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An alien in my head
As I've said before, one of the advantages of my job is a lot of time to think. Driving is instinctive to me at this point, and I know my route like the back of my hand. So I have time to think.
I've been considering resurrecting what had been the Concordart as a setting for fiction and/or gaming. To that end, I'm working on aliens who aren't humans in rubber suits. I've already got the Blimps and the !kaf. But I wanted another.
One of my favorite critters from the Lovecraftian mythos was always the Mi-Go. Mainly because they weren't extradimensional gods, but instead aliens with their own motivations and technology. So I'm using them and their look as a base for the race humans call "Buzzers."
Buzzers are a hive species. The average member is about 1.2 meters long, has six paired limbs that function as both feet and hands interchangeably, and a set of four wings. The "head" is dominating by sensory stalks, 10-15cm long, that contain photoreceptors as well as organs that can sense magnetic and electrical fields. The complex mouth is on the upper thorax. To either side of the mouth are two organs that produce the characteristic buzzing speech of the race. Below them are the smaller ears. These organs resemble drum heads. Buzzer vision is shifted to the shorter end of the spectrum. They cannot see red or orange light, but can see well into the UV. Their hearing is comparable to human norms, but with a lower reach in terms of range. They posses excellent senses of smell and taste. Buzzers can fly if the local gravity is lower than .8g and the atmosphere is dense enough. Buzzhome has a natural gravity of .68g and a surface pressure of 1.3atm. Buzzers are adapted to a richer O2 mixture than humans, finding 25% oxygen most comfortable. They also prefer UV rich lighting. Humans need to take precautions when visiting Buzzer facilities for these reasons
Buzzers communicate constantly. Their speech is low frequency, much of it below the threshold of human perception. It is incredibly content-rich. A Buzzer will be constantly updating all around him on what it is experiencing, working on, and advising it's fellow Buzzers on their inquiries. Buzzers working on a problem actually form a sort of distributed network (called "think tanks" by humans) where rapid discussion and distribution of problem solving occurs at an instinctive level. Buzzers do not train specialists as a rule. Instead, every worker learns a little about all the jobs they encounter in their hive and can advise other workers and receive advice when needed. due to this reliance on communication, it is almost unheard of to encounter fewer than a dozen Buzzers in any circumstance. The nature of Buzzer life made them naturals for developing biotechnology. Whenever possible, they prefer to use a biotech solution to a problem. Buzzer ships are more grown than built, and most Buzzer technology incorporates some living portions. Rumors abound of Buzzer monsters, war castes created to deal with humans but there is no evidence of this.
Most Buzzers are neuter. Each hive will have several queens that serve as egg layers and a small number of male drones, who are not intelligent. Drones fight for mating rights, and this is a popular spectator event in hives. Once mated, the drone becomes a parasitic attachment to the queen. Each queen can accommodate six drones. Eggs mature over several weeks, and the developing Buzzer actually learns the language while in the egg. Once born, the new worker is ready for assignment.
A Buzzer hive can hold upwards of ten million workers. Humans who have visited hives describe them as "nightmarish" with Buzzers crawling and flying everywhere, high heat and humidity, and the stench of food fungus (the Buzzer's main food source) everywhere. Buzzer starships tend to be built into asteroids so they can build more natural feeling nests. Buzzers have been described as the ultimate communists. While Buzzers do have individual identities and personalities, evolution has given them a "hive first" mentality. Personal ambition is an alien concept. Buzzers never needed to develop governments as we understand them, instead each hive functions as a cross between an Athenian democracy and a single mind. Questions about policy are communicated across the hive, input taken in, and a consensus reached. When Buzzers first made contact with humans, it took them some time to understand concepts like "money" and "I can't make that decision, I need to check with my boss." Relations with the Buzzers have included active trade and occasional skirmishes.
Well, what do y'all think?
I've been considering resurrecting what had been the Concordart as a setting for fiction and/or gaming. To that end, I'm working on aliens who aren't humans in rubber suits. I've already got the Blimps and the !kaf. But I wanted another.
One of my favorite critters from the Lovecraftian mythos was always the Mi-Go. Mainly because they weren't extradimensional gods, but instead aliens with their own motivations and technology. So I'm using them and their look as a base for the race humans call "Buzzers."
Buzzers are a hive species. The average member is about 1.2 meters long, has six paired limbs that function as both feet and hands interchangeably, and a set of four wings. The "head" is dominating by sensory stalks, 10-15cm long, that contain photoreceptors as well as organs that can sense magnetic and electrical fields. The complex mouth is on the upper thorax. To either side of the mouth are two organs that produce the characteristic buzzing speech of the race. Below them are the smaller ears. These organs resemble drum heads. Buzzer vision is shifted to the shorter end of the spectrum. They cannot see red or orange light, but can see well into the UV. Their hearing is comparable to human norms, but with a lower reach in terms of range. They posses excellent senses of smell and taste. Buzzers can fly if the local gravity is lower than .8g and the atmosphere is dense enough. Buzzhome has a natural gravity of .68g and a surface pressure of 1.3atm. Buzzers are adapted to a richer O2 mixture than humans, finding 25% oxygen most comfortable. They also prefer UV rich lighting. Humans need to take precautions when visiting Buzzer facilities for these reasons
Buzzers communicate constantly. Their speech is low frequency, much of it below the threshold of human perception. It is incredibly content-rich. A Buzzer will be constantly updating all around him on what it is experiencing, working on, and advising it's fellow Buzzers on their inquiries. Buzzers working on a problem actually form a sort of distributed network (called "think tanks" by humans) where rapid discussion and distribution of problem solving occurs at an instinctive level. Buzzers do not train specialists as a rule. Instead, every worker learns a little about all the jobs they encounter in their hive and can advise other workers and receive advice when needed. due to this reliance on communication, it is almost unheard of to encounter fewer than a dozen Buzzers in any circumstance. The nature of Buzzer life made them naturals for developing biotechnology. Whenever possible, they prefer to use a biotech solution to a problem. Buzzer ships are more grown than built, and most Buzzer technology incorporates some living portions. Rumors abound of Buzzer monsters, war castes created to deal with humans but there is no evidence of this.
Most Buzzers are neuter. Each hive will have several queens that serve as egg layers and a small number of male drones, who are not intelligent. Drones fight for mating rights, and this is a popular spectator event in hives. Once mated, the drone becomes a parasitic attachment to the queen. Each queen can accommodate six drones. Eggs mature over several weeks, and the developing Buzzer actually learns the language while in the egg. Once born, the new worker is ready for assignment.
A Buzzer hive can hold upwards of ten million workers. Humans who have visited hives describe them as "nightmarish" with Buzzers crawling and flying everywhere, high heat and humidity, and the stench of food fungus (the Buzzer's main food source) everywhere. Buzzer starships tend to be built into asteroids so they can build more natural feeling nests. Buzzers have been described as the ultimate communists. While Buzzers do have individual identities and personalities, evolution has given them a "hive first" mentality. Personal ambition is an alien concept. Buzzers never needed to develop governments as we understand them, instead each hive functions as a cross between an Athenian democracy and a single mind. Questions about policy are communicated across the hive, input taken in, and a consensus reached. When Buzzers first made contact with humans, it took them some time to understand concepts like "money" and "I can't make that decision, I need to check with my boss." Relations with the Buzzers have included active trade and occasional skirmishes.
Well, what do y'all think?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucigenia
Perhaps on thier home world that's the direction that life took, rather than the namby-pamby notochord that life on Earth settled on.
How fast would a Buzzer colony adapt to a new visitor. Would the first hour be fumbling, and then as the hive picked up the nuances of their human visitors, would they be uncanny in their communication and hospitality. Or would different hives have different personalities?
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What holds all that atmosphere down?
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The low frequency speech ("below human perception") *can't* carry all that much data. Data rate goes up with frequency. Anything below what we can hear (20 Hz or less) can only carry data at a very limited rate.
Also, low frequency sounds tend to bend around normal sized objects and reflect from walls or other barriers, even ones with fairly large openings.
So a buzzer could go thru a door and the low frequency stuff would cut off or at least attenuate *badly*.
For your distributed computing, you want *high* frequencies. Something electromagnetic, rather than audio, would be better (and is still doable biologically, even if it's harder to pull off.
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