[BRIEF NOTE] The Hivers
Sep. 7th, 2005 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldOne of the most interesting races in the Traveller RPG system are the Hivers, a race of unisexual radially symmetrical hexapods which have managed to forge a substantial interstellar empire.
Aficionados of the system will know that the Hivers, as a species, are renowned for their manipulations, their open efforts to try to manipulate other species and civilizations into doing their bidding. Remarkably, the Hivers have managed to get away with this; the innate cuteness of generous mute ambulatory starfish, it seems, is the clincher. Even apart from the potential astropolitical implications for the Hive Federation were it to be discovered that its dominant species was trying to dominate all civilized space, there is still the important question of motive. Why do the Hivers position everything they do in terms of manipulations?
It turns out that it's all a consequence of their evolutionary history. The various human species in the Traveller universe, like almost all of the other major and minor sophont species, evolved intelligence as social individuals, as entities which cared for their young and built ever more efficient group structures to maximize their survival instincts. The Hivers, in contrast, develop from larvae abandoned by their parents for the first year of their existence, left to struggle on their own. In other species, intelligence was particularly useful for entire populations; for the Hivers, intelligence was useful for individuals facing the extreme pressures of their first year of life. Intelligence among the early Hivers developed as a problem-solving skill for specific situations, and even among the modern Hivers intelligence needed to be focused on a problem in order to remain active. Hence the conspiracy-mongering.
If only all alien races in science fiction were as well thought-out.
Aficionados of the system will know that the Hivers, as a species, are renowned for their manipulations, their open efforts to try to manipulate other species and civilizations into doing their bidding. Remarkably, the Hivers have managed to get away with this; the innate cuteness of generous mute ambulatory starfish, it seems, is the clincher. Even apart from the potential astropolitical implications for the Hive Federation were it to be discovered that its dominant species was trying to dominate all civilized space, there is still the important question of motive. Why do the Hivers position everything they do in terms of manipulations?
It turns out that it's all a consequence of their evolutionary history. The various human species in the Traveller universe, like almost all of the other major and minor sophont species, evolved intelligence as social individuals, as entities which cared for their young and built ever more efficient group structures to maximize their survival instincts. The Hivers, in contrast, develop from larvae abandoned by their parents for the first year of their existence, left to struggle on their own. In other species, intelligence was particularly useful for entire populations; for the Hivers, intelligence was useful for individuals facing the extreme pressures of their first year of life. Intelligence among the early Hivers developed as a problem-solving skill for specific situations, and even among the modern Hivers intelligence needed to be focused on a problem in order to remain active. Hence the conspiracy-mongering.
If only all alien races in science fiction were as well thought-out.
