Leliel
2008-04-07, 05:23 PM
Well, since my "Alien Invasion in Eberron" thread was a relative success on the Wizards forums (and an eye-opener: I had underestimated their knowledge of quantum physics, apparently), I decided to take a version of the thread around these boards and get their input as well. So without further ado...
The campaign world is a fairly normal fantasy world, but comes under the attack of a magically and technologically advanced race of extradimensional warriors, the Nic'en, who seek to turn it into a base to use in their million-year long war against another race, the Iul. Now the PCs have to find a way to defeat them, while dealing with a newfound sense of worthlessness. After all, a single Nic'en starfighter can take down a mighty dragon, and all the knowlege every sage has ever learned pales next to the Nic'en's scientific discoveries.
Is this a good idea? How would the how would the inhabitants of the campagin react when they realize that the Nic'en (the primary race of alien invaders), and their allies are not a race of outsiders or aberrations native to their cosmology or itself, but from different Prime worlds, both in this dimension and not? How should I illustrate the inside of Nic'en ships, so as to illustrate their millions of years of advancement in both science and magic?
Few notes about them:
1) For those of you who are wondering, the Nic'en are a race of warm-blooded avians, with an evolutionary path that has rendered them very similar to humanoids, albeit ones that look more like birdmen with wings more than humans. They are extremely intelligent, and have a great appreciation for all forms of art, especially poetry and literature. They're too big too fly, but they can use their wings to both run very fast and glide for long distances. They, like their archenemies the Iul, are extradimensional, using a type of "Skimmer Drive" to travel at FLT speeds and cross the borders between universes. They are also masters of AI, using a "hive structure" to coordinate the self-aware computers of their ships using a "mother brain", a semi-organic supercomputer with the ability to think outside it's directives and learn on it's own. In fact, this is the main weakness of the Nic'en: destroying the mother brain will cause the communication between the invading fleet to shut down entirely in some places, and confusing the AIs in others. Although this is only temporary in the long term (mother brains are replaceable), and not a viable option in many cases (The Nic'en have temporary backup computers just in case this happens, in which case they will also have to be destroyed in order cause the breakdown described above), but it will allow the opposing force enough time to launch a devastating attack against the Nic'en, or at least, build up defenses.
2) The Nic'en culture is similar in structure to feudal Japan, with the warriors expected to be poets and thinkers as well as conquerers and rulers. They are nomadic, divided across an unknown number of tribes. There is only one attacking Eberron, but their relatively low numbers are more then made up for by the fact that they have a tendency to assimilate cultures they come across, peacefully or not, into the individual tribe's fleet. The entirety of Nic'en society is dedicated to defeating and/or avoiding the Iul, a similar warrior race whose contact with forced the Nic'en to abandon their formerly peaceful ways. The countless eons that this war between the two races has more then whittled away at the Nic'en's collective sanity, and as a result, they have become dogmatic and fanatical in their search for a home safe from Iul attack. Ironically, if the Nic'en were able to forgive their enemies, they could probably live in peace with the Iul, who have grown equally tired of the constant war; If it weren't for Nic'en fanatics constantly arousing that race's instinctual paranoia via attacks against them, and their leaders not condemning them, or even supporting them, the Iul would happily form a truce that their honor would not allow them to break.
3) No, I do not plan on featuring the Iul in the first campaign I go about featuring the Nic'en. The next campaign, however...
The campaign world is a fairly normal fantasy world, but comes under the attack of a magically and technologically advanced race of extradimensional warriors, the Nic'en, who seek to turn it into a base to use in their million-year long war against another race, the Iul. Now the PCs have to find a way to defeat them, while dealing with a newfound sense of worthlessness. After all, a single Nic'en starfighter can take down a mighty dragon, and all the knowlege every sage has ever learned pales next to the Nic'en's scientific discoveries.
Is this a good idea? How would the how would the inhabitants of the campagin react when they realize that the Nic'en (the primary race of alien invaders), and their allies are not a race of outsiders or aberrations native to their cosmology or itself, but from different Prime worlds, both in this dimension and not? How should I illustrate the inside of Nic'en ships, so as to illustrate their millions of years of advancement in both science and magic?
Few notes about them:
1) For those of you who are wondering, the Nic'en are a race of warm-blooded avians, with an evolutionary path that has rendered them very similar to humanoids, albeit ones that look more like birdmen with wings more than humans. They are extremely intelligent, and have a great appreciation for all forms of art, especially poetry and literature. They're too big too fly, but they can use their wings to both run very fast and glide for long distances. They, like their archenemies the Iul, are extradimensional, using a type of "Skimmer Drive" to travel at FLT speeds and cross the borders between universes. They are also masters of AI, using a "hive structure" to coordinate the self-aware computers of their ships using a "mother brain", a semi-organic supercomputer with the ability to think outside it's directives and learn on it's own. In fact, this is the main weakness of the Nic'en: destroying the mother brain will cause the communication between the invading fleet to shut down entirely in some places, and confusing the AIs in others. Although this is only temporary in the long term (mother brains are replaceable), and not a viable option in many cases (The Nic'en have temporary backup computers just in case this happens, in which case they will also have to be destroyed in order cause the breakdown described above), but it will allow the opposing force enough time to launch a devastating attack against the Nic'en, or at least, build up defenses.
2) The Nic'en culture is similar in structure to feudal Japan, with the warriors expected to be poets and thinkers as well as conquerers and rulers. They are nomadic, divided across an unknown number of tribes. There is only one attacking Eberron, but their relatively low numbers are more then made up for by the fact that they have a tendency to assimilate cultures they come across, peacefully or not, into the individual tribe's fleet. The entirety of Nic'en society is dedicated to defeating and/or avoiding the Iul, a similar warrior race whose contact with forced the Nic'en to abandon their formerly peaceful ways. The countless eons that this war between the two races has more then whittled away at the Nic'en's collective sanity, and as a result, they have become dogmatic and fanatical in their search for a home safe from Iul attack. Ironically, if the Nic'en were able to forgive their enemies, they could probably live in peace with the Iul, who have grown equally tired of the constant war; If it weren't for Nic'en fanatics constantly arousing that race's instinctual paranoia via attacks against them, and their leaders not condemning them, or even supporting them, the Iul would happily form a truce that their honor would not allow them to break.
3) No, I do not plan on featuring the Iul in the first campaign I go about featuring the Nic'en. The next campaign, however...