Thri-Kreen in Oriental Adventures Setting

[Solaris]

I have a player who I know is rather fond of thri-kreen and has been wanting to play one for a long time, and I want to cater to that by writing the bug-people into the setting. It has bits of mythic China (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), feudal Japan (Sengoku Period), and medieval India for major cultural influences, with Mongolian and SE Asian cultures on the periphery. Humans are the only race of mortals; everything else is some form of spirit, tennin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennin), or oni (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurOrcsAreDifferent). I didn't mis-type that.

By bog standard, thri-kreen (those elfropophagous green Martian expies) don't seem to fit in well with the setting. For one, there aren't any elves. I'd like to keep their racial traits more or less intact, as well as their racial weapons of the gythka and the chatkcha. For bonus points, a culture similar to green Martians would be pretty good, too.

What are your thoughts and ideas, Playground?

[MrZJunior]

You could have him arrive John Carter style, out of thin air with no explanation.

[Solaris]

That's reverting a little too far back to the original, I'm afraid. It seems a bit of a cop-out, and I've already made the mistake of letting one player do that to 'port his character from an existing setting into my other game with less than satisfying results.

[Jendekit]

In an Avatar: The Last Airbender game a buddy of mine ran, I played a viking barbarian. The external justification was that he simply came from a land that previously hadn't had contact with the official lands. One storm o' the century and a shipwreck later, and viola! A viking alongside benders.

You could do something similar. If you don't like the shipwreck idea, you could go Europe/Asia Silk Road. Have the Thri-Kreen simply be at the opposite end of a multi-continental trade route.

Another possibility is that the character is basically a freak. Possessed by a bug spirit as a child and when the spirit left the changes didn't. Granted this doesn't allow for the racial weapons, but just throwing ideas out.

[MrZJunior]

That's reverting a little too far back to the original, I'm afraid. It seems a bit of a cop-out, and I've already made the mistake of letting one player do that to 'port his character from an existing setting into my other game with less than satisfying results.

Fair enough.

I have a few ideas, but I think you should know that I know absolutely nothing about the Thri-Kreen, so I don't know if any of these ideas will conflict with their lore.

Why not make him some sort of supernatural creature and try to fit him into the mythology of the world? Eastern mythology is full of powerful creatures of one kind or another.

He could be a traveler from a distant land a la Marco Polo.

Perhaps he was transformed through magical means and either liked the transformation or was unable to get it reversed.

[Admiral Squish]

You could do a little bit of rebuilding and call them mantis- or grasshopper- men, or some pseudo-translation thereof. maybe lose some of the desert stuff to fit them into a more appropriate environment.

Also, you could go with the silk road option and have the thri-keen come from a middle eastern style region.

[Yanagi]

I have a player who I know is rather fond of thri-kreen and has been wanting to play one for a long time, and I want to cater to that by writing the bug-people into the setting. It has bits of mythic China (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), feudal Japan (Sengoku Period), and medieval India for major cultural influences, with Mongolian and SE Asian cultures on the periphery. Humans are the only race of mortals; everything else is some form of spirit, tennin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennin), or oni (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurOrcsAreDifferent). I didn't mis-type that.

By bog standard, thri-kreen (those elfropophagous green Martian expies) don't seem to fit in well with the setting. For one, there aren't any elves. I'd like to keep their racial traits more or less intact, as well as their racial weapons of the gythka and the chatkcha. For bonus points, a culture similar to green Martians would be pretty good, too.

What are your thoughts and ideas, Playground?

Green Martian as in Barsoom? I realize that's the best fit, but I'd rather be precise.

Well the question on fitting them is how you want them to interface, particularly since it sucks to have a player be a "kill it with fire immediately" race. So...peripheral, rare, but not an immediate antagonist. Given how you're describing your setting and your desires, I'm going to focus on niches of the region in "real-life" or in mythology that be an acceptable niche to drop them in.

Along the Silk Road, as opposed to at the other end of the Silk Road. Think of all the various Central Asian groups. Sort of like the Scythians: pastoralists and traders most of the time, sometimes raiders.

Migrants down the Silk Road, like the Tocharians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians). Imagine the equivalent of the Chinese forts/trade stations in the Taklamakan Desert...but instead of being plaid-wearing blondes speaking an Indo-European dialect, it's mantis people.

Isolated in an extreme environment. If you're fantasy world echoes the Asian continent, you've got your pick of extremes. Atop the Himalayas (think Nepal or Tibet); in the deep rain forests (tribal groups like the Munda or Nagas in India, the Bhils or the Hmong in SE Asia.)

Coming from the sea. Is there an ocean or sea equivalent to the Pacific? Think in terms of the scatter of islands that extend from Asia to Australia. Maybe the thri-keen are pirates, like the coastal Buginese or Dayaks used to be. Or they're from an island with an askew ecology like Papua New Guinea. Or...just from Fantasy Australia. Giant murder bugs strike me as pretty apt for fantasy Australia.

The idea I like best is:Tsuchigumo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuchigumo). Not literally the same thing as in the myth, but the idea of creatures that had to be driven off or culled for humans to tame the land. So basically there used to be more thrikeen, but they lost and ended up as an atavistic remnant. Are they still feared, or are they just kind of oddities? Maybe they have some useful skill, so they end up as Simmelian Strangers--inside a community, but not "of" the community. Maybe their place in myth as ancient enemies makes them kind of weird cultural fetishes: a living reminder of an ancient victory.

[Ravian]

I really don't see why a Thri-Kreen would have to be too foreign for an Oriental setting. They're "Mantis" people, and the Praying mantis is one of those animals associated with Eastern Cultures nearly as much as dragons, tigers and Pandas. China has two martial arts systems attributed to their movements.

Now obviously you wouldn't want to just stick them in right alongside humans culturally, that's a disservice to the alien nature the Thri-Kreen are meant to invoke. To facilitate that they need to be somewhat foreign, but not necessarily too much.

One approach could be to make them isolationists. Those remote mountains and hidden valleys? That's where the mantis-folk live in their village hives and their monasteries teaching their strange fighting styles. Their ways are strange to us, living by some philosophy likely out of tune by what is espoused in human society (Chinese history is rife with those sorts of conflicts.) If one were to find them, one might be able to learn to fight like them, though few can imagine how the human body could mimic the leaping kicks and flashing claws the Thri-Kreen monks are capable of.

The other possibility is keeping them a little further at bay, a truly outsider culture rather than an internal isolationist one. Out there, beyond the great walls, they ride like a swarm of locusts through the steppes. They care little for the order that governs over all things, instead going by their crude rule by might ways. On occasion some of their smaller, less aggressive cousins have ventured from the mountains and deserts to trade curiosities from the lands beyond the setting sun, but for the most part the Kreen mean death to those that dare to enter their harsh domain. While they are rarely organized, there is always the dreaded possibility that a Khagan, a khan of khans, may rise amongst them to lead them on a great warpath. And when that day comes, we can only pray to the spirits that govern above all that our walls shall be strong enough to hold back the swarm.

Personally I'm a fan of the first one, since the second one may tread on their Dark Sun origins too much, while an internal outsider would offer ways to more easily use them as a part of the game's world, rather than focusing them as an outside threat.

[Solaris]

The very same, Yanagi. The 'desert-dwelling group o' warbugs' thing is something the thri-kreen inherited from the green Martians (http://barsoom.wikia.com/wiki/Green_Martians), along with their four arms and something of an alien mindset.

I'm working a few suggestions from here into the race (calling them "Mantaras", after one of the terms for a particular group of multi-armed Hindu goddesses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrikas) combined with "Mantis"). Ravian hit the nail on the head about them working best as alien, but not too alien in a setting where "Kill it with fire" is a reasonable response to anything barbarian foreign and where there really are all kinds of people-eating spirits. I actually didn't want to make them be spirits or hengeyokai, actually, because doing that takes away from their being alien. Even if they're rare and mystical, hengeyokai fit as well in the setting as lung dragons and ninjas without a whiff of the alien about them. Worse, hengeyokai tend to be more unique creatures than an actual race.

One of the ideas I think I like the most is the Silk Road idea, which interacts kind of interestingly with the idea of having them be roving bands of semi-savage desert-dwellers. The mantaras excel at surviving in a desert that kills most people who don't know what they're doing (it's a haunt of undead and/or giant bugs as well as being a desert, depending on which part you're in), and thus the success of that leg of the setting's equivalent to the Silk Road depends on their goodwill if not their cooperation. They also form the entry for crystal weapons into the setting, which are useful against incorporeal creatures in the Rokugan campaign setting but thus far really haven't had a way to fit into mine just yet; after all, the mantaras live in an undead-heavy area and inherited the iconic gythka and chatkcha from their original thri-kreen versions. They're not interested in the same things city-dwellers are, though, and really don't concern themselves with them unless the city-dwellers start encroaching on their hunting-grounds (at least, not since the nearest city-dwellers built that really big wall that they keep manned with catapults and archers), which makes them interesting trading partners.
I might also be splitting the mantaras up into 'savage' and 'less savage' subraces/cultures, with the former being big, mean, and dumb and the latter being smaller, smarter, and if not more sociable then at least more tolerant. If I do that, then there's definitely room in the Empire for the 'less savages' to establish isolated colonies of bugman hunter-monks in out of the way places.

Thanks for the help, all. I think I've got some ideas to fiddle them into the setting, and to work on some neighboring cultures as well.

[nick_crenshaw]

You could just have be from a hidden valley in your Mongolia area.

[sktarq]

Actually if you dig a bit deeper into the Darksun buildout of the green Martians you might have more luck with their more northern cousins. Some of them live in more humid climes and have a social structure that may be more amenable to your crossover. Particularly if you stuck them as the prime inhabitants of something like Papua New Guinea or Luzon.

As for the elf thing replace it with tennin or class of spirit touched beings.
One idea that could be interesting is that if their homeland is particularly infested with spiritual oni etc they have some natural tendency toward hunting such things. This could well lead to a degree of tolerance from the humans-so occasional ThriKeen have found some degree of acceptance in human lands (as clutchless individuals most likely) and may well have founded fighting schools and provide knowledge to occultists in vague ways (that spur adventures) and play up their alien mindsets.

[GungHo]

Animal-people fit right in an OA setting. Insect guy isn't going to stand out that much when his best friends are Crowface, Nine-Tails, and Turtleboy.

[Dusk Raven]

Well, someone decided to revive a thread a couple weeks old, which is ancient history as far as this forum is concerned. Still, I'm disappointed I didn't notice this sooner, so here we go.

I have to say, when I was making my own Oriental Adventures setting (which I will desperately attempt to keep from rambling about), I'm surprised I didn't think to put mantis-folk in, given I put Gnolls in (reflavored as psuedo-Mongolian wolf folk). Mantises, while not uniquely oriental by any means, seem to fit rather well.

That being said, reading the Thri-Kreen entry in the Expanded Psionics Handbook, the culture described therein... really doesn't evoke a mantis feeling from me. There's also references here and there to "green martians" but that's meaningless to me. Anyway, to me, Mantises are patience incarnate, second only to spiders. They also are capable of both courage and loyalty, willing to take on foes larger than they and even capable of being kept as pets.

Of the suggestions in this thread, I like the ideas of them being Silk Road guides, alien yet often necessary to deal with, as well as occasional secluded monasteries.

Couple suggestions, however: I really like beings that are psychologically alien by our standards (I'm a fan of Lovecraft, Celtic lore, and xenofiction in general), but I don't believe anything that's actually sane is completely incomprehensible by our standards. I'd probably portray the Thri-Kreens "alien-ness" as being like the way westerners viewed "inscrutable" orientals a century ago. They're different, to be sure, but not completely unknowable. You might not think like them, but you can come to understand how they think. It's just that it takes time and personal experience to get to that point, and most people don't make the effort (especially when foreigners are involved), preferring to write them off as completely alien.

Second suggestion is mechanical. Racial hit dice and level adjustment are massive hinderances in my eyes, so maybe alter a couple of the Thri-Kreen's abilities. Do they really need a once-a-day poisonous bite? Are psionics in your setting, that they'd get a power point reserve and psi-like abilities? And as for their arms, I'd make them a bit more like actual mantises, with two arms specialized for a claw attack (and maybe grappling), and only two of them actually have any fine manipulation skills. And maybe cut down their natural armor bonus by 1 or reduce the extremes of their Dex bonus and Cha penalty. Feel free to keep all those abilities (and especially consult with the player), but removing some of that could allow for taking away a hit die or LA point.