Yeah, but that’s assuming that a Grog could read a Thing’s mind to begin with.
If it could… hm. How would it have a Thing kill itself? Every cell would have to be destroyed.
If it couldn’t… eek.
Oh, and in regards Protectors:
Protectors are basically human beings who have undergone a sort of metamorphosis. Pak come in three stages: child, breeder, and Protector.
Child is self-explanatory. Breeder is basically Homo Habilis, a kind of smart ape. When a Breeder reaches a certain age, the smell of a certain plant drives him nuts, and his instincts make him gorge like hell on it. The plant, “Tree Of Life,” carries a symbiotic virus that interacts with human DNA in such a way as to complete the changeover and turns a human into a Protector, a creature described in some detail above by Zen101.
Protectors’ entire function is to protect their bloodline. They care for breeders and children, and fight other Protectors whose interests do not coincide with their own. They have to be careful, of course – after all, you don’t want your own bloodline getting too inbred – but you also don’t want your clan wiped out because the Protectors of the Yellow Rock clan think your valley would be a nice place to expand.
And yes, they’re quite ruthless about it.
Here’s the fun part: Earth was colonized a million years ago by Pak protectors. One large clan. They landed in Africa, turned the breeders loose, planted tree of life, and sat back to enjoy the good life.
Unfortunately, the symbiotic virus needed thalium in the soil in order to grow in tree of life. The plant grew, but the virus died. Without regular infusions of the virus, the protectors died.
Leaving a planet full of Homo Habilis to grow and evolve without Protectors. They couldn’t evolve while Protectors lived; any mutation or deviation from the norm would be killed, to protect the bloodline.
A million years later, Humanity moved outward from Earth, and colonized the asteroid belt. Civilization was at its peak. What they didn’t know was that a Protector back home had recieved the last distress call from Earth a million years ago… and had organized a rescue ship, loaded with tree of life and tons of thalium oxide. He intended to seed Earth with the stuff, and make the entire human race into his clan, you see.
It never occurred to him that we might have evolved, in the meantime. Even protectors can make mistakes. He didn’t even recognize us as breeders until the prisoner he took went bughouse and gorged on the tree of life roots he had in the cargo pod… and changed into a human protector.
Human protectors are slightly smarter than Pak protectors, but not much, and not quite as bound by logic and pragmatism. They have a little more free will. But even then, they think and move INSANELY fast. Once the prisoner, Brennan, understood what was happening, he instantly killed the Pak protector, because Brennan realized that if tree of life was ever seeded on Earth, civilization was doomed. Earth would become a world of eternal war between protectors, same as the Pak planet.
Brennan had children, you see, and didn’t much like that kind of a world for them. Brennan was capable of taking the long view, AND the wide view – that his kids might be happier if they never knew a super-monster was looking out for their best interests. Instead, Brennan began manipulating society behind the scenes, to make the world in general a better place.
Until he realized that a Pak armada was approaching…
And admittedly, scribes take out grendels easily, but they’re not a threat to anything quick enough to move out of their way (that is to say, anything but grass) and not stupid enough to attack them.