XXXzone Campaign Setting

[the_taken]

I'm going to post idea I have for the alien races or alternate campaign settings here.

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Zzhetanz, as described by Mizrin.

"I will insist you put those extra 'Z's in the written form. You sound more respectful when you pronounce all the 'Z's.

"So, my race," he says with a bit of trepidation. "Perhaps I should start with what creature we evolved from. I believe your planet has a similar category of creatures called spiders, though there are many differences. For one our progenitors were much bigger, closer in size to your gorillas. Our ancestral race also had an endoskeleton, not an exoskeleton, a common element you'll find across the space faring races." He then points to his face. "As you can see I have lips and a tongue, features this creature had in addition to venomous fangs, which I lack."

"This creature was a solitary predator with a penchant for making tools and elaborate traps. I'm not a historian so I don't know the specifics, but eventually these creatures started gathering in colonies and developed husbandry and eventually evolved enough intelligence to grasp the concepts of genetic engineering and baking.

"My race, as you can see with, is not large like those gorillas you have. I am actually the smallest of my kind, so do not take my lack of stature as the norm. I also only have four limbs instead of eight, an intentional design feature. Eight limbs is entirely too much for most people, so my species made some changes." He points to his backpack. "We still have the brain capacity to use all these limbs, which is where this thing, my Pack, comes in. We Zzhetanz are a genetically engineered cyber-organic species, and interfacing with this machine requires a significant amount of neural processing power. It has also replaced many bodily functions of life sustaining organs that we no longer have, as well as being a primary interface for a lot of our technology."

"A good example would be our version of what you call the Internet. My race has little use for terminals, hand held or otherwise, as my Pack would allow me link to our radio-telepathy network. This isn't the same as the Psionic-Telepathy network those glowing bastards have, it's much better."

"Our society is an Military Empire, ever expanding and seeking new worlds to colonize. We were very aggressive conquerors for a time, until the Armadas of the Star Lords defeated us repeatedly. Now we have much more rules on what type of worlds we are allowed to colonize or conquer, one of which is that when we encounter a planet with a biosphere we must leave it be for a set amount of time to see if intelligent life could evolve from it. Then there are numerous rules for if there is intelligent life on the planet whether we may invade it, and permission from the Star Lords.

"I don't want to talk about the Star Lords right now.

"Oh, I don't know all the rules, but I know this planet isn't on the list for a very big reason. It's in a something called a Madness Zone, an area of the universe that not even semi-intelligent life can enter or develop without adequate protection or some sort of outer-dimensional psychic entity possessing it and rendering it mad. I've upgraded my Pack to protect me, but it was very costly. I didn't expect to encounter an intelligent species in this zone.

"In anycase, we were talking my Race, not your adorable little planet.

"Our society is split between two castes, the Technicians and the Warriors. There's a subtle difference in genetic expression that becomes apparent during our incubation period and this determines what sort of caste we will be in during our entire lives. This also determines what sort of Pack we receive after hatching. I am a warrior caste Zzhetan, and have a Warrior's Pack. It is a lighter more streamlined machine, but just as modular and configurable. The real difference between my Warrior Pack and a Technician's Pack are that my Pack has software for interfacing with weapons and combat vehicles, while a Technician's Pack has software geared towards logistics and resource management. In any case, both our Pack allow us to access the Network as well as interface with drones, whether they are combat drones or worker drones. Those are autonomous robots we employ to do menial tasks such as maintenance, repair, sanitation, scouting or fighting.

"Our leadership is composed of the Imperial Council, a group of thirteen venerable Zzhetans chosen for... um... huh, I'm not sure how they are chosen, I just know that there are always thirteen of them, and the retirees often take up teaching positions in the academies. Anyway, the council is the final authority on everything in the empire, and only step in to make decisions when the protocols they or their predecessors have designed are not working. They also get to decide whether a planet can be put on the list for invasion or colonization to run by the Star Lords."

"Beneath them are the Commanders and the Grand Controllers. I believe you call your warrior caste commanders Generals. That would be the best analogy I could make for all the Commanders, they are Zzhetanz who are given command of a large number of lower ranked Zzhetanz from different castes for large projects. The invasion of a world with a race nearing the space faring
Technological level would be given to a Commander from the Warrior Caste. While the terraforming of a barren world or colonization of living world without intelligent life would be given to Technician caste Commander.

"The Technician caste also has Overseers, who are ranked below Commanders. They are usually tasked with long term projects such as asteroid mining, or planet shrinking. No we don't have some magical way to shrink planets, it's just a term we use instead of mining, since the planet actually appears to shrink as the project continues, and we only shrink Liquid or Gas planets, like those you've named Jupiter and Neptune.

"Now, Controllers are not Zzhetanz, they are Cyber-Organic Supercomputers. They do a lot of the administrative assistance for all of our race. They keep records of our activities and findings and remind us about protocols we have to follow as well as gather complaints we have about protocols. They also run simulations of our society and make suggestions to the Imperial Council for changes.

"No, the Controllers are not secretly controlling our entire society by manipulating the Council, that is just stupid. There has only ever been one Controller gone bad, and it was early on. It was put in charge of a reproduction center, and instead of doing its job, it instead genetically lobotomized all the Zzhetans there and made the Packs those hatchling received extensions of itself. All the other Controllers actually made numerous suggestions to prevent that disaster from happening again, and implementing those changes has prevented it!

"Anyway, there are number of ranks throughout the castes that Zzhetanz can aspire to reach. Each with more responsibilities and rewards than the previous. One thing I would note is the lowest rank of a Technician Zzhetan is that of what you call Superintendent, since they can have drones do all the menial labour a janitor would do.

"Yes, some of our Warrior caste Zzhetanz do enter the law enforcement field of work. They usually do this when the no longer wish to be part of the Military but the Academies have no need for more teachers. No, Warriors never become Technicians nor vice-versa. Despite being the same species, our brains are too different to make the shift from violent destruction based problem solving to constructive engineering.

"It is unlikely that that my race will mark down your world for invasion anytime soon. What is more likely to happen is this planet be declared a World of Strife, and assigned a Controller to manage visiting warriors. These planets are combat zones that the Warrior caste of my race uses as an alternative method of gaining promotions. A World of Strife is a place where low ranking warriors that are not currently working are allowed to go to and engage in random violence with the locals. If they survive and complete an object given to them by the Controller, then their performance is reviewed by a board of officers and hopefully impress them enough to earn a promotion to the next rank.

"Having a higher rank means having more resources and better equipment available to you, and having better stuff means being more effective in your missions. Most often warriors get promoted when there is a vacant position of the hierarchy that needs to be filled and there isn't a Warrior of sufficient rank without work to do, which can lead to promotion stagnation, which is why this system was developed. The Imperial Council also doesn't have to inform the Star Lords about planets we declare as a World of Strife since we don't conquer, destroy or colonize the star system, we only technically visit.

"Why am I here? Despite my record breaking grades upon graduating from my academy I was not promoted to the first working rank of the warrior caste. I am three-quarters the height of the norm for my race, you see. For a long time I existed in a sort of bureaucratic limbo where I was getting a student's stipend, had no obligations, but also no privileges so I was just accumulating money for sitting around using the simulators younglings use. I decided to enter retirement and discovered an interesting legal loophole. While I still get my previous rank's stipend, a student's, I am also be able to purchase all the equipment I was allowed to use of that rank. Academy students are allowed to use any equipment their teacher purchases and assigns them to learn to use. And as a retiree I am also a qualified teacher allowed to purchase equipment I was allowed to use in my previous rank, which could be anything any teacher could have allowed. I am now the only Zzhetan legally allowed to purchase anything my race can produce. Not even those on the Imperial Council can actually purchase some things, only commission their creation and order their use.

"Not that I can afford any of it. Even after all the time I took being unable to spend money I still barely had enough to buy and fuel my starship."

[the_taken]

There are two standard Zzhetan invasion procedures when attacking inhabited planets.

The first involves having the Armada repeatedly and strategically bombarding hard targets from orbit with precision to disable a society's military, government and law enforcement before dropping pods full of combat drones to capture whatever inhabitants remain for enslavement. Most Zzhetanz never see combat in person, only through remote viewing through drones. Only when a planet's inhabitants manage to resist capture for extended periods do Zzhetanz soldiers enter active combat, and even then are the accompanied by a small cadre of drones.

The second invasion method is what the Zzhetan's call Bio-cleansing, and the Empire requires permission from the Star Lords to perform. In this case, the Zzhetan armada will bombard a planet's population centers with kinetic mass weapons in addition to precision strikes. Following that, the armada will unleash hordes of combat drones specifically programmed to hunt down all life forms above a certain size or of a certain shape.

Thankfully, the Humans of Earth don't have to worry about a Zzhetan Invasion. What Humanity may face is having Earth declared a World of Strife by the Empire. This will mean that Zzhetan soldiers will visit the planet with the intent to cause chaos and engage local military forces in combat. In these instances, a Zzhetan soldier will drop down to the surface in a pod and attempt to achieve an objective as a mock-up for what they would perform during a real invasion. Worse, the better our troops perform, the higher the danger rank our planet will receive, encouraging more experienced and better equipted Zzhetans to show up.

Zzhetans are smaller in stature than humans, standing an average of 125 centimeters, and physically comparable in scale. What makes their soldiers dangerous is their use of superior technology and seamless cybernetic enhancements.

The first piece of hardware you will notice is a form of powered armoured exosuit, which they can easily control through a neural-uplink provided by their backpack like implant. These come in models that are simply plated environment suits to fully functional body replacers with extra limbs, and what you encounter will depend entirely on that Zzhetan's preference.

The second important piece of technology Zzhetanz employ is robotic drones. Every Zzhetan has at least a single drone that they control using a combination of direct neural link, again through their Pack, and the drones' simulated intelligence. Combat drones come in many forms, from small weapons platforms, to e-war or c-war units, to large multi-purpose battle units. Drone AIs are programed to put their owner's survival before mission objectives. All drones have articulated limbs that allow them to move over many terrain types, and most also have some form of hover technology.

While Zzhetan weapons technology is far above our own understanding as of now, they use primarily kinetic weapons comparable in effectiveness to our own ballistic weapons. The difference is in their use of computer assisted targeting and mechanically assisted recoil compensation.

Zzhetan Combat Doctrine states that soldiers and drones should abstain from melee combat, however powered exosuit fists are easily capable of breaking through concrete with only a small amount of time and minimal effort from their wearer. Additionally, many veterans will equip their exosuits or drones with extra limbs that include built in melee weapons.