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Re: [Space] [Racial Templates] Really Alien Aliens
The Quartet Today
Spoiler:
[continued from previous post]
The four species soon gravitated towards specialities in their combined civilization. Triphibians, with their exploratory urges and innate sense of three-dimensional space, proved excellent space pilots and explorers. Sessiles, with their patience and fine motor skills, tended to become technicians and engineers. Armstrongs, with their natural combat skills, provided ground soldiers, frontier scouts, and first-in colonists. Female Striders policed, administered, and led their new multi-species herds, while male Striders acted as natural ambassadors binding the whole civilization together. These tendencies are far from absolute: There are Armstrong mechanics, Strider soldiers, Sessile bureaucrats, and Triphibian politicians, for example. And all four species contributed, in different ways, to science, commerce, and the arts.
Together, the Quartet races carved out a territory amidst the chaos of the Trinoc Empire’s final collapse. They had the good fortune to be located on the frontier of Trinoc space, far from the fierce fighting over the former imperial core and with plenty of room for peaceful expansion. The Quartet launched no wars of aggression but proved savagely capable of self-defense, so rival civilizations largely learned to leave it alone — or better yet, trade with it instead of fighting. Over the centuries, as Quartet colonies and influence grew, interstellar trade agreements and defense pacts evolved into a galaxy-spanning common market.
Today, a typical Quartet herd consists of five to 100 individuals of all four species. However, a significant minority of herds comprise only two species — typically only Striders and Armstrongs or only Sessiles and Triphibians — and a few herds are single-species. Most herds are involved in some sort of “family business,” their members working together on anything from a farming colony to a starship crew to a military unit. A traditionalist herd is led by the eldest female Strider, the Herd Matriarch. Some herds select their leaders by majority vote, albeit with older individuals typically granted extra votes.
Multiple Herds — anywhere from a handful to hundreds — join together in Meta-Herds, which likewise use a variety of matriarchal, elective, and mixed systems of governance. Meta-Herds federate into even larger entities, and so on up to the galaxy-spanning alliance that is the Quartet itself. It is a loose and sometimes shambling system, often slow to respond to crisis and inconsistent in its daily policies, but its flexibility and diversity has made it the greatest power in the galaxy — for now.
Racial Templates
[EDIT: I've revised these templates in response to the great feedback in this thread -- click here for the final versions.]
Female Strider (133 points)
Spoiler:
Attribute modifiers:
ST +10 [90]
DX -1 [-20]
IQ +2 [40]
HT +2 [20]
Secondary Attribute Modifiers:
Size Modifier: +1
Basic Move +3 [+15]
Will +1 [+5]
Advantages
Charisma +1 [+5]
DR 3 (tough skin, -40%) [+9]
Sharp Beak (can’t use when holding things in tongue, -50%; Armor Divisor 2, +50%) [+1]
Subsonic speech [+10]
Reputation: most powerful species in the galaxy (+3 with almost everyone, -4 with enemies of the Quartet, a large group) [0]
Disadvantages
Bloodlust [-10]
Chummy (-5)
One Arm: Prehensile tongue {flexible +50%, weak -25%) [-17]
Sense of Duty: herd [-5]
Pacifism: aggressive self-defense* [-5]
* You only fight to defend yourself and your people, but you have a broad definition of “self-defense.” You may preemptively attack any individual, group, or (in some cases) even species that has used deadly force against you and your people in the past, and you may use maximum force to end this perceived threat.
Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Ally Group & Duty: Herd [variable]
Fanaticism: Herd [-15]
High Pain Threshold [+10]
Honesty [-10]
Selfless [-5]
Truthfulness [-5]
Male Strider (137 points)
Armstrong (62 points)
Sessile (26 points)
Triphibian (26 points)
Last edited by SydneyFreedberg; 08-11-2022 at 08:26 PM.
Reason: added link to revised templates
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