Some alien inspiration from “Alien August”

If you’re roleplaying in a scifi universe, it can be a challenge to keep coming up with interesting aliens & creatures, especially if your characters are encountering new ones every week. The website SciFi Ideas has plenty of interesting concepts to choose from or inspire you to invent your own. This month especially they’re dubbing “Alien August” and publishing at least one interesting alien profile every day. Here’s a few of the best that might inspire you in your own story.

Gublorghas

Greedy, stupid, short-tempered and primitive, Gublorghas have a habit of eating their own offspring. Gublorghas are large and cumbersome creatures. An adult Gublorgha is typically between seven and eight feet in height (on it’s hind legs). They alternate between walking on four legs and shuffling on two. They have three powerful claws on each hand, which are used for ripping open tree trunks, digging, picking fruit, and shoveling food into their mouths.

Gublorghas have large round mouths with no jaw. Instead, powerful muscles and several rows of razor-sharp teeth are capable of munching through almost anything. Read more about the Gublorghas here.

The Xenosimias

Xenosimias, as its name (“strange primate”) implies, is something of an alien monkey. However on closer inspection the differences outweigh the similarities.

Monkeys and humans are descended from primitive swimmers, whereas xenosimians are descended from ancient crawlers of the sea floor. These crawlers existed in an abundance of forms, from sprawling mud dwellers to graceful striders of the sea floor, with most groups sporting various combinations of exo- and endoskeletal supports. As their swimming predators grew more powerful, some adapted by growing suits of dermal bone armor. Others took to the open seas themselves, eventually outcompeting many of their former predators. A small minority of forms strengthened their endoskeletal supports and ventured into the shallow reefs and coastal pools of the numerous small landmasses of their world. It was only a matter of time before some began to use their legs to drag themselves onto the shore, like bizarre endoskeletal horsehoe crabs, to lay their eggs in moist burrows, safe from the predators of the sea. Read more about the Xenosimias here.

The Cooties of IO

Here’s a fun alien profile by Dan Palacios. The “Cooties of IO”, or their scienfific name: Cthulhu Sapiens Ionicus (coined by astronaut who screamed, “They look like Cthulhu!” The biologist who documented the discovery had never read horror stories and promptly wrote the name down in Linnaean tradition. It stuck and the rest is history).

Cooties resemble man sized fresh water hydras. They normally swim within the subterranean lakes of liquid sulfur and other molten chemicals on Io using echolocation to find their way and hunt for prey. However they can also crawl out onto the surface and hop about on their “foot”. Given the low gravity one leg is sufficient. Super insulator silicon carbide based skins protect them from the freezing vacuum of the surface. Cooties have high temperature superconducting loops surrounding their gut to store electric energy harvested from surface static electric discharge, absorbed from prey, or generated from thermoelectric action. Read more about the Cooties of IO here.

The Whosians

The Whoosians are a species of sapient amphibians native to the planet Choralorafax. They produce and release a virus from glands in their armpits, which acts as a natural defence mechanism.

The Whoosians have the appearance of large frogs standing upright on two legs. They have two large bulbous eyes, green skin, and webbed hands and feet. Their diet consists of fruits and berries, as well as small insects. Read more about the Whosians here.

Random species generator

Also if you’re in need of a more random alien, try the random alien species generator on the SciFi Ideas website. It’ll create you a wild & wacky alien, with a unique name, details about their culture etc. The profile is short, but it’s really useful for generating ideas when you’re in a bind, and can be incredibly inspiring. Ideal for giving you that spark you can flesh out into a full alien that you can write into your story or roleplay.

Here’s an article with a few of the best randomly generated aliens.