Roleplayer #25, August 1991
We Who Harvest Souls
A Science Fiction Super-Race
Copyright © 1991 by Stefan
Jones
Like many SF fans, one of my guilty pleasures is watching Star Trek:
The Next Generation. It's not great SF, and not even the best SF on
television. Most of the time it's pretty lame. But last season the producers
threw in something wonderful: The Borg. Technology had turned these humanoids
into horrors whose values and ultimate goals are incomprehensible to lesser
races. They weren't the decadent pushovers that Captain Kirk used to destroy
with a few photon torpedoes or careful use of illogic. Implacable, mysterious,
and terrible, the Borg put the smug, civilized Federation types in their
place. There were races in the galaxy, it seemed, that didn't play fair.
They defied easy understanding, and could, if they needed to, crush the
Feds and the Romulans like ants.
Original? Perhaps for TV. There are plenty of juggernaut civilizations in
written SF. The Ousters in Dan Simmons' Hyperion, the "calculator
races" in Gregory Benford's Across the Seas of Suns and the
Jarts from Greg Bear's Eon are good examples. These races not only
endanger humanity physically, but threaten its collective ego, its place
in the universe. S.O.P. goes out the window when they appear; politics and
economics take a back seat when dealing with them. The fact that one of
these made it to TV was inspiring. If it was OK for TV, it was OK for a
roleplaying game. . .
Enter the Harvesters. These folks are not your average alien race. They
an immensely powerful elder civilization, with magical technology and a
way of life that humans and their ilk would find bizarre, terrifying, and
even hideous.
Tales from Distant Shores
Far coreward of human space -- in the constellation Sagittarius, as seen
in Earth's skies -- is a huge volume occupied by a mysterious, secretive
race. Until recently, humanity only knew the "Sagittarians" through
travelers' tales and distorted third-hand accounts. The reports were contradictory
and full of tall tales about machines with mystic powers, slave races and
stars surrounded by swarms of artificial worlds. The only point of agreement:
The civilization that occupied the regions bordering this side of the galactic
core was vast, immensely powerful and frightfully advanced.
There was no pressing reason to investigate these reports; the long journey
involved would have been fabulously expensive, and dealing with enemies
and opportunities closer to home had a higher priority. But through the
decades, humanity's sphere of exploration, trade and influence has edged
closer and closer to the core.
Tales of the Dgro-dgri
Though Dgro-dgri merchant-pioneers have been visiting human space for decades,
only recently has humanity reached and contacted their home worlds. The
Dgro-dgri Confederacy (see sidebar) has confided
that the Sagittarians are real . . . and frightening. Through their own
efforts, and information bought from other races living near the core, the
Dgro-dgri have assembled a few facts:
The Sagittarians calls themselves many things. The most authoritative name
seems to be Jowuril Kee. This translates loosely as We Who
Harvest Souls. Harvest in this case has a slightly sinister connotation,
as in "the hunters harvested the park's excess wildlife." Kee,
a word also used to designate an sapient individual, translates crudely
into "soul," but has no apparent religious mean-ing. Incrementing
memory string is a better but less elegant translation.
The Jowuril Kee seem disinterested in the affairs of lesser beings, but
treat interlopers with callousness and dispatch. According to the Dgro-dgri,
the Sagittarians maintain a buffer zone 1,500 light years wide around their
territory. Intruders are warned away by automated mobile beacons. Ships
that persist in trespassers are blasted by warning shots designed to cripple
intruders to the point where limping home is the only option. Massed fleets
approaching Jowuril Kee worlds simply disappear.
A few Jowuril Kee have visited Dgro-dgri colony worlds, apparently out of
sheer curiosity. The visitors were of many species, and acted strangely.
Some spent their vacations talking with children; others wandered around
in zoos. Though they volunteered no information about themselves, careful
analysis of taped conversations indicates the visitors came from a diverse,
complex multi-species culture.
Jowuril Kee technology is frightfully advanced. Refugees from a wandering
race calling itself Waltzers-On-Creation claim that the Harvesters
create artificial planets, terraform worlds by the dozen and build megaengineering
projects of frightening scale. Once good customers of the Dgro-dgri, the
Waltzers made the mistake of moving their migration fleet through Harvester
space. Only a fraction of their mobile colonies escaped.
The Dgro-dgri themselves have dared buffer zone patrols on occasion. One
expedition discovered an asteroid belt aswarm with Harvester mining robots.
The asteroids turned out to be debris from a brown dwarf star that was apparently
disassembled for its mineral content. A recent mission confirmed that the
Harvesters occupy normal planets as well. Some of these seem technologically
backward; others are city-worlds with tailored ecosystems and trillions
of inhabitants.
The Inside Story
The Jowuril Kee are a dynamic, sophisticated and civilized people. More
than 50 sapient species belong to the civilization, which occupies some
12,000 habitable worlds and uncounted millions of space habitats, asteroid
burrows and comet colonies. The oldest races in the coalition have been
around for nearly a hundred thousand years. . . and their culture, politics,
religion and science have been evolving and changing since then.
Fortunately for the lesser sapients of the galaxy, the Jowuril Kee are mature
and enlightened. They are not interested in conquering their neighbors,
though if they wished they could do that quite handily. Their wealth and
utopian society has not made them capricious esthetes or decadent hedonists;
Harvester culture is vital and the goals of their civilization are exciting
and worthy.
The Making of a Kee
Understanding the Harvesters must begin with their unique method of education
and reproduction. The Jowuril Kee are obsessed with creating competent individuals.
A typical kee begins its existence as an animal. There are twenty-odd species
of sritkee u'korpil ("soul seed makers"). Some sritkee
u'korpil are herbivores, some carnivores; a few are aquatic, and two can
fly. All are borderline sapient, about as smart as chimpanzees or dolphins.
These animals are born, live and die in natural settings on urombi kee
k'korpil ("worlds of nurturing and winnowing"). Automated
machinery implants a semi-intelligent virus (similar to the "Riders"
in GURPS
Aliens) and a tiny etherspace transmitter in each creature.
When it dies, the memories of the animal (its sritkee) are absorbed
by the virus and transmitted to a collecting station. Vast AIs evaluate
the animal's personality and recorded life experiences; if they meet the
examiner's specifications the memories are transferred to a young creature
of another species. After a dozen or so cycles, the combined memories are
judged worthy and implanted in the custom-tailored fetus of one of the Jowuril
Kee's sapient races. These memories surface slowly at first; the process
accelerates during adolescence. By maturity, every citizen remembers a dizzying
series of past lives in a variety of animal bodies.
To say these memories give the kee a broad view of things is an understatement.
They remember drowning in floods and dying of thirst; they have experienced
childbirth and the triumph of defeating rival males to win a harem. They
know what it is like to walk on two, four and six legs, to swim in the depths
of the ocean, to burrow in the ground and to fly. They remember the terror
of being eaten alive by ravenous predators, and the thrill of stalking fleet
herbivores with loyal packmates. This extraordinary pre-life gives kee a
mystical streak and the innate wisdom of someone who's seen it all.
The pre-life is just the beginning of a young kee's preparation. The sapient
species grow up slowly. Five decades of childhood and adolescence is not
uncommon. Youngsters spend much of that time in study, making and raising
jarum kee, and gamboling in carefully orchestrated educational realities.
The payoff is individuals of astonishing competence and flexibility. The
amount of time, material, energy and effort that goes into raising new kee
is astounding, but the Jowuril Kee can afford it. They can't afford not
to. Their civilization is too complex to be left to slackers.
Work and Play
Adult kee live a boisterous but civilized existence. Much of what kee do
"for a living" is incomprehensible to humans. Consider the plight
of a Kalahari Bushman or Amazonian Indian stranded in 20th-century Manhattan.
He might be impressed by the skyscrapers, frightened by the crowds and roar
of traffic, and dazzled by the shops . . . but he would miss 90%
of what was going on him, unable to understand the implications of subtle
cultural cues and unaware of the workings of the vast institutions dwelling
in the cliffs of steel and concrete around him. He's no fool; he would quickly
learn how to get around in Manhattan, perhaps even mastering the subway.
But without years of learning he might remain totally oblivious
to the fact he was at the center of world commerce and in the heart of power
of vast mass-media empires. An interstellar-age human, even an educated
and sophisticated one, would have as much trouble understanding the goings-on
of a Harvester world.
In their plentiful spare time, kee do research, discuss
philosophy or trade gossip, frolic in parks, create or study works of
art, rough it in the wilderness, raise children, or contribute to the Great
Works. A favorite activity of late is viewing scenes from the time camera.
Tedious, routine, and degrading work is done by the jarum kee (see below).
Servant Things
Jowuril Kee worlds are also home to highly specialized, barely sapient jarum
kee ("utilitarian souls"). On many worlds, especially the
urbanized ones, jarum kee outnumber the full sapients. Jarum kee are really
little more than machines; they are tailored to specific jobs and live carefully
supervised lives toiling in fields, mines or factories. Conditioning, tailored
entertainments and drugs keep jarum kee content and productive. Their personalities
are simple and stereotyped, like a cartoon character's. Though treated well,
jarum kee have no civil rights; they are little more than property. They
experience something like religious ecstasy while on the job, and are too
limited in their thought patterns to contemplate another way of life. Freedom
is an unknown concept.
Some jarum kee are grown in factory crèches, but most are made by
young kee. Labs tailor and distribute jarum kee zygotes to the Harvester
equivalent of high school health classes, where the kids study them, make
interesting variations, and have them implanted in their bodies to gestate.
In addition to being good parenthood practice, this makes kee affectionate
and protective towards their servant-creatures.
Jarum kee live a few dozen years. They are programmed to report to recycling
centers when they begin to wear out or become senile. Occasionally, an emergency
forces a jarum kee to become a hero, breaking its conditioning to distinguish
itself in some way. These disruptive sports are quickly terminated, but
their memories are recorded to be put in a sritkee u'korpil, eventually
to emerge as a full citizen kee!
Common Jarum Kee Types
Jarum kee come in hundreds of varieties Most have been customized in small
ways, either for efficiency or esthetics. They have pleasant, eager-to-please
personalities. They are frighteningly enthusiastic about their jobs, and
tend to be gullible and unnaturally cheerful.
Sparker
3' long, 12" tall, 60 lbs.
ST: 7 IQ: 7 DX: 11 HT: 5
Basic Speed: 4 Move: 4
Armor: PD 1, DR 2
Advantages: Electric shock, 2d-2. All except metallic armor must be penetrated
for the shock to work. Extra arms (two, limited reach), Extra legs (two
extra), Striker (Pincers, 1d-1 swung/crushing dmg.)
Disadvantages: Slave mentality, Pacifism (total non-violence), Duty (Repair
and build, always).
Skills: Various repair skills.
Sparkers are lobster-like creatures about the size of a small dog. They
have an electricity-producing organ and a sort of secondary nervous system
made of organic superconductors. Their natural electricity is channeled
into specialized steel-alloy claws to do spot-welding and soldering. They
do construction work and electrical repairs.
Carpenter
4' 6" long, 24" tall, 80 lbs.
ST: 9 IQ: 7 DX: 12 HT: 6
Basic Speed: 4 Move: 4
Armor: DR 1
Advantages: Extra arm, Striker (saw, swing/cutting, 1d+ 1), Extra legs (two
extra), Built in sandpaper and glue organs.
Disadvantages: Slave mentality, Pacifism (total non-violence), Duty (Repair
and build, always).
Skills: Climbing 14, various carpentry and repair skills.
Carpenters are expert furniture and building makers. They look like huge
fiddler crabs with soft brown shells. One of their four arms ends in an
18' long saw made of a metallic substance. Their palms are covered with
rough, horny tissue that improves their grip and can be used as sandpaper.
Carpenters secrete a yellowish goop that acts as a strong, fast-drying glue.
When diluted with saliva, the goop becomes a durable, if not especially
aesthetic, varnish. Carpenters compulsively test and repair wooden structures
they come across.
Groomer
3' tall, 50 lbs.
ST: 6 IQ: 7 DX: 12 HT: 6
Basic Speed: 4.5 Move: 4
Advantages: Extra arms (2)
Disadvantages: Slave mentality, Pacifism (total non-violence), Duty (Clean,
comb, neaten; always).
One of the first jarum kee a young kee grows for itself is a groomer. The
most common model resembles a blue-furred, four-armed teddy bear. Groomers
are chatty, gregarious little busybodies who compulsively "neaten up"
other creatures in their presence. Their saliva, and secretions from modified
sweat and sebaceous glands, act as natural cleansers and conditioners for
skin, hair, fur, feathers and scales. With training, they also act as tailors
and expert dressers. Most adult kee have a personal Groomer which lives
with them and accompanies them on travels.
Snacker
3' long, 18" tall, 70 lbs.
ST: 5 IQ: 8 DX: 11 HT: 11
Basic Speed: 5.5 Move: 3
Advantages: Acute Taste & Smell +4, Cast Iron Stomach, Extra Arms (two;
have "no physical blow" limitation), Extra legs (four extra).
Disadvantages: Reduced Move -2, Slave mentality, Pacifism (total non- violence),
Duty (Eat, forage, eat, serve food, eat; always).
Skills: Stealth-10, Survival (Foraging)-10, Cooking-11.
Snackers look like chubby tarantulas with too many limbs and a coat of bushy
camouflage-colored fur. They are found in wilderness parks and on newly
settled worlds. Snackers have incredibly efficient digestive systems and
exquisite senses of taste and smell. They can eat almost anything, including
cellulose and dirt. Snackers accompany kee during jaunts in the wilderness;
they forage for themselves and their masters, carefully checking out strange
findings for poison before passing them on to the kee. Excess calories,
vitamins and minerals consumed by the snacker are concentrated in a waxy
paste that fills bulbous, blister-like growths on the creature's furry hide.
These deposits can be collected and eaten by kee if other food is unavailable.
In extreme emergencies, snackers cheerfully asphyxiate themselves so kee
may eat their nutritious (and quite tasty) muscles and brains.
Snackers are sometimes trained as expert campfire chefs, and can field-dress
game animals.
The Elder Kee
Finally, there are the ebjo jarum kee and the keeli urom d'kthist.
These are sapient machines imbued with the memories of deceased kee. Ebjo
jarum kee ("enlightened servant souls") are AI machines with the
preserved personality of a particularly talented and distinguished individual.
They are immensely powerful, able to command the resources of entire worlds.
Ebjo jarum kee also have a direct tap into the knowledge contained in the
civilization's vast electronic libraries; they "know" this information
as though it were their own memories! Ebjo jarum kee maintain the urombi
kee k'korpil (nursery worlds), run automated outposts, oversee the education
of the young and advise kee still in corporeal state.
Though ebjo jarum kee are effectively the leaders of Jowuril Kee civilization,
living kee are not anxious to be preserved in this way. They look on it
as a kind of civic purgatory, like serving a thousand years of jury duty.
The usual fate of a dying kee is to have its memories poured into the keeli
urom d'kthist, the "soul world-ocean." Physically, this is
a series of immense AI machines scattered through Jowuril Kee space. The
oldest parts consist of continent-sized mats of organic computer circuits,
floating in the placid seas of sun-drenched ocean worlds. The greatest mass
of the brain-stuff can be found in densely packed space habitats. Newer
additions may be found growing in comets, or on the crusts of brown dwarf
stars. The various parts of the network communicate by some sort of FTL
radio.
What the keeli urom d'kthist thinks about is a mystery. The ordinary kee
don't even bother trying to comprehend the entity's thoughts; it (they?)
is as far above the kee as they are above the sritkee. The ebjo jarum kee
can, with great effort, communicate with a portions of Its composite intelligence,
but have only a vague idea of what It thinks about or does with Its time.
Occasionally, the keeli urom d'kthist may temporarily eject a kee individual
from the fold for mysterious special missions. The memories and personality
of the agent are implanted into a living body or sapient machine for the
duration of the task, then transferred back into the pool. These reincarnated
individuals claim to know nothing about existence in the keeli urom d'kthist
. . . but they seem extremely anxious to finish their missions and get back.
Probing the Keeli Urom D'kthist
Establishing a telepathic link with the keeli urom d'kthist is incredibly
easy. Any telepath on or near a mind-world (within 1 A.U.) can do it. But,
as Jowuril Kee psychics discovered long ago, breaking a link with
the great mind is almost impossible. They gave up probing the soul store,
and are satisfied with descriptions provided by the ebjo jarum kee.
Psychics attempting to contact the Keeli Urom D'kthist immediately get a
head-splitting migraine and an intuitive feeling that they'll be real
sorry if they continue. If a character persists, roll vs. Telepathy
skill +4. On a critical failure, the psychic passes out, waking up hours
later with a worse migraine that prevents them from doing anything meaningful
for 1d days.
On an ordinary failure, the psychic screams in terror, clutches his head,
and begins laughing hysterically. After a moment the psychic falls into
a coma (lasts 24-HT hours). When he awakes, the psychic vaguely recalls
being bombarded with the thoughts of countless alien minds. Each mind seemed
to be simultaneously participating in a tense PTA meeting, a scientific
conference and an endless, ecstatic Mardi Gras revel attended by hordes
of strange creatures. The intruder's appearance seemed to startle, outrage
and delight the things there. Feeling like a chimp loosed in a society ball,
he bolted. Another consciousness, unbelievably vast and powerful and utterly
unreadable, could also be detected, hovering in the background and somehow
directing the chase. After what seemed like days of pursuit, the intruder
was ejected, receiving the mental equivalent of a slap on the behind just
before contact was broken.
A telepath who makes the skill roll has his mind sucked into the
activities of the keeli urom d'kthist. His body falls into a permanent coma.
Unless his mind has been stored on braintape, he is gone. On a
critical success, even this doesn't work; his tapes turn up blank! Optionally,
the tape may contain a short, jovial goodbye message from the lost character,
addressed to his friends. . . "Having a wonderful time, wish you were
here!"
Foreign Relations
The Harvesters' strange psyches make communication with outsiders so very
frustrating that they rarely bother to do so. Language is not the problem;
they simply can't relate meaningfully with ourki ("earlies").
Their past-life memories give them a insight into the web of life that outsiders
cannot hope to fathom; rather than empathizing with lesser forms, kee see
animals and ourki as links in a chain. The stimulating mental life of the
net isolates them even further. Some actively dislike being around ourki,
just as some humans are uncomfortable around animals. This may be fortunate.
Full contact with the Jowuril Kee would induce culture shock that would
surely destroy a primitive society.
Nearly all kee respect the right of less advanced sapients to exist . .
. but deity protect the unfortunate or foolish ourki that gets in the way
of some Harvester project, or intrudes on a urombi kee k'korpil
or keeli urom d'kthist world.
Harvesters who seek out contact with outsiders are either nonconformists
who enjoy communing with their simple, stunted brethren, or the Jowuril
Kee equivalent of dogcatchers. Rambunctious youth sometimes seek out ourki
to study or molest.
Adventure Seeds
The Harvesters should be used carefully, if at all. On one level the Harvesters
are an awful warning, a chilling example of what extensive use of mind-machine
interfacing and braintaping techniques could do to a civilization. Their
main purpose is to loom in the far distance and remind the PCs and humanity
that the universe is a big place full of terror . . . and wonder.
These seeds aren't full adventures. They are incidents, designed to introduce
the Sagittarians to the PCs, give them a hint of their powers and perhaps
tease them into investigating.
Voices
The PCs, enjoying a period of R&R, meet an elderly Dgro-dgri trader.
The trader, far from home and lonely, talks their ears off. Fortunately,
she is a good storyteller. She tells them of the places she's been and the
things she's seen. Not the least of these is a place, far toward the core,
she calls "The Rip." She and her crew of merchant-pioneers were
lured there by what seemed to be signals from an young interplanetary civilization.
Instead of a new market, they found a time-space anomaly surrounded by a
swarm of space habitats and sensor arrays the size of worlds. They had stumbled
upon one of the Sagittarians' stupendous engineering projects! The traders
watched and listened for several days before they were spotted. Their ship
was pursued and crippled by swift, agile warships and forced to limp home.
The trip back took nearly a year, and only half the crew survived it.
Analysis of the recordings showed that the anomaly was a wormhole; the signals
that lured the traders came from it. The signals proved to be the radio
and TV transmissions of a world with primitive space flight; the images
showed scenes of space battles and planetary bombardment, "obviously"
the result of an attack by the Sagittarians. The creatures were using the
wormhole to project their power to distant corners of the galaxy. The trader,
who begins to rant a bit as she nears the end of her story, finishes by
describing her futile attempt to convince her race of the danger it faced.
She fled rimward, convinced that the invasion could come at any time.
The trader refuses, "for your own good!," to divulge the location
of the Rip. If the PCs offer her enough ($10,000, modified with a commercial
transaction roll), the trader will pass on a disk with a copy of the signals.
The images show a vicious interplanetary war, but it's impossible to tell
whether the grainy transmissions are genuine.
A long, careful analysis shows that the war is between technological equals,
far below the level that the Sagittarians must have achieved.
The Observer
The PCs, laid over on a backwater agricultural planet, decide to explore
the small town outside the starport. It's a pleasant, pastoral place, but
decidedly dull. While looking for something to do, they spot an unfamiliar
non-human wandering in a park. The creature is the size and build of a large
black bear. A coat of stiff, woolly black hair covers most of its body;
over this it wears a vest of coarse fabric and a harness hung with leather
pouches. Its blunt, symmetrical face has four eyes arranged around a complex
multiple jaw; the four digits on each hand have sharp, retractile claws.
Though bipedal, it walks on all fours at times and is twice seen climbing
trees, seemingly for enjoyment.
If the PCs take the time to observe the thing, they'll quickly come to the
conclusion that it is a fellow tourist. When not looking over the stock
of local stores, it occupies itself taking pictures of people, animals and
buildings using a tiny camera mounted on a finger ring.
Eventually, the thing takes notice of the PCs and follows them
around. It occasionally asks a simple question -- such as the name of a
tree or bird or what a certain building is for -- but for the most part
it is content to amble along, window shop and take pictures. It answers
most questions about itself with a grunt and a shrug, but freely gives its
name if asked: "ChooHOOO! Swam vigorously through methane for a mate.
Called Uhnuh." The questioners will feel subsonic pulses in their viscera
and hear an almost inaudibly high keening when it pronounces this. (These
sounds are parts of its name too. It will be very impressed if the PCs realize
this and manage to duplicate the sounds.)
After a half an hour or so of wandering together, the PCs will realize that
they and the beastie are both being carefully watched. Wary-looking offworlders
disguised (badly) as locals tail them; armed, uniformed men from the local
militia will be seen peeking around street corners. Children playing in
the street are scooped by their parents and hustled indoors when the party
approaches. The stranger doesn't seem to notice anything untoward until
the party reaches the next shopping district. The thing will stare at the
CLOSED signs and shuttered shop windows, mutter "This always happens,"
quietly floats into the air, then streaks toward the horizon and out of
sight.
After the thing disappears, the party will be briefly but thoroughly questioned
by agents from the Contact service. The awe-struck investigators will take
down the PCs' every word and observation, request duplicates of pictures
and recordings they may have made and ask that they report further contacts
with the creature. The investigators won't say what they know about the
creature. If the PCs do some undercover work, they learn that the tourist
is thought to be from some terrifically advanced civilization, and that
it has been paying regular visits to the town for nearly 50 years.
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