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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16283
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:27 pm Post subject: Aliens from D6 Space |
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Since there doesn't appear to be a general topic discussing WEG's various alien species (of which there are several of interest), I figured I'd start one, on account of something interesting I discovered...
In D6 Space (See D6 Space Aliens, pg. 19), the Barathax species is described as a "feline species that maintains a reputation for cruel domination of 'lesser' aliens, an active slave trade, [and] a caste system revering nobles, warriors and spies."
The Clone Wars (see Episode 4.04: Slaves of the Republic) took the WEG species Zygerrians (which weren't described in WEG material beyond being slavers) and made them a feline race ruled by a monarchy who were "well-known for its long history of violence, war, and slavery, which the Zygerrians viewed as a natural order of life."
While the impression that Disney is now copying homework that they didn't pay for first is irksome, the Barathax could be a useful template for GMs looking to include Zygerrians into their campaign, complete with D6 stats.
Just thought I'd put that out there. If you have thoughts on this or any of the other alien races from the D6 Space series, toss your hat in the ring.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10407
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2022 1:56 am Post subject: Re: "Zygerrians" |
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I often search Google to do research for something Star Wars and get the Rancor Pit in the results. Tonight a search for another "D6 Space Aliens" species lead me to this post which I must have missed when it was first posted...
| CRMcNeill wrote: | ...something interesting I discovered...
The Clone Wars (see Episode 4.04: Slaves of the Republic) took the WEG species Zygerrians (which weren't described in WEG material beyond being slavers) and made them a feline race ruled by a monarchy who were "well-known for its long history of violence, war, and slavery, which the Zygerrians viewed as a natural order of life."
While the impression that Disney is now copying homework that they didn't pay for first is irksome, the Barathax could be a useful template for GMs looking to include Zygerrians into their campaign, complete with D6 stats. |
A minor point first: While "Zygerrians" as the name of a slaver people did originate with WEG, I wouldn't call it a "WEG species" because, like you indicated, the few WEG references were fluff-only mentions without any species details (no images and no stats even).
More importantly, the species as they appeared in TCW were only vaguely feline. The main animals that actually inspired their design were coyotes, which are canines. While it is still possible that they may have been inspired by the D6 Space Aliens feline slaver species Barathax, I don't think there's any real evidence supporting Disney copying something they should have paid for.
I do agree that a GM definitely could still use the Barathax as a template for incorporating the Zygerrians into your game.
On a personal note, I can't stand the cartoon appearance of the species (like so many other characters in Star Wars animation). Based on that alone, I could very easily say the species doesn't even exist in my SWU. But there has been some FFG RPG art that I like (here and here). The Canon version of Zygerrians could exist in my SWU if they looked like that, but I wouldn't use the adjective "feline" to describe them.
The less animal-like version of the species that first appeared in The Clone Wars comic book series (2008-09) was the original appearance given to the species. I like the WotC RPG art for them (here and here). They could exist too. Being completely Legends, I would give them the misspelled version of the name that appeared in all four WEG mentions after the original, "Zygerian" (only one "r"). The two species could be from the same star system.
Perhaps the Legends version were once slaves of the Canon version of Zygerrians, but the Legend version rose up and won their freedom long ago, then ended up becoming slavers themselves. Maybe the two species have a treaty with designated territories.
The WotC art of the Legends version looks a bit more human but they still do not look like they could be natural evolutionary offshoots of humanity, so maybe they are a genetically engineered near-human species, like how I envision Zabrak. Maybe the Legends version are a genetic hybrid of the Canon Zygerrians and Humans. Maybe the two species have a single slaver syndicate and there are just two different kinds of Zygerrians that are a part of it.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10407
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2022 2:15 am Post subject: Re: Aliens from D6 Space |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | Since there doesn't appear to be a general topic discussing WEG's various alien species (of which there are several of interest), I figured I'd start one...
In D6 Space (See D6 Space Aliens, pg. 19), the Barathax species is described as a "feline species that maintains a reputation for cruel domination of 'lesser' aliens, an active slave trade, [and] a caste system revering nobles, warriors and spies." |
Versions of most D6 Space and D6 Space Aliens species do exist in my SWU, but they have mostly only appeared in my game as unimportant NPCs. The Barathax are one of them, being one of the many evolutionary offshoots of my homebrew feline species.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | If you have thoughts on this or any of the other alien races from the D6 Space series, toss your hat in the ring. |
I'm currently working on an adaptation of the Mareens (intelligent fish operating humanoid bio-mechanical exoskeletons) to be a PC species. The stat block was very complex and it took a lot of work to write up, but that is mostly done. The damage rules (based on Shard rules) are mostly done, but need some final revisions. I still need to do the fluff write-up. To do that I've got to transcribe the text from the PDF first, and that will take some effort since the PDF in the Library and elsewhere on the web are poorly OCRed. Also, the original capsule in D6 Space Aliens is poorly written so I feel compelled to re-write a lot of it.
...
It's funny that I've seen some complaining on various corners of the internet about the D6 Space Aliens PDF. I'm the one that scanned every page of it and created the original PDF for OpenD6 all those years ago, which back then was actually even worse than what they are complaining about. Pages were crooked, and they were all images of text only with no actual text in the file at all. It's the best I could do. I still have the physical copy of the book that I ruined to make the PDF (I bought a replacement for my collection and the ruined one is my reading copy–It's right beside me as I type this). Some unknown person along the way took my original and ran it through a better application to straighten the pages and OCR a lot of the text. I wish the text was better on the OCR job too, but I am thankful for what we have because it is better than nothing (my original version).
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