Stellaris random species: a listing

[dorchadas]

While Elves of Stellaris hasn't updated for the new expansion yet, I've still been playing a bunch of Stellaris lately. I found some new mods, and one of them was a mod for extra species diversity by addding more possible traits. So I installed it, made a game, and this is W I L D.

Unlike when I'm playing space elves, in my current game my empire is accepting refugees, so I have my founders and a few other species. Here's the current list of species in my empire:


THE FOUNDERS

• Frilin: The founding species of the empire, a bunch of long-lived, telepathic, indomitable plant people. With an average lifespan of 300 years, the ability to contact each other's minds, and photosynthesis greatly reducing the need to compete for resources, they reached the stars and founding an empire dedicated to peaceful contemplation and inward focus--the "Garden of Worlds." However, the name "garden" is chosen well, because the frilin were born in lush forests and adapt very poorly to other climates.
  
  The frilin are directly drawn from the RPG I've most wanted to run but never gotten the chance to, Mechnical Dream. And if that article intrigues you, there's a setting intro PDF available too.

THE LOYAL
Servants of the Garden of Worlds, who sought the protection of the frilin as the Garden of Worlds gained more power on the galactic stage.

• Pelismus: Plantoids from a warm and dry world, the Pelismus are similar to the frilin, being long-lived and mostly peaceful due to not needing agriculture to survive. Unusual for planets, their sap has clotting properties similar to blood, allowing them to heal from wounds extremely quickly and without forming knots and scars like most plants. The pelismus grew up a symbiotic relationship with several other species on their homeworld, and perhaps that led to one of their most distinctive mental quirks--pelismus find it almost psychologically impossible to function in a hierarchy. The very concept of a chain of command is anathema to them, which prevented any large-scale social organization on their planet for aeons. That they would voluntarily come to the Garden of Worlds for protection speaks to their terror that something out there in the galaxy is a greater threat to them than anything else in their recorded history.

THE CONQUERED
These were acquired in the two wars fought by the Garden of Worlds, both times as the defender, on planets seized to provide a defensive hyperlane chokepoint against neighboring hostile empires:

• Vetirisius: More plant people, that the vetirisius evolved at all is a mystery. They have a natural connection to the Shroud, being innately pyrokinetic and able to sense their surroundings without physical sensory organs, but perhaps due to the innate enmity between fire and plants, they are in constant pain, sometimes increasing to agony.


• Sidimatus: Also plant people, the sidimatus are even more of an evolutionary mystery. They are adapted to cold climates and are naturally clairvoyant, and also have the ability to spray an oil that ignites on contact with air, effectively breathing fire. Rather than their clairvoyance making them more compassionate and aware of of others, however, it has made them cruel--ritual flame duels are used to solve most personal disputes, and many crimes are punishable by death by burning.
  
  Basically, they're piranha plants from Mario.

REFUGEES
Various waves of aliens who arrived from other empires:

• Shantari: Landbound avians, the shantari are physiologically odd. They age almost in reverse, growing more and more robust and strong as they get older until suffering sudden organ failure and death after an average of eighty years, leading to a gerontocractic social structure where the old work to support the fragile young. Perhaps because of this, they rarely travel, and the average shantar remains within a few dozen kilometers of their birthplace their whole lives.


• Bothrian: Resembling the yaks of Earth (but bipedal), bothrians distinguish themselves by their hard carapaces, their immense strength, and their glowing blood. Their veins are visible under their skin and fur at all times, as a compound in it is an extremely efficient conductor of bioelectricity. While native to the cold climate of their homeworld, they are resilient enough to live almost anywhere.


• Wessari: Furred, horned, and billed, the Wessari come from a tropical planet. They are a short-lived species, dying at an average age of 50, but perhaps because of that, their minds work at a fevered pace and they reached the stars millennia before many other species who evolved at the same time. Perhaps as another quirk of their thought process, they have a difficult time with materials science and rarely use alloys in the creation of their technology--a wessari starship is a massive hunk of rock and iron.


• Zelvan: Humanoids from a frozen iceball, the zelvans evolved groups of cysts on their skin filled with explosive chemicals to deter predators, who had no desire to eat something that would explode in their mouths. While many zelvans have them surgically removed now due to the danger, their armies are famous for their fast attack tactics emphasizing closing with the enemy as quickly as possible.


• Sutharian: It's wrong to call this a species, as it was a single individual. The Sutharian is kilometers long, as large as a mountain, and capable of regenerating lost tissue up to and including vital organs. They are also capable of pyrokinesis. When questioned by frilin scientists, the Sutharian claimed that members of their species genetically engineered themselves almost beyond recognition when their planet underwent an ice age, but were so changed by the process that further reproduction became impossible. There are a few dozen Sutharians remaining, each millennia old, and probably the last of their species.


• Yaanari: The opposite of the Sutharian, the yaanari evolved on a ruined ecumenpolis from abandoned precursor nanotechnology. They are so small that an individual yaanar is invisible to the naked eye, but each of them is a veritable Renaissance man, multitalented in nearly every field and extraordinarily capable. For some reason unknown even to themselves, they produce "fruit" from their bodies--nutritious spheres which they stockpile and use to feed their children. They live to be about 60 years old, after which their vital processes simply shut off regardless of their underlying health, perhaps a legacy of their nanotech ancestry.


• Vag-Oross: Mountain-dwelling reptiles who grow an average of four meters in length, the vag-oross are rare in that they gain most of their sustenance from directly consuming electricity, which was in abundance in the storm-prone mountains heights where they evolved. They are famously perceptive, able to distinguish between several hundred million colors, see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra, and hear both high and low frequency sounds. They are even capable of directly experiencing the last memories of the dead as long as they are able to touch the body for several uninterrupted minutes, an ability that even their own scientists are unable to fully explain. Perhaps as a side effect of their ability to store electricity, their blood can take days to clot, and even minor injures can be life-threatening without medical treatment.


• Natfankans: Large arthropoids who evolved on a world with a highly eccentric orbit, frozen for much of the year with a brief and powerful summer, the natfankans evolved to fit this cycle. While other species would describe them as lazy, their lack of action makes sense--during the majority of their lives, they would expend the minimum energy possible in order to conserve resources during winter. When summer hit, however, the natfankans would gather in large groups, forming families and rapidly reproducing and creating resources to last them through the lean times. Despite the harsh climate of their homeworld, this foresight and communal spirit allowed them to reach the stars.


• Vissari: Less than a millimeter in height, the avian vissari were uplifted to sapience by the panaxala, a group of vicious, slave-taking, lithovore plantoids. The vissari themselves are capable of flight without wings, since their small size means their feathers alone are enough to provide lift. They vissari also gain sustenance from eating minerals directly, though examination by frilin scientists was unable to determine whether this was due to the uplifting process or whether it was a natural byproduct of their evolution.


• Hesukar: A very odd species, frilin scientists are divided over whether the heskuar were engineered or evolved. Hesuk Prime is a so-called "superhabitable world," a large planet which nonetheless retained most of its gases while forming, resulting in shallow seas and a diverse biosphere. The hesukar's biology is carbon, but in the same way a diamond is--their muscles are laced with thin, hard fibers that provide immense lifting and grasping strength, and they have a similar layer of such fibers just under their skin that allow them to momentarily "turn to stone," avoiding almost all damage from any assaults they are aware of.


• Mirovandia: Each mirovandian is actually a group of tens or hundreds of thousands of linked individuals, forming multiple hive minds that have competed and cooperated for most of their history. While the mirovandians are also plantoids and evolved on a desolate world, they were able to attain spaceflight through a bizarre side effect of their physiology--their senses are attuned to metals in nearby rock, and they secrete a sap that erodes solid rock, allowing them to access the metals directly. They could thus accumulate stockpiles of resources without heavy industry, and several mirovandian hive minds reached the stars and colonized other worlds, seeking an escape from the endless political games of their homeworld.

THE EXILES
Aliens who used to live in the Garden of Worlds, but were expelled for various reason:

• K'Taknor: Furred, tree-dwelling bipeds, the k'taknor had little conflict amongst themselves throughout their history, and had eagle-like eyesight that allowed them to avoid the many predators of their homeworld. But for some unknown reason, perhaps because they evolved on a world devastated by some disaster in the past, a world where all life lived at high elevation to avoid the poisonous mists of the lowlands, they are anathema to worlds with more healthy ecosystems. Through some unknown mechanism they drain the life from the natural world around them, withering plants by their very presence, and that was a crime the frilin could not abide.


• Qravadox: More cold-dwelling avians, the qravadox have six eyes, which allow them to coordinate their sight enough to see things that most species cannot see without the aid of microscopes. Due to the extremely scarce resources on their homeworld, the qravadox are extremely community-oriented, living in very close proximity to each other and almost never wasting any resources. Due to the presence of Shroud-touched predators on their world, they evolved the ability to conceal themselves from psychic powers to such an extent that they appear as holes in reality to psionic beings. The frilin suffered physical pain even being near them, and in the end were forced to exile them.


• Nuurian: Evolving from molluscs, the nuurians are small, being less than ten centimeters in height on average, but their species is one of the oddest fruits of evolution in the galaxy. They are biologically immortal, never suffering senescence or cellular degeneration, but their species has a frighteningly high death rate because the nuurians have no emotional regulation whatsoever and are liable to kill each other over the most minor disagreements. Despite having a theoretically infinite lifespan, very few nuurians outside the ruling class live past forty years of age. Their skin is translucent, allowing them to camouflage themselves in the shallow seas of the arid world on which they evolved, and making them superb ambush predators. Their very existence horrified the frilin, who quickly expelled them once their demeanor became known.


• Raltek: Furred, horned bipeds who evolved alongside the avian lytalk, frilin scientists did not understand why the lytalk had not wiped them out. Ralteks were the beneficiaries of advanced genetic engineering, rendering them far more physically and mentally robust than the galactic average, but their very odd species psychology made them unsuitable for the Garden of Worlds. The ralteks believed, unshakably, that each sapient being possessed an immortal soul that survived beyond death. This belief was universal among the frilin as well--the advent with the Shroud had taught the frilin that their ancient beliefs about world-souls were correct--but the ralteks took this a step further. To sustain the heightened metabolism as a side effect of their genetic engineering, ralteks were always hungry, and they thought nothing of butchering and eating even other sapient beings to feed their hunger. Their fur was actually nanotubes capable of camouflage against their surrounding environment, the better to stalk and eat each other, and while they were docile and perfectly willing to explain themselves to frilin authorities, perhaps a legacy of their evolution, the result of these interviews was the expulsion of every raltek in the empire.

NOT IN MY EMPIRE BUT NEAT

• Akkano: They're Vulcans. Evolved on an arid world, naturally psychic, gifted at sociology and interpersonal relations, capable of great feats of physiological control by willpower alone, use the "space elf" portrait...they're Vulcans that the computer randomly generated.

Most of that is just me directly extrapolating from the listed traits, with a little bit of RP thrown in to try to fit them all together. I did find a species that were simultaneously emotionless berzerker sadists, which is definitely , but fortunately there aren't any of them in my empire.

I tend to play a lot of Stellaris games the same, in a "decadent precursor" kind of way, where I just build fleets and fortress stations and then hide in my borders and spend all my money building ringworlds or whatever, but it's still a lot of fun! Especially if you RP when you play. There was no in-game reason for me to expel the k'taknor or the qravadox, but I figured that a bunch of psychic plant people would refuse to allow them to stay. It's relatively easy to become unstoppable if you survive the early game, and at that point, RP makes the game fun.

I kind of want to play a space opera TTRPG and populate it with species from Stellaris's random generator now.

Comments

[draxil]

Not played since the new expansion.. I'm sure it'll lure me back in soon.

[dorchadas]

"One more turn" is dangerous in a game with no discrete turns...

[corvi]

What appeals to you about Mechanical Dream?

[dorchadas]

A lot of it is the inventive worldbuilding. So much of roleplaying is either D&D--which is its own genre at this point, with its own conventions that don't automatically match everything else--or "our world plus [X]," with vampires or cosmic horror or whatever. Mechanical Dream doesn't even have humans, and the world it takes place in is clearly not the classic "a planet floating in space around a star" that even most fantasy worlds are assumed to be. The parasitic ecosystem concept is fascinating to me, with the miles-high trees and animals a thousand feet tall, and entire game taking place on a smaller-scale ecosystem that's around and under that.

I also love that characters have to have social ties because of orpee. Without eating it, they die. Only the Inaïs can harvest it, and it only grows underground, so a massive social infrastructure is required to harvest it and get it to the surface so people can survive.

It's just so fascinating.