Truly Alien Aliens

So I'm working on a space setting, and want the aliens that are actual aliens and not descended from an ancient galactic human empire to be really, really alien. I'm looking for things lacking bilateral symmetry or with weird forms of locomotion or just generally not at all remotely humanoid.

Do you guys have any favorite creatures you like to use that actually seem like they might not be from earth? Or just favorite aliens from existing fiction that might work?

The only one I've got that I'm fairly happy with so far floating gas-bag creatures with a "Head"-like lump sticking from the bottom, and a single long multi-segmented arm sticking out from that, which evolved as ambush predators in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.

Pic vaguely related, in that it's one of the weirder looking things I got when I googled "Non-humanoid aliens".

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=thdC-HlRHWg
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/52513662/#52530356
falsepositivecomic.com/2014/05/06/redeem-page-1-cosmic-horror-commic/
youtube.com/watch?v=5RPeQxjqDb8
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

One of the things I like best is non-verbal communication.

Might be posture, or even bioluminescence ala squids.

Different/bizzare reproduction methods are fun too.

Like what if they lay eggs in dead animals? Or budding, or their reproduction method doesn't result in any paternal attachment to their offspring. Then take those eccentricities and build a culture around them.

Don't hesitate to put clashing traits in there either. Maybe the aggressive militant aliens are small and cute by other alien standards.

I was actually going to have the gas-bags communicate via squid-like color and texture changes on their skin. They can actually detect sounds and distinguish them as well or better than humans, but they can't make specific noises without technological assistance.

These are all good jumping off points for weird aliens, though.

Octopus-like, rather. Or maybe squids do it too, I'm not sure.

Plant like aleins might be cool. With little to know food requirements they might have a radically different mental development and social structures.

Here's your reading assignment for tonight. Come back when you have a 5-page campaign outline with the theme of "what makes an alien is on the inside."

Why don't you use parasitical lice as a template? They have so many delightfully fucked up features that you could twist into a fundamentally alien species.

>Different/bizzare reproduction methods are fun too.
I am writing up a setting revolving around a species that doesn't give birth to the underdeveloped like humans do. Basically a baby will hatch from an egg and find themselves in a hut full of supplies and very simple maps on the walls directing them to civilization. If they're able to make their way through the wastes to the nearest community, using the supplies they are given, they qualify as full citizens, and of course any child too stupid/lazy/sick/etc to solve the quest dies. The Hike and how they approach it is the foundation of any individual's character, and each culture handles it slightly differently. Still grinding through the implications of how it effects the rest of society.

Sector General by James White

All Tomorrows OP. All you need to know.

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A field of mushrooms that is effectively a giant single sentient brain, with the individual mushrooms effectively being brain cells and their spores neurotransmitters.

Lots of good shit in this thread, thank you all. Gonna read some of these books now.

Precursor creations that love all life.

Just a bunch of flying space cubes that love all life.

They are completely mute, don't reproduce(made in factory boxes), powerful and small.

Do to their different needs, different priorities, different communications, and a complete and utter blank about things like reproduction and coming of age

Alien mindset is kinda hard to express, especially in roleplaying, but one can try.
Sometimes it's the Orz with their *silly cow* antics and *dancing*. Sometimes it's just like humans but with certain concepts that are different, or some missing entirely ("Why do you humans have sex for fun? It's incredibly painful for us, we do it just once in our lives!"), or thinking in different ways (Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra!)

Also kinda unrelated but that Darmok and Jalad aliens' language literally works on memes. Terry Crews, advertising Old Spice. You, when the thread is diamonds.

A friend of mine writing a scifi novel came up with an aquatic creature with a sea slug-like body, a skeletal horse's head, and jellyfish stingers. They're about the size of golden retrievers and are extremely poisonous, they're called Pubbalos.

Veeky Forums, when moot fled. Longcat, now forgotten. tfw oldfag. Like tears in rain. See you, space cowboys.

non-verbal communication is cool.

I once thought how itd be possible for there to be an alien species that has a language based on a sort of dna sequencing. The speaker would build a special non-reproductive strand of DNA that was coded for what they wanted to say, and then transmit the DNA to the receiver via a pilus, like a bacteria, the receiver would then decode the DNA and understand the message.

If these species could communicate with humans, just have them in pairs and take long breaks in silence while connected to each other to discuss whatever the humans are asking.

>non verbal/ocular language
youtube.com/watch?v=thdC-HlRHWg

Like the septapods in Arrival. Alien in both language and their way of understanding.

Intelligent, friendly dust mites.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/52513662/#52530356

>All it takes is one time for someone to say "Our powerplants need U235 not U238, we have to enrich and refine the uranium we find"
>and everyone physicist in the universe is going to look up from that sharply and say "He's talking about fission power. Uranium is their word for things with 92 protons in it. Show me every other word they use when discussing this, and I will probably be able to tell you what it means."
This is fucking great.

Why spores and not mycelium?
They could be like Zerg meets fungus zombies, where their original form is the creep rather than some insect.

Bump

for physical designs, just scale up microorganisms.

Hivemind as a memetic virus, that exists in creatures thoughts and can influence them && spread an infection

I actually had that as a disease in a Dark Heresy game. Nurgle decided to get fancy, and infected people became bloated and started growing bioluminescent pustules. Anyone who was in the light was in danger of infection.

>Serious video made by someone with rhotacism
Objectively the cutest speech impediment

I understand your sentiment because we share a common meme vocabulary, but try explaining what you had for breakfast.

And he does good stuff.

The Hildemar's Knots

>Alien species first discovered in the neutron star KJEI-54-458945 in the Einstein's Revenge Cluster. They consist of knots of the vortex and charge tubes in the neutronium mantle of the neutron star; each individual is a few centimetres across and lives on soliton waves and neutrino flows. They are based on nuclear matter processes, acting naturally on the femtosecond timescale and have nuclear matter manipulation abilities. The Einstein's Revenge Cluster consists of 34 neutron stars, apparently the result of timed supernovas several hundred million years ago. It is unknown if they were caused by the Knots or some species which created the Knots, but all neutron stars are inhabited by different versions of the Knots.

>The Knots appear to have a largely non-material culture where the basis of interaction is trade in self, orthodoxy and authentic noise (?) according to the communication attempts that have been undertaken by various interstellar institutes. Knots appear to view the world as an eternal unchanging structure, where they just play out its logical unfolding in order to cause their existence (?). Most contact attempts have failed, as the Knots consider the world outside the neutronium a highly abstract mathematical problem rather than something to interact with.

Twilight Imperium has some rather alien aliens.

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just make sure it's not a human with a weird head and a weird skincolor.
Orks, Jar Jar, Greedo and ET are all just that

There are more.

I liked this short comic

falsepositivecomic.com/2014/05/06/redeem-page-1-cosmic-horror-commic/

The rest are not very interesting.

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I didn't get it.

Clock rate of e^-6 Hz

Abdul Alhazred IN SPACE

Look to the deep ocean for inspiration of things that are truly alien

Nothing really to get, just weird for the sake of it

I like that he has a sense of humor about it

Try giving this and the sequel Echopraxia a look if you can find them.

Forgot pic.

The aliens communicate by moving a floating ball around, and expect the human to do the same

Sorry user,but this is retarded.

Evolution is a copypasting bastard.The selective pressures that would create a sapient alien would also make it humanoid.

Sapience has nothing to do with anatomy.
The only life we know is terran life, maybe in strange wolrds life is fully different to us.
I would advise you to read Stellaris.

>The selective pressures that would create a sapient alien would also make it a terrestrial omnivore with strong, prehensile digits and a largely temperate preferred habitat

Fixed that for you, you unscientific loon.

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That's a raven

Any of lovecrafts aliens

Your own example works against what you are saying. A sapient alien would probably have one head, two arms, and two legs, but beyond that everything else is up in the air.

It's a sentient, tool making organism able to solve problems, communicate verbally, and understands the concept of being able to ask human beings to take bottle caps off bottles in order to drink.

Ravens are sentient life. In a few million years they could have societies that would be recognizable to people that don't study them.

Nevermore

Some day

>go read this fiction book
How about you reading some biology books?

>The only life we know is terran life, maybe in strange wolrds life is fully different to us.

Bullshit.Water is literally the second most common molecule of the universe and carbon is the fourth most common element.Both have properties that are extremely useful,if not downright essential for life.
>billaterally simmetric
>biped
>homeothermic
>main sense is vision
>literally talks
Cool.maybe someday their descendants will get the anatomical features needed to chuck spears
It would also be biped and have a head.
>biped
>four limbs
>a head
i dunno,looks kinda humanoid to me.

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Evolution does a lot of copy/pasting on earth because it's working with the same tools. Bats and birds received a shared genetic toolkit from the freer evolutionary meanderings of their earliest ancestors. An alien world would almost certainly have a different earliest evolutionary history that would lead to its later creatures having a different toolkit. Those creatures would often be similar to each other in the way that bats are to birds, because they'd be pulling from the same foundation, but they would likely be very little like humans, or earth life at all.

classic diogenes

Pretty good.

Okay, while I don't have a lot of practical experience in these matters, I feel pretty much the last thing you want to do when finding yourself in contact with strange aliens is start talking a bunch of different languages at once.

Reductio ad absurdum.Yay i win!
The basic building units won't be too different.The need to use energy efficiently will still exist and influence evolution.Even if their ancestor looked nothing like ours,they would evolve in something similar to its terran counterpart.
People don't think well when they're in panic

Nah, he's just taking a jab at your humanoid classification, ol' Diogenes style.

You have to misunderstand evolutionary biology pretty extensively to somehow come up with "Aliens will always look humanoid". Convergent evolution is a real thing, and quite possibly some aliens will by happenstance come to look something sort of like us in the way that insects come to look sort of like birds, but extrapolating from a sample size of one out to the entire universe is absurd.

There are multiple instances of ridiculously implausible happenstance in our evolutionary history that have shaped us to be what we are. How different would every mammal on earth look if some early rodent had developed three sets of limbs instead of two?

Sentience already exists here, on earth, in a species formed by processes so incredibly different than our own that it has developed eight limbs, each of which has its own small "brain", no bones, and the ability to change both the color and texture of its skin to match its surroundings. It uses tools and manipulates its environment. It can also open jars and plan complex escapes from aquariums.

How humanoid is the octopus? It has two eyes, because both of our ancestors had two eyes. That's very nearly it. But these creatures are already extremely intelligent. How many thousands or millions of years might it take them to become as intelligent as us?

So why not a creature with trilateral symmetry, or six sets of limbs, or any number of things that we cannot possibly imagine. You say "The only creatures that can possibly arise from these pressures is this one", but that is not even how it ever worked on earth.

Again, life on earth looks as similar as it does to all other life on earth because our earliest genes, when there was the least restriction of possibility, are very similar, and anything new has to be built off of what is old. It takes an extreme lack of imagination to say that only humanoids could solve the evolutionary problem that create intelligence.

He was wondering if they had met humans before, and so tried some other human languages. Its right there.

MOANING LESCUE. This is a sandwich, it is full of aids and fail.

Dropping what I have as non humanoid aliens

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youtube.com/watch?v=5RPeQxjqDb8

>their spores neurotransmitters
Slow thinkers. But they live for millennia.

Put the “brain“ or other vital functions into specific places, like a thorax. Bonus points if they have a head but he is not a vital part. Players usually need a while to figure that one out.

>Mould colonies with a hivemind that are their own ships, propelled by shooting out spores which also colonise nearby planets
>Tree aliens which experience time much slower than other races and take dozens of years to grow branches into hands to communicate, and control their technology by having roots grown into it and sucking out resources in a sort of code (e.g. activating weapons by severely depleting the potassium in them)
>Fish aliens which haven't evolved to leave water or carry it around with them exactly, more they've developed localised antigravity fields which means the water follows their own position as they swim in different directions

did he died?

that last one could be amusing with a technological twist in it.
>"They didn't evolve hands or feet, yet they invented magnetized water! You believe that? Magnetized! Water!"
>"Yeah, and you know what? They say their scientists have recently domesticated it!"
>"Say what now?"
>"They managed to domesticate their magnetized water!"

It's true that they might not look like us at all, but we can make a few estimations.
They most likely will have a manipulation limbs with which they can shape the world, else they won't evolve higher brain function.
Most likely will be land animals. Fire, archery, husbandry and agriculture is more difficult in water.
They can't be much smaller than us, because you need a certain amount of brainmass to achieve sentience. Our brain to body-mass is fairly high, so its likely that the aliens will be bigger than us.

>They most likely will have a manipulation limbs with which they can shape the world, else they won't evolve higher brain function.
Killer whales are sentient and they're about as far from a tool-using species as you get.

>Most likely will be land animals. Fire, archery, husbandry and agriculture is more difficult in water.
I'll give you that.

>They can't be much smaller than us, because you need a certain amount of brainmass to achieve sentience. Our brain to body-mass is fairly high, so its likely that the aliens will be bigger than us.
Birds can solve complex problems using a fraction of our brain mass, so it's possible ours are actually quite inefficient.

>Do you guys have any favorite creatures you like to use that actually seem like they might not be from earth?

I liked the aliens from the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

What are the chances that any alien species aren't humanoids?

We look like this because of very basic threats and environmental conditions made us evolve so we can survive. We stand on two feet to be taller so we can see father. We have sensory organs to cover as much of our surroundings as possible. Our hands are able to manipulate tools. Our skulls are massive compared to the rest of our body, and we have a very dense brain within such skulls.

Shouldn't some of this translate to any other intelligent species?

>we stand on two feet to be taller so we can see farther.

A species that evolves in a mountainous or unstable environment might select for a more stable locomotive style with more legs. We evolved for a flat plains environment. In addition, we evolved bipedal locomotion for stamina, not height. Also, Giraffes. height isn't decided by walking style.

>We have sensory organs to cover as much of our surroundings as possible.

No. If we did, we'd have echolocation and eyes on the sides of our head with goat or horse-style pupils. What we have is designed for spotting prey at long distances with binocular vision.

>Our hands are able to manipulate tools.

I agree with this one.

>Our skulls are massive compared to the rest of our body, and we have a very dense brain within such skulls.

I'm not certain how the first one is a benefit, and the second one is simply due to how our nervous system developed. What if a species developed with crustacean style nerve ganglia, or octopus style 'hindbrains' for each limb?

imo the main barriers to octopus society development are their solitary lifestyle and mothers dying in childbirth limiting the ability to pass on information.

>Our hands are able to manipulate tools
>I agree with this one
It's worth nothing though, that "hands" in general are not necessarily suited to tool use. The difference between ape and human hands and muscle structure is relatively slight but very significant in effect.

I was more agreeing with the 'tool manipulating' bit. The real advantage of our hands is our opposable thumbs, not so much the hands themselves.

>skin
It's spacesuit.

I loved that damn book. The scene where the mc (can't recall his name) briefly lost his ability to observe as a human still sticks with me.

Just wanted to say thank you to whoever posted this. Enjoying immensely atm.

I wish I wasnt so annoyed by speech impediments.

I think that the worshippers of Azathoth there don't like basic geometry. Right angles and the like. So when he demonstrates right angles and knowledge of geometry, psychic dude tries to warn him that they are Zealots, but its too late.

Then they feed him to their god. Who has some connection with Earth I couldn't figure out

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I read some where that making your character act as completely random as possible and do everything on a spur of the moment was a good way of making them seem more alien.

Basically just make them as weird as possible.

It's worth noting that dolphins are extremely intelligent (highest encephalisation quotient apart from humans) without having manipulatory limbs.

They are also extremely rapey

More or less than humans?

>The selective pressures that would create a sapient alien
There is no consensus on what these pressures are. You're assuming they're environmental, but the sample size on which you're basing that assumption is terrible. If our environment alone created the pressure that lead to sapience, then it would have happened more than just the one time in our planet's long history of bearing life.

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