The Pak : An Alien Race from the Known Space Universe, Modified for Traveller

It was one of my favourite moments in the Traveller game I ran in which the Pak appeared when, as I was describing the creature that their characters could see - a Protector - one of my players recognised it, turned to me and said "You bastard!"

The Pak are a semi-alien race in the Known Space universe of Larry Niven who first appear in the book Protector. They have a stage of life beyond that of a human adult [which is Pak terms is a Breeder], the Protector.

The Protector stage of the Pak lifecycle is an incredibly dangerous life form, a fighting machine, with armour-like skin, super-human strength and super-human intelligence. However, this vast intelligence is directed solely towards the preservation of the bloodline of a given Protector, both by eliminating mutation within it, thus effectively halting Pak evolution, and also eliminating competition from other bloodlines, thus leading to a state of constant war between different bloodlines.

They originate from near the core of the galaxy and are the ancestors of humanity [in the novel Breeders are what is known from the fossil record as Homo habilis], though this fact is not known until humanity encounters a Pak Protector, Phssthpok, who has come to rescue a lost Pak colony that it turns out formed the basis of the human race.

All of this makes the Pak a highly challenging opponent in a roleplaying setting, and is why I adapted them to my own personal Traveller setting.

My Version of the Pak

In my Traveller setting the Pak are not the ancestors of humanity, though they are humanoid. Instead they are an alien race living in an interdicted star system.

They evolved on the very dense moon of a gas giant in their system, which was, at the time, a very hostile place to live with very powerful weather and predators, as well as a high background radiation level due to the radiation belts of the gas giant world.

Originally amphibious largely herbivorous ape-like mammalian creatures living in fairly safe seashore cliff caves, they had always lived in symbiosis with a virus that, at a certain age, transformed Breeders into a more intelligent and powerful neuter Hunter form that was the only form of the species ever to really leave the seashore except in an emergency, as they could handle predators and other dangers.

About six million years ago a minor decrease in solar activity brought on an ice age, in which the planet is still gripped. This resulted in a large drop in sea levels and a rearrangement of climactic zones. This meant that Hunters could not supply enough food to feed the whole tribe, so they were forced to leave the caves to forage and so on. Most groups adopted a nomadic lifestyle with both Hunters and Breeders forced to become tougher and more intelligent to survive.

Unfortunately the change in lifestyle caused a series of mutations in the symbiotic virus, causing many groups and tribes to die out when these caused the Hunter transformation to go wrong, or made the virus hostile to the host. However, in several groups from the same region of their world, the viral mutation brought about a change from Hunter to proto-Protector.

These groups prospered and grew, and as the ice age stabilised, so did the Protector, into its modern form. A side effect of the Protector mutation was a very sensitive sense of smell - though that of the Hunters was already very sensitive - which could detect difference from the norm of a bloodline - i.e. mutations - and differences between bloodlines. This effectively stopped evolution on their world and caused the splintering of Protector and therefore Breeder groups into individual bloodlines with Protectors out only to advance the interests of their own bloodlines where previously Hunters had worked for the whole group.

Strife began almost immediately. Technology and a highly structured society - with the most intelligent Protectors on top - quickly developed to protect and advance the interests of their bloodline, with treachery and alliances of convenience becoming the norm in inter-bloodline relations.

Because of this, since before the start of their recorded history some four million standard years ago, Pak society has been trapped in the same form. Bloodlines continually struggle and war for advantage. Their constant wars lead to cycles of devastation on their world, with equivalent cycles of rebuilding and repopulating their world to the point where the cycle begins again. Obviously this state of affairs has greatly slowed their rate of increase, in terms of both numbers and technology.

Obviously Pak Protectors are very xenophobic, seeing aliens as being more of a threat to their bloodlines even than other Pak.

The Pak have mounted many small slower than light expeditions to nearby star systems over different civilisational cycles, but perhaps fortunately they cannot easily colonise other habitable planets as they need an environment with large quantities of heavy metals to keep alive the virus that initiates and maintains the Protector transformation.

They never invented the Jump Drive. However, long ago a human scout ship jumped into their system and although it was destroyed by the Pak they were able to reconstruct the Jump Drive from the wreckage.

The Protector bloodlines involved leapt out into the stars and only a huge effort by humanity was able to push them back, more by weight of numbers than anything else. At first humanity only destroyed Pak Jump Drive factories, ships and data repositories, but once they knew it existed the Pak were able to reconstruct the Jump Drive from that fact alone. Because of this humanity were forced to nuke the whole planet back almost to the Stone Age to stop their threat, interdicting the entire system to stop the Pak breaking out again.

Since then the Pak have regained technology but not the Jump Drive, and their system has remained heavily interdicted. Pak history remembers what happened but not why, so that they now have a genocidal hatred all aliens.

Because of their very high intelligence Protectors have a very distinctive signature on a Neural Activity Sensor.

The Pak Homeworld

This world is a moon of a large gas giant planet [one which is considerably larger than Jupiter in the Solar System]. This orbits a type G2V star not dissimilar to the Sun. There are four other occupied orbits in its solar system with, going out from the star, a world not unlike Mercury, two asteroid belts, the gas giant and another asteroid belt.

The population includes all three stages of the Pak life cycle; their constant wars and relatively small habitable land area keep the population relatively low. Its atmospheric taint includes industrial chemicals and radioactivity. The planet is still in its ice age, which accounts for the small percentage of free water. It has many radioactive areas. As an interdicted star system their home star system is considered to be a Red Zone.

No animal exists on the Pak homeworld that is not useful to the Pak in some fashion.

Pak Technology

The overall tech level of the Pak is 16. However, their technologies vary greatly in different fields, with their Tech profile being as follows:

Field	TL	Notes
High Common	16
Low Common	9
Energy	15
Computers/Robotics	9	As protectors prefer to rely on their own abilities they use only minimal automation and all Pak ships use the minimum of computers
Environment	16
Communications	11
Medical	10	This is low because protectors are tough, and in combat and so on they usually win or die
Novelty	18
Land Transport	14
Air Transport	14
Water Transport	14
Space Transport	15	Because of their intelligence and lack of need for amenities, Pak ships need half crew, and crew need half space, compared to humans
Heavy Military	18
Personal Military	18

Pak attitudes

As defined in the World Builders' Handbook.

Radical and Enterprising
Expansionistic and Militant
Fragmented and Xenophobic

Protector Personalities and Behaviour

As my version of Protectors match the originals in terms of behaviour, this is largely taken verbatim from the Larry Niven Wiki.

All Protectors recognize their own Breeder bloodline by scent, and are instinctively compelled to act in the best interests of their Breeder relatives (often their own descendants). Pak Protectors will fight among themselves to procure land and resources for their respective Breeder populations, often leading to the violent deaths of entire Pak bloodlines. A Pak Protector with no Breeders to protect will generally stop eating and quickly starve, although some Breeder-less Protectors have avoided this fate by adopting the entire Pak race, and devoting themselves to activities that benefit the species as a whole.

Their minds have been described as having 'diamond' precision, insight, and clarity, while Breeder [human] level thinking is 'fuzzy' by comparison. Because of their vastly increased intelligence, a Protector will always see the best answer to any question for a given set of conditions; as part of this they can generally recreate technologies from having seen demonstrated examples of their effects. If that answer results in an advantage for their Breeder descendants, they will instinctively act upon it. In effect, Protectors have little free will as humans would think of the term.

Consequently, Pak Protectors are by nature xenophobic and warlike, inherently incapable of holding abstract moral principles and ruthless beyond measure towards all Pak who are not their own descendants or - in the case of the most 'broadminded' Protectors, that is, those who adopted the entire Pak species - to members of all other species. Pak Protectors from different bloodlines will only cooperate in a shared goal until one bloodline sees some advantage in betraying the rest, and thus the Pak homeworld is in a constant state of war.

Because of all of this, all Protector bloodlines are governed as fierce meritocracies, with individuals moving and rising within the hierarchy based on their skills and achievements, and also the needs of their bloodline.

Another effect of their great lack of free will is that the Pak have very little in the way of an economy. Breeders do not require one, and Protectors work entirely for the good of their bloodline and so are rewarded in non-financial ways. They do have issues with resources and lack of same, but this is simply part of the overall struggle between bloodlines on their homeworld.

Pak Characters

All Pak, whether Children, Breeders or Protectors, are non-player characters. For the first two groups this is because they are not sentient life forms. For the last it is because they are so physically and mentally powerful as individuals that they would be horribly unbalanced as player characters.

The exact role of Breeders in Pak society is not made clear in the novel. They may simply wander free within the lands of their bloodline, guarded by Protectors, eating and breeding freely until the time comes for them to become Protectors themselves. On the other hand it is possible that they could, as intelligent, semi-sentient creatures, be trained to perform relatively mindless menial tasks such as farming, and so free Protectors for work more suited to them.

Protectors do not have fixed careers [in Traveller terms] as such. Instead, they are placed in roles determined by a combination of their own talents and the needs of their bloodline as determined by their superiors. Thus, although they do have four-year terms via which they gain skills and so on, these are in a single 'career' - Pak Protector. Protector careers can have a military, scientific or leadership focus, but this focus can and will change over time.

The Pak have no bureaucracy or underworld, so they do not have admin or streetwise-type skills, though they could of course learn them if required. They have no art as such and so no artisan skills. They have no spies as they can literally sniff them out. Almost all Protectors will have weapons skills (including Brawling) over and above the general introduction to them that they gain in their first term as a Protector.

Reputation

Pak do not have Social Standing and ranks as such. Breeders do not need and cannot comprehend them. In Protectors they are replaced by Reputation [Rep], a combination of intelligence, creativity and resourcefulness that serves much the same purpose, and determines their place in the hierarchy of the Protectors of their bloodline. This is helped by the fact that Protectors can remember the relationships of far more individuals than humans can.

Reputation is an indication of how widely known a given Protector is, both within and without their bloodline, what they are known for, how much weight will be given to their views and ideas, and how likely they are to be allowed to initiate and control projects and so on. Reputation normally grows over the life of a Protector, and is enhanced when the Protector does something particularly noteworthy.

As an indication of how well known a given Protector is a reputation can be bad or good.

Traveller Statistics

Breeders

The Pak Breeder stage is defined in Traveller terms as follows:

Statistic	Roll	Maximum
Str	2D6	15
Dex	2D6	15
End	2D6	15
Int	1D2	2
Edu	1	1
Rep	0	0

Enlistment

Automatic

Survival

+2 with Strength 8+

Position

Enhanced Reputation

Special Duty

Skills per Term

1D Roll	Skill Gained
1-3	Physical
4	Brawling
5-6	Survival

Re-Enlistment

Automatic

Note that the low Int and Edu of a Breeder greatly limits the skill levels Breeders can acquire. Because they turn into Protectors, Breeders do not suffer the effects of ageing. They also have no Mustering Out benefits.

After 3 terms roll 8+ for the Breeder to feel the urge to eat the virus-infected plant that causes the transformation into a Protector. If they fail this roll they automatically feel this urge at the end of term 4.

Protectors

The transformation to a Protector takes perhaps a week to complete, during which time the Pak is in a coma. Assuming they survive the transformation they wake up ravenous. Once the transformation occurs the statistics of the individual concerned change as follows:

Statistic	Modification	Maximum
Str	+14	30
Dex	+14	30
End	+9	25
Int	+1D+18	30
Edu	+0	35
Rep	+1	15

As part of their transformation the new Protector also acquires natural Jack armour, natural claws, eidetic memory, the ability to speed read, a powerful mental calculation capability, and the ability to recognise Pak of all kinds by smell. This last allows them to tell members of their bloodline from others, and also detect (and eliminate) mutations.

The new Protector then progresses as follows:

Enlistment	5+	The transformation from Breeder to Protector is not always successful; sometimes the Breeder dies
Survival	8+	+1 with Int 25+
Position	-	-
Enhanced Reputation	10+	+1 with Int 25+; this represents that the Protector has done something particularly noteworthy during that term
Special Duty	-	-
Skills per Term (1st Term)	Special	+9 Edu Jack-of-all-Trades-1 All skills at level 0
Skills per Term (Term 2+)	3	Can acquire almost any skills +1 Edu [if doing something; Phssthpok did not become more educated while sitting and piloting his starship for 1200 years!]
Re-Enlistment	-	Automatic

Protectors acquire an extended lifespan, and can live for tens of thousands of Earth years. However, most Protectors die as the direct or indirect result of conflict with other Protectors, so death from old age is almost unknown among them. Being a Protector is not a career that can be left by anything other than death. As such it has no Mustering Out benefits.

An elite Protector will have a lot of ranks in Jack-of-all-Trades. This is partly what makes them so dangerous. They are not just superhuman in ability; they are innately very resourceful [which is represented by their high Jack-of-all-Trades skill]. They will also very likely have a high Reputation.

Under this system the average Pak is perhaps weaker than Phssthpok, the one Protector appearing in the novel. However, logically Phssthpok was a fairly elite Protector, old and with a great deal of experience. Equally logically there will be weak and below-average Protectors, and it is likely that most of them will be eliminated over time by the very nature of Protector society.

Childless Protectors

For each term roll 3D. If 18 is rolled [equating to a roughly 1 in 1000 chance per year] then the bloodline of that Protector has been totally wiped out, or will be wiped out at some point in the future, for example because they have all been rendered sterile by radiation [as happened to Phssthpok in the novel], so that once all Breeders become Protectors they will have no bloodline to protect and so stop eating and die.

If this happens the Protector must roll 12+ on 2D to transfer their loyalty to the Pak race as a whole, DM +1 if Int 25+. Otherwise the Protector loses the will to live/eat and starves to death.

Such Childless Protectors have no bloodline to protect, but must work on some project for the good of the Pak race as a whole. They can continue to advance as for any other Protector. For each term the Childless Protector must roll 11+ to retain the will to live; otherwise they again lose the will to live/eat. However, their Reputation can still rise on a roll of 9+, +1 for Int 25+, the slightly easier chance of this when Childless indicating that the Childless Protector is more likely to be working on some epic project for the good of their species as a whole.

Human Protectors

Should human Protectors be possible, they must transform after 5 or 6 terms [later than for a normal Pak]; if younger than this they will not want to and if older than this they will want to, but if they do will die in the process.

The statistics of Human Protectors change in the same way as Pak ones, but they start from a higher human Int and Edu. Thus their maxima in these are also higher. Human Protectors have a maximum Int of 40 and Edu of 45.

If a Player Character should change to a Protector then that character turns into a Non-Player Character. Protectors are simply not suitable as Player Characters!

Fighting the Pak

Should conflict occur between the Pak and humanity then humanity is in trouble. Big trouble. In a straight fight the Pak will simply win. So if humanity is to survive the playing field must be levelled in some fashion. This is a task best left to the GM, but taking advantage of the relatively small number of Protectors and the rivalries between their various bloodlines may be a way to begin.

Among many other things the Pak might make use of decoy ships or Q ships - captured human ships flown by Pak and possibly armed with TL16+ systems and filled with Protectors. These could land at strategic sites and storm them. They might also use large TL16+ cargo carriers [20000 tons displacement, Jump-6, Manoeuvre-1] to move troops, set up hidden bases and so on.

Any Protectors going out among the stars would bring along manufacturing facilities as well as Breeders in cold sleep - a large portion of a bloodline could leave Pak to find a new home elsewhere, Pak-form worlds and start anew. The cargo holds of at least one ship would be full of the heavy metal compounds they require while at least one more would be full of plant seeds, animals in cold sleep, tree-of-life plants and so on.

They might find a suitable red supergiant star close to some strategic target that is close to becoming unstable and use gamma-ray lasers to cause it to go supernova, damaging electronics for parsecs around...

The Pak and Pak Protectors were invented by Larry Niven and belong to him. They are used here, without permission, for personal game use only and not for profit or commercial gain.