The Preservers

[BouncyCaitian]

Has anyone ever dealt with this question in thier Trek Game? I never like the TNG episode that made them 'greys' for lack of a better term. My players said my version was....interesting to say the least. I'd like to hear what other's had to say.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Actually, those were unlikely to be the Preservers in The Chase. They died out far too long ago to be the same folks who transplanted a bunch of Native Americans to that planet in TOS.

I would strongly argue that the Preservers are another, more recent species.

[Karg]

We just had a little plot point come up in our game. So far we think that they are capable of constructing Wormholes and using them to travel to other Universes.

We wound up in a Mirror Univers (A branch off from kirks origional mirror universe) who's Federation was the "Soverign Empire of Planets"

[Balok]

Opinion seems divided on whether the Preservers are the same species as the aliens from 'The Chase'.

I believe they are not. I believe the aliens from 'The Chase' died off millions of years ago (or, perhaps, became something else). The Preservers were active as recently as a half millenium or so ago, judging by the events of 'The Paradise Syndrome'.

The Preservers probably work better as the sort of race whose mysterious artifacts drive plots, and not as the sort of race players can actually encounter. This leaves open the question of whether any of them are actually still alive.

One concern is that there are a number of races *already* whose technical skill dwarfs what the players have. That's not unreasonable -- counting walk-ons, we've seen hundreds of races over the course of five series' and ten movies, and that's no including the many out there who can't survive in an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere readily. Even if 99% of species die or are destroyed before achieving the the technical skill of The Preservers, or the First Federation, or the Metrons, that still leaves room for dozens. HOWEVER, there's a danger in constantly presenting players with non-player "actors" (races or artifacts) whose abilities exceed theirs. It can make the players feel like they're not important. It certain kinds of stories (like fantasy) that's fine, especially in the early going -- but in Trek RPGs, the players should feel fairly important from the get-go.

As always, my $0.02

[BouncyCaitian]

Actually it was more of a 'creation' question they had to deal with. The preservers generally kept to thier own devices and left the younger races alone.
At the end, one of the players asked, "why did you do all of this (seed the planets)." The answer was simple: We wanted someone to talk to.

[Balok]

There's a thread of "seeding" planets running through Trek. The Preservers did it. The aliens from "The Chase" did it. Sargon's people did it.

Might be interesting to explore the motivations for that -- perhaps in an episode set in the far future, when humans are doing it...

[Tobian]

I also agree that the Preservers cannot be the race as portrayed in 'The chase' as they didn't preserve anything, they created!

There is no reason that several species we traditionally see as seperate could have been interconnected in much the same way as the current races of the Federation era are.

give the sizes of their localles, and their technology levels - the people who built the dyson sphere could know the T'kon, who know the Iconians, who know Sargons people, who know hte preservers etc.

The Orions are also a great catch all on such things as they have had a 10,000 year or more civilisation, which may have had contact with several of these species.

The preservers and Sargons people could have been one and the same - after all the 'preservers' is a subjective name.

The interesting thing about technology, especially in trek is the ammount of self similarity - the Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons and Federation all grew up at roughtly the same time and much of their technology is simmilar - even borrowed from one another.

To take that annalogy, you could still find ancient civilisations who were advanced, but perhaps not much moreso than the Federation of the 24th C Era. Look at the Iconians - they were highly advanced, but not neccessarily MORE advanced than the federation - it was just their technology focussed on different things. After all they were killed off when their planet was bombarded from orbit. If they were So advanced, they would have had some sort of defensive shields. (Point in case Aldea would have not suffered such a fate!) As a comparitive analogy, the Sikkarans in Voyager were only roughtly the same tech level as Voyager, it was just a unique property of their crust which allowed them to do what they did.

You can have ancient artifacts show up, but they can be extremelly exotic and inexplicable, without having god powers.

[Yuber Okami]

Tobian, it's only a matter of scale: yeah, Aldea had an tremendously powerful planetary defense shield, but bring an enemy race with an extremely powerful weapon, say a Death Star, and you have the whole Aldea destroyed. And the people who destroy the old ultra-powerful civilization may well survive to our days with a technology not as powerful as in those days...there are plenty of examples in Earth's history, like the chinese cannons used to drive the huns out of Asia(and into the Roman Empire). 1100 years later, when the portuguese arrived with their firearms the chinese emperor was very surprised of the "mighty weapons" of the europeans, and he(he and NO ONE) didn't even suspect that he had more powerfull cannons rusting in the imperial armory...

[Tobian]

Yes very true - its likelly that in 10'000 years of civilisation the Orions have forgotten more than they'll ever know and there are several civilisations who have been arround so long they fell into decline.

Point in case - the Iconians do seem to have lived on - on 3 seperate worlds - but none of those even could remember BEING Iconians - let alone how the portals worked ! mind you - thats 100,000 years for you!

[Phoenix]

I still like the explanations given for the preservers activities in the book Vendetta, they were fighting the Borg in essence, to prevent the extermination of lesser species they spread them out.