Melnorme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Melnorme
The Melnorme appeared as one-eyed, orange starfish-like creatures in Star Control II.
Ship	Trader
Homeworld	Unknown
Contacts	Countless presumed, Humans, Keel-Verezy, and Slylandro confirmed
Quotes	"It has been a pleasure dealing with you, Captain."

The Melnorme are a fictional race of beings featured in the second installment of the sci-fi Star Control computer game series. The name is a reference to Mel Torme, the singer. [1]

The Melnorme are a race of merchants, primarily in the business of buying and selling information. They will provide history, current events, fuel, and technology in return for biological data and the locations of certain colorful worlds known as Rainbow Worlds. They use large Trader vessels to seek out, contact and strike deals with potential customers. Though in possession of a great deal of powerful artifacts and better grasping the events than any other race, the Melnorme come across as mostly benign and harmless. Trading with them is not required to complete Star Control II, but makes the game vastly easier to finish.

The Melnorme are highly secretive of themselves and their origins, and while they are technically ready to divulge such information, the prices are ludicrous. To learn why their bridge turns purple, for instance, costs twelve million (12,000,000) credits, a sum that exceeds the maximum amount that can be possessed in the game. (For reference, the discovery of a Rainbow World, their most prized view, gains you 500 credits. Even if 12,000,000 credits are gained through cheating, the game does not allow you to ask that question a second time.) The race's psychology, homeworld, and goals are all a mystery. They are known to have based their culture entirely on equivalent trade and reject the concept of charity, and place a great emphasis on colour, to the point of basing their own names on different shades (the one pictured is Trade Master Greenish of the aptly-named starship Inevitably Successful in All Circumstances).

The race itself is not talking, but their similarities have led many to believe that the Melnorme are the descendants of the Mael-Num, a race formerly part of the Sentient Milieu that disappeared, believed extinct, after the arrival of the Dnyarri. This link was later confirmed outside of the game by the game designers.^{[citation needed]}

The Melnorme are found around every huge star in this part of the galaxy, though they will leave those stars to investigate hyperwave broadcasts or if they detect a ship that has run out of fuel.

[edit] Melnorme Trader

Traders are distinctively large vessels, due to its capability to store various items for trade, and commodities like starship fuel. The energy projectile produced by the primary weapon can be held and charged to increase the potential for damage. With each successive level of potency, the cluster of energy changes color and enlarges- from green, to blue, to yellow, and ultimately to red. In the red form, the charge is capable of passing through most opposing weapons and even dispatching small ships (a Zoq-Fot-Pik Stinger or anything smaller) with a single shot. The secondary weapon is a rainbow-hued ball of energy that stuns other ships, forcing them to spin uncontrollably in one direction and incapable of using their secondary weapon for a short period of time.

[edit] Mael-Num

The Mael-Num are an 'extinct' alien race. They were members of the Sentient Milieu, the only race apart from the Ur-Quan which survived the Dnyarri empire. However, after freedom was gained the Ur-Quan then set out to destroy them. The Mael-Num's question of why the Ur-Quan were doing this and the assertion that it was wrong caused delay amongst the Ur-Quan which led to them breaking out into the first doctrinal war. Whilst the Ur-Quan were fighting amongst themselves many Mael-Num were able to escape.