Pak Protecters in GURPS

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

To judge Pthssspok's overall IQ, you also have to look at where, and how, he failed. And Pthssspok makes a couple notable errors in IQ-based skills that suggest, to me, that their IQ can't be absurdly high. First, of course, is the fact that they clearly rolled more poorly than Brennan did on Psychology, to work out the probable human reaction to Tree of Life, allowing Brennan to get the drop on Pthssspok. In fact, Brennan speculated that Pthssspok still thought Brennan was just behaving like a "normal" Protector, killing a competitor to ensure his own bloodline's monopoly on the transformation.

Second, though, and much more hugely, is Pthssspok's flub of a roll in the first place, putting Brennan into his cargo hold with inadequately secured Tree of Life. Pthssspok looked at Brennan and, knowing what an untransformed breeder looked like, decided that Brennan wasn't related, to the point where they were surprised that Brennan had eaten the root and undergone the change. That, to me, is a major failure, if not a critical failure, on Biology, or Physiology, or something. I doubt very much that anyone trained in even TL 8 levels of those skills, when presented with an example of Homo sapiens next to one of Homo habilis, wouldn't instantly conclude they were closely related. Pthssspok doesn't even have the excuse of living in a universe where "parallel evolution" turns up humanoids on every world, because Niven was always pretty careful about having aliens be alien in Known Space, with very clearly different body plans.

I'm not so sure that the second roll should be considered a flub. Pthsspok's mission was to bring tree of life to the breeders of earth. Protector motivations really warp their thinking. I think Pthsspok very intentionally turned Brennan into a Protector. Yes, he knew he'd die, but he'd accomplished his mission. Why would be want to survive?



Misjudging the human reaction to tree of life is a different matter, and a little harder to explain. Certainly, Pthsspok was working with a very alien mind, and that inflicted a heavy familiarity penalty. It would have been nice to study human society first, but I suspect his purpose got the better of him there. Protectors are depicted with very high intelligence but some very crippling self-control issues.