The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

If you have the Taalo shield, how can dnyarri control your mind to make you ask about flowers? like

You: Come on Dnyarri tell us the scope of your mental powers!

Dnyarri: Captain i don't think you ment to ask about my powers, didn't your mean FLOWERS? (green flash of light)

You: Yes-Dnyarri-I-Wish-to-Know-About-Flowers

Dnyarri: flowers are beatiful and smell nice, now be a good human and leave me alone (green flash of light)

You: I-Wish-too-Leave-Now

Dnyarri: Ahhh yes captain i can only imagian you have a great deal of work to attend too


Hmmmm how can he do that   :P

Your Taalo shield isn't properly installed.  ::)

When you "aquire" him, choose the option to throw him in space(or something like that) and then he will tell you about your installation.

The Dnyarri can overcome the Taalo Device, but it's a huge strain on him and he can only do it in brief bursts.

Not to mention that the Captian really DOES like flowers and
so is more vunerable to this attack.

Hee. Somehow I doubt the Starbase technical crew are particularly interested in "flowers, and puppies, and other pretty things".

I don't think it's as simple as saying the Dnyarri's powers can only work in bursts. In order to maintain his safety on the starship he probably has to be constantly influencing those around him; the Captain goes from being determined to shoot down the Dnyarri like a rabid dog to completely accepting the Dnyarri's offer of alliance, and giving in to the nasty thing's annoying demands and pampering it and such.

I think it's more like the Dnyarri's powers are blunted, so that it can make people do certain things that it really wants them to do by diverting, distracting or tricking them rather than directly controlling them. It can't directly force the research team to stop asking it questions, but it can constantly divert the conversation onto more pleasant topics. It can't force the Ur-Quan ships to self-destruct, but it can confuse them and make them fly in random directions. Interestingly it *can't* force people to take an action they've directly, strongly decided against, it seems; its main priority, after all, should be to get the Taalo Shield turned off, and it never manages it.

Actually...

Speaketh Commander Hayes about the Taalo Device:


Game, set, match.

Well, yeah. Who were you playing this tennis match against? We were all basically saying the same thing, that the Shield doesn't work perfectly against the neo-Dnyarri.

What I'm saying is that it seems more like it's always working imperfectly, rather than that it works perfectly most of the time and occasionally lapses. One good stretch of time when the Dnyarri's powers aren't working are all it would take to kill it, and we see that the Dnyarri actually forces you to keep it on your ship even though you really don't want it there (at least, you wouldn't if you picked those conversation options), and do all kinds of demeaning things to please it in the meantime. It's also constantly capable of telepathically reading your mind, something the Shield's supposed to stop completely. It's probably more like it keeps the Dnyarri's powers constantly in a very weak state, rather than letting it use its powers off and on.

By far the most frightening option is that the Dnyarri is letting you 'THINK' you are protected, and in his scheming, wants you to think that he is powerless..evidently, he 'forgot' to order someone to get him out of that cargo hold =p

After that conversation, I calmly saved, exited, switched the pc off, then shivered...definately one of the freakier things I've thought of...

Might it be more of a pain thing than a blunting thing.

Remember the first encounter the dnyarri acted like he was smacking his head hard into a brick wall everytime he tried to send you to your death...

maybe the more he tries to control the more painfull (to the point of knockout/death?) it is. Changing a topic of conversation like that is probobly painful but much less painful than making you *do* something.

Dnyarri are very lazy too so the pain thing makes sense to me...

And it wouldn't surprise me to know that the taalo device isn't 'perfect'

Possibly both; I think a low-level use of his powers to do things like read minds and keep you from thinking to eject him into space doesn't do much but give him a constant, mild headache, but trying to do major things like forcibly send you away when you're investigating his powers, or confusing and distracting the Ur-Quan, must be excruciating cluster headaches. And actually forcing you to do something deeply against your nature like kill yourself or turn off the Shield and set him free is so painful he can't do it.

Thank the lord he ain't a pain fetishist, then...The Dnyarri are probably the most frightening...followed closely by the Orz

Well, he DOES ask that you send down two crew members to amuse him, preferably one male and one female...

(wonder what happens if acceded to his request and sent down different species)

The reason the Dnyarri can't control people aboard the ship is quite simple. The Dnyarri uses the force, and the Taalo shield is a giant rock Ysalamari. Therefotre, inside the ship there is no force to tamper with. However, as the Dnyarri has sky high midichlorian values it can somwetimes *push* the Ysalamari antimidichlorians away, enablign it to function for short periods of time.

Chess mate.

Substitute "psychon" for "midi-chlorian" and you have something that more or less sounds like the explanation SC2 attempted to give.

StarWars is the debil =p

But yeah, that is practically the same, like art said.

Does anyone else think that the Dnyarri have other, stranger powers? I just don't think that psi is the only thing they possess...

I hear they're very good cooks. ;)

Quote: Chess mate.

Isn't that "check mate"?

On another note, I think that if the little guys have psi, they might
be able to see glimpses into the future. Wouldn't that put an
interesting spin on things? Or maybe some sort of healing powers?

Certainly if we put all purported forms of psi phenomena together and say they're all manifestations of the same force ("psychons" or whatnot) something with as uber-powerful telepathic powers as the Dnyarri should show some capacity for other forms of psi like precognition, clairvoyance and psychokinesis. My guess is that in the SC2 universe pre-cog and clairvoyant abilities are in general weaker, since they perceive mindless physical objects rather than other minds -- the Pkunk need to use all kinds of weird mojo to see into the future (communicating with spirit guides and things, that provide the other end of what's essentially still a telepathic transaction between minds) while they don't describe needing any such aids to "see into your heart". Probably the Dnyarri are too unpleasant for the higher-dimensional spirit guides to want to give them much help with fortune-telling.

As far as psychokinesis, maybe messing with actually using psychic powers to alter physical reality is the sort of thing that got the Androsynth killed (using otherworldly forces like Dimensional Fatigue and whatnot), and maybe the Dnyarri are perceptive enough to realize this. Or maybe they're just too lazy to exert any physical force of their own and prefer to have everything done by big, strong slaves.

I'd rather not eat anything that a dog sized brain frog would cook.

Well, I percieve clairvoyance, and all those other things as stupid "john edward' crap, so its a moot point for me...
I always just assumed that they have a natural reciever for brain waves that translate them into speech, and they can transmit, powerfully enough, to overwrite the brain waves. Sort of like the Chenjesu with their hyperwave.

Too bad the Pkunk would disagree with you, and their powers seem to work...

But yes, I think you could define all psi as mind-to-mind interaction, at least within the SC2 universe; the Pkunk see the future and see things light-years away because they can communicate with the minds of beings who live in higher dimensions that they call "spirit guides" and "gods".

That is one of the things I like the most about the game now that I'm revisiting it 10+ years hence -- The writing on the Pkunk is exceptionally well-done, in that their advice seems so flippant when they give it to you, yet their prophecies are 100% true when you go back and look at them with full knowledge of the game's events.  It really makes me hope that Paul Reiche does some more story-driven games (as opposed to action games) soon, his attention to detail in his fiction is remarkable to say the least.

"Also I sense that you will have 14 children, and die at an early age."

Well, if I were married to a Syreen, I'd probably, er, proliferate like mad. All that sex would probably wear you out too, and might be a cause of your untimely death.

At least, that's what I assumed it meant.

Hey, no fair taking the quote out of context like that:


...which means that the last prediction is not really part of their prophecy, and as such, does not count towards their accuracy rate, in my opinion.

But I suppose I could concede the point and say that their prophecies are 99.5% accurate.

Dude, you don't *know* that the prophecy isn't true. Zelnick's certainly got quite a few grandchildren at the end of the game -- not as many as you might expect from 14 kids, true, but nothing says they'd all have to be visiting him at the same time. And his age is indeterminate at the end; he's certainly graying, but he seems a lot more like someone in his 50s or early 60s than someone at a ripe old age of 80 or 90. And if he died fairly soon afterwards, I think it might be fair to call dying in one's 50s an early death, especially if we live in a future society where technology regularly lets people survive past 100.

And, it's not like we know how long "early" is compared to the Pkunk. Maybe the pkunk live to be 200+ years, so dying then would be considered young to them if they haven't had much contact with humans.

Right... controlling people's mind isn't enough. They can also launch nuclear missles from their arse.

LOL =p

Well, the Pkunk irritate me innessesantly....so I never really bothered with their conversation =p