jamesp81 wrote...
lovgreno wrote...
No, a victory should cost you a lot and it could be a interesting setting for following games. A situation like the Quarians perhaps. Of course those who want a bigger di... I mean a unrealistic galactic empire for their ubermensh may be dissapointed.
Not interested in a galactic empire. Just trying to save enough that we don't get kicked off the council, enslaved, or demoted to Elcor/Hanar status.
A clarification here:
Demotion to "associate" status would suck. I do not want to see it happen. But if it happened to us, we would likely recover, and after a few hundred years we'd be back on the council. The reason the Volus and Elcor and Hanar remain associate races for so long is that their cultures are fundamentally incapable of the kind of politicking and military action required to be council members. They, quite simply, don't have what it takes.
Ok, Galactic history lesson on the council! If you don't want to read it, skip everything between the asterisks.
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This whole "most races have to wait hundreds of years" thing is crap. They're making these rules up as they go along, and while some patterns have emerged, they are by no means consistent. The Asari had the citadel for only 60 years before the Salarians arrived, and the council was formed 20 years later. Scarcely a wait of centuries. The Salarians got their "seat" 20 years after their first contact with the citadel.
After that, the Council primarily encounters pre-mass-relay species, it seems. (It's unclear whether or not the Volus had achieved Mass Relay tech when they were encountered, but the Elcor had not and there's no suggestion that the Hanar had.) It makes some sense that the council races might look upon these younger races as children, almost as though they had been "uplifted." The Quarians and Batarians are the edge-cases here. I can't find any information about Quarian history that isn't tied to the Geth, and the Batarians were crazy slaving warmongers, so it's kind of understandable that they didn't get a citadel seat. I'd assume that the Quarians never seriously fought for one, or, being a non-colonizing race, never saw the need.
The next relay-capable race they encounter is the Rachni, and we all know how that goes. The Salarians uplift the Krogan so again, not on equal footing, not perceived as equals, the Krogan rebel. New war, second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.
Eventually, when they start losing the Krogan rebellions, so they look for a new fighty race, to help fight. They find the Turians who have mass relay tech but have been too busy with civil war for the past 1200 years to make contact themselves. Still, they seem more reasonable than the Krogan (which is roughly equivalent to being taller than the Volus), so they're given a shot. Two hundreds years after they're recruited into service, they're granted a seat. This is some 1300 years after the Salarians and the Asari formed the council.
It's another 1340 years before humanity discovers FTL and Mass Relay tech, and we've already started a bunch of colonies and exploration before we make first contact. If it weren't for the Turians, we might have been the first race in millenia to independently make contact with the Citadel, without being discovered by Asari or Salarian scouts looking for "undeveloped" races.
While this has created a negative image of humans in the Galaxy, I don't think the Turians come out looking bright and shiny either. The Asari and Salarians are always wary that their warrior race might go crazy, and having two warrior races to counterbalance each other is very appealing. What's more, the Turians have shown that they are
IDIOTS when it comes to handling first contact. I mean christ on a ******, people. Haven't you heard of
hailing frequencies? I think the Asari and Salarians, the two prettiest girls in school, are still deciding who should be prom king. The good old dependable Turians, or the new kid... a badass stranger who might just turn out to have a heart of gold.
And they can delay that as long as they want. They know they have the highest WIS and INT scores, respectively, and now they have that little "well we made the Turians wait for 200 years so it wouldn't be like, you know, fair to let you in the club right away," line to trot out. But the 30 years humanity is around before they get a seat is just about the amount of time it took the Asari to let the Salarians in, when they made contact. So it's not so unprecedented, after all.
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Ok, sheesh. You probably didn't need to know all of that. Hell, I probably didn't need to know all of that. Sorry.
To sum up: if the council meets a race that is
1. Ambitious
2. Capable of widespread expansion
3. Capable of diplomacy
4. Capable of militarizing
That race will get a seat on the council eventually. Every race other than the council races fails at least one of those tests. Even a vastly weakened humanity would still pass them all, after a few generations, as long as they don't become too militant or incapable of diplomacy; that's how the Krogan and the Batarians screwed themselves out of a solid future. What's more, we're the council's only real hope if the Turians all of a sudden decide to go kill-crazy. Bear in mind the Turians spent 1200 years having an interplanetary civil war
with themselves. The only reason they stopped was that they killed themselves out, and then they immediately were willing to go fight in another
centuries long war. Finally, the first time they ever encounter a new race, they
start a war. Compared to that, human history is basically a sack fulla rainbows.
Honestly the whole council vs. associate thing bothers me profoundly. If my Shep comes out of this with any political power, she's going to fight for some sort of actual representation for non-council races who are members of the Citadel.
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