Bad: aliens that insist upon referring to human women as “feeeeemales”.
Good: aliens that insist upon dividing humans into binary categories, but the binary in question is based on something we’d regard as trivial and bizarre.
pro cilantro and anti cilantro
Just to screw with us they refer to have designated half the population as “edible” and the other half is “inedible.”
No intention of eating anyone, they just like how uncomfortable it makes everyone.
Even better: the aliens all agree on who is edible and who is inedible, but the humans have no idea what the criteria is
Even better: there is no criteria, the Aliens just keep a running list of whenever one member designated a human as edible or not. People are baffled because the selection appears random yet all the aliens are up to date, so there must be SOMETHJNG
I love this because it implies the aliens possess either (1) a universal hive mind or (2) an intergalactic group chat dedicated to fucking with humanity
Honestly, in the absence of autoimmune conditions that impose dietary restrictions, ANY diet that says that Homo Sapiens Sapiens, a species that is wildly successful in large part because we have spent the last six million or so years evolving to be opportunistic omnivores (and yes, that’s going back before any human species, to our common ancestor with chimpanzees, because chimps are also opportunistic omnivores and we both got that from our common ancestor) is not designed to eat __________, immediately trips my ‘bullshit’ alarms.
We can eat just about any damn thing we can shove in our faces and chew. If it’s toxic, we may be able to cook it so it isn’t and still shove it in our faces and extract nutrition from it. We’ll sure as hell try.
You are absolutely designed by millions of years of evolution to eat plants, animals, grains, fungi, whatever. ‘Original human diet’ my left asscheek. Show a Cro Magnon hunter a burger and fries and he’d be all over that shit.
That said, maybe still avoid things like the insides of stone fruit pits, and manchineel fruit, and live venomous animals.
True. Kill the venomous animals first and de-venom them.
We’d never have known if some poor souls hadn’t the courage to push the limits of human gastronomy.
I always wonder about the stories behind how we figured out which things were poison.
“Oona at that mushroom and died. Don’t eat those. But THAT one…Ayna ate that one and absofuckinlutely tripped balls. Grab more of those.”
One time I asked how anyone first thought to make/eat cheese and was told to “never underestimate the creativity of starving peasants.”
Very true.
Even when something kills people who eat it we still try to play around with it until it stops killing people, like with kidney beans.
Then you get the people who somehow discovered that feeding reindeer certain types of poisonous mushrooms and proceeding to drink the reindeer piss causes you to trip balls and then the discovery of stuff like bread and cheese and alcohol make a lot more sense.
One trait seems to unite all human cultures; every goddamned one figures out some way to get absolutely and totally fucked up.
i’m personally glad that most human cultures also figure out how to deep fat fry things. because getting totally fucked up is that much better with fried chicken.
This is the Truth.
Human 1: Okay, we have this leftover vat of boiling oil. The stuff we throw on people as a siege weapon.
Human 2: I’ma dip my chicken in it.
Human 1: Fred no
Human 2: It cronch
i have spent many a late night hour, in various states of inebriation, considering how the first piece of fried chicken happened. this theory never occurred to me, but i sincerely thank you for sharing it.
Another humans are weird space orcs idea because I really like thinking about it. What if aliens have no idea how to hide their emotions? Like, they suck at poker because they can never keep a straight face or anything. or, on a darker note, their ship is hijacked and they can’t keep the fear out of their faces, but all the humans look cold and emotionless to them. Other aliens hating having to bargain with humans becase we can bluff and keep our emotions in check so well, but when they get frustrated it’s all over. Pirates threaten the space ship and they send the human to do negotiations, and the pirate talking is super confused because no matter what threat he makes, the human just doesn’t seem to be fazed one bit.
Someone please, feel free to add to this, I love to see what else people come up with!
Okay, but now I’m thinking about how this ability is used in the context of animal training/hostage negotiation/teaching/customer service. Not just looking stone-faced, but completely lying with affect, body-language and vocal tone to seem calm, friendly, relaxed and in control of the situation in order to build rapport with an animal or person and to de-escalate aggression in a situation.
Proximity alarms start going off. A vessel is approaching.
Camilian: <looks at viewscreen> “Oh zark it, it’s the Parg.”
Camilian: <shudders>: “The Parg. Remember the civilisations living on those five planets Lei-ward of Helios 6?”
Human: “No? I thought that system was empty of sentient life.”
Camilian: “Exactly.”
Human: “…ah.” <looks at flashing lights on console> “They appear to be hailing us.”
<Camilian and Egrat scuttle backwards away from console.>
Human: “…thanks a bunch, guys.” <presses hail pick-up button> “This is Communications Officer Haley Makini of the Starboat Fribling, how may I help you?”
Parg ship: “This is Zek of Parg.”
Human: “Hello Zek! How are you feeling this day-cycle?”
Parg Ship: “…”
Human: “I for one have been missing my family lately, I got a vidcall from my little sister and my cousins – same-generation kin-people – and they told me that cousin Wendy is getting married to her girlfriend Mila, isn’t that nice? So I’m really hoping I can make it to the wedding – that’s romantic lifebond ceremony – because otherwise they’d all be sad, they told me so. Do you have any family – lifemates or brood or other kin-people back in your home-system Zek?”
Parg Ship: “…Zek of Parg has brood of five. All Smallings, but soon Biglings. Soon.”
Human: “Oh! You must be so proud of them!”
Parg Ship: “… Yah. Good future replacements for Parent-bodies for Glory of Parg.”
Human: “And that’s all any of us could want! Imagine how sad our kin would be if either of us were to fail to make it back home! That’s why I want to help your ship Zek, in any way we can. The Fribling is only a small ship, but we have some surplus goods and skills to offer if you need anything from us.”
<long pause>
<No one on board the Fribling speaks, but Egrat has anxiously chewed their claws to the quick>
Parg Ship: “Have Lucrum cable? Parg Ship underengine in poor condition, jury-rig not hold, need hitch-tow to Dellar System.”
Human: “Oh, that’s only 8 parsecs away. Sure, hah, we can manage that. No problem.”
<78 minutes later, after the two ships have been attached via Lucrum cable>
Parg Ship: “…What kind you?”
Human: “Huh? ….oh, I’m a human. I’m from Sol 3, Earth.”
<Human sinks to ground, hand on chest, hyperventilating slightly>
Human: “HolyfuckhowdidIpullthatoffohholyfuck!”
Camilian: “Wait, you were scared too?”
Human: <glaring> “Cam, we’ve worked together how long? I’d have thought that by now you’d trust my threat assessment abilities. Phew! That one was so close I felt the breeze going past.”
Egrat: “…how. How did you just do that?”
Human: “It’s not hard. Stay calm, just keep smiling, and build rapport by pretending to care about their problems, and meanwhile showing that you’re a real thinking being. Tends to defuse situations rather than escalate them.”
Egrat: “…I think I saw what you did, but where did you learn how to do that?”
I just want to throw my hat into the ring about the Humans Are Space Orcs trope that has been going around and I’ve been enjoying immensely.
You know how a large percentage of us have a fear of spiders? Even cripplingly so, like “kill it now I’m crying and breathing into a bag” kind of fear. So what if the aliens are monitoring our transmissions before making first contact, and see, for example, a bunch of Tumblr users discussing how scary spiders are?
Put that with how badass humans generally are (seriously, we invented surgery before we invented anesthetic and consume literal poison because we like the taste), how freaked out would the aliens be to learn that there’s something we truly fear? I can see it going down like this:
Human Steve: Tell us about FTL travel and your culture, we have much to learn from each other
Alien: Yeah yeah in a minute tell me about the spider threat are we safe right now or
Even better would be if Human Steve is not one of those people who is afraid of spiders at all. Like, he has a pet tarantula and puts wild spiders outside safely when they come into his bathroom, if he bothers with them at all. And the aliens are VERY CONCERNED about the little guys and he’s like ???? They aren’t??? A threat????
But then they consult with Human Bill, and Human Bill is basically Professional Spider Hater and goes on for a weirdly long time about how spiders are the actual devil and how black widows are really dangerous and let’s not even MENTION Australia. He gets the heebee jeebies and starts twitching and itching as he begins to feel phantom bugs on his skin.
Both Human Steve and Human Bill insist that the other is the weird one.
The aliens are more concerned than ever.
For most species, bared teeth are a threat, even on earth. So it shouldn’t be very surprising that most alien species tend to respond poorly to a human smiling at them. Humans who spend a lot of time around aliens do their best to train themselves out of the habit, adopting (as much as they are physically capable) the expression of enjoyment used by whatever species they socialise with most. But it’s really hard not to smile when you see another human… Harder still not to smile back when one smiles at you. This leads to the common misapprehension that humans generally don’t get along with strangers.
When, by whatever series of events, a crew or team with a human member acquires an additional human or two, the atmosphere gets tense for a few cycles while the nonhumans wait for some kind of establishment of hierarchy to take place. Some humans humor the assumption and perform a mock battle in some public area – these are generally those who have encountered the scenario before and became tired of trying to explain.
Rap battles, trivia contests, simple sports matches and other activities that a human would recognise as popular recreational activities often feature in these dominance rituals. The participants find that the performance serves as a great ice breaker and so the practice is becoming increasingly common. It is likely, therefore, that the misinformation about human social strata will persist.
what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.
“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”
“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”
“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”
“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.
Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”
“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”
“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”
goddamn, you people amaze me.
I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard…
“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”
“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”
This keeps getting better
This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.
“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”
“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”
“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”
“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”
“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”
“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”
“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”
“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”
“…That’s different.”
I just really like the idea of sighted humans telling their friends-who-don’t-see about how interesting-looking they are. Like, “You’re awfully pretty, you know that? You’re such a lovely shade of blue.”
And the friend’s like, “YEAH sure buddy” but they are secretly charmed, like someone discovering a new form of astrology that suits them really well – quietly thinking it over later when they’re alone, like I’m blue!! Yeah!! What’s blue?
@unmarkedcards isnt this the plot of a short story you read?
Imagine trying to explain colors when they do ask though
“What’s blue?”
“It comes in many forms? Light blue is like how rain feels when water is needed”
“What the HELL that’s beautiful! So what other forms does it come in?”
“There’s dark blue, that feels like sadness and remorse”
“Shit… How are they so different?”
“Light comes in many forms and colors and each human sees them a little differently”
“You sound insane… you know that right?”
“You look insane rubbing your whiskers on everything”
“Touché ”
Can you imagine the reports, though?
The aliens get all their intel via audio and the human’s like “What do you mean I have to LISTEN to this? It’s so monotone! Who’s the narrator? I want to blast him into the next system! Geez, my grandmother tells stories better than this guy can!”
“They’re not stories, Human Crew Member. It’s very valuable intelligence.”
“But it’s SOUND! You guys do realise that if the enemy is listening to the right frequency, they can just listen in on the valuable information we just stole from them?”
The caffeine in coffee “beans” is a natural plant defense against herbivory, i.e., a toxic substance that protects the seeds of the plant. Fruits and leaves are both sources of caffeine as well and a tea can be made of the leaves, but neither are used commercially.
On the topic of humans being space oddities bc that’s kind of been my most recent obsession… what if curiosity is a uniquely human thing???
let’s say aliens are real and we meet them and they just do not for the life of them understand why we do half the shit we do because they don’t understand curiosity
Because come on like other alien posts here have said humans are fucking wild we literally build spaceships and rocket ourselves to other planets before we even have the proper technology to do so just because we’re curious to see if there’s life on other planets
When we get up there into space and meet the aliens I can just see them being all like “oh yeah we discovered space travel out of necessity… our planet was going to be absorbed by a nearby supernova so we had to get out of there. How did you humans get to space?”
“Oh… we just… wanted to?? Space seemed cool. We were curious.”
And the aliens are AGHAST because why the fuck would we launch ourselves into a dark endless void out of sheer curiosity rather than necessity??? Especially when life on earth isn’t imminently in danger (not yet anyway, but that’s another post). So many failed attempts and so many struggles – literally half of the scientific world telling us that space travel isn’t possible – and yet we go and do it anyway because we were curious??? Our world was fine we had no reason to leave we just *wanted* to and that’s such a foreign concept to our alien friends
Like imagine one day a crew compromised of a group of aliens and one human are exploring unknown terrain and they approach a very dark, foreboding cave. The crew really doesn’t need to go in it, so they plan on just passing by to avoid it, but the human stops them
“Wait hold on guys, I wanna see what’s in there. I’ll be right out,” human Lena says before plunging into darkness
And the aliens ARE FREAKING YHE FUCK OUT because why would their human do that???? Is she secretly dying and she needs to find the cure in the cave?! Is there some kind of hidden secret in there that needs to be discovered for the sake of humanity??? She’s putting her life in danger!!
And human Lena walks out completely unscathed to find the rest of her crew in a total frenzy
“HUMAN LENA WHY DID YOU DO THAT DID YOU NEED TO TAKE A SAMPLE FROM THE CAVE WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ENDANGERED YOUR LIFE”
And human Lena just stares at them confused and says “oh no I was… just curious. Wanted to see if there was anything cool down there.”
“YOU PUT YOURSELF IN DANGER TO FIND SOMETHING ‘COOL’?!?!”
“Yeah man, and it was totally worth it. Here, I found some neat glowing rocks, take one. Oh and also this little fuzzy thing here is my friend now. I found him down there and he reminded me of my dog back at home”
One alien promptly faints because he cannot control this fucking human who brings potentially dangerous animals with her to keep as a pet
Ahh ok but like what if that’s humanity’s “superpower” like our curiosity is the one thing that has kept us going for so long because it’s what spurs so many of our innovations and discoveries
And eventually all alien crews catch on and all want a human on their crew not just for their ability to survive extreme weather conditions but also because their curiosity often helps the aliens make vital discoveries. All a human has to do is see something and think “gee I wonder what this does” or “if I combine this two things, what will happen?” and bam new amazing life-changing discovery
Of course it also leads to a lot of explosions and trips to the infirmary, but humans are resilient, so everyone is sure we’ll be fine
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai’kor. Commander Vura’ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
It was a strange creature Tar’van glimpsed at on the vast island known to the humans as ‘Australia’.
“I would warn you not to fuck with us, mate.” Their forced guide, a prisioner, had warned with a chilling grin upon capture. “If you think a moose is bad, wait until you tango with a red back.” To this day Tar’van fears the creature known as the red back, and what horrors it would bring.
The prisioner turned out to be of little help,the stubboness of his people causing them to refuse the danger that the captured human warned of. Tar’van recalls a moment when one of his squad members approached a creature know as a dingo, insistent they had seen these creatures before and they were tame. They barely escaped with 5 of the original 7 members of his squad.
Another moment Tar’van recalls was the brutal mauling they witnessed by the hands of a creature called an ‘Emu’
“Don’t feel too bad,” the prisioner mocked. “We lost a war to the Emu’s as well.”
Now with only 4 members of their squad left, including themself, Tar’van had learned to listen to the prisoner, to be wary of the simplest of creatures. This human was of the sub-species of ‘Zookeeper’ after all.
The ‘Zookeeper’ looks off to the distance, where the creature is.
“It’s a kangaroo, leave it be and you’ll be fine.” Tar’van nods, a human signal of acknowledgement if they are correct. The human smiles a bit.
“That creature cannot possibly harm us.” Tar’van’s squadleader protests. “It is so docile. I will aproach it and bring back it’s head to show this human is a fearmongering liar.”
The human reels back, a look of disgust crosses their face and anger passes through their eyes.
“Fucking do it mate, I dare ya.” The human hisses. The squad leader puffs up their hoinn gland, a sign of pride to their species, and aproached the so called ‘Kangaroo’.
“This will be unpleasant.” A squadmate mutters as they watch their leader raise their fist and bring it down on the creature. The ‘Kangaroo’ looks a little stunned by the impact, before it raises itself upon its strong tail and uses its powerful heind legs to launch their squadleader backwards through the air.
Their squadleader lands upon the ground, unmoving with black blooded oozeing from them. It appears Tar’van is the squads leader now.
“I don’t know what they expected.” the human says, smugness filling their tone. “Kangaroos are fucking shreaded. 8-pack and all.”
Tar’van steps forward to the human, whom inches back in a sign of fear as Tar’van pulls their blade from its holster, and in their first act as leader, frees the human of the bonds around their hands.
“Please,” Tar’van bags. “Get us back safely.”
As the surviving human guerrillas destroy more and more zoological information, the invaders must turn to older and much less reliable sources to aide their strategy-making. After scouring many particularly old documents, a group of researchers found references to a horror that all other Earth-Beasts pale in comparison to. Causing quite a stir, more research was directed specifically towards these rare creatures, and these endeavors uncovered that these monsters have many detailed and complimentary references across thousands of cultures and thousands of years, including many contemporary ones.
Compiling the common features, the aliens set about crafting a new weapon that would be designed specifically to combat this as-of-yet unseen foe. Chief Engineer Cho-lo’ack, upon the completion of the prototype, personally escorted a human pilot around the experimental hangar, on the advice of a friend currently moving through “Os-t’raylee-ya.”
“Human, I would like to introduce to you our new fighter, the TY-0001 ‘EhgsK’al-aber’ after your primitive legends. It’s hull is perfectly curved at every angle, and has been reinforced with five times the average heat shielding, in addition to a liquid-nitrogen environmental temperature regulation system.” The ship hovered in the hangar, bobbing up and down gently, as the human eyed their own reflection in the sleek hull. Reaching out their hand, the human pilot touched the surface and found their fingers sliding off uncontrollably.
“Speaking of the environment system, the two pilots are seated here, in the rear of the craft, and are completely sealed in.” The alien gestured several tentacles towards what apparently was the back of the fighter. “The cabin is entirely invisible from the outside as a result, thus making it impossible to target the pilots themselves.
“In addition to these passive defensive measures, we have armed ‘
EhgsK’al-aber’ with a number of active defensive and offensive armaments. For example, these here are ‘air-o’ class projectiles.” The human turned to face the missile-like objects held in suspension beneath the glass floor. “Using precise heat-seeking capabilities modeled after several of your own human armaments, these weapons are able to detect missing armor plates, penetrate the exposed surface, and explode inside the target.
“Defensively, these spouts here are designed to allow two different chemicals to pass through the hull of the vessel.” The alien ducked below the craft and led the human to an exposed port in the hull. “The secondary pilot chooses either a harsh spray of liquid nitrogen or a flame-resistant foam that is able to force any penetrating objects from cracks or breaks in the vessel’s hull that may form from combat damage.
“Finally, the last defensive measure.” Withdrawing a small screen from their robe, the alien shows a scale model of the fighter. Suddenly, the hull of the model begins to crack and turn gold, soon sloughing off of the craft altogether and fragmenting into a dazzling array of gold specks fluttering through the air in a dense cloud. “When escape becomes the only option for the craft, either pilot will trigger the top layer of heat shield to crack and flake off of the craft, similar to many of your Earth-Beasts “molting” habits. The underside of this shielding layer is coated in purified gold flakes, gold having proven a suitable distraction, and allowing our pilots to escape.”
The human eyes the features of this strange vessel once more before speaking to the expectant captor. “This is all well and good, but what is it for?”
The alien clicks confidently before speaking.
“Dragons, of course.”
Karda’en had been sifting through rubble on zir research recovery expedition. Karda’en and their troop were scavenging a ‘Thee-ah-tar’ for information on the advice of their human captive, that may contain information they were looking for.
The human ‘Kim-bra-lee’ had already proven very useful in avoiding highly dangerous creatures that were seemingly harmless. Such as the ‘wra-bits’ creatures. Upon first spotting one, Kib-bra-lee had shouted “Run away!” repeatedly while attempting to flee. Karda’en after hearing of the many horrors that plague this planet knew better than to doubt the small female, and with her, xi and zir troops fled the area. The small creatures were, Karda’en was later told, able to decapitate a single human in a moment and could fend off large numbers of attacking humans with ease.
In zir expedition, they had already uncovered a wealth of information stored on rudimentary ‘Cel-oh-fane’ disks and viewed with light projectors. Kim-bra-lee showed them a wealth of information on creatures they had yet to encounter.
Among them were amorphous creatures able to consume and digest any bio organism within moments leaving no trace behind; which would explain the countless missing they had. Limbless creatures that could detect you by movement and swam underground as if it were water, solid stone and elevated structures were their only weaknesses. Relentless aquatic beasts able to sink moderate aquatic vessels that had too many teeth and were hard to kill. Parasitic organisms that gestate in it’s host body before violently bursting out of their chest cavities and grew into even deadlier beasts with acidic blood.
Worst of all was a creature that loomed over entire city structures. Kim-bra-lee had shown them a horrible beast called a ‘God-zil-ah’ a creature of their own creation by accident that, no matter what they did, they could not be rid of it. Even the violent fiery doom of a volcano could not stop this singular creature from returning.
It lives deep in the ocean, which explained why a creature of such mass avoided detection, but also the sheer exoskeleton crushing weight that it could endure spoke of it’s resistance to their weaponry. A single step could crush several dozen troops. Then there was the antenna quivering fact that it could breath massive beams of plasma that could certainly wipe out an entire fleet.
With hearing all the stories from injured troops, Karda’en was uncertain that invading this planet was a good idea, upon seeing the horrific creatures Kim-bra-lee showed them, Karda’en was now curtain it was not. For they had only scratched the surface of a world made of Monsters.
Ra’charr had been assigned to a mysterious land called “Louisiana.” He and his troops traversed through a hellish land called a “swamp.” Bizarre clumps of grayish stringy plants hung in long strands from the trees. Ra’charr quickly learned not to brush against the stringy things, for when he did, tiny red bugs, too small to see, would cover his body. The bugs spit a substance on his skin that liquefied the skin cells, leaving tiny pits and a horrendous itch. The itch was so tormenting that Ra’charr wanted to rip his skin off.
This “swamp” was filled with blood-sucking insects that were so numerous that Ra’charr and his crew breathed them in with every breath. Many of his soldiers were felled by the bite of a legless, slithering reptile with a short, fat body and a bright white mouth. The horrendous beasts were everywhere in great numbers.
After a few days of trekking, Ra’charr came across a human woman sitting on the front porch of her wood shack. She was wearing overalls and as soon as she sighted them, she grabbed her primitive projectile weapon . “Git off mah property!” she yelled.
Ra’charr pointed his paralyzer device at the woman and pressed a button. She instantly froze. Ra’charr noticed a fenced-in area containing large reptiles. He said, “Human, I will unfreeze you, but you must tell me what those creatures inside the fence are. We have heard about the many monsters of Earth and you must instruct us on them. If you attempt to use your projectile weapon on us, we will kill you.”
Ra’charr pressed the button again on his paralyzer.
The woman blinked. “Dem’s gators.”
“What are they for?”
“Fer eatin’.”
“Eating? We could use these gators. It has been days since we had protein nourishment. Hand over the gators.”
The human looked shocked and then a slow smile spread over her face. “Okay. Now, you want dem gators, just go up in they pen. They’s real nice like. Let you go on up to dem an’ pet dem an’ such.”
Ra’charr nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation, human. For this, I will spare your life.” He led his men to the gator pen. Once inside, one alien reached for a gator, and it grabbed his arm, dragged him under the water, and drowned him. The aliens screamed, but it was too late for most of them. The gators were grabbing the men and drowning them. Some were ripping off limbs. The gators were immune to the paralyzers, having primitive brains, and no matter how hard the aliens punched or kicked the gators, they could not get free. The gators’ mouths gripped their prey like a vice. Many gators were fighting each other for scraps of alien flesh.
Only Ra’charr and two other men made it out alive. They ran in terror, and heard gunshot as they fled. Devious, wicked human! She had lied! Clearly, these swamp people were some of the toughest humans to live in this wretched place and to view the horrible gators as a tasty treat.
I love how this keeps expanding. And yes, that is my swamp people.
Ma’thek and his squad wondered, when they first saw the human residence, why it had not been destroyed like many of its neighbors. The rural areas of this world were proving somewhat…difficult…to pacify, but this area had been more or less swept clean.
However, there was one area that was still marked blank on their maps. A captured hu-man, when asked about the place, had just said “Oh, well, that’s the Phillips place. Nice people, buy honey from her now and then”
He’d then cackled. “You think you’re goin’ there? Boy, if you thought the farm was bad…”
He’d refused to say anything else. Ma’thek had consulted with Investigations and discovered that ‘honey’ was a sweet sugary food product somehow distilled from flowers, though the process was vague. He’d learned by now not to underestimate this planet, but apparently this food product was not made from toxic plants. He agreed to take a squad in.
The human home, when they found it, seemed ordinary. Isolated, with much land around it. Oddly, the land was dotted with dozens of painted wooden boxes. In among the boxes a female hu-man was working at something.
The boxes seemed to contain insect colonies. Ma’thek was instantly suspicious. However, some extended observation of the female reassured them. She was not wearing any sort of protective clothing, and the insects were swarming around her without any apparent harm.
They advanced. The hu-man female looked up. She seemed neither surprised nor intimidated by their pretense.
“I thought you lot learned your lesson the first three times.” She said. Ma’thek was poor at deciphering the more subtle inflections of hu-man speech, but she was smiling. That was usually a sign of welcome, wasn’t it? Oddly contrasting to her words…
“We have come to take you into custody.” He chirred, and revealed his trap-gun.
“Yeah. Figured.” The hu-man calmly turned back to the box and the swarming insects. “Sorry, girls. You know I hate doing this.”
She seemed to be addressing the insect colony. Odd..
And then, in one smooth motion, the female lifted a box off of the stack she was working on and hurled it at Ma’thek. He quickly shifted back from the poor attack, clicking in amusement.
And then his pheromone receptors caught a hint of…something.
Insects boiled out of the box. Angry insects. As the hint of pheromones grew stronger, insects began swarming from the nearby colonies too.
And then they began stinging.
The following few minutes were pandemonium. Ma’thek and his team fled, shrieking, but the insects chased them. Every sting injected more venom, and they began choking and stumbling one by one, unable to breathe.
One of the last things Ma’thek saw before he asphixiated was the human female ambling over. The small insects were swarming around her, but she seemed only mildly irritated. She leaned over and picked up his trap-gun.
“Sooner or later.” She said. “You lot are going to learn to stay away from me and my girls.”
“How…” He managed to croak.
She grinned again, and Ma’thek belatedly remembered that showing teeth was a display of dominance and aggression in primates as well as a greeting. “Beekeeper. I’m immune any more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put that hive back together. Thanks for the gun”
In a desperate effort to reduced the casualty rate, the Admiral of the renowned 45th System Expeditionary Division approved aerial reconnaissance drones, both piloted and remotely controlled.
The initial peacekeeping operations on each landmass had used nanobot swarms, but the volatile humidity levels and sheer numbers of microbial life forms caused too much interference for the swarms to remain cohesive. Strategic intelligence analysis at the Fleet level had determined that the most efficient option was to provide each squad with their own drone.
This decision was not without some debate, as many suspected that squads with true-born leadership would be shown favoritism over lab-born squads. Legally, the supply chain was free from discrimination, but alleged “clerical errors” still occurred on occasion.
Eventually, the Admiral agreed to the controversial resupply plan. Xe had no other options if the peacekeeping forces were to make up for lost time. Field units on every major landmass were behind schedule, and the Admiral already had strained relations with the Internal Inquisitions Department. Failure would not be tolerated any longer.
The barbarian natives had no difficulties misleading them, because even they were generally unaware of the fatal flaw in this plan. Although an appreciable number of them had used primitive combustion-based flying machines, their own records reported good safety statistics. They hadn’t developed advanced nanobot swarms, and in fact they had barely started using inefficient remote-controlled aircraft for combat.
Nobody ever saw it coming:
To the shock and horror of all involved, more than 65% of the reconnaissance drones had been damaged or destroyed within 20 rotations. Even after the Intelligence Analysts had assured Fleet Command that “dragons” were fiction, a mere “distraction meant to waste production resources”, it was revealed that “eagles” were both very real and very widespread. In fact, small numbers of the natives would claim to know of training eagles for cooperative hunting.
There would be a crackdown for this collective deception, of course, but it couldn’t return the wasted time or erase the controversy. Many of the natives had allegedly shouted “The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!”, which was eventually traced back to a common light projection erroneously classified as “fantasy”. It was re-categorized as “history” immediately, calling the classification of “dragons” into review.
With stoic, resigned purring, the Admiral surrendered the ceremonial war hammer of xis bloodline to be ejected into interstellar space. It had been determined that ritual suicide was not required for this level of shame, but the failure still warranted exile to an imperial colony world. Admiral no more, xe and all of xis genetic descendants would be removed from the glorious warrior caste.
Quig’thip was, well, not precisely lazing at their post, but definitely not paying as much attention as the surroundings dictated; when a loud screaming noise caught their attention. Their head snapped up towards the sound, an eerie keen coming from the forests nearest the small outpost’s wall. The famed fog of this island was out this morning, and they could barely make out the trees.
Even though they couldn’t see the source of the screaming, wailing sound, they knew better than to trust that it was benign. They sounded the alarm immediately, calling to their fellow defenders. They heard the sounds of the soldiers scrambling behind them in the open yard of the outpost seconds later. They weren’t entirely worried, after all, the yard and outpost were surrounded by meter-and-a-half high fencing and surely none of the hellbeasts of this land could jump that high.
The keening was close now, the loudness of it almost piercing their ear membranes, and it was now accompanied deep, thunderous rumbling. They squinted at the fog and the trees, searching for the source of the sound.
When it finally burst out of the tree line, it was like nothing they could possibly have prepared for. Tall, dark, four legged creatures covered in metal were running out the tree line, fog clinging to them as they ran directly at the outpost. As they watched the invaders coming on, they realized the source of the wail – there were humans astride these creatures. The one in the front was carrying a long pole with a strange piece of cloth on it – Red with many horizontal and vertical stripes in varying colors and thicknesses.
That one, the one with the flag, his bellow reached even to the watchtower, “FOR SCOTLAND!”
Humans. That explained the metal, these must be robotic modes of transportation that the natives kept hidden. Well, they’d be no match for the energy weapons, and they’d never get those heavy things over the walls. Quig’thip was comforted by that thought, relieved that they weren’t real animals.
Until the first shot was fired, and it fizzled against the surface of the metal, not even leaving a scratch. In disbelief they used their HUD to zoom in on the oncoming horde. There was nothing on this planet like that, how had it deflected the energy blast? The metal wasn’t smooth and even, it was pieced together, and all too late they realized that the humans had scavenged the metal from fallen warriors. Their first assessment was correct – those weren’t robots at all, but creatures wearing armor. The humans were wearing it too.
Still, there were the walls. There was no way those huge, heavy creatures would make it over the walls. They clung to that thought until the first of the charge jumped, easily sailing over what now seemed like laughably low walls. The beast reared up and kicked the nearest defender in the chest, sending them flying back against the wall of the outpost. They didn’t get up.
Another defender fell to the ground, blood pouring from a bite. Why wasn’t their blood coagulating? It should have stopped bleeding. Was there yet another creature on this accursed planet that carried poison in its mouth? Or were they simply more vulnerable to the microbes in its mouth?
The rest of the human-beasts made it easily over the wall. On those beasts they towered over Quig’thip’s comrades. Worse, the huge animals seemed to be obeying commands, and had all to much intelligence in their eyes for Quig’thip’s liking. Combined with the deadly effects of the animal’s hard feet – which Quig’thip realized were shod with metal – and their powerful bites on the defender’s unprepared anatomy, the outpost was devastated. They stayed as long as they could before hitting eject. The tower doubled as an emergency escape pod, and they were taken back to the nearest orbiting ship.
On the ship, after reporting to their superior, they were tasked with questioning a native. One of the other soldiers recognized the strange animals from the outpost, they’d seen them in the southwest of a country previously called “America”, and pointed Quig’thip towards a prisoner from that part of the world.
“I demand to know what this is!,” they said in the rough speech of the humans from that part of the world, holding up a hologram taken by the outpost’s emergency recording system.
The female in front of him gave what they’d come to know as a smile. They weren’t proficient enough in human body language to tell nuance, but something about this look made them distinctly uncomfortable, “Someone called the cavalry. Literally.”
“I don’t know what that means, female. Explain your colloquialism,” they were getting frustrated now, nerves frayed by the loss of their fellow soldiers.
“Did your commander tell you about what they ran into in Arizona?,” she asked, her voice sounding suspiciously reasonable.
“The large four-legged pack herbivores? Yes. What of it?,” According to the commander, they’d been merciless with the squadron that had been caught in the path of the herd, trampling them to death, and biting whole tentacles off of those that weren’t trampled. They’d been listed as a Class Eleven threat due to their size and strength. Was it possible that the humans had domesticated them?
“Well,” she said, her disturbing smile widening, “Those ones were wild. These ones work with us. You think our wild animals are bad? You’ve seen nothing, C’thulhu. Our domesticated ones are worse. One of them has been shaped by people for thirty thousand years. We call that one ‘man’s best friend’. And I can’t wait until the raptor handlers get ahold of you. Or even the corvids. They’ll pick the eyestalks off your head because it’s fun. You may have taken our planet, but you’ll never keep it.”
Raptor handlers? They’d thought all of those reptiles were dead, surely she was lying. She sat back on her cot, and it was obvious she’d say no more. At this point, the invective that came out of their speaking gland was a human one they’d heard that somehow felt strangely appropriate, “Fuck this planet, and the horse it rode in on.”
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