[2300AD] Kaefers: The Final Solution

[Lord High Munchkin]

That was always the big problem with the Kaefers... all you could do was shoot them.

None of my players were ever "gun-bunnies", so although a huge amount of GDW material was devoted to the 'Invasion' story arc, it was not really of much use to us.

The Pentapods were used a lot though, for all sorts of situations and interactions.

 

[Lemnoc]

They were always far more interesting as intelligent beings that one could discuss existential philosophy with... OK someone would likely get killed, but the Kaefers at least understand philosophy (well the "smart" ones do, the "dumb" ones know that such exists).

I guess I generally got the sense they were something for GDW's "gun porn" guns to aim at. Not that that made them any less cool :wink:

The way their rancor-based intelligence ratchets up, you're almost more or less encouraged to open up on them first and furiously. Jawing with them about the meaning of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" seems a recipe to get one's self kil't. I do appreciate, though, that the intelligent ones are very VERY dangerous and move combat tactics into the realm of high art.

The Pentapods seemed the race with whom one could have a cerebral adventure, akin to Niven's puppeteers while the Kaefer were more like his undomesticated Kzin. Not that that made them any less cool :wink:

EDIT: Ooops, I guess our posts crossed in the mail!

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

There was always "Sartre" from 'Mission Arcturus'... he might beat you up a bit, but only if your discussions were boring.

Actually, the Kaefers in 'Mission Arcturus; were a lot more interesting than in later supplements. I suspect you are right about the "gun porn".

 

[GJD]

Agreed, but then finding a middle ground between fundamentally opposing ideologies is certainly something that should strike a resonant chord with many events around the world today, and, I think, a campaign finding out about WHY the Kaefers are like they are, why they attack humanity so relentlessly and seeing if there was a way to change whatever it was that made them do it could be very, very interesting.

The problem with dealing with Kaefers is that it's going to be hard to get them to accept that we aren't what they fear - or at least we are a sort of begin(ish) version of it. Humanity and the Kaefers COULD come to a peace IF they can be shown that one truth and convinced of it, but, as I said before, it's flying in the face of millennia of social and psychological evolution.

It's easy to paint the Kaefers as 2-dimensional angry bug race, but imagine for a moment that they attacked Earth today in a limited way, hordes of them just fighting and killing and then enslaving. The first question on every-bodies lips would be "Why?" The Why? seems to have been missed out from most of the old GDW stuff, with the noted exception of Mission Arcturus, and I think that was a real shame.

G.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Another hurdle to overcome is that Kaefers fear other Kaefers instinctively. There just isn't the "we are all in it together" "blitz spirit" mentality.

The only times that they "get it together" is when an über-special leader appears... and in the years 2300-2320 there sadly isn't one of those about (that's why things go the way they do). So, you end up dealing with groups of fighting cats in several different bags. It can only really become belligerent.

That's my main problem with the Kaefers. A very interesting, believable alien race and culture, but one that is almost impossible to fit into the sort of game I like playing.

... and of course, there is always the question: "are you 100% sure that all the Humans actually want peace?". There are a lot of vested interests and as well that deep-seated animalistic fear of "icky bugs" to undermine relations.

 

[Reynard]

I notice the 2300AD mainbook has less than a half page describing the Kaefers and no actual stats. Are they expanded on in another book? Personally I would love to run adventures that let the players encounter them as a story arc rather than the entire campaign. They're nasty enough to give the gun bunnies fun while 'civilized' enough to reasonably be used over and over as antagonists towards a story's goal.

I dug out my GDW edition of 2300AD with the Kaefer supplement so I get ideas until I have the Mg bug stats. Time to make the galaxy dangerous.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Personally, I think that there is perhaps enough Kaefer material out there already... at least to work with. What I would far prefer is more on the Pentapods and the other aliens (such as the Sung) that have been given little detail so far.

 

[2330ADUSA1]

They are like a Space Herpy...best stepped on and squished under foot then remember to wipe off the bottom of your shoe. A dead Kaefer is a good one.

Agreed, but then finding a middle ground between fundamentally opposing ideologies is certainly something that should strike a resonant chord with many events around the world today, and, I think, a campaign finding out about WHY the Kaefers are like they are, why they attack humanity so relentlessly and seeing if there was a way to change whatever it was that made them do it could be very, very interesting.

The problem with dealing with Kaefers is that it's going to be hard to get them to accept that we aren't what they fear - or at least we are a sort of begin(ish) version of it. Humanity and the Kaefers COULD come to a peace IF they can be shown that one truth and convinced of it, but, as I said before, it's flying in the face of millennia of social and psychological evolution.

It's easy to paint the Kaefers as 2-dimensional angry bug race, but imagine for a moment that they attacked Earth today in a limited way, hordes of them just fighting and killing and then enslaving. The first question on every-bodies lips would be "Why?" The Why? seems to have been missed out from most of the old GDW stuff, with the noted exception of Mission Arcturus, and I think that was a real shame.

G.

 

[Lemnoc]

... and of course, there is always the question: "are you 100% sure that all the Humans actually want peace?". There are a lot of vested interests and as well that deep-seated animalistic fear of "icky bugs" to undermine relations.

Exactly. Any threat that sets the French hair on fire and knocks them back a peg is going to likely thrill leaders on the other Arms. Like the joy hoteliers feel when the hotel across the street burns down. So I can really see the other powers being slow on the uptake that Kaefers present some universal, existential threat to humanity.

 

[Lemnoc]

They're nasty enough to give the gun bunnies fun while 'civilized' enough to reasonably be used over and over as antagonists towards a story's goal.

I dug out my GDW edition of 2300AD with the Kaefer supplement so I get ideas until I have the Mg bug stats. Time to make the galaxy dangerous.

Yup. Actually, if they're played correctly they should seriously make gun bunnies burst into tears and cry for Mamma! IIRC, there was a description in the GDW sourcebook where just two of them took out an entire Marine squad.

 

[2330ADUSA1]

Actually in my campaign they are a major major threat and part of the reason the American aggression was able to go so unchecked is because of their threat, and the face that the Americans were willing to commit resources (Fleet assets to aid in fighting them, and they were extremely effective in fighting them with their shielding, armor and Plasma Energy weapons tech).

Penn

 

[Lemnoc]

fighting and killing and then enslaving.

Do they enslave? I seem to recall they experimented to prolong the grisly agony of captives as long as possible (evidently collecting some adrenal catharsis from their special puppet theater)... just how much suffering can a human take and live? at what point do these mysterious bruised organs fail?... but I don't recall them actually having uses for humans beyond that.

 

[2330ADUSA1]

It all depends on the creative nature of the GM...

fighting and killing and then enslaving.

Do they enslave? I seem to recall they experimented to prolong the grisly agony of captives as long as possible (evidently collecting some adrenal catharsis from their special puppet theater)... just how much suffering can a human take and live? at what point do these mysterious bruised organs fail?... but I don't recall them actually having uses for humans beyond that.

 

[Mithras]

:/ nasty

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Well, it could be strongly argued that being forced to discuss French philosophy endlessly is certainly torture....

 

[GJD]

They're nasty enough to give the gun bunnies fun while 'civilized' enough to reasonably be used over and over as antagonists towards a story's goal.

I dug out my GDW edition of 2300AD with the Kaefer supplement so I get ideas until I have the Mg bug stats. Time to make the galaxy dangerous.

Yup. Actually, if they're played correctly they should seriously make gun bunnies burst into tears and cry for Mamma! IIRC, there was a description in the GDW sourcebook where just two of them took out an entire Marine squad.

One of them and a dead cow, as I recall.

 

[GJD]

fighting and killing and then enslaving.

Do they enslave? I seem to recall they experimented to prolong the grisly agony of captives as long as possible (evidently collecting some adrenal catharsis from their special puppet theater)... just how much suffering can a human take and live? at what point do these mysterious bruised organs fail?... but I don't recall them actually having uses for humans beyond that.

Invasion mentions work camps run on the occupied worlds. Beta Canum specifically, I think. They don't seem to engage in genocide as a hobby, so once a world is subjugated, they lose interest beyond holding it and move on to the next one. However, if they have to drop rocks on a population centre to subjugate the world, then they have no qualms about it at all.

G.

 

[Epicenter]

The Kafer Sourcebook for original 2300 is one of the best examples of "painting-yourself-into-a-corner" writing to me. The worst problem with Kafers is that they're mostly uninteresting. 128 pages of sourcebook in original 2300 to detail the biology and history of 2300's Orcs.

They're either bumbling idiots or H.R. Giger's "Alien" with tool use. The source material stresses how smart they get in combat, but the issue is that unless you're willing to kill off a few of your actual players every encounter with the Kafers, there's really no way to impress this upon your characters; killing your PCs off tends to kill player interest in your game unfortunately. Fighting other humans is vastly more interesting than Kafers; you can have a full range of interesting encounters with humans, even ones who are your enemies like temporarily alliances, betrayals, deciding to bury the hatchet, and so on. Kafers, you either kill them or they kill you. They're also so vastly alien you don't really feel much sympathy for them; it's like finding ants nesting in your kitchen. Someone can tell you ants are advanced and have adaptive intelligence crafted over millions of years and that what they're doing isn't evil, they're just trying their very best to survive. We'll all just nod as we go and get the Raid. That's uninteresting to me.

The fact that their intelligence is short-term I think is the ultimate weakness of their species - unlike Ebers, Sung, or Pentapods, they're just not interesting to hang out with (even if they weren't violent).

Ultimately, because of their short-term intelligence, they'll be too dangerous to live free. They'll probably be the first species to be gentrified; probably wiped out with a sampling of individuals genetically adapted to have constant intelligence from birth to see if they can't be socialized outside of their society to be more productive allies of humans. They'll probably the first attempt by humans to "uplift" a species.

 

[Strithe]

I always thought that the Kaefers pose a couple of interesting problems given the other setting assumptions, even if you wouldn't want to "hang out" with them, and I always thought they were a bit more than just "space orcs" when you got to know them better.

First, they're the only aliens that pose any sort of a real threat to human supremacy in space. Only the Pentapods have FTL travel, and they seem more interested in trade than warfare. The

Second, the Kaefers create a variety ethical questions: the Kaefers have no concept of "rules of war" and it it causes a moral quandry with the humans about using WMD's in response or carrying out genocide.

Third, not all of the over-the-top violence is actually inherent: it's part of the current social paradigm. They have to be violent because it's what keeps them smart & protects them from the "smart barbarians." All of Kaefer history has been a series of rises & falls because a stable civilization literally causes the Kaefers to get dumber, and then that civilization is vulnerable to attack by more violent, smarter barbarians. A lot of the ritual violence in current Kaefer society is to maintain their average intelligence.

As far as Kaefer treatment of human captives & noncombatants goes, it boils down to a false assumption on the part of the bugs. The Kaefers assume that human intelligence works the same way as theirs, and beat captives simply as a means of making them "smart" enough to interrogate. Some of the claims by PAX (that the war's mostly the result of misunderstanding between humans & aliens) aren't completely off-base.

The rumor about Kaefers eating of human flesh is due to two things: the Kaefer's hands aren't really suited to fine work (they are literally "all thumbs"). They use their complex mandibles for delicate or sensitive work. This means if they are examining a prisoner it appears to the human that they're being tasted. There's also the fact that a common Kaefer insult to refer to someone as a "meat-animal:" sort of a the old "to Serve Man" Outer Limits episode in reverse.

I play the Kaefers a bit differently in my campaign. They occupy a much smaller sphere: I've basically eliminated all the blatantly fictional stars from the Kaefer sphere. This "ends" kaefer space right round Gamma Serpentis, and they only have a couple of colonies & outposts. They achieved spaceflight via the Ylii, who in my 2300ad universe hail from Lambda Serpentis, and who due to their own cultural peculiarities have made themselves basically slaves to the bugs.

Overall the bugs in my campaign are at only a moderate threat level, mainly due to their lack of organization. The reason why their warships tend to be larger is that they are true multipurpose vessels: they are basically small floating towns and are relatively self-sufficient and only occasionally need supplies or spare parts which they trade or raid for. Each ship is essentially an extended family or clan that wanders around in search of conflict, plunder, and/or trade. This is in keeping with their semi-nomadic past.

Basically, they're a nasty version of H. Beam Piper's Space Vikings. If they ever do manage to organize under a major leader, it'll get really nasty, but it's not really likely. The closest thing to that was the Great Raid on Aurore, and that tenuous alliance broke up the minute the bugs made the surface.

I've also added routes that let the bugs get into the American Arm as well, although as of the year 2300 they haven't done anything in earnest. However, some of the disappearances attributed to pirates along the American & Chinese Arm are due to the bugs, and then there's those mysterious livestock mutilations on Kingsland....

 

[Hopeless]

Just a thought but what if their intelligence and species depends on access to an intelligent source?
Sort of like wasps they use the host own biology to help advance their own.

I've been thinking on a storyline for T2300 and it evolved around Prometheus trailers and Starship Troopers that a organisation trying to establishg their own empire is seeking out lost worlds and one discovered a number of star systems hidden within a rift surrounded by a nebulae that makes travel to and from the interior extremely difficult unless they had access to an astronavigator who is skilled enough to be able to cope.

The expedition is under the impression they're exploring an new system but things start to go wrong once they send down teams to explore the inhabitable world below and eventually discover its home to an unknown species.

Fleeing offworld once they realise this species has a number of leviathan sized types they discover their base ship has been left unmanned as the remaining crew and expeditionary leaders are exploring what looks like a fleet of abandoned spacecraft.

Getting aboard they discover the natives of this system have an entirely different offshoot located in this fleet of interlocked spacecraft that look upon the intruders as a new food/breeeding source.

The survivors escape back to their base ship but can't unrun the aliens and are forced to flee aboard an old escape craft intended for routine exploration should the base ship have to head to another system and they want their current location explored more closely.

The survivors succeed in escaping but to do so the survivors' are placed in suspended animation as the last two crewmembers set the ship to jump clear before entering stasis themselves believing it the only way to survive the trip back out of the nebulae only upon awakening (some years later) to discover the aliens have found another way out and they have to deal with the ramifications of being blamed for their release even though all the evidence points to another expedition having been sent in after there's disappeared...

I was thinking that the pentapods you mentioned had a hand in creating the kaefers and when they had done what was wanted of them they were unceremoniously dumped with no means of returning, but when humanity reached that area of space the pentapods didn't mention about this little secret as they have no problem with the kaefers going after humanity and the pentapods would only intervene when it benefited them or they came under threat and in any case have no intention of letting any of the other races discover they were responsible for the kaefer...

Needs more work yes but I was wondering how that might be viewed by those of you with a better understanding of the setting?