The Trith

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Nightfish
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The Trith

#1 Post by Nightfish »

In a remote corner of the galaxy, on the planet of Trith Prime, the High Priest of Quaran-Dor (The God of the Mind) was concluding his speech to the race of the Trith. Actually it wasn’t a speech as humans would know it. The Trith were a telepathic race and the High Priest communicated his thoughts across the whole planet without technology’s aid.

“And thus our path is clear. The time of the great cleansing is at hand. The countless assaults of the impure will not be forgiven! No more will we tolerate their offenses! No more shall they roam the sky and defile the All with their impure thoughts. Now the means to exact just vengeance are available to us and we shall not rest until the last one of them lies in his own blood….”

To understand the Trith’s hatred for all other races one needs to understand the nature of the Trith. They live on a radiated planet, totally devoid of life safe them. As has been said, all Trith are telepathic, and herein lies the reason for the Trith’s rage: While the Trith can learn to keep their own thoughts to themselves, they are unable to tune out the thoughts of others. To the grown up Trith this is merely vexing, to the point of driving the weak of mind into madness, but for young Trith it can be fatal. Usually the Trith gain their ability only after their adolscent years, but the strongest of them are born with the gift. Unfortunately they are most often not ready to cope with the combined minds of all people in the universe screaming at them.

With the beginning of colonisation conscious thought is spreading rapidly and the pressure on the Trith increases. Actually the thoughts of people travelling through hyperspace seem to be even more painful to the Trith than those of people staying on a planet.

But the Trith have not been idle, either. They started their own space program and they are determined to fight for their survival and to avenge the death of their children.


Additional Info / Racial Attributes:

·Homeworld: Radiated: They are most comfortable on a planet without life. Non-sentinent life is easier for them to bear, but they still prefer what they call “The Silence”

·Appearance: I think they are some sort of energy being, feeding on the radiation of their planet. They are probably red/orange in color and not 100% defined in shape. But probably slender in build. (I’m taking suggestions here.)

·Spying: The Trith are awesome spies, unfortunatly most of them can’t bear being on another planet with conscious beings. That would translate into higher cost for spies and their maintenance

·Diplomacy: No thanks. We’re not out to make friends. We’re out to kill all organics. They might talk to races that are not alive, like robots, but never to normal races.

·Combat: Their telepathic and telekinetic abilities would give them a considerable edge, if they could shut out the enemies thoughts. As they can’t do that they find it hard to focus in space combat (reduced accuracy) but they are still able to use their skills against the enemy. But those strikes are made randomly and withour coordination, like an enraged animal flailing around. How that would translate in combat we have to see. I could imagine they can make enemies attack their own ships, damage ships, and a bunch of other random effects.

·On conquering a planet they wipe out the entire populace immediately. Before they can make use of the planet they need to bring in their own people. So long as there is non sentinent life on the planet they receive a (small) penalty to everything they do, due to the increase "noise" of thoughts. Terraforming it to radiated eliminates that penalty.

Impaler
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#2 Post by Impaler »

Could their be a mechanism that reduces their population growth when ever another player has ships/troops nearby??

It would be a realy interesting feature, presumably growth could go down to zero if the though waves are strong enough to kill all the young. And their would probably be penalties for the adults even if they arn't killed by the errant thoughts.

The question is how much sentient though dose it take to harm them? Do some races think more then others. Would a ship full of Psilons cause more harm then an equal number of Silicoids, what about other Telepathic Races?

I would think their could be a high chance of their ground forces Panicing/Freezing if their mental "shields" wore down. Perhaps their forces have low endurace or are more likly to suffer from Panic and Freeze ups under stressfull conditions or dattle damage. Psi based attacks could do all kinds of nasty things to their oponents (head explosions anyone)

Physical form - How about a jelly like smear of Red Fluid that can change shape. They flatten out and bask in the Sun and then "flow" down into cracks in the parched baking craced crust of their planet to "dream" durring the cold of the night. But in actuality the basking durring the day time is their "uncontious" phase and most of their work and though is done telepathicaly durring the night pahse.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

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utilae
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#3 Post by utilae »

1)Surely though, they have to deal with everyones thoughts no matter where they are. So it would not matter how close an enemy ship is.

2)They would be good spies, because they don't need to go anywhere, they just listen for other races thoughts on research.

3)In ground combat or any other situation they could know what the enemy is going to do, their strategies and tactics. And could they plague the thoughts of their enemies.

4)Impaler, did you rush that jelly description.

Nightfish
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#4 Post by Nightfish »

Population growth under blockade?

The biggest problem for the Trith are the beings travelling hyperspace. Those are the ones causing the most harm. (Except for beings located on the same planet but those wouldn't last long, anyway.) Under a blockade I can see population growth going to down to zero pretty quick. On the other hand a blockading force would have to deal with psionic retaliations. That would translate into X ships being lost per turn per unit of trith population on the plant. (X could be smaller than 1, probably subject to balancing) Beings on distant planets aren't as bad, blame it on the atmosphere or the planet's gravity. :wink: Those are just like a quiet murmur compared to the screaming they hear from minds in (hyper-)space.

Spying?

You're both thinking of ordinary telepaths. But these guys are what I like to call erratic or chaotic telepaths. Imagine the whole universe screaming at you all at once... In fact they are at best average as (offensive) spies. They normally can't go to other planets where there is sentinent life. And they can't just focus on the thoughts of high officials on some distant planet. On the other hand they would excel as defensive spies. There's no way another race's spy could approach a Trith world and go undetected.

How much sentinence does it take to cause them harm?

To the Trith it doesn't matter if the thoughts come from a psilon or a silicoid. I mean if a thousand voices talked to you, would it matter if they recite poetry, mathematical formulae or if they were talking just gibberish?

Ground Combat:

I can see them using robotic units a lot here. They would have to bring a lot of "normal" units in order to do any "good". (If mass genocide can be considered good...) Though their ships in orbit could take a hand in ground combat, too. Something like 10% chance to kill an enemy ground troop per size class of the ship. And maybe a 0.5 - 1% chance to convert them for X turns of the battle.
One thing is for sure, they don't like ground combat much but when it's over they'll end up with an empty planet. (except for the buildings that are there). They need to ferry in some of their own people before they can start using the planet.

Appearance:

I don't want another gooey race *g* That's what the Shapeshifters were for. Also I'm pretty set on that energy being thing. They'd have some sort of glowing aura or something to make them look cool. Their bodies would appear to have some sort of inner light. I'm thinking of something etheral here. Like maybe the sun given a roughly human shape. Maybe the Trith transcended some time ago, who knows? Maybe the cataclysm had some sort of hand in that, else why would they only have trouble now and not before when the orions roamed the universe? Hm, I think that's not a bad explanation...

That gives us a reason why they need to leave their planet now: The voices of others have only started causing them harm in recent years. It also provides another decent excuse for why they can't completely control their powers: They have only recently come to be able to use them and don't have much in the way of guidelines on how to contain them.

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Zanzibar
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#5 Post by Zanzibar »

actually... would silicoid thought even cause them harm?? They aren't exactly organic, you know? Just a bunch of living crystals... ahh well, just a thought... *shrug*

Nightfish
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#6 Post by Nightfish »

If it thinks, it hurts. Though we don't have any silicoids in our game anyway...

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utilae
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#7 Post by utilae »

Any other good things about them, to outweigh the constant headaches. :)

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Zanzibar
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#8 Post by Zanzibar »

Nightfish wrote:If it thinks, it hurts. Though we don't have any silicoids in our game anyway...
Yes, but don't robots/androids think?? Do androids dream of electric sheep? I guess it all depends on your point of view... how different a thought process does a being have to have so it doesn't "hurt" this race?

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#9 Post by Impaler »

Computers do not think, they compute (as all our programers will tell you).

basicaly we will need to give each race a little check Box called "Though waves harmfull to Trith" and we just deside the issue individualy. Or maybe we have a "grouping" system kinda like Moo3. The Robotic group would in general be imune to all Tepepatic comunications and other such game play effects of a Psionic/telepatic nature. Thus the Robotic race would not trigger any of the bonusus or disadvantages of the Trith and their default diplomatic stance is upgraded from "Genocidal" to "poor" with the Trith.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Nightfish
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#10 Post by Nightfish »

Well, the Trith would probably have nothing against a race of robots so diplomatic relations would be "normal" towards them in contrast to "kill 'em all" towards all the organic, thinking races. Meaning the Trith would actually talk to them, something they wouldn't do to other races. I mean, what's the point in talking to other races if all you're going to say is "We're sorry, but we need you to die. Have a nice day"?

How well the robots would like the trith would depend on the robots agenda. If the robots don't give a damn about what happens to the universes' organic lifeforms they would get along just fine.

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Zanzibar
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#11 Post by Zanzibar »

But what about a semi-organic life form like a silicoid?? how do they "think"? And what about advanced computers like star trek's data?? At what point does a computer gain sentience?

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#12 Post by Nightfish »

The good thing about science fiction is that it doesn't have to make perfect sense. I think you can pick apart any give piece of fiction until you discover some inconsistencies.

Actually the only reason why I'm saying "organic" thought is to give the Trith the oportunity to have at least some diplomatic interaction. Though when it come to doing the race picks it might be easier to have an option "hates all other races" (repulsive) and let it go at that. So, in the end it may very well be that *all* thought will hurt the Trith.

Also, I don't really feel the need to explain scientifically why or how robotic thoughts hurt them or not. Actually I think it's pretty impossible to hear thoughts at all in the first place and if I can't explain why they can hear thoughts at all, why should I bother to explain what thoughts they can hear?

My first thought when creating the Trith was "We need a race that is hostile and aggressive but has a better reason than "We're the Silicoids. We're made of Rock. Everybody hates us" "

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Zanzibar
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#13 Post by Zanzibar »

Well, this is true... but we already have the Worm guys that hate everybody... :D Anyhow, I was just wonderin' what sort of thoughts effect your race, and how different does a being have to be from your race to not effect them... Maybe silicoids would just effect them on the minimum level, and so they don't hate them as much?? (-50 diplomacy with silicoids as opposed to -500 diplomacy with humans?)

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#14 Post by Impaler »

NightFishes proposal makes sense in universe of "traditional" science Fiction which we are basing all of this in. Its a ver well agreed upon point that robots/machines/computers are incabaple of Telepathic type stuff. The only exception might be in Isac Asimov's Caves of Steel series.

I am assuming that all of our "official" races will have some kind of Default Diplomacy stance as original Moo had. We can enter things like that in here. We are assuming that the relationship with other races is directly proportional to the amount of telepathic Pain that the race generates for the Trith. Because this Telepathic pain is going to be an actual game play mechanic that has significant effects on the Trith it will be simpler to make it an ON/OFF kind of thing rather then a more complex HiGH/LOW/OFF kind of thing.

I am still wondering about their physiology. Are they a completly Non-Corporial life Form or a mixture of matter and energy? How do they Reproduce. Perhaps 2 of them "merge" and then seperate with a 3rd smaller infant individual created as they seperate. The new individual would contain a mix of the parents thoughts and memories.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Nightfish
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#15 Post by Nightfish »

Actually the Trith look at it this way: "If your thoughts hurt us, then we kill you. If your thoughts don't hurt us then we got nothing against you" That's simple, straightforward and easy to understand.

Thus diplomatic relations are "total war" to everybody in category 1 and "normal" to everybody in category 2.

About appearance: I think the Trith are a mixture of matter and their enormous psychic energies. The matter part is responsible for the vaguely humanoid form, the energy part is responsible for the glowing halo and other cool effects.
About reproduction: I think the Trith can handle that part without my meddling *g*. Seriously, did anybody in Star Wars explain how Hutts multiply? :D

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