Sauron Supermen?

[Castor Troy]

I have the two Motie books (Mote in God's Eye and the sequel to it) and I was wondering what were the page numbers where they describe the Sauron Supermen and what happened during the Secession Wars. Also, are there any other books that talk about this? Any information on the Sauron supermen, on the Sauron, and what happened during the Secession Wars?

Thanks.

[xammer99]

You get a bit more about the Saurons in the various War World books.

[Castor Troy]

Problem is, they're pretty rare books.

[Stofsk]

This might help, Google for more info.

It's been awhile since I read any of it, but IIRC the Sauron Superman were nasty fuckers.

[Castor Troy]

Thanks for the link, Stofsk. Lots of information in there on the war.

[Stofsk]

I remember stumbling onto that link a long time ago, I think through Babtech actually (yes, I'm sure of it), as like you I've been interested in the Mote universe but never found the books that made up the 'future history' of it. In any case, I'm reading through it now as well. Thanks for actually asking for it, because I wouldn't have returned to it without being reminded.

[Imperial Overlord]

The Sauron Supermen survive on the planet Haven in the War World series. They have superfast clotting, can outrun a horse, IR vision, and superhuman speed and reflexes. The misleadingly named Sauron Cyborgs have further genetic modifications and biomodifications. The Cyborgs are designed for calculation and killing. The Saurons society is best described as an authoritarian technocracy with a high emphasis placed on rationalism. They are portrayed in a mixed light in the War World series.

The description of Mote Warrior caste being superior to Sauron Supermen in Mote in God's Eye isn't convincing IMHO. Of course, that was done before any real details of the Saurons emerged and by a character had no experience with them.

[Diamedes]

If you're interested in the CoDominium universe, the Falkenberk's Legion and Go Tell the Spartans stories have bee released in one volume called the Prince. Otherwise everything is written in the War World series and King David's Spaceship, although you may find an older version called a Spaceship for the King.

Pretty much every trip to a used bookstore is me looking for War World or There Will Be War collections.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Ah the Sauron Supermen.... Yeah.

Besides the WarWorld books, you can find a Sauron Superman short story in either N-Space or Playgrounds of the Mind (I forget which) titled "Brenda". Fun fact: All Sauron Supermen have huge 'fros to protect their heads from impacts. They're like the Harlem Globetrotters with guns.

Oh and the "There Will Be War" collections are some of the best Scifi anthologies of all time. Gotta get them all!

[Diamedes]

Yeah, but if you read "Face of the Enemy" by Don Hawthorne, First Rank Deittinger is described as having straight, white hair. Granted, he's a model over fifty years old compared to Brenda Curtis' being in her twenties maybe. Or it could be that ground troops have the battlefro's, and vessel ranks don't. On the other hand, Cyborg Rank Koln is described as having lank hair, and he was one of the last models of true Sauron Supermen, a Cyborg monster that defined the imperial nightmare. Again though, Cyborgs ran around in full armor.

Or course, a lot of this is just the fact that Pournelle is letting other people wander his playground, and Niven can have rather whimsical ideas. I recommend the Hawthorne story if you can find it though, it's a good example of the Saurons in action, and the beginning of the fall of the Empire.

"Brenda" is actually in the same collection, Vol. II: Death's Head Rebellion.

"Brenda" was pretty nifty though and you can see her and Terry Kakumee's descendents, another Terry Kakumee, in the Gripping Hand, the mechanic on the Hecate, the solar sailer, who accompanied the Motie warriors into battle.

Hard to say if that can be used to compare Sauron Supermen to Motie Warriors, because Terry was descended from maybe six children and 200 orphans that passed through Curtis' ranch, and rather clannishly interbred. I wouldn't say he kept up all that well, but either way, Brenda wasn't a Cyborg.

[Castor Troy]

A couple of questions.

What weapons did the cyborgs have?

How would they do in a fight against Motie warriors?

[Diamedes]

Short term, they may well anhiliate the Moties. They share certain advantages over baseline humans, such as having more flexible minds as regards to 3D, but overall the Saurons aren't all that much smarter, and were killed by underestimating the Empire and being too predictable.

Depending on the time period, the Sauron's would have Langston fields, the Moties wouldn't. In that scenario, the Saurons would just hellblaze the entire Mote system without qualm. They killed billions at St. Ekaterina and other worlds, and the description of the sacking of Sauron itself is close to a base delta zero operation, though it should be noted that Sauron is still survivable during the Second Empire (Midshipman Staley is a Sauron of original descent as I recall), so it wasn't quite Base Delta Zero, but magma did show through. Also the Second Empire hadn't caught up to the First Empire yet, so the Saurons would probably possess the capability described at the end of the Mote in God's Eye, and could sterilize the system. And they would have the balls to do it. But they might not. They might view the Moties as an opportunity to reach their full potential in constant war.

Long term they could well lose. The Sauron supermen still used regular gestation and didn't breed any faster. They can force evolution, but would that be enough. Plus the Moties had an awful lot of weapon technology from every age preserved, which could prove nasty.

As for actual weapons, probably blasters, near starship trooper level armor (mecha like) for the ground troopers. The ships used Langston fields (always my favorite exampe of shields in SF), had heavy lasers and H-bomb torpedoes. The only definate ground tactic I can recall is that the starships would nuke the target before the sent the Pathfinders in, who bore a badge with a mushroom cloud shaped like a skull, and thus the name Death's Heads for the Cyborgs, and about a hundred Cyborgs were a match for the entire forces on Tanith.

The only definate thing I can say the Saurons have on Moties is jump disorentiation. The Saurons recover significantly faster than baseline humans (the cattle), and humans recover much faster (and less traumatically) then Moties.

Overall, I think the tide would go against the Saurons. But who knows, in that time Sauron supermen might become a part of the Motie spread, a sort of general purpose soldier that can think outside the box and do other tasks.

Or we end up in zoos as a reserve meat animal.

[Gil Hamilton]

Midshipman Staley was of Sauron descent, but I'm almost certain that not all Saurons were the Sauron Supermen. I recall from The Mote In God's Eye that there were never that many Supermen to begin with, their numbers were in the thousands, but those thousands were such bastards that it caused the first Empire to begin to tank (I also recall they weren't the only reason that the first Empire tanked).

[Diamedes]

Midshipman Staley was of Sauron descent, but I'm almost certain that not all Saurons were the Sauron Supermen. I recall from The Mote In God's Eye that there were never that many Supermen to begin with, their numbers were in the thousands, but those thousands were such bastards that it caused the first Empire to begin to tank (I also recall they weren't the only reason that the first Empire tanked).

I think the Empire used the term Supermen, and that the term just meant that the group was, or considered itself, above the rest of humanity, in a Nietzsche sort of way. All Saurons had genetic engineering, but of course, a gaussian distribution means that even genetic engineering will result in a few that aren't above baseline. For example, Squad Leader Gav in The Gates of Paradise wasn't very different from human, and only reason he was even seeing action was that Sauron was desperate. Most passed for humans, which suprised the Imperials after thirty years of war. But not the cyborgs. There was a whole planet with millions, if not hundreds of millions of citizens, all the subject of eugenics. Not billions though. No planet approached the population of earth after the Great Patriotic Wars.

The Saurons just called themselves the Soldier Race, as I recall, not Supermen. You also have to recall that much of the general knowledge about the Sauron Supermen is mixed with myth. The War World books are clearer.

The real monsters of course, were the Cyborgs. When the supermen are described that is what is described, and their numbers where small in comparison, a Sauron special forces. They probably form the strongest impression on Imperial history.

And no, they weren't the only reason the Empire tanked. They were the steel backbone in the Secession movement, but a series of Claimants to the Imperial Throne also helped. The sheer ferocity of the fighting hurt also, once the Imperials dedicated themselves to total destruction of Sauron, whatever the cost.

On reflection, the similarities between the CoDominium universe and Andromeda are striking, aside from the fact that Andromeda sucks.

[Imperial Overlord]

Sauron Superman is a generic term for genetically modified Saurons (all of them). Soldiers are slightly different from other castes, although overwhelmingly represented on Haven (tech caste in last War World novel). Cyborgs were never present in large numbers. The Fomoria carried a brigade of troops with four times the normal cyborg compliment, which meant one hundred cyborgs.

As for their loss in the War of Succession, it was also caused by the First Empire of Man's willingness to destroy itself in order to destroy the Saurons. The Empire collapsed in the after math due to the casualties its fleet sustained and the rest of the Council of Succession succeeded. It was a mutual failure to understand the enemy,

As for the superiority comment, it was based on the performance of the Moties warriors in Mote in God's Eye, which was described by one character as being superior to Saurons. IMO, it was about equal to that of Sauron Soldiers.

The last War World novel takes place about the same time as first contact with the Moties. The Saurons don't even have total control of Haven at that point and certainly couldn't handle a space faring power. Based on the Sigrid's and Sharku's personalities the Saurons are likely to come to some kind of accomadation with either New Finland or the Ha Bandari. The Saurons maybe eugenics based racists, but they aren't Draka.

[Petrosjko]

To expand a bit, the Saurons didn't call themselves supermen, they just called themselves Sauron.

The soldier caste accordingly called themselves Soldiers, and on Haven they were the majority of Saurons in order to keep pace with unrelenting hostility of the world. They were so much a majority of the species that Sharku is somewhat surprised to meet a non-soldier caste Sauron the duology, who was distinctive by still being genetically engineered, but not a trained soldier. Apparently they kept a small non-soldier caste squirreled away at the Citadel.

(It also follows that the majority of offspring off a warship would be soldier caste in any event.)

As for the cyborgs, they were portrayed as being as far ahead of the common Soldier as a Soldier was to the baseline human. However, their inbred nature was very linear, because as a general rule they did not think outside the box. During their time on Haven, the cyborgs began plotting a coup against Diettinger, but their commander betrayed the movement and sided with Diettinger because he projected that cyborg control of the refuge would lead to the eventual death of the species via attrition. As he put it, they would win every battle they got into, until there were no more cyborgs left.

Until Sharku seized control of the Citadel, that was the direction they were heading. Furthermore, the dissemination of their genes among the local population combined brutal Darwinistic selection was dragging the normal folk of Haven in their direction, qualitatively.

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm calling them "Sauron Supermen" because that's what they are how they are refered to in "The Mote in God's Eye". They call them cyborgs too at one point.

However, the Mote in God's Eye makes it clear that there weren't that many Supermen. Only in the thousands. This is what freaked them out about the Moties, because they represented "an entire race of Sauron Supermen".

[Bob the Gunslinger]

So how would these supermen compare to unarmored 40k Space Marines?

[Imperial Overlord]

I'm calling them "Sauron Supermen" because that's what they are how they are refered to in "The Mote in God's Eye". They call them cyborgs too at one point.

However, the Mote in God's Eye makes it clear that there weren't that many Supermen. Only in the thousands. This is what freaked them out about the Moties, because they represented "an entire race of Sauron Supermen".

Yes, lets base our opinion of Saurons on a few lines on Mote in God's Eye where they don't even appear instead of whole books in which they are major characters.


As for Space Marines, they Saurons don't the black carapace, suspended animation organs, or acid glands. They do have grossly superior reflexes to an ordinary human while Space Marines are merely faster. Cyborgs have back up organs and are even more enhanced than Soldiers. I would say a Space Marine is probably superior to Soldier (but slower), but inferior to Cyborg.

[Jalinth]

A major problem with Sauron "Cyborgs" is apparently the entire birthing process. The survival rate until birth was low - they apparently used high-tech methods for child birth before they had to run away to Haven.

Also, Haven was a pretty brutal place to begin with - and became worse after it began losing contact with the Empire (the Saurons were just the nail in the coffin). The tone of the books was that the local inhabitants who survived were becoming generally hardier - and were able to compete with the Saurons.

[Imperial Overlord]

Saurons are genetically modified to become Cyborgs sometime in utero. It does complicate gestation.

The Empire of Man is a terrible source for knowledge on Saurons. The propaganda was so bad that after Captain April was captured by EVA marines and taken aboard Fomoria, he asks First Rank Diettenger why a human is in command of Saurons. The captain of an Imperial battlecruiser believes that Saurons are obviously inhuman.

[Castor Troy]

So, how powerful were the Sauron compared to the Empire space warfare wise?

How did their ships compare?

[Diamedes]

During what can be taken as Captain Adderly of the Canada's musings the Formoria is described as:

The Talon-class Sauron heavy crusier Formoria was still out there, a ship as fearsome as the reputation of her commander. Sauron heavy cruisers were designed to be all-purpose vessels, carrying fighters, ground troops, and far more armament than their Imperial Navy counterparts. They were an Admiral's dream, the first ships in human history truly able to "outfight what they couldn't outrun and outrun what they couldn't outfight."

Saunders, commander of the Konigsberg in "The Face of the Enemy," informs Cassardi and Adderly that:

The Formoria is a heavy cruiser by their rating, a heavy battlecruiser by ours; she outguns Canada and either of our light cruisers; but she canna'[sic] outgun all three ships and the Chinthes t'boot[sic].

The Canada was a battlecruiser, the 3 Chinthes overgunned destroyers, along with the light cruisers Konigsberg and Strela.

It should be noted that the Formoria survived the battle with them, proving Saunders wrong, destroying a Chinthe, hulling the Konigsberg, and taking the Canada as a prize with its Marines, as well as dropping a load of Soldiers and Cyborgs on the Tanith spaceport to seize some borloi.

It should be noted the Dietinger was a masterful commander though, never losing a battle that he commanded, for what that's worth.

Over all, Sauron military might outscored the 1st Empire.

No battle plan survives contact with a Sauron.

And the Empire thought that when Sauron was still loyal.[/quote]

[Gil Hamilton]

Yes, lets base our opinion of Saurons on a few lines on Mote in God's Eye where they don't even appear instead of whole books in which they are major characters.

"The Mote in God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand" are the only novels set in that universe actually written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle together. Since when can later books that aren't even written by the creators of the universe override facts established in the original book which launched the damn setting in the first place?

[Imperial Overlord]

First, its Pournelle's universe. Niven cowrote a few of the books. Sterling, who is a co-writer of the Sauron books and two of the Mercenary series, is also a cowriter of the War World novels. That makes Stirling a cowriter of four novels set in the universe and several short stories versus Niven's one short story and two co written novels that barely mention Saurons. Since when does a throw away line from a character who is ignorant of the subject matter override a cowriter who deals extensively the central matter?

It doesn't.