--------------------------                   (c) Rowan 'Sumaleth' Crawford
Zumlin: a background story
--------------------------


The mission briefing listed a rather vague, "assess situation", leaving Zumlin
wondering exactly what he was supposed to do. Perhaps the lack in clarity
was simply trying to imply a relaxed set of rules on this particular mission,
suggesting that the council were possibly a little worried about what might
evolve on the Strogg homeworld.

The station located on a planet in the Strogg system had reported a fleet of
huge battleships coming out of warp in an imposing pattern, mostly situated
directly above the main Strogg city. The reports suggested that the ships were
of reasonable technology from an unknown species, both points were sure to have
caused more than a little concern in the council. The Strogg had been a known
enemy for nearly 10 thousand generations now and so a certain comfort had
developed on the Zargraan homeworld, a comfort that was easily upset when a new,
powerful race was introduced into the equilibrium.

The Zargraan homeworld was located on the 3rd of 5 planets orbiting the closest
sun to the Stroggs solar system, a locale that was both beneficial to a point,
but often annoying to the Zargraan race.

Being the nearest star always meant the Stroggs would explore there first
after they developed the warp drive - a technology the Strogg had discovered
first - and chances are that the Stroggs really hadn't expected to find anyone
living there, let alone a race whos evolution, both spiritually and in technology,
was well in advance of the Stroggs. They were more than a little unprepared. Even
so, their greed, and need, for fresh body parts was so great that little thought was
given, with a full on attack launched soon after the discovery was made.

The Zargraan were totally surprise bythe ensuring onslaught yet, after a little
confusion, they were able to convincingly destroy the Strogg army to within an inch of
their life. A lesson that would have gone completely wasted had the Zargraan been
an offensive race, but luckily for the Strogg, the Zargraan were far more passive
than their fighting skills would suggest.

The Strogg had limped back to Stroggos to lick some fairly deep wounds, but that
encounter was forever to change the way the Zargraans structured their civilisation.
Their aim, above all else, was for a peaceful existance with the universe, but it
was now apparent the universe had little say in the predisposition of the lifeforms
inhabiting it's vast shell.

The biggest change the encounter forced apon the peaceful Zargraan race was the
introduction of the warrior caste. Originally a highly benevolent race, even more
so than the Strogg, the Zargraans had taken their entire civilisation to the brink
of total annihilation, culminating in a massive war covering the entire surface of
the planet. The devastation of loosing more than 97% of the population inside
a single orbit lead to the collapse of the existing governing structure, and the
system which built up in it's place, over many generations, was intent on creating
a far different existance.

Zumlin owed his own existance to the Strogg, for without the upset in the Zargraan
way of life, he would never have been born. After the final civilian war, the Zargraan
had worked diligently in mapping out their entire DNA structure, intent on
identifying the elements which gave Zargraan their benevolent traits. Their worked
payed off, and only 3 generations after the war ended they had began the process
of removing those genes from their population entirely.

A process was never found that would allow removal of those traits from living beings,
and so the process was one of simple genocide; every fetal Zargraan was duely tested
for the gene, and if the gene was found the fetus was aborted.

The Strogg incident had shown a need to reassess the laws and look at the possibility
of allowing the survival of a limited number of psychotically unstable Zargraans in
the form of a well controlled warrior caste. A group whos sole purpose was to keep
an eye on the Strogg and keep the Zargraan race free from external hostilities.

Zumlin was proud of his role in the Zargraan structure, and understood the purpose
of the warrior caste. Their existance was not a comfortable one orginally, but
no one again questioned their need after the Strogg launched a second offensive
against the Zargraan homeworld, not even 200 generations after the initial attack.

The Stroggs were far more prepared this time and while the Zargraan would still
have been little match for the Stroggs, the existance of the warrior caste created
such massive devastation for the Stroggs that there had been no further attacks
more more than 9 thousand generations. The Zargraan had quickly moved the focus of
the war from their homeworld, back to Stroggos where the resulting mass destruction
had left the Stroggs more than a little frightened of their nearest neighbours.
Frightening the Strogg would have once been considered a laughable idea, but the
Zargraan had achieved it.

The Zargraan monitoring of Stroggos was never questioned by the Strogg, they just
accepted it; the Zargraan had twice shown no interest in conquest and so the Strogg
simply got on with their own plans. There were lots of stars in the sky, afterall.

For 9 thousand generations the Zargraan witnessed countless Strogg missions head
out into the stars, all but a handful of times returning with the body parts
they required to keep their culture alive. There were a lot of angry alien races
out there now, a situation that left the Zargraan with a sense of unease. Sooner
or later the Strogg would surely find a race with both more powerful weapons, and
a more benevolent attitude. The Strogg would lead them back here, and the Zargraan
homeworld was so close...

But the Stroggs had developed into a fierce race with power that few distant races
were able to put up more than even a token fight. The Strogg life was built entirely
apon the need for war, or more clearly, bodyparts, a fact which lead to frightening
advances in armorment, but the Zargraan enjoyed a view of the Strogg development
others lacked which allowed them to always be three steps ahead. They had no
delusions - the Strogg would try again one day, it was inevitable, so eternal
vigilance was compulsory.

The Zargraan outposts had seen, first hand, two alien attacks on the Strogg's own
homeworld, obvious signs the Strogg weren't out making friends on their journeys.
The first was early in the Strogg's war development, and while the Strogg were
far too strong for their arachnid-like adversaries, the war was long and heavily
damaging on the planet itself.

The Stroggs were perhaps lucky for this encounter since, while they were able to
comfortably win the struggle, they were plainly shown the problems with their
own defense systems. They were setup as well as possible to cope with the Zargraanian
style of offense, but other races worked differently. Very differently. Changes
were needed.

The resulting system of planet based "big guns" was the first of the more than 200
revisions they have seen since. The second Stroggos attack lasted little more than
a planet rotation, the attacking force picked out of orbit one by one by the big
guns. The Zargraans watched intently, knowing that a purely orbit based assult had
little hope of making an impact, but they didn't interfere. It if didn't effect them,
they were happy to let the situation find it's own resolution.

It had been a long time since the Strogg returned basically empty handed. Their force
had grown so strong since the original Zargraan assult that they were picking off
alien races basically at will.

But they had recently returned, this time not only without with a full bounty, but
in what appeared to be at least a partial retreat. A sign that they come up against
a force almost equal to their own, or perhaps they simply understimated their prey.
Either way, the Zargraan felt it important to find out. Just in case.

They had barely begun intiating spy activities when their questions were answered
in full as a fleet of heavily armored battleships appeared in orbit around Stroggos.
A decent technology, showing a distinct lack of experience on the designers behalf,
yet at the same time proving the race to be highly capable in many areas.

The Zargraans sat back and watched, interested in how the attack would progress,
but always more than a little worried about this new race the Stroggs had dragged
back to this part of the universe.

It initially looked like they would be launching an orbit attack, with thousands of
bombs dropped onto the now heavily fortified Strogg cities. The Zargraans began
guessing how long the attackers would survive, but it didn't take long to realise
that there was more thought gone into the attack plan than original observation had
suggested. Someone had done their research here.

There was only the one massive drop at which point the battleships quickly disappeared
into the characteristic distortion of warp travel. They had probably gone just far
enough away that they would be ready to return when the time was right.

The bombs didn't explode on impact, suggesting that they were instead individual
capsules holding a single soldier. A clever tactic really, since shuttling down groups
at a time would have been easy cannon fodder for the Stroggs, whereas thousands
of small high velocity targets were all but untouchable by the Strogg defenses. They
had built cities strong enough to weather bombing, but had overlooked the possibly
of a landing force "bombed" onto the planet. Notes were taken.

Zumlin sat strapped into his craft, along with three others from the warrior caste
spy division. A short flight would find them on Stroggos where they were to observe
the war first hand and evalute the attacking force. That is, to "assess" the
"situation".