[Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

[Prince Charon]

On the Kzin, and their wars with the Solar Cooperative.

The Kzin are a particularly aggressive branch of the felinoid species commonly known as 'Caitians.' 'Kzin' is a transliteration of their actual name for themselves, which is both difficult to spell properly with Roman letters, and unpronouncible for most hominid races. Their ancestors were one of several groups taken from the planet Cait by the Preservers (who had settled the Caitians' ancestors on Cait millennia earlier), during the Caitians only full nuclear conflict; it is believed that the first generation of Kzin-Caitians arrived on the planet as children, forced to raise themselves or die trying, which may help to explain the culture which they developed. Kzin are stronger on average than other Caitian subspecies, but have poorer hearing and night vision, closer to the senses of humans. One of the native plants on their world produces an addictive substance which induces telepathic abilities in members of many feline species. Most or all of the Caitians who were settled on the planet that came to be called Kzin suffered from a sex-linked genetic disease which caused reduced intelligence in females. This disease is extinct in other Caitian populations. For this reason, the government of the Kzin culture's empire is generally called the 'Kzin Patriarchy' in English, and their autocratic leader the 'Patriarch of Kzin.'

Once interstellar travel became minimally available, interstellar conquest and colonization became both a means of distracting the population from internal problems, and a vital safety valve: young warriors who thought that they might make a better Patriarch of Kzin than the current Patriarch or his heirs, or who otherwise might advocate for reforms that the Patriarch wasn't prepared to grant, could be sent off into space to bother someone else. The fact that their travel speeds at the time were limited to high sub-light by the gravitic (psychokinetic) drives that they used was a bonus in this case, since while they could communicate with some difficulty, they couldn't come back to make trouble.


* The First Human-Kzin War, and Terran humanity's first contact with the Kzin race, began without warning in early 2131, when a Kzin conquest fleet invaded the planet New California, an extrasolar colony of the Solar Cooperative (for this, it is also called the New California Incident or New California Conflict by those who do not wish to classify it as a war). The Kzin in the fleet had no experience fighting an opponent capable of FTL travel, but still did well initially due to their numbers. However, they could not hope for reinforcements, while the Terran colonists could. Political tensions with the Andorian Star Empire (due to the SC's alliance with the Vulcanians) and the Orion Union (due to piracy and other criminal activities by the Orion Syndicate, a criminal organization which is strongly suspected to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Orion government) lead to the Solar Cooperative Space Patrol developing a rather large interstellar defence force, primarily under the previously small SCSP Special Weapons and Tactics Directorate.

By the time Task Force New California arrived, the Kzin Seventh Conquest Fleet was in control of the orbitals, and the Kzin troops on the ground were discovering that they really hated guerilla warfare (which they subsequently called 'ape warfare' or 'monkey warfare' in their own language, comparing it to the behavior of troops of primates on their homeworld); the effectiveness of improvised explosive devices was especially unnerving for them. In space, the portion of the Seventh Conquest Fleet still in orbit was unprepared for attack, and badly outnumbered, while those on the ground needed time to gather their crews and take off. Task Force New California was thus able to obtain orbital superiority with minimal losses, and begin landing ground troops (primarily drawn from the Lunar Commonwealth Militia (formerly the Lunar Colonial Militia) and the surviving or reconstituted military forces of Earth) within days. The war lasted several months, as the Seventh, typical of conquest fleets of that era, had numerous strong personalities in the officer corps, who didn't agree with each other on a lot of things, and certainly weren't going to accept a surrender order just because someone they didn't like had 'turned coward.'

Once all the surviving Kzin were captured (less a few crazy or stubborn ones who made their way far enough from the few settled parts of the planet that they weren't detected), the question was what to do with them. After much consideration, the surviving spacecraft of the Kzin Seventh Conquest Fleet were demilitarized, the surviving Kzin were loaded on to them, and a mixed fleet of Space Patrol, SC civilian-owned freighters, and various alien military and cargo vessels, dragged the Kzin sphereships into warp, and delivered them back to the Kzin homeworld (located using the Kzin vessels' own computers). This failed to go over well with the Patriarch of Kzin, but there was little he could do about it against prepared opponents with spacetime warp stardrives... not that he didn't try, as he couldn't lose face by just accepting this 'invasion,' but Patriarch Kilrargh-Riit was intelligent enough to grasp the implications better than many of his subordinates. This resulted in a lot of deaths, most of them Kzin.

Once the fighting was done, information about other problems came out: the Patriarch had limited influence over the Kzin interstellar colonies, who might make trouble eventually, the Fourth Conquest Fleet was missing (the Fifth had been sent to the same system, and found no evidence of them), and an Eighth Conquest Fleet was recently sent out. Also, the Patriarch of Kzin really didn't want the prisoners back.

The peace treaty included a trade agreement favorable to the Solar Cooperative's interests, signing over of ownership rights to the Solar Cooperative of the Kzin vessels that the SCSP had already captured, the Kzin giving up all claim on New California (a sticking point that they eventually gave in on, despite having launched the Seventh Conquest Fleet some years before the first SC colonists arrived on the planet), an agreement not to attack the Solar Cooperative if not attacked first, and an agreement that the Space Patrol would transport the prisoners to the existing Kzin colonies when they went to inform the colonists of the treaty, and convince said colonists of its validity. This lead to the final phase of the war, as the colonists needed a lot of convincing, in many cases.

The war was effectively over, and the troops back home, by Christmas, 2132.

(OOC: The Fourth and Eighth Conquest Fleets are left as adventure seeds; what happens with them is up to the individual GM.)


* The Second Human-Kzin War took place a decade later, from late 2141 to early 2143, when trade with the various FTL-capable civilizations had allowed the Kzin to develop spacetime warping technology of their own, and equip it on what became the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Conquest Fleets. All three fleets were sent to the Sol system, the Ninth to Earth and Luna, the Tenth to Mars, and the Eleventh, which was already the most fractious, to deal with habitats in the rest of the system; the official casus belli was a bar fight on Tellar, in which a human who served as a guard at the Solar Cooperative's embassy threw the first punch at a Kzin telepath who was part of the Kzin embassy. Due to the Kzin Patriarchy's limited experience with espionage and counterintelligence, the coming invasion was by no means a surprise, though due to limited intelligence assets and general arrogance in the Intelligence Bureau at the time (and the Kzin not being completely incompetent at counterintelligence), the total number of vessels was badly underestimated.

The first two battles occurred in deep space on the way to Sol, and were tactical victories for the Kzin, in that the SC fleets were driven off without the Kzin needing to significantly alter course, but strategic losses, as several vessels were disabled or destroyed, and unit cohesion was reduced in the Ninth and Tenth Conquest Fleets, as the flagships were specifically targeted, and were destroyed.

The invasion of the Sol System did not go terribly well for the Kzin, both due to the initial losses in deep space, and the fact that the Kzin were playing catch-up with a technologically-superior opponent. Indeed, they wouldn't have done as well as they did, if the Intelligence Bureau had registered how big the fleets were going to be. As it was, the Conquest Fleets had been forced to surrender by June, save for a few couriers that were assigned to bring news to the Patriarch, and a small group of vessels that were taken over by telepaths, and fled to Orion territory.

In August, 2142, a large punitive expedition was launched to the Kzin system, along with smaller expeditions to keep the Kzin colonies (now reluctantly under closer supervision by the Kzin homeworld) from getting ideas. This lead to several battles, before the Kzin were eventually brought to the negotiating table. The new treaty required the Kzin to pay significant war reparations, and had a much clearer definition of what constitutes an attack sufficient to justify a war.


(Continued next post.)