Kariad

(Excerpted from Bill Keeler's notes for Hello, Sailor; the Voyages of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus. [Early drafts])
The Kariad are a species of non-corporeal beings, or possibly pan-dimensional beings from another dimension, possibly non-corporeal beings from another dimension. Actually, it doesn’t much matter how corporeal or pan-dimensional they are. They are assols, and should be avoided if at all possible. 
== Defining Characteristics of the Kariad ==
Our only direct interactions with the Kariad involved the crew being taken into a sort of waking dream where the physical universe disappeared and the Kariad communicated via thoughts and feelings in a kind of metaphysical realm. Based on these interactions, and descriptions of Kariad interactions with human colonies, we have come up with the following list of characteristics. 
* Lack of physical bodies (at least in this universe) 
* Technological advancement greatly ahead of human norms
* Arrogance matched with Stupidity
* Monosexual? Or just really incredibly boring?
* Incredibly annoying
* Obsessive need to meddle in human affairs, usually making everything all higgledy-piggledy in the result. (If collapsing multiple human civilizations can be described as higgledy-piggledy.)
It’s also been hypothesized that the Kariad are sort of super-evolved humans who moved onto another dimension; that would explain both the superpowers, the obsession with meddling in other people’s business, and the disasters resulting from such attempts. 
== Effects on Colonies Unfortunate Enough to Come into Contact with them ==
=== Yronwode ===
The Kariad sought to broker a Peace Treaty in the Centuries-Long War between the Tsi Bai (the descendants of prisoners sent to Yronwode when it was a Commonwealth prison colony) and the Midians (the descendants of religious missionaries sent to convert the prisoners). In exchange for technology from the Kariad, the Midians agreed to retreat to a single peninsula of land and leave the remaining 97% of the planet’s land area to the Tsi Bai, and provide the Tsi Bai with technical assistance to help develop their culture. In return, the Tsi Bai pledged to stop making war against the Midians. Predictably, the barbarian Tsi Bai abrogated the treaty nearly as soon as the Kariad left the planet and laid siege to the last Midian holdout. (Worlds Apart Book 07 – Yronwode.) 
=== Fallon ===
Fallon was a world divided into multiple nation-states with vastly unequal levels of wealth and development. The Kariad solution was to unite the planet under a single unitary planetary government. As an incentive, they offered the Fallonians a new energy source that would replace their dependence on Tritium imported from the Hellfire system. They distributed a piece of the technology to each of the nation-states on the planet, believing they would come together to create the power source. But some of the nations decided they would rather even the score with the nations they had previously resented, and withheld their part of the technology. When the Tritium ran out, the entire planetary civilization collapsed. (Worlds Apart Book 08 – Hellfire)
=== Gethsemane ===
The Kariad provided the inhabitants of Gethsemane with warning of their coming apocalypse and a means of evacuating their doomed planet. The Gethsemenians did not precisely follow the Kariad instructions and instead of opening gateways to other worlds, the single gateway connected to either an alternative parallel universe or possibly the Afterlife. There have been heated debates about this. Actually, this one wasn't entirely on the Kariad. (Worlds Apart Book 09: Gethsemane) 
=== Eventide ===
The Kariad found the low level of development and rampant social inequality on Eventide unacceptable, but did not know how to deal with it. The social inequality was based on Anything Boxes --- replicating machines that produced all of the planet’s material goods. They were baffled how to solve the inequality without removing the boxes that formed the basis of the planetary economy. The brave and heroic captain of the Pathfinder ship Pegasus made a wager with them, vowing to solve the problem of social inequality without removing the Anything Boxes. The captain won the bet, and the Kariad promised to never again meddle in human affairs. (Book 10 – Eventide)
On second thought
Maybe it was never their intention at all to help out the colonies they contacted. Maybe each one was some kind of crazy alien experiment. 
Whatever, I hate the bastards.
Category:Alien Races