I will in the future be bringing out an alien race as part of my range.
However, I won't be doing this until I think I have a really good concept.

There are many many humanoid races that have animal heads or minor cosmetic differences.
There are many bipedal acid bleeding races too.
There are races that have funny ears or big beards.
There are many of the same.

Does anyone have a good idea for an alien race that is not a cliche or been done to death?

I really don't see the point of bringing out another Star Trek style alien race.

It need not be just the appearance that is alien, are they able to do weird alien stuff?

They need to be practical for 6mm too.




Michael.
www.angelbarracks.co.uk

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Plantmen, Triffids, that kind of stuff ... like these that Khurasan makes in 15 or 25 ... no one makes something like these in 6mm ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Considering how many sci-fi films and series there are, it's pretty hard to come up with anything original for an alien species, which is exactly why I'm not going to suggest one! However...

Have you ever watched the tv show Falling Skies? The alien race in that is pretty interesting. *Spoiler alert* I'll not go into it too much because I don't want to ruin the whole show for anyone who hasn't seen it, but they have technology that allows them to take control of other species. That would be a pretty interesting concept as it would allow players to field really any 6mm armies they had as part of their [insert alien species name here] force with just a few select few items to represent their alien masters.

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I was pondering some sort of nanite/nano race.
Created by a sentient organic race these machines grew into AI through a hive mind structure.
Each little nanite thingy can attach itself to an intranet whereby their memory and CPU and all that techy stuff can be pooled to make a true self-aware entity. (Even if it is only the size of an appleseed)

They became aware and started infiltrating their original creator’s tech and civilization until they became able to take over the infrastructure and manufacture themselves machined bodies.

These machines mimicked the forms of their organic creators at first but then evolved depending on what their purpose was.

For the most part they simply ignored their fleshy creators as they viewed them as less than a threat.
The creators tried to fight back, but the <b>metalswarm</b> simply controlled too much, they shut down servers, stopped the domestic water supply, closed hospitals, turned off power to homes, turned off satellites, and basically denied the creators any technology and forced them from their urban modern tech-reliant homes into the wilderness.

The metalswarm grew aware and considered if it was alone in the universe or if there were others like it.
It set about creating an exploration force to find out.

So we have the metalswarm army.

Groups of nanite thingies that come together inside metal machines and act as its brain, currently shaped like their creators but with sticky on weapony things.

Currently they simply attack the enemy using their machines; however they will soon learn to make machines that will allow small clusters of nanites to be shot across the battlefield and hit enemy tech (tanks, artillery etc), penetrate it and then take over the computers.
This will either render the enemy tech useless or in a worst case scenario, the metalswarm will be able to take control of the enemy tech.

Damaging the metalswarm machines will be hard too.
When a machine is damaged, it can be repaired by some of the nanites inside it; however this will result in many nanites sacrificing themselves to make these repairs.
This will mean they operate less efficiently as they have less hive mind capability.

In terms of rules for KR 16, the difficulty for orders will increase with each repair made.
So for example, they may pass orders on a 1+ whilst fresh.
After one repair they pass on a 2+, after two repairs on a 3+, three repairs on a 4+ etc. until they reach orders of a 6+ at which point further repairs are not possible and the machine is effectively killed.




They will in time learn how to take over creatures by making cerebral plants.
Small machines that attach to a creature and in time create an interface whereby the hive mind of the cerebral plant can take over the functions of the creature they are attached to.

So you can have the metalswarm taking control of horses, dogs, flak worms, razor hounds, maybe even people…

I think I will run with this idea as it is sufficiently alien enough and should allow for a different style of gaming experience.

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I like it as a general outline. I would recommend the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons for further inspiration. I think that it is one of the better novels dealing with run-away AI, especially since you also are thinking of going "parasite" with them.

Truly alien aliens is hard to do.

Otherwise, you could go with "native" aliens to complement your colonizers and junkers. To be frank, the intelligence you just described seems like they could wipe them out without a second of forethought.

A fun idea for "native" sentience is the Speaker for the Dead concept (Orson Scott Card). Although at sometimes extremely simplistic and awkward as a novel, the idea of a virus creating biological terraforming (for someone else) by infecting the native life is well executed.

/Fredmans

Are you thinking of Stargate Replicators ? http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sta ... &FORM=IGRE

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Just a personal opinion here but I think what makes people think alien alien is a lack of symmetry. For instance something with 5 legs, 3of them on one side and to on the other but add some articulated appendage over there looks wrong to our sensibilities.

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I am not familiar with them, however looking at those images I would say not.
My nanite things don't turn into machines as those SG ones appear to do, rather they have them built and they 'sit' inside controlling them.
When the machine takes damage, some of the nanite crew sacrifice themselves to repair the damage.
This knocks down the AI power of the crew which makes it less clever for want of a better term.

Think a bit like a vehicle with a swarm of trillions of these things plugged into it, making it live, either giving it orders and controlling it, or using their own bodies to repair damage.

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I'm still a fan of the Plantmen ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

One of the GW books (Eisenhorn) had a race of five-limb creatures, each with some type of hand on the end of each arm, but the arms were all different lengths and no two creatures were alike. They walked on four limbs and the fifth was up in the air. If you made a hub (abdomen) that had five places to glue the limbs, you could issue the player 5 (or 6?) limbs and a torso and the player can model them anyway they want, giving them all a unique look. They were supposedly pretty big, maybe a bit smaller than a Dreadnought and shorter, but you could make them bigger.

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Wasn't that the strange Cthulhu-inspired race. It fits that bill perfectly, anyway. If you went Cthulhu in 6mm, I would be all over your place. Disturbing symmetries of alien design; Elder Things.

/Fredmans

So would various IP and copyright lawyers!

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I don't know about the inspiration but I know these were wholly asymmetrical. Just looking at them gave you a headache because they existed in a different dimension. No eyes to speak of, just a large mouth that appeared on different parts of the torso. The hands were all different... Bah! I will find my Eisenhorn copy and post their description. They were weird and I liked them.

I just remembered their name: the saruthi. I liked that Eisenhorn couldn't care enough to even capitalize the name of their race.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

It rhymed with heretic, no doubt.

The saruthi was an hommage to Lovecraft. It featured non-Euclidan geometry and weird angles as well. I loved them, it was one of the better takes on the Cthulhu mythos, in the 40K universe as well.

/Fredmans

I don't see any IP issues, unless he calls them saruthi, or Cthulu warriors, or lovecraftians.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.