What alien would you be?

[TheNaga]

If you could be any alien character what would you look like?  What powers and abilities would you have as this alien being?

 

As an alien I would be an Xaukvad which is a race of aliens I created.  I would have at least all the abilities and powers that I listed below.

Physical Description: He is a humanoid male with four arms that towers a full eight feet in height.  His body has smooth featureless luminescent ultramarine skin that has a rubber texture and is completely devoid of hair.  His large head is attached to a long, flexible neck.  Growing of out of the back of his head are six tentacles that each measures a foot in length.  He has two eyes located where a human would have eyes.  Above both of these eyes is another eye, and above these eyes is another eye.  All of his pupil-less reflective eyes are silver in color.  Each one of his four hands has three slender fingers and a slender thumb.  Both of his feet have two forward facing toes and one backwards facing toe.

Abilities & Powers:

• Xaukvad Physiology:  Life Support  (Eating: Character does not eat; Longevity: 1600 Years; Self-Contained Breathing; Sleeping: Character does not sleep)
• Psychokinetic Shield:  Resistant Protection (30 PD/30 ED); Costs Half Endurance (-1/4)
• Telekinetic Flight:  Flight 45m, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2)
• Psychokinetic Weapons:
  Psychokinetic Greatsword:  Killing Attack - Hand-To-Hand 2½d6 (3½d6 w/STR)
  Psychokinetic Mace:  Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Armor Piercing (+¼)
  Telekinetic Lance:  Killing Attack - Ranged 2d6, Penetrating (+½)
• Psychokinesis:  Telekinesis (65 STR), Fine Manipulation, Alternate Combat Value (uses OMCV against DCV; +0), Line Of Sight (+1/2)
• Intense Willpower:  Mental Defense (20 points total)
• Superhuman Intelligence: 400 I.Q.
• Multiple Arms: 4 Arms
• Eidetic Memory
• Telekinetic Energy:  Endurance Reserve  (240 END, 20 REC)
• Legendary EGO: 30 EGO
• Legendary OMCV: 10 OMCV
• Legendary DMCV: 8 DMCV
• Xaukvad Eyesight: He has the ability to see in the dark and in low light conditions.
• Scientist: Anatomy, Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Evolutionary Biology, Exobiology, Genetics,  Physics,  Psionics, & Psionic Engineering
• Speed Reading: x100
• Ambidexterity: no Off Hand penalty
• Lightning Calculator
• Psychokinetic Wall: Barrier 12 PD/12 ED, 12 BODY (up to 12m long, 4m tall, and ½m thick), NonAnchored, Dismissable; Costs Half Endurance

[Tjack]

    Oooooooookay......You go with the thing that looks like Culthullu banged the Brood Queen from Aliens and she failed to take proper pre-natal care. 
     Meanwhile I’ll choose a Kheran from the Wildstorm Comics universe. The two prime examples are Mr. Majestic and Zealot. This basically makes them Kryptonians without all those annoying disads.

[Sveta8]

I don't quite know how to answer this. Being an alien... being a being from somewhere else. What it looks like is important, as what it can do, but that's... Tangential? A defining feature not on them, but that helps define a culture. A world. The cosmos where they came from. How it's society developed, what was norms and what wasn't. Privacy, policy, family, life and what it means to live a good life, death and whether it's a part of it or not, what it means to be powerful and weak, legends and lore and the line of reasoning for it all... All of this changes when the baseline isn't human.

It's why so many aliens are "Human and psychic" or "Human and can fly" or "Humans but super strong, and can fly" or just "Human plus... something." And those that reach outside of it tend to just shrug and go, "Weird and scary, go!" And you get Junji-Ito esk fleshy blobs that don't have clear creation or definition. The explanation being, "They exist, how horrifying" and never why they exist as they do.

 

I don't have the same cultural lexicon. I don't have the same history of comics and media to help me simplify my answer to just a single point with a name of a known alien type. Sure there's the archetypes. Strong Alien. Psychic Alien. Warlike Alien. Scavenger Money Loving Alien. Emotionless Hyper Intelligent Alien. But to be alien is to be other. Fundamentally. Not Human with a new slap of paint and an extra power or two. It is to be different.

 

Then there is the condition question. Are we one of these Aliens in their own world? Where what is said is presumed to be the norm? A Stranger in a strange land on Earth? Would we be as the people they are from, or some strange aberration even among the Alien? There is a difference between someone being super strong, and a society of super strong people after all.

Sorry, this is probably wildly overthinking this, but you started to get me thinking about it less as "What alien would you be," and more, "If you had to design aliens that you would be one of, what would you make?" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, will answer your question now.

 

The alien, Snivs for lack of a better name, would be short as a baseline. Four foot high considered rather tall by their standard. Pale, bluish white skin that's thick and tough, large yellowed eyes peering out on a blunted face with mangled teeth. Hairless to a one, and a short bipedal structure to their walk, the flesh on the small of their back warped by their parentage. But only the children would look this way. 

 

In a supernatural bent, they would see in the dark, and sleep once a week, and retain some low level regeneration, perhaps at most one Body a day if it were in stats. The only thing that defines them as being abhorrently strange is their adaptability.

 

 Consecrating in ritual as much as mysticism a bowl containing their own blood and something else, they would take on it's characteristics. Seven times this could be done in one's life, and no more. Further use would distort and rend the body into an unusable and wrenched beast of a thing, considered the greatest sin there is. For this reason the ritual, a simple matter all said and done, is a guarded secret from the children, whom upon the first usage of this rite they are considered an adult.

 

Each usage of it would warp and wrap their body in dizzying and concerning ways, each use mixing and intermingling the constituent parts. Flesh could distort into stone, scales, razors, iron, and any number of things. Arms could grow or be lost, hands blunted or grown long and gangly. Even but two usages and the average Sniv would look nothing like the race they once came from with but one exception. A razor thin margin upon the small of their back retaining the pure element that they took in, both oneself and one's linage. One's history and past carried at all times. To be stripped of this marker, the Neff, is to be without a family, to be without a past. Exiled for all time. One usage of this transformative ability often saved for matrimony, the pair set to share for then and ever more their blood. Those who forewent this application considered brave or foolhardy, or driven to ends beyond family. For without such a bond, no child would be possible, the body and dna so warped and distorted from one another.

 

Children raised below ground, hidden away from the sun's harmful rays that would scour their flesh, adults working and living above, descending for family and home.  Only in the last few hundred years have they left planet, out to seek and find new planets, abusing this transformative ability to settle and habitat planets otherwise considered unusable.

 

Mechanically, I'd probably stat that as a Transform, Self into Any One Improved Self, limited charges that never recover, each usage granting about fifty points worth of abilities linked to the material component used.

[Echo3Niner]

I get to choose?  Depends on my mood I suppose; either:

1. A Q from Star Trek - He is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself, being capable of altering it to his whim. Despite his vast knowledge and experience spanning untold eons (and much to the exasperation of the object(s) of his obsession), he is not above practical jokes for his own personal amusement, for a Machiavellian and manipulative purpose, or to prove a point. He is said to be almost omnipotent and he is continually evasive regarding his true motivations.
2. A Czarnian with exceptional strength and fortitude. He enjoys nothing better than mindless violence and intoxication, and killing is an end in itself; his name roughly translates as "he who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it." He is arrogant and self-centered, focusing almost solely on his own pleasures, although he proudly lives up to the letter of his promises – but always no more or no less than what he promised. The last of his kind, having committed complete genocide by killing all the other Czarnians for fun. 

[Tjack]

     Dear Sveta8, 

    I really like your take on this question.   While I might have answered above in a flip manner your more serious take leads me to think more deeply about the subject. 
   The original question wasn’t “What would you like to play?”.  It was “What would you like to be?”.  And TheNaga’s answer was something that could never function in this world, so I answered the way I did.  But you delved into what makes someone an alien and what viewpoints an alien would have. 
    I’ve played alien characters a few times before and I’ve always had the most fun with the ones where I built a society and way of thinking for each people.

[Sveta8]

11 minutes ago, Tjack said:

     Dear Sveta8, 

    I really like your take on this question.   While I might have answered above in a flip manner your more serious take leads me to think more deeply about the subject. 
   The original question wasn’t “What would you like to play?”.  It was “What would you like to be?”.  And TheNaga’s answer was something that could never function in this world, so I answered the way I did.  But you delved into what makes someone an alien and what viewpoints an alien would have. 
    I’ve played alien characters a few times before and I’ve always had the most fun with the ones where I built a society and way of thinking for each people.

Well, thanks for that!

I just was sort of frustrated for a moment with the normal stance of Alien = Human + Thing. So, I thought about why that bothers me, and got that ramble. And then made the Alien of the definition of Human + thing.

[TheNaga]

3 hours ago, Tjack said:

     Dear Sveta8, 

    I really like your take on this question.   While I might have answered above in a flip manner your more serious take leads me to think more deeply about the subject. 
   The original question wasn’t “What would you like to play?”.  It was “What would you like to be?”.  And TheNaga’s answer was something that could never function in this world, so I answered the way I did.  But you delved into what makes someone an alien and what viewpoints an alien would have. 
    I’ve played alien characters a few times before and I’ve always had the most fun with the ones where I built a society and way of thinking for each people.

Why could my never function in this world?

[Tjack]

2 hours ago, TheNaga said:

Why could my never function in this world?

  Well, you don’t generally see somebody eight feet tall with four arms and tentacles out of the back of their heads standing in line at the supermarket.  Not without people talking anyway...screaming, calling in the National Guard, whatever.

   Your original question as I mentioned wasn’t “What would you like to play?” Like in a role playing game.  It was “What would you like to be?” Implying that you meant in this real world of ours.  Like one of those “What superpower would you like to have?” kind of discussion starter questions.  So I took the question literally just for fun.

   If you truly want to be eight feet tall with four arms and tentacles.....then I’m resigning from the conversation.

[dmjalund]

The fact that this thread is in the Champions sub-forum does imply being a character (more specifically in a Super Hero game)

[Tjack]

21 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

The fact that this thread is in the Champions sub-forum does imply being a character (more specifically in a Super Hero game)

   Granted.  I was just having a little fun about the sentence structure.  If anyone was offended or any feelings were hurt, then I certainly apologize, but I truly just thought it sounded funny.

[Duke Bushido]

I'm not expert, but from what I know, Kryptonian seems like a pretty safe bet.....

[DShomshak]

11 hours ago, Sveta8 said:

Well, thanks for that!

I just was sort of frustrated for a moment with the normal stance of Alien = Human + Thing. So, I thought about why that bothers me, and got that ramble. And then made the Alien of the definition of Human + thing.

Well, honestly, Human + Thing (and maybe + Makeup, but that's optional) is what comic books do. Or monsters. "Serious" attempts to portary aliens that are alien is not what the superhero genre does. Anyone who tries is doing a deconstruction of the genre. Which is OK, but let's recognize it for what it is.

 

For my Millennium Universe setting, I lean into this. Zetrians are humans except for blue-to-purple color palette and feathers for hair; their "+ Thing" is advanced technology and a Utopian culture based on post-scarcity technology and Enlightenment reason and humanism. Alsafians, OTOH, are humans-in-makeup but with a totalitarians society that makes them a menace to Earth and anyone else nearby: The Zetrian hero Officer Pax explained them as "then Galaxy's North Korea." Coronans can pass as Black humans, but their inborn atomic psychokinesis makes them super-strong, super-resilient, able to fly, and generally act as the settings Kryptonians or Eternals. There are radically nonhuman aliens in the background, such as the Irradians who live on a pulsar planet, but that's their role: Background. Probably the limit for character involvement are the Phlegrans, silicon-based people who live on a world with oceans of lava, but that's just a particularly intensive makeup job. Psychologically, they are human.

 

Given the choice, I'd be a Zetrian. Coronans have a pretty nice society too, as well as super-powers, but they got there by a very ugly route that is kept hidden from most of them.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

I'm going to eschew reasoned discourse in favor of the first juvenile thought that popped into my head: a Centauri from Babylon 5. Six, meter-long, prehensile penises.

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I'm not expert, but from what I know, Kryptonian seems like a pretty safe bet.....

 

 

You know what?  Screw that.

 

I'll be a Transformer.   

 

 

[dmjalund]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

You know what?  Screw that.

 

I'll be a Transformer.   

 

 

so you'll be happy hanging of a telegraph pole and humming?

[Tjack]

1 minute ago, dmjalund said:

so you'll be happy hanging of a telegraph pole and humming?

   Only if he doesn’t know the words. 😇

[fdw3773]

17 hours ago, Echo3Niner said:

 

1. A Q from Star Trek - He is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself, being capable of altering it to his whim. Despite his vast knowledge and experience spanning untold eons (and much to the exasperation of the object(s) of his obsession), he is not above practical jokes for his own personal amusement, for a Machiavellian and manipulative purpose, or to prove a point. He is said to be almost omnipotent and he is continually evasive regarding his true motivations.

Same here. The idea of being a member of the Q Continuum and the power levels they possess are pretty mind boggling when you think about it. Q was the one who first "introduced" the Borg to the U.S.S. Enterprise and was able to move about as he pleased despite everything happening, kept Vash alive throughout all of her interplanetary explorations, and so on. The fact that they can be near omnipotent yet ignore the proverbial, "With great power comes great responsibility," adage can be both interesting and quite disconcerting at the same time. 🤔

[Asperion]

Instead of going for power like most people would,  I would take a being better known for other abilities  - Delvian.

[archer]

I think Tamaranian would be fun.

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Tamaraneans

 

Extreme good looks by human standards, universal translator (if you touch someone who knows the language first), flight. Enhanced strength, dexterity, and durability. Life Support vs heat/cold, no need to breathe.

 

That gives the basis of a well-rounded character.

 

And such a character who found himself on Earth would likely know martial arts and be proficient in melee weapons, projectile weapons, and energy weapons. (Tamaranians are often captured and trained as either gladiators or warriors.)

 

I'd probably land and demand to be taken to the King of Earth to whom I'd pledge my undying loyalty and service in exchange for his protection.

[wcw43921]

I'm inclined to go with the alien I created for my hero team The Defeateers--Zargor, the Man from Mars. 

 

".  .  .a creature with glistening green skin, two translucent blue orbs for eyes, a thin, lipless mouth, and two small holes where ears would have been on a human on either side of its hairless head. He wore a silver, form-fitting flight suit with a black metallic belt; slung over his shoulder was his BRZAP! Gun, which could fire blasts of BRZAP! Energy at any setting he needed---and as he stood beside his hovering saucer, it was obvious to even the most casual observer that this being would have to stand on highest tiptoe to see over the top of a yardstick."

 

His flying saucer can go from zero to escape velocity in 3.7 seconds, but has no weapons or energy shields--it's not a warship.  He came to Earth to hunt down crooks for the fun of it--although when the blaster bolts start flying and the cars get tossed around like ping pong balls, he has to wonder what the bazatta he was thinking.

[Grailknight]

If I can ditch the stupid weakness then a DCU Martian.

[archer]

19 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

If I can ditch the stupid weakness then a DCU Martian.

 

The nice thing about a DCU Martian is that no one would have to know you were a DCU Martian unless you were dumb enough to tell someone.