Can Vaylen recognize each other?

I would also note that I don’t think the Vaylen hull all humans on the worlds they control. Possibly not even the majority.

Thor’s got it. The majority of conquered worlds deep inside Vaylen space are garden worlds, where only the governing powers are Vaylen, and the humans are left to develop as naturally as possible. There is an unobtrusive harvesting, using different mechanisms depending on taste (lottery, “tax”, age, whatever), to cull off hosts for the ruling clan’s hungry Naiven. But the Vaylen are good caretakers for the most part. A human world is the goose that lays the golden egg… it doesn’t pay to get greedy. How many unhappy humans do you have to kill when a world rises in revolution? What a tragic waste. Such a clan proves it is unfit to hold something so precious. Perhaps they should be deprived of it…

-Chris

Though our game only lists only a few clans, I know the storrie shave hundreds, thousands. I would assume that once a Clan takes a Wrodl it is theirs. and they greedly defend it.

Is the Terror unified enough to not fight over rights to newly conqured/being conqured worlds (I would expect some political manuvering after the dust is setled for the hosts etc) but they would not sabatoge an Infection would they?

I can see a conflict scene where a spacer goes to get help from the system next door, but the planet has alreayd fallen and be remoralized to accept the Vaylen as a Good thing, so they would be happy with their new “life” circumstances. To one day be Chosen, oh Joy! Come and Join us…

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the Vaylen farm worlds. Most sprung from the notion of running a conspiracy/medical mystery type game on a sub-index void world that effectively has a space blockade due to the isolation. Once the Vaylen stumble on it they approach cautiously. Why? Because one thing that didn’t fade as fast was medical tech, specifically a nasty anti-parasite treatment/vaccine that the medics are aware of but unsure of the purpose exactly.

Then I realized how much more delicious it would be if that was a farm world instead of a playing world. It would be a “vacation” to paranoia for high ranking Vaylen, and a wonderful training ground for hosts for those serving in a finger. After all, who better to hull for infiltration than an individual whose spent their whole life hunting down odd clues and tracking the lines of power?

From there it occurred to me that there are probably millions of variations, ranging in “usefulness”, in order to create a rich tapestry of human life for the worm to try and crawl into. I imagine a number of them are regretful that the Iron Empires must be entirely dominated. After all, how wonderful to experience total terror and defeat, and then fully awaken and realize that it has become absolute triumph.

The vaylen are organized into a few overarching clan lineages as outlined in the book, but each of those is composed of countless smaller off-shoots, some wealthy, some struggling, some falling into the great unwashed masses. There are two basic types of these (sub) clans… those that are established, and those that are hungry to become established. It’s the latter that fuel the invasions into human space. Theoretically, there will come a day when there are no independent human worlds left. How Vaylen culture will cope, nobody knows. But that’s a long way off, and for now, there are more human worlds than even the humans know of (the Void is composed of millions of human worlds that have fallen out of contact with the Iron Empires).

The Vaylen are a more unified power than the human empires, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t very polite, very serious jockeying for position. That said, unlike the humans, the Vaylen will only very rarely turn on their own openly. There are hard-wired reactions to treachery. If a clan steps too far out of line, unless it is very lucky, it will be stripped of its holdings by common action, and its line exterminated. Outright warfare between Vaylen is almost unheard of. Assassination and intrigue (the subtler forms of warfare) are more commmon.

And Tim, you’re right, there are any number of possiblities for the Vaylen farm worlds in the interior. In the fairly recent past there was a huge human crusade into Vaylen space (of course it fell apart almost before it had begun), but I wonder what sorts of horrors they discovered the farther into Vaylen space they plunged?

-Chris

The Clonus Horror/The Island, Vaylen style!

Nice! 8)

Some musings about Vaylen infection long term tactics…
Well, if I were an infesting, brain-burrowing ArchWorm dealing with a recently conquered planet, I would probably hull almost everybody (certainly anybody with an education). This would make a lot of clansmen and allies happy.
Then I would demand of the millions of recently sentient Lucky To Be Human Vaylen parvenus to breed like rabbits as a quick, “painless” manner of payment. This would create a new generation of humans, totally oblivious of the previous culture, and ready to be molded in your typical alien garden world with the aid of some crafty social engineering…

Mm, but you don’t want them ignorant of previous culture. That would be like genetically engineering tomatoes that don’t taste like anything, then breeding for taste. Why not just start with the already rich texture of the previous culture and build from there?

Hulling most of the conquered generation makes sense, though, and is probably what happens in the case of a full hot-war conquest. You just raise the next generation by relying heavily on the host’s memories of the world’s old culture, edited where necessary to prevent rebellion.

Different clans will have different priorities and strategies for how to “raise humans”. Ultimately, the Vaylen try to be as hands-off as possible. They are painfully aware of the limits of their social engineering skills. They know they aren’t human, and can’t raise children as successfully as human parents. I imagine they wrecked a lot of worlds before they learned that nature worked best.

Zaieru’s comment about the genetically engineered tomatoes is spot on.

-Chris

I’d love to see the story of one of those wrecked worlds.