12hr Game Story

[Cyrien]

OOC - This is from a game with 12hr turns that just started. Others from the game might post and might not. Up to them. I myself am going to try and mold this game into a story. Updates on my part will probably only occur with major events. A little background for understanding the race I am playing.

Bio Desc -

The Alteri are a bug like race that evolved on a cold barren planet with no real atmosphere. The Alteri are a rather weak and physically under developed race with overdeveloped brains that may be usefull in psychic manipulation. Some argue that there mental abilities may extend to manipulating time itself. While weak in ground combat they make up for this with a formidable ability to keep track of multiple tasks all at once without any loss of efficiency in any single task, greatly increasing their combat ability in the complicated and high tech arena of space combat. The Alteri are the only species, sentient or otherwise to have evolved on their homeplanet.

Society -

The Alteri are broken up into several clear and distinct castes. Each caste is responsible for a specific sector of Alteri society and has complete control over the specifics of that area. The Speakers are the highest caste and are the voice of the Alteri. They decide what is researched, what ships go where, how the Alteri will deal with alien races, and what actions the military will take, how each caste deals with these directives is upto them. While there are many in the Speaker caste there is only one who holds the title of Grand Speaker at any given time. The Grand Speaker is the equivalent of an Emperor with supreme authority in theory. In practice, all decisions are made by councils of Speakers knowledgeable in the areas necessary for that particular decision with advice being given by top members of other castes that may be affected and the Grand Speaker then putting these decisions into affect. The Society runs well and dissent is not tolerated on any level.

The Alteri are not overtly hostile but do have at the core of their philosphy the idea of survival of the fittest once they realize they are not alone in the universe. They will take advantage of the weak and ally with the strong. This is their basic policy.

[Cyrien]

Somewhere in the depths of space a being has taken its first tentative steps into the great unknown. Undisputed masters of all they survey, they move outward. Outward and onward. Who knows what mysteries await them?

Alteri Homeworld -

The messenger rushed into the room with news he was sure the Grand Speaker would be overjoyed to hear.
"Grand Speaker! Grand Speaker! The council has decided! They have accepted your proposal! We shall extend further into space! These strange worm holes will be investigated!"
The messenger stopped and seemed surprised when the Grand Speaker did not react to his words.

The Grand Speaker was filled with thoughts of the Last time they had ventured into space. They had built massive ships to travel to a nearby star that had been detected with several planets that were suitable for colonization. That had been over 150 years ago. Traveling at sub light speeds it had taken the ships just over 70 years to reach their destination. He reached out and touched their minds with his own and surveyed what was. In such a short time those two planets had become as developed and crowded as the home planet. Now it was time to expand once again. They would expand. They would survive.

It never occurred to him to wonder if other life might be out there. After all, the Alteri had evolved alone and solitary on a desolate ice planet with no atmosphere worth mention. There had never been anyone or anything else alive for them. There was nothing in their experience to suggest there ever would be.

So they moved into space freely without concern never suspecting they might not be alone. Never suspecting the future that awaited them.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

they would have to eat dirt. if they ate each other, there would be none left.

[Cyrien]

The Alteri don't eat or breathe. They are self contained entities. Any breach of their exoskeleton results in death. One of their physical frailties and their primary lack of ground combat ability. Alteri young are born en masse, several dozen per hatching and the parents is killed in the process. IE the parents die mating and the eggs mature in the corpses and then hatch. The rest of the Caste they are born into raises them. Only elderly Alteri are expected to reproduce for what should be obvious reasons.

I had all this down in the original descs for the race but have since lost it when I switched computers so now I have to rebuild it.

[Puke]

what the hell do they run on, cold fusion?

[Cyrien]

The idea is basically the same as a planet. Each one is a self contained eco-system, the basic resources for which are garnered during the egg stage from the leftovers of the dead parents and surrounding environment. Eventually everything that can be used inside is, that is old age for them, and nothing can stop it or extend lifespan. In addition, the secondary source of energy is the sun. They evolved on a planet with no atmosphere composed of ice. This means very low electromagnetic field and high ambient radiation. Their bodies are capable of absorbing and harnessing the radiation. A sort of super photosynthesis that keeps their internal eco-systems running.

They are an very biologically complex species with an evolutionary timeline that when compared with earth would start with the earliest dinosaurs and end... now.

Note the species did not evolve on an airless void world, as the original atmosphere was liquid rich and very thick. The world slowly died due to the lack of an electromagnetic field and all other life was wiped out as the atmosphere was slowly torn away by solar winds and steadily dropping surface temperatures. They managed to evolve in a way to enable survival. Their planets Version of the cockroach.

Please pick them apart freely. I want to try and develop them as much as possible. Finding flaws or making suggestions would be quite helpfull.

[Atrocities]

The Starwolf Clan values this information and will put it to good use. Please, by all means, keep posting.

What would be of especially good use would be your ship designs, planetary locations and defenses. Your fleet locations would also be very helpful to our - um - historical research people.

[ October 14, 2003, 02:37: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Cyrien]

Fleet locations? What? Can't you see them from your homeplanet? Oh wait... darn those cloaking devices...

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
Please pick them apart freely. I want to try and develop them as much as possible. Finding flaws or making suggestions would be quite helpfull.

All right, you did ask for it....

Let me get this straight -
you have a great number of creatures that, from hatching to death, need nothing beyond sunlight; at hatching, they need only their parent and the surrounding planetary material (ice, mostly). There are no predators, and no reason to prey upon themselves
- these plants needed mobility because __________________________________________
- these mobile plants needed an IQ because __________________________________________
- these mobile intelligent plants needed a society because __________________________________________

Order is unimportant on those - perhaps IQ came before mobility, for example - but there needs to be something to fill in the blanks; there is very little which will go to the work of improving itself without good reason to do so, and you don't seem to be referencing a Creator here.

[Cyrien]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:

Let me get this straight -
you have a great number of creatures that, from hatching to death, need nothing beyond sunlight; at hatching, they need only their parent and the surrounding planetary material (ice, mostly). There are no predators, and no reason to prey upon themselves

- these plants needed mobility because __________________________________________
- these mobile plants needed an IQ because __________________________________________
- these mobile intelligent plants needed a society because __________________________________________

[/QB]

First. They aren't plants. They are closer to insects. The sunlight development was by necessity and not due to a direct relation to plants.

Right. Mobility was early on. They didn't evolve alone on the planet. Mobility was first as they evolved as an insectoid scavenger. At that point they resembled their current form about as much as the first mammals resemble modern humans.

Next would be a society. Think hermit crabs here(for a bug like example in the real world) or apes, chimps, any number of other creatures in the real world. While each works as an individual they tend to live in large colonies and Groups by nature. When left alone they tend to die due to depression. Close bonds within communities are in existence even before sentience. Note that even at those early stage weak psychic ability exists in the form of empathy(ability to feel the emotions of others), causing far closer community bonds than any example on earth.

Intelligence develops only much later as the atmosphere of the planet continues to burn off. Here intelligence as well as the more extreme physical changes develop all as a means of keeping the species alive in the face of drastic planetary changes that wipe out all other life. The first records for the Alteri occur shortly after total atmosphere burn off well after any remains of previous life have ceased. At this point the various Alteri Groups find each other and now possess stronger psychic abilities(still mostly of the empathic type but with some telepathy as the singular means of communication, no atmosphere after all). With direct telepathic communication there are no misunderstandings. Slowly the Alteri become a united society wherein each performs that which they are best suited for to best serve the society as a whole.

Next the Alteri still have the earlier inherent desire to expand and multiply like so many others. With no enemies the numbers rapidly get outa hand. Thus the drive to expand beyond the planet. Also the instinctual drives of their scavenger ancestors will push them to respect strength and conquer the weak.

Finally, there is other life on the planet... but it is all part of the Alteri. Microscopic life. Single celled and multicelled forming a ballanced and temporarily self sustaining eco-system out of each Alteri. Thus they do not process the radiation but a microscopic organism inside them does and in so doing creates biproducts that feed others and so on and so forth keeping the Alteri going.

Hope that answers your questions.