Classic Trek remastered has got me jazzed about TOS again. I'm curious as to what resources there are about the Tholians as I'm interested in them as the baddies.
I know they are pretty big in Starfleet Battles universe but I really don't have any of that stuff (aside from GURPS Prime Directive). None of my old FASA stuff really mentions them. As for TV Trek, I know the Tholian Web (TOS) and In a Mirror Darkly (ENT) have prominant appearances and I remember a few references in TNG and DS9 episodes.
Any novels or Decipher or LUG Trek stuff that details them at all?
Or, any cool thoughts that you guys have had yoursleves on what the Tholians should be like?
I am understandably curious, to paraphrase Captain Spock
The aliens book in CODA gives us some nice descriptions and abilities for them. As best as I can recall, they are a form of crystaline / plasma entity, who have different norms than human (they need high heat to exist in) and need a form of 'encouter suit' to interact with humans. In Enterprise you get to see one 'in the flesh' so to speak, when you see 'evil Archer' (mirror universe) torturing one by turning the heat down!
The Lost Era novel The Sundered by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels features the Tholians quite prominently and did so in what I thought was a truly magnificent fashion. The book doesn’t reveal a massive amount of data on the species but it does feature some interesting details on their physiology, politics and customs.
I felt the book was not only a really fun and interesting story but was one that provided a rare look into the mysterious race and really captured the essence of the Tholians.
So if you like Tholians then I think you'll like this novel but I don’t know if there are any other novels that also feature the Tholians. This was the only one I have read but I have by no means read all of the Trek novels out there
The two books in the Star Trek: Vanguard series feature Tholians in several of their chapters, and give rather intriguing glimpses into their society. Given that the setting (Starbase 47, aka Vanguard) is in the Taurus Reach, a prime reach of space between Tholian, Klingon, and Federation space - and the Reach features rather prominently in Tholian legends according the book - one can expect quite a few mentions of the Tholians, including at least three or four chapters that solely feature the Tholians. Might be worth looking into, at least.
I'll try to find a used copy of that Captain Sulu book. Sounds useful.
I really haven't gotten any concrete stuff on the campaign nailed down yet as I haven't gotten a group of players committed yet. I'm still in the conceptual stage now, and I was looking for stuff for inspiration/background.
The interesting thing about the Tholians is the potential for attacks you don't even know are attacks. You could have a string of weird anomalies or mysterious disappearances that only after five episodes you discover are the work of the Tholians. A phase-warped Tholian ship could become embedded in a subspace fold accidentally created by the Crew's ship, and half-phased Tholians in encounter suits might be sneaking around abducting engineers to help them with it, erasing their memory after and sending them back to the crew's ship. A gateway to some Realm Man Was Not Meant To Know could open, and tentacled space-beasts start assaulting Tholian colonies, and they need the crew's help to close it. Or, alternately, the space-beast attacks a Federation space station and you have to find out from a Klingon double-agent that it was really the Tholians behind it...
One of my favourite NPC ideas was a rogue Tholian, living in the decaying hulk of an abandoned space station. You could replay Empok Nor TOS-style, or a source of information about spatial anomalies, technical help, or intelligence about the Tholian Alliance–Ever read Perdido Street Station? I'm thinking of the Weaver here...
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One interesting thing about the Tholians is that they are one of the most "alien" of the TOS species. THis could be used to effect by a Gm. For instance, imagine a situation where the PCs are in a small ship near Throlian space, and thier spip gets disabled in an ion storm. A Tholian ship beams the crew off od the damaged ship, but the Tholians toss everyone into "the brig".
In the end, the Tholians beam return the PCs back to the Federation. When asked why the PCs were kept locked up, the Tholiians explain that the environmental settngs on the ship were so different as to be fatal to humanoids. THe PCs were locked in for thier own protection!
A long long time ago someone posted a "Halloween" adventure in which Tholians were featured as really aliens (not mistery race but truly alien) species. I mastered it some years ago: The players´ went to answer the SOS call from another starfleet vessel. Upon arriving they found the ship intact, but inside it it was like a nightmare: there were twisted corpses everywhere, some of them in really odd and horrible postions. Some had some parts of their bodies missing, yet some more had EXTRA body parts, and those ones seemed to have died after getting those extra parts. Aside from them, there were four amnesic survivors. During the ship´s survey a tholian flotilla showed up, urging the players to leave the area inmediately. Unfortunately for them, the player´s ship was caught in (another!) spatial interfase, and they could not start their engines. They could have asked the tholians for help, but due to the reaction of the survivors when they saw them (one them died outright of pure TERROR), they decided otherwise. The survivors were slowly recovering their memories, but unfaortunately the crewmen were becoming mad because of the spatial interphase, which also began to disable more and more of the ship´s systems. At this time the doctor tld the captain that the remaining survivors had a brain degenerative process on and they were going to eventually die. At this time the tholians began shooting at the ship, and thanks to them changing the energy balance of the area the ship´s engine started again and they disengaged, but not before destroying two of the tholian vessels (and during the fight all the survivors died heroically helpng the PCs man the bridge). It seems ok, no? but, the true was that the tholians originally found the ship when all the crewmwmbers had perished. All the twisted corpses were part of their experiments trying to restore them to life. In the end they only managed to revive the four amnesics, which were so afraid of them because of the traumatic event of revival...
Hope this helps about the "feeling" of the Tholians. At least my players really enjoyed it.
An idea i got for using Tholians after reading their profile:
"It is unclear why certain territories are taken as “territorial
annexes,” many of their acquisitions have minimal resources and are of no strategic value (one
area of space to which they have laid claim holds no star systems whatsoever). However, once
annexed they defend new territory as zealously as any other under Tholian control."
Now, What will happen if they were to claim, let´s say, Mercury (or any other too-close-to-the-Sun planet inside a Federation system) as a territorial annex?
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