mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
Should add the Weeven then as well.
Species (Races) in MgT 2e
- Thread starter mavikfelna
- Start date
Then I'll suggest a section for "these sophonts exist, but are considered unplayable due to their alien nature" aliens.
mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
Yea, that makes sense.
FreeTrav
Cosmic Mongoose
...which should also contain the Jgd-Il-Jagd, who appeared in one of the GDW JTAS issues, but I don't have my peel of the CD to hand at the moment to tell you which one.
FreeTrav
Cosmic Mongoose
It needs to be somewhat controversial, as there's (pre-Mongoose) canon that says that the Aslan didn't actually develop it themselves, but got it from a lost Terran starship. That would make the Aslan a minor race by that definition.
Perhaps one could 'de-contraveralize' the terms by suggesting that a major race is one that has managed to establish a lasting hegemony over a large number of worlds.
Yes, it absolutely should include them!
#17 originally, looks like September 1999 in Pyramid and September 2016 in JTAS Online.
mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
Have they ever appeared in a Mongoose or related publication or the forum here?
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
While the Aslan secret was published by DGP, it was sourced from Marc and GDW as one of the founding secrets of the Aslan. DGP was set up to reveal it, but didn't invent it.
The Major vs Minor terms are discussed in some of the same sources, and are presented as in-universe terms translated from the Vilani to expressly put non-Vilani in their place. The idea that "founders of major interstellar states" are the real Majors was floated at the time.
Major vs Minor is controversial *in-universe*, and a great way to start a fight if any home worlds Vilani are present. To us, the outside observers, the terms should not be. We know they are pejorative, out of date, and distinctly Vilani in origin.
Vih-LAH-nee. or. VIL-uh-Nee? It's all in the delivery...
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
In many of his interviews Marc has mentioned that major/minor race is to indicate the inherent racism within the setting - the Imperium is not a nice liberal rights based democracy you know, not in any of its incarnations.
The Vilani were inherently racist, Cleon's Third Imperium follows the tradition.
Just look at how people use casual racial slurs against the Vargr and the Aslan...
The Vilani were inherently racist, Cleon's Third Imperium follows the tradition.
Just look at how people use casual racial slurs against the Vargr and the Aslan...
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GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Both of whom have fought wars with the Imperium and/or its citizens. Wars are an efficient breeding ground for slurs (though not the only one, of course).
According to some census grinding Don McKinney and Marc did, the Third Imperium and its Noble population are majority Human, but *just barely*. That implies somewhat less institutional racism than the Ziru Sirka is known for, *on average*. The devil is, of course, in the details of each region, subsector, and even world. Some worlds will be, or have close connections to worlds that are, thoroughly cosmopolitan. Other worlds will be dominated by monocultures that may have become too insular and show all the results of that, good and/or bad. Of course, a lot of these worlds are also home to a whopping 20,000 people. "Weird small town vibe, this world. Stick to the star town bars."
G'Naakbusters
Emperor Mongoose
To my lasting shame, I never got that.
I got the bit that they are literally from Bland (because of the whole v/b business); if only because Agent of the Imperium makes it overt. But I didn't get the "villainy".
To quote Hermes Conrad, "We didn't choose to be bureaucrats; No that's what our mighty Ja made us. We'd treat people like swine and make them stand in line; Even if nobody paid us."
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I would not use that as a defining boundary. Drinaxi from the Floating Palace and the Vespexers are the same race, biologically. They have different stat modifiers, but that seems more like a writer making up whatever they feel like and not thinking of the consequences of that creation as opposed to them actually being different species or sub-species.
G'Naakbusters
Emperor Mongoose
The Major Race/Minor Race business is the equivalent of the Council Race/Non-Council Race divide from the Mass Effect games. It's a matter of politics and perceived status, whatever other justifications are made for it, and it defines the setting around what the big players -- in this case the Vilani -- want normalised (much of which is, their own hegemony).
It's actually sort of comedic in its way. The Vilani just want everyone to stop doing the equivalent of sticking random things in their mouths. It's ingrained in the people of Vland that you only put something in your mouth if it has been correctly worked on by experts, confirmed by precedent, and catalogued correctly. Otherwise you just poisoned yourself. People working outside of the lines and doing their own thing is unsafe, perverse, and an affront to the ancestors, whose correct action ensured your prosperity. Vilani social institutions are effective so long as the system is closed, so inevitably once their universe encompassed other races all those aliens had to be wrangled into conformity. They needed an excuse to justify imposing on everyone, so they came up with "had interstellar reach" and then tweaked it to exclude the Geonee and Suerrat.
Mission accomplished (with the help of a few Consolidation Wars).
Only, over the millennia, they've had to accept other races as "equals" because they turned out to meet that one specific criterion; the problem for the Vilani is, none of them do it *right*. The Solomani and Vargr are barbarians who merrily rampaged across the lawn and can't organise to save their lives -- Ramshackle Empire, the Vilani sneer, and the Vargr don't even get that far; the Hivers and K'kree don't actually care about these Human political concepts, since their empires are just a managed anarchy and a singular herd/crusade respectively; the Droyne don't even have an empire (and if Chirpers are Droyne that means Vilani are arguably in the same category as *them* -- oh, how the mighty have fallen, victims of their own obsessive categorization!). The Aslan are a young race even before the "actually didn't invent the drive" revelation. Only the Zhodani get it "right" and behave "sensibly" from a Vilani viewpoint -- and, final irony, they're the one polity the modern Vilani are politically *unable* to respect, because of the Psionics issue and all the cultural/ethical disagreements it's tied up in. (One does wonder if another factor in the Imperium's anti-Zhodani stance is the fact that the Vilani cultural mindset cannot abide a competitor -- not merely in a political sense, but in the form of something more threatening; a claim to a stable, centralised, organised system that might actually be *more effective than theirs*).
It's actually sort of comedic in its way. The Vilani just want everyone to stop doing the equivalent of sticking random things in their mouths. It's ingrained in the people of Vland that you only put something in your mouth if it has been correctly worked on by experts, confirmed by precedent, and catalogued correctly. Otherwise you just poisoned yourself. People working outside of the lines and doing their own thing is unsafe, perverse, and an affront to the ancestors, whose correct action ensured your prosperity. Vilani social institutions are effective so long as the system is closed, so inevitably once their universe encompassed other races all those aliens had to be wrangled into conformity. They needed an excuse to justify imposing on everyone, so they came up with "had interstellar reach" and then tweaked it to exclude the Geonee and Suerrat.
Mission accomplished (with the help of a few Consolidation Wars).
Only, over the millennia, they've had to accept other races as "equals" because they turned out to meet that one specific criterion; the problem for the Vilani is, none of them do it *right*. The Solomani and Vargr are barbarians who merrily rampaged across the lawn and can't organise to save their lives -- Ramshackle Empire, the Vilani sneer, and the Vargr don't even get that far; the Hivers and K'kree don't actually care about these Human political concepts, since their empires are just a managed anarchy and a singular herd/crusade respectively; the Droyne don't even have an empire (and if Chirpers are Droyne that means Vilani are arguably in the same category as *them* -- oh, how the mighty have fallen, victims of their own obsessive categorization!). The Aslan are a young race even before the "actually didn't invent the drive" revelation. Only the Zhodani get it "right" and behave "sensibly" from a Vilani viewpoint -- and, final irony, they're the one polity the modern Vilani are politically *unable* to respect, because of the Psionics issue and all the cultural/ethical disagreements it's tied up in. (One does wonder if another factor in the Imperium's anti-Zhodani stance is the fact that the Vilani cultural mindset cannot abide a competitor -- not merely in a political sense, but in the form of something more threatening; a claim to a stable, centralised, organised system that might actually be *more effective than theirs*).
G'Naakbusters
Emperor Mongoose
One small thing -- Dynchia, Ghenani, Happrhani, Iltharan and Mal'Gnar are Human Minor Races, and Katangan is a Human ethnic/regional bloc. They're currently under Aliens.
mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
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