So, I've gotten to a point where I'm including a certain race in my book. Only thing is, I don't really know much about this race. I know they are very isolationist, and while the majority of my world is very low-tech, they are more advanced. I thought about our level or above, but Industrial Revolution stuff would be interesting too. Hm. I also would like to figure out what they look like. Most of my races have been, basically, anthros. I almost picture them as a taller, more spindly human, but I don't want to do that really. Yeah I could use some brains to bounce off of. Thanks guys. EDIT: Okay I'm pretty happy with what I've got figured out now.
I am good at bouncing! Though not sure I see the issue here. You don't want them to be taller? Okay. Isolated and advance technology can make sense since that explains why the tech didn't spread. Essentially as long as you can explain or defend the choices. I see no break from logic. I see no breaks from logic so far. Granted your current post is kind of small. If you don't want them to be tall? What do you want them to be? And why not tall?
@GuardianWynn The thing is, what I've posted is pretty much all I have figured out for them. So thus the thread. Tall is okay, but my mental image is basically 'tall human' and I don't want to do that. Every other race is severely different from humans and I want that with them too. @Laurus Hm, I think more like the former. As for environment, I've got one backwards group that is technically same species living in the forest, the rest (mostly) live in cities closed off to outsiders. The cities are in a variety of biomes I think.
Well. I mean, there isn't really enough information. Like, caves? Mountains? Old city? New city? Why are they isolated? Did something happen? Tall human, whats wrong with that? I mean sounds like they are different from everything else you have. This is a positive or a negative depending on your view. Its hard to give advice without more grounding. I'd never want to create something for you. That is your job! And with so little information, they could go in like 1000 different directions!
Hm, maybe some old city and new city? They've got older buildings and newer ones. Current stop is a desert oasis that was apparently made by the race in question. As for their isolation, it's mostly a cultural thing. I guess they started getting advanced and someone pushed for keeping the technology out of the hands of the others who would use it to wreak havoc, so they closed off to keep it out of outsider hands. That may have been fairly recently too, maybe the last 100 years? Hm. Nothing wrong with 'tall human' it's just not what I would like to do. I've already got humans so don't wanna just do a tall version. I know it's my job, but the thing is those '1000 different directions'. I don't know which one I want to take. D:
Oh yeah. Agreed, analysis parysis! lol. So many roads you freeze. It hits the best of us. I just advice you don't seek too much help before you have an idea less you let someone else create it for you. Well. A few thoughts? Desert? But that is a tough area to live in. If they became smart in the desert. How did they create the osasis there? If they are only a 100 years. how were they created? Or did you mean this sect of them bratched off and became new? Or were they created in a lab of some kind?
Okay so, they live in biome cities that they've created to suit their needs in the last 100 years. Culturally isolated. Hmm. Maybe you could think about their architecture and their tools first? Like just think of cool things they have and use that to inform their physiological aspects. Kind of uh...reverse engineer? If you want them to look different from humans, start with their art and their tools -- culture and industry -- work backwards from there. That's where I would start.
Stellaris portraits are a bottomless source of inspiration for me. You can also use Maslow's hierarchy of needs (as Simpson did here) to create a personality.
@GuardianWynn @Laurus @Mouthwash Okay your suggestions all sorta fed into each other and here's what I got. Alien plant beings. Or descended from them anyway. I think they've forgotten exactly what they are, mythology mostly has them 'coming from the stars' but no one actually understands exactly what that means. They've lost some tech knowledge from ending up on a such a 'primitive' planet. It may have been an accident that they ended up on the planet in the first place? The Stellaris portraits were a big inspiration! Their native region was a foresty area, (plants!) but they have scattered a bit. Hence the desert. As for the oasis, I think they just improved it and the one person emphasized their involvement to my one MC to impress him. As for Maslow's, that's interesting! I might play with it, but I'm also leaning towards everyone having the same basic, 'human' nature. If I started mixing up the needs, they wouldn't feel as much like 'people'.
I don't think the point of Maslow's pyrmid to jumble it but rather define it for a person. A technological plant based alien race for example may have a much higher physical need for water than us. So the value of water to them is different than a human. So on and so forth. Does that make sense? Glad we could be of help!
Glad to hear it! That's reasonable. But remember that a large part of human nature is connected to physical human needs. A species that (for instance) reproduces by scattering spores won't understand romance or parental attachment. If a species only needs photosynthesis and water to survive, then it might be a lot more passive. Et cetera.
I would recommend 2 things: 1) Brute force. Come up with as many crazy ideas as possible, then see what it is you like about each one and what it is that you don't so that you can narrow down what crazy ideas to come up with next. I would recommend looking up online encyclopedias of mythological creatures (one of my favorite hero protagonists I have kicking around in my head is half-psoglav on her mother's side: shapeshifter, not full-time hybrid.) 2) Study humans. What are we good at compared to other species, and what are other species good at compared to us? Oh, I jumble it If water is more physiologically important to a plant-person's survival than it is to a human's survival, but if the plant-person psychologically doesn't care about survival as much as a human does, then the plant-person won't be as psychologically driven to find water as a human would When I read things like "readers won't connect to inhuman characters who do not share basic human needs," I take it as a challenge EDIT: Wow, this thread is going fast! And yes, that's what I'm talking about: how to make the inhuman psychologies obviously inhuman, but still making the readers care about the characters Though I am kind of cheating by making my half-psoglav character a shapeshifter who's either completely human or completely psoglav depending on what she wants to do (and how she wants to think: she's gotten used to going back and forth between two completely different mindsets and reconciling the same basic values between them)
O.O I like the challenge accepted attitude but that is hard to picture. Someone ignoring their physical needs! At least as a cultural concept! How did they survive! lol
Hm, this is all very interesting. But this sort of thinking takes more brainpower than I've got at the moment. It's past my bedtime and I'm still trying to get all my wordcount for Camp Nano in. I have procrastination down to a science. EDIT: Feel free to keep pitching ideas! I'm just dropping out for the night. I'll enjoy seeing whatever posts are here in the morning.
By accident. If they have to choose between survival and something else that they value more, then they'll obviously choose the thing they value more, but if living longer means that they'll be able to do the thing they care about more effectively, then they'll take physical care of themselves as means to an end (rather than for its own sake). The recognize that they are mortal, they harbor no delusions of immortality, and they would rather make the most of the time that they have rather than ruin the quality of their lives in a doomed attempt at enhancing the quantity: "It's better to live for 20 years than die for 70." Humans, on the other hand, kill each other by the millions because we're afraid that other people might potentially try to kill us first at some undetermined future point. Our fear of death will accidentally drive us to destroy ourselves, so why couldn't another species' acceptance of death accidentally lead them to preserve themselves? Good luck!
Just to share one last thought not in the direction of the xenopsychology that seems to have taken over: Humans are the world champions at long distance running. Cats are faster over short distances, but they get really tired quickly, so they have to sneak up as closely as possible as quietly as possible before making their move. Humans, on the other hand, started out by scaring our prey with lots of noise and forcing them to run themselves to exhaustion. The reason we domesticated wolves before cats, and the reason we never domesticated cats for hunting, was because wolves were the only other predators with any hope of keeping up with us. When I picture the Needlemen that your OP put into my mind, I picture them as not having the muscle for sprinting like cats or long distance running like humans and wolves. Cats have to be sneaky because they're only sprinters, not distance runners, and Needlemen would have to be even sneakier because they wouldn't be sprinters either. EDIT: Could that be why the species in your own world are more advanced than anybody else? For as long as they've existed, they've been more dependent on tools than anybody else because they're so much physically weaker?
@Simpson17866 I did in fact get my words in. Thanks! Wow, lot of stuff to think about there. XD I'm thinking Ill keep their psychology still basically 'human'. The other stuff is interesting, its just doesn't feel right for me. I do like the idea of them being physically weaker! I decided against Needleman, but plant people could still be that way. Ive got a bunch of different races floating around my world. Three in my main cast and not a one human. Theyre all native to the planet too, the plant people are the only alien colonists.
I guess I'll just have to use them myself then Thanks! What are some of the other species you've come up with?
Needleman do sound cool! My most developed is the Kah-irr, or Jy-irr, depending on the timeframe. (Lot of the time they're called Kirr/Jirr by outsiders.) I made a post about them in the 'Share Your Fantasy Races' thread. They're a snake-like race hailing from desert climates. Tribal nomads. They have scales, fangs & venom and a tail. They do also have legs, but that is something I'm considering changing. Maybe. Haven't decided. They're also my 'bad guy' race. Very restrictive culture, promoting a violent lifestyle. My current MC from this species character arc is a villain redemption one where he realizes just what a jerk he's been. Apumet is a cat-like race. Look much more like bipedal cats than humans with cat ears. I'm thinking one of my current ones is more cougar-based, while another is more of a silver housecat sort of look. Used to have a third, but he wasn't contributing so he ded. They're a semi-nomadic culture, placing a high emphasis in finding where they belong, their 'heartland'. It's expected for the males (and sometimes the females) to strike out on their own to find it once they come of age. Although there has been an Apumet kingdom forming too, so not everyone does that any more. (One of my MC's is a traditionalist who disapproves of that, the other was raised outside his culture so he doesn't really have an opinion on that.) Egalia is my last race represented in my main cast. Probably least developed too. I know they're bird people, wings&arms, more birdlike feet though. I'm thinking they've got some sort of feathers instead of hair? They might end up getting changed some, they're a little close to 'human + animal traits' as is. I know they've got a thing about defects and disfiguration, my Egalia MC got a raw deal due to cultural stuff from her people and the Kah-irr. The Egalia are currently at war with the Kah-irr, a war the Kirr are winning easily.
I will have to take a look at the longer post, but right now I like it Have there been others in your MC's species who've resisted their culture of violence and whom your MC had previously looked down on as traitors before being inspired by more recently? Or is he one of the first? Multiple cultures in the same species, that's already an improvement over a lot of SF/F Bipedal cats are certainly an interesting development. Remember what I said about how humans are distance runners and cats are sprinters? That's largely because humans are bipedal: our nearest living relatives – the gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, etc... – are largely quadrupedal, and they can't run distance the way we can. Which leads to one of my favorite aspects of how I'm going to portray the psoglavs (one-eyed wolfmen from Slavic folklore) in my own work: If quadrupedal wolves are better at distance running than quadrupedal apes, And if bipedal apes are better at distance running than quadrupedal wolves, Then bipedal wolves would be even better at distance running than bipedal apes Your bipedal cats would probably be comparable to real-life quadrupedal wolves: somewhat better speed than humans, somewhat lower endurance (as opposed to real-life quadrupedal cats: world-champion record-setting speed, no endurance) Do you know of any fun facts about birds in real life that most people aren't aware of (and that you might be able to use yourself)?
There may have been a few here and there, but no movement ever gained any traction. Don't think Faris ever knew any. In fact, he got banished from his original tribe cause he said they shouldn't burn down this village cause they might hurt some kids, which was against their code. He's more changed by getting away from his people and really seeing how it messed up the Egalia MC. I mentioned in my longer post how they basically worship these dragons that gave them the code they live by. So it's not just internal stuff, they've got some external too. Faris doesn't play a big role in his race's development, by the time he gets himself sorted out the dragons have gone 'nope, you're going too far with this' and banished his people to the Wastelands. A barren island/continent that there's no way off of. All the trees got burned down and it's too far to swim or fly back to the mainland. Got a second book in mind with them coming back from the banishment (actually the first one I thought up set in this world) and having a huge upset over whether or not to go back to the old ways. Thanks! I'm having fun with doing things that way. In fact, one of my Apumet MCs grew up among a more 'noble' Kirr tribe and kinda hates Faris for not being like them. Part of me is wanting to have at least one species that could be bipedal or quadruped. Might end up being the Apumet, I just picture them dropping to all fours to run. But if I don't, that's a good thought to keep in mind, thanks! Ah, no I don't. But my mom is a birdwatcher, maybe she'll have some stuff that I could use. Good thought!
Xenophobia would be an obvious reason to isolate oneself from neighboring species. I would recommend figuring out exactly how advanced you want your species to be, then figure out what they would need in order to get to that point. For example: you can't possibly have a civilization that has computers, without access to and understanding of semiconductors. Industrial revolution is also quite difficult to achieve, because not only do you have to invent all of that stuff, but you need the materials. Fuel is rare, coal and oil would have to be within the species' reach, and it'd either have to be renewable, or in massive quantities. They'd also have to be able to feed their population. All of this with only internal trade, which is a very tall order. How large is their civilization? There is a reason that hermit kingdoms tend to only last a few generations. What are some of the most advanced pieces of technology that they have?
I'm leaning towards industrial revolution. And they may not be very strict about staying within their walls, just letting other people in. As a matter of fact I've currently got my cast about to join a trading caravan of this species. Their civilization is several cities scattered around. Don't think they have a specific 'country'. They're all-around good neighbors that just don't want others in their house basically, so nobody really minds at this point. Countries like we have today just aren't a think at this point. Tech-wise, hm, maybe an early type of car?
@MusingWordsmith I just finished a more in-depth post about the biomechanics of long-distance stamina, and I think you might be most interested in the part about how birds' lungs are different from anybody else's
