So I’m sitting here with pencil in hand, trying to sketch out an alien race for an RPG I’m setting up, and I’m a bit lost. I’ve got some vague ideas of how they live, to make them fit into the plot properly: they have only just started making tools, don’t utilize fire, live in caves, climb seaside cliffs, are largely nocturnal, omnivorous, and don’t have an obvious vocal language, though some means of communication should be present even if they don’t have a full language. I’d prefer to avoid anything along the lines of telepathy. The area where they live is subtropical.
I know that my players will revolt if I make them furry or cute or too obviously rip off somebody else’s ideas. The more original, the better.
Anybody have some ideas for how to work with these traits? Humanoid appearances aren’t at all necessary, just so long as there’s some means for using simple tools.
Random idea: what if they’re symbiotic with swarms of insectoid creatures who provide communication between the different organisms? Their fur contains the swarms, and they can adjust chemicals in their blood/temperature on their skin or something like that to cause the swarms to fly off and land on the nearest other alien, transmitting crude messages.
Do they need to look like spinal animals? If not, what if they appear similar to woody vines that grow along the cliffs, a form of camouflage? Little tendrils can manipulate tools.
One idea that I read in a short story (from an anthology of ‘golden age of pulp fiction’ stories, title of the story escapes me now) had an interesting idea for alien communication that always intrigued me. Seems that this alien race had no receptors for sound - they were essentially completely deaf - but could emit microwave vibrations, and therefore ‘spoke’ to each other in a way that appeared to the human protagonists of the story as if it were telepathy. How’s that idea?
Have them be ancient robots, left behind by some forgotten race, who have been recently activated with no memory of their purpose or history, and only the vaguest notion of how things work. They’re living as primitive hunter-gatherers in spite of the fact that they have no needs because one of the few files remaining in their memory is from an anthropological study of primitive island natives, and that’s what they think they are.
Left Hand of Dorkness, some sort of symbiotic relationship could work. I don’t have anything exactly insect-like made for the planet yet, but I do have small creatures that could be revealed to have a relationship with the aliens. And they don’t have to appear to be spinal animals, though I already have one player joking about the “plant-like god beings” that his character will discover. I’ll have to decide if I want him that smug.
The New and Improved Superman, I really like that idea. It gets away from the aliens relying on the same standard senses that most Earth species do.
runner pat, and there’s another potential form of…communication. :eek:
Ethilrist, that’s completely unlike anything I’d considered so far, but it has definite potential. I’m going to seriously think on that one, since it could tie into some other aspects of my plot.
If they live in caves and climb seaside cliffs, I’m assuming they’re not Sahara-subtropical, but more Australian-Subtropical. They might need an efficient way to dissipate heat anyway – that’s a major limiter to size of animals. If they don’t have an obvious vocal language, they should probably have antenna or something, in order communicate some basic stuff with each other.
They need to be very muscly, with large hands, probably with digits all the way around them, rather than in the 180 degree style of humans.
ETA: Hope this helps. I like to pretend I’m an exobiologist once and a while… so I’d love to lend a hand anytime something like this comes up.
Land Cephalopods - some variant of Nautilus, only with a leathery/chitinous shell rather than calcerous.
They may be (evolutionarily) recently emerged from the sea, but already have developed tool use underwater.
Suckers, hooks & 10 tentacles would make for great cliff climbers. Communication by bioluminescent skin colouration - conveying basic emotions & social signalling. Perhaps they may be on the cusp of developing this into a more abstract symbol language…
Todderbob above gives a great strategy for alien race development – model their surroundings, and you have a mold for your aliens to fit into. What are their environs – cold, they need a small volume/surface quotient to radiate off less heat; hot, they’ll need some way to dump it (evaporation cooling or something); in heavy gravity they’ll probably be short and squat, on a lighter planet tall and slender. How do they generate energy? Some ordinary aerobic metabolism, or something a little farther out there – utilising naturally occurring radioactive elements, for instance?
As for communication, some plants have a surprisingly sophisticated subtle method, like acacias ‘warning’ each other of a ‘giraffe attack’ by releasing chemicals into the air, causing them to generate tannins to make their leaves taste bitter, so why not go for something like pheromones? Maybe complicated chemical sequences, perhaps only being exchanged upon direct touch to create some limitations?
Yes, heat would definitely be an issue for them at times. The temperature ranges and weather they’d be dealing with would be similar to the dry summer subtropical climates seen along the Mediterranean and southwestern Australia.
And on preview: MrDibble, wow. The bioluminescent idea is excellent, particularly since even if it was observed, there could be a great deal of debate about whether or not it could ever develop into true language.
In A WOrld of Difference, all the aliens exhibit radial symmetry, like starfish. Remarkable the things a six-legged, six-eyed, six armed alien can do. Sort of like intelligent hat-racks.
Here’s another exotic form of communication; they speak by modulating their bodies’ natural electromagnetic fields. There are real world gadgets ( meant to be worn ) that can communicate that way when people shake hands, so it’s not that implausible.
Naturally, this would only be short range ( touch or very close ) so you could combine it with other forms of communication to make things more baffling to outside observers. Communication via symbiotic insect or pheromones as suggested for long range but crude/slow speech; “touch-talk” for faster, more detailed speech.
One thing I think would be cool in a role playing game is a symbyotic relationship they don’t know exists. Given your initial outline, they are fairly primitive. The may not be totally self-aware. What if there was something in their biochemistry that, when near a certain rock, metal or other organism something happened–like they gained strength (like anti-kryptonite) or gained wisdom. don’t tell the players–let them figure the cause and affect. This also lets an adversary figure it out independently and use it to their advantage until one of the aliens figures is out and protects that resource.
Another idea to make them more alien, and give them some flavor.
Have them gestate in external wombs; some sort of symbiotic plant. A settlement would have one or more big plants that is constantly guarded, that they seem to show respect towards and do things like ritually sacrifice animals to it ( and bury some or all of the remains there ). An other-species onlooker could well assume that they are worshipping it - even sacrificing entrails to their “holy tree”. Whereas what’s really happening is that they have a symbiotic relationship; the “tree” gestates their young, while they guard it from herbivores and provide it with fertilizer. And the fact that it’s so important to the survival of the tribe makes it reasonable that there’d be plenty of religious-style ritual and respect paid to it.
Given the OP’s suggested ecological niche, how about big, smart lemurs of some kind? Mammalian, of course, but with lots of teeth, to keep the cute-and-cuddly aspect in check.
An interesting twist here would be if they were amphibious - underwater, they would have much louder ‘voices’ due to conductivity (or is that much better hearing…?). Assuming they were primarily land-living (to make it a little easier on your explorers), they’d still have a much stronger need to be near water than humans. And not just a little stream, they’d need large bodies of water for tribal gatherings and what-have-you. Maybe their first instinct on meeting a group of strangers is to head for water so everyone can talk. Individually, they could still communicate by getting very close to one another, but maybe the part of the body that does the electroreception (based on the platypus’s bill, I’d go for whatever they use to grab food) needs to be in direct contact.
One thing that would be interesting is if they classify animals by language, the way humans would, except to them, language means modulating your electric field. So, the PCs are basically just humming all the time, and are therefore animals, not people.
As for physiology, being amphibious could mean wet-and-squishy to a certain extent. Cliff-climbing, cave-living creatures tend to be either flight-capable or small enough to hang on pretty well - coastal cliffs are pretty rough environments. I’d make them smaller than humans, maybe gecko-ish, but with better grasping skills. Say, gecko-like sticky feet plus big claws. Lots of articulation in the hands, which would lead pretty well to tool-use.
If they don’t have fire, I’m going to assume hunter-gatherer, so tools are food-and-shelter oriented. Rock and wood, maybe coral or something. If they’re living in coastal cliffs, and are nocturnal, their food sources could include birds (or whatever flies and nests on cliffs), eggs/young, seaweed, fish, smallish plants (rocky coastal cliffs tend not to have much vegetation), mushrooms. It’s possible they’d hunt larger sea animals, but I think if you want to keep them low-tech, I’d have them primarily gatherers. So, fish-spears, not harpoons. I’d have a network of seaweed ropes along the cliffs, maybe nets for skyfishing. Baskets would be important for carrying food around, too. You don’t need fire for textiles, so maybe most of their tools are woven or braided.
Their version of DNA was really fragile(but malleable), and suceptible to UV. And that once they had climbed out of the protection of the sea, they had started creating mutations at a very high percentage. They had been stuck at a primitive level of civilization because there was no continuous advancement as whole populations changed every couple generations, and even within a popluation there was really no consitancy.
Noctunal cave dwellers? How about a race of giant space badgers? Ones who have no idea that earth badgers are considered grumpy, so are baffled as to why they’re continuously thwarted in their efforts to get to know people?
sorry, I was thinking “no more space insects!! Everyone makes them look like bugs!” so hard this is all that came out
