How To – Design Your Aliens?

So, you want to create a new world and the sentient life that will call it home? First think about the common geographical features, land masses, climate, and atmosphere. There are others, but we’ll start with those. What makes your world unique and what kind of creatures would live there? What defines their characteristics? In short, what makes them tick?

I am going to use my world of Zhyre to demonstrate. Zhyre is hot, steamy jungle, with plenty of rivers and streams. Delta areas tend to flood at some seasons and be swamps other times. Vegetation is dense, the atmosphere thick, and visibility limited. I am not playing with the gravity here, so we will assume it’s like ours. Due to the thick atmosphere, there isn’t a great deal of seasonal temperature change. Think warm to steambath. Most humans would not find it a very comfortable place.

However, the Zhyreans love it.

This race started out as a general idea and developed more detail as I drew on them for some secondary characters. They are thick-skinned reptiles averaging seven ft. in height. As with Earth’s reptiles, they have extremely quick reflexes. Their environment has a direct impact on certain design features. They have thick,scaled skins because of the abundance of insects. Their hearing is far more acute than ours, both in range of sounds they can hear and the fine distinction between sounds. They can sort the sounds of different individual birds among many kinds in chorus. A Zhyrean can see into a broader spectrum than we can and, at close range, it is similar to ours in definition. At distances of over 20 ft. they can see clearly in the infrared only. They have sense organs in their head crests that detect magnetic and electrical impulses, giving them great advantages over humans in high tech societies. All these traits are related to environment.

I decided early on that the Sorthains were not going to have a monopoly on telepathy and psychic abilities. The Zhyreans are easily as gifted in that area, but with a different focus. Where Sorthians tend to perceive psychic force in terms of light or sound, the Zhyreans think in terms of tactile forms and manipulate the power like strands of fiber. Variations in texture, size, and composition of the strands are used to define the result they want in the same way that a Sorthian will visualize light in color, density, and shape. Different means to the same end. Interesting things happen when they work together, but that’s food for another post.

Some of the physical characteristics include lots of very sharp teeth in an elongated snout, not quite like a crocodile, with an expressive headcrest starting just between the eyes and extending down the neck. The crest has spines that can be raised or relaxed depending on their mood, fanned taunt with the spikes jutting signifies aggression. If they also smile, run – it’s a direct threat. Their eyes tend to be bright shades from golden to vivid blues and greens. Their skin is scaled and ranges from a blue-green to emerald with other colors sometimes present in highlights. They get darker with age.

Socially, they’re a friendly people, open, honest, and quick to laughter. They love storytelling. They are strong in their convictions and their friendships. It is not not a good idea to try and cheat them though. They have direct methods of addressing justice.

Their cities are built on higher ground away from flood zones and known for their intricate architecture. Textures are many and varied, as their focus is more tactile than visual. They tend to excel in all the sciences and mathematics. They also have some of the best weavers in the known galaxy.

Now, that was probably far more than you wanted to know about my Zhyreans. Most of those details haven’t actually come out in the books, and probably never will. I needed to know them well though, as you will need to know your own creations in depth to write about them.

You probably have a general idea of the kind of aliens you want, just like I did. That’s a to good place to start. Now think about where they will live and in what way that might affect their design. The Zhyreans are nearly blind at over 20 ft, because the jungle is so dense. Also related to the jungle is the sensitivity to magnetic and electrical anomalies. They navigate by awareness of the magnetic lines on their world, sensitivity to electrical activity was also originally due to environment.

How does that relate to modern, cosmopolitan Zhyreans? They are really good with electrical devices and can sense the actual flow of electricity in equipment. This becomes very important in the third book of the Talmanor trilogy. I won’t give away exactly how, but it’s a game changer for the Coalition. The sensitivity also gives them the equivalent of a build in threat receiver, as well as GPS. All together, they are a formidable race with the confidence to be friendly and open. No one in their right mind would want them for enemies.

So, when designing your aliens, think carefully about how interaction with their world, and sometimes their history, would affect who and what they are.