Basically, since I watched Crest of the Stars & Banner of the Stars, I’d been thinking about how I’d incorporate the Abh into the various Star Trek RPGs. After a bunch of thought, I’ve figured out some of how to do it… and I commissioned some art to go with it from Kimberly Odessa! I’ll be focusing on the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures rules – for this post, and I’ll do write-ups for Decipher Trek and LUG Trek later, since I have the books for those as well.

The Abh

Homeworld: Lakfakalle (Massive space habitat – they have no home planet per-se)

Home Region: The Humankind Empire Abh (empire in name only) is located around the nexus of Federation Space, the Romulan Neutral Zone, and the Klingon Neutral Zone.

Eras: TOS era onward.

History

The Humankind Empire Abh (though they have shifted to a constitutional monarchy on entrance to the Federation), began when a group of ultra-Nationalist Japanese genetic engineers, fleeing Earth towards the latter days of the Eugenic Wars, had their sleeper ship pass through a wormhole and arrive in habitable star system near (though they didn’t know at the time), an area that was in the path of the slowly expanding Romulan and Klingon empires. As the settlement did not have warp travel, the colonists genetically engineered what was, basically, intended to be a servant race, with long lifespans and various other genetic traits that they felt would be conductive to extended time spent in space, exploring the surrounding starsystems. A group of these explorers chose to declare independence, and ended up in conflict with their creators, nearly leading to their creator’s destruction. They ended up sparing them, which once their creators rebuilt, and both sides managed to develop a form of FTL drive involving subspace travel, leading the two to come into conflict – their creators becoming increasingly both isolationist and expansionist (particularly once they later made contact with three other worlds settled by escaping Eugenics Wars genetic engineers and warlords, forming the Four Nations Alliance) – and exceedingly xenophobic, and the explorer race – now calling themselves the Abh, taking a paternalist view of lifeforms living on planets, while maintaining an existence exclusively on space habitats.

The Federation got involved when a Constitution Class starship ended up in the middle of a conflict between an Abh vessel and a ship from the Alliance. In one of the great misunderstandings and miscommunications of history, the crew of the Allience vessel mistook the Federation starship’s Vulcan helmsman as an Abh and opened fire, before withdrawing. The Alliance later ended up declaring war on the United Federation of Planets without even knowing that they were headquartered on Earth. This – plus both nations having the strategic location in between the Federation, the Romulans, and the Klingons (all of whom, through blind luck, they’d been completely unaware of for centuries, and vice versa) – lead to the Federation making overtures to the Abh, with them making the necessary political changes needed for Federation membership. While the Abh historically had rejected all alliance offers,

With the Abh’s affinity towards historical Japanese political structures, the transition to a democracy modeled on a mixture of the Japanese Taisho-era and post World War II constitution, with a General Assembly modeled on the historical Diet, followed. By the time of the Dominion War, the Abh were full Federation members, and the Alliance had more or less moved to total political and military irrelevance.

Mechanics

Attributes

+1 Control, +1 Insight or Presence, +1 to an attribute of your choice.

Trait

Abh. Due to their history of genetic engineering to thrive in space, Abh maintain orientation in microgravity – they always know how they are oriented in relation to everything else in their environment.

Talents

The Character receives access to the following talents.

Eyes of the Abh

Requirement: Abh, or Gamemaster’s Permission

Abh, when angered or really looking for a fight, can show an unnerving appearance. The difficulty for a task to intimidate an opponent or to use Presence to get them to back down is reduced by 1.

Abh Piloting Interface

Requirement: Abh

The Abh Alpha is a headpiece that interfaces with the unique sensory organ on their forehead to provide additional feedback. All Abh wear this and, prior to contact with the Federation, it included a connection to an Abh vessel’s sensor systems, allowing them to understand their ship’s position in space as if the ship was an extension of their Body. Since the Abh joined the Federation and started serving on Starfleet vessels, some Abh have elected to use modified Alphas that can interact with a starship’s computer system to receive the same level of sensor data, without needing a physical link with the console. Reduce the difficulty of starship piloting checks by 1 for a specific culture’s vessels (Federation, Klingon, Ferengi, Cardassian, etc.). On receiving an Arc Milestone, the player may choose to add 1 additional culture’s vessels to the headpiece.

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays