John Potter wrote:
> As I see it most player's haven't really dug into the Aslan history
> enough to have informed opinions and simply use a generalized
> label like "Klingon Like" to infer that they are aggressive warrior
> like and tend to not get along with other species since they have
> a hard enough time just getting along with others of their own
> kind (differing clans).
You are confusing two points. In my view, the Aslan had two huge
problems. One was the History and one was the Culture. I have
already gone over the Culture problem in another post, so, since
you brought it up, I will hit on that. :-)
The problem with the history is that it doesn't match their culture.
We are told over and over that the Aslan do not have a racial
identity. Instead, they have a clan identity. So, they are just as
likely to make war with another clan as they are to make war with
the empire of another race. That is just the way they are. But, within
the history, they are always attacking as a race. They move as a
race to battle with the Imperium, until they strike a treaty with the
Aslan race. (Yeah, they try to cover it with being a treaty with the
'clan of clans', but really, it is a treaty between the humans and the
Aslan, as all Aslan obey it.) They have skirmishes with the Solomani
as a race. They invade the Domain of Deneb as a race. And finally,
they take over most of the Domain's holdings in the Trojan Reach
as a race. That doesn't fit and, really, doesn't make any sense.
They tried to cover it by saying that it was really the ihatei that was
doing the invasion. But that doesn't fly either. In fact, the Regency
Sourcebook spends a lot of word count describing how pathetic
ihatei fleets actually are, how expensive they are to create, and how
rare they are. There just simply aren't enough ihatei fleets to do the
damage they are accused of. And there pretty much isn't any way that
they could take over the Tobin Duchy (much less Tobin itself).
So, really, the whole story of the Aslan through the Rebellion and the
Collapse makes no real sense the way it is portrayed. It just doesn't
fit.
What I did to deal with it is to say that the story that "everyone
knows" was a cover. What happened is that some anti-Imperial clans
made war with the Domain while they could, knowing it would have
to be quick and decisive before they lost all of their home holdings
to clans that would decide their unguarded homes were juicier targets
than the Regency. Tobin didn't fall; rather the duke decided that
Norris wasn't paying enough attention in that direction, so he cut a
deal with the Aslan clans. His duchy then realigned under the Aslan
banner. The whole "everyone knows" cover story is the nonsense that
Norris put out to save face over the idea that a Domain Duke deserted.
(And he paid for that choice with his life when Norris could finally
refocus his forces.)
(And note that even my explanation doesn't hold together that well,
as the other clans wouldn't wait like I made them. They would have
struck immediately after the war fleets left for the Domain of Deneb.
The war clans would have had nothing to come back to. I just hand-
waved the delay to make it all work.)
Mike West