Cairn
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The Cairn live on the world they call Vair; a mysterious world of endless forests and woodlands, Vair is the fourth planet in the Visium System. None of Visium's other planets an support humanoid life.
Large predators on Vair are rare but nonetheless dangerous: They hunt by tracking the faint energy signatures of their victims' brains. Vairite animal life evolved psionic powers early in its evolution. Even Vair's plankton is capable of reacting with the mental energy of organisms around it in a rudimentary way.
Only a tiny minority of Vairite species learned to communicate through sound. Instead of the calls and cries typical of most planets' fauna, Vairite animals send simple, mental messages to one another when they wish to mate, warn of approaching danger, or signal the location of food. Vairite forests overwhelm visitors with their eerie silence.
History
The Cairn evolved from the silent, psionic animals of Vair. Where the sapient species of other planets took their first steps toward intelligence when their hominid forebears developed spoken language, stimulating the enlargement of their brains, the proto-Cairn developed their minds when they became the first animals to mentally transmit complex images instead of simple instinctual cues. Staggering quantities of brainpower were required to summon up and receive detailed images.
The Cairn not only evolved much more quickly than hominids elsewhere, but experienced extreme rapid social and technological development thereafter. Although Cairn do not maintain a written history - or use any kind of writing at all for that matter - their collective memories are long and accurate.
They can correctly state that they were non-sentient forest-crawling apes a mere two thousand years ago (the comparable development in the human species took hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years). They developed harmonious, cooperative horticultural societies mere generations after becoming sapient. A hundred years later, they lived in cities. Their Bronze Age came a hundred years after that. Their Iron Age occurred a mere generation after the Bronze Age. They developed steam power three hundred years later.
The Cairns' telepathic access to one another's minds not only allowed good ideas to spread almost instantaneously through the planet's entire population, but also protected them from the violence and warfare that typically accompanies a civilization's early development. They began their development with a sense of unity that enveloped the whole species; they never formed the exclusive tribal units that, in other cultures, fight one another for resources and developing techniques and technologies for warfare. The concept of harmful struggle between Cairn had never even occurred to them.
Their fall from innocence occurred fourteen hundred years ago. Their nascent Industrial Revolution was derailed when a deranged and still little-understood individual named Rakwin fostered the Viral Images, a series of mental pictures so horrible that the act of receiving them was as traumatic to brain tissue as a brutal physical beating. Victims of the images became as hateful and angry as Rakwin, suffering a compulsion to spread them to other minds.
Warlike tribes formed, each claiming inspiration from one or another of the unspeakable viral images. They battled one another and preyed on the unaffected. Cairn savagery was all the more intense for its delayed introduction; it was more an expression of madness than of amoral self-interest.
The ferocity of the Viral Image Wars burned itself out when the entire population of the planet was reduced to a few thousand individuals. An innovator called Wusna developed mental disciplines to protect the mind from harmful images, whether they came from another person or from the darkest corners of one's own subconscious. Wusna even learned to heal those already affected. As her positive images spread, Rakwin's destructive ones were suppressed.
Cairn culture returned to progress. The population grew. Rapid technological progress resumed. A thousand years ago, the Cairn developed warp drive technology and began to explore the stars. When they encountered other sapient species, however, they were unable to communicate with them. Invariably, these other races spoke through sounds instead of images. They recorded their thoughts with strange squiggles, rather than simply remembering them. Even worse, many of them seemed to suffer from symptoms of viral image infection; Cairn vessels suffered attacks on more than one occasion. Deciding they were truly alone in the universe, the Cairn packed up their starships and retired to their isolated, sparsely populated world to pronounce space exploration a momentarily interesting, but ultimately futile, dead end.
In 2365, the U.S.S. Okinawa initiated first contact with the Cairn on behalf of the Federation, after an eager-to-please ensign performed an unusually thorough series of sensor sweeps, discovering the disused warp engines still in operation at a museum facility. Communication was difficult, but not impossible, due to the presence on the Okinawa of two telepathic officers, a Betazoid and a Vulcan. Intermittent and frustrating contacts continued for five years; nonetheless, the Cairn applied for Federation membership in 2370. It was granted shortly thereafter, leaving the Cairn and Federation with the difficult challenge of integrating their means of communication to allow each side to reap maximum benefits from their relationship.
Culture
Cairn society is young and vital, hungry for knowledge and development. They value innovation over all. An individual who conceives a new image that proves useful can expect to be remembered for all eternity. Everyone knows what Dairo, the inventor of the kiln, looked like; they can call his image to mind as easily as they can summon up the images of their immediate family. Everyone can call up the first, fuzzy imaginary image of the kiln Dairo dreamed up nineteen hundred years ago, as well as the subsequent kiln designs he and his friends developed until they'd perfected their technique. All young Cairn are brought up with the desire to add their own deathless images to the collective memory of their people.
Although eager to take part in the interchange of ideas, goods, and technologies that comes with Federation membership, the Cairn are used to being isolated. They remain leery about contact with outsiders, and many folks are prepared to be disappointed; a few worry about another disaster like the Viral Image crisis.
The Cairn recognize only two social units: the kinship circle, and the people as a whole. A kinship circle is an extended family, including relations by marriage. Each kinship circle maintains one or more residences; the average number is three to four. Members of the circle move freely from one location to another. Members of the family are obligated to help one another. They make decisions as a group, by consensus. Family togetherness is highly desirable; the Cairn find it easier to achieve than many other species. It is unthinkable to get married, come of age, or be laid to rest without one's entire kinship circle present.
The naturally harmonious Cairan are governed by a participatory democracy in which referendums are commonplace. Votes consist of the passing of mental images to a designated registrar in each kinship circle, who then passes them along to a community registrar, who in turn takes them to the central council of electors. Bitter controversies are almost unknown in Cairn politics.
Maques, the leader of the delegation that negotiated Cairn membership in the UFP, is now its representative on the Federation Council.
Physiology and Psychology
Physiologically, Cairn are unremarkable humanoids. Bony protrusions on both temples house their larger-than-average brains, which contain large areas for storing and transmitting visual images.
Psychologically, Cairn differ significantly from most humanoids. Because they don't use language, they don't think in abstractions. The phrases "to be or not to be, that is the question" or "we hold these truths to be self-evident" simply wouldn't occur to a Cairn. Without the ability to communicate abstract concepts, they don't understand philosophy, theology, or a host of other -ologies. If you can't see it, experience it, or remember it, it might as well not exist. Social deviance is extremely rare among the Cairn. It's hard to conceal your feelings when you communicate with images. Troubled people tend to reveal themselves through the darkness of their images and are provided with help, guidance, and support before they do anything harmful. Cairn find it hard to understand harmful behavior in others; they can understand it only as madness. Cairn like to act quickly and to seize on new ideas. They have excellent memories.
Reference(s)
- Isaacs, Ross A., et al. Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG Players Guide, Culver City, CA: Last Unicorn Games, 1999.