#The Ur-Quan Masters

[zarla-s]

Another batch of holiday requests! Very fun to draw some Ur-Quan again.

[patreon]

[oneirophasia]

There's an old computer game called Star Control II. You're from a human colony which lost contact with Earth generations ago, and you're the captain of a brand new FTL starship on a mission to back to your homeworld. Earth, it turns out, has been discovered by the Ur-Quan, alien conquerors who give every other species a choice between being pressed into service as battle thralls, or giving up all advanced technology and being permanently confined to their homeworld beneath an impenetrable forcefield. Humans chose to be bubbled, and now that you're here it's up to you to find out how to defeat the Ur-Quan and free them.

It's sort of like Mass Effect if instead of a cover shooter it were a spaceship combat simulator from 1992. It's great. (And also, after a lot of copyright lawsuits between the developers and publishers, open-source freeware! The Ur-Quan Masters is a fanmade quality update with the creators' blessing.)

The first aliens you're actually likely to meet are the Spathi, a species of cowardly bivalves who call you "hunam" and are both drily cynical about your claims of peaceful intent and stoically shameless in avoiding danger. (They also, incidentally, speedran bronzesmithing to nuclear power in less than a century, so trifle with them at your own risk.)

Each day when we awaken we call forth the traditional Spathi prayer:

"Oh God... Please don't let me die today! Tomorrow would be so much better!"

When they surrendered to the Ur-Quan, the Spathi High Council voted enthusiastically for the "impenetrable force field" option, but alas! in a cruel miscommunication ended up as battle thralls anyway.

The Ur-Quan left a detachment of Spathi on the moon in case the humans tried anything tricky, then took their fleet corewards. In their absence, the Spathi decided it would be safer to watch from a little further away. You find the base on Pluto, populated by an officer named Fwiffo who drew the short Ta Puun stick every time and is doing his best to make it look like they're still fully-armed and staffed. Everyone else has "strategically redeployed" one at a time back to Spathiwa as reinforcements to defend against something called the Ultimate Evil, whom they believe may attack them at any moment:

As yet, the Ultimate Evil remains largely unmanifest, and its powers and exact intentions are still a bit obscure, since it lurks just outside the range of even the most sensitive, long-range detectors... which we feel gives conclusive evidence as to The Ultimate Evil's nefarious intent.

This has all been a roundabout build-up to this joke, as an explanation that this is what people sound like to me who take the Dark Forest hypothesis seriously.

[remcycle]

More pixel guys

[mod-a-day]

Erol Otus, Pablo Luna Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Theme (𝚄𝚁𝚀.𝙼𝙾𝙳, "The Ur-Quan Hierarchy" Remix) Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (1992) Toys For Bob

I debated whether or not to credit myself (as "Joseph Collins") in this one. Basically, I remixed the tune and Pablo remixed my remix (with my permission). However, his remix sounds almost nothing like mine does, but he did give me a "special thanks" in the song information.

Ultimately, though, I decided not to. It's his remix, through and through. He just used my version as a "base". (:

~ J

[alanahikarichan]

Starcon2/The Free Stars fan discord!

i was feelin' a little Oppressed by only being in the official free stars discord lol so im starting a new fan discord!!!

come post about kissing ZEX or whatever with me <3

[loreweaver-universe]

Part 1 of my first playthrough of Star Control 2 is up on Youtube!

[tinsnip]

OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY

[fangoriousfae]

i watched someone play star control ii and felt compelled to rank the aliens according to my second-hand experience.

[remcycle]

Earthlings

Industrious hominids. 

Earthlings, also commonly called humans or terrans, hail from the water world Earth, third planet of the yellow dwarf star Sol. They are a race of inquisitive, cooperative upright primates, and relative newcomers to the galactic scene.

Earthling culture is organized around tribes, with tribal sub-units known as families, and congregations of many tribes known as nations. Since 2020, humans have united under a single world government called the United Nations (UN).

Above all, earthlings are productive. The scale of earthling industry and manufacturing are unmatched by any of their galactic neighbors. While they have not advanced as far technologically as many other civilizations, they make up for it with sheer volume, often brute-forcing their way through technological limitations.

For example, when humans first visited their moon, Luna, they didn’t wait to develop efficient and safe repulsor-lift technology to achieve orbit. Instead, they simply strapped three intrepid humans to the nose cone of an oversized ballistic missile and threw them at the moon like a dart at a board.

What’s impressive is that it worked.

One year after joining the Alliance and being given a technological jump-start by the Chenjesu, humans had already surpassed even the Yehat starship clans in terms of bulk resource extraction and wartime manufacturing, soon becoming the primary materials supplier for the entire Alliance of Free Stars. Their ability to erect productive asteroid mines and outposts quickly (though not always efficiently) provided their new allies a much-needed shot in the arm in the face of the invading Ur-Quan armada.

If there is a downside to this tenacious drive toward industry, it is perhaps a species-wide myopia for the consequences of their production. After all, humans created the genetically-engineered Androsynth almost without a second thought, but with disastrous long-term consequences. Industrial waste products had nearly driven their home world past the brink of habitability in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And when they revealed to the Chenjesu the vast stockpile of nuclear armaments they had amassed in just a few short decades of international cold war, well… The earthlings present at this meeting assumed the Chenjesu ambassador's stunned silence meant that the ancient crystalline being found their stockpile impressive. It's hard to know what a rock is feeling, but declassified records of a later conversation between the ambassador and his retinue provide a more accurate term: disturbing.

Humans in fantasy settings with multiple races have kind of a problem, which is that it's hard to figure out what their "thing" is.

The biggest problem with establishing a "thing" for humans is that humans are the baseline for our understanding of the world, and any axis you move humans along, you're immediately cutting down the possibility space of all other fantasy races.

For example, if you said "humans are fast", you would be left with the problem of having to make all other races slower. If you said that humans were smart, you would have to make all other races dumber. There inherent problem here is that elevating some human trait as "their thing" blocks out concept space.

One of the stock characteristics that humans get is being all-arounders, which is boring but preserves them as being a baseline species. The other big one is "adaptability", which I think tends to be a decent choice because it means that humans can show up everywhere, but also means that there's nothing that humans are excluding anyone else from doing. There are other options, and I know everyone has their favorite.

I do have some affection for writers who decide that humans will exist at some extreme, with all other fantasy races being warped around that. There's some nice commitment to the bit that comes from deciding that yes, humans are at least a foot taller than any other race, or that humans are the mayflies of the mortal species and have by far the shortest lifespans.

[kasperl-ruprecht]

[zarla-s]

Given that humans had been trapped under an impenetrable slave shield for twenty years, I have to imagine ZEX was a little startled to have one come waltzing up to his planet, haha.

(btw you can play starcon2 for free, it's under free stars: the ur-quan masters on steam)

[patreon]

[remcycle]

Star Control 2 planet lander vibes

Weird Science-Fantasy Annual #1 (1952), cover by Al Feldstein

[remcycle]

Admiral Zex invites you to tour the menagerie.

[itsbenedict]

behold, the only negative steam review for Star Seeker

[loreweaver-universe]

Starting Star Control 2, AKA Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters!

[pokecatt]

If you don't know, they made it open source and free. It's under a new name called The Ur-Quan Masters.

star control 2