Need inspiration for a galactic menace

[Zemekis]

I intend to introduce a new galactic menace in my campaign. Something my players will discover "out there". An encounter not unlike when the Enterprise first met the Borg in TNG.

However, I don't want them to be just the ordinary power mongers of the "the more planets enslaved the better"-kind. I am looking for something that distinguishes them. So far, there are only 2 races I like:
a) the Borg, adding biological and technological distinctiveness to their own
and
b) the Ori of Stargate. Needing worshipers/converts as power base for their ascension.

Since I don't want my menace to be a total rip-off, I need some ideas and inspiration. Any input welcome.

 

[EDG]

There's the D'Vor from Dream Pod 9's Core Command - huge techno-biological machine ships that destroy stars and planets. (sorta like Saberhagen's Berserkers, but more unpleasant)

 

[Sangrolu]

Well, there's Berserkers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen)) or similar variants (like the Inhibitors in Alastair Reynolds' Revelations Space universe): implacable beings with the mission of wiping out intelligent life.

The idea has a lot of play in literary SF circles, but less so in movie/tv SF, so it might be something that might not come across as tired to some RPG groups.

EDIT: Curious; the Berserker article link refuses to parse. Go to wikipedia and look up "Berserker (Saberhagen)" if interested.

 

[Golan2072]

An "infesting" species such as the creatures from Alien(s) or the Annelids from System Shock 2 could be effective; they don't necessarily need to be fully sentient, just biologically effective, spreading from one colony to the other, turning hapless colonists into drones, food or worse...

The trick is to give them an interesting life cycle, and thus variety of forms and disgusting/gory things to do to unsuspecting humans. Think of insects: two (or more!) very different organisms could be either different stages in the life of the same organism, or different end-points of that life cycle.

 

[GypsyComet]

The galactic antibodies (that are never given a name that I recall) from the old anime Gunbuster, with a similar thing seen in the Nightbrood of Silent Death New Millenium. They are living organisms that respond to destruction and the technologies that allow spaceflight.

In Silent Death, the Nightbrood were becoming an increasing problem that was attracted to the fusion and antimatter drives of Terras forces. When a huge antimatter bomb was deployed to wipe an area clean (after a large number were lured in) it woke up every Nightbrood for a lightdecade in all directions, who proceeded to shred the Terran Sphere to the point of a dark age across hundreds of suns, after which the Humans found that anything bigger than a destroyer in size would attract more Nightbrood (thus reinforcing the setting as centered around fighters).

In Gunbuster the motivations are never closely examined, but the "bugs" get bigger as the Terran fleets do. The series was half homage to older anime tropes, so I doubt they considered the psychology of the enemy all that much.

 

[DM]

accountants

 

[Sangrolu]

accountants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-iIfi3SNpw

 

[Zowy]

A Multi-dimensional enity that is pokeing it's "fingers" into one or more star systems. It has little understanding of our dimension and is doing a number of experiments to lean more :twisted:

 

[Sangrolu]

A Multi-dimensional enity that is pokeing it's "fingers" into one or more star systems. It has little understanding of our dimension and is doing a number of experiments to lean more :twisted:

That reminds me of the villains of the short story "Second Night of Summer" by James H. Schmitz (which is in the short story collection "The Good Old Stuff" by Dozois.) In short, the race pokes through and is more or less harmless and powerless until they pull a machine through, which causes them to multiply and ravage the world they appear on. But any sign of armed resistance and they disappear, and pop up somewhere else. So it's like a game of interdimentional whack-a-mole.

So the trick is to have someone in place to destroy their machine without tipping them off and able to do so without a lot of firepower.

 

[AndrewW]

A Multi-dimensional enity that is pokeing it's "fingers" into one or more star systems. It has little understanding of our dimension and is doing a number of experiments to lean more :twisted:

Psions does offer interdimensional travel...

 

[BP]

Something like the inhibitors from Alastair Reynolds' trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap) might fit quite well...

 

[Da Boss]

I intend to introduce a new galactic menace in my campaign. Something my players will discover "out there". An encounter not unlike when the Enterprise first met the Borg in TNG.

However, I don't want them to be just the ordinary power mongers of the "the more planets enslaved the better"-kind. I am looking for something that distinguishes them. So far, there are only 2 races I like:
a) the Borg, adding biological and technological distinctiveness to their own
and
b) the Ori of Stargate. Needing worshipers/converts as power base for their ascension.

Since I don't want my menace to be a total rip-off, I need some ideas and inspiration. Any input welcome.

how about the Shadows from B5 - massively powerful, devious and actully secretly working for your best interests - well maybe.........

- asking players want they want and apparently giving it to them can make them nicely paranoid

 

[Madarin Dude]

I tend to shy away from large scale galactic menaces and keep things low key.

We had a menace that was a group of religious zealots who were saved by the birth of a new sun and are of the opinion shat since they were saved by the new sun that all others are lesser and not worth saving. Since they were saved by their sun their favorite weapon was fusion to recreate teh power of the new sun.

I tend towards corrupt local governments secret societies that span sectors. Rogue elements from military organizations or just plain pirates.

 

[towerwarlock]

Well, here is a suggestion for a galactic menace. It is from an old comic called Star Jax, go luck finding a copy though. Anyway here goes, it is the Galactic Revenue Service. A group leftover from the fall of a galaxy wide federation, they are a group of terrorists, hi-jackers, and pirates that force everyone to pay their taxes, regardless of who they are. They ignore the fact that the federation to which they belonged has fallen. Also, they are better equipped and better armed then anyone else.

 

[Guardnacho]

If you find a copy of CT Dbl Adv 10 'Chamax Plague' you could use Them. It will give you an intro to the menace and an expedition to their long dead homeworld.

Or,

Daleks (from Doctor Who)

 

[BP]

How about asteroid sized psionic creatures - who have just stumbled upon (perhaps by the players misjumping) how jump drives work. Oh and playing with human minds is just soo much fun after millennium of boredom - perhaps they should challenge each other to a little game of Imperial conquest (it could be fun - just like in the old days when their system had planets...) :twisted: :roll:

 

[Zemekis]

Thank you all for your input so far. I gave the ideas some thought but I see my group having difficulties accepting them.
Here's why: The psionic asteroids (Shabazza?) and Berserkers will have a hard time being accepted because my players want a face to the threat. Making it more personal. If you can't reason and bargain with them, there's a whole lot of adventures gone out of the window.

The problem I see with the Chamax or Alien's for that matter: They are not smart. They don't do interstellar travel. They can be outwitted by a human anytime. So the threat is pretty much localized. Save for some "oh, they caught us by surprise, yet again" adventures I cannot picture them being a galactic menace.
Making them smarter will instantly raise the question: Why didn't they breed/clone their food/human incubators in the first place?

I was also toying around with a Mule-like creature from Foundation, giving the threat a personal face and someone to bargain with for sure. My problems with this solution is: a) to powerfull. How can the players ever overcome a villain like the Mule? And b) even more important: What are the Mule's goals? Just conquering known space? Lame!!

I have also been thinking about the lines of a temporal cold war like in ST:Enterprise until I realised that I can't even remotely imagine what a war like this would be about and how it would be fought.

So, my search continues.

 

[GJD]

I had a race of aliens called the Thalen in my old Lightspeed setting. They traveled around on giant asteroid-ships and raided and ravaged each system as they passed through, something like the mongol hordes of space. The Thalen themselves were fairly weak, squid like creatures who lived in zero-g, but they had a subjugated slave race of brutish humanoids called the Uroks (a cross between the uruk-hai and the Ogrons from Dr. Who) who did most of the fighting. The Thalen would bombard a planet from their giant asteroid-ships and then send in swarms of Uroks to loot the planet. The Uroks bred prodigiously, so the Thalen didn't care about losses. Then they'd strip the planet of useful resources and move on to the next system. I also had a ruling class of Thalen who were thr real power, using psionics to keep the Uroks subdued and using banks of captured human and alien psions in giant icky biomechanical devices to boost their own power.

G.

 

[qstor]

Daleks (from Doctor Who)

Only in a stair free universe

Mike

 

[Guardnacho]

Daleks (from Doctor Who)

Only in a stair free universe

Exactly. You have an alien, huge in numbers, bent on exterminating all life that is not them, but low on the tech side. the campaign then evolves as the baddies do. One of my favorite Dr. Who moments was that first dalek who hovered up a staircase after the Doctor mocked him.