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Topic: Ur-Quan lost link (Read 4385 times)
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spinsane
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I don't think the Eternal Doctrine > Path of Now and Forever is really so black and white.
I think that they don't consider other races a threat for a very good reason. The Vindicator flying around only gets met with "oh we'll punish earth AFTER we're done with this little interracial spat...". What damage could the Vindicator honestly do? Any race that interferes is attacked by both Quans, and yet while they are fighting BOTH doctrines are on hold. The Kzer-Za don't have the local personnel to enforce enslavement (The battle of Delta Gorno is, according to the Chmmr, the primary reason why the Kzer-Za would lose the doctrinal conflict) and the Kohr-Ah aren't annihilating other races while they fight the conflict.
SC2 is a bunch of freak events and serendipity. The Kzer-Za may have predicted that the Chen/Mrn would seek a synthetic union, and that they may acquire the tech necessary to disable the shield, but they might've known all that would happen after the conflict was over. Their ships are designed to super-destruct on death to destroy their tech and pet. Neither Quan properly dealt with the Utwig *points finger at Primat*. Both Quan would've overlooked Unzervalt due to interference from the other--- That there was a SECOND precursor bomb in the quadrant, that there was a Sun Device that could accelerate the Process, that a Talking Pet was revived to Dnyarri status, and that there was a precursor vessel tough enough to get close enough to the Sa-Matra is all incredibly improbable.
The Chmmr were most likely setup around the doctrinal conflict preparing for a surprise attack after the Sa-Matra is destroyed. IMO- the Sa-Matra escort fleet gets wiped out in the blast. It is composed mostly of Kzer-Za, so that's a LOT of ships that the Kzer-Za have lost to precursor bombs... The Kohr-Ah fleet only really took minor damage from the Utwig/Thraddash/Supox and whatever amount of damage was sustained from the Kzer-Za (which wasn't enough to prevent them from wiping out everybody discluding the Chmmr-- suffice to say that the Chmmr are the camelback breakers). NAFS forces, primarily yehat/chmmr, make enough critical strikes to force the Quans to retreat beyond the Magellanic Clouds.
In all liklihood, the primary production facilities of the Quans are not local to the scope of SC2, so even though both of their combat fleets are forced to retreat (probably to Kzer-Za territory) they will be retreating to familiar terrain where it probably wouldn't be too difficult for them to recooperate their losses. In other words, the threat of the NAFS isn't THAT big a deal in the galactic context. Both Quans still have their respective "empires", the Kohr-Ah fleet may be seperated from their means of production, but that's not necessarily a disadvantage. Kzer-Za supposedly has many battle thralls that they can summon from afar, as well as local battle thralls whose confidence in the NAFS can be crushed (IE- if the Quans got close to Yehat space again, you can be damn sure that the usurper would fall and the old Queen would rise again as per their political engine).
Both doctrines are at fault, or rather, neither doctrine is at fault. The problem was that neither doctrine was being implemented while the conflict took place. The primary lesson that they learn is that doctrinal conflicts, at the scale they were performed, do not help propogate the Quans.
Would this lead to reconciliation? Postponement of conflicts? Reduction of the scale of the conflict? A new doctrine? A third doctrine and more conflict? Mutual peace with NAFS while conflict continues?
It is in the interest of the NAFS that the PoNaF beats the eternal doctrine (much better to fight the Kzer-Za as opposed to the Kohr-Ah or all Ur-Quan). The victor of the doctrinal conflict isn't canon, so it's impossible to say for certain whether or not the ED had time to win before the Sa-Matra was destroyed. This presents a few possible scenarios.
* PoNaF submits to ED- unified Ur-Quan destroys NAFS.
* PoNaF prepares for 3rd doctrinal conflict and the ED destroys the NAFS.
* PoNaF and ED put conflict on hold and destroy NAFS- ED most likely win conflict.
* Additional factional infighting allows NAFS to destroy the Quans.
* NAFS becomes battle thralls under a liberal interpretation of the PoNaF to provide the resources/personnel (but not ships, der) necessary for the PoNaF to defeat the ED. PoNaF doctrine becomes semantically relative....
* NAFS ceases fighting with the Ur-Quan so that the Quans may take their time to determine the doctrinal victor and the NAFS can go sneaky sneaky and convert Battle Thralls/stabilize their war engine to fight whomever wins the conflict.
* NAFS obliterates the Quans somehow and forces them to be peaceful.... or DIE!
* The Eternal Ones force everyone to be all hippie and find a solution to save all sentience in the galaxy! Yay! Then they go back to fighting.
Or any mix therein. Most likely the Quans just team-up and pwn the NAFS and then get to doctrinal conflicting later. I'm willing to bet they'd rather finish the second conflict with the ambient firelight reflecting throughout the shattered homeworld of the Chmmr. Alternatively the NAFS holds a stalemate long enough for The Captain to inspire revolutionary juices in distant Battle Thralls.
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Arne
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Yak!
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Those are old concepts. I think I later redesigned the Taalo into big Barbapapas.
Funny how no other races ever joined, then. In fact, the only races we can be sure they even found were the Slylandro and Dnyarri. It's not really funny. It's established that the brownies did not make friends easily. They could have discovered other species, but just not made fiends with them.
The brownies did find the Slylandro, so they must have been pretty thorough though.
Nope! They were actually the last to join, and had the least advanced technology. When joining, perhaps. As explorers, they may have gotten early dibs on many precursor artifacts, so it's possible that they leveled up quickly despite joining the Milieu late. Perhaps some scouts kept wonderful precursor artifacts to themselves, establishing territories elsewhere. Space is huge, and I got the impression that the Dnyarri can only do their thing in close proximity.
It's quite probable that the Dnyarri on the Ur-Quan homeworld later tried to lure back all of the scouts so they could be infected. It's difficult to speculate how effective this was. In sci-fi ships tend to get stranded, loose communications, get trapped in time bubbles, run into portals, alien mystery artifacts, etc... (Edit: A lone worm might not have been able to reproduce though, unless they later remedied their mating troubles by artificial means. While they had their quirks, they were probably not stupid.)
Also, since the Ur-Quan were so territorial (less so later on though), perhaps there was a 'boom' with many eager explorers wanting to find their own little world to settle on. Their homeworld must have seemed quite crowded as space opened up to them.
Ultronomicon:
The Ur-Quan soon found that they made ideal Milieu scouts; individual Ur-Quan could not only tolerate but enjoyed the prospect of piloting tiny, single-occupant ships to uncharted regions of the galaxy to report their findings, and the many Ur-Quan scouts gathered huge amounts of data, exploring great chunks of uncharted space.
So, their ships might have been relatively cheap to build (not requiring a large amount of planetary resources each), and they did spread out far, exploring uncharted areas, suggesting that they may have indeed gotten first dibs on precursor artifacts. Humans got stranded on Vela, so maybe something similar happened to a brownie?
As for the Orz talk about the Taalo, I got the impression that the Orz described the Taalo escape as happening 'now', because they see time differently.
Edit: didn't the SC1 story have a different timeline? I also remember that there were plenty of artifacts to pick up, and if the Ur-Quan had combed the area earlier, what is left by the time of SC2 must be scraps.
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« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 02:00:27 am by Arne »
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spinsane
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I think the main concern is that Ur-Quan just aren't social creatures and their scouting methods are solitary.
In the wilds of their homeworld, they probably had a breeding method something like.... man finds woman, jungle sex, then they never see each other again. After the momma gives birth, she leaves the eggs in the wild. Eggs hatch and the baby hatchlings all eat each other. Last caterpillar standing gets enough to make it to the next stage of their growth.
It's hard to say, but they do say that their scoutships are solitary, and Ur-Quan don't live forever, so it's just too far fetched for them to have some remote colony that the Dnyarri can't find out about (there would records and trade between colonies). There may be brown ur-quan artifacts all over the galaxy, but it'd be tough to make an argument for live brownies.
The best bet would be, against all sociopathic urge to kill each other, two ur-quan scouts meet in space and fall in love and live in a monogamous lifestyle. They seperate their young from eating each other at birth and somehow transcend their killer instinct to make the third offshoot, Plush-Quan. Over 20k years of isolation and a pastoral life, they develop a peaceful independent colony. Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah find the colony and leave it be because it is Ur-Quan, and the doctrines are intended to protect ALL Ur-Quan (unless you are a part of the debate).
I don't see them having any kind of important plot device... except maybe some awesome history and perhaps some precursor artifacts on hand-- but they'd have an eye kept on them by contemporary Ur-Quan. Whether or not the doctrinal forces are keen on allowing them to move around or not is tough to determine.
It all hinges on them swallowing their urge to kill each other and NOT information the Ur-Quan command structure that they were forming a colony. It's kind of deceptive in a way, and the Ur-Quan never lies!
In a sequel, it's a pretty big stretch-- but it is fiction. The Thraddash had contemplative cultures, the Pkunk left the Yehat... there are several possible things going on. It'd be an interesting conversation-- they'd have a ton of good history.
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Alvarin
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"Plush-Quan" - liked that !
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Arne
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Also, if the brownies established any Noah (starflight style) colonies, someone back on the homeworld is bound to know something about it, so the Dnyarri would find out pretty quick. On the other hand, a territorial species might be paranoid and careful, so perhaps they took security measures. Any space faring species would probably start thinking about their survivial once they figure out how hostile space is.
I doubt all Ur-Quan had the exact same personality. There are humans who like eating poop, having sex with grates, and in SC there's Zex of course. A monogamous Ur-Quan couple (and other deviants) would probably be ashamed of their fetish and leave the homeworld. Perhaps there was a secret society of non-territorial brownies, like how Spathi have the brave Black Spathi (which may just be a story, I know).
Another thing to think about is that (Ultronomicom again:):
They were solitary hunters who had to defeat their strong territorial nature, and the deep hatred between each other, to found a mighty technological culture. (Although they 'still struggle' with it.)
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« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 12:01:15 pm by Arne »
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