Need inspiration for a galactic menace

[AndrewW]

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.

Could be about a fight between those that want to change the timeline for the 'better' and that those who believe messing with it is too dangerous and will really screw things up. So you have agents on one side that are going and say saving someone from an assassination or perhaps seeding an earlier civilization with more advanced technology. The assassination turns out to have been a good thing even so that one was a good leader preventing that ended up preventing someone else crucial to the timeline from ascending to the leadership. More advanced technology got out of hand and that world ended up in a devastating war. Of course not all would have to end in disaster but those changing things don't see the consequences of their actions and believe what they are doing is better overall then the alternative.

 

[BP]

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!!

Goals? - Simple: He wanz ONE MILLION DOL.... er... to conquer the Ear... Universe!

a) trickery (like in the book) - probably with the help of some NPCs

b) he's insane - religious zealot perhaps...

Sounds like you want something that is apparently powerful and sinister, yet actually not (ala Wizard of Oz).

So - Mel Brooks is your villian... take it from there :wink:

 

[kristof65]

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?)

Smart doesn't always mean human motives.

Still, what's more disturbing is to use a non-intelligent threat like the Chamax, yet have them sometimes "act smart." FREX, what if the Chamax horde were being directed/manipulated by an intelligent force? A couple of ideas - one of the megacorporations is developing an "easy" way to defeat them, and so is spreading them at first to test their new product, then later to eliminate enemies, clear planets they want for other reasons, etc?

Or the Chamax are client species of another race who uses them as the shock troop forefront of an invasion.

Once the players realize there is an intelligence behind the mindless horde, they face an even more troubling problem - how do you glean the intelligence data of who's directing them from critters that are basically mindless?


EDIT: I just went back and re-read your original post. What it seems you are looking for is something that will by necessity create conflict with humans, but isn't driven by the need to just conquor.

What you need is an alien species whos needs conflict with the needs of humans in a such a way that conflict is inevitable, unless a mutal solution can be agreed upon. A few ideas:

- a race that needs a certain spectrum of starlight, and is expanding into systems that have stars with that spectrum. This one can be fun as there might not seem to be any sort of distinct logic or pattern to their incursions at first.

- an interstellar race that is hurt by the mechanics of jump drives. The race could be migratory, or just fed up with having fewer and fewer places to hang out.

- a race that lives in Gas Giants that is expanding their empire and their colonies are threatened by normal human fuel skimming activities.

- a migratory race without FTL that is millions or billions of years old that picks up every hundred thousand years or so, and moves onto the next set of planets on their route around the galaxy - ones that happen to be inhabited by humans now.

- glalactic farmers. A race that has an empire a long way away that regularly terraforms planets to be huge farms. They need planets of a specific type, with specific spectrums, and once they find those, they raze all life, and begin to grow their Kudzu like crops. All their farming is pretty much automated, and they have a disdain for "lesser" life forms.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

There's always the Puppet Master/Go'auld/Vaylen/Shadows style a behind the scenes infiltrators.

The Starflyer from Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth books is a good model.

Or how about the Body Snatchers....?

 

[BP]

...
What you need is an alien species whos needs conflict with the needs of humans in a such a way that conflict is inevitable, unless a mutal solution can be agreed upon...

How about a simple misunderstanding
-humans are killing our offspring
-jump drives are endangering our race (hate to say it - jump bubbles - shudder)
-gravitics are interferring with our mating rituals (energy beings?)

The biggest problem is probably the desire to have a face-to-face encounter with something that must affect a huge region of space. Don't see how this can work with regular (non-omnipotent) beings - and FTL will have to play a role...

With a player party - it seems like anything effecting a whole system or sub-sector would be sufficient...

 

[Gee4orce]

I always loved the Jarts from Greg Bear's Eon. They desire ultimate knowledge of everything in the universe - unfortunately, that requires they dissemble it first.

 

[kafka]

Well before cylons looked like girls I would like to know...

I always felt the Star Trek episode Conspiracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) which had an alien inside that controlled the humans and others like a puppet was the scariest alien...similarly, The Thing, it is ability to be just like us was scary for me...it is always the idea of scutle menace that.

 

[The Chef]

how about a race that sees humaniti as the ultimate threat (ie, the Kafers from 2300AD) or a race that comes to dominate human space because of some missunderstanding/tragic accident (like the Minbari from Bab 5)

these are two antagonists that are not out to conquer space but to eliminate a potentially more hostile life form than themselves, or the result of first contact gone wrong.

Maybe it's the humans who are the aggressors with the seemingly hostile aliens defending their homes rather than the other way around.

Chef

 

[Custodian]

I think that an extensive network of sleepers, seeded through the Imperium years ago, could be woken up to unleash a whole toolkit of sabotage designed to make interesting situations for players to be involved in.

The thing is that communication is so poor that it would be hard to assess the size of such a threat, especially when people start to engineer independent copy-cat disasters. There could be a fair few false leads strewn through the methodology used to add to the paranoia and confusion.

Look at the history of the Islamic Assassins for example of how much sleeper agents can really terrify people.

This could be part of a larger plan, if so consider what the forces behind this approach would be seeking to gain.

Custodian

 

[EDG]

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.

Well, right now at least the Daleks are ridiculously high tech. Hell, they made an engine to destroy the entire universe out of planets.

 

[Mithras]

I am extremely fond of the Wraith from SG:Atlantis. Only saw Season 1, but I was very impressed. Harvesting entire worlds, leaving enough alive for a return in a generation...

 

[Ommadawn]

I don't know if anyone here has ever played Starfire, but there are some really nice nasties hidden away in the fluff/rules that would make scary adversaries.

The "bugs", or Arachnid Omnivoracity would be a major problem. Imagine hiver-like beings that are a real hive/group mind and exist only to consume, reproduce and eliminate all other threats. All other life is seen as food, and treated as such. They build huge fleets of massive, slow moving behemoths and are almost impossible to stop once they have found you.

Another alternative enemy from Starfire are J'Rill. They are a race that combines organic and machine parts into an efficient being that never negotiates. They have no homeworld, living in vast fleets that move through the galaxy finding other races, then subjugating them and converting them into more J'Rill, brains extracted and used as slave labour to control their mobile factories and warships.

 

[AdrianH]

Another idea, based on the "Saga of Seven Suns":
The humans have seriously upset an alien race whose existence was unknown up to now because they live in gas giants. The aliens will now attack anything which comes near a gas giant, including but not limited to a starship trying to scoop free fuel, or a colony on a moon of a gas giant.

Or, based loosely on the VUX from the old game "Star Control 2":
During first contact, the humans said something which the aliens found extremely offensive. Ideally the players are the ones who make first contact. Pick any random thing they say, which is either misunderstood to be an insult or which violates some strongly held taboo. The players are welcome to try apologising...

From the same game, the Ur-Quan:
Not one, but two alien races, actually off-shoots from a single race which split into two. One is bent on enslaving every sentient species in the galaxy. The other is bent on annihilating every sentient species in the galaxy. For additional fun, the players find a small, brown toad-like creature which then telepathically enslaves them.

Or, guess the source(s):
During first contact, the aliens initially wanted to be friendly and aimed a scanner at the human ship. The humans mistook it for a weapon, thought they were about to be attacked, and fired first. The aliens are now on a war of total revenge against humanity. One of the party is captured by the aliens and, depending on which source you think I'm using, either he will eventually become a religious icon for the aliens, or he will become their undercover agent while a second party member becomes indestructible.

 

[Madarin Dude]

Well an idea that is more covert and keeping with the traveller universe. The Hiver are manipulative and might nto have our best interests at heart. They are next to the KKree and want to carve out part of the KKree empire for themselves. So they put in a few people in the imperial moot who are fond of the idea of war with the KKree. they coerce these people in any way possible. Maybe hooking one on an exotic drug that only they can supply another might be blackmailed into it etc. it can be a web of conspiracies to support an unnecessary galactic war. A bit more subtle but a interesting campaign that the players can make a difference in.

For those who are not so familiar with Hiver they are sort of a less cowardly version of Larry Niven's Puppeteers. KKree are militant vegetarian centaurs.

 

[Custodian]

Or, guess the source(s):
During first contact, the aliens initially wanted to be friendly and aimed a scanner at the human ship. The humans mistook it for a weapon, thought they were about to be attacked, and fired first. The aliens are now on a war of total revenge against humanity. One of the party is captured by the aliens and, depending on which source you think I'm using, either he will eventually become a religious icon for the aliens, or he will become their undercover agent while a second party member becomes indestructible.

Can I have 5 guesses?

 

[Myrm]

You can, so long as I can Voice my opinion

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

You want the most scary enemy imaginable?


Okay, check it.


A race, generally humanoid, in size ranging from about 1.5 to 1.8 meters tall. Unexceptional but roundly adequate in all traits - no attribute bonuses or penalties. They reproduce very fast, though not typically prodigally so, with a lifespan of about most of a century provided adequate medical care.

The race is expansionist and very self-centered; though not nessessarily instantly warlike, they place their needs - resources, space, whatever - above all others, and if they cannot get what they want through negotiations (which they tend to tilt insultingly in their favor in the way they offer; they never negotiate what others would consider a fair deal, they want more and never want to give a fair trade for it,) they are not averse to taking it.

The frightening thing about this species is that they don't act as one. While they do have a government with the power to declare war (or sue for peace,) this fractious race weighs a lot of power on exceedingly wealthy, influential individuals, and large conglomerations, brought together by mutual resource aquisition interests or idelogical designs may take hostile actions without their government's approval. Their space is dangerous, full of individuals to be wary of, perhaps even moreso than their government needs to be wary of, and they don't get along well with neighbors unless they're in an obviously superior position through one means or another.

They don't play nice with equals. They talk like they do, but others' having power parity with them makes their trigger fingers itchy.

 

[GypsyComet]

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Can you imagine anything more hairy to deal with? Eventually, a race hell-bent on destroying/enslaving/consuming everything in their path would unite all of the sentient races who can more or less get along against them, and be promptly exterminated.

But these guys... These guys would be just and rightly scary to deal with.

 

[nvdoyle]

K'kree Jihad.

Are the Hivers behind it? Trying to stop it? Looking for an advantage? Will the Solomani stand by, or help on the Rimward flank? What about the Vargr? Might the Imperium promise the Aslan all the worlds they could conquer from the Two Thousand Worlds, if they'll send their fleets to resist the Herd? What will the Zhodani do?

It wouldn't be an immediate threat to the Imperium, as the Jihad would have to chew through the border states, but that wouldn't take too long.