Being Gbaba

Wasn't there a vocal segment of the TF's xenology community that insisted that the aliens' societal state was the fault of one of their former leaders, Gbabak oGbaba?

jchilds wrote:Wasn't there a vocal segment of the TF's xenology community that insisted that the aliens' societal state was the fault of one of their former leaders, Gbabak oGbaba?

Humm...could it be that I'm hearing a bit of ethnic bias here with the "o" being tucked on to the front of that last name?

Don

phillies wrote:The notion that the Gbaba are simply brainless has become a bit hackneyed. The author may have planned that, but perhaps he will also change his mind, as he did when Honor Harrington rose from the dead, and as JK Rowling now wishes she did with respect to who married whom at the end of her very long 7-volume novel.

(Similarly, in War God, one might propose that the notion that people who have somewhat yielded to black magic (or even completely so) never change their mind and turn to the light is perhaps not utterly consistent with the notion of free will or the Jewish if not the Christian message of redemption (the two messages being very different in key respects).

Couldn't agree more.

However since we are in the SF genre it'd be cool if the Gbabba weren't doing Gbabba things because they are 'evil' but because they have an utterly alien (to us) way of thinking.

That's why I came up with some of my - admittedly far-fetched but fun (err - for me ) - ideas above.

jchilds wrote:Wasn't there a vocal segment of the TF's xenology community that insisted that the aliens' societal state was the fault of one of their former leaders, Gbabak oGbaba?

Why blame the Irish?

McGuiness wrote:

jchilds wrote:Wasn't there a vocal segment of the TF's xenology community that insisted that the aliens' societal state was the fault of one of their former leaders, Gbabak oGbaba?

Why blame the Irish?

Why not blame the Irish? They've got broad shoulers and everyone has their role in life...

Don

Another idea -

Maybe the Gbaba are just naturally slow innovators / uncreative / less intelligent on average than humans and much less likely to produce geniuses.

But they got a head start (were the first intelligent species to evolve, at least in "local" space or the Milky Way).

And they know from their exploration that other species tend to advance faster.

Thus, the only way they can compete is to crush other species early on.

The faq entry made me think my own idea of what the Gbaba are like could be right. It would be a Planet of the Apes scenario, where the Gbaba were a servitor race that ran everything but weren't those who developed the technology. They rose up against their masters and wiped them out, easily, as they were the ones crewing the military ships.

They don't innovate because they can't, and getting to the point where they're intelligent enough to develop the technology further would take millions of years of evolution. They can run factories and ships because they were trained to, they can train each other, and the technology was built for them to handle that work.

After a genocide of their former masters, they have no choice but to wipe out any species that have developed space travel on their own. Any peaceful interaction and trade would put them back into their former subservient role, simply because they couldn't do anything more useful when interacting with a more advanced species. If humans, who have developed starships on their own, interacted with Gbaba, who can only run simple machinery made for them to run, they'd necessarily be reduced to a lesser role. That's why they kill every species they encounter until the day, far in the future, when they can meet other starfarers as equals.

This is a variation on what Highjohn wrote earlier. The key similarity is that the Gbaba weren't the ones to develop the technology they use and aren't able to develop it further.

What do we really know about the Gbbaba? As far as I recall there's no in-text evidence that the Terran Federation recovered bodies let alone live prisoners - even capturing star systems doesn't guarantee prisoners or bodies - they could have been automated or military outposts, even purely geographic regions within the Gbbaba zone of control i.e. akin to the Senkaku Islands which Japan, communist China and Taiwan all claim but can't colonise. While presumably the Gbbaba warships are crewed finding DNA in nuked ships may be a near impossible task, and "broken" ships which would contain corpses may be rare. If so what the Gbbaba are remains a mystery - we don't know if they're a hive species, or even if they're a biological life form.

What if further Gbbaba technological innovation is dependent on AI and that the Gbbaba, amongst other issues, have decided that AI is unholy? Conversely what if the Gbbaba like ME3's Reaper's are AIs on a jihad against biologicals? As AIs they could be devoid of true intelligence and thus unable to research\innovate.

There's also the Ori explanation - feudal (Safehold) tech folk who're conscripted and granted uber-advanced "magical" weapons\starships etc. They don't understand the tech themselves but they can follow patterns and orders.

As for the xenophobia which drives the Gbbaba, it could be innate, akin to Apocalypse Troll Kanga's, or it could be historically induced - aliens wiped out their society and thus they fear all other incursions including the Terran Federation's. That first incursion could have destroyed their society but missed their factories. If so it's conceivable that the industry to build fleets exists and continues to function but the educational\technological infrastructure to grow stronger no longer exists. Those who control the godlike power of the Gbbbbbbbaba fleets would retain an iron grip over a population that cannot challenge it - akin to control of the Rakurai.

Bewildered wrote:What do we really know about the Gbbaba? As far as I recall there's no in-text evidence that the Terran Federation recovered bodies let alone live prisoners - even capturing star systems doesn't guarantee prisoners or bodies - they could have been automated or military outposts, even purely geographic regions within the Gbbaba zone of control i.e. akin to the Senkaku Islands which Japan, communist China and Taiwan all claim but can't colonise. While presumably the Gbbaba warships are crewed finding DNA in nuked ships may be a near impossible task, and "broken" ships which would contain corpses may be rare. If so what the Gbbaba are remains a mystery - we don't know if they're a hive species, or even if they're a biological life form.

Good point. OTOH, TF knew that Gbaba were brutally interrogating the prisoners, meaning that they probably recovered some of those interrogated prisoners, meaning that they knew something about Gbaba's appearance.

Or the prisoners were interrogated by nasty and advanced brother of Star Wars' interrogator drone. This could explain why TF didn't know how do they look like.

Bewildered wrote:There's also the Ori explanation - feudal (Safehold) tech folk who're conscripted and granted uber-advanced "magical" weapons\starships etc. They don't understand the tech themselves but they can follow patterns and orders.

I like this version. It would parallel Safehold itself nicely (seijins, anyone?) and could give more depth to race which could otherwise be pretty generic "alien invaders from space". Don't get me wrong, I love what RFC did with Arachnids in Starfire, but they'd be kind of boring in a long run.

The million-dollars-question, is, of course, who's Ori in this scenario?

Long time lurker, first time poster in a while.
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What if the Gbaba had a tremendous Antigerone breakthrough? Textev shows that the Terrans had extended life to approximately 3 centuries. That required continuous shots of nano, but still.
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What if the Gbaba were a naturally long life species, say for multiple centuries. What if they then had some sort of breakthrough that enabled them to indefinitely extend that period. Maybe its gene therapy, nano-tech, cloning, or some combination therein. What if they lived forever, for lack of a better word. If the lives of average Gbaba were measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. If indeed they had to die at all. If that were the case, the powers at the very top of the social structure would want to preserve the status quo. Even the average life of the average citizen would be pretty good.
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If they had started out as a long lived species, then they would naturally have had a very low birth rate, because it wouldn't have needed to replenish its species. If such a species evolved with no natural predator, and a low birth rate, it would have a slow development cycle. Once it reached what the PTB considered a pinnacle of civilization, it would grind to a halt.
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I imagine the GBaba were long lived, apex predators, with low birth rates. Who never suffered a mass extinction event. Once they had FTL travel and FTL communications, they probably didn't see any need to adapt further. Indeed, for the powers at the top of such a system, adaptation would threaten the power base of those rulers. Combine that with the very natural fear of AI uprising, and you have a stagnant society.