So I was just curious as to what you guys think are the craziest groups/races/cults/etc. in your stories/universe. For me it would have to be a race called the Zashik. They are a race of machine aliens who hate everything organic and think it should all perish. They are not some weird mechanic skeleton or anything like that but more of floating pieces of metal all connected to one another which can form different shapes and weapons. Now this is not why I deem them crazy. The reason I deem them crazy or out there is because of what happened after their defeat in my universe. The Zashik tried to go to war with Terrans but lost pretty badly leaving only a few survivors. About 10 percent of the survivors lived on planets away from Terran space or in some drifting derelict ship. But the other 90 percent turned themselves into something only told in whispers and thought to be fake (even by the poor). The names that are whispered and told as folk tales or jokes to scare the young children are The Frankensteins. It was said that the Zashik had begun to tear themselves apart into smaller bots and began to literally wear the skin of other races, Terran, Drakel, all of them. It was their way of hiding in the shadows as they try to make more of their own. They would use pieces from abducted Terrans to dress themselves in meat suits as they hid on ships or planets where they could recreate themselves in the hopes to go to war again and annihilate the human race along with the rest of the sentient beings in the galaxy. So what are your crazy messed up groups?
The craziest race I've made were the Devonians. Basically, imagine a cat-like race which is short, stocky and stubby. The paws and feet end in three digits each, a tail protrudes from the trousers/skirts. They have human-like faces (sans noses), human-like hair, pointy ears and bison horns coming out from their heads just above the ears. They consider themselves the true guardians of the realm they inhabit, and their High Chief demands to expand their territory into neighboring kingdoms because she feels the filthy humans have corrupted the world too much with their reliance on machinery and steel. Only through the might of a would-be Devonian Empire could peace and tranquility be realized. A return to nature, without the comforts of modern society. They were the first race created by the Highest Goddess, the first ones to hone and study on magic. This, then, is proof that they are the true inheritors of the land, not the humans. The High Chief is, of course, part of a in-clan faction that focuses on what some think is the far extreme end of sanity. Even Devonians within the land think the High Chief insane and had fled to the human lands. Are you able to picture it? Weird isn't it?
They sound pretty creepy. I probably wouldn't want to mess with them. Their motivation is intriguing to me, I'd like to know more about them. And now looking back at my crazy race/group, I'm thinking of either scrapping them, or developing them on a new line because right now they hardly seem threatening. Maybe take bits and pieces of it and create an actual, legit terrifying character/group of characters. I just looked at the title and thought, 'Well, I got a race that looks pretty crazy,' and went with it. Once I come up with an actually terrifying group, I'll post it here.
I'm slightly ashamed to say I've never created a weird world where I can make weird ...creatures? in it. Maybe I should write a short story and make the goal to be the wildest, and craziest thing I'm capable of dreaming up... Oooh. Ideas. Thank ya! and Welcome to a part of my brain.
Not much too them, during the war they wore human skin as trophies and use railguns as their main weapons. They came out of unknown space so not a lot is known about them. Other than that race there are a few weird ones: Thi'Ka'Mik: The males love a fight and are very anger driven. The females hate the males and are sexist and are driven by their need for power. Drakel: A mostly peaceful lizard race. Grilyeks (Greys): Created all the aliens in the known universe and have been watching as they all grow. Terrans: Humanity has split into the rich and poor, the rich are ignorant and keep to themselves in the center of Terran space and the poor use ancient and old human technology to get by. Xunkiirax: An insect that colonizes worlds but are peaceful. Wydmun: Giant living trees that taught the Drakel their religion, after hundreds of years when they are near the end of their life the Wydmun find a place to die and become actual trees. Zashik: Already said what they are. You're welcome It's always fun to make vast universes with crazy things in them.
Dammit, Daemon Wolf, now I'm jealous. Your races are very interesting and fascinating and the most exotic race I have is the freaky horned-cat race. Oh, and weasel-race, dog-race...basically my fantasy is clogged with walking, talking bipedal animals. I should start brainstorming new, and better, races. To work I go!!
Funny. I've come up with several different types of creatures to use someday at some point.....currently I'm focusing on my crime writing as opposed to my fantastical work but I've yet to name any of my creatures and monsters. XD
Mine isn't a race and is not as crazy as in all others' comments, yet I love them for their horrifying theme. They are humans named "Shabro" s, believing in a god named Horotat, the god of waters. They are one of the many gangs of my story world, and are very much like medieval priests and torturers. They have many types of members, some are torturers as I said, some are the especial clergy men that sing in the mourning ceremonies, some are the exorcists... The reason why I consider them crazy, is a scene in which one of the torturers traps one of the good guys of another gang and threatens him of pouring sulfuric acid on him. You see, they believe in the god of waters (acids).
Eh, The Greys are based on the, well, Greys. The ones that supposedly crash landed on Earth in Roswell. Drakel are a generic lizard race with the exception that I wanted them peaceful instead of evil like most of the lizard races I've seen. Xunkiirax are based on giant bugs like the ones from Ender's Game and Starship Troopers. Again, wanted them peaceful. Wydmun. Lol I based them off of the Lord of the Rings' Ents race Zashik I wanted an evil robot race. Terrans are just humans with how I think the future will play out. And Thi'Ka'Mik males were made because I wanted a brute race like the Jiralhanae (Brutes) from Halo or the Krogan from the Mass Effect series. But the design of them was inspired by a short film. The Thi'Ka'Mik females on the other hand were based off of my own personal view of feminists (as I have seen most of them just hate men where as a few (I know of 3) who are actually interested in equality).
In one of the stories I'm working on now there is a group anthropomorphic wolf-people who have travelled from an alternate timeline in order to continue their genocidal crusade against humans. Being a group of religious zealots, they travelled to a point in time before their prophet (a dragon, one of the various demigods) was killed, and end up worshipping it. The prophet is rather confused and frightened due A) the sheer craziness of this group and their tales of their own timeline. B) The size of their army and level of technology and magic. C) The fact that they now expect it to be the prophet for a religion that doesn't fully exist on this timeline yet, and was in actuality, a load of bullshit in the other timeline anyway that it made up in order to gain power. As a result, it becomes afraid of being discovered as a fraud and tries to convince its followers to downplay their faith and abandon their genocidal ways. Many of them do, but a large portion of them end up denouncing their own prophet and retconning it out of their holy books under the logic that since this is a different timeline then it's not the real prophet. They continue their genocide regardless. Still better than grave-robbing Tolkien for the ten thousandth iteration of nature worshipping, bow and dagger wielding, magic excelling, elves. Along with their axe-wielding, beard growing, mead drinking, underground dwelling, dwarves. Christ am I ever sick of elves and dwarves in fantasy.
The Poor fellow Knights (Space Templars) who cruise around the universe on a noble crusade to save mankind. "Our swords are forged from asteroid metals in the fusion reactors of our ship. our shields are hardened ceramic, capable of stopping plasma, laser, and small arms fire. as a unit we are unstoppable in ship to ship combat."
The only creature I've ever really made that doesn't look entirely human is yet to be named. They are gray creatures, made of clay, stone, and sticks with sap for blood. They walk on all fours (looking pretty similar to Gollum from LotR) and have massive jaws full of razor sharp teeth which they use to shred the metal that they eat. Their life force is connected to the Stele, a giant creature with a fully formed upper body and a lower body that looks like a pillar. He cannot move or speak verbally. He can only communicate with a select special few. These creatures live in the real world, but have to regularly return to the Stele to "refresh" their life force. And since they are made of clay, they can shift their bodies to look human and change their faces as needed.
Ceramics offer heat absorbtion against lasers and plasma while when backed with kevlar will stop bullets. The vest worn by US service men contain such ceramic plates.
I wrote a short story about a group of people that lived inside the internet to protect it from attacks. They were basically just humans though. No fangs, scales, or wings, or anything like that.
Humans I found an amazing gimmick online for developing non-human psychologies, and I love emphasizing in my writing that we look just as crazy to everybody else as they do to us. The two main non-human species that I've worked on for my stories (sadly, both WsIP at this point) are vampires for a horror story and an insectoid-humanoid species (called the "Malmooth") for my Doctor Who fanfiction. Spoiler: Humans According to Maslow's Hierarchy, humans care primarily about Survival (the four Fs of biology: food, fight/flight, reproduction), then we go through Security needs (making the world predictable: shelter, schedules, law enforcement), Social needs (relationships with friends and family), Esteem needs (knowing that our contributions to the world in general make us important), and finally look for things that make us special as individuals (artistic/philosophical creativity...) Anybody can overcome their basic instincts if they try hard enough, but most basic instincts that humans would have to overcome are: we fear death more than anything else (even when we give our lives to help somebody else, it's not "I love that person so much that I don't fear death" so much as "I love that person so much that I fear his/her death more than I fear my own"), we gather in large numbers to survive, we take care of other people if we feel that we will be compensated for our efforts, and we shut down new ideas that go against the group's accepted dogma (both in ourselves and in others) because we see group loyalty as a matter of life and death. We tend to look at people as "groups" rather than "individuals" (Security/Relationships > Specialness), and we feel little obligation to aid those outside our own groups. Most of the worst cruelty in human history has boiled down to "one group feared that they would die if they allowed another group to live, so they tried to wipe out the other group first." Spoiler: Malmooth In Doctor Who, we've only seen one person from the species that I'm using - and she only appeared in one episode - so we don't know very much about their cultures in general: 1) the species is insectoid, and 2) the character was raised to believe that she had to begin and end every sentence by repeating her name over and over ("Chan, my name is Chantho, tho." "Chantho, are you able to talk without doing that?" "Chan, it would be incredibly rude, tho."). This leaves quite a bit of room for fanfic authors to come up with their own ideas for what the rest of the species could look like, and what I have so far is: *Maslow: the Malmooth start with Relationships, then work their way through Contribution, Survival, Specialness, and finally Security. Being an insectoid species, they gamble on the survival of hundreds of children per family unit (whereas mammals invest in the survival of a much smaller number) and frequently over-populate planets because they don't fear starving to death as much as they fear loneliness in life. They feel that death is a "sad" thing, but they don't feel that it's a fundamentally "bad" thing. They are perfectly comfortable with the fact that they are mortal, that they are going to die one way or another, and they would rather make their lives as fulfilling as possible - for themselves and for as many others as possible - than make themselves and everybody around them miserable by trying to delay the inevitable: "living for 20 years" versus "dying for 70 years" Those who make it to adulthood are surrounded by so many people that they can't keep track of everybody, but they still feel the need to try. Humans generally see other people as means to an end (survival), so when we get to the point at which we wouldn't be able to keep track of any more relationships, we generally don't try: we focus more on the relationships we've already built and ignore everybody else. Malmooth, on the other hand, desire relationships with others as the goal in of itself and so keep trying to meet new people long after a human would've said "enough is enough." Since a Malmooth understands how much trouble he has at keeping track of all of his friends'/relatives' names, and since he knows that his friends/family are in the same boat that he is, he generally tries to reintroduce himself at every opportunity so that his friends/family can have an easier time remembering him. Spoiler: Vampires Maslow: Food-Specialness-Security-Relationships-Contribution Vampires are solitary predators who want to live for as long as possible in whatever way that they personally have decided they would like to, and they don't care who they hurt along the way. Humans joke "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you" when really we feel compelled to seek strength in numbers; a vampire would think that honestly. A vampire who is asked to look back on her human memories of seeking friends/family would feel incredibly confused and embarrassed by her own previous "dependence on" other people to validate her life for her. If these three species were to meet: The Humans would think of the Malmooth as suicidal flower children and the Vampires as a threat. The Vampires would think of the Humans as mindless automatons and the Malmooth as suicidal attention whores. The Malmooth would think of the Humans as violent sociopaths and the Vampires as sadistic psychopaths.
I'm writing near future social-sci-fi so I don't have weird races but I do have a lot of weird social/political movements planned (not started unfortunately, but planned). I'm finally coming up to the point in the current novel where I have to start setting up for a group I'm calling the "Fluorescentes" - who end up launching a street revolution against a violent rebel group in Ecuador in the 2030s. Basically the idea is that the rebels overplay their hand by staging a massacre at the New Year's Eve celebration in the capital - the corrupt local government decides to ignore it because the police are on the take - and all the young urbanites call BS and take to the street - but what makes it crazy is that since the massacre occurred at New Years Eve, I have all my street revolutionaries carrying glow sticks and covering themselves in glow-in-the-dark paint, and blasting loud music as an act of remembrance. Basically they refuse to end the New Year's Eve bash in the main square in Quito until such time as their demands are met. I'm also toying with the idea of blowing up a revolution out of the Eurovision Song Contest, but that wouldn't happen until several books ahead of where I am now.
Sounds pretty cool. Are you writing it based on any current events? I live in the U.S. (I know I feel terrible) and when I was beginning my universe there was a big scare that Russia was up to something so I made the first thing to happen in my universe World War 3 that destroys most of the population. And go from there. If you are, there is a great saying (don't remember it word by word): That in this day and age to be rebellious is not to get tattoos or wear all black or listen to loud music but to think for yourself where nobody else does. I dunno if that helps anything but yeah
I have some really crazy alien races in my universe. There is this one giant species from a methane/ethane moon which can change colour and has only one gender. And of course the race from my mystery world! They have black skin because they live in symbiosis with plants which are catching the sunlight for photosynthesis.
Mine are the "Arthromorphs" - a team of 6 young adults who can become a team of brightly coloured "bug" people. Hopefully Toei and Saban don't sue.
They're something of a parody of Toei's IP. At one point, one of their number suggests a "giant robot" would be useful for defeating a particular enemy, while another points out that such a machine would cost a huge amount to buy and maintain.
