Josh_Kablack wrote:Dunno why you care about having them switch genders, seeing as aboleths are already described as being both male and female at the same time a lot like the slime creatures in your backyard Although they probably use psychic powers rather than calcium or chitin harpoons to establish mating dominence.
But if you go with my earlier explanation, you get a race, where the sex/reproductive drive, the fod/hunger drive and the intellectual/knowledge drive are one and the same. They would see humans are horribly confused and conflicted due to our limited and fragmentary perspectives.
Bear in mind that an aboleth absorbs the memories of anyone it consumes, and the final memory of each victim is going to be what it felt like to be consumed by an aboleth. It's easy to rationalize this away by saying they are evil and have no empathy for their victims; but it's far creepier if they honestly know that the best thing for their victims is to be devoured.
Yeah, it's gotta be a weird perspective when you eat people who are useful and enslave those who are not. It's not like mind flayers when they eat you when you've served your purpose or whatever - Aboleth eat you if they think you have ever done anything interesting. Conversion into a Skum only happens if they believe you to be less valuable than a fork or screwdriver.
Because it's not a philosophy without a sound bite:
"Each of your race has a thousand goals and only one lifetime; Each member of our race but one goal and a thousand lifetimes. You shall become one with our purpose and your life will be put to better use then your limited perspective could even comprehend. If it might console you, know that the tales of your deeds shall outlive the rest of your species."
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sat May 08, 2010 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
"All things are transient. From the briefest life of a fly to the near endless lives of gods and stars, all things end. No matter how great you may be, there will come a time when your life is over, when your very name is forgotten. Nevertheless, what you leave behind is of lasting value. The fortresses of the present are built upon the foundations of the past. It is our goal not merely to wield strength the likes of which our ancestors never dreamed of, but also to herald in a future that is mightier still. We will pass from existence and even memory, but we shall herald future generations who will conquer frontiers we have never glimpsed. Perhaps even Death itself."
Sounds kind of reasonable until you remember that the next part is:
"...and that's why I enslaved your entire village and put them to work making war machines, and started using our own senile elderly as food for a new generation of Neogi slave masters."
