> After reading what you posted on the topic Nigel, all I could think of was > "TO serve man" from the Twilight Zone - but in a nastier fashion. > > What are these anyhow - biological "Beserkers" of Saberhagen fame? It > looks > like they were bred for war as opposed to having evolved that way. How do > you get genetic racial memory of star ship skills if your race originally > evolved as primatives with nothing to start with?
The series of books is a thinly disguised dig by the author at people who think they know better. The Aldenata, a precursor race who may or may not be extant, decided they wanted a 'nice' universe, so they edited all the bits they found not nice out of races around them. They twisted them out of their natures in their attempts to make them 'nice' The posleen seem to have been an attempt to make a race able to survive anywhere. But in restricting their culture from violence the Aldenata - who the Godkings believed to be Gods - drove the Posleen mad. In the start of "Yellow Eyes" its suggested that the Posleen were the Guards of the Aldenata at one time. The Aldenata took another race: the Darhel. A carnivore form of a from a high-g world that was a sturdy humanoid with a foxy muzzle equipped with razor teeth, excellent senses, fabulous reactions and strength. A top predator. To stop it being aggressive and meat eating they engineered in a gland that emits a hormone like heroin if the darhel even thinks about eating meat, or violence, or aggression... or even gets angry. They have become the bankers and bureaucrats of the galaxy. They can attack _once_ then zone out in a drugged stupor that is unrecoverable. The most populous race - the Indowy... don't know if the Indowy are modified by the Aldenata. They are short green furred, bat face engineers. Totally non-violent. Incapable of it. The closest the can come to it is running away. A toothy human smile is enough to make an Indowy faint. Posleen breed very rapidly, and indiscriminately. So they breed out the land they life on fast. This pressure leads to 'Oronodar' -'apocalypse' when the clans turn on one another over the dwindling resources. It ends in anti-matter nukes. And the posleen fleet looking for another world. When they find a world they let the Net [which they don't seem to know who runs...] tell them where to land and invade. When they do land they land by the quarter million strong force. No support troops - all combatants. Any wounded are slaughtered for the pot. The first wave invasion of the earth was 60 million posleen. Like I said - they breed _fast_ Oh - and they are immune to toxins and biological weapons. They can eat all the major races but the major races cannot eat posleen. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
