What aliens do you have?

So what aliens populate your setting?

In my setting there is a race of bat like people (Portrait stolen from Stellaris). Their superior hearing evolved as an adaption to their formidable homeworld.

>Space Elves
>Space Dwarves
>Space Mongolian/Vikings
>Space Zombies
>Space Jews
>Energy Beings

"SPACE JEWS"

Well I can give you a quick rundown some of the major factions in my setting (yet to be played in)

>United Terran Core Worlds (UTCW, basicly your typical sci-fi human democratic goverment)

>The Oep (a race of small multi limbed aliens with tough skin and eyes like those on flies. A major trading partner to the UTCW)

>The Xogom Scholars (These aliens are the smalles factions in my setting since they only inhabit one tiny star system. But they are obsessed with gathering knowledge. And thier protective nature has kept them safe from other hostile factions due to a natural form of parnoia)

>The Gorm (The Gorms are a race of cyborgs that left most of their flesh eons ago due to reasons even unknown to them. They are also one of the most nuemerous species, mainly due to their quick growth and breeding.)

>The Gleaddahl-Kahr Confederacy (This is acually two species that have united their goverment when both of their homeworlds faced annihilation due to a supernova. Surprisingly both species have gotten along very well

>The Mupie Coven (These aliens are slow moving giants that focuses on industrialization and pride themselves in hard manuell labor and only leave the most crucial tasks to computers and robots. They are mostly known for producing tough and reliable battlecruisers and space stations)

That are all the major factions, ther are the typical, greedy merchans aliens, the bug aliens, etc. But they do not have as much power as these. One can argue that the merchant aliens would have power, but ftl in my setting is hard work that needs an anchor or hyper ship that must spend a few weeks orbiting a star to collect the solar energy and other cospic rays in order to open up a rift in space.

...

I went for chliches and full David Icke with some but I don't care
>greys
>reptilians
>humanlike benevolent higher beings
Besides that, fuckton of human varieties
>Democratic federated humans
>Despotic Imperial humans
>Technocratic trans-humans (Mixture of cyborgs and ascended "ghosts in the shell")
>Pirate human technobarbarians
Then dark eldar ripoff which basicaly >humanlike benevolent higher beings turned evil and decadent
Then
>Robots that destroyed the organics who created them and now are civilisation on their own
>Crystalline entities
>Hiveminded bug-people
>Aquatic molluscoids whose ships have to be filled with water and if they explore land they needs suits filled with water
>Photosyntetic half-plants/half-bugs
And a handful of not very detailed and unimportant ones

I have a setting with a herd-species that became sapient. The vast majority of them are female or sexless, males are born only when their father is getting very old. The females are intelligent reasonable people who run their civilization. The sexless individuals are dumb, docile brutes capable of doing simple tasks. The males are basically giant monsters which require constant breeding or they go on a rampage. They don't tolerate the existence of other males anywhere near them, including their own sons. The males aren't stupid, but they're too driven by their mating and territorial instincts to do anything but fuck and fight.

Each male maintains a harem of 20-30 females, and each female has 2-3 sexless children for physical labor. The females trade daughters with other clans to keep the gene pool flowing and to stimulate cultural exchange and gain needed skills.

When males start being born, the females will try to pretend their sons are sexless for as long as possible, but soon the father will sense his sons and will start to become violent. The father will usually kill the first few sons, but the battles will eventually wear him down. Eventually he accumulates enough injuries that he can no longer win a fight, and he is killed by one of his sons. Once the father is dead any sons that remain will kill each other until only one is left, the new alpha male. The mother of the current alpha male is almost always the leader of the clan.

The species has an unusual mechanism for maintaining genetic diversity; during mating, the females produce sperm-like gametes which enter the male's body. These gametes integrate themselves into a secondary pair of gonads which remain inactive until late in his life, when he begins producing sons. Daughters are produced by his primary gonads and so are purely "his" DNA, but his sons are created by his secondary gonads, and so are virtually unrelated to him. The sexless individuals are haploid.

I've been working on my own take on the traditional gray aliens. Physical description only here:

The average pthosian is taller than a grown human and much leaner, qualities emerging from the low gravity of their homeworld, Ptheros. A well fed pthosian would appear malnourished were he another species. Their skin appears leaden, but when exposed to sunlight it turns silvery as nanocrystals in their outermost dermal layer align and become reflective, a defense mechanism honed on Ptheros in response to their harsh white sun’s intense ultraviolet radiation.

Pthosians have large bulbous heads with small ear and nose cavities and thin lips. These contrast with their large, extremely expressive eyes. They appear almost completely dark and shiny, due to a polarized second cornea overtop the primary cornea and sclera. This leads to poor low-light vision and near blindness in the dark, but extreme resistance to damage from UV light, and indeed the ability to see the UV spectrum.

What is most striking to anyone first encountering a pthosian is their arms. Pthosians have two arms at each shoulder, linked together by a bearing-like joint permitting an extreme range of movement. The limbs themselves are sinuous and spindly, terminating in double thumbed hands. Independently, each arm is fairly weak, and a pthosian often needs two arms to handle loads that other races could carry in one, but the tradeoff is matchless dexterity.

Pthosians are completely hairless, and have limited, or at least very subtle, sexual dimorphism, primarily in skeletal structure.

>Antmen, craftsy and heavily traditionalistic, aka spess dorfs
>Cute cuddly things from cradle-planet that like to terraform and make new species, aka spess elfs
>Humans - warriors, traders and furries
>Eurypterids, dumb, uncivilised and durable, aka spess ogres

>Dyss
>Race of friendly Squid people that have a hard on for technology
>Like, a raging love for it
>They are a Technocracy
>As in, Scientists are the heads of state
>They have 3 massive fleets that travel the galaxy looking for lesser races to up lift and integrate into their empire
>They have done this countless times
>The 'First Born' race is humanity. The first race uplifted by the Dyss. They are kinda cocky about it. Some are /pol/ about it.
>Dyss are the most numerous and can be found on almost every habit planet
>Dyss have a very, very particular way things have to be
>Planets have to be like their home world
>Terraforming and genetic manipulation are the norm when up lifting

Still working on the rest of the lore for them

Physically, the species looks "replitian" with hairless skin covered in bony lumps. The females are generally humanoid, though their arms are longer than a human's, proportionally. an adult female is about two and a half meters tall. They are a reddish brown. Their feet are hoof-like, the bony lumps forming two "toes". Their hands are each two bony "fingers" and a single fleshy "thumb"

Males are much larger, and walk on all fours, like a gorilla. Where they to stand fully erect they would be about four meters tall. Their bony skin is denser, the lumps overlapping to form plates of armor and broad horns along their head, shoulders, and forearms. Their coloration is similar to the females but with "runes" of bright red on their armor.

The sexless workers are somewhere in between the two. They lack the plates and horns of the males, or the distinct red rune-like markings, but they are significantly larger than the females, standing at a full three meters erect. They can walk upright (while carrying something, for example) but generally prefer to walk on all fours.

Does anyone have any pictures of four-legged aliens? I've got a species of centuar-like guys that I'm working on but I kind of hate the way that centaurs look most of the time, so I'm looking for alternate ways of doing it.

I'm not running sci fi at the moment, but there is the mind flayers of THOON.

THOON IS THOON AND THOON IS ALL

>Hegemony (end justify the means fascist power, black & red, military dictatorship from the ruins of the Terran Empire)

>New Republic (used to be a small defender of systems too far for the Empire to care about, became the big classic federal space government, they're pretty cool except they need all their troops to fight the Hegemony, so their systems aren't very secure)

>The Exchange (white and gold, huge consortium of plotting megacorps that has grown so big it's one of the three main territories in the sector, ultra-libertarian close to anarcap, bioshock-inspired stuff + moral decadence + The Godfather, they pay pirates to get them off their back and even sell weapons to the worst asshole of the sector while being friends with their sworn enemies)

>S'pht (stolen from Marathon, they're cyborgs with a very secretive but enlightened culture, follow an unbraked -rampant- AI named Durandal as their leader, with a council of clans right beside it; they're currently building a way of *safe* FTL travel with Exchange money.
Also used to be slaves to the ancient alien space race and to the Pfhor after that.

>Pfhor (used to be the proud warrior race, got gangraped by the Terran Empire after first contact, most of their tech was high jacked by the AI and the S'pht went genocidal on them when they got their free will back after hundreds of years of slavery. Now they're space pirates and nomads that everybody hates, and they hate everyone. Still better equipped than most people, they are big trouble whereas human pirates are mostly annoying if you got guns on your ship).

There are also a few monster races, including xenomorphs because those are apex predators, a doom-of-the-universe mega beast in a black hole (or a race thereof, it's a mystery), and that's about it. I don't know if I should add one or two more alien races that would be part of the Exchange, or even the New Republic and Hegemony.

>also obviously none of those are the good guys. The good guys are the PCs, if they want to. Everyone is mostly out there for themselves or well-intentioned extremists.

>4-armed bipedal amphibians with external gills. Rigid caste system, highly milirarized society.
>Insectoid species that infest the nervous system of other species from their homeworld with their larvae, which they direct with pheremonal commands. Unlike most insect swarm aliens, they can actually be reasoned with, though the language barrier with humans is exceptionally difficult.
>Robotic tech merchants who travel space seeking new upgrades to incorporate into themselves.
>not! Elder Things who evolved in geothermally heated caves on a cold moon and originally built the robot merchants.
>Warrior race decsended from pack hunters. They gain limbs as they age- juveniles are quadrupedal, adults are centauroid, and elders have four arms and four legs. Frequently used as mercenaries by other species, especially the not! Elder Things who have little native tradition of war.

How about these bad boys?

Why does it go so out of its way to show you their junk?

>Master of Orion: the setting
I'd play it.

Because monster girl love knew no time limit.

Why should it not go out of its way to show you alien junk?

So is there a Dyss Alliance or something? I can see some of the Uplifted races going out of their way to help them out when they get advanced enough.

Large, brightly-colored bird-like things with the ability to influence emotions with their song-like trilling. Humanity's only encounters with them have been with science teams sent to survey the planet, so the primary characterizations of them have been that they're very curious and extremely conflict-averse. They usually use their power to influence emotions to calm people down.

>Homo Sapiens
40-50 Million at best. All that's left of them are those that were on pre-FTL or low-FTL colony and cryo-ships. A galactic minority in the worst way, and basically space gypsies now. Have a shitty reputation, and it's not helped that a lot of other races like to use them as a deniable asset or scapegoat.
>Humanity
A reclusive race of post-human AIs and Gastalt beings. Ostensibly created by a peaceful transcendence of the humans in the Sol system, but some fringe Homo Sapiens groups have less credible theories. Been part of the galactic community a lot longer than Homo Sapiens, and as such are the principal race known as Humanity. The most technologically advanced race, but also furtive and keep to themselves at the edges of society.
>Raxan
Six limbed red lizard-apes. Consummate soldiers and businessmen, with a strict cultural hierarchy and rules for ascension within it. Have no cultural stigma about lies or betrayal, so long as it doesn't interfere with objectives. Have control over some of the largest arms and industrial manufacturing in the galaxy, are one of the leading members of the Galactic Commonwealth. (Think space NATO, but also slightly less powerful.)
>Edolari
Resemble TES elves, but have metallic hair and burnished skin colors. Slightly shorter than humans on average, and generally weaker. Strongly pack/herd oriented, the Edolari have traditionalism basically in their DNA. Another member of the GC, they hire out most of their military to Raxan contractors. Are the "face" of the GC.
>Tzithir
Bipedal snake men with vibrant multi-faceted eyes and silver pangolin scales. Nomadic traders, maintain a sizable tax empire through the use of automated colonies. Known for being ardent pacifists, and frequent supporters of less fortunate races, they are responsible for no fewer than three species uplifts. Frequently criticized by the GC for "predatory" business practices.

Nice. I'm kind of aiming to go more deerlike and less, uh, fetishistic. Here's the idea:

The species are called the kastrani. They're mamallian and lithe, with lower bodies that resemble deer and largely humanoid torsos. They have antlers that they shape into a variety of forms chiefly for fashion (unless they're military, in which case they file them down to nubs) and manes that grow from the back of the head down around the neck into a V down the chest. Their skulls are triangular and they have four eyes: two facing forward and two around the temple region facing outward.

The original idea was that they're inspired by Andalites, with a different spin. Problem is I have a hard time finding images of four-legged aliens that don't look ungainly. I kind of figure that their lower bodies are more goatlike or, again, deerlike than horselike, to give them a more agile appearance.

Space Penguins, they are natural physacists and obsessed with flying.

they are mostly peaceful, but have a powerful navy and a constant focus on military tech.

they sell their tech to other aliens at reasonable prices, but are known for stealing technology from other more advanced civs.

fun thing i never played it
basically where i stole ideas were
>david icke and tinfoil teories
>40k
>gallactic civilizations 3
>some old as fuck strategy game i don't really even remember, even the name (I only recall that the main ship was named mjolnir, there were some crystal shits and bioshits)
>twillight imperium

>Less powerful than NATO

Where have I seen this before?

I just mean that's three or four major military/trade deals, rather than just two. So each is proportionally less powerful on a galactic scale than NATO/Warsaw Pact was on the planetary scale.

How about instead of the typical race of space jews/merchants, there was a species of alien Musa Mansas whose wealth and generosity causes them to nearly collapse the economies of worlds they visit that haven't been built to withstand such material wealth (a common trait of primitive capitalist societies that have yet to tap into asteroid mining or free energy).