 April 3, 2011 - 6:28am | Note Deryn Rys started a thread to discuss what the clikks are and this thread is to discuss the broader topic of Where and when and what happened to them. Deryn's thread is here: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/4329 Zebs tells us the heliopes were abondoned on Starmist 950 PF or millenium ago and from the module it seems that the clikks never returned. That little fact suggest a civilization in decline. So what to do with the Clikks? dead and dying scattered remenants of a once great warrior culture? heliopes were a client species and they had tentacles; did the clikks have another client species with tentacles? A worm like client species perhaps? Did the sathar originate with the clikks and have effectively supplanted them? Do the clikks still exist? Who were the Clikks fighting? they built a bolo sized tank for a reason! If you need a super tank the size of a bolo or several city blocks then you have an enemy to match that. Speaking of bolos- the latter marks were used as planetary defense units capable of shooting into orbit with their main hellbore weapons. If the clikks were building tanks on that scale I'd expect that they used them in a similar manner. As a mobile planetary defense gun. This would suggest that their enemy may have been able to dominate in space or at least that it may have been cheaper to garrission planets with a few of these tanks rather then tie up their own fleet. heres another other posts on the clikks that I found: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/1533 I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 3, 2011 - 6:44am | If the sathar originated with the Clikks and overthrough them then they would really be skeeved out by the vrusk. Perhaps thats the reason they implacably attack the Frontier. I can see anti vrusk groups advocating throwing the vrusk under the hover bus in order to get the sathar off our backs. The Unspec (Unknown Species) that the Clikks were in conflict with is a very interesting question. All the typical questions apply: who, what, when, where and why and how come. I'd expect them to have tech to rival what we've seen of the Clikks tech base and if they are still around then their tech base should be in advanced of the Frontier tech base. If the UPF ever encountered them and they were hostile it would not bode well for the Frontier. It'd be almost like the Federation encountering the borg in TNG. So far as I can extrapolate we can say there are these races present in the Starmist Sector a millenium ago: Clikks, Heliopes, and the "Unspec", might as well through in the sathar or the Ferrengi like S'sessu (ie the alternate sathar race that act like ferrengi from the dragon mag #96) You know, throw in humans with the above; Clikks, heliopes, Unspec, sathar, you have the equiv of a "core 4" and an antagonist in the Starmist sector a millenium ago, except the sathar should be more like the S'sessu and on the "good guys" side. Which would make the Unspec the menace. Just a thought. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 3, 2011 - 7:38am | Just reread the S'sessu article it speculates that the s'sessu were an off shoot of the sathar tha split of 20,000 years ago and were transplanted by an ancient powerful race possibly the tetrarchs It does not nail it down as the tetrarchs only speculates that it could have been. It does place their home world 10 LY south by south west of Gruna Garu as well as they have a second system in close proximity. They also have no knowledge of the sathar themselves. So since the clikks are to be located west of the Frontier it could also have been the clikks that relocated the s'sessu to their home planet of Phri'sk. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 3, 2011 - 9:22am | Civilizations in decline are always handy to have around. Proud angsty warriors in despair over thier inevitable and unavoidable extinction in a universe that no longer knows them, and they barely recognize. Tragedy in motion, Sympathy for the devils, Pathos for the enemy. FTW. Tentacles, Because tentacles make all would be alien gods look cooler. I vote for the Elaborate a bit on the 'If the sathar originated with the Clikks and overthrough them then they would really be skeeved out by the Vrusk.' please? I wouldn't mind replacing the humans with something else, I accept I am likely a minority on my view of a 'literal humanocentric requirment' used in games and fiction, however. I vote for something more like the Ul-Mor, Zuraqqor, Arboreans, or at least the High Martians from Space: 1889, so that all the Core Four immigrants can remain new exotics to the Frontier, and the vast majority of space (~1000ly or even more) around it. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 April 3, 2011 - 1:22pm | Looking at the tetriarch society as the precusor of the externals in Alternity, simply because I have always felt that Alternity was what Star Frontiers might have been, and that a lot of the ideas in Alternity's Star Drive campaign setting have just a hint of Star Frontiers in it. There are five external races...the Klikk, Magus, Kroath, Eldala, and the Gardhyi. These races were at war with the Meddurr a winged reptilian race called Dragons who were technologically superior to the people of the Concord and Verge (read UPF, and Rim). I have long held the belief that Star Drive and Alternity in general was TSR's attempt to rectify the stupidity of cancelling Star Frontiers in favor of Buck Rogers, but Alternity failed because the system was a bit too complicated for casual gamers. Still the Alternity system has a huge wealth of really good material for anyone who cares to read through it and alot of it is still floating around the internet. As I've always said, the Sathar might have been genetically bred by the tetriarchs (possibly the Clikks) as a bio-weapon, that just got abandoned after the tetriarch society was overthrown or destroyed and are now just running on autopilot, diong what they were programmed to do from the beginning, infiltrate the enemy learn their weaknesses and destroy them. Of course with no master race to point them at the enemy, the Sathar just consider every sentient race as the enemy. "You can't reason with them...and they will never stop...." Survivor of the massacre at Outer Reach. "They mostly come at night...mostly." Newt survivor of the massacre at New Pale. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
April 3, 2011 - 2:17pm | Elaborate a bit on the 'If the sathar originated with the Clikks and overthrough them then they would really be skeeved out by the Vrusk.' please. IIRC the desription of clikks is that they are a sort of cross between the vrusk and the heliope which I interpret that as a more or less vrusk like body and a the scorpian like tail of the heliope. Thus the vrusk look like the clikk. if the sathar were were uplifted by the clikk and they over threw their masters then discovering the vrusk should stir some very deep racial memories for them. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 3, 2011 - 9:17pm | ok, kewl thanks.Sathar equate a mystic sense of 'the cosmic bad' on the Vrusk... and it just so happens that I did the same with the Vrusk to the Clikks, the visage of a Clikk (should they ever see one.) and the nature of Clikk ruins gives the Vrusk a similar deep metaphysic impression of the 'Great Illogical Chaos'.... enough that varients of the phoneme ql'ic'q ([q_>l\=\.1:k_k.q_>] x-sampa) translate roughly to things like 'daemon', 'monster', 'madness', and 'valiant despair'. I did this for simple racial interest, and because I considered making a "Lost-Clikk-Ruins" adventure long ago, but it only ever showed up as the name of a simi-paramilitary multi-colony Vrusk hoverfan gang in regular opposition to the Star Devils. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 April 6, 2011 - 9:34am | Here's a thought. After reading the article on the Clikks in the last SFman, it made sense to me that the Sathar and Clikk have a long-standing conflict. It seems to me the Sathar would have conquered other areas of space; they would have certainly made other enemies, as well as allies (such as the Zuraqqor). So perhaps the Sathar and Clikk have been at war for many centuries. I like the idea of the Sathar starting out as a creation of the Clikk, or perhaps the Clikks were slaves of the Sathar that rebelled and began building weapons? Or perhaps both species have large empires that are constantly clashing, with the UPF/Rim caught in between? Perhaps the Clikk explored the Frontier on a military scouting mission, and the ship that dumped the Heliopes was damaged in battle and forced to retreat to Clikk space. Also, it was not too long afterward (around 800 PF) that the Sathar attacked the Eorna on Volturnus, so they were also in Frontier space during that time. Then the Sathar turned their attention totally to the war against the Clikks for several centuries; when they turned their attention back to the Frontier sector, they found this new civilization had sprung up, the UPF, and thought it was ripe for conquest, with lots of planet full of resources. They find out the hard way the UPF can fight. Then, suppose the Clikk renewed their war with the Sathar, forcing them to turn their focus away for several more decades, leaving their agents to do most of the fighting. This would explain why the Sathar seem to not be attacking the UPF constantly. But of course, Zeb's indicate they do harass the Rim constantly. |
April 6, 2011 - 4:07pm | More likely they go on a Clikk raiding spree, looking for a lost planet-buster missile/nova bomb/philosohers stone, to use aginst the Frontier, (or maybe some other enemy). Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 April 17, 2011 - 6:36pm | When I wrote the article on the Sundown system, I had to expand the backstory on the system. The module was really sparse in BG info. I took what was spelled out and built upon it. Specifically, 1. Starmist was from another star system 2. The Klikks resembled the Vrusk, hence the Heliope's subconscious reactions to Vrusk PC's 3. The Klikk society used slave labor 4. The Heliopes were susceptible to sonic weaponry 5. Klikk small arms are slug throwers 6. The UPF does not get the opportunity to study the tank 7. There was something wrong with the Klikk vessel that dumped the Heliopes Like Jedion, I drew the conclusion that the Klikk society was in decline, hence they didn't return for their slaves. I also concluded that the Klikk captain planned to return otherwise they would have disabled or destroyed the military hardware that was dumpped with the slaves. Since this didn't happen I crashed their ship in the system. I also concluded that the Klikk were familiar enough with Sundown that they felt safe leaving the hardware and the slave there. So I placed Klikk ruins in the system, these bases were destroyed in the chaos when the rogue planet (Starmist) moved in. I also concluded that the race had to be aggressive. Societies that are dependent on slave labor usually are. The Klikks more so because the slaves were also a food source. I love Alternity. I also noticed the similarity in the names between the two races however that is where it ended for me. I also did not give any thought to the Sathar as, in my mind, the Klikks had not expanded beyond Sundown in an easterly direction. The ideas you guys are throwing around here are certainly interesting and way beyond the scope of what I wrote. I love it. |
April 17, 2011 - 6:55pm | Interesting, I was thinking the same, and was where the idea of a Clikk ruins adventure started for me. And when I decided to put some of the back story into the Vrusk. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
