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Topic: Ur-Quan and Syreen (Read 6643 times)
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Draxas
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That's probably counteracted by the cathartic feeling they get when their former enslavers actually get hurt. Besides, while the Ur-Quan don't like to waste things, all other races are considered beneath them, and thus, expendable.
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Steve-O
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I think the main reason the Kzer-Za didn't exterminate the Syreen is, as others have said, because of their morality. The Kzer-Za decided to give other races a choice - be slave shielded or become battle thralls. They decided to offer this choice because they could not condone the Kohr-Ah doctrine of unilateral extermination. They do have a code of ethics, however harsh it might seem to us. That fact that each race in the StarCon universe has a complex rationale for their behaviour is one of the things that makes this game such an undying classic in my mind. It's not just good and evil, black and white. And sometimes the logic is very alien-minded, not the sort of thing a human being would come up with, but it's always there.
If the Kzer-Za exterminated the Syreen, they would be no better than the Kohr-Ah. They've already shown they're willing to enslave the Dnyarri instead of killing them - if they can show that much restraint with the very race that held them in thrall for so many years then letting the Syreen survive under a slave shield is small potatoes.
They obviously aren't concerned about the question of future evolution of the Syreen, nor are they concerned about the future evolution of the Dnyarri. Maybe this is borne of an overconfidence in their technology, maybe it's borne of a moral high ground attitude ("perhaps they will evolve, but the potential for future threat does not excuse killing them in the present. The ends do not justify the means.") Maybe the Kzer-Za are just generally too short-sighted to foresee that outcome (highly unlikely, imho.) Whatever the reason for their mercy, the fact stands that they are obviously not willing to exterminate races simply for displaying psychic compulsion abilities, despite their past. The fact that the Dnyarri still survive - in whatever limited form - is the most potent evidence of that fact, I think. Does this compassion leave room for future problems? Yes, it probably does. In my mind that just goes to show that not even the mighty Kzer-Za are infallible. It's easy to sit back and nit-pick story elements as a player, but in the real world people do make mistakes, based on pity or compassion among other things. I don't see it as a plot hole that the Kzer-Za are equally capable of making such mistakes. I would be more disappointed in the game if the villains were completely infallible, remorselessly evil scoundrels who anticipated every possible error and corrected for it. That universe would seem much less real to me than the one that has been created here, and that would certainly influence my desire to continue thinking about this game nearly two decades after it was first released.
As for the question of what happens when they move on to a new sector of space - what new sector of space? The Kzer-Za left their home region going one way around the galaxy, the Kohr-Ah went the other way. They met again in our sector of space. That means everything in our galaxy has been covered by one race or the other by the time this game begins. Even if the fleets are moving at different speeds and thus this sector of space is not exactly opposite their home space, they've still covered the whole galaxy between the two of them by the time they come together again.
If the Kzer-Za had come out on top in the conflict, they might have sent a few scouts to make sure the Kohr-Ah didn't miss any races in their path around the galaxy, but they can reasonably expect to find little if anything left alive in the area the Kohr-Ah moved through. And everything in the area the Kzer-Za covered is now enslaved, one way or the other, so they're done. They would just need to set about occupying whatever remains of the galaxy, including our sector of space, so they wouldn't be turning their backs on any potential threat from the Syreen. If anything they'd be bunkering down and watching them closer after the Kohr-Ah were dealt with, if the Syreen were really that much of a concern to them.
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« Last Edit: March 10, 2010, 05:05:09 pm by Steve-O »
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Draxas
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Both, actually. Which is why I said they wouldn't be too broken up about the talking pets getting hurt.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Kohr-Ah also use talking pets, so mercy is at most an unnecessary contributing factor.
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