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I've heard some stuff about the Aliens book.
Is it out yet?
If it is, can somebody give me a quick summary of the Tholians (if covered). No need for too much detail - I plan to by the book after all. :)
I run the Tholians as the main villains in my post-movie-era series. It would be interresting to see how different my guys are in comparison to official stuff.
-K
Yes they are covered, so it would be worth your while getting that book if you wanted to run them.
Basically what is in the book is quite vague, to keep their slight air of mystery, but they do give some rules for their useage. Tholians generally appear to be a plasma based life form, who when out of their ships, walk arround in a crystaline type carapice armour. It is stated that it is not known if this is natural or a construct of some kind. They have an inibility to be read by telepaths because of the alien nature of their thoughts (or a +25 or something to their TN). Generally most of their advantages mean that they will remain a baffling mystery to anyone who encounters them. the historical writeup was also quite nice.
Great, I can work with that! :)
Can't wait till I get my grubby little hands on that Alien book.
It's really going to enhance my game ;)
A New and rather large novel Setting in 2298 with Captain Sulu (w00t) called 'The Sundered' actually give rather a lot of information on the Tholians. The infamous Thloian Punctuality is explained....well I won't give out too much. I'll let you guy's look for it.
Hmm I haven't read that.. However another half decent source on the Tholians, from the point of view of Game ideas rather than cold facts, was the LUG product the first line, which gave some rather sinister overtones too them. They were extremelly teritorial, and seemed to abduct people and do experiements (rather like the sinister Solangen based life forms who abducted Riker) - from whitnesses their ships appeared to move and change constantly.
With this in mind, for my campaign, I've had it so the Tholians basically shift parts of their spaceships into subspace pockets, so they are really larger on the inside than out. As an amusing sidenote, when the ship came to the players starbase and docked, once the 3 Tholian guests departed, the ship basically re emerged internally and registered as being totally solid (No sneaky visits inside for my players :D )
I've also been toying with the idea of having (latter 24th century Tholians) developing a rather devastating web based weapon, whereby the wed fires intact from their emmitter as a complex knot of subspace strands, and it expands as it moves forward, pulling in Zero point energy, untill it hits it's target (functionally similar to a Quantum torpedo) I think it could well pack quite a punch! (and probably lower a shields relative TN because it spans a large area). If anyone's interested I'll do a writeup of it.
Great book! Just finished it. Looking forward to the next "Lost Era" book, which featured the E-B. :)Quote:
Originally posted by BouncyCaitian
A New and rather large novel Setting in 2298 with Captain Sulu (w00t) called 'The Sundered' actually give rather a lot of information on the Tholians. The infamous Thloian Punctuality is explained....well I won't give out too much. I'll let you guy's look for it.
The Tholians seem to be really advanced. In the Enterprise episode with the time ship, they wiped out a whole group of Suliban and crippled a Vulcan combat cruiser, and it didn't look like they were trying too hard. :D
They didn't use the web weapon but did use some sort of beam weapon, which quickly turned the Suliban into scrap. The LUG books mentioned that they use some sort of plasma weapon, and if they do live at extremely high temps (by most standards) a Tholian boarding party could pose an extreme risk to the ship. Imagine Tholian marines coming aboard in armored suits. If the suit is breached, the Tholian is a goner, but so are most carbon based lifeforms nearby. If plasma or some sort of high energy is a part of their physiology, coming into direct contact with Tholians is not a good thing. Maybe they're really made of nanites... who know's.
I was just thinking of the dangers of breaching a Tholian carapace. All that bottled plasma... Could be an interesting last resort tactic, beam a Tholian over and have him/it expose itself. It would be a one-way trip for sure but the idea of a mini fusion bomb going off on deck 3... I'd imagine they don't assimilate very well either.
Of course, this being the case, are Tholians even aware of how hostile they are to Class M starship environments? Certainly a Tholian would be aware that cracking his case would be the end, but are they really aware of how dangerous their body fluids are?
:D
I've used that idea about the interior of the Tholian ship being in subspace and much larger than the outside. Tholian TARDIS. That also tied in to the Tholains "weird" and "random" territorial claims. Annexing slices and segments of different sectors that are not contiguous in real space-time. I thought of it in terms of Gate magic. It struck me that these disassociated territorial annexes created angles and non-euclidean relationships in real space but more importantly in subspace and I used that as the basis of Tholian propulsion. I toyed with the idea of exposing the ship to Yog Sothoth. What sort of emotional reaction would THAT elicit from a Vulcan Science Officer I wonder?
Read the Lovecraft story "Dreams in the Witch House" that's where I got the idea.
Gotta say...I am reading The Sundered now, and it is AWESOME! If you are a Star Trek fan who watched The Tholian Web over and over again, you will love it! The Tholians are a fully developed alien species, and their foes are an intriguing race.
I'm not sure if breaching a Tholians carapace would do anything, major. The Tholian Observer was killed at that meeting that was bombed in the Leyton Affair (DS9.) From what I understand all the damage was caused by the explosive itself...I suppose having a bottle of plasma in the form of a Tholian there probably didn't help any.