Kliges'chee (Epiphany Trek)

== Kliges'chee AKA The Cold Reavers ==
The Kliges'chee are also known as "The Cold Reavers" in many languages. The Origin of the terms Kliges'chee is not currently known. Cold Reavers is fairly obvious and "developed" independently many times.
Created by: Dennis Washburn, Jay P. Hailey, interpreted by Garry Stahl
Appearance: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile, Epiphany Trek.
Number of Members: Billions, kinda.
Nature of Members: Liquid methane creatures harshly altered by a Rishan artifact set on insanely stupid. Kliges'chee are roughly man sized blobs with twelve eye-stalk tentacles, each with a different kind of eye. It is unknown whether this was their natural form or an alteration made by the Rishan race maker. It is seriously hoped that it's the later case.
Organization: There are three kinds of Kliges'chee. "Proper Kliges'chee" are a mass mind, with no individuality at all. "Free Kliges'chee" have damaged "telepathic centers" in their mind, preventing their being absorbed into the Kliges'chee mass entity. The "Kliges'chee All" Free Kligs'chee coached by the Ane in how to form a telepathic community without giving up individuality.
Proper Kliges'chee -- Mass mind. Some 25 "individuals", each composed of billions of Kliges'chee drones and one "Comptroller" - The Kliges'chee are something like organic Borg. A Drone has no more individuality or identity than one of your skin or muscle cells. The "Comptroller" is a network controller, but the consciousness, perception, and knowledge of the creature is spread through all the drones. By analogy like a distributed computer network.
     Comptrollers often exchange individual drones and do not usually notice these exchanges. There seems to be some sort of telepathic range effect - a drone who wanders far away from his native network will simply join the loudest/nearest network.
     If a comptroller is destroyed, his collective is ruined. His drones join other comptrollers, and are subsumed into the new entity. It is not known how much of the drone's knowledge is accessible to his new home, but Kliges'chee brains are as large and as capable as a humanoids. 
Free Kliges'chee -- These are Kliges'schee who, in adolescence realized that when they were absorbed into a mature "entity", their own individual identities would be destroyed. They vandalized the telepathic nodes of their brains, preventing the change from an individual to part of a greater whole. The Free Kliges'chee then rose up against the main Kliges'chee in an attempt to win their freedom.
     They were not successful and now, only a handful of survivors exist.
The Kliges'chee All -- This was an alternative form of telepathic community, formed with the help of the Ane. Very few Kliges'chee members of the Kliges'chee All survive, but they are the most popular and supported by those who know about the kliges'chee.
Game Role: B villains
World Role: Rishan insanity not even directly caused by the Rishans.
Relative Influence: Once overwhelming, now minor.
Public or Secret?: Public
Publicly Stated Goal: Hey! You! Get out of my space.
Relative Wealth: Was huge, larger than all of known space put together. The Kliges'chee economy was remarkably productive and stable. Now, compared to the Federation, Minuscule. The Kliges'chee retain a handful of systems.
Group advantages: Instant communication and mass awareness. What one Kliges'chee drone sees, its entire collective sees. This also allows the Kliges'chee remarkable strategic and tactical coordination. They move as one because they are one. Their communication is telepathic and so cannot be jammed, eavesdropped on, or tracked by any currently known means.
     The Kliges'chee are poor at innovation but excellent at copying technology used against them. They are scary good at this.
Group disadvantages: The Kliges'chee are native to a world not unlike Titan, the moon of Saturn. Methane is liquid there. Oxygen is corrosive snow. Water ice is a form of rock. Temperatures that most other races find normal will burn a Kliges'chee to death in a flash. 
     Their attitude. The Kliges'chee hate races composed of individuals with a passion. The Kliges'chee word for this is "Rhihansu" a Romulan word for a certain sect of Romulans. The Kliges'chee mass mind creatures considered individual-based species as animals and sub sentient at best. (At worst a form of mutation from true beings such as themselves, like cancer) They had a fanatic hatred of such creatures - their goal was to pacify the Galaxy and contain the explosion of such hideous monsters.
     Interestingly, the Kliges'chee didn't especially worry about bio-chemistry or habitat. They created several creatures like themselves mentally, but native to Class M Environments. The iconic Example is "Mister Prindal" an entity that sees himself as a single being, but composed of billions of humanoids. Fred is another example not created by the Kliges'chee.
Those who favor them: No one really.
Those opposed to them: Anyone not wishing to be bombed into the stone age.
Area of Operation: Kliges'chee implosion zone.
Headquarters Location: Formerly an earth sized methane moon of a super gas giant about 900 light years to the spinward and coreward of the Federation core. It's not there anymore. Refugees exist on a handful of Methane moons in the former Zantree Alliance and on Titan in Sol system.
Public Face: KILL YOU!
Notable Members: The 25 mass mind entities, often referred to as "Fleets" - they were observed by allied Naval Intelligence to be specific entities with specific behaviors and goals.
History of the Organization: A long time ago - the Rishan Race maker is used on the Ane of Coventry and the Unicorn people. Either there were no Kliges'chee at that time, or there is more than one race-maker.
Some time ago - The Kliges'chee were created by the Rishan "Race Maker". The Kliges'chee worship the race maker.
Some Time later - the Kliges'chee begin to explore space and encounter Awful Monsters. A campaign to render space safe for true life forms begins.
     The Kliges'chee discover that they can use the race maker. They do so, a very little creating new "Entities" where once chaotic and anarchic individualism reigned. Mostly, however, the Kliges'chee destroy all starships belonging to individualized races, and then bombard their worlds from orbit. Once the world is suitably "Pacified", the Kliges'chee issue their ultimatum. Individualized races in Kliges'chee space will forego all space travel. Subject people will perform no act of resistance. A world that violates these demands will be scoured of all life.
     This is a matter of efficiency for the Kliges'chee. The bombardment and demands are much cheaper than exterminating a whole world. When a world is found to have violated the ultimatum, it is quickly and ruthlessly destroyed. The Kliges'chee don't show mercy.
Circa 1900 - the Kliges'chee encounter and begin a campaign against the Shardin Empire. This brutal and total war of extermination destroys the Shardin and Faren utterly. The Murian, Aneilogs and others where blasted back to the iron age, if lucky. That conquest stalled against the Encarta whose technology the Kliges'chee could not over come.
     "Fleet 8" is killed by the other comptrollers for the failure to reduce that section of space. Its frones are absorbed by ther others.<BR>
2271 - the Kliges'chee encounter the Romulans. This begins an alternating hot and cold war that taxes both to extremes.
2311 - the "Tomed Incident" - the Romulans ambush a Federation Starbase and destroy it, with thousands of casualties. Later it is discovered that the intent of the attack is to make the Romulans seem mysterious and dangerous, whle they effectively withdraw from known space and focus on the Kliges'chee. Scouting missions to discover the extent of the Kliges'chee empire do not return.
2344 - the Kliges'chee begin pulling back and taking a defensive line. The Romulans pursue but are bogged down in campaigns that stretch their supply lines past the limit.
2347 - The Free Kliges'chee begin to gather forces.
2350 - The Kliges'chee/Romulan War cools off and takes up a stable tone. The Romulans quickly begin to shore up their own borders and take actions to secure the empire.
2351 - The Free Kliges'chee rise up and revolt against their older, non-individual fellows. The Proper Kliges'chee consider that individual monsters that look like them are far worse monsters than any other kind and concentrate on extermination the "free" movement with extreme violence.
2353 - After bitter and chaotic fighting, the Free Kliges'chee retreat into the Zantree Alliance, hoping to find allies and aid against the Proper Kliges'chee.
2359 - the Kliges'chee civil war has ground to a stalemate. Unknown to everyone, the Kliges'chee begin building a vast armada with which to over run the Zantree and the Romulans as well as other rumored individualistic races behind them.
2364 - The Romulans announce their return to the interstellar communnity in a tense stand-off with the Federation. Both sides accuse the other of sneak attack. This is later discovered to have been a Borg scouting mission mapping the local area.
2367 - the USS Harrier is thrown to the far side of the Kliges'chee empire and begins to cluelessly trundle for home. The extreme demand for ships and crews for the coming campaign has stripped the Kliges'chee interior of ships, allowing the Harrier to bumble through for quite some time.
2368 - The Ane traveling through the Kliges'chee empire on their way to the Builder Home world stop and aid the Free Kliges'chee they encounter. This aid is in re-modeling the Kliges'chee telepathy so that they retain their individuality in the Kliges'chee mass mind. this effectively recreates the Kliges'chee in a third form, the Kliges'chee All.
2370 - The Kliges'chee All, and allied forces begin a second phase of the Kliges'chee civil war. This war is bloodier and exceptionally violent beyond anything seen so far. The Proper Kliges'chee see the Free Kliges'chee as the greatest threat there could ever be, and the Free Kliges'chee with the mass individual advantage will not be assimilated no mater what. Live free or die. The Zantree Alliance and other individualized allies of the Kliges'chee All try to help but are quickly left behind by the sheer numbers engaged on both sides.
2378 - The Kliges'chee civil war ends with the destruction of the Kliges'chee home world. There are very, very few survivors, all either individuals or Kliges'chee All Members who elected to flee rather than face possible death. Three classic Kliges'chee Comptrollers and a handful of drones survived. (The remaining proper Kliges'chee will later make two more Comptrollers in a bid to survive.) The Federation and the Romulans rush into the "Kliges'chee Implosion Zone" to try and make friends, influence people, and out flank the rival empire.<BR>
2379 - An Ane "galactic sanitation" mission to destroy the race maker is derailed at Starbase 600, due to the race maker having been destroyed in the planetary collision that "ended" the Kliges'chee civil war.
2380 - Fred working with Mister Prindal managed to convince the remaining five Comptrollers that further war will result only in their total annihilation. The Agreement with Fred is signed ending the Kliges'chee war.
2383 - The USS Crystal City cruises through the ruins of the Kliges'chee system a spreading asteroid belt in the orbit of the super Jupiter the only sign of their world. They discover a Class M world with intelligent life in a pre warp society. They find no living Kliges'chee.
===Meta: Why did I do this?===
To me the Kgles'chee are not Star Trek. B villains without even a decent mustache to twirl. No real motivation and no story to tell. An opponent whose only purpose is to fight and be fought. You don't even have a face to identify with, a mindless drone. As to eating class M life forms, "Oh come on! Lets have a big party and drink lava and inhale plasma!! It will be fun!" Plain old organic molecules exist at every temperature range. Titan is covered in methane and ethane, vanilla plain hydrocarbons. Amino acids are found in comets. There is nothing unique about class M life's chemistry. I didn't see any Trek Stories to tell there. "We hate you for existing. We don't have a reason, you can't change our mind, and we have a conversational ability that makes a Lisa program look brilliant." I appreciate many of Denise Washburn's inventions as told by Jay P. Hailey. Sorry Denise, but this one is stupid.
However, I like Jay Hailey's Stories and wanted to include some of his work as part of my universe. So I bring up the Kliges'chee and promptly derail them, leaving out the parts that hit the "oh come on" button. I grab Captain Hailey by the nards and derail his long march of failure. Most of this is seen in the Starbase 600 game. Not so much the fiction arc of Epiphany Trek. The Kliges'chee are encountered in the middle of their civil war by the Ane on the way to Three Suns Station in The Word of the Builders, and whole arc is derailed, as planned.
OK, Jay feels a certain responsibility to the arc Denise created. That is his damage. I hope that "I'm not Captain of Anything" Hailey knows that Jay established contact with Coventry some time ago with Rondo in Green. Aneilogs are in the core Federation. J-Tathilan and Breeanlan open the door quite unclosablly There is only one way that could have happened There has to be Ane on Coventry. One day he is going to look up from lunch and J-Gensilan will be standing there. **Silly boy, did you think I was giving up?**
Category:Races
Category:Epiphany Trek
Category:Kliges'chee