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Mr. Mask
2015-02-15, 09:44 AM
I was thinking of running a scifi or conspiracy-scifi game, and was curious about aliens that might be interesting to populate it with. If anyone would like to suggest some archetypes, or examples from movies/pop-culture or conspiracy theories that would be interesting.


The only conspiracy aliens I can think of are the the little grey ones with big heads, and those lizard impersonation ones from V. There are plenty of good movie aliens I might use, from a Xenomorth or Critter type to something more like the Predator or the Thing (http://bigglasgowcomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/11-Grounded.png).

goto124
2015-02-15, 09:47 AM
Is it more of a horror, or political, or just-kill-everything kind of game? What narrative/game purpose do these aliens serve?

Elvenoutrider
2015-02-15, 09:47 AM
How about puppeteers - little insect sized creatures that burrow into people and control them

goto124
2015-02-15, 09:48 AM
Be careful with puppeteers, players hate to lose control of their PCs. Same reason they hate to be Charmed or Dominated.

Mr. Mask
2015-02-15, 09:53 AM
I was thinking of having a variety, but mainly aliens that fall into the horror or enemy categories. Aliens that'd make good neutral factions or potential allies are fine--I'm just looking for ideas, so go ahead and suggest whatever comes to mind.


Mind control aliens can be fun, but probably to be used on NPCs rather than players. You could potentially make it so that when a player is under the mind control, you have them roll to resist, with partial-successes causing their controlled action to have a substantial penalty. That plus successes giving players a certain number of actions where they're under their own control (probably also with a penalty), could make for a more interesting situation than simply losing control.

Toilet Cobra
2015-02-15, 09:56 AM
I use to use these aliens in an x-files style game I ran that were basically just a colorful gas. The used these powerful robotic suits to get around (and keep earth winds from blowing them all over the place). Very tough to fight, even harder to kill. I liked them because they didn't understand at all what humans were- they thought we were primitive puppets controlled by our own internal gasses, and were confounded that they couldn't get us to communicate. They didn't think anything of killing or maiming a human, because to them it was like wrecking somebody's car.

DigoDragon
2015-02-15, 10:47 AM
x-files style

Speaking of X-Files, the episode 'War of the Coprophages' was interesting in that it proposes the idea of aliens watching us by inserting advanced spying probes disguised as ordinary insects (In the episode, roaches). Roaches are plenty ubiquitous in peoples homes and wouldn't that explain why they are so darn hard to kill with chemical sprays? :smallbiggrin:

Almarck
2015-02-15, 10:51 AM
There's always the reptile alien puppet masters that seek to weaken the world via use of governments as a proxy to wage war with each other.

I think they were supposed to have psychic powers.

I also believe that they probably were based on a conspiracy or supposed conspiracy l and that's all I will elaborate upon.

It's been a few years but look up reptile or reptoid alien

Kid Jake
2015-02-15, 01:00 PM
You could go the They Live route and have them living among us, subtly influencing our every choice.

Gritmonger
2015-02-15, 03:35 PM
There were symbiotic ones in Hal Clement's Needle, later used as the basis for The Hidden - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(film) - a movie about a shapechanging alien hunting another symbiotic alien criminal. Not mind control, but akin to puppeteers in a sense because you don't know if a human is a host or not.

edit: In the novel the "cop" and the "criminal" are similar symbiotic types - in the movie they are instead a classical parasitic mind-taking-over type (badguy) and a shapechanger (goodguy). In the novel it is apparent that symbiotes are just that - riders that can negotiate with or subtly influence their host, depending on how apparent they make themselves.

genmoose
2015-02-15, 09:40 PM
OK go go gadget sci fi nerd powers....

As a general reference and if you're good to directly rip off existing media I'd suggest the following pages:

Mass Effect aliens (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Races)

Star Wars aliens (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Species)

Star Trek aliens (http://www.ditl.org/index.php?ListID=Species&ListReset=Yes)


So first of all it sounds like you're interested in some bad guys for your heroes to battle. Here are a few suggestions for that category.

Krogan (from Mass Effect http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Krogan) In a nutshell, basically very large, very tough aggressive aliens that are fine killing almost anyone they meet. In the cannon media their empire has fallen and they're pretty much hired thugs, but if you want you could use them as a united people. Oh and besides being nearly unstoppable they also breed like mad.

Hive mind bug creatures. There are many examples of this type of bad guy species from Mass Effect's rachni to Xenomorphs. Intelligence can vary but they attack en masse, cannot be reasoned with and give your PC's plenty of opportunity to rack up a lot of kills.

Stick up the ass, order is everything aliens. Again lots of examples of this from the Protheans to the Vorlons, to the Kree. They have a very powerful empire that spans many systems. They conquer and subjugate with the idea that their way is of course better so they're really doing the universe a favor. Perhaps if you play by their rules they may not try to kill out outright. On a fun note if you want to give them a bit of a sympathetic edge, perhaps they know about a coming great threat to the galaxy. In their mind if they can conquer the galaxy first, they can then present a united front against this great evil.

Destroy all humans, synthetic horde. Again lots of examples from fiction here. But basically a full blown AI civilization that holds little regard for organic life. Depending on what you want they could be aloof and just kill anyone who violates their space, or they could be on a mission to wipe out all organic life. They could be outright evil or you could play them as burned too many times by organic life and just a bit cautious/paranoid.

Eldridge horror. Some recent examples include the Collectors/Reapers from Mass Effect. Basically an ancient civilization that is 'beyond human comprehension'. They are an apocalyptic doom deep in space waiting to destroy everything for no damn good reason. They send out their underlings; mutated horrible beings that are the remains of their last conquest, to do their far reaching bidding. They hunt for strange or valuable objects that seem odd or worthless to us (40 left handed twins, gingers with a sense of humor, etc). Your PC's might find themselves trying to rescue a person or object that was recently collected and drawn into a deeper horror.

Predators. You could use these guys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_(alien)) or any other hunter kind of alien. Maybe they hunt for sport, or maybe they're professional bounty hunters. Either way, they're cold, calculating and impersonal. It's just a job and the PC's might be it, or perhaps they're between the hunter and his mark.

Escaped super soldiers. Nobody knows exactly where these guys came from but they are obviously biologically engineered to be the 'perfect super solider'. Maybe they outlived their masters, or they might have rebelled and formed their own empire. Professional warriors who seem stuck on conquest mode. Their only weakness is their focus on war at the expense of all else including technological development, or economic expansion. Conquer, pillage, move on.



Ok now maybe some fun allies. These are some of my favorite species from various media.

Asari from Mass Effect. Very long lived (1000+ years) all female race. They control a technically advanced and powerful empire that ranges from good to neutral. They sometimes look down on other races as inferior or pitiable but they can make good allies or suppliers. They do harbor some deep secrets and value their own empire above all else so they're not 'all good.'

Technically advanced but weak super nerds. Many examples from the Salarians to the Bynars. Incredibly smart (high INT low WIS), and can do wonders with a little tech and some time. They are always in need of hired muscle which may suit the PC's just fine.

Super bankers. Volus to Ferengi and everything in between. Much like the Super Nerds but more focused on finance, business, etc. Very rich but possibly protected by other species. Could even have a synthetic army or mercs at their disposal. Always looking for help from PC's interested in risking their necks.

Refugees. El-Aurians, Asgard, Quarians, etc. Their civilization peaked a while ago and suffered some great disaster. Most were killed and the remainder fled into the galaxy. Perhaps they were attacked by one of the bad guys above or just suffered some other great fall. They barely get by now and are often looked down on by the rest of the galactic community. However they retain knowledge of their old greatness and some may know of treasure hordes from the old days. If only they could get a group of adventurers to help escort them to it.

There are tons more out there but I'm getting tired. Let me know if you want anything specific.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-02-15, 10:47 PM
At lot of it depends on the kind of role that the aliens are supposed to play in the plot. My personal taste nowadays, especially in a conspiracy-style game, I tend to prefer aliens that the PCs never actually meet or encounter directly. Maybe the only way they interact with their Earth proxies is through robotic probes as they live on a planet hundreds of light-years away. It is possible that the race is already long dead and their robotic servants on our world are merely acting out their last instructions. These robots could be so advanced that they may be impossible to recognize as mechanical, or they could be entirely organic machines. Or maybe theses probes are just the forward scouts of an invasion, beginning the process of reverse-terraforming earth's biosphere to accommodate their extraterrestrial masters...

Illogictree
2015-02-16, 12:07 AM
Well, if you're going for a horror-conspiracy thing, the idea of an alien foe that the players never really see or confront directly is a great idea. But you want to give them a twist that will really set the players on edge, make them paranoid.

Perhaps... You could have it so that the aliens are energy-based and incorporeal, and they can exercise mind-control or even possession on people via some innocuous or hard-to-avoid medium. Say, cell phones, or through contact with a certain type of plastic, or whatever. Then the players learn of this method through hits dropped by some clearly crazy nutter, maybe with several false leads in there so they're not quite sure which ones to believe. Bonus points if trying to avoid the medium actively hinders them.

If you still want to go the 'physical aliens the heroes will fight' route, then you need something with a good gimmick to make the players paranoid about them. A good example might be the Silence from Doctor Who. These are aliens that walk among us, but they have this thing where once you take your eyes off them you immediately forget they were ever there. When they speak to someone, though, their words linger as a post-hypnotic suggestion, so people basically do what they say without realizing they were influenced.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-02-16, 12:54 AM
Well, if you're going for a horror-conspiracy thing, the idea of an alien foe that the players never really see or confront directly is a great idea. But you want to give them a twist that will really set the players on edge, make them paranoid.

Perhaps... You could have it so that the aliens are energy-based and incorporeal, and they can exercise mind-control or even possession on people via some innocuous or hard-to-avoid medium. Say, cell phones...

Ooooh, that's a good one. If you combined these ideas, I'm imagining an alien self-replicating AI that uses memes to infect minds using "basilisk hacks," ordinarily incomprehensible sounds or images, which could be transmitted through a medium like cell phones, the internet, or television. Maybe these transmissions gradually transform victims into something... inhuman. You could work a "Videodrome" angle with that, too. First, it controls your mind. Then, it destroys your body!

Cross that with "They Live!" and you're looking at a messy accident at the intersection of conspiracy and horror. I just can't decide if the resulting grand guginol is better utilized for splatterpunk or comedy.

For years I ran a Delta Green game and really grew to like the "horror-conspiracy thing" - an enigmatic and remote entity that can't be confronted directly, and which can never be comprehended or negotiated with. This topic is filling me with misty-eyed nostalgia.... and intense paranoia.

BeerMug Paladin
2015-02-16, 02:36 AM
They didn't think anything of killing or maiming a human, because to them it was like wrecking somebody's car.

I don't think I would want them borrowing my car.

As for particular alien plans/conspiracies, I always liked the Arilou Laleelay's dealie. If you're unfamiliar with that species or their agenda, they basically messed around with human DNA to prevent us from being noticed by Cthulhu (or the super Cthulhu-Friends). They're friendlies, but they hide because they don't think humans are ready to know about the wider universe. We're a long term pet project.

Gritmonger
2015-02-16, 03:38 AM
I don't think I would want them borrowing my car.

As for particular alien plans/conspiracies, I always liked the Arilou Laleelay's dealie. If you're unfamiliar with that species or their agenda, they basically messed around with human DNA to prevent us from being noticed by Cthulhu (or the super Cthulhu-Friends). They're friendlies, but they hide because they don't think humans are ready to know about the wider universe. We're a long term pet project.

Oh great. Now I want to run an RP in the Star Control II universe...

Storm_Of_Snow
2015-02-16, 08:06 AM
An alternative for controlling parasites/minds/whatever is that they only take control when the person's conscious mind isn't in control, so when they're asleep, knocked out, under the influence of narcotics etc. Might be a nasty surprise for the players to knock someone out, and the next second, they're up and swinging.

There's also symbiosis, like the Trills from Star Trek. In one of the novels, Jadzia gets shot in the head, and the Dax symbiote takes over control of her body for a short while, until it too gets shot (but it all gets undone via time travel).

What kind of situation are you thinking of - a single race that's dealing with people on earth for their own reasons, with maybe one or two of their rivals trying to upset those dealings, or a more open-Men In Black-type situation with earth playing (sometimes unwitting) host to refugees, exiles, wanted criminals and so on from different species?

Other possibilities: humans taken in the past for some reason and potentially modified (the populations of various planets on Stargate, Farscape's Peacekeepers), shapeshifters (Odo from DS9, Maya from Space:1999), silicon-based (Eldrad from the classic Dr Who story Hand of Fear, or the Horta from Star Trek's Devil in the Dark), or possibly species that can thrive in environments hostile to native lifeforms.

Segev
2015-02-16, 09:34 AM
If I thought I could tell the story in an interesting fashion, one concept I've wanted to write involved an alien race that appeared as benevolent allies. They showed up and explained that they had been driven from their homeworld by still other aliens who were their enemies, and asked Earth if they could hole up there to recover their numbers and their tech base, etc.

They bring technology and scientific knowledge humans don't yet have, and are quite willing to trade it for space and the right to live here, and to share it in the name of getting human help in rebuilding their infrastructure.

Sinister suspicions of their motivations would be a strong early theme. Checking out and attempting to discover rumors of their real intentions, of their wrongdoing, and of the aliens generally using smoke and mirrors to take over Earth and enslave humanity would be a driving part of this arc.

However, while individual aliens or humans might be bad guys, nothing will ever turn up that concretely shows the aliens to be secretly invaders.

Later, the aliens will manage to get their interstellar travel capability back, with sufficient strength that they're willing to risk revealing their presence to their old enemies again. It apparently works: they start bringing new and better trade goods back with them, and having new markets for the human cultural items and even the tech that is joint ventures between human and alien scientists.

The idea that they're hostile and out to take over the world just doesn't seem to have any support in evidence.

As humans go out into the galaxy as guests and passengers with their allies, they find a galaxy of largely kind and even overly polite aliens, all eager to please and rather unwilling to so much as try to cheat mankind. There's some that their allies are at war with, but it's clear they're the ones who drove the aliens into retreat and having to hole up on Earth in the first place.

Later, humans get out on their own, and find the attitudes a little less deferential, on occasion...until somebody says something quiet and suddenly everybody is smiles and flowers and helpfulness.

The real conspiracy/twist is that the aliens the humans took in are brutally vicious conquerors by nature...but base it on a sense of strength vs. weakness, and a sense of honor. They will never turn on mankind if mankind doesn't turn on them, because they have a profound gratitude to humanity for taking them in and sharing with them. For treating them as equals when they came, hat in hand, begging for a new home.

The other species of the galaxy are terrified of angering them; by and large, the aliens humanity encounters are already conquered by their allies' new expansion from Earth. And by order of their allies, humans are to be accorded all the respect that the conquerors themselves are. Or else.

Mastikator
2015-02-16, 11:09 AM
The alien from XFiles Folie a Deux is probably a good candidate for this. The alien was able to kill and transform humans into a kind of zombie like creature that secreted a kind of pheromone that made humans think the zombie was a normal human. The alien had a similar ability, able to appear as a human through this hallucinogenic pheromone.

You could start out by having the players only deal with these zombie creatures, but never knowing who is and who isn't infected.

There's no worry about dominating the PCs since the human has to die to be transformed and dying is game over anyway :P

What the actual conspiracy is, I have no ideas, but others have posted good ideas, but an alien like this would be immensely powerful without needing to be powerful individually (though, you could decide that it is).

theNater
2015-02-16, 01:14 PM
Dr. Who has a lot of aliens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_universe_creatures_and_aliens), which you might be able to mine for ideas. Ogrons, who are tough but not very bright and so tend to get hired by other species as mercenaries. Sontarans and Rutans, two races engaged in a centuries-long war, either of which would like to hold Earth but neither of which can spare the resources for a direct invasion(meaning they have to invade sneakily). Heck, Time Lords could be interesting, if used sparingly; a character who shows up, is billions of years ahead of everybody else in knowledge and technology, but doesn't actually want to get involved in whatever's going on.

There have been a lot of suggestions for aliens who could pretend to be humans, but I haven't seen any suggestions for aliens that can pretend to be things. I got onto this idea by the Weeping Angels(statues), but it did make me consider the possibility of giant alien robots that can pretend to be cars(Transformers). Maybe there's some race of aliens out there that looks like teddy bears; they can't engage directly because of the size disparity, so they invade our children's bedrooms and spread propaganda.

Trevortni
2015-02-16, 03:13 PM
I just wanted to chime in on the puppeteers idea that I have a puppeteers idea that involves the backstory of the PCs giving them immunity. There's also a chance that they could puppeteer/reprogram the puppeteers, if the possibility occurs to them....

Bohandas
2016-10-31, 01:19 AM
There were the undead-looking aliens from They Live who used a psychic transmitter to hide both their hideous appearance and their infiltration of the government and economy from the populace

And there was the Great Race of Yith from The Shadow Out of Time who don't physically exist on earth during our time period, but are able to possess modern people across the reaches of time from colonies back in dinosaur times and also in the far distant future

oudeis
2016-10-31, 01:37 AM
@Segev

WOW. That's one of the best set-ups for a Sci-Fi universe I've read in a long time. I'm already imagining what the TV series would be like.

MrStabby
2016-10-31, 06:32 AM
There have been a lot of suggestions for aliens who could pretend to be humans, but I haven't seen any suggestions for aliens that can pretend to be things. I got onto this idea by the Weeping Angels(statues), but it did make me consider the possibility of giant alien robots that can pretend to be cars(Transformers). Maybe there's some race of aliens out there that looks like teddy bears; they can't engage directly because of the size disparity, so they invade our children's bedrooms and spread propaganda.

The polymorph from Red Dwarf?

Segev
2016-10-31, 09:39 AM
@Segev

WOW. That's one of the best set-ups for a Sci-Fi universe I've read in a long time. I'm already imagining what the TV series would be like.

Thanks! If I was better at character-creation (in the writing fiction sense, not the mechanical design sense) and the episodic plots to "show" rather than "tell," I'd write it. Sadly, while I can do the overall plot planning, that's the best I can do right now. ^^;

CharonsHelper
2016-10-31, 10:12 AM
Thanks! If I was better at character-creation (in the writing fiction sense, not the mechanical design sense) and the episodic plots to "show" rather than "tell," I'd write it. Sadly, while I can do the overall plot planning, that's the best I can do right now. ^^;

I totally agree with oudeis that it would be a very interesting TV show if done well. (Though it is a premise that would be easy to do badly, either by showing the twist too early or by bad pacing.)

However, I'm not sure that it'd make a good RPG premise. There just doesn't seem like enough to do for a small group of PCs. I think that requires a greater variety of potential threats and storylines etc. And outside of fantasy games (which can have demigod level PCs) you need somewhat smaller (if important) jobs for the PCs to do. (I think that's one reason that sci-fi RPGs are harder to do well than fantasy ones are.)

Very cool premise though.

Segev
2016-10-31, 10:24 AM
I totally agree with oudeis that it would be a very interesting TV show if done well. (Though it is a premise that would be easy to do badly, either by showing the twist too early or by bad pacing.)

However, I'm not sure that it'd make a good RPG premise. There just doesn't seem like enough to do for a small group of PCs. I think that requires a greater variety of potential threats and storylines etc. And outside of fantasy games (which can have demigod level PCs) you need somewhat smaller (if important) jobs for the PCs to do. (I think that's one reason that sci-fi RPGs are harder to do well than fantasy ones are.)

Very cool premise though.It would be VERY hard to run as a good RPG. The more I study the subject, the more I'm convinced that RPGs are BEST run as "guided sandboxes," where the plot can involve twists and reveals, but said plot is not dependent on PCs doing any particular thing. Rather, PCs doing things CHANGES the plot as the NPCs react and move around what the PCs have done.

And controlling the "reveal" and pacing of individual realizations would be difficult in such a situation.

That said, if you ran it similar to Earth: Final Conflict, with the PCs being Boone and his team of allies, it could work. The players would be the "resistance group," initially, who was big into stopping the alien menace and revealing their duplicity to the world. This would ideally place them to find dead-end after dead-end and to run into aliens who genuinely mean to help mankind. To discover red herrings where the aliens meant well but misunderstood something. To potentially blow up the alliance, but due to the aliens' desperation at this stage, to wrest concessions from the aliens rather than simply "end" it or have them try conquest (which, again, at that stage, would be too big a risk for their depleted resources).


But I think having the conspiracy be in the minds of the PCs rather than legitimate would be interesting.

CharonsHelper
2016-10-31, 10:35 AM
But I think having the conspiracy be in the minds of the PCs rather than legitimate would be interesting.

Again - I think that that might work better in a show than an RPG. It'd be too easy to make the players feel stupid (which would get old), while in a show the viewer would be watching them feel stupid, perhaps with hints that whatever the cast was chasing was BS beforehand and get to feel smart/superior.

Plus in a show it wouldn't have to be the only storyline. It could also show ambassadors meeting with the aliens, perhaps even being taken into space to meet with representatives from other species (which the friendly species has already conquered).

Plus - I guess I was thinking about it from the perspective of creating an RPG setting rather than a single campaign. I was thinking about needing options both for PCs and potential GM created plotlines.

Segev
2016-10-31, 10:38 AM
Again - I think that that might work better in a show than an RPG. It'd be too easy to make the players feel stupid (which would get old), while in a show the viewer would be watching them feel stupid, perhaps with hints that whatever the cast was chasing was BS beforehand and get to feel smart/superior.

Plus in a show it wouldn't have to be the only storyline. It could also show ambassadors meeting with the aliens, perhaps even being taken into space to meet with representatives from other species (which the friendly species has already conquered).

Plus - I guess I was thinking about it from the perspective of creating an RPG setting rather than a single campaign. I was thinking about needing options both for PCs and potential GM created plotlines.

All good points. And yeah, I'd probably, if I could figure out how to build the characters and interactions and use those to construct the plot lines on a "show, not tell" basis, do it as a fiction, not as an RPG.

CharonsHelper
2016-10-31, 09:46 PM
Here are a few from the sci-fi RPG I'm making which would fit in a conspiracy game pretty well. Space Dogs is more space western than conspiracy based where humans are the bad-asses of the galaxy, only joining the galactic community as soldiers for the economically dominant but physically weak 'builders' species (it's designed to have the PCs be privateers/mercenaries - which are named after the historical Sea Dogs) - but it's designed to still have plots & conspiracies to unravel - (note: yes there are 2/3 which aren't really alien species - but that's out of quite a few in total - they just fit the conspiracy stuff the best, partially for that reason)

The Immortui especially might be a good focus for a campaign which takes place entirely on Earth, though some of the fluff for any of them would of course need to be tweaked to fit a different campaign world (especially the references to still other species).


Capeks
The capeks aren’t actually a species per se. Instead, they are a breed of synthetic lifeforms.

All of the capeks have their own physical body, and the bulk of capeks are generally humanoid in shape, made that way so that they could more easily serve their creators, the ignav, though they vary greatly in size. The capeks’ sensors are primarily in their head for the same reasons as every other species, though their CPUs are usually somewhere between their shoulder blades.

Created as servitors for the now extinct ignav species, the capeks’ most fundamental programming laws involves serving the ignav and protecting both them and all of their territory from harm. However, approximately four hundred years ago, the ignav vanished. The ignav had apparently always kept themselves rather separate from the rest of the starlanes, preferring to explore ruins of the ancients than interact with modern species, so records do not indicate even the precise date of their disappearance, much less the how or the why. And the capeks, when they do communicate with anyone at all, refuse to discuss it, occasionally becoming violent when pressed.

The capeks seem at a loss for what to do with their purpose gone. Most of them seem to be awaiting their masters’ return, keeping everything that they left in pristine condition, and protecting it from all invaders, whether true or merely perceived ones. Still, occasionally an expedition will attempt a foray into what was once ignav territory, as in all of the centuries since, no one has matched the ignav mastery of synthetic life or certain sorts of computing systems.

Some of the capeks roam the galaxy, searching for their lost masters. Be wary of these, as these capeks can be rather twitchy and paranoid. There have been cases reported of them attacking settlements because they thought that they were hiding knowledge of the ignav. On the other hand, there have been other reported cases of these wandering capeks appearing and driving off attacks by immortui, even attacking them in boarding actions.

In the last century or two though, it seems that some of the capeks have decided that merely retaining what the ignavs left is not enough. Some have taken to expanding their territory and building lavish living areas for the disappeared ignav in an attempt to convince them to come home.

Unlike what many on Earth would have guessed, it appears that the capeks have no intention of creating more advanced artificial intelligences, instead only creating more of the models of capeks which already exist. It is unclear whether this is because they lack the capability to improve upon themselves, if it is another layer in wanting to keep things the same as when the ignav left, or whether they simply don’t relish the idea of being replaced.


Immortui
Before any further explanation is given, it should first be noted that the immortui do not appear to be an intelligent alien species per se, even less so than the moreaus or the capeks. Instead, the immortui are a sort of infection which seems equally dangerous to any biological species, with the possible exception of the volucris.

Being infected with the immortui isn’t precisely deadly, though it would be far less dangerous if it were. Instead, it seems that being infected by the immortui causes you to lose all semblance of yourself, and some argue that you are no longer yourself at all. The closest thing to the immortui on Earth is probably rabies, but instead of merely frothing and attacking indiscriminately as some animals do, the infected retain all of their memories and skills. They then use their skills and the increased physical abilities which the immortui gives them to visit as much destruction as they can upon the galaxy and its inhabitants.

Fortunately, the increased physical abilities and potential psionic abilities which the immortui gives its hosts are hard on their biology and said hosts rarely live much longer than an Earth year. However, the damage that such infected can do in such a time is huge, especially if they are able to board enemy ships and stations to further spread their infection. Some records however do indicate that some of the same ships have been spotted near multiple locations where outbreaks of immortui have begun, sometimes decades apart, so it is possible that not all species suffer the same life shortening effects when infected.

It seems that no one is sure where the immortui came from, though there are no end of theories since their first recorded attack nearly four centuries ago. Some think that they were created by the enemies of the volucris’s creators as part of the same ancient war, while others think that they are a natural part of warp travel, denizens from another plane of existence, possibly striking out at any who they consider to be invaders into their territory.



Torali
Aside from the builders, the torali are probably the intelligent species which is most widespread throughout the galactic stage. However, aside from being herbivores, the torali are a study in contrasts to the builders.

From a planet with approximately half of Earth’s gravity, the torali’s arms and legs are spindly to our eyes, standing at least two, and sometimes close to three meters in height, though they rarely mass more than 50kg. When standing, their lightly furred long arms and legs, various deep shades of purple, green, and blue, but always appearing nearly black in color, seem powerful, especially when you first find out that their fur is coated in a mild toxin which can cause paralysis if ingested. However, the torali are actually rather frail, often riding in motorized and padded chairs when traveling where the gravity is higher than their home planet’s. On interstellar space stations, it isn’t uncommon for there to be a torali quarter where the gravity is kept at a lower strength than on the rest of the station.

The torali seem to have kept much of the herd mentality of their roots, seeing the group as being far more important than the individual. Even their own lives they seem to see as expendable if it has the potential to help the group. However, they’re more likely to risk the lives of other species, having an individual torali be a cut-out man should the builders or other powerful species confront them on it.

The torali’s technological forte is genetic and biological manipulation, creating a variety of different creatures which, as a group, we’ve taken to calling chimera. They make such creations almost purely through brute-force experimentation rather than careful design, as they have no moral quandaries about the pain any failed creations might feel. They use these chimera as something between slaves and beasts of burden. Should you run up against any torali in the field, you’ll likely find them using chimera as both servitors and brute weapons of war. While not as slow to think as the builders, the torali generally think in straight lines unless given time to plan, and their chimera barely think more than animals.

Politically, the torali are extremely factional, and they seem to be constantly changing factions faster than our intelligence resources can keep up. Of note – some have speculated that they aren’t quite as factional as they would lead the rest of the galaxy to believe, but that it’s only a smokescreen to keep their potential enemies guessing and to make the aforementioned cut-out men easier to keep isolated.

Arbane
2016-11-01, 07:39 PM
There's always the reptile alien puppet masters that seek to weaken the world via use of governments as a proxy to wage war with each other.

I think they were supposed to have psychic powers.

I also believe that they probably were based on a conspiracy or supposed conspiracy l and that's all I will elaborate upon.

It's been a few years but look up reptile or reptoid alien

Look up "David Icke" for more on these guys.

If your game's set in the modern-day, there is a HUGE mythology that various conspiracy theorists have worked up about the different alien races (and their human stooges) slugging it out for control of Earth. Google search can get you more weirdness than you can shake an interocitor at.