Context: Destroying Alderaan was unprovoked and cartoonishly evil. The CA blew up an unpopulated planet after a long war against the Morat Supremacy since the latter refused to surrender even though they had lost. With an explicit threat of "surrender now!" to get the MS high command to surrender. The Rebel Alliance was also a group of individuals with disparate goals. Destroying of the Empire was a common objective they shared. The Morat are arranged in military units and in a military unit you do whatever your superior officers say. If your superiors say that your side has surrendered unconditionally then you surrender unconditionally as well. Except, the CA in no way oppresses the MS. The only two conditions they gave the MS were, "go fight our enemies" (which the MS was a-okay with), and, "the CA has the final say if we say something." They skipped over the whole "build us an AI," since the Morats have lost a lot of technological advancements due to their constant wars. The CA gave the MS access to tech they never had before in order to be more efficient soldiers. The MS was largely terrestrially bound before they encountered the CA.
You don't think being pressed into military servitude for an invader that you lost a war to after they blew up one of your planets counts as being oppressed??? Also, the Morat Supremacy was not terrestrially bound or suffering from lack of technological development. They were already a multi system conquering interplanetary species when they encountered the EI.
For Morats? No. They're soldiers if their superiors say "jump" they just jump as high as they can since their superior never specified a limit. I fully expect there to had been some resentment in the beginning. And then they found out that the CA gave them endless enemies to fight that they'd never have been able to reach without their help. And the endless civil wars stopped since there was a new boss in town. And other than those two things it was pretty much the same. The MS is self-governing. In large parts, the MS decides what the MS wants to do. The CA just slips in a few orders once in a while about what it wants to see on a galactic scale. For example, "go here and fight." The nearest comparison I can think of is WW2. When Germany officially surrender the Vermatch stopped all fighting as soon as they were told. The only part of the German army that kept fighting was the SS units. And even the Vermatch helped the allies with fighting those. The MS are happy being told to fight someone, the alternative is fighting themselves. The MS is a subtle as a hammer to the face and wielded with just about the same delicacy. The CA in no way oppresses the MS as the MS is self-governing and the MS tells them to do things they would do anyway if they had the means.
Except, you know, there are lore excerpts that say the Morats have a separatist feeling and that the CA does limit their technological access to avoid a possible rebellion. It's in both HSN3 and the RPG. They are consumatte soldiers, true, but they are also highly aggressive and independent. Sure, a Morat secession wouldn't be clean cut and perfect, but it is a possibility and something that has been brought up in official lore a couple times.
Not to thread necro, but the Kyosot entry has even more evidence of a eventual Morat succession: "Nonetheless, the Kyosot are well aware of the nature of their own people, and they know that, at some point, a new civil war will break out, pitting Morat against Morat. Perhaps it will be an internal strife, or maybe a war to secede from the Ur Hegemony, with some Morat abiding by the principle of the rule of the strongest, which is the EI, and some others rebelling against it. In any case, the Kyosot will be there, ready to strike down any Morat worthy of their lethal blows, which they have perfected on every alien species the Morat Aggression Force has come across. These are the Kyosot, the mercy of a quick death."
Given the Morarts nature and the self-serving tendencies of the Shasvastii, the only troops the EI can really rely on are its own batroids and probably the Umbra, hence why in bits of the lore it mentions how it has numerous secret batroid farms scattered about the galaxy. The slightly patchy nature of the Combined Army just gives CB and players some narrative scope which is good. Some sort of Morat or Shas uprising could be a useful narrative tool to put a spanner in the EIs works when CB can't put off their advance any longer in the ongoing story.
Morat uprising resulting in at least part of them breaking free of EI domination Humanity encountering unaligned Shasvastii splinter faction which split from the main population before it met CA Parts of Tohaa and Sygmaa societies rebelling against their respective rulers and forming a joint faction The ideas are there.
Honestly, I find slave uprising or 'the cool aliens rebel and team up with the humans' kind of trite. Western culture is filled with these ideals and themes and the point of fiction is to subvert from time to time. l hope the MAF stays in service to the CA and they keep the slaves down personally.
I can see your point, and you're right that alien civilization gives storytellers an opportunity to explore a different set of ideas. I'm attached to the idea of Tohaa/Sygmaa faction, though, because both are underutilized right now.
So the Kyosot are what...? Unaffiliated Loner Morats who are only interested in killing and perfecting their combat skills?
Also, has anyone got the book to see if there is fluff for the Rindak? Dying to know if it's a robot, a cyborg, etc.
That's not my take. They're the remnants of a secret society that believed their enemies deserved an honorable death instead of slavery. They also think an rebellion against the EI or a Morat civil war is inevitable. You can find the full fluff entry in the product listing on CB's site.
Picked up the book from my local DHL office today. They're cyborgs Started off as essentially a fire and rescue unit at a navy base. When the base was attacked they not only managed to fight fires and rescue people from damaged out destroyed buildings, but they also took the fight to the enemy (they're still Morats after all) and managed to defend an armoury containing some top secret maguffins. After this Rindak teams were formed all across the Morat Supremacy as combat search and rescue teams, as the demands of their job got harder they turned to cybernetic augmentation to fulfil the needs of their roles. Now Rindak are the most heavily 'borged out of the Morats, to ensure they're always at peak performance. A Rindak can never be caught short without his armour or strength enhancements because they're part of him.
Also, the TAG-Raid Morat prospector is part of a search & rescue team, he appears to have cybernetic implants along his arms, plus the "wrecker" arms mounted to his back. I'm going to say it was intended as Rindak, much like the Nomad engineer is clearly a Monstrucker and the hacker is clearly a Wardriver.
