On Wed, 20 Nov 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
There is a middle ground between attacking artifacts and artificers and
keeping them off limits. It's a normal thing to try to steal them, but if
you do it so reckless, that they are destroyed you are a barbarian. IMO
that fits well with the general image of Goa'ulds.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, George Martin came up with a guild/order
of scholars/scribes/doctors who serve a castle and the current lord
of the castle, whoever that is. In theory, that makes them neutral
in petty feuds, for the preservation of civilization and knowledge.
In practice, a conquering lord will distrust the old maester.
Something like that could work too.
I suppose some will have cozy positions on central worlds, enjoying the
fruits of technology, only somewhat less so then the overlords. The
overlords pet engeneer plus assistants would be a template. If you want to
go really cliche, they also research terrible weapons of mass destruction.
Can one "court artificer" with a few henchmen maintain a technical
civilization? How many practitioners do you need to keep a science
rather than rote learning? Can the pet engineers of different Evil
Overlords talk to each other?
Overall the Goa'uld seem to have inherited technology and are barely able
to keep it. Though i suppose important overlords will keep many
technicans.
Yet an other option is, that something more scary then the Goa'uld is
lurking somewhere out there, and there are one or more technological
civilisations, that exchange technology and the services of technological
advisors in exchange for protection. The overlords will likely treat them
well, after all the system lord who treats them worst, is most likely to
loose access to technology first. Conquest or blackmail propably have been
attempted in the past but failed.
Class and caste borders would be good start. If fraternisation between
classes is discouraged, who will tell a peasant about the scientific
method?
Too many castes, and there are too few members of each caste in the
base of each Overlord. How many Jaffa did a typical Goa'uld have?
Agreed.
Still outlying colonies could interface only with troops.
Are the overlords gods who bless the peasants with aqueducts and such, and
attempting to get thoose without them is blasphemy?
Who builds and maintains the infrastructure? If it is the local
tribe under the command of the Evil Overlords, they'll know how
the artifacts were made. And during the construction the locals
can rub ellbows with the EO.
If the workers are ferried in for each project, how do you keep
the workers from mingling with the locals?
Maybe the artificers of the lords are the only ones who can
build awesome arcs and mile-long tunnels, but the miller will
be tempted to improve the dam, just a little.
If the overlord sends prefab parts as special blessings, then the locals
will only know how to assemble them. Trying to replace individual prefab
parts with something produced locally could be considered blasphemy. And
since it likely often does not work at the first try, many locals will see
the wisdom of that.
I was mainly thinking about who is there and what resources do they have.
Settlers who come from a distant more developed place, bring some
equipment, that they can't all produce themselfs yet. They form comparably
small communities. There are natives and outlaws as opponents and propably
rivaling colonial powers as well.
I would have thought that each planet has one ruler. One gate
per world (more would be wasteful of scarce tech) and whoever
controls it has the planet.
Natives can be all over the place. Rival overlords can come by ship for
scouting missions, to take over the place, or to stir up trouble, so
troops are moved there from some other place.
A take over attempt might be a long affair, starting with finding native
allies, who do some of the fighting for you.
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