Vatgrown race of hyperaggressive super soldiers get cut off from their creators and have to form a culture of their own

>How do I make their society interesting and not just a klingon/krogan ripoff?
Take a look at the Fremen or Sardakur from Dune. Perhaps their creators helped them form a culture all their own with the creators at the head. Clans derive from the specific facility they come from, families within those facilities come from their specific vats(I.E. the Chronos Facility specialized in growing larger specimen on average, but they also had vats specifically for different roles and cohorts). Maybe specific vats even grow a leadership class or an individual is chosen early on for additional hormone and gene therapy to instill leadership characteristics into them. Ultimately this race would perhaps seek to emulate or at least honor their creators, or maybe move in the exact opposite direction and villainize and despise them.
>How is the new season? I heard it was even better.
Is it out?

Cravers

thinly veiled ork thread

An interesting idea I saw from another thread was the idea of having several species of biologically created super-soldiers made to fill various roles in terms of logistics and warfare, but after their creators went away they broke down into civil war and each one was left to fend for itself.

So for example, you'd have the hulking 10 foot tall dudes with acid cannons in place of an arm to serve as walking tank/artillery, versus the small race of nimble creatures that can blend into backgrounds like chameleons and serve as scouts. Both are still bred for warfare, but what do they do when they suddenly find themselves without scouts or artillery, respectively? How do the big guys fill the need for more mobile units or intel? How is such a role seen by them in warfare after the long years of being on their own? How do the scouts respond to a threat that simple hit & run tactics can't take out?

Having multiple warlike races that have been bred for it and forced to adapt will help you give them distinctions rather than just making them samurai in space.

Think about the things that make society a society. Think about the art and music they would be drawn to. Even the most aggressive mind, if given the free time brought about by being made free range, will drift to find something creative or some way to be expressive. How does the concept of "individuality" express itself, how does that mean with larger society? They might have started out as manufavtuted war machines, but the moment they're allowed personal autonomy they will begin to develop as individuals.

Start with some individuals and imagine the things they do during "quiet" petsonal time. Think of how they interact when being friendly or bonding. How do they convey history, ideas, and what do they consider important enough to commit to such things. That's the fabric of society. The more "soft" and "personable" things you tuck into the warrior culture, the less stale it will be.

Even if it's a war band with very strict conduct rules, consider how soldiers go to great lengths to customize their gear and dress while "technically" staying within regulations. Or the way they personalize their bunks and personal spaces.

Toss a few ideas around, and tell us what you think of.

Unarmed combat becomes terrifying

In order to function as a society long term they're going to need more than just 'warrior' as roles. I'd think something like makes sense they'd probably have 'follow orders' as a built in feature so a very rigid set of social rules and norms that allow them to function as a society with a very clear hierarchy.
Come to think of it something like feudal Japan would probably fit.

Alternatively you could follow the idea that while they were created for aggression/warfare they still had enough free will and intelligence to recognize that they need alternative behaviors in their current circumstance and as such have meditation or some other similar exercise to suppress/control aggression as a central part of their culture. They know they're just a few violent outbursts from mass infighting and do everything they can to prevent that.

THey rehect violence they were created for and bevome pacifists.

That sounds pretty difficult. A race created to do nothing but kick-ass would likely be dependent and/or addicted to combat. There's probably a few pacifist monks living on mountains that can serve as a shining example of self-control, but the vast majority of the race would have to live with the inborn knowledge of how to beat a man to death with his own spinal column.

Read CJ Cherryh's "40,000 at Gehenna", where the descendents of vat-cloned super-soldiers form fiefdoms based around who has the biggest pet lizard.

Jem'hadar ripoff

They don’t have to be very good at being pacifist.

I'm not 100% certain that you necessarily want your cloned super-soldiers to BE wired to be hyperaggressive. That sounds incredibly inconvenient for the 99% of their time that won't be spent fighting. You'd engineer them to be obedient and to never get bored.

It depends on what kind of super-soldiers you want. Do you want elite commandos, or fire-and-forget brutes that can secure a beachhead?

>Vatgrown
Can they reproduce naturally or are they a single generation? What is their lifespan? Are we seeing the first generation or subsequent ones?

>Super
How? What makes them super soldiers. Are they they hulk or are they super smart and tactical? Both? Something else?

>Soldiers
Is the war still going on? Is the enemy still there and a threat?

>Cut off
How? Are the creators killed or did they simply lose communication? Do the soldiers know which it is?

>Have to form a Culture
Why? Why wouldn't they just strike out as isolationists or as random hunting parties?

What if you just want goons who will patrol, build roads, and stand guard in places? Also, mainly dick around on Hurry Up And Wait? You know, what most soldiers actually spend their time doing?

I actually like this idea. Maybe men are allowed into the "core worlds" to breed only if they bring an impressive enough bounty.

Why would you make super soldiers for that? If you make super soldiers, they're meant to be thrown into the meat grinder and come out on top. Just use grunts for that.

If you want a full-on clone army, then make some low-grade grunts that are pumped out constantly, with variants based on their combat specialty. Pump assault units to the brim with adrenaline, throw some enhanced eyeballs onto your marksmen, and the odd Ubermensch to command, inspire, and awe.

I like this idea too.
>How did the Peace Accords go?
>Very well. It was three whole weeks before I bludgeoned the other diplomats to death with an end table.
>A new record! Very good!

How would one procure this many teeth?

youtube.com/watch?v=rR7ktkOEeFw

exo-squad.wikia.com/wiki/Neosapien

>vatgrown race of hyperaggressive super soldiers get cut off from their creators and have to form a culture of their own
Make them good at the the other bits of war. Give them an innate grasp of movement and logistics which make them peerless officers and fighter pilots. Their written language looks like QR codes and is based on geometric transformations. They aren't ANGRY aggressive but they have the same kind of pumped-up carelessness that psychopaths exhibit. You can't cow one with a gun. You can't cow one with yelling. You can't really intimidate them at all. All you can do is promise retribution and give up the element of surprise.
As for culture, they'd have to have a sense of deathless devotion to an ideal or objective to bind them together. Perhaps their politics look like debate club, but the loser gets their head blown off on live TV.
They organise into corporate/military units aligned around common goals and dependant on unity of purpose. They aren't actually that much more scary than other soldiers one on one, but they are panic-inducing when you see them move on a battlemap. A battle against them should feel like a 1v1 knife fight in a pitch dark basement, only they're wearing NVGs.

deviant acts.

does the imperium of man have a vast stockpile of teef for paying off orc freebooters and the like? Or would the skull aesthetic not work without their teeth?

Work as a dentist. They have a quota of healthy teeth they can "accidentally" remove every year before they get investigated for malpractice.

Teef can not be stockpiled owing to their quick degradation. This acts as incentive in the Orkonomy, according to ancient splatbook

Aren't freebootas paid in gold and shiny things as they're the only orks who see value in such stuff?

Hyperaggressive super soldiers? Could be a few things.

>Honour culture, based on intricate rules and duels to help control their violent urges
>As born soldiers, they adopt class system based on a pseudo-military hierarchy where questioning the orders of those born into the rank above you is treason
>Kraterocracy where the strongest warrior leads their band, the strongest squad leads the army, and the strongest army leads the nation
>"Mercenary Diaspora" - they can't get along with each other so no real culture forms, instead becoming mercenaries fighting alone or in small bands for other cultures/societies. Instead of their own culture they adopt aspects of the cultures they fight for/against

Could be a combination of all the above

Maybe they are knowledgeable of their origins and inherent violence and seek to overcome it. Meditation and calming incense are necessary.

You know the Imperium's obsession with the human form? That, but all the real humans are extinct.
The super soldiers are desperately looking for like, cryogenically frozen humans, or colony ships, but so far no dice.

Grind everything.

They don't. They just travel the universe on an endless military campaign due to having automated factory ships and cloning plants.

fallout super mutants?

If they still have the means to create more vatgrown people, have it be a militaristic technocracy with the scientists running everything.

If they no longer have the means to spawn more of themselves, then I say either go beehive style where there's one fertile woman who rules over all or some kind of harem religion where they always take women prisoner. If it's high magic, you could have them also take men prisoner and use cursed items of gender change.

The imperium sometimes vat grows teeth to pay orks. They one time wrecked an ork economy this way.

Check out the cravers from endless space.

That's actually a pretty good example. There's the Hive, and there's food, in their culture. They're not so much evil as focused entirely on the success of their civilization as a whole. While they do enslave and eat other cultures, a Craver removed from the Hive and inserted into another culture brings all the dedication and biomechanical perfection of his species to his new task.

>any deviation would be considered an insult and the offended party (potentially everyone) would likely exact bloody revenge.
Literally every highly structured and codified culture ever makes allowances for outsides because they aren't fucking retarded.

Would a hyper-aggressive super soldier culture make allowances for outsiders?
Maybe they're too busy expanding to care about the opinions of lesser beings, or maybe everyone stays out of their way and the weird cut-off planet of maniacs.

Stage 1: Total collapse into anarchy and bloodshed. All forms of original organization totally fail as the chain of command is severed at the head with the loss of the creator species. Technology is lost, ancient devices are coveted and treasured, but misunderstood, and quickly succumb to damage as they are fought over. The population drops drastically until casual encounters between individuals is relatively rare and leaders are short lived barbarians rising and falling at the end of a gun and presiding over short and equally brutal reigns consisting of little more than a small village at most.

Stage 2: Assuming they are capable of natural reproduction, the population drops to a level that the basic unit can live together without interference by others. Depending on their level of social intelligence, that could be anything from a homestead of a single family (plus slaves, in all likelihood) to a great clan consisting of hundreds, likely built in some semblance of the hierarchy of their ancient command structure such as battalions or squads. This new agrarian society knows nothing of the ancient technology of their creators, and revere the remaining relics as mythical items of great religious significance. Those born from the lineage of those trained as engineers likely misinterpret the training of maintenance as religious rituals, and guard their knowledge closely to keep what power they may have, making them valued, and more likely tolerated members of any clan's leadership caste.

cont.

Check out Fragged Empire it's a sci-fi setting about a bunch of engineered races adjusting in the first decades after their designers destroyed eachother in wars.

Apparently it has pretty good mechanics for gunfights, too. But that's just what I've heard

Stage 3: Slowly, over the course of many generations, possibly hundreds of years or more, the population grows again, this time upon a stable foundation that does not know or miss what was lost by their abandonment. Any knowledge of the creator species will be considered myth and legend, possibly forming some manner of Original Sin to explain why they were cast away from their makers, or possibly built around a more Luciferian self-reliance that shuns their "gods" as dead or otherwise useless villains to be despised for their actions, and surpassed through loyalty and service to the clan and family, and in time, the state. At this stage, nations slowly form, likely centered around major points of strategic and tactical importance. Depending on how much "instinct" the warrior race holds vs how much they were trained, these locations could hold significance similar to the concept of leylines, with temples and altars built to superficially resemble weapon emplacements or bunkers built for both practical protection and as mystical places of reverence.

Stage 4: The continued expansion of the growing nation-states, and their continual technological progression leads to inevitable world war. Through either shaky coalition or outright conquest, genocide, or enslavement, the world is united under the banner of the state that is the most efficient at warfare, the most brutal in combat, and the most advanced in technology, as well as the most stable at statecraft. This war functions as a kind of cultural evolutionary pressure, tempering whatever society this world has made until only the most capable manage to survive to create a space program. The wars likely continue well into their modern era, and if it does not result in atomic holocaust of planet-killing proportions, the victor lays claim to any new colonies across the local star system in addition to the planet itself.

cont.

Stage 5: The newly solidified quasi-fascist state utilizes the origin myth of the Creator Species who left the ancient technological relics behind as a unifying cultural influence to rally the masses and funnel them into space, settling the local system in order to extract its resources. The state forms a kind of central church through which all relics are collected, researched, and reverse engineered while the ritualistic nature of maintenance is maintained out of respect for tradition and to maintain state control of any advanced technology. Starships are recovered from what were once considered ruins, and the space age is rapidly accelerated as they begin to go forth out among the stars.

The new stability of their culture is likely maintained through a kind of Confucius style philosophy where efficiency, loyalty, and self-reliance are valued above all else.Honor is likely valued, but not to the degree of forgoing legitimate war strategy. Deception is similarly valued, but not to the point of creating needless conflict. Diplomacy is likely something that is tried first, if only to accomplish a bloodless victory through intimidation, bravado, or deception before conflict is considered, and when it is considered, it is waged as efficiently as possible regardless of how dishonorable, so long as the goal of the conflict is itself not destroyed or lost in the process.

cont.

Just becusse they're hyper aggressive doesn't mean they have to give into that.

perhaps a practice of extreme self control emerged, originally just so the first generation could avoid tearing each other apart.
Since then, self control is a primary factor in a persons self worth in this culture.
If everyone is a strong violent soldier, how do you set yourself apart?
Willpower and feats of the mind, not the body.

Wouldn't a race of supersoldiers be incredibly disciplined? Seems like the ability to follow orders is more important than aggression

Intelligence is valued along with raw strength and speed, and it would not be uncommon for an individual to be able to list off quotes of ancient generals and be knowledgeable in both tactics and philosophy, which would likely be seen as strongly interconnected. The means to fight, the capacity to fight, and the reason to fight are all seen as critical components to warfare, and without any one component conflict would be avoided. Emotions would likely be muted, hardly present to the standards of most natural species due to their engineered status, but with a passion for finding and understanding ones own personal truth to life and an ability to appreciate beauty in the strangest of things and places. Their art would likely exemplify their biological forms, providing mythical hero figures in their art and literature to live up to and strive to overcome. Individuals seek a constant self-improvement, challenging themselves to surpass others in a fierce but often bloodless cycle of in-fighting through which the best prevail.

To outsiders, it would often be difficult to detect their warrior nature hidden under a stern, but otherwise reasonable demeanor, but there would be no mistaking it on closer inspection, as every aspect of their society is built to become better at every aspect of conflict, and viewing every moment of life to be itself a form of battle in some way or another, from a handshake to a conversation to a first date between courting youth. They hold passion for everything they do, but rarely show it to outsiders, but it drives them well beyond where any other individual would quit or drop dead. Their art celebrates these passion. Nothing is meaningless, but its meaning must be made for yourself, and cannot be taught or given, and finding this reason to live when their creators have abandoned them to die is what makes them struggle to be the greatest at everything they strive to do.

came here to post this, YAK DECULTURE

They could be the shock troops who are more on the aggressive end of the spectrum while still able to follow orders from a recognised superior. Possibly have to be dosed up in transit to remain docile, but without the creators ....

Competitive + Grandiose

They aren't a successful warrior race because they love battle or are particularly suited for it; they're successful because they intrinsically see the idea of another force being superior to their power as unacceptable.

Read starship troopers, now imagine that that is very liberal compared to what you will get

Actually you don't want your super soldiers to be aggressive all the time since you're probably not fighting wars all the time. If there's some sort of chemical trigger for it, their recreational drugs might be dangerous.

...

The really tricky part of soldiering is the dying part. Particularly getting people who will stick around and keep fighting in a disciplined and organized way while people around them are getting killed.

If you're making super-soldiers you don't necessarily want hyper aggressive. You want "If they're holding a position, you can wipe 3/4s of these bastards out and the survivors will shore up their fortification with their freind's corpses and keep holding the goddamn hill".

Thinking about it, you might actually wind up with a very very egalitarian society. As Machiavelli pointed out: "deaths, which are deliberately inflicted with a resolved and desperate courage, cannot be avoided by princes, because any one who does not fear to die can inflict them." Any time a large enough group of these people get motivated enough, they'll immediately mob up and go for whatever's pissing them off. Which makes is kind of hard to run an autocracy/oligarchy/whatever. So most of the time the society looks like what American socialists think Scandinavia is like. This very egalitarian socialist welfare state type deal. Except with more casual fights to the death.

Trick is that phase shift. The entire society is still militarized, just in reserve, and can shift to total war in an instant. Which is a problem if you get into a situation where society starts dividing itself along whatever lines. So they're very careful about making sure they keep things unified.

Hmm: First thing is shocking amounts of violence.
Second thing is a surprisingly egalitarian socialist democracy.
Third thing is deep deep conformity, god help you if you're perceived as 'stirring up trouble'.

Make them meek pacifists

Not quite meek.
wiki.endless-space.com/minor-factions/remnant

Well, lets talk about supersoldiers and how different they would be from a normal social being.
They wouldn't enjoy war, that would be a bad idea. They wouldn't be very "humanizing" to put it like that, so that they don't form clades outside their armies or even care about killing their enemies, which would also mean their dopamine reward for killing would be lower since their brain needs less protection from shock of killing another. Probably complex, as race might be a problem in a multispecies imperium and signs or uniform can be faked.

They wouldn't be about the war but simply the act of following orders and serving. They would be rather apathetic against most things outside physical fitness and their leaders demands. To be their best in a battle situation, they not only need to be intelligent but also creative, meaning that when they're "off duty" and they're not simply programmed to shut down into hibernation mode they would most likely create interesting but in the end relatively in-line art, being not made for having differentiating ideas and values.

If cut free from their masters they would not do so well, being a slave race breed for a specific reason. Their slowness to accept others as sentient or even as them outside pre-programmed propaganda. Probably leading to no or a very slow to come agriculture, animals usually hunted with no remorse or simply beaten into attempted slaves.
Societal they would be servile to the people they recognize as their betters or that remind them of their former leaders, this would also mean that the leader would be eager to serve. They would perhaps develop a functional communist regime.
In person, they'd be a quiet, contained and boring race. Though incredibly intelligent and capable of social behavior many races would be put off by their almost creepy distancing from those different and some might even antagonize them as they feel little regard or even acknowledge the rights of those they do not recognize.

just copy pic related

So what would a trader of this culture do when a merchant from a more "civilized" country (ones with silk clothes and more art and such) acted like he was better than they were and made a terrible offer, trying to buy their furs and tools with shiny baubles and fancy trash? I feel like they would just set fire to his goods and eject him from the land.

Polite refusal followed by progressive escalation if the trader insisted. Depending on how different the civilized trader, they may also go for a trade for furs/tools. "Okay, you're going to give me a sack of those colored glass beads, who's nearest equivalent I'd have to hike across the fucking continent and spend a year doing horrible things to snails to get for this... fur? This fur that grows on the slow moving lumpy river vermin? Pfffftt... fucking deal pal." It's when market pricing asymmetries can no longer be profitably exploited by both sides that there's room for conflict.

Now, once there is a conflict, the risk of escalating into a war is when the civilized country thinks: "A show of superior force will bring them into line". Well, it will bring them into line. Just not the one you were hoping for. It's more a skirmish line they're sniping from along that ridge.

Sharks are covered in teeth and they are pretty effective at killing shit.

I always forget that shiny beads are actually valuable to people who can't easily get them.

...

You'll survive through combat with little more than just the skin of your teeth

This and Starship troopers, somehow....

And your bite is worse than your bark.

They form a contemplative society who examine their purpose in the world where they can choose a path other than war
what does it mean to be alive when you were born tools
what does it mean to be free by an accident.

"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it" - Publilius Syrus

And yep. It's always important to remember that we live in a very weird place in history, where you can mostly get most stuff everywhere.

>TFW one of 500 people ever in game

But really user, Carvers.

Presumably, many of them would be used to working together and thus there really wouldn't be much actual conflict between them.

Store it in milk.

(a pity they are a bitch to play)
this

The Johns don't really have a culture beyond being soldiers/warriors though, just a deep-set duty towards rebuilding the Empire. Except for the Free Johns, but who knows what happened to them. Seriously, how come the only free John left was Old Man Prophet?

>>vatgrown race of hyperaggressive super soldiers get cut off from their creators and have to form a culture of their own

Have them be contemplative and trench dwelling.