what the Kafer wants it to, they whack it to try and make it smart enough to do what they want. That's why human prisoners see the kafers as brutal bullies, they hit you for no reason when they want you to do things. From the Kafers point of view, they are just making sure you are smart enough to understand what they want.

It also means that Kafers don't really have much in the way of medical science - why would you want to stop pain when it helps make you smarter?

G.

 

[ChalkLine]

I had a lost Kaefer sniper in Aurore that was an anxiety junkie. It'd deliberately miss, or it'd go out of its way to get almost cornered and then escape. It drove my players, trying to shepherd some scientists, utterly insane. It also like to capture people to provoke rescue attempts. One night it snuck into their camp and stole a lot of stuff and then threw it all into a creek just to keep the humans angry at it. It also had nasty habits, it knew humans were protective of their young . . .