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Klingon Honour
feiqa
Member Posts: 2,410 Arc User
So I have been thinking.
There seems to be a divergence in the honour showed by Klingons between the KDF line and the Federation line. Let me give my thoughts then give yours and show me where I may be wrong.
<spoilers>
KDF:
From the tutorial you go to bring down your coward of a captain. (Honestly this was so bad I wanted to knife the betrayer as a player.) This is honourable, the man betrayed his empire and worst his crew.
When dealing with a rivalry of two houses, we find one working hard and another hiring foreign assassins. The list of crimes by the second house climbs till the council discomendates the entire house. This is honourable as they violated the codes of honour so egregiously it was inexcusable.
In a time of war and facing your enemy, a ship is boarded. The crew fights back but falls to your warrior skills. The weak captain surrenders information needed for a glorious battle to occur and you leave. Now the ship is broken battered and probably will not last long on its own. The crew fought valiantly so you destroy her, granting those on board death at the hands of an enemy. This is honourable as it shows respect for the crew. They died as warriors in battle. Had they been towed away they would have been shown as too weak to be worthy of killing.
Summation: KDF side, Honourable.
Fed:
Tutorial a ship in distress is answered by a crew of cadets and attacked. Their final teacher taken and them told to surrender. Then a mighty Negh'var stalks a damaged old frigate manned now only by cadets. This is dishonourable. When the fekl'ri attack qo'nos one of the points of contention is they assaulted bekks that were not full warriors yet. So this marauding captain hunted students violated code by battling those who should not yet be in battle.
Captain over P'jem. Works to intercept an undine, when asked for his proof attacks. And he had his men kill the abbot of a monastery while holding the others prisoner. This is a grey area to me. The need to hunt the undine is valid. But even the Klingon council needs more proof than a warrior's word. Good intent, poor execution.
Captain battling undine warship. Spoken to briefly, but grants his enemy the right to withdraw as they fought alongside one another against a common foe. Honourable as he gives respect where it was earned and a hope for the battle between warriors in the future.
B'vat, Oh this one can be a thread by itself. His assault on the peace talks violates council directive. (How can peace talks be in play if the council did not authorize them?)
Weapons plant. . . The base is legitimate, the question is the hiring of unaffiliated scientists under false pretenses then killing them when they are through within the bounds of honour?
The doomsday machine, this divided even some of his warriors. Is it right to send a beast to destroy the homes of civilians? Were this a manned ship and battling the mightiest foes I would find nothing questionable. But a drone to eat the worlds of the enemy. Genesis without the habitable world when it is done. Dishonourable.
Time travel. . . Had he merely gone back and removed the stain of augment dishonor he would have statues across qo'nos. But by trying to remake the past he willfully wipes the honour of millions of warriors.
So how is it from the view from the KDF most warriors are honourable, yet from the federation most are not?
There seems to be a divergence in the honour showed by Klingons between the KDF line and the Federation line. Let me give my thoughts then give yours and show me where I may be wrong.
<spoilers>
KDF:
From the tutorial you go to bring down your coward of a captain. (Honestly this was so bad I wanted to knife the betrayer as a player.) This is honourable, the man betrayed his empire and worst his crew.
When dealing with a rivalry of two houses, we find one working hard and another hiring foreign assassins. The list of crimes by the second house climbs till the council discomendates the entire house. This is honourable as they violated the codes of honour so egregiously it was inexcusable.
In a time of war and facing your enemy, a ship is boarded. The crew fights back but falls to your warrior skills. The weak captain surrenders information needed for a glorious battle to occur and you leave. Now the ship is broken battered and probably will not last long on its own. The crew fought valiantly so you destroy her, granting those on board death at the hands of an enemy. This is honourable as it shows respect for the crew. They died as warriors in battle. Had they been towed away they would have been shown as too weak to be worthy of killing.
Summation: KDF side, Honourable.
Fed:
Tutorial a ship in distress is answered by a crew of cadets and attacked. Their final teacher taken and them told to surrender. Then a mighty Negh'var stalks a damaged old frigate manned now only by cadets. This is dishonourable. When the fekl'ri attack qo'nos one of the points of contention is they assaulted bekks that were not full warriors yet. So this marauding captain hunted students violated code by battling those who should not yet be in battle.
Captain over P'jem. Works to intercept an undine, when asked for his proof attacks. And he had his men kill the abbot of a monastery while holding the others prisoner. This is a grey area to me. The need to hunt the undine is valid. But even the Klingon council needs more proof than a warrior's word. Good intent, poor execution.
Captain battling undine warship. Spoken to briefly, but grants his enemy the right to withdraw as they fought alongside one another against a common foe. Honourable as he gives respect where it was earned and a hope for the battle between warriors in the future.
B'vat, Oh this one can be a thread by itself. His assault on the peace talks violates council directive. (How can peace talks be in play if the council did not authorize them?)
Weapons plant. . . The base is legitimate, the question is the hiring of unaffiliated scientists under false pretenses then killing them when they are through within the bounds of honour?
The doomsday machine, this divided even some of his warriors. Is it right to send a beast to destroy the homes of civilians? Were this a manned ship and battling the mightiest foes I would find nothing questionable. But a drone to eat the worlds of the enemy. Genesis without the habitable world when it is done. Dishonourable.
Time travel. . . Had he merely gone back and removed the stain of augment dishonor he would have statues across qo'nos. But by trying to remake the past he willfully wipes the honour of millions of warriors.
So how is it from the view from the KDF most warriors are honourable, yet from the federation most are not?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Post edited by feiqa on
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From KDF side Klingon must be written in a favorable way, to make easier for player to identify with them.
From Fed side the requirement is the opposite. Klingons must retain some semblance of honor to not contradict canon too much, but otherwise they must be also a suitably hated enemy.
It's not very different than it was in shows and movies.
Meedacthunist has the right of it: the "other side" from each side is written in such a way that reinforces the beliefs of YOUR side, whatever they may be.
To Feds, Klingons are belligerent, illogical, hot-headed, and at a stretch, even hypocritical. To the less open-minded members of Starfleet, the dominant Klingon stereotype isn't Worf as much as Lursa and B'etor or Kang.
To Klingons, especially the more warlike ones that hold power in the future of STO, Federation types are weak, vacillating, and waste time on petty pleasantries. Think Jiro Sugihara during the Romulan storyline and you'll have a good handle on what Klingons think of most humans.
The truth, of course, is that both civilizations are host to all kinds of people. Some are honorable, some aren't. Some are smart, some aren't. Some are regular people, one is Franklin Drake
It's worth noting that the "honorable warrior" archetype wasn't really THAT dominant for Klingon characterization in the original series. Only when Worf became our window into Klingon culture did that template for Klingon behavior emerge to be the "default" for Klingons. In TOS, Klingons were mostly just scummy dudes with weird eyebrows.
"Nothing is more honorable than victory."
- Judge Aaron Satie
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
I'm not saying the OP is British, but it is the accepted proper spelling over here.
It's not just the British.:)
Over here in Germany we learned British English as well and I assume it's that way in several other countries where English is not the first language as well.
Unscrupulous? The Romulan DOFFs are WORSE :P
Yet the Romulan Republic are a bunch of flower picking, epohh licking fools!
So you know what that means: NEVER get between a Romulan and his flowers!
The concept of honour is nebulous enough that I would be very surprised if different Klingons didn't have vastly different concepts of what it means.
I did the early KDF missions a few days ago including the one where you destroyed a Starfleet ship after getting the information out of the supposedly weak Captain.
First, the game had you shoot the Fed Captain 5-8 times before he finally gave up the codes to the Sol system. I personally see nothing honourable in torturing someone for information.
Secondly, once I was done with him and back in space, my first officer declared the Dewitt as too damaged to be of further use to the Empire and suggested we have a little "target practice" with it. (With surviving crew and the newly-tortured crew still aboard.)
There was absolutely no mention of giving the Dewitt crew an honourable death for being valiant opponents.
Rather it seemed like cold blooded murder of a defeated, helpless enemy. I don't see that as being particularly honourable either. So from my perspective the portrayal of Klingons both on the Federation and KDF side seem pretty consistent to me.
Yes, there are many different interpretations from the Klingons alone in IP, but the end of all of it is the saying Worf made: "Nothing is more honorable than victory."
Success and victory is what gains a Klingon and his House honor. How they go around that differs.
As far as tormenting that fool of a Starfleet Captain to give up the codes, blowing up the hapless Dewitt, etc., that's actually going right along with Star Trek canon. If you are a longtime fan of Star Trek, you know that Klingons are not:
- Fond of taking prisoners. This has been repeated quite a bit, esp. in the Kirk-era movies: "Klingons don't take prisoners."
- And if they do, expect misery. I.e. the icy, dilithium mining, death world of Rura Penthe, and die in a cold, miserable place.
- Star Trek III - The BOP Captain wanted to capture a Starfleet science ship. They attacked and badly damaged her. He wanted her disabled for prisoners and getting information, but his weapons officer was being a D-Bag and shot the ship to destroy it (and was promptly executed on the spot by the Captain for defying him).
Granting an enemy an honorable death is nowhere near the Klingon "way of doing things." However, they do look forward to the chance in getting into combat with a worthy foe. General Chang relished every bit of it as part of his plot in Undiscovered Country. And Jadzia Dax mentioned that one of her old friends, Kang or Koloth (can't remember exactly), who had one deep regret was never getting into combat with Kirk.
Well, Starfleet ships have escape pods. Since you did not expend any apparent effort to either retrieve or destroy them, it stands to reason that any crew that wanted off the ship would have gotten off, and you simply blew the worthless wreck into debris. Considering how long the ship had been sitting there while you first rampaged through it and then left, anyone who was leaving had long since left.
When did any of you take the time to swipe the prototype anti-proton stream gun?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Klingons are not Borg Drones.
Regardless, the Klingon idea of Honour (much like religion on our world) is something the Klingons in the shows used as an excuse to get what they wanted. The only person who was truly pious in his pursuit of the idea of Honour was Worf.
And sometimes that made him a bit of a jackass.
And stabbing a defenseless hostage isn't exactly out of character from what we've seen.
R.I.P
Now again it's not the same, but it's very close if you think about it.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
As well scripting has a big effect on how honorable klngons are portrayed in the IP. Heroes when needed, villians and brutes more often than not.
R.I.P
well you didn't have to shoot the twit of the dewitt you could have went bare fisted on him. the goal to victory in that battle was getting the information needed and then hiding the fact that you had the information. so torture to get the info was justified.
Klingons are not Humans so don't try and have them feel like one.
destroy the ship to cover the fact that you obtained the information again justified.
besides it was disabled what could it possibly be other than target practice?
the helpless crew? what a joke they would have reported that we had the info and were in route and foiled our mission. again killing them was justified.
even by that push over Worfs reasoning. Victory is honor, this was an honorable mission.
The Klingon definition of honor is not the same as the human definition of honor.
Like any philosophy or belief system it will always breakdown on a individual level because no one is ever purely piuos or devout.
To villiany Klingons as a whole as being dishonorable is a disservice and ignores this fact about all philosophies, including humannones.
R.I.P
I've singled out this line just for one reason.
Frankly you have absolutely no idea how I role-played my KDF Captain, don't try to lecture me about it.
My post was regarding my perspective as me the player, not the the character I was playing as. I was using the DeWitt mission as an example of why I personally see the behaviour of the Klingon Captain in the Fed tutorial and the behaviour of the KDF Captain and his/her first officer in the DeWitt mission as pretty consistent as far as overall Klingon behaviour goes.
lol ... That was priceless. Thank you for posting it.
Far as it goes, the new roms have more honor than the feds or the klingons. The klingons pick fights on those weaker all the time, half your daily missions or duty officer quests involve beating someone into submission to the empire. The feds will do anything to win, just as bad as the rom are perceived to be. Neither faction is exactly an order of paladins.
The thing is - we're talking about very different civilizations alien to each-other, so their perception of certain things and their meaning is bound to differ.
One man's paladin is another man's terrorist, sort of speak.