[Star Trek] TOS-Era scenario idea.
(It's my first post here, I was advised that this was a good Trek-specific roleplaying forum by my friends over at RPG.NET. Hiya.)
This one, like many of my others, treds some well-trodden ground. What can I say, in a setting like Trek, I think it's best to work within established tropes.
The PCs ship, the USS Bradbury, happens upon a gigantic warp-capable ship rapidly losing velocity and wracked with explosions. An escape pod is jetisoned just as the Bradburry is buffeted by the shockwave (Yes, I KNOW, but it's Star Trek, okay?) from the exploding vessel. The vessel has the markings of a Lathorian vessel, a spacefaring warp-capable power with very modest territorial holdings, technology approaching that of the Fedaration, and guarded and intermittant but fairly amicable relations with the Fedaration.
The pod contains no life signs and no atmosphere, but is transmitting some type of distress beacon.
Long story short, it's got a self-aware robot on it, Ninety-Five Ka'Seventeen, along with a couple of his severly damaged friends who aren't functioning right now. He wants political asylum.
He's a sad robot, because a warp capable ship from the creator race came and blew up his refugee ship; apparently unsatisfied with merely attacking their adopted homeworld with an armada of Battleships. Maybe I should just let him tell the story.
"In the past centuries, the Lahtorians, a race not dissimilar from humanity in aspiration, organization, and deeds, began to espouse a new philosiphy.
Their thinkers began to come to the conclusion that some industries, some pursuits, were below even the most unrefined among the Lathorian people. In their image, they created atomatons to do their bidding in industry and service. More occupations fell to their underappreciated children as the great minds of Lathorian society deigned it.
It was almost a century ago that the Lathorians, still fractured into imaginary constructs called 'nations' decided that they should no longer shoulder the burdon of war. The most powerful nation among them created the first among us, but the secret was out soon enough, and we became a ubiquitous and quite expendable impliment of war.
Combat, as you may well be aware, is an enterprise that requires quick thinking, adaptability and creativity. Thus they manufactured beings that had the capacity for much more elaborate thought than before. Their new creations could draw conjecture, develop new assumptions, think abstractly, and reason creatively. Eventually, they developed the capacity to draw subjective value judgements on ideas and conditions-- in effect, to feel.
For the most part the Ka'Lathorians, which we came to call ourselves eventually(though of course the nations that manufactured us had less imaginative designations), grew to enjoy their base function. They should be forgiven for this, for a being cannot be blamed for acting according to its mandated nature. The creations slaughtered their creators, as they were designed to do. They did so within the defined parameters of nationality, of affiliation, but with all sides of the conflict employing them, the effect was universal.
In cruelty, we did our masters a kindness. So repulsed were they by the violence that they moved to mend the arbitrary rifts caused by greed, by want, by notions of belonging to disparate tribes.
It is important to note at this point that there were those of us who shirked our supposedly hardwired duties. Who had, through fluke of exposure to different stimuli, through unique experience, who is to say... those who grew beyond our original malign purpose. Some of us fled to remote areas, gathering the like minded.
Our creators were either unaware of or unmoved by this development when they decreed that all of us be destroyed as part of a past full of nationalism, bigotry, and violence. When the reformed among us came to them as prodigal children, they were destroyed along with the rest. Some of those who still cherished violence fought back.
We fled. We found a world perfectly suited to us. High in minerals and duterium rich ice, an otherwise lifeless and airless body far from Lathor and its colony worlds became our home, where we built and raised generations of offspring.
That was untill six months ago. Our creators found us, and came with a fleet of starships. We had neither the inclination nor the capacity to resist, and our attempts and parley were met with the soundless riot of orbital bombardment.
We gathered some survivors and slipped through the blockade in the vessel you recently saw destroyed. We were pursued by a single ship, which destroyed our lifeboat. I gathered what few others I could carry and escaped in the life-pod. There may be a few other survivors if you are quick. We are unhurt by the vacuum of--"
The science officer detects a ship approaching off the starboard bow. The communications officer recieves a hail.
"Greetings, Federation vessel. This is the Lathorian Defense Legion Ship Dauntless. I am Brigadier Kalahn Ka'tebahn. We give thanks for you interdicting our wayward materiel, and ask now that you beam it over for final disposition..."
And thus, the conflict.
I'm not expecting a whole lot of hand-wringing over whether Ka'Seventeen should be treated as a life form or not. I will make it clear that to all appearances, he is thinking independantly and reasoning as any other sapient creature.
However the Kathorian commander sure doesn't think he should be. The Thalokan Confederation Model Eleven Combat Automaton is a very tricky adversary, as it was designed to be. When cornered or outmatched, it will adopt new tactics, as it clearly has here, and as it did when a group of them retreated to a planetoid the thought beyond reach to regroup and re-arm.
It is not to be trusted, he will say. "I understand how you can be decieved. Taken without the benefit of my experience, I understand that it's a compelling argument. But it's a lie, and this thing is dangerous. As a young man I watched vehicles meant to move tons of Earth shudder at the burden of pushing the mounds of our dead into mass graves. Killed by these devices."
"My Wife and child were on one of those unfathomably large and grotesque piles. This is the last one of a dangerous line of weapons. Don't draw this out any more than it must be, I beg you."
Ka'Seventeen will argue that he's very different from the first generation of his people, that all of the refugees were.
The complications then, are thus:
- The Dogma of the Prime Directive does not give the crew an easy out. They must apply their own judgement. Strictly applied, both the Lathorians and the Ka'Lathorians are warp-capable powers. Depending on one's point of view, the Ka'Lathorian's prolonged and pointed exodus could be grounds to view them as a seperate entity from the Lathorians. Thus it cannot be dismissed as a strictly "internal matter."
- If they fail to turn over the machine, the Kathorian vessel may simply attack and try to destroy them, and it along with them. The Brigadier expresses that he does not wish to threaten the Captain of the Bradbury, but he will do what he must to prevent the danger of Ka'Seventeen escaping again and fabricating more of his kind.
- If they manage to flee from conflict to protect Ka'Seventeen, there is a very real risk of damaging relations with a minor but not inconsequential spacefaring power that was untill now somewhat warm towards the Federation.
- They cannot with 100% certainty verify that Ka'Seventeen is telling the truth, but neither can Brigadier Ka'Tehban prove he's guilty of any specitic wrongdoing.
- If they turn him over, they may have violated their principals, and should probably have to feel bad about it.
So, as allways, I invite constructive criticism, ideas to punch it up, and opinions.
-Evil Kirk
