Monday, February 24, 2014

Born for War


The thrax are famed soldiers of the Alliance sphere in the Strange Stars. They are a clone race, created long ago by an unknown culture who put them to use in a plan to conquer the galaxy--slowly. Asteroids were turned into habitats and launched toward certain worlds, manned by robots and carrying an army of clone embryos. The sublight voyages afforded more than enough time to grow and train the embryos into warriors before planetfall. 

It's possible the creators of the thrax were dead before any of their attacks met their targets. In any case, the ai administrators and bot trainers were unable to impart anything to the thrax other than their mission parameters. Thrax did subjugate some worlds, but others resisted their assault. Their appearance probably helped to disrupt the Radiant Polity and hasten its end.

Contact with other cultures gave the thrax goals of there own. They destroyed the machines that had nursed and trained them and took control of their own destiny. Still, from the moment of their decanting as infants, thrax are evaluated for and trained in capacity for war.

Appearance and Biology: Thrax are tall, powerfully built humanoids, with whitish gray skintones. They have somewhat pronounced and heavy brow, and nasal slits rather than an external nose. Neither sex has much body hair, but females do have head hair. 

Psychology: Thrax are taciturn, serious, and greatly concerned with honor and discipline as defined by their warrior's code. Some allow themselves displays of emotion in the heat of battle, but others view this as excessive display. Their possessions are few and their quarters tend to be spartan. Rarely do they use intoxicants, and very few would do so at any time they thought combat might be imminent.

Thrax express their individuality through their armor, which they are allowed to individualize within parameters set by their unit.

Stats: Stars Without Number: Thrax have a minimum Strength of 12. No thrax has psychic abilities.

9 comments:

Jack Guignol said...

Reminds me a bit of Talislanta's Thrall race, but with customized armor instead of tattoos. Neat.

Trey said...

The thrall were certainly one of the inspirations, along with the Kronin in GURPS Aliens, the Acroyear in Micronauts, and maybe a little bit of the clone troopers in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Anonymous said...

Do the thrax as a whole consider themselves one polity? Or is each planet independent?

Trey said...

@seaofstarsrpg - They see themselves as one culture, but the different habitats operate independently. Part of the body of commentary on the warrior's code governs etiquette for thrax units encountering each other and when they are honorably able to be at cross purposes.

Brutorz Bill said...

Nice one! Always loved the Acroyears.
So are you defaulting back to SWN?

Trey said...

@Bill - Well, I still think I'm going to give FATE a try in actually play (if only to see how it shakes out), I'll probably still do a fair number of posts in SWN, as I think that has got more appeal to the majority of my readership.

iemattias said...

Ah yes... the decanting of the embryo is essential to developing and appreciating its full bouquet...

Brutorz Bill said...

@Trey- Gotcha, did you decide D6 wasn't what you were looking for?

Trey said...

@Bill - Yeah, it was good but the amount of new stuff I would need to make up seems like it will be easier with the more freeform FATE.