Cthulian Space Monsters

[Tvtyrant]

One of my favorite tropes in fantasy/Sci-Fi are the monsters that travel through space but do not have high technology/space ships. Creatures that desecend on moon beams, or ships that somehow connect to our oceans from the moon, or things that travel as particles of light/colors.

What is everyone's favorite renditions on none-technological aliens?

[FreakyCheeseMan]

In my setting, there are a handful - space-mermaids that swim through ectoplasm they generate around themselves, sirens whose magical songs protect them from and propel them through space (only in groups, though - they can't alert I their own bodies, so one siren alone would run out of breath and stop singing, so they have to go in rounds.)

My favorite, though, are the Chaos Nebula Gods - each one is an entire Nebula, made up of the ruined fragments of a magitech society destroyed by entropy incarnate. The society had up loaded its consciousnesses to living computer networks - when the cataclysm came, some of those mainframes were powerful enough to hold together, absorbing all of the individual living minds into one massive, utterly mad being whose body is measured in the distances between stars.

So, that's fun. What does everyone else have?

[erikun]

While they aren't aliens, the Eclipse Phase game does have Suryas, which are giant biological space-whales that live around the sun (and people can upload their minds into).

[golentan]

I had one NPC of sorts called simply the Entity. It was mysterious in origin and purpose, and was basically a colossal seed pod like being with tendrils that floated through space. It wasn't really real, though, it was an accumulation of psychic energy that had gained enough awareness to pull itself into a semblance of reality. As such, it could only exist "near" sentient creatures of at least some latent psychic potential, and it travelled by generating dreams that would pull it to its destination with currents of fantasy. Because of the weird nature of the dreamworld, it might take only seconds to cross most of the galaxy, but years to drift from one star system to its immediate neighbor.

[Tvtyrant]

I had one NPC of sorts called simply the Entity. It was mysterious in origin and purpose, and was basically a colossal seed pod like being with tendrils that floated through space. It wasn't really real, though, it was an accumulation of psychic energy that had gained enough awareness to pull itself into a semblance of reality. As such, it could only exist "near" sentient creatures of at least some latent psychic potential, and it travelled by generating dreams that would pull it to its destination with currents of fantasy. Because of the weird nature of the dreamworld, it might take only seconds to cross most of the galaxy, but years to drift from one star system to its immediate neighbor.

That one is weirdly awesome. What did the Entity do when it found sentient life?

[golentan]

That one is weirdly awesome. What did the Entity do when it found sentient life?

It varied wildly. Sometimes it would help them in various ways (often awakening psychic abilities in people), sometimes it was a harbinger of a wave of insanity sweeping a world, sometimes it would attack without warning, sometimes it would transplant people to distant locations, and sometimes it would simply observe events. One time it rearranged the position of a couple moons, then left. It wasn't much of one for communicating, and could switch between friendly and hostile at a moment's notice. When I said it was mysterious, I wasn't kidding.

In general, I had its goal being to increase the frequency of psionic abilities, but I also wanted that to be a means to the end of pulling an entire solar system into the dream world with it. But it didn't perceive time normally, so it would undertake tasks that seemed counterproductive to that cause at times, and it had as many secondary interests and goals as anyone. Usually weird interests, like collecting interesting dreams as "rocks" and arranging them into mosaics where emotional content played the role of color in human art. Or it really liked ruins, so it would try and make them. Not build something that would crumble into a ruin, it liked making the ruins ex nihilo.

[Driderman]

Well there's always the classic "they live in a dimension beyond time and space as we know it, can be summoned to our plane of existence through rituals and enter on their own when The Stars Are Right", which will work equally well in pretty much any setting.

In a campaign I'm working on, a small brood of telepathic aliens have infiltrated the goverment agency structure of the US after the crash at Roswell and are paving the way for their mothership, which will arrive just around the climax of the story, by replacing key government and agency actors with bioengineered sleeper agents of their own.
It's basically a mash-up of XCom, The Manchurian Candidate, The Bourne stories and Lovecrafts Mi-Go aliens. Their travel mode is rather classical though, although I have yet to decide on it completely as it has little relevance to the story itself.

[prufock]

I'm working on a Spelljammer-like space campaign where the part of "aliens" is played by aberrations, and psionics is an aberration-only ability (to start, at least). Aboleths are akin to space whales, traveling in the phlogiston/vacuum, protected by the mucus that covers their bodies.

[Driderman]

The Aliens Xenomorph approach could also fit: The entity simply hibernates in the cold vacuum of space until it reaches a destination with life that will sustain it, and then it creates a colony.

The "drifting through space in hibernation" could be used for all manner of entities, big or small.

[123456789blaaa]

Have you read the manga HellStar Remina? It's a manga by Junji Ito (I highly recommend his other works as well). I'll just copy/paste the description from Bogleech:

In this sci-fi horror series, a wandering "planet" invades our solar system and guns straight for Earth...eating other planets and moons along the way, or at least tasting them. Most of the action focuses on an unfortunate girl whose father discovered the astral terror and how humans respond to their impending doom (poorly), but the Hell Star itself is a fascinating and horrific being, even moreso when a group of humans hatch a desperate plan to colonize the monster's nightmarish surface, finding less than hospital conditions.

This is what it looks like:

Spoiler

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Here's the list from Bogleech I got the description from, in case you're interested in some of the authors other works but don't know where to start.

[GungHo]

Psionics and abberations are from outer space in my campaigns. Consequently, encounters are few and far between and usually a cause for extreme stress among my players because I don't pull punches when it comes to greys shooting mind bullets.

[Doorhandle]

Remember the elder evil Atropus? Well, he/it is basically like Remina, except as an undead stillborn god. Bonus point for having a bodack minion that decided from the moon on a massive, black-winged construct

Ragnorra could also apply, being the biological, positive-energy counterpart of atropus.

There's also a few epic-level creatures that could apply: I'm pretty sure atropals, anaxims, and possibly chimerics have both the flyspeeds and the immunities needed for space travel (admittedly at a snail's pace.)

The immortal's handbook bestiary has a bunch of huge beasts living in the depths of space: astral worms, the infamous neutronium golem, void dragons, wormhole dragons, the space brains known as the cogent...

Also, I'm pretty sure that the astral plane could act as hyperspace if you really wanted it to.

[Cog]

Also, I'm pretty sure that the astral plane could act as hyperspace if you really wanted it to.

It already is. Almost all magical teleportation is actually travel through the Astral.

[Doorhandle]

It already is. Almost all magical teleportation is actually travel through the Astral.

Also, add astral juggernauts to the list. a massive cyclopedian monster which traveling though that astral plane and who can server a soul with a pinch is pretty close to the mythos in my book.

Although i'm not entirely sure on how moving on a timeless plain interacts with interstellar distances, and I don't know how one would clarify it...

[Mastikator]

I like the idea of space crystals. A huge crystal that lives forever and feeds off the background radiation of the universe.

[DigoDragon]

This is what it looks like:

Well I didn't need to sleep for the rest of the week.
Now THAT is a pretty freaky creature. Love it.

(If they can reach it, I wonder if anyone thought to bring explosives?)