Werra wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:01 pm
This might be a bit of a broad question. But what do the other races know about the Historians?
Do they know basic biologic facts like diet, possible lifespan, etc?
How much do they know about the Historian government?
What -if anything- is known about Historian culture?
And has there ever been a Historian who migrated out of Historian space?
Well, the short answer is that not very much is known about the Historians as a species or culture, or about their forms of government. Access to Historian territory is strictly prohibited and it seems that living Historians rarely venture outside their own borders. There are no known cases of Historian emigres. The long answer is…
The Historians are known mainly through visits of their unmanned exploration/patrol vessels and examination of Historian technology, contact with the AI constructs (which are sometimes carried on their own ships, and sometimes others), visits of a few live Historians to a few interstellar treaty meetings which required their presence in the flesh, data gathered by the Loroi fleets when they were in Historian territory prior to the fall of Seren, and data gathered by the Umiak during their invasion and occupation of planets in Historian territory.
Unmanned Historian vessels are actually a fairly common sight in Union territory, and ships at dock have been extensively scanned and scrutinized. Their drives appear to be completely reactionless, and they generate very potent electromagnetic fields for defense. The Loroi got a close-up look at this technology during the research exchange, even though the provided versions were clearly less capable than the ones the Historians use themselves. The general impression that the Loroi formed was that as advanced as their ship technologies were, the Historian information processing technology was even more sophisticated and harder to duplicate.
The Historian constructs are somewhat diverse, having differing personalities and visual forms, though the forms seem to be abstractions on the same theme (that being of the biological Historian body), and most seem to be to different degrees sarcastic, aloof, and condescending. The constructs never give personal names, only titles, and they usually refer to themselves in the plural. They speak flawless Trade and easily learn any language that is required of them, but there has been no hint as to their native language.
The Historian Jars are actually things manufactured by the Loroi to Historian specifications (as no self-respecting Loroi captain would ever allow a Historian-made device on board her own vessel), and the Loroi sometimes deliberately under-spec them just to be disagreeable. However, once allocated, these jars are technically Historian sovereign territory, like an embassy, and may not be further tampered with. The jar in Highland-7 is the same one that was on the
Tempest bridge; Stillstorm ordered that it be taken off her ship with the other “alien artifacts.”
While Historian constructs do not have a telepathic signature that can be detected by the Loroi, the living Historians do, though it is comparatively faint and difficult to perceive at greater distances.
During the Historian attendance at treaty conferences, only a small number of live delegates arrived on the station and only for the minimum amount of time that was required by rule, and the living Historians that were in attendance at meetings spoke hardly at all, and AI constructs conducted all of the business. What few words were spoken by the live Historians were in heavily accented Trade. Loroi seers were able to detect that their ship did have a small crew in addition to the delegates, though the former never left the ship. The live Historian delegates were tall, spindly hairless and pale and roughly humanoid, bipedal with four manipulatory limbs, and didn’t require any special life support. Whenever the delegates were not required for specific tasks aboard the meeting station, they returned to their ship; and so no one observed them eating or performing any other bodily function. While they were on the station, they were extensively scanned both by physical sensors and a suite of Loroi telepaths. It was determined that they had a fairly ordinary metabolism, which was not Soia-Liron. One notable exception was that their teeth seemed unusually large and savage for an otherwise seemingly highly evolved and physically unimpressive social organism. The Historians actively avoided physical proximity to the Loroi present, and so none were able to get a clear reading, but the delegates seemed disinterested in and not very knowledgeable about the diplomacy in progress; their main concern was looking forward to their next meal upon returning to the ship. The Loroi conclusion was that the Historians had chosen these individuals specifically because they didn’t know anything useful, aware that they would be scanned, instead allowing the constructs to conduct all the business. Perhaps the only significant thing that was learned about their culture through this interaction was that “Historian” is actually a rank or class within their society, rather than their internal name for the race or species, and the live delegates were not of this class.
Very little is known about what the Umiak found during their invasion. Loroi intelligence has only been able to pick up a few hints and fragments of information from prisoner interrogation. The main gist was that the Umiak seem to have been surprised at the relative lack of extensive ultra-tech development compared to what they expected to see on the Historian planets that they occupied. Participants in the invasion had dreaded the expected Historian superiority in weaponry, but in the event they encountered surprisingly little Historian resistance. The Historian civilians had all been completely evacuated beforehand, down to the last hamster (so to speak). The Umiak easily took any system they attacked. Umiak information regarding the eventual Historian counterattack is even more scarce, as it seems likely that few of the Umiak forces involved ever returned to friendly territory.
One of the few times when Loroi were allowed into Historian territory was in 2139 when Loroi fleets were permitted to try to help prevent the isolation of Seren by the Umiak incursion into Historian space. This mission failed in its strategic goal, but it offered a rare opportunity to survey of a number of Historian planets, for close-range scan of Historian territory by Farseers, and for a close-up look of at least part of the Historian military fleet.
The Historian warships were substantially larger and more powerful than the automated vessels that commonly left Historian territory, though few were much larger than a cruiser. Seers were able to confirm that the vessels did have living crews, though these were small for the vessels’ size. There were only a few glimpses of the ships in action against the enemy; the Historian fleets mostly retreated as the Umiak advanced into the interior of their territory. The weapon most observed in use was a powerful tight-beam, long-range, continuous-firing version of the plasma focus.
The few inhabited planets observed appeared to be little more than resource-gathering colonies. The majority of the population had been efficiently evacuated ahead of the enemy advance, with only minimal staff remaining behind to operate the machinery, but the scans of planetwide infrastructure and living facilities suggested that the pre-evacuation population was not very much larger. Like the Umiak, the Loroi were disappointed not to see the expected precursor-scale ultra-tech artifacts of which the Historians’ technology was surely capable.
In addition to surveying the immediate systems, Farseers were able to peer slightly deeper into Historian territory. They did find larger concentrations of Historian population farther spinward of the border, but not in the concentrations that would be expected of other Union races. However, still limited by range and sensitivities, the Farseers were not able to be very specific about the numbers detected, nor rule out larger populations that were still beyond resolvable range. What they did detect, however, was a small population of sentient minds that were clearly different from the Historians.
When asked about this later, the Historian ambassadors explained that this group was known as the Pol, an alien species that was under Historian protection. They refused to answer further questions about this, and the Loroi had more pressing matters to attend to at that time (as they were busy trying to hold the Golim-Tinza Line), but various members of the Union Assembly committee on social and humanitarian issues continued to pester the Historians on this issue, expressing concerns of possible mistreatment. After the end of the Semoset campaign, the Historians finally agreed to allow a small team of Barsam and Pipolsid xenologists and diplomats into Historian territory to observe the Pol for themselves (Loroi were conspicuously not permitted on the team). The researchers were allowed to make no records during the visit, and their official report was subsequently sealed, but they reported to the committee that they saw no evidence of mistreatment. Subsequent rumors indicated that the organisms studied were some kind of intelligent aquatic species, which might or might not be of Soia-Liron biology, and that there were no live Historians present during the interaction.