lessons from Eox

[Ashbourne]

Got thinking how the Elebrians chose undeath as a way to survive a planarity-wide disaster, might be an interesting approach to doing a generation ship, just without the need for generations. Would help preserve the original culture. Wouldn't have generations that never knew anything other than just space travel. The biggest problem would likely be boredom.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

Can undead dream of thaumaturgic herd animals?

[Ashbourne]

about as well as androids dream of electric sheep, but it would be just dreaming there's no listing for thaumaturgic herd animals of electric sheep in any of the alien archives. Not too hard to make an electric sheep in Starfinder with the right skills. Just googled to see if any are available currently, the only thing that came up was Electric Sheep Shears, which makes me wonder if sheep dream of Electric Sheep Shears...
likely only in the summer in the wither might give them nightmares.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

There are regular herd animals which you can flavor as electric ones if you wish.

[Ashbourne]

More than just flavor you can make them glow too.
7 Genetically Modified Animals That Glow in the Dark.

[Leon Aquilla]

A generation ship with no generations (and no ability to reproduce) kind of misses the point. That being said, I believe HOV2 does say flat out that Elves were using generation ships while other races were struggling with the basics of space flight.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

Elves were amongst the first space-faring species. My favorite Starfinder Pathfinder 1e adventure, Doom Comes to Dustpawn deals with a crashed spaceship filled with elves...

[Metaphysician]

Leon Aquilla wrote:

A generation ship with no generations (and no ability to reproduce) kind of misses the point. That being said, I believe HOV2 does say flat out that Elves were using generation ships while other races were struggling with the basics of space flight.

Makes sense to me, given that for elves, any given space trip will take many fewer generations than for most other species. In fact, you could easily have space ships that are not so much "generation ships" as "long term residence ships with support for raising kids". 500 years is enough time that the original elven crew will probably all still be alive on arrival, after all. Its just also long enough that the crew will have given up roughly half their total lifespan, so they probably will *need* a cadre of young elves once they arrive.

[Perpdepog]

Why not send out a generation ship with an undead crew, and the materials to clone a new generation once they get to wherever they're going?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I mean, they'd probably be like "Why bother cloning a new generation if we're already unliving forever? F*** them kids!"

[Zo!]

Eoxian scientists on looking at cloning materials. "Oh, look! They gave us a way to make snacks!"

[Mad Dog Mike]

Zo! wrote:

Eoxian scientists on looking at cloning materials. "Oh, look! They gave us a way to make snacks!"

Given how many undead need to feed off the living, it actually makes a disturbing amount of sense to have a live "food" population for an undead non-FTL ship. Heck, can make it an actual generation ship if you animate useful dead living beings to replace those crew you lose to accidents or similar. Depending on circumstances a "normal" generation ship might also very well become an undead ship if some sort of undeath happens to make its way into enough crew for them to take over and enslave the living ones. Would definitely make a great adventure setting to stumble onto. Or take a page from the old movie Lifeforce (NSFW trailer) about the chaos of an undead "sleeper" ship being discovered near an inhabited world.