The Fascination with Iconians

[ghosty]

I've read many posts in the last few weeks and the Iconians have a tendency to feature in them...i was just wondering what the fascination with them was. I admit they were pretty interesting when they first turned up...an ancient civilization with a piece of amazingly advanced technology...but I just couldn't find how they fit into a game except for the inevitable artifacts show. I notice a few threads which show Iconians popping up all over the place...but aren't they a dead civilization (the Gateways series of novels notwithstanding)...I'm not citicizing mind you, just curious.

[Dan Stack]

For me it is my love of the works of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Under the old theory "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" along with the Iconians being referred to "Demons of Air and Darkness" it seemed a good opportunity to inject a touch of the mystical into my games. With the Iconians being an extinct species, it means there's no one to explain the artifacts left behind. With their artifacts being so advanced, they are, for all intents and purposes, magical. And they are advanced enough such that their technology can not be easily reproduced by the Federation.

[Calcoran]

Besides, every GM needs a powerful mystery that can last a whole campaign from time to time .

Iconians are all that: Powerful, mysterious, <I>AND</I> <B>CANON</B> (/me bows to the canon god)!!!

Can you imagine a better scenario? Canon has specified everything you needed, leaving you almost unlimited freedom to develop the rest! Granted, other races provide this also, but maybe less so. Well IMDNSHO .

[Dan Gurden]

To be honest I hadn't ever really used the ICONIANS at all... However one of my players, Perrryyy from these very boards, has quite a significant study of the Iconians in his background and skill pool, and so I am going to have to consider them for inclusion otherwise the very limited grouping of skills focusing on Computer tech could get quite monotonous...

[ghosty]

Originally posted by Dan Stack
Under the old theory "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" along with the Iconians being referred to "Demons of Air and Darkness" it seemed a good opportunity to inject a touch of the mystical into my games.

I used the idea of Clarke's Law myself but I used it to introduce a band of Technomages (yes I stole it from Babylon 5) who found a brand of tech which they don't really understand but use it effectively as a form of magic...maybe its Iconian?

[Michael Barratt]

Originally posted by Dan Gurden
To be honest I hadn't ever really used the ICONIANS at all... However one of my players, Perrryyy from these very boards, has quite a significant study of the Iconians in his background and skill pool, and so I am going to have to consider them for inclusion otherwise the very limited grouping of skills focusing on Computer tech could get quite monotonous...

The Iconians have semi-featured in the history of my table-top ship. Before the players joined the crew, the Perseus did an exploration from the DS4 starbase, and thought they'd found some Iconian gateway systems - and Iconians - but it turned out that it was a much more recent race using them to basically attack and pillage other races. They never did find proof that the gateways were Iconian, let alone how they worked.

The Doc