Rogue Templars

[pendell]

You guys are thinking about an expansion , right? Well, how about fighting the nastiest, toughest force in the quadrant?  

I understand that most templars , with thousands of lifetimes of Zindu memory, are loyal to Shalun and his teachings.  But they are human beings, not pristine beings immune to temptation.   And even if they are loyal, Narvidians are insidious. Perhaps they and their cultists can manipulate more communications than just the FTL variant. 

How about this for a campaign idea:  The cultists or Narvidians, angry with our squad, fabricate evidence framing us of being a Xeno cult. We are forced to flee aboard a spear cutter with Sergeant Kathos and take refuge among a band of smugglers. Over the next several missions, we fight to clear our names while our every step is dogged by bounty hunters, faction military, and the templars themselves. 

Perhaps there is a traitor Templar who has framed the team and  the final battle will be a timed assault on his stronghold, in which we must apprehend the real traitor and bring him to justice before his evil plans can reach their culmination.  


Whaddaya think? 

Respectfully, 

Brian P. 

[Cory Trese]

Nope!

There will never be "Chaos Templars" in the universe.

Never.

[pendell]

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! 

Dang it. 

Okay , then. It's your universe, after all. I expect I'll enjoy it anyway!

[Cory Trese]

It isn't an uncommon request, especially from people who believe that Star Traders is 40K.

There just isn't any place in the lore for it. The last thing we want to do is be more like Games Workshop's nonsense.

We still have people who think Templars are Space Marines when they couldn't be farther from it.

[pendell]

As you wish. When *I* play I think of them as the powersuit troops from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". The book, that is, not the terrible movie.

Heinlein's troops also fought an arachnid enemy. They were a bit more mobile than Leviathans because they were equipped with jump jets, allowing them to "flit" very quickly over the battlefield. They were also armed with Davy Crockett-style nuclear rocket launchers in the 1KT range for hard targets, as well as flamethrowers and grenade launchers for close work. Imagine a Hydra able to cover the entire battlefield in a bound, and who moreover carries a nuclear rocket launcher. On second thought, don't. It'd break the game most horribly .

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Cory Trese]

I think this concept is still really good ...

The cultists or Narvidians, angry with our squad, fabricate evidence framing us for violating Shalun law. We are forced to flee aboard a spear cutter with Sergeant Kathos and take refuge among a band of Star Traders.

Over the next several missions, we fight to clear our names while our every step is dogged by bounty hunters, faction military, and the Factions themselves.

...

This fits in the Lore. The Templars are the enforces of much of Shalun Law, but the Laws also include elements related to Faction business which the Templars are explicitly forbidden from getting involved with. For example, perhaps the Cult makes it look like the Templars interfered with a Duel of Assassins or a Trade Ban.

While Fleet Command tries to calm the situation down, the rogue elements of the Factions dispatch bounty hunters or FDF to try to destroy the Templars, using a poor reading of Shalun to justify things.

That are your thoughts on that?

PS: I love that new Army guide you posted! It is "my" universe but I feel like I'm only babysitting it on behalf of the players. Of course, I need to love it so I can stay engaged and work on it 100 hours a week, but it has grown up on player input and I don't think that will ever stop.

[Brutus Aurelius]

I like the idea! People Cherry pick from laws and holy texts to justify things all the time, why would this not still happen in the far future, especially one as fractured as the Quadrants.

[xdesperado]

Rather curious actually about what we'll see in ST2 since it will be occurring in a time when far flung survivors of the exodus start reconnecting.

While Templar's are the embodiment of Shalun law it's hard to imagine that any human group sepperated for centuries could reunite and all parties still be holding the exact same interpretation of laws/religion/whatever.

Just looking how much drift and conflict arise here on earth between people who claim the same religion and can trace their precedence for interpretation back for a 1000+ years.

Wouldn't even have to be the conscious actions of any one individual or group, think of the game telephone many of us played as kids where you whispered a message to the kid next to you and it got passed around a circle. Rarely even if no one was trying to mess up would the message return word for word.

[pendell]

Jan 28, 2016 18:18:13 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

I think this concept is still really good ...

The cultists or Narvidians, angry with our squad, fabricate evidence framing us for violating Shalun law. We are forced to flee aboard a spear cutter with Sergeant Kathos and take refuge among a band of Star Traders.

Over the next several missions, we fight to clear our names while our every step is dogged by bounty hunters, faction military, and the Factions themselves.

...

This fits in the Lore. The Templars are the enforces of much of Shalun Law, but the Laws also include elements related to Faction business which the Templars are explicitly forbidden from getting involved with. For example, perhaps the Cult makes it look like the Templars interfered with a Duel of Assassins or a Trade Ban.

While Fleet Command tries to calm the situation down, the rogue elements of the Factions dispatch bounty hunters or FDF to try to destroy the Templars, using a poor reading of Shalun to justify things.

That are your thoughts on that?

 


I think I agree with you that this is a cool concept; the idea being to not only retell the "innocent who fights to clear his name and find the real culprit"  , which we've seen in The Fugitive, but it also gives us a chance to explore the seamy side of the Star Traders Universe; spice halls, star trader ships, explorer hideouts.  In ST, we can hire Templars as officers aboard ship. Well, now we can see how one such group of templars -- an entire squad, in fact -- found themselves aboard such a ship, traveling the galaxy seeking for the evidence to clear their name, hunted every step at the way by Faction and Xeno alike.  Up until now, Captain Astrid (say) has fought her entire life to defend normal humans against Xenos. But now she has faces and names. Experiences not from her Xindu memory, but her own
life and her own experience. Ordinary men and women. Some good, some evil, some of them hard-working , others vile slave traders, but each of them part of the great fellowship of Star Traders -- 


Names and faces which, by the way, could re-appear in subsequent campaigns. Can you say "character development"?  

It also helps us to follow the life of an independent captain. I don't mind if they have the Templar Order still in their court, provided the rest of the factions hate them and desire their destruction. Remember the Independent achievement from ST; every hand is against you, every port closed, so you have to hang out at places like Roavin or Olgavvan Hold or Aro Prime to refuel, re-equip, and repair.  And even there, you have to watch your step, because bounty hunters will follow you out of the spice hall and wait for you in orbit; That 132,000 credit bounty driving them to madness. 


There's also another element of the motivation for hunting our Templars, one of the seven deadly sins: Envy. just as humans can be tempted by the lure of forbidden fruit, so they can be consumed with hatred for those who have what they do not. There are those among normal humans who look on the Templars not with gratitude,  but with resentment of their great power, their seeming prescience, and their laws.  So some among the humans will leap on any pretext to legally
kill a Templar.   Like the Jedi order in Star Wars,

PS: I love that new Army guide you posted! It is "my" universe but I feel like I'm only babysitting it on behalf of the players. Of course, I need to love it so I can stay engaged and work on it 100 hours a week, but it has grown up on player input and I don't think that will ever stop.

You're welcome! You guys have created a cool and engaging universe, and I love it too . I loved to catalog information and present it for others in a useable, readable form. The equipment guide was also for my own benefit as I navigate the tech tree, and the army guide was  to give some idea of the enemies we face in game. I'm glad you liked it!  

While Templar's are the embodiment of Shalun law it's hard to imagine that any human group sepperated for centuries could reunite and all parties still be holding the exact same interpretation of laws/religion/whatever.



Just looking how much drift and conflict arise here on earth between people who claim the same religion and can trace their precedence for interpretation back for a 1000+ years.

Part of the reason for drift is generational change; this isn't as much of an issue for Templars because their memory really does stretch that far back; it's not unreasonable that Templars could hold the same beliefs now as they did when Shalun first laid down the law. 


Of course, that in itself could be a point of contention with the factions, because THEY don't have Xindu memory and THEY will most definitely drift.  I can well imagine a common complaint being that the Templar Order is "one thousand years of tradition unhindered by progress".   Imagine how a person with an eleventh century outlook would fit into the modern world. It's  not that they're evil,it's that people change, and if the Templars don't they will find themselves increasingly out of step with the factions and find it harder to either relate to or sympathize with them; that's part of what this proposed storyline is intended to act as a counterweight to.



Respectfully, 


Brian P. 

[Cory Trese]

We will explore a lot of those themes in ST2 as the Faction's have drifted both in time and space.