Interesting/Unique character ideas

[Tricky]

Well, as a few of you know, I'm never satisfied with playing a regular human; I tend to Reptilians and Felinoids, with the occasional Artilect for 'flava'.

Today I was thinking of all the 'weirdness' that seems to follow SF crews, and how a typical FED member could be changed by it, and wether he would be allowed to serve still, or enroll in SF if this condition came earlier in life. We have many examples of this in Trek:

Our alien hybrids (Spock, Troi, B'elanna, K'Ehleyr), one sentient Android, one sentient holoprogram, one transporter created 'duplicate', one geneticly enhanced doctor,twon liberated Borg Drones, and one Chief Operations officer from earlier in the time line (O'brian).

But we have seen lots of 'strangness' on the various shows, so what if things didn't "reset" at the end of an episode/adventure? What if a character was transporter merged with another character and the combination was allowed to continue? Or their 'Protometamorphasis' disease wasn't fulled cured, and they retained some animal chacteristics, but were otherwise in good shape? Or they were only partially 'un-assimilated' from the borg? Or replaced by an alternate reality duplicate who isn't evil (or might even be more good)?

I know, if you think 'real-world' (how do we do that with Trek), then no one would let ANY radically altered crewmember continue to serve (especially after assimlation; who knows what the collective is up too), but we know better than to let the RW interfere with our ST .

I guess I'm looking for two things: Opinions on what would happen to someone in a situation like I've described, and secondly (and most fun, i think) other types of these "altered" characters, or maybe things that you have used in your games, or wanted to use.

[LUGTrekGM]

This is along the same lines of artifacts that change gender in D&D.

The themes of such stories are: A slice of how the other half lives. / a day in their shoes.

By definition, these things are monstrosities.

Same as living under a curse as a werewolf or vampire. Ultimately these creations will not fit in society, and will be ostracized, or killed.

Now 10-20 years from now, Transhumans will be facing these issues for real, and Humanity will have to redefine what is really human. It might turn out to be, for all intents and purposes, anything goes. ButI doubt that that will be welcome, by the majority.

It's again, the problem that Star trek aliens are usually (but not always) a human with a funny nose or forehead, in a strange costume, to keep the budget down.

Your question I think, really points to:

H.R. Giger's Alien has a hybrid human kid. It joins starfleet, and has acid for blood. How welcome is it in the crew, really?

Yes?





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[C5]

Given the Federation's tolerance, enhanced by the fact that some things happen in Trek which would never occur to a sane individual (like beaming all major crewmember to a hostile planet, never minding that a crewmember commits atrocities as long as he was possessed by some thing or other, or having hundreths of people aboard a starship who seem unable to do anything apart from the main cast, and so on), I guess that such individuals would eventually be fully accepted, though not without some troubles, humorous or not (like McCoy's distrust of Spock or Data's multiple goofs).
And an Alien hybrid would probably even be accepted, as long as he behaves ("no laying eggs in people, even ennemies!"), and remembers to warn the doctor when he has to endure surgery.

As for other ideas of unusual characters fitting in...
- A future alternate version of a crewmember, who remains stranded in the present (ok, that's close to what happened to Tashar Yar, more or less).
- A Q cast away from the Q-Continuum (like the Q who left the Continuum in Voyager, only this time staying alive)
- A replica of a known character from the past (like in that TOS episode with Surak, Kahless, and Lincoln), created by some advanced species.
- A rogue Jem'Hadar (read the DS9 novels for more ideas about that particular type of character...)
- An energy based life-form who needs to possess living people in order to stay "alive". This life-form could have made a pact with the crew to possess willing crewmembers for determined periods of time. Could also be a rogue parasite from "Conspiracy".

Bit tired right now, I'll come back with other ideas... I hope this is what you wanted ?

[LUGTrekGM]

All of these are great posts. This is why I enjoy this community.. lots of ideas.

[JALU3]

What about that Delta Quadrant Species that use dead bodies as host for their children . . . imagine how that would make the loved ones of the corpse feel.

Or what about non-carbon based, non humanoid species.

Imagine, sentient hummingbirds . . . would anyone realise their sentient until you see a flash from the planet, and see a long nosed vessel the size of a large ice chest match your orbit?

Or say there is a sentient being that lives on what many others consider as bio waste . . . say a dung bettle society . . . with their capital building made out of dung, and rebuilt after ever winter season.

Or say a species that cannot normally behave around sub-space fields.

What about a species that exist only as gasious bodies

[C5]

I remember a TOS novel (whose name I shamefully forgot) which involved a species whose appearance and smell caused any other humanoid species to be instantly violently sick. A member of such species could qualify as well.

I also wondered about a smurf-sized, or, on the contrary, gargantuan-sized species. They might have more troubles fitting in as well (especially physically ).

Then there would be vampiric like species, who feeds on the energy of others lifeforms (ok, that's similar to the Wraiths in SG-Atlantis), but who is otherwise very well meaning and doesn't quite see why their methods of feeding are different from eating the flesh of a dead animal. After all, the prey they feed on can even survive.

There are also lots of variations on the different metabolic parameters, like an ice-based life-form (to whom a temperature of -5°C is scaldingly hot), or a species who naturally radiates enough heat to melt plastic or even iron...

[The Tatterdemalion King]

A character of a species which is socialized to have more than one personality, in a sort of fully functional DID.

--

A species which is naturally blind to most visible light, but can otherwise see more of the electromagnetic spectrum.

--

[Cut]

Our alien hybrids (Spock, Troi, B'elanna, K'Ehleyr), one sentient Android, one sentient holoprogram, one transporter created 'duplicate', one geneticly enhanced doctor,twon liberated Borg Drones, and one Chief Operations officer from earlier in the time line (O'brian).

Alright. You got me. DS9 isn't my strong suite Trek-wise. Where is revealed that O'Brien is from another, earlier timeline?

[Tobian]

O'brien was irradiated with particles from the Defiant's cloaking device, which caused him to spontaneously jump in to the future, to see the future then jump back. In one version he saw the station get destroyed, so they forced more radiation into his system, to force him to jump forward, and before he died he sent future him back in time, so it's not quite our O'brien

it's a tough post to answer, for while many reset buttons are pressed during the show, 7of9's button was pressed very slowly, and her dealing with the transition from the collective to humanity was anything but smooth, and made for a great story ark in the end (if you disregard the silver jumpsuits designed to wow the fanboys over any story point haha).

In show there are the oddities: Data, Spock, Worf (a Klingon raised by human parents) the EMH, Kes, Neelix 7 of 9, Odo, Garak, Nog, Rom and on...

In a way DS9 allowed more exploration of deep characters who weren't bad guys, yet intrinsically alien, and who didn't have to conform to Starfleet and their agenda, or be written out of the show because they could no longer fit in, now their terrible secret was revealed.

In one of my Trek games, one of my players, through the course of his adventure, discovered he was actually a clone, from an alien society trying to infiltrate the Federation, and he had replaced the person he was supposed to be at some point. He had an implant in his brain which appeared to have been severed, and it was largely inert. How all this happened was difficult to investigate as he now lived on the other side of the federation, and his identity theft created a huge problem, yet he managed to convince the crew to keep him That was a lot of fun as my player agreed to let me do it to him, without me telling him what I was doing, so he discovered these things as the other players did. There are inherent hooks to his character now that it's part of an unfolding mystery, much as Odo was an unfolding mystery in DS9, and despite what they knew about him, his integrity is what allowed him to stay on side, and chose his own path, aside from the agenda of his own species.

The problem with something like a potion of change gender is that in a meta-game sense (outside of the universe they are living in) this can be very hard on the player in question! Doing something like merging 2 PC's could be entertaining, but unworkable. For one thing, who gets to run the PC! (and don't say both! ) Unlike in D&D where even death is not a permanent hindrance, changing back is not always possible if it wasn't possible in the first place. I.e. someone who's assimilated into the Borg collective and then doesn't promptly return because of a complication, then has to live with that complication for quite a long period, or permamently. the change might just not be workable, and certainly seem unfair, and cause the player to ditch the PC, thus undoing any work involved in the 'experiment'

The Flip side to this is games, such as World of Darkness, where Vampires, Werewolves etc, are options for players. They have hideous disadvantages and advantages, and within the game it's... the point, rather than being a 'disease' or affliction, but that's specifically designed into the games mechanics, in such a way as to make such characters player friendly forms of those 'monsters' so they can explore the ballance of having to retain their dwindling 'humanity' in the face of being made a monster. However, fundamentally this is meant to be a horror game, where characters accept that these things may happen to them, much as players understand they will likelly go insane in short order in Call of Cthulu. Startrek is about, in a way exploring humanity from the other side of the fence, without it having to happen to you: You see a planet undergoing horrible political change and war, rather than have it happen to you, for it to be a morality play about it. It's somewhat of a brave new world in Trek to mess with that equilibrium and still feel like Trek!

[Tricky]

Give Tobian a cigar!

While I love all the ideas that have been thrown out (sentient Hummingbirds...that is just too much; keep that stuff up, btw), mine tend to be more changes to humans mostly, here are a few:

The typical 'guy from alternate reality': TNG ep. Parallels shows us many different Trek-verses: imagine a guy from the universe where the Bajora are the aggressors being stuck in 'our' universe; "Kira? You mean Field Marshal Kira? The Butcher of Betazed? She's our ally?" The slightly more interesting reality I came up with is one where Klingons are extinct, and the FED is trying to slow a "land grab" of their territory while searching for survivors on distant colonies.

Imagine someone's mind transfered to an android, with no chance to go back to it's body. How does a organic personality adapt to the abilities and drawbacks (like anti-artilect prejudice) of a machine? How does that affect his personal life? (sure, he won't ever be late for a date again, but he isnt really 'husband material' either )

A slightly more extreme variation of this, and a bit of a strech, I know, is a Borg related idea I had: I seem to remember the the Borg strip alot of personality info away from a drone after they are assimilated. Imagine trying to save someone who was assimilated, and having the system crash and divert the 'data' (the personality) to the next available drone, while the cascading failure destroys the original body! This could lead to being stuck in the body of another gender, or even species! (or maybe the creation of 'sentient implants' that both assimilate and possess the host!)

One idea I've been toying with is a race 'bio-forming' one race to be more like theirs: suddenly, you aren't a human anymore, and the advanced nature of the change makes it almost impossible (considering the taboos on genetic engineering in the FED) for you to be restored! (plus, what if this race is now gone, and you are the last repository of them, like on ENT? Who are you to destroy the legacy of an advanced culture?)

Similar to that is my idea of not quite getting over your "Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome"; you keep some animalistic traits, and are definately not human.

OH, and don't forget humans from past eras (or maybe future eras) getting stuck in your player's era! (it would be funny for a future guy to interact with NG era crews, like how they lorded their superiority over those 21 century humans from Neutral Zone!).

Fingers tired, who's next?

[First of Two]

When I merged my College Trek game with my At-home Trek game ( one of the players I gamed with in college just happened to come from near my home, where I had another game running), I had the PC's from my College game get into an accident which caused them to be permanently transported to my at-home universe, which was a close but not perfect duplicate of their own universe.

Mostly because I'd been playing variations of the same adventures with both groups, using the same NPCs.

Then I tossed them from Movie-Era to DS9-Era in one go. So now they're all timelost, and some of them are dimension-lost, too. Happy Chaos.

Among my players and NPC's, I had:

A former Orion Slave Girl with an IQ over 200 and advanced degrees, and a deep and overreaching hatred of her own people - so deep that she endured extensive body mods to disguise her heritage.

A Romulan 'abandoned' as an infant - but now sought by the Empire.

A Klingon from a world which rebelled against the Empire and joined the Federation during the late TOS Era.

An escaped (and incognito) Soong-type former Geishabot Android

A security officer with a couple secrets in his family tree and a "probability-altering biofield."

A Vulcan Captain who embraced the appearance of emotionalism as a way to better interact with his non-Vulcan crew.

Oh, and I once had Lucifer as a guest NPC.

Unfortunately, my game folded before more than half my 'secrets' could be found out, and all my diabolical plans never reached fruition.

And I was SO looking forward to uttering the line "...Captain? I'm not sure, but I think He's assimilating them!"

[Cut]

Great thread indeed.

Thanks @Tobian for reminding my of the O'Brien episode. I did see it, just didn't remember Thanks, man.

[First of Two]

I just remembered... "Our" Harry Kim and little Naomi Wildmon aren't quite from this universe either... they crossed over from the Duplicate Voyager in one episode, didn;t they?

[Tricky]

That's right! I had forgotten about them. I guess that's because VOY is the 'red headed stepchild' of Trek. But Spike is going to be showing episodes soon, so hopefully I can recharge my VOY data banks (quite boooing!).

[Cut]

I just remembered... "Our" Harry Kim and little Naomi Wildmon aren't quite from this universe either... they crossed over from the Duplicate Voyager in one episode, didn;t they?

You're right. That one I actually remember. It was an episode with the vidiians I think it was named "Deathlock". Not sure though

Did I mention, that (yes, I know shame on me) Trek-wise I seem to have more knowledge of VOY then I d of DS9. Shame on me, I liked 'em both!