#Alien bestiary

[ordheist]

been using this https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1373/09/1373096776710.pdf guidebook for coming up with some crazy beasties as a warmup

[briefbestiary]

Little, sharp-clawed, metallic men. On August 21st, 1955, these goblins were on the receiving end of gunfire from several members of the Sutton family. The most commonly attributed explanation was a mistaking of owls and meteor showers for the creatures and the light of their ship.

[goawaypopup]

Rust & Humus discord server

Something different today!

Rust and Humus is an ongoing surreal worldbuilding art project by Lucas Roussel. The full first book is complete, and describes the complete history from genesis to time’s end of a world full of odd creatures and phenomena, with gorgeous art inspired by medieval bestiaries.

There is a second book that has been in progress for some time now, and is entering the final stages of work, expanding the universe to include other worlds and the spacefaring civilizations.

I, for one, am hyped, and I want to hype and speculate with others. But the only real congregated Rust and Humus fan community are the Instagram followers, and I loathe Instagram.

So I made a Discord group! I expect it’ll be pretty small, but we can talk about the world, theorize, and dig up bits of buried lore.

[pyreflydust]

[dipteracide]

CHOCOVADERS - SEASONS 1-4 + MYSTERY FIGURES - TAISHIRO KIYA

[fitiusvol]

Phenomenon 47, Tergores.

The terror of an infection or disease is not given by the fatality or symptoms it has, but by how easy it is to suffer it. Such a case occurs with the infection of Tergores, which is not transmitted by contact with an infected person, but by the plane of thought.

It originated by accident in some abandoned runes of an extinct civilization, when all research material was transferred to laboratories, they began to translate the ancient writings. It took years to obtain a certain phrase from the ancient language:

"Tergore colux nisus linef qxintus zsa"

it was enough to think about it and tragedy struck.

the blood, of all the personnel who thought of the phrase, began to coagulate rapidly and they began to feel ruptures inside their bodies, the blood in their veins began to cross their skin outwards as if they were branches, between choking and agony the body began to tense, and then fainted due to the lack of blood.

It is only necessary to understand the phrase in an understandable language to share such a destiny, sciences, religions, cults, and everyone has tried to understand such a phenomenon and eradicate it, but as long as there is thought, there will be tragedy.

[idk-its-just-alien-observations]

World 5000 - Autania

Autania is the furthest from any other worlds, residing just barely on the edge of the habitable universe. This world does not orbit a sun, and all life on this world is bioluminescent to make up for the lack of light. Unlike most of the other worlds in this universe, Autania is not a planet - rather, it is a collection of islands, massive in expanse, and wildly hostile to any life that is not adapted to its extreme environments.

Autania is the final world, yet ironically, of all these worlds was the first one to be made, and it sparked the original idea of having multiple worlds in the first place. It is home to a humanoid alien race known as the Auhron.

This world does not have interplanetary travel developed by its inhabitants. As these inhabitants have no urge to explore beyond their reach, they have no motive to create anything remotely resembling an interplanetary travel vehicle.

Environment

Culture

Beliefs

Creatures

Auhron

Azure Reaper

Droca Friytcarrowl

Eirzae

Feathered Tackapakeff

Feathery Seed Pod

Fun'u

Ink Casseriolque

Isylhejif

Nyctoreighn

Phaumeraii

Sky Nebulae

Tor'eyga

Triuthospythin

Ususeal

Community Contributions

(Your guys' ideas go here!)

[soggyskinflaps]

I found my old sketchbook where i made a few creatures for my own alien world series and thought i'd share some of my favorites.

[asderat]

The large bodies, shearing teeth, and cryptic facial expressions of a Nexian are adaptations from a harsh world. However, the reactions space-faring sophonts have to these features can be harsh in their own ways as well. The small amount of time spent as a space-faring species and a lack of progress in their medical research has, for better or for worse, painted their biology in an enigmatic light.

Nexians are scaly, mesothermic carnivores that greatly prefer carrion over fresh kills. On Nexia, most carcasses were quickly colonized by a special, highly derived bacterial lineage. They formed a symbiotic relationship within a Nexian’s gut by outcompeting and annihilating potentially dangerous microbes in their hosts in exchange for shelter. While this relationship is not strictly necessary for survival (or easy to replicate in space), Nexians are still driven to eat rotting ‘animal’ matter instinctually. That being said, their presence is often unwelcome at places where corpses are common (cemeteries, morgues, hospitals). This is because they profusely and involuntarily salivate when in close proximity to ‘decay’ odors (they can absolutely resist the urge to eat it, but other sophonts often find the salivation unsightly and disrespectful).

The many-lobed tongue of a Nexian is highly sensitive to putrescine and cadaverine, and is their main area of olfactory reception. The tongue’s shaft is finely bristled, and aids in scraping meat from bones. Instead of residing in the main oral cavity, this tongue is sheathed in a pouch beneath the bottom-front tooth. This is theorized to be an ancestral synapomorphy developed to decrease the incidence of one biting their own tongue off. Their front tooth-plates are continuously growing, and must be used often or manually filed to retain their proper length and sharpness. Their back molars are great at crushing hard materials, but are not replaced throughout life. Their teeth, as well as their bones, are dark in color. Nexians barely have a sense of taste, and can swallow large pieces of rancid meat whole, and with gusto.Their mouths go straight to their stomachs and extremely short intestinal tracts. Their waste is extremely chalky and dry to save water.

They intake air from two in-current openings on their clavicles, which is funneled through highly expandable lungs, and then finally exhaled through ex-current openings below the ‘ribs.’ Their advanced ability to make use of inhaled O2 is similar to Earth’s birds, and is much more efficient than mammalian respiration. This is an adaptation to Nexia’s shockingly low atmospheric O2. Higher O2 percentages, however, don’t appear to be terribly detrimental to their health.

[khelkid]

This log features Xutza, The Crafty! Artwork by Israel Bothelo.

[tlemo]

postybirb doesn't work on nixOS so you're getting a smaller desc

also Nuna look different now, i'll explain some other time

[mondaymoshmonsters]

Andrei was an avid conspiracy theorist, but tended to suspiciously steer the conversation in a different direction whenever aliens became the topic.

[briefbestiary]

Fairly fun fellows as far as American alien sightings go. From 1957, these little characters with their cubic craniums had a singular, brief sighting before the hours of twilight.

[vintagerpg]

Few megadungeons are quite the smack in the face as Jason Sholtis’ Completely Unfathomable (2022). It actually collects two previous publications, Operation Unfathomable (the underground) and Odious Uplands (a wilderness), and translates them to the DCC system. Everything about this is bold and clear — the writing, the design, the art (by Sholtis himself, as well as Christ Brandt, John Larrey, Stefan Poag and Skullfungus). The art in particular does a lot of work here — strong line work keeps things comic bookish and cartoony, which is a nice contrast to how unrelentingly deadly the book is.

I’m not even sure the cave complex here counts as megadungeon. The maps seem rather reasonably sized, and a lot of the material is dedicated to bespoke encounters rather than detailed room descriptions (it feels more like a collection of hex descriptions, actually). It is an unrelentingly strange place (so are the Uplands, honestly), but I hesitate to call it gonzo, a term that for me evokes the flailing and shouting of Kermit the Frog — gonzo games are just explosions of chaos, one right after another. This is a deeper sort of weird, with odd characters wandering on and off screen in a way that implies a larger sort of ecosystem, but one that remains inscrutable to me. Similar to the way aliens in many ‘60s science fiction novels are just bizarre, and even when you get them explained, they never entirely make sense. Or, like Voyage to Arcturus, where humans grow new organs upon arrival and no one freaks out about it. That’s the vibe here (I mean, the name of the book IS Completely Unfathomable). There’s a strong sense of near-psychedelic wonder as well; granted, the party is probably too busy dying repeatedly to truly appreciate those wonders, but still.

The bestiary is A+ and worth the price of the book alone. So many odd creatures. I particularly like the decapitants (humanoids with aerials and satellite dishes instead of head) and blind antler men (fungus-headed people), but honestly every monster in the book brings something new to the game.

[pyreflydust]

[deadwooddross]

If like 10 more people wanted to hang out in my sticker tier on patreon to get some sticky guys for a bit, my rent would be, how you say…secured

I also have like a year of stickies planned out so far, the current selection is Lots of Imps, more manticores, some aliens…just kinda going through little bestiary creatures I like I suppose

This is me sticking out my long cartoon leg in fishnets on the side of the road, but also here’s a sneaky peeky of one of the manticores I accidentally made too big for my envelopes, and a 👽