 August 15, 2014 - 12:25pm | Gorlian Thugs were famously mentioned in Alpha Dawn but with no explanation of who they really are. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 27, 2014 - 9:55pm | Got a chance to sit down and read my Carniverous Wom article in FE #3. It is written a bit agnostic as to who the Gorlian are so it could easily be a yazirian from Gruna Goru and the Wom could be native to Hargut. However I made the big mistake of spelling Gorlian as Gorilian. I think I had been reading Gorlian Thug as Gorilian Thug since I first got the Star Frontiers rules as a kid. I checked SFman #8 and it is spelled properly as Gorlian there too for those who go the new species/race route. I need to put an editors note in the next FE Jurak Hangna article correcting the spelling to be Gorlian. -iggy |
August 28, 2014 - 4:54am | Race Cons: no detail for their home planet, history etc, there is a view of too many sapient beings in the Frontier sector. Why can this race not be from several planets ex: coexsistance or share a planet like the Tyleri and Vrusk. Coexistance on several planets after they were colonized yes but were did they evolve? Where is the cradle of their civilization? This to me is the problem. It can be hand waved away and that works for some but I generally like to know these little details. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 7, 2014 - 9:33am | Well, I had them originate from Dramune. They hired themselves out as thugs. They also gravitated to Truane's Star due to conflict, civil war and Sathar. Finally, they immigrated to Rupert's Hole and fit in with the rough and tumble atmosphere. Other Races: I had Jakar stem from Prenglar. They are a previous exsisting but, minor race. Vimh stem from Prenglar by PGC. They tried to secretly export them to the mines of Zik-kit, Kizk-Kar. So those systems have populations of them. Vimh, sneaked aboard ships or hired themselves out and spread to almost every planet. Sape and Lokkuku, are basically the same race; with minor and cosmetic differences. They are basically trained apes, like Coco the gorilla. Many planets have some type of local ape or gorilla species - that is what they basically are. Someone mention Boon'Sheh live with Humma so Fochrik. Finally, Yinni come from Kawdl-Kit, K'Tsa-Kar. They live in the jungles. It's rare for them to leave their planet, even if their queen dies and they are...for lack of a better word - ronin. |
September 7, 2014 - 7:10pm | Sape and Lokkuku, are basically the same race; with minor and cosmetic differences. They are basically trained apes, like Coco the gorilla. Many planets have some type of local ape or gorilla species - that is what they basically are. Someone mention Boon'Sheh live with Humma so Fochrik. I like the sape as a "tinkered with" Lokkuku. If that were so then the Gorlian could be a 2.0 combat model from the labs of Streel. Rhianna, IIRC, was a secret planet with an unpublished jump route but was with many corporate secrets its location became the subject of corporate espionage and at first a conflict between Streel and CDC and later other mega corps. Due to the secretive nature of the early conflict there mega corps felt they had a free hand and did as they pleased with the technically sapient lokkuku- taking specimens for experimentation. Streel was very successful with its Sape. [insert gorlians as a 2.0 combat model if you wish but they have a problem with authority so the gorlians have proven problematic and many have ended up in the lost strata of society living as thugs with no morality and borderline sociopathic personalities. EDIT: Plot hook (lots of Blade Runner possibilities here) 1st and 2nd generation Gorlian combat models were hard wired to "die" after 7 years. A successful gorlian thug wished to live longer and hires the PCs to break into a secret corporate lab to steal a tailored virus that will replace the gene that represents this 7 year clock. of course this might be a bad idea to remove this limitation on a dangerous creature... I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 8, 2014 - 6:05am | REcap: Proposed solutions for who or what is the Gorlian thug? 1. Shadowshack in SFman 8: a yazirian clan from Hentz, hot tempered and often fueds with clan Anglann who control the Family of One. Clan's name is Gorlia and symbol is an ivory ear ring, Gorlian yazirians get a 5% bonus to battle rage. 2. Mark Bowman in SFman 8: submitted a player race that was 1 part gorilla and 1 part bull; race has +20 STR/STA and -20 INT/LOG but tracks as a 1st level environmentalist (40% and this score may be improved with EXP) 3. Cadre of thugs- allows for beings of any race 4. The word Gor is an transliteration from the Guna Garu system and thus is a word that can be applied to things associated with that system like Gorlian Whisky, Gorlian metal work or Gorlian thug. In this case a Gorlian thug is a cultural stereotype. They can be from any clan but the thug culture is that of a tough, touchy, ready to throw down kind of customer. 5. Engineered race: a 2.0 combat version of the Sape, right out of the Streel labs on New Pale. ONe thing we have determined is that the Gorlian did not originate with John Norman's "Gor" but we do appreciate the artwork spawned by Gor. I think we should consider the manner in which the Gorlian thug was introduced to us. Namely as that of an incidental encounter in the example on doing a personality check. he was clearly intended to be a mook or thug that would be more of a speed bump for the player characters than a real opposition- thats not to say that a gorlian thug cannot be real opposition. We should consider the use of the word thug that it had real connotations for the writer/designer of that section of Alpha Dawn. Originating 100's of years ago in India and used for bands of organized assassins that duped travellers into allowing them to join them then killing and robbing them with the element of surprise most notably with a noose or garrot. [side note Mark Twain actually wrote about them in "Following the Equator"] Lastly I'd like to propose an article that is a review of the 5 possibilities, include some adventure seeds that cover each of the possibilities. and run a poll on this site with the results of the poll being included with the article submitted to the zine. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 8, 2014 - 12:55pm | What issue of which magazine were the sape in? View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 September 8, 2014 - 2:49pm | The sapes are actually from SF5 - Bugs in the System Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
September 9, 2014 - 7:10pm | Ok started a poll: http://www.starfrontiers.us/ I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 12, 2014 - 8:44am | A possibility no one has mentioned is that Gorlian doesn't refer to a race, but to a gang or affiliation. |
September 12, 2014 - 12:06pm | A possibility no one has mentioned is that Gorlian doesn't refer to a race, but to a gang or affiliation. Covered that with cadre, which is Zebulon's guide for gang. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 13, 2014 - 12:12am | The unnamed possibility is that the writer was just being witty and wrote Gorilian as a descriptive term and a corruption of Gorilla a nickname for big muscular henchman in organized crime circles. Any other use the term is put to is just we the players of the game adding some fun to it. The only ridiculous use of it would be to make them Yazirians as some people seem to think Yazirians are everything. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 13, 2014 - 8:56am | Except that he didn't write "Gorilian". He wrote "G-o-r-l-i-a-n". (Only one "i" in the whole word and it comes after the "L".) View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
September 13, 2014 - 10:50am | In the etymology of words gorlian could be related to gorilla, especially if a non human member of the core four was involved in bestowing it as a label. My English teacher played a vinyl record of a professor reading Beowulf in the exact pronunciation its original hears would have heard and we couldnot understand one word at all.
I like rattraveller's take on this, its actually believable from what I've seen of how words evolve over time. Chalk it up to a Pan Gal mangling of gorilla. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 13, 2014 - 8:22pm | And the typesetting could have dropped the I. If that is so then the typesetter gave us a cool new PanGal pronunciation. -iggy |
September 15, 2014 - 7:22am | I like that explanation too. Disregarded corrections is simply a pet peeve of mine. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 September 15, 2014 - 10:47am | Never mind all that shtick...I want to see the Girlian Thugs. |
September 15, 2014 - 4:42pm | Never mind all that shtick...I want to see the Girlian Thugs. Russian barrel-chested, no-necked women? To each his own, I guess. :PView my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
September 15, 2014 - 4:53pm | I think she was in a late 70's Hannah-Barbara cartoon. -iggy |
September 16, 2014 - 6:30am | Never mind all that shtick...I want to see the Girlian Thugs. Russian barrel-chested, no-necked women? To each his own, I guess. :PNo, women's olympic swim teams aren't quite what I had in mind.  |
September 16, 2014 - 8:49am | Pphht! Ha! I'm glad I wasn't drinking my milk when I read that. :) View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
September 17, 2014 - 7:06am | Note: the human loan word corrupted when brought into Pan Gal solution (ie it originates with gorilla used as an adjective) is not going to be added to the poll as I'm 90% sure editing the poll would reset all of the votes so far. Thus the vote for other will be the place to vote for this solution and you simply comment in the commets area of the poll to explain your "other" vote. When the poll ends, I'll add the results to the "In Search of the Gorlians" article and submit it to the fan zine. thank you for your involvement, this has been a very interesting discussion. BTW: Gruna Goru is only spelled that way in the astro catalog on page 50 of AD while on page 51 in the map it is spelled Gruna Garu. Zebs follows the Gruna Garu spelling as well. Personally I embrace both spellings as part of what happens with loan words being brought into other languages. the first letters to change in a word can often be the vowel sounds so an A or an O changing from one book to the next is not that big a deal. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 17, 2014 - 12:25pm | It's also spelled "Gruna Garu" on p.55 of the KH Campaign Book (in the militia section). Three out of four suggests "Goru" was a typo. I used Gruna Garu in my Yaz Clan article, and the Gorlians are from Hentz. |
September 18, 2014 - 8:58am | I stand corrected. Thank you. Though I doubt "Gorlian" (One "i") is a misspelling because there is also only one "L". View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
