Vaurca: The Final Solution

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello!

Silvertalisman was the player that previously handled the Vaurca species' as their overseer. Due to IRL obligations getting super demanding for quite a long period of time they've resigned, and that means that the Vaurca species' defaults back to me in terms of responsibility.

I've going to put aside a day off and actually read the Vaurca wiki page take a deeper look into the Vaurca wiki page. I am considering a complete top-down reconstruction and overhaul, similar to my work on the skrell and the unathi.

This will consist of finding out where exactly in the narrative the Vaurca fit and what niche they fill, blasting what is here and reforging it into something that all works to reinforce this narrative, and streamline a lot of the information.

Are you satisfied with the role that Vaurca fill now? Does their lore make sense? What sort of changes would you want to see in them, if any? How do you see Vaurca fitting into the narrative and the game? What sort of role do you want to play with the Vaurca? What problems do you see associated with Vaurca now?

[CakeIsOssim]

Obligatory usage of Godwin's law.

Pls, make the queens matter more to the Vaurca other than babymakers. If they're ant people, then why do they have a cabinet that outranks the queen? That makes no sense.

[LordFowl]

I can't really say what I'd like to see with the Vaurca lore, because its mostly verbose meanderings on largely inconsequential details, burdened by several things that while interesting after a fashion have little to no bearing on actual roleplay and are a bit cryptic. Ultimately, I am largely dissatisfied with how players play the Vaurca, and I think this is because Vaurca lore fails to establish a dominant mood.

There are however three specific things I'd like to see changed concerning Vaurca lore, however, and in no particular order:

1): Removal of Vaurca religions and superstitious concepts. The whole "Black Queen" concept strikes me as absurd, and not every race should have a formal or even informal religion.

2): Increased importance of Vaurca queens. Vaurca queens in the current lore are pretty much like modern Earth royalty; just figureheads. They should be the de facto, ultimate leader of each hive.

3): Increased hive loyalty. Loyalty to one's hive is a given to some Vaurca, but not to all. Vaurca - bound and unbound alike - should be absolutely loyal to their hive without fault. In rare cases that an Unbound somehow breaks the indoctrination and disbands from their Hive, they should be looked down upon. That is abnormal.

[Guest]

I say destroy them, as I am biased and I personally have a stake in development with my own race concept which has sprites in. Yes, the Peleng idea. It has sprites now. Meaning we could get to work code-wise on that.

check it check it check it: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5697

 

 

Okay, but seriously. I'm against keeping Vaurca because the design of Vaurca is seemingly too convoluted and not interesting enough to follow. Why?

 

• Structure of the existing Vaurca hives is expansive and massive as hell. They have an entire scrap of space to themselves. Almost larger than that of human space.
• There are multiple hives, again, that fight, bicker, war and squabble amongst each other in their own vast area of space. When it comes down to it, big societies that have a lot of infighting would end up suffering major consequences in the long run. From a practical standpoint, the society itself is doomed to fall apart and go extinct. Buh-bye, bugs.
  
• Vaurca are so mindless and utterly weird if we're going by lore standards. They're effective cannon fodder, workers or slaves but they are otherwise not collectively sentient enough for the higher-end spectrum of what they can offer for NanoTrasen.
  
• Jackboot has his hands full with handling Tajarans and the Unathi, as well as other extraneous projects we don't know about yet. Adding yet another race into his hands is way too much.
  
• Very few Vaurca whitelistees who hold those whitelists follow the established lore to a V. The few that I've seen do it so well were rather entertaining, interesting and had a level of depth that was admirable. And then suddenly the quality of it dropped and every single Vaurca became a massive powergaming turbonerd with a blood-craving hunger for gibbing simple mobs for food, even though their diet does not consist of meat.
  
• Have I mentioned that the majority existing Vaurca, if and when they play, simply don't engage people in the specifics of their hive unless they're a gLORIOUS ZO'RA VORCHA WARRIOR, with some lines torn straight out of some North Korean documentary? Really, it's kinda sad.

 

This is why I proposed my idea. I have plans to set in motion from a lore stand-point to create an interesting introduction into our universe without the disaster that the Vaurca went through in their development phases with constant peddle alternations, staff structure schisms and so on. We've learned from the mistakes we made awhile ago and I have a grasp of how we can do better.

I remember mentioning that the Vaurca were a dead meme race. They really should've stayed dead because they were not even close to finished when the project got picked up. Covert should've been around to see it through and put the final touches to it himself, but he couldn't.

I have the sprites for Pelengs, though it's fairly barebones, we can come up with specialized snowflake Peleng jumpsuits as well as the code for offsetting held items in the lower set of hands. It's a worthy project. Just vote "kill memebugs" and we can do what we can.

[Nikov]

1. Get rid of virtual reality. Nothing about this species lends itself to developing an elaborate technical industry required for even considering Pong, let alone VR. If they have no art, why develop a virtual world? If they have a virtual world, why leave their homeworld's caves, ever?

2. Simplify castes. There are lot of castes, types, and other fluff that really doesn't add anything. Model them directly after ants; Type A workers, Type B soldiers, Type C males and queens. Get rid of the mixed subtypes, which are confusing as hell.

3. All A's and B's are undeveloped sexually. A's are genetic females, B's are genetic males. B's may be identified as male as an honorific similar to knighthood. "It" is the common pronoun. They are not lobotomized; they are simply stupidly obedient and obediently stupid. B's have somewhat better autonomy thanks to their dormant male gene, and particularly strong or old examples begin to develop enough self-awareness to strive for certain "honors".

4. All free-willed, free-thinking Vaurca need to be Type C: sexual development begets intellectual development. Males; who compete as nobles, administrators and generals. Females; who are queens or princesses and revered as goddesses. A male might arrive as a diplomat on the station, any male in Nanotrasen employ as a subordinate is almost certain disgraced at home. Queens never leave their palaces, save young queens when carried in a grand "bridal procession" to a new palace. Religion? They worship their queen. Queens maintain a cult of a Grand Mother, which presents a handful of Commandments that straight-jacket males into the social order. The cult, that is the Queen and her relatives, is also responsible for deciding when to produce more C eggs, in a ritual nobody has witnessed. C's develop when an egg is exposed to a secretion from a female's naughtiest gland-sac, and females maintain this secret by sacrificing an esteemed personal attendant (a) or honored warrior (b) to be the larvae's "egg yolk". B eggs have slightly darker coloration, although mistakes have been made. It is believed to have an outcome on personality, but the specifics are a Cult secret.

Females have completely ritualized sex. Females have no enjoyment in the act; their carapace is physically ruptured near their ovaries in an area with mercifully few pain receptors. Males practically have a seizure and swim in a pheromone high from exposure to the serous fluid surrounding the ovaries. The precise mechanics, like the egg ritual, are strictly taboo. Some Earth insects evolved a similar sexual arms race between male and female; Vaurca evolved intelligence as well. A's and B's have no concept of libido; the closest fulfillment possible is to be selected as a Sacrifice. C males have no sex drive beyond acquiring a Queen, and fulfillment is impossible without one. There is a dark penchant among older B's and male C's to rip enemy A's apart in a frenzy, however. it is considered a heinous war crime by most hives.

That males are rare and females rarer creates a society in which males strive to create a gilded cage that a female is willing to live in. Since females deign to live in such cages, they control all the ultimate power. This provides a creative drive for males. Males select their strongest sons, invest resources in preparing them a hive, and have lesser sons manage the hive's daily operations. Lesser sons are content to serve their fathers creating wealth and hoping to position themselves into a hive. The taboos, religion and social norms are themselves carefully constructed control mechanics to keep the females in-power. The Cult is aware of several historical occasions in which a male learned the various secrets, and it is darkly rumored to be the pre-historic and "barbaric" state of affairs. Cult rituals are considered life-or-death, accordingly.

A recent strategy is to send unwanted type A's and B's into Nanotrasen's employ under a low-ranking son...

Goddammit I wanna re-write them. Its bad. Its really, really bad. So many basics of scifi realpolitik are ignored in their first contact. Hello strange species. We'd love to give you bluespace and the keys to invade every star in the galaxy. What's that? You're bloody-stupid overbreeding insectoid communists? I'm sure you'll fit right in!

Lore needs to hold them as literal slaves being sent over and managed by third-rate sons to earn glass beads and hatchets from Nanotrasen to impress a first-rate son's future queen. This explains why Nanotrasen hires them; they are the natives in Heart of Darkness. A's and B's need to be DNC, with players allowed to respawn as an A or B with a new name. A and B names need to be a hive name, caste tag and a serial number. Every drone needs to be a complete throwaway with just a trace more hive-memory about how to do their job.

We need to make these aliens alien. I posted way more than my imagined five-point plan to fix them.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I've spoken with Skull. Since half the community that voted here wants to keep Vaurca I commited most of today (a day off!!) to embarking on a complete top to bottom reconstruction of the entire Vaurca lore. To put it in my own informal terms, I've assblasted the Vaurca and rebuilt them. We are going to keep them for the rest of this month and all of May then come back and decide if we still want to keep or remove them after these changes. IF we're still so divided about them then we will probably work on a replacement.

I'm going to make another thread right now going over everything that was changed and feedback is heavily encouraged seriously don't hold back im not going to be offended GIVE ME CRITICISM

https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Overview

[Nanako]

I'm one of the biggest fans of the vaurca, and i want to keep them.

Lorewise, the idea of having bround crewmembers around who follow orders from everyone is really fun,. I always interact with them and give them something to do when i see the,.

The whole virtual reality thing is really impressive and gives them an unfathomable depth as a species, it's provided a few talking points with unbound vaurca. A better undersdtanding of it can be gained from CMF's work http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=5243

Mechanically, i like that they don't naturally heal. It means they have to come to medical more often for every tiny thing, and that means I, as a doctor, have consistent patients to build relationships with

I'm definitely against removing them, and somewhat against modifying them to any significant degree. Ill look into the proposed changes and see what i think, though this does feel rather sudden