Since we're on the subject, I thought I'd advance another theory of mine, that being the Pfhor are biologically predisposed to a slavery-based society. The Pfhor have a strict hierarchy of their various subspecies. Hence, from birth to death every Pfhor is consciously aware of other, higher Pfhor who can have total control over them via pheromones. For all intents and purposes this makes every Pfhor a slave, except of course for the Holy Mother Crouched Behind the Throne. All Pfhor above Conditioned would be slave-owner as well as slave.
Hence, it perhaps makes sense that they would extend this logic to other species. They would seek to perpetuate the same hierarchy that dominates their own society. Other species, the Drinniol, the S'pht, (maybe) the Enforcers would also have to fit into the grand scheme of slave/slave-owner.
Boy, I'm starting to sound like a Marathon-addicted sociology lecture aren't I?
The Pfhor would not see anything morally suspect about slavery. Of course, this is hardly unique. Most human societies held slaves at some point or another, some like the Romans made it the basis for their economy. However the Pfhor might be unable to ever see anything wrong with slavery because they are natural slave/slave-owners. It is simply the way biology works for them. It would be similar to a human trying to eliminate all form of self-interest; effectively impossible (and for us at least) undesirable.
Another interesting note is that societies dependent on slavery tend to be very slow to develop new technologies. After all, they have an effectively inexhaustible resource (since slaves breed) that only needs to be paid in food. The Pfhor not only got most of their Marathon-era technology from salvaging Jjaro remnants, they also did not develop much beyond that point. Though they got their technology from the Jjaro, it is obviously a vastly inferior version: otherwise we wouldn't have been able to defeat them. Also their space-faring empire has been existence for a very, very long time, but probably hasn't developed much new technology. Human weaponry doesn't seem significantly more advanced by the Marathon's time than it does in ours, and it still works great against the Pfhor.
So any comments?
