Encarta

Created by: Garry Stahl cribbing a lot from GURPS Aliens. 
Appearance: Starbase 600 game 
Number of Members: The Encarta have refused to answer that question, their world cannot be scanned for life forms and they are seldom seen more than one at a time. Speculation runs anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand. (The recent exile Miray has revealed that less than 14,000 Encarta remain. The population has not changed in several thousand years.) 
Nature of Members: 1.3 meter tall elfin, large-eyed androgynous humanoids. They usually wear loose figure hiding robes and sport improbable hairdos in unlikely colors. Miray indicates that neuter is more like it. Sex has been eliminated from the Encarta. Her crime was that she restored sex to herself and cloned a child to bear. 
Organization: They don't speak about government either, except to comment on how primitive yours is. (Miray indicated that Encarta is an oligarchy, but since everyone is in the ruling class, it really doesn't matter now does it? Machines take care of all mundane tasks invisibly and without personality.) 
Game Role: To cause people to grind their teeth
World Role: Ancient race that missed the boat to YAGLAhood.
Relative Influence: Minor. They mind their business, protect themselves and never get involved in the messy affairs of lessor races. They do hire the best mercenaries money can buy.
Public or Secret?: Public in that they exist, secret in every aspect of that existence.
Publicly Stated Goal: Silly, lessor races have goals, we have achieved ours. Sadly this is true, they have nothing to look forward to.
Relative Wealth: Usually filthy rich once the locals start ponying up to live forever.
Group advantages: SCIENCE! Encarta have a near godlike science, their ships were faster and more powerful, current Federation models equal them. They have abolished all the messy biological things, they live forever.
Special Abilities: They will claim everything short of the actual creation of the universe (but they were consulted). While their technology is stunning, they are personally not powerful. 
Group disadvantages: There are few of them. they depend totally on their technology.
Special disadvantages: Ennui. The Encarta are jaded and bored. Their solution to living much longer than any biological should was solved by shorting out any really long term memory. So a hundred years after you sky dive until you never want to do that again. "That again" looks good. This drives the Ane nuts as any true Encarta history is lost.
Those who favor them: Mercenaries making it hand over fist, old people looking to not be old. Luxury item dealers.
Those opposed to them: No one, and they like it that way.
Area of Operation: Starbase 600 sector
Headquarters Location: Encarta 0.7/-15.6. The Encarta system is some 4 light years from Avaya.
Public Face: Jaded merchants of immortality.
Notable Members: <I>Keeray</I> Encarta androgynous looking and sexless. Keeray is the Encarta representative and pusher on Renaissance Station. "He" advertises the super tech Encarta medical life enhancement and prolongation treatments at the Encarta Clinic for Mortal Life Prolongation (They DO work as advertised) and as a buyer of art and luxury goods for the Encarta trade.<BR>
Miray: An exile who committed the crime of back engineering her body to female and creating an embryo to bear. A vicious violation of Encata law. The Encarta grudgingly revealed their law to the Council of Seelas in an effort to get her back. They failed and had to eat that. The Galaxy has caught up to them. They are no longer the big dogs on the block. Miray herself is a vain slut with a personality as deep as a mud puddle. A result of burning out long term memory. Her only remarkable point is she has been a valuable resource on Encarta itself. They wanted her mind wiped, she has returned the favor by baring their secrets (and everything else she has).
History of the Organization: The Encarta have lost their history. All that can be surmised about them is what has happened recently. Over 500 years ago Aneilog warp ships encountered them. There were then as they are now. No, they didn't have any of that useless history lying around, they couldn't even remember their very long lives to any detail.
Tens of thousands of years ago the Encarta deliberately removed any vestige of psionic ability they might have, it was inconvenient to be empathic you see. To handle endless life, they shorted out memory. Encarta have to consult their logs to remember new things for more than a decade. For as long as any local race can remember they have been there. When the Ane founded Oz over 100,000 years ago the Encarta were there, and much as they are now.
Once the Kliges'chee had flattened Oz, they moved to the next target. Two more worlds had nothing to threaten them, but the Encarta did. For fifty years the Comptrollers sent fleet after fleet at the Encarta. The debris field a light year from Encarta continued to build until tens of thousands of dead ships and hundreds of thousands of dead Kliges'chee floated in the void. This ship graveyard is now used as a resource by Avaya and Oz.
The Encarta are a dead race. No new Encarta has been born in over 50,000 years. Those that remain, remain. They no longer create, they no longer innovate, they lead their shallow jaded lives. Once in a great while something snaps, and some Encarta does something totally sane that even an Encarta cannot survive. Fellow Encarta will find they have also deleted all personality records so they cannot be recreated. That means one less Encarta.
The one exception to this is Miray. Someone that got bored, rebuilt itself as a female and cloned a child. Miray has been a wealth of information about the Encarta and a thorn in the side of the Encarta in general. Both mother and child are under the protection of the Federation.
<I>For more detail on personality and possible reactions check the Engay in GURPS Aliens from which the majority of this race was cribbed.</I>
Category:Races
Category:Far Sector
Category:Epiphany Trek