The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Ok, at 2134 Earth was slaveshielded by the Kzer-za.
At 2159 (more or less, depends on the player ;) ) earth's slaveshield went down.

What happened down there all these years?
And what would happen now that the earth is free?

A bit of "history": Before and during the war, Earth had some kind of global government, with Ivana Or-Kochav (By the Matrix, that's an Israeli name!) as high Provost, and with the UN as some kind of senate for all I can tell.
Some kind of utopian future, with world peace and all the nukes locked safely (until we used them on the Cruisers).

I failed to find any information describing life under the slaveshield, except this quote of Commander Hays:
"I spent so much of my time struggling --
-- down on the surface under the shield and then later up here, trying to keep this station alive "

As for what happens after the slaveshield is broken, we don't know much either. Zelnick don't mention any disaster to his grandchildren, and at 3DO ending movie we see earthling Cruisers take off from earth right after the shield is removed, so I guess the people down there eventually managed to do something. So, let’s make history!
I think the ending was good, but I can't believe that everything was fine under the shield all these years. Riots and trouble are sure to happen.
What do you think happened down there, and how did the Humans manage to have Cruisers when the shield went down 25 years later?

Why would you expect riots? We've been living here on the surface of the Earth for tens of thousands of years, and it's never been any cause for riots.
I suspect life will go on on the planet surface as it always did.
And what Zelnick refers to as "struggling" might just be him trying to make a carrier so that he would one day be able to serve on the station in orbit.

Hays referred to struggling, not Zelnick :)
Zelnick is the player character.

And while we never saw living here as a reason to riots, that was before we became a space faring race and participated in a big war, lost and got all our older-then-500-years buildings destroyed.
Also, all the Humans not on earth were transferred to earth before the slaveshield went up (or at least most of them, as you know a certain group of scientists didn't). After quite a while of living on other planets and expending in space, this transfer of people to earth probably put a lot of strain on the system, finding homes and food for all of those refugees.

I think this is when riots, extremes (religious and not) and all those nasty things raise their ugly heads and start making trouble.

IMO at least, earth would be in quite a mess after the shield is placed.

Why no riots?  Sometime, ask the thraddash what happens when an ur-quan slave species doesn't behave so nicely.  Ur-quan start saying a lot of things that end in 'or die'.  When a species that has already obliterated good portions of your planet and whipped your entire race says things that end in 'or die', you listen.  Or you die.  Since humanity is still around, I'm supposing they listened.

More likely then not, they behaved themselves.  They didn't exactly know about the ur-quan being busy, and since there IS a starbase in orbit specifically for ur-quan to come to, and since there were supposed to be several spathi and ilwrath around to rat us out if we tried anything....well, lets just say misbehaving seems like a very bad idea.

I'd say it was most likely the human government generally controlled the populace, preventing any activities that might end in fusion blasts, and did their best to make humanity survive, probably limited to solar, wind and geothermal power (cause the ur-quan were gonna vaporize us if we tried nuke power, and it's not exactly like the oil on this planet is gonna last til 2300).

As for the cruiser....it was either very well hidden, cause hunams are sneaky like that, or it was an incosistency.  Or it wasn't a cruiser, just a shuttle for ferrying people to and from the space station every 20 odd years.

Also, IIRC, humanity didn't spend all that much time in space expanding.  I'm pretty sure they took their first steps into hyperspace, and right about then the chenjesu showed up to explain that we were about to die.  Doesn't exactly leave time for expansionism.

I don't think the Ur-quan care what happens under the slaveshield.
Also the races that heard all the "or die" sentences were battle thralls, and the Ur-quan needed them to fight.
Under the shield, we were pretty much on our own.
Beside, the Thraddash lunched their nukes on themselves, there is a big difference between that and some riots and perhaps terrorism on earth.

About Human expansion: In fact if I remember correctly Human didn't have Hyperspace capabilities until the Chenjesue gave us the tech. BUT bases on asteroids and planets in the system were mentioned, maybe I'm wrong, but it's probably safe to assume that there was a colony on mars and maybe on some asteroids. Especially in this semi-utopian future SC have for the Humans (utopian until the war that is).

And last, for the Cruisers - you can watch the movie yourself if you'll download it here:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/3do/movies.shtml

The ships are certainly Earthling Cruisers, and lots of them. Since we try to make sense of all the little inconsistencies and mistakes in SC2, we can't just rid that as an inconsistency that should be ignored. At least unless ridding it like that is best for some story in plan. :)

Not to mention, seeing a deep pulsing red whenever you go outside... Everything indoors probably looked green for a few minutes.

Well, it's 25 years of having to run around on the surface, accepting the fact that you will probably never be able to populate other worlds. I imagine precautions against overpopulation were probably put into effect...

do you think the weather changed at all on Earth because of the slavesheild? Maybe the red layer caused some sort of greenhouse effect. I know I would start looting if it was extremely hot all the time, assuming I could live for that long outdoors.  ;D

Dunno, I imagined it wasn't really so much of a solid 'hard' shield as it is an energy shield that blows apart anything that tries to pass through it.

first, i would hope with the time they had on the surface, that they would rebuild all there lost buildings. second, the government should look into what was destroyed, by the ur quan, at places where there was no buildings, or reason to do so. maybe something useful they were diging up could of been used for a plot development to make a sequal. the humans had plenty of time to accomplish all that in 25 years easy. they might also be having to keep some people in line, as to prevent any mischeif that might bring down the ur quan to punish them. all in all it would be like it is now without space travel and hate for one another. im sure the slave shield would bring us all together as one, so that we might be stronger because of it. we would bide our time and eventually persavere. time always has a way of working things out. ~DEFIANT  

This is very optimistic, how about this:
After the slave shield went up, religious extremes blamed anyone else for bringing the anger of god, this is the real reason we lost to the Ur-quan! God is mad on us!

"Green" groups and Gaia cults want to return Humanity to our primordial state, people should destroy their cities and technology and live with nature. Tech didn't bring us any good, and we're trapped here anyway! Those cults would have their extremes too...

The stronger countries expel the space refugees from their territory and close their borders, in an attempt to prevent hunger and shortage from their people. In other places hunger and shortage in water and medical supplies get only worse with time. This cause the UN to crumble, the global government no longer mean anything.

Cults that worship the Ur-quan show up here and there, their people led to believe that if the Ur-quan will find us worthy they'll remove the shield.

Angry mobs attack government facilities, they voted for being Battle thralls, why were they imprisoned under the slaveshield?!

True, and don't forget that the Kzer-Za themselves claim humanity will come to love and revere the Ur-Quan for the gift of enslavement (mmm...bondage and dominance). I imagine this is probably spoken out of past experience.

After all, in a few hundred years the Ur-Quan could very well become as gods in the enslaved society's re-started history. What else do you call a race that comes from the heavens to dictate their  commands, have the power to smite you at their slightest inclination, and occasionally will take a gifted few to a 'higher place of existence'? (starbase)

Damn you all have some interesting ideas on this. (Just found my way here).

Truthfully no matter how peaceful we may have been I think being crushed by an alien race and all thrown back home under a big red shield would send any society into a state of Turmoil.
We probably had roits for food to start, Then some rationing systems were set-up. I could see a war or two occuring.
As for the Nukes. I think the Ur-Quan could care less if we had Nuclear power, or even Nuclear missles on the planet. Nothing we did was gonna break that shield.
Guess that might explain the Cruisers at the end. After a few wars, and some time for a new government Earth probably decided to work on getting the shield down. If nothing else prepare a fleet incase an Ally got the shield down so that we wouldn't be defenseless.

A couple of things.

1.) We humans, for the most part, aren't stupid enough to think that the Ur-Quan are "gods". We've had religion set in to the face of this planet for over 3000 years, it'd take more than that to change things. The "Green" groups would get smushed by government police, anyway... :P As for the Ur-Quan telling Zelnick that the Earthlings would love them for enslaving them, it might actually be true after awhile. If the Earthlings knew about the Kohr-Ah, I'd wanna be a battle thrall too, if they promised to be nice. I DON'T think, however that we'd call them our "gods".

2.) If you recall, Fwiffo tells Zelnick about battle thrall vs. fallow. Being enslaved entailed "Returning to Pre-Atomic savagery on the face of the planet.", so no nukes.

3.) I'm sure that precautions on overpopulation would be taken. Probably something like China. :o

*quietly*
There are a lot of people on this planet -today- that I am absolutely positive would do such a thing as worship alien conquerers as gods, even without the benefit of hundreds or thousands of years of enslavement.

This is why I said cults, most of humanity won't believe that the Ur-quan are gods, only the people Pirmat know ;)

But I didn't start this thread just to name all the bad things that could've happened under the shield.
How do you think the Humans managed it all? We know that at the end they even had Cruisers ready to leave the surface as fast as the shield went down.

Let's write a story, a future history.

Let's see here. Hayes tells you (I believe, or I read it somewhere) that Cruisers are manufactured in the original Motor City, Detroit. Did the Ur-Quan destroy Detroit? If they didn't, there's that. As for the plans, it mentioned that the Ur-Quan took or destroyed them all. Doubtful. We've got things like NORAD and other helpful mountain hideouts to store our goodies, so I'm doubtful they got all the copies. If the Ur-Quan destroyed Detroit, I'm sure there's some other city that we could've built them in, just as long as we've got the plans. If they did return us to "pre-atomic savagery", it's not like they dug up all the Uranium in the mantle either, so we'd re-discover it once more, perhaps it'd be even more efficient.

I'd guess that the social structure would be Quasi-Socialist or a Glastnost-like Communism, as we'd all be geared toward taking the shield down, and Capitalism would take a back seat as the greed of the few is replaced by the desires of all. Mmmm. Socialism. Anyway, they'd probably elect a leader that acts as more of a figurehead than anything (that's pretty much what American politics is today anyway :P) that would have Cabinets to accomplish things. Perhaps a Ministry of Freedom or something similar. Who knows?

As for the Pre-Atomic Savagery:  Perhaps the Slave Shields act like super-control rods, preventing any nuclear reaction within their confines (although I doubt it).

Cults:  Hmm, how old would Jason MacBride be at this time?  Considering the Small War was in 2115, and Homo Deus was founded not long after that, we've got 119 years, plus 30 years (estimate) to make MacBride respectible when he started, and he'd be 149 when the slaveshield went up.  Unless medical technology really became advanced before the Chenjesu came (possible, since the Androsynth worked as scientists), MacBride would be long dead.  
If he survived long enough to see the Chenjesu though,  (2112 - 2016 + 30 = 126 [he was rich, so he could afford the best care]), then he would probably reform some underground cult that despised all alien interference (fueled by reports of Arilou *modifications* before the war).  If he didn't survive, one of his children or maybe an ardent follower could do the same thing.  With the glow of the slave shield overhead, many might be angry enough to follow this new movement.

The secret: Xemu comes out of hiding in the Earth's core and restores nuclear power to the Earthlings.

As Hayes said, one of his crew was a worker at the New Detroit shipyards and made a secret copy before they were mass-wiped from the databases. Noone's to say another bloke working there didn't make a secret copy too--- or that this lady didn't make a copy of her copy and hand it off to someone she trusted.

its all in the remake ::) ::) ::) ::) ;D

I think the simplest solution is that cruisers coming up from earth simply look cool and no one bothered to care enough to try and make it consistent with the story you're told in-game.

Why were the Androsynth scientists?  They were raised by Hsien Ho.  The SC2 manual doesn't say that they were slaves in the literal sense, but that their level of human rights were equal to slavery.  They would have been Scientists with no paid overtime time what-so-ever.

... but that's how scientists in Academia are already paid, practically speaking.

at the end of the game
when the ships from earth took off in to space
they were or might have been nato peace keeping ships
to keep the earthlings in line
if they got out of line they got zapped

                >:( (warning) >:(
( hey its just a guess as to what is was)

NATO would keep Earthling Cruisers as peacekeeping ships?!
Space ships equipped with Nuclear weapons?!
I don't think it's logical, especially as it seems that the Ur-quan didn't want the Humans to continue to build cruisers. (That's why people had to make secret copies of the plans).

But this seems like the easiest "problem" to solve: People made copies of the plans and after order was restored they were used to build more cruisers in preparations for leaving the shield.
I guess there were projects trying to crack the shield.

But how did people reach order from the cause that came with the shield?

Well, the slave shield clearly permits some kinds of signals: after all, you can see through it. So the alliance could just write "HIERARCHY" with a bunch of flares, and the people on the surface would know it was safe to begin building.

A few thought of my own: First of all psychology, sociology and history have demonstrated that nothing unifies a group of people more efficiently than a common enemy. The Ur-Quan seem like a big enough threat to me to unite virtually the whole human species.

The notion about famine got me thinking. While humans colonized the solar system, Earth was probably still pretty much the sole source of food. Also it would stand to reason that less than 10% of the entire human population was residing off-planet the time the Chenjesu contacted us. There would probably be enough food production to satiate the population. The breakdown of the transportation infrastructure is a possible problem, but I don't consider that very probable.

BTW, where did the people on the starbase get their food?

Good points. And if the starbase can just make food, why not Earth as well.?

d*&^% you fred

I'm not sure you can say that Humanity have an enemy to unite against. They already lost the war, I think it was the time for desperation and blaming people. Uniting is what they did before that. :)

BTW Death_999, you're idea is hilarious!