Has anyone done up templates for the Traveller aliens and races, especially the Zhondani, Solomani and Aslan?
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Aslan Collas
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Star Trek:Strange New Worlds;
http://www.geocities.com/aslan_collas/
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Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
Copyright 1984 by Game Designers Workshop.
Developed by Mark W. Miller.
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The Aslan
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Skills
Athletics (Choice one) 2 (3)
Culture (Aslan) 2 (3)
History (Aslan) 1 (2)
Language
Aslan 2
World Knowledge (Kusyu) 1 (2)
Unarmed Combat (Dewclaw) 1 (2)
Primitive Weapon (Fierah, Yurietya, Akhaeh, Spear, or Club) 2 (3)
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Advantages/Disadvantage
Arrogant -1
Code of Honor (Aslan) -3
Night Vision +2
Burst of Speed (Can double movement for one minute every ten minutes) +1
Toughness +2
Claws (does +1 damage in HtH Combat) +1
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Aslan Physiology
Aslan are descended from four-limbed carnivorous pouncer stock which was orginally near the top of the food chain in the forests of Kusyu. About 1.8 million years ago, Kusyu's climate shifted, with the result that the extensive forests of Tafohi (Kusyu's largest continent) almost completely disappeared. As the forests dwindled, so did the small fauna upon which the Aslan had preyed, forcing them to venture out into the expanding grassland plains. The large grassland grazzing animals in these regions were too much for a lone Aslan to kill, & they began hunting in ahriy (prides) of several families. The strongest male became the leader, and his family reciever the best parts of the kills, choice sleeping places, and first drink at any waterhole.
The Aslan which has evolved from these beginnings is, like humans, an upright biped averaging 2 meters in height, & 100 kg in weight. There are two sexes, male & female, of which the most notable external difference is the male's increased size & more impressive mane. Females outnumber the males by a ration of 3:1. (Editors note: This has lead to many jokes about Alsan females in comfortable shoes on the TML, please don't ask or start it here.)
The Aslan hand has three fingers opposing one medially-placed thumb, & all have retractable claws. In addition, Aslan have a singly highly specialized claw under each thumb; this dewclaw folds back jack-knife fasion into a horny covering in the base of the thumb & palm. The presensce of these claws & the general nature of their body structure make the Alsan somewhat clumsy by comparison with Humans, but what they lack in dexterity they make up for in strength and endurance.
Aslan sleep about one-third of the time; shaped by their homeworld's rotational period, their sleeping time is roughly 10 to 11 hours (one-third of Kusyu's 32 hour day). Like humans lack of sleep degrades their abilities drastically.
True to their pouncer ancestry, Aslan are capable of short bursts of speed somwhat greater than manageable by Humans. They als have slightly superior hearing & night vision.
Federati0on explorers regarded the Aslan as "lion-like" & the simile has stuck ever since, although the Aslan bear little resemblance to Terestrial lions. Nonetheless, this early misnomer has influenced a great deal of human thinking about Aslan, including terminology (the use of pride to translate ahriy, for example) & ascribed behavior - which is not at all leonie. The derivation of the world, Aslan is unknown, but sometimes credited to human explorers who first contacted the race.
Taken from Traveller Alien Module 1, Game Designers' Workshop, 1984, pg 2 & 3. With changes to fit into LUG's Star Trek RPG, by Legate Legion
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History
From the earliest days when they were hunters on Kusyu's grassland plains, the Aslan have had a curious dichotomy in their social organization. Females were traditionally responsible for provision & improvement of life, while males existed largely for defense & war. The early hunts were conducted by females, & females are generally credited as the inovators in the areas of toolmaking, animal husbandry, & eventually, agriculture (developed to support herds of livestock, not for direct consumption). Males adopted female innovations reluctantly, but it was the female of the species qho strived always to improve the Alsan way of life.
The Aslan eventually hunted the virtual extinction most of the large carnivores which threated them on Tafonti. At this point, fire, metalworking, agriculture, & many other developments had brought the Aslan to the verge of civilization, & the security they now enjoyed permitted development of a number of civilized communities on Tafohti.
The territorial instincts of the Aslan male made the general trend of Aslan social development a feudal one. Families formed into prides, & prides formed into clans under the leadership of a dominate pride. Clans practiced a variety of semi-feudal procedures of fiefdom & vassalage which led to the development of a few very powerful clans, but this was generally the limit of social organization in most Aslan Civilization. Although tradition & ritual gradually evolved to curb the aggressive male character, wars were common as clans sought greater power or greater territory, & as population pressure increased on Kusyu, wars crew both more common & more intense.
Kusyu barely escaped a global conflict of devestating proportions, save by two development which took place at about the same time. First, the Aslan instituted their Hierate - an agreement of the 29 pre-eminent clans to meet & discuss their differences on a regular basis, replacing the previous procedures which dealt with each problem on a case-by-case emergency basis. This helped to ease rivalries & pressures, although it did not eliminate them, under the new Hierate system there grew up an increasing formality in warfare (the concpt of highly limited wars with outside referees was introduced at this time).
The quasi-government was clumsy at best & probably would not have withstood the test of time if not for the second great innovation - the invention of warp drive. About 96 Aslan (741 BC), barely a century after the Tlaukhu came into being (the exact date & circumstances of the discovery remain shrouded in mystery (In official Traveller Canon, the Aslan reverse engineered Jump Drive. Something I do not agree with, therefore I did not use it, nor will I use it now. Ie, they developed Warp Drive on their own.)); the two most powerful clans (the Yerlyaruiwo & the Khaukheairl) cooperated to an unprecedented degree to produce a warp drive. It opened the star to the Aslan Race.
Star travel was the ideal way to satisfy the territorial drives of the race. At first expansion was slow, limited byt the gradual development of warp technology. But, every new planet discovered opened new territories for colonization. The ear of 96 yo 2100 Aslan (approximately 741 BC to 1010 AD) was an era of expansion & cultural flowering not unlike Earth's Ages of Discovery (1450 to 1600 AD & 2100 to 2300 AD).
Recent Troubles: Recently, the Aslan have had a number of confrontations with the Federation. Fortunately for the Aslan, the encounters have primarily been between the Federation & either the Yerlyariuwo or the Khaukheairl, both clans strong enough to hold their own with the Federation, & also add in the fact that the Federation is not looking to fight a war with the Aslan. Tensions have risen to near-war level, but full-scale belligerency appears unlikely.
Taken from Traveller Alien Module 1, Game Designers' Workshop, 1984, pg 3. With changes to fit into LUG's Star Trek RPG, by Legate Legion
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Society
The Aslan have long been a warrior race; they are noble & proud, devoted to those in authority above them & responsible for thos who owe them fealty, from below. Aslan society is based on the family & its relationships.
Family Structures: An individual Aslan is usually a member of a family (ekho) of from 2 to 12 persons under a patriarchal leader. This family will generally include the male family head, one or more wives, plus children & various blood relatives of the leader (unmarried brothers & sisters, aged surviving parents no longer maintaining separate families, adopted orphans of blood relatives)/ Several families combine into a pride (ahriy), with one family dominant. The leader of that family is also the leader of the pride. Other families owe him and his family their fealty. A number of prides from a clan (huiha), with one pride dominant. Again, prides in the clan owe fealty to the clan's leader. The clan's leader is expected , in turn, to protect & provide for the members of the clan, settling disputes between prides within the clan, & administering his holdings wisely & well.
Clans may, in turn owe fealty to more powerful clans, particularly where blood relationships exist. The Tlaukhu consists of the 29 pre-eminent Aslan clans, the strongest within the Hierate; many other clans owe them fealty, either directly or through a chain of other clans. Overall, however, clans owing fealty to one of the Tlaukhu are in the minority; most clans are independent & function accordingly.
Duelling: Aslan pride makes them a touchy race, & it is quite easy for Aslan to give or take offense. This behavior originated in the struggles for dominance within families & prides, & remains a basic part of the Aslan personality. Over the centuries, Aslan rouchiness has grown formal & extremely ritualized; this rigid pattern of behavior has been necessary to reduce conflict & injury in the settlement of personaly disputes. Non-Aslan who do not understand these ritual forms of conduct find it difficult to get along with individual Aslan. For their part, most sophisticated Aslan have learned a certain amount of tolerance towards those who do not fit into the Aslan cultural pattern, but the cultural patterns are deeply ingrained, & offense is still taken from time to time.
Aslan society generally categorizes abrasive, uncultured, or offensive behavior into three classes: familiarity, impoliteness, & discourtesy. Familiarity is the treatment of social superiors as equals; it involves social interaction, extreme friendliness, or condescending treatment by a lower-class Aslan to an upper-class Aslan. Impoliteness stems from a lack of proper education or upbringing; it might include failure to address a social superior by the correct honorifics, failure to respond promptly when addressed, or losing one's temper in public. Discourtesy is a deliberate insult, & springs from contempt, a lack of respect, malice; outward actions may often be perceived by Aslan as discourtesy although not meant to be so by someone alien to Aslan culture. Any of these three behaviors can give offense, & an offended Aslan becomes an enemy. Discourtesy, however is grounds for dueling.
Duelling is a common way by which insults & slights are resolved, especially if rituals & other tension-relieving form fail to defuse the problem. Duels follow well-established rituals & are fought to the death only rarely. The rules of conduct & protoculs which govern them clearly state what is allowed & what is not allowed.
A challenge to duel is never made lightly. At the same time, reluctance to challaenge is seen in Aslan culture as weakness, a trait few Alsan wish to exhibit. Properly, anyone may challange at any time. Most challanges are issued in response to discourtesy; elaborate, but imformal rituals have evolved wherein one party is discourteous & actually gains stature if the other does not reply with a challange. Much of this behavior seems incomprehensible to individuals not steeped in Aslan culture.
The rituals for duelling, however, are strictly segregated by gender. Males & females never duel; insults & slight by the opposite sex are dismissed with the excuse that males (or females) don't understand female (or male) honor. When a transgression becomes too blatant, too extrememe, or too unacceptable, then a member of the insulted Aslan's immediate family (& of the correct sex) will respond to the discourtesy with a challenge.
The barrier against certain duels within a family are almost as strong as though for cross-gender duelling. Children never duel with their parents (which socially includes any adults in their family of the previous generation, not just biological parents).
Duels between Aslan take place as personal combat. Combatans use only their hand (and dewclaws); combat continues until one side receives a wound. In the case of grave insult, the fight may continue to unconsciousness for one participant. The winner has his or her honor satisfied; the loser is required by social & ritual standards to apologize (even if he or she was the one originally insulted).
For non-Aslan, one way to gain an Aslan's respect is to be willing to challange to a duel when required, & to duel when challenged. Aslan consider those who do embrace their culture to betahiwihteakhtau (barbarians). Willingness to behave in the honorable fashion is one indication that one is not completely ignorant barbarian. Since Aslan especially respect prowess in battle, upholding one's honor in a duel is especially respected.
Feuds: Disputes between families, or between prides, usually take place because of slights, insults, mistreatments, or problems which have not been resolved to both parties' satifaction. The families may back different scientific theories; one family member may have won a competition the other family had traditionally won; a family may have rejected a proposed marriage between it & the other family.
Feuds are also an intermediate step between duels & wars. Strangely, for Aslan society, they are unstructured & lack rituals to control them. If kept at a low level, a feud is a pretext for discourteous behavior & sparks many duels. If allowed to get out of hand, it involves the vassal prides & families on each side & can erupt into war.
Wars: Disputes between clans (usually over ownership, control, or access to land) are, like duels, also highly ritual iized. They are resolved through formal clan wars. Like duels, such wars are given highly specific rules (agreed upon by all parties in advance). There are many modes, from ordinary military conflicts to wars of assassains to capture the flag games in which some token must be removed from an enemy stronghold in order for victory to be won. Unlike duels, most (but not all) clan wars do involve the death of enemy personnel. In some cases (particularly wars of assassians) the war may be bloodless, akin to the counting coup practices of certain Indian tribes from early Earth history.
This sucker isn't done, but I thought you might like to see it AslanC.
~LL
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"Resistance is futile...say baby that is a nice tight skirt you have on." --President Clinton of Borg.
Please do not quote copyrighted materials here, LUG's or otherwise. I don't have time to check Legate's text here to see if it's a quote (as he states) or a paraphrase (which would be better). However, there's another thing to consider - Anyone who wants to use the Aslan already has a writeup on them in their Traveller materials. All that's needed in the Template and a single short paragraph-length synopsis. People who don't have the books and want more info can go out and scrounge the books - Traveller stuff isn't hard to get, and there are a lot of Traveller-specific sites out there.
Remember, guys, this IS an ICON Trek-based Discussion Board, not an all-game/all-genre area.
When I saw you were asking about "Traveller" aliens, I thought you were talking about the balding dude who took Jack Crusher's son on a field trip through the outer dimensions.
Then when you mentioned the Aslan, my brain tripped sideways -- until it uncovered roleplaying-game knowledge that had been buried for two decades!
Admittedly, I can see no good reason why you wouldn't want to throw the aliens from the Traveller RPG into your Star Trek game, as they were rather well thought out ...
Traveller Aliens
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