Factions/KT’ZR’KT’RTL Adhocracy

KT’ZR’KT’RTL have a single driving need — green cubes. They have many products to trade for them, including a near inexhaustible supply of inexpensive colonies. Recommended for players who desire a razor-sharp focus to their goals, and the tools to negotiate for it.

The Kit are also a good starter faction for new players since it is easy to course correct after blunders and their resource requirements are straight forward.

## Background

Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl (sometimes abbreviated to "Kit"), are enthusiastic, short-sighted, flighty, like to be heroes, and dangerously brilliant in a sideways sort of way. They developed written communication before sapience and mastered electricity before fire. To solve their overpopulation problems, the Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl invented the nullspace drive: an engine that would instantly throw a starship into the heart of whichever star it was more-or-less pointing at. They then intentionally "broke" it so the ship would miss the star by enough to be safe-ish. They were poised to colonize the galaxy when all of their starships started failing to jump.

Their name Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl is pronounced by humans as "KIT-zer-KIT-rittle". They pronounce it as a series of clicks and buzzing sounds. The Kit don't breath through their head. Their vocalizations are done by rubbing or striking various parts of their body together.

### Home world

The Kit home world is Nz'Dlr'Nx, an icy planet interspersed with volcanoes and hurricanes, making it nearly inhospitable. The Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl mostly avoid all that by flying away, which means that their infrastructure is temporary at best. They tend to solve problems in the least logical way imaginable and often at an extremely high speed. Most of their technological solutions look "impossible" to anyone who isn't a Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl.

### Society

Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl treat responsibility as a property of locality, not causality. This means that if you do something that breaks everything in three years, the people who are nearby when things break are the ones morally obligated to fix it— it's not your responsibility. So, Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl are great people to have around when you need a hero, but they tend to cause situations that require more heroes. Their history is one of cascading consequences, and their civilization is riding the tidal wave of disaster.

Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl spend two years in their eggs before finally hatching (and then only live another thirty-five years or so). This delay means that they have socially decoupled the responsibility of taking care of children from the act of creating them. Unsurprisingly, they face horrifying population pressure, which is only alleviated by the constant disasters.

Due to population pressure, they developed a need to find new places to live, which led them to develop the Null Space Drive. This drive is slightly more horrifying than described in the game, as it not only knocks out the crew and disables the computers for several minutes after a jump but also involves the risk of not arriving at the intended destination and facing fiery death in the heart of a star.

If it wasn't obvious from all the above, the Kit have short attention spans. They often leave projects half-finished and move on to something else. Fortunately, other Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl are likely to come along and continue where they left off. Their writing is more about communicating over time (to the next person working on the same thing after you've left) than over distance. They also tend to write notes directly on whatever they're working on so they don't get lost.

### Language

Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl language consists of a series of simple scratches. In fact, a significant portion of their language is pheromonic, providing context to the written language. Consequently, their sense of humor could be described as "punning": constructing sentences that lack context and can be interpreted in various ways or contain self-contradictions, but only when context is applied to them.

### Picture

The profile picture for the Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl shows them welding something. If you look closely, you can see that there's writing all over it. Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl mostly live in the polar areas of their planet which are dominated by chemical fungal forests. The fungi can be seen below, as can their “pile of sticks” cities — rather fragile, but easy to erect. The sun is low in the sky, as the picture is near Nz'Dlr'Nx's pole.

### The Confluence

A few dozen year's later, the Faderan introduced themselves, and the Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl immediately (and correctly) concluded that they had sabotaged the nullspace drives. And yet, the Faderan offered them a place in a growing society of aliens poised to explore the galaxy. Frustration with the Faderan's actions fled in light of the opportunity to interact with so many new species and discover so much about aliens, physics, and the universe as a whole. The future is in chaotic flux, and it is awesome.

## Gameplay Information

* They win colony bid ties.
* They have infinite colony support.
* Their starting converts each have two cards.
* They have nullspace colony cards.

### Nonlinear Thinking

All of the Kit converters that start in play are split over two cards. Card pairs must be arranged such that the lines match up. The two cards in a pair cannot be split up, nor re- arranged. Each card in a pair is upgraded independently. The Kit can trade these pairs of cards to other players as if they were a single card. They are returned at the end of the turn, as normal.

### Nullspace Drive

The Kit have a deck of colonies that they can colonize during the Trade Phase by running the converter at the top (which has no output other than to play the colony). The deck of colonies is an open deck: they may be played in any order. The colonies do not have the Kit background: they are traded permanently, not for a single turn. If they are consumed by a converter that has worlds as an input, they are removed from the game instead of being put under the colony deck.

### Boundless Expansion

The Kit can support any number of colonies. The Kit always win colony bid ties as if they had fewer colonies than the other players. This does not apply to research team bids.

### Dangerously Fast

The Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl have a tie breaker value of infinity: if all else is equal they win ties.

### Advice

It is imperative that the Kit run Expansive Social Diffusion frequently, especially in the early game. It is the starting converter which requires five green as input. Many nullspace colonies cost one yellow to put into play. If the Kit trade these for more than one yellow (say, a yellow and a small cube), they make a profit for nearly no cost. Since nullspace colonies are played during the Trade Phase, they can offer a colony to a player. If the player accept the deal the Kit can then play and trade them that colony.

If the other players aren't interested in trading for the Kit's nullspace colonies, they can invest in the colonies to improve their economy. They just have to make sure they can run any new colonies the turn the colonies enter play. Similarly, if the Kit can't get five green on the first turn to run Expansive Social Diffusion, they can pivot into collecting yellow to get as many nullspace colonies as possible. The colonies will add up to a significant additional income over the game.

If a player is about to spend a colony to upgrade or play a card, the Kit should offer to trade for that colony for one of their nullspace colonies and a small cube or ship. They profit the small cube or ship. The Kit will lose a yellow (to play the nullspace colony) and whatever they paid the other player. For the rest of the game, the Kit gain the output of the colony the other player would have spent.

## Rules Clarification

### Planet Deck

The Kt'Zr'Kt'Rtl can pick from all of the cards in the nullspace colony deck not just the top card. They can buy as many colonies as they can afford in a turn.

## References

1. ↑ Sidereal Confluence Rulebook pp. 3
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/SiderealConfluenceKtBackground
3. ↑ https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1911184/article/27840902#27840902