|
Creating Lifeforms Lifeforms in the Aliens universe will virtually always be animals (although neolithic level cultures are possible) and they fill the same role in adventures, as beasts of burden, minor threats, food, etc. If the campaign is going to concentrate on a single planet the GM should create some common lifeforms (a herd animal or two, a carnivore) as part of the background. Note that all self-sufficient terraformed planets have transplanted Earth lifeforms, however they usually make minor genetic alterations to alter the creatures appearance in some way, or adapt them to the enviroment - blue cattle or bald sheep. This serves both to adapt the creatures to their enviroment, and helps give the colony a sense of cultural identity.
The Giants |
Hundreds of thousands of new species have been cataloged on colony worlds, and this is
just the tip of the iceberg. Any world that is naturally habitable will have an ecosystem
that is probably just as developed as that on Earth, and humans still haven't recorded
every lifeform on Earth. Life that survives in an Earth type enviroment is called
Earth-Bio, as opposed to Xeno-Bio life which survives in unearthly enviroments.
Earth-Bio life tends to have a biology remarkably similar to terrestrial lifeforms, to the extent that most colonists live on native produce. Xeno-Bio life is occasionally biologically similar to terrestrial life, but is usually more exotic, such as silicon based plant life or the ammonia lifeforms living in some gas-giants. As yet no pure energy based lifeforms have been discovered, although some gas-giant entities consist of clouds of electrically interacting gases. Popular fiction depicts Xeno-Bio life as hideous, unstoppable monsters, however in truth most Xeno-Bio lifeforms are plants (or an equally sessile substitute) and very few can leave their native enviroment. There are some lifeforms that can be a threat to humans (both Earth-Bio and Xeno-Bio) but nothing that a prepared military group cannot handle. Colonists are another matter; some lifeforms on colonial planets make Wolves and Crocodiles look like kittens. When humans went out searching their local stars, they did so with a reasonable hope of encountering other intelligent life. After all, if FTL communications and travel was as easy for others as it was for humans, then their should be someone out there to talk to. The first few worlds explored proved that life existed on virtually all Earth-like worlds, and on a few non-Earthlike worlds. But no signs of intelligence were found. The scientists chalked it up to chance; the evolution of intelligence seemed to be a fluke event, very rarely happening. Then somebody found a ruin. And another. And another. Soon it was an unavoidable fact. The stars near Sol had once been home to a collection of intelligent species, with technologies ranging from neolithic to more advanced than mankind. All had been wiped out millions of years before humans even evolved. Whats more the disaster had been targeted; even on those worlds where an intelligent species had been wiped out, the rest of the ecosystem continued to florish. Nobody knows who destroyed all these species, or how they did it. No date no technologically developed species has yet been encountered, certainly not one capable of this sort of feat. The idea of an advanced genocidal species terrorising around the galaxy continues to inspire doomsday cults on many worlds. Governments deny any proof of such a species, all the while frantically building up their militaries and digging for nuggets of information on this possible threat. The disasters on Epsilon Eridani and LV-426 have given a major hint as to the who and how, and have been carefully covered up by all involved. |