The zyradu are part of the background of my Planetary Romance setting, but they are not entirely my creation. Some friends of mine have run a Traveller campaign for decades. However, they dislikes some elements of the setting and rewrote them. Notably, they rewrote the aliens to make them more alien. Really, nothing but the names were left. So the vargr stopped being uplifted wolves and became a powerful species of biology-focused and utterly pragmatic aliens (and a lot weirder looking). When I joined the campaign, I offered some additional cultural detail. When I set out to create my own campaign, I did another rewrite (and changed the name and appearance to avoid confusion), resulting in the zyradu.
I'm using them again, under the name Hyadans, for my new Champions campaign. -- Dean Shomshak
ZYRADU
Biology: The zyradu show many anatomical resemblances to Earthly reptiles. They have an internal skeleton, scaled skin and slitted eyes. They also lay eggs. Zyradu have seven limbs, though: two arms, four legs and a tail that ends in a bone spike. They also have four eyes. One pair of eyes sees colors in bright light, while one sees in dim light. Zyradu skin is colored various shades of blue or purple, from medium hues to nearly black.
The average zyradu weighs 200 kg, and 300 kg is not uncommon. Zyradu are never unarmed, since the long, muscular tail can curve over a zyradu’s body to strike a foe in front of the creature. Zyradu warriors sometimes affix a gun or bayonet to their tails, along with whatever weapons they carry in their hands.
Zyradu share one trait with pack animals, which hints at their evolutionary past: Relatively few female zyradu bear offspring, but those who do lay five to ten eggs at a time. Most zyradu cultures consider motherhood something best left to professionals. Humans have great difficulty telling male and female zyradu apart. Zyradu practice complete gender equality with no sexual politics, to the extent that they lack gender pronouns. Culturally sensitive aliens refer to zyradu as “it,” like the zyradu themselves. Zyradu have no nudity taboo, but may wear clothing for warmth, protection, or because pockets are useful.
Culture: Encountering the zyradu gave humanity its first hint about just how inhuman aliens might be. Zyradu lack emotion. They show physical drives to survive, mate and protect their progeny, but no love, no hate, no loyalty, anger, fear or joy. In the most general terms, zyradu seek their own best advantage, balancing what they hope to gain against the risk they must undertake, like the ideal rational actors of classical economics.
Zyradu recognize that no one can possess perfect information about the profit, loss and risk of every situation, especially about the long-term consequences of actions. Like humans, therefore, they form ideologies to guide their choices. Each zyradu ideology constitutes a guess about the strategy most likely to assure survival for oneself, one’s social group and the zyradu species as a whole. Ideologies do not possess any moral or transcendent aspect: zyradu do not choose an ideology because they believe it is “good.” They believe that a particular strategy optimizes their chances of surviving to propagate their genes and beliefs.
These different ideologies or survival strategies form the basis of social or political groupings that human xenologists dub “clans.” The zyradu term combines the connotations of extended family, political party, and even religion, while not precisely meaning any of these things. Zyradu society includes more than a dozen major clans and numerous minor clans and sub-clans. Many of these clan ideologies draw heavily on concepts from biology and ecology.
Zyradu clans are partly hereditary. Zyradu seek to indoctrinate their offspring with their own beliefs because people who share one’s beliefs increases one’s chance of implementing that ideology. It’s not unusual, however, for zyradu to switch to a different clan than their parents. In the remote past, groups of zyradu experimented with genetically “hardwiring” clan loyalty into their offspring, but they found that this made their societies too rigid and insular to optimize their survival. Zyradu show about the same degree of loyalty to parents as humans do: While zyradu feel no love for their parents, they do not feel any need to rebel, either.
Most zyradu also belong to extended families. These “phratries” combine several generations. Members usually follow the same ideology, but this is not always the case: Some phratries consider it strategically desirable to place members in multiple clans. The relationships between clans and phratries become at least as complicated and subtle as any human politics, and as volatile. Individual zyradu become leaders of their phratries or clans through seniority, skill at administration and persuasion, and interest in taking the job.
Nor are clans monolithic. A zyradu who disagrees with the dominant clan in its region may find it expedient to go along with the majority while attempting to nudge other zyradu to its point of view. If a zyradu sees some clear advantage to acting against its ideology, it may choose personal gain over abstract principle. Zyradu of the same clan do not necessarily agree in every detail, either, or feel mindless obedience to the clan’s interests. Zyradu pursue their own interests first. They do not even have words for concepts such as patriotism or loyalty: They must import such words from other species, or translate them as “insanity.” Zyradu can display altruism, though — some ideologies define the individual as a temporary and expendable vehicle for genes and memes.
Technology: The zyradu have developed biotechnology to a very great degree. Their “machines” may consist in whole or in part of organisms genetically engineered to perform special functions. For instance, zyradu do not build computers: They grow creatures whose brains are hardwired to perform intricate calculations or operate complex machinery by instinct. The zyradu grow living buildings, factories, vehicles… and weapons. Zyradu warfare relies on synthetic plagues and artificial organisms of varying lethality. Biotechnology cannot replace all “hardtech” — living fusion reactors or starship engines just aren’t possible — but the zyradu possess great expertise at integrating living and nonliving devices.
For millennia, the zyradu have genetically engineered themselves, too. However the species began, the average zyradu is now stronger, tougher, and smarter than the average human. Some zyradu diverge wildly from the species norm because of altered genetics. Most zyradu consider genetic alteration and bioengineering completely normal. They do not understand how humans could fight devastating wars over such an issue.
Governance: Zyradu space extends more than 200 light-years. No single polity extends further than a single world, however, and few zyradu societies grow even that large. Zyradu space consists of ever-changing alliances and counter-alliances between clans. A clan may wield enough power in a particular region that humans would say it “rules” that world, continent, city-state or neighborhood, but the zyradu would not. Zyradu space is not a government, or even a collection of governments: It is an ecology in which clans and phratries compete and cooperate like different species in a reef or forest. Even a single clan operating on the fringe of human space, however, may command the resources and power of a human planetary government.
Interstellar Relations: Different clans hold different attitudes to humanity and other species. Some zyradu want peaceful coexistence with other species; others regard competition as better for zyradu and aliens alike. A small, radical clan advocates the extinction of all other sapients to make more room for zyradu expansion, but the overwhelming majority of zyradu believe this strategy is counterproductive.
Zyradu treat other species the same way they treat each other. Often, they do whatever seems expedient to get what they want. Sometimes that means whatever they can get away with. Trust is one of the most valuable commodities for zyradu: Those who must live in close proximity can count on reciprocal self-interest to keep their fellows honest, but how can they prevent robbery, cheating or default if a zyradu can hop on a starship and vanish? Zyradu use elaborate methods to make default more costly than keeping faith. Humans joke that the zyradu invented the escrow company before the wheel. More extreme measures include mutual poisonings, with the antidote delivered when a deal is complete, or floating assassination contracts on anyone who robs or cheats the client. The zyradu who provide such services work very hard to establish their fidelity, for that is their fundamental commodity.
Clan alliances sometimes fight wars with other species. Zyradu warfare appalls humans for its cold-blooded pragmatism. These creatures don’t care about dominance displays, honor, revenge, or other intangibles. They also don’t care about mercy, rights, or rules of warfare. Nothing matters except achieving some tangible advantage over a rival (or victim).
The zyradu specialize in biowarfare — spreading plagues to remove an enemy’s capacity to resist. If the zyradu think a foe might become useful later on, they create diseases to incapacitate enemies and supply the cure once the enemy surrenders. If zyradu see no potential benefit from an enemy, the plague kills. Fortunately for other species, the far-sighted zyradu rarely decide that today’s enemy is a threat forever and a resource never. Most clans believe that outright attempts at genocide cause more problems than they solve.
The causes of wars against aliens range from the obvious — zyradu want to colonize a world but not share it — to the utterly obscure, at least to the aliens involved. To be fair, some of the wars make no sense to the zyradu, either. The zyradu make no secret that they find much of other species’ behavior difficult to understand — especially humans. Wars between zyradu and humans (or other species) usually end when someone buys out one of the attacking clans or finds a way to make the zyradus’ goal too difficult to be worth the effort. Wars between zyradu factions tend to move in slow motion, as the members of each participating clan ponder each new development and recalculate their own risks and interests.
Much about zyradu society and politics remains puzzling to humans, though zyradu themselves insist (of course) that their societies are entirely rational and therefore entirely comprehensible. Other species do not understand zyradu culture because other species are not rational. Individual zyradu possess different sets of information to guide their decision-making, however, and this leads to inevitable disagreement and in some cases to error and less than optimal survival strategies, or even different standards of what constitutes “survival.” Xenologists caution humans to tread cautiously and to avoid reading human motives and viewpoints into zyradu societies.
CLANS
At least half of all zyradu merely ally with whatever faction seems strongest or pays best. They desert when they find a better deal. These “Opportunist” zyradu display no loyalty to each other, either — only to their phratry.
Many of the clan names refer to biological, ecological or evolutionary concepts — a link to the zyradu’s awesomely advanced biological science. Clans known to humans include:
CLONAL MONAD: These zyradu form hive-mind societies in isolation even from other zyradu. Their hives often live in space colonies.
COERCIVE GARDENER: These zyradu advocate conquering other species as a means of managing them and, in the long run, assimilating them into zyradu society. When zyradu control all sentient life, other species cannot threaten zyradu survival.
COMMENSAL ADAPTER: This clan advocates cooperation with other sentient species for mutual benefit. These zyradu point out the many instances of cooperation between species in every planet’s ecosystem. The Commensal Adapters chiefly interact with humanity through trade, leading some humans to call them “Commercial Adapters” instead.
COMPETITIVE SELECTOR: This clan advocates war against other species to winnow out weak societies, both zyradu and alien. The Competitive Selectors think the zyradu can out-compete other sapient species and displace them from their worlds.
DISCRETE GENOME: These zyradu oppose any cooperation with other sapients and advocate strict isolationist policies. They would use force, if necessary, to keep other sapients at a distance and prevent contamination from non-zyradu cultures. The Discrete Genome also tries to prevent species contamination between biospheres.
IMMORTAL: A defunct clan from zyradu history. About 15,000 years ago, a group of zyradu created offspring who never grew old. In a matter of centuries, the immortals achieved immense influence over zyradu society through sheer accumulation of resources. The Immortals dominated the zyradu for millennia in a stultifying period that many zyradu now regard as a dark age. The Immortals did not make more of their kind because they had no need for offspring to carry on their genes or beliefs, and every other Immortal was a competitor. Over the millennia, the Immortals died by mishap or assassination, or they retreated into ultra-secure, self-sufficient bunkers. Few of them remain active and they wield no great influence in zyradu space. (However, they gave ideas to the nivoncoli who became the Owners of the Conglomerate.)
IMMUNAL EXTINCTION: This radical clan seeks to annihilate all species, sapient or otherwise, that could threaten zyradu survival. Other zyradu periodically suppress the Immunal Extinctionists on the grounds that this clan itself endangered zyradu survival by provoking wars with other species. The clan keeps reappearing, however, as a spontaneous sociobot.
MUTAGEN: These zyradu engage in radical genetic experimentation upon themselves in hopes of bypassing evolution and finding ways to improve their species. They conduct similar experiments upon other species too, including other sapients when they can get away with it. Mutagens believe that a more powerful genetic science increases the zyradu’s power and safety in the long run, even if it costs the lives of individuals — preferably not themselves, of course.
SAPIENT CLADE: These zyradu promote social and biological diversity among sentient life. They think diversity confers flexibility and rapid innovation, and this in turn brings strength and promotes survival. The Sapient Clade believes in protecting endangered cultures — even non-zyradu cultures — just like endangered species. Who knows what gene or meme might become useful at a later time?
SLAVER: This small clan rules and exploits a species called the r’yax. The Slavers began as a Commensal Adapter group that tried to accelerate the r’yax’s technological development and ended up conquering them. For their own safety, the Slavers cannot release the vengeful r’yax. The Slavers point out, though, that parasitism is one of the most successful of all ecological strategies. There may be other Slaver clans in the depths of zyradu space.
STEEL INTEGRAL: These zyradu pursue hardtech instead of biotechnology. They place particular emphasis on bionics as a way to combine the strengths of zyradu and machine. Steel Integral members can hold any other ideology as well, but they agree that technological development forms the most important strategy for their species’ survival and growth.
SYMBIONT VOID: This clan eschews planets to live in mobile space habitats. It also seeks to incorporate other species into the clan society. Humans know little about the Symbiont Void.
Humans perceive two major alliances or super-clans in zyradu culture, which they call simply “Clan Group A” and “Clan Group B.” Clan Group A generally takes an aggressive posture to other species. Clan Group B generally advocates some form of peaceful coexistence. The Coercive Gardeners and Competitive Selectors are bulwarks of Clan Group A, while the Commensal Adapters and Sapient Clade lead Clan Group B.
Other clans remain neutral or make temporary alliances based on shared interests. For instance, Symbiont Void zyradu usually side with Clan Group B, but they can also work with the Coercive Gardeners if that seems like the best way to increase the species diversity of their space habitats. Conversely, the Discrete Genome sometimes sides with Clan Group B if they think a war would increase contact with another species.
ZYRADU RACIAL PACKAGE DEAL
Ability Cost
+5 STR 5
+3 CON 6
+3 INT 3
-6 COM -3
Tail: Extra Limbs, Intrinsic (+1/4), No Manipulation (-1/4) 5
Tail: 1d6 HKA 15
Tough Skin: 2 PD, 2 ED Armor 6
+3” Running 6
Disadvantages Value
Psychological Limitation: Lack of Emotion, Driven by Self-Interest and Abstract Philosophy (Common, Strong) -15
I picked up a D20 anicent mythic chinese sourcebook and as a class it has alchemist in it and it looks like your write up would be a solid base if I ever did a conversion. Thumbs up!
This style of combat is based on ideals similar to both Commando Training and Dirty Infighting. Except that the gole is NOT to remove the target from the fight, but to make them suffer. There are no style disavantage for this style.
The combat style is, like everything I did and reposted in this thread, for 5th edition, and may have to be modified for use in 6th edition and Champions Complete.
Maneuver/ Phases /Points/OCV/DCV/Damage and Effect
Adder Fang/ 1/2 /4/+1/+1/2d6 NND(1)
Andaconda Wrap/ 1/2 /3/-1/-1/Grab Two Limbs, +10 STR for Holding On
Black Racer's Fang/ 1/2 /5/+1/+0/STR+v/5, FMove
Cobra Fang/ 1/2 /5/-1/-2/Grab One Limb, HKA 1/2, Disable
Grass Snake Escape/ var. /4/+0/+0/+15 STR vs Grabs
Python Block/ 1/2 /4/+2/+2/Block, Abort
Python Crush/ 1/2 /3/-2/+0/HKA 1/2 d6, Must Follow Grab
Spitting Cobra Strike/ 1/2 /4/-1/-1/Sight Group Flash 4d6
Skills:
Acrobatics
Breakfall
Contortion
Fast Draw
KS:VIPER (required)
WF: Blades
WF: Small Arms
Elements
+1 Use Art With Blades
+1 Use Art With Clubs
Well there is an easy way to figure this out. The bike weighs 200 kg each girl weighs 100 kg (300 kg). STR 23 lifts a max off the ground at 600 kg. So over head is either -5 STR or minus -10. So STR 30 should fit the bill (going with -5 STR overhead and since that is also the benchmark for max human potential as of fifth edition
)
Christopher you mentioned about buying some if these module. I bought the To Serve and Protect module years ago and it had a blank page every other sheet! Lol (I knew the condition of the module when I bought it. Someday I'll get a new copy.)
That's the exact same level of complexity as Knockback.
Or are you referring to the Knockdown rules that only apply if both the optional Hit Location and Impairing/Disabling rules are in play? Because that would be good to know going into the conversation. If that's what you are talking about I find them less complex than the Impairing/Disabling rules themselves.
EDIT: Just saw you specified 5E. I'm at work and don't have my 5E books with me (most of my PDFs are 6E), but I don't recall any significant change in Knockdown between editions. If there is, my bad.
Ninja-Bear got a reaction from Asperion in 5th Edition 250 Points Comic Book Characters
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Ninja-Bear got a reaction from bigdamnhero in Revelations 1001
Ninja-Bear got a reaction from Joe Walsh in Need More HERO
Ninja-Bear got a reaction from Hyper-Man in Need More HERO
Ninja-Bear got a reaction from Christopher R Taylor in 6th Edition Conversions
