Umgah pranks

The Umgah are known for their distorted, sadistic sense of humor. They use to play various pranks on other races, especially the cowardly Spathi; the known Umgah pranks are listed below.

HyperWave Caster tricks

Using a powerful HyperWave Caster, the Umgah played some "minor" pranks on the Spathi (with disastrous consequences), as well as a routine prank on the Ilwrath, which ended only when the Spathi stole the Caster, hiding it on their temporary homeworld, Epsilon Gruis Ia.

Ilwrath

The Umgah, around 2157, used their Caster to impersonate the twin Ilwrath gods, Dogar and Kazon, giving their commandments to their faithful on Channel 44. This caused a revolution of the Ilwrath believers against their priest caste, whose reputation had already greatly decreased. The Umgah commanded Dogar and Kazon's followers to attack the 'Bird Beings' (interpreted as the Pkunk by the Ilwrath).

See also Ilwrath recent events

Spathi

The Umgah also used their Caster to impersonate several fictitious malevolent beings — the Grand Master Planet Eaters, Jud the Ineffable Vug (a prank which the Spathi claim not to have fallen for) and Killmaster 18.

Other pranks

Some minor pranks are also known:

• Capturing and dissecting a Mycon (they clonked it on the head to study its capability of causing genetic modification by just thinking it; they keep the incident secret, unwilling to suffer a Mycon or Ur-Quan retaliation, unless The Captain asks them for their secrets after becoming Great Hero).
• Clogging the life support systems of an entire Spathi Eluder fleet with foul-smelling goo (which resulted in some unwanted hostilities)¹
• Changing The Captain's status from Great Hero to Great Enemy and attacking him.

Two pranks that fortunately did not come to pass were using the neo-Dnyarri to compel the Spathi to attack the VUX, thwarted by the creature's rise to power, and dropping a planetoid on the ocean of the "stupid nosers from Draconis" (the Thraddash), prevented by both species' status as Battle Thralls.

Notes and references

¹Star Control II manual, pp. 68.