Bad: Aliens who are bewildered by basic aspects of human society like cooking food and wearing clothes, implying that no similar practices exist anywhere else in the universe.
Good: Aliens who regard human society as largely unremarkable, but if questioned it rapidly becomes apparent that their understanding of the motive and purpose of various human cultural practices is subtly yet bizarrely askew.
“Ah, I see you have placed a simple lock upon the lavatory door for when you are… eliminating waste. I understand.”
“Thank you, Zazar…”
“You wish to make it harder for your enemies to ambush you during a moment of vulnerability. Very clever!”
“Wait, what?!”
“You wish to make sure that the parasitic lifeforms harbored in your intestines cannot escape without facing you in battle! How noble!”
what
kinds of body decoration do your rtts aliens do? like, are there alien
versions of/analogues to tattoos, hair dye, nail polish, pierced
jewelry, face paint, etc.?
OH BOY do I have a lot of stuff for this topic! For reference the main posts for centaurs, avians, and bug ferrets are here. Scud body decoration not included in this post because they are my most recent Runaway to the Stars race and I don’t have as many juicy cultural details for them.
More info under the cut.
Bug ferrets (or just ferrets) are from an iceball planet where most lifeforms live underground in the tropical band of the otherwise glacial planet. After millions of years of subterranean life, the tropics are now riddled with vast networks of biologically formed tunnels, caves, and seas. Ferrets rose from a strain of endothermic and highly social omnivores. They have both an endoskeleton (mostly for muscle support) and an exoskeleton covered by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, skin, and dense, highly sensitive hairs and whiskers. Ferrets wear minimal clothing, if any, because it irritates their delicate hairs. Their central nervous system goes down the length of their body, and they are wicked fast at picking up sensory signals and reacting to them.
Ferrets also have an incredible propensity for language, and pick up other ferret languages and alien languages with ease. Generally, all ferret cultures have at least one vocal language, one visual sign language, and one tactile sign language. Tactile sign is unique to ferrets, and is spoken by touching the arms, chin, and chest of the conversational partner. Humans have described it as “like the most intense and complicated game of pattycake you could imagine.”
Ferrets are hermaphroditic and usually live in family units of 15-45 individuals. A given family will usually all be in single profession, operating almost like an individual– for instance, in public offices, a family will be nominated rather than an individual ferret. Having ferret ambassadors over on other planets is a nightmare, because you can’t just invite one ferret, or two, or eight, you have to have the entire family of 30 or so ambassadors (and their kids, and their picnic baskets and etc). It’s for good reason, as ferrets are so socially co-dependent that leaving one alone with no company will severely stress them. Spending over a day alone without social contact is enough to put them into a state of shock.
They are a spacefaring race, and have been for the longest of any of the races. The first aliens the ferret race met were the avians, then later the humans and centaurs.
They are from an oceanic planet, where endothermic, feathered flyers are one of the most successful land-based lifeforms. Since land is limited to a scattering of small islands, the feathered flyers can travel the distances between dry land more easily than flightless or exothermic creatures.
The evolutionary ancestors of the sapient genus of avians are tree climbing critters with grasping hands on both their fore and back limbs. In the sapients, the hindlimbs are specialized to a point where they are used almost entirely for grasping, tool manipulation, and launching into flight. The dramatic speciation of the sapient avians was caused by hundreds of thousands of years of separation by ocean, and fostered by a lack of traumatic events like Earth’s ice age or K-Pg asteroid impact to wipe any of them out. Besides the five major species, there are many subspecies that can successfully breed with one or more of the major species.
The avians are a technologically advanced genus. After the industrial revolution, aggressive colonization by the skimmer species, and the globalization of information, the avian genus achieved interstellar flight. The first aliens they made contact with were the ferrets, then later humans (after the ferrets found us.)
Note: Despite the fact I drew all of them naked, avians have very strict decency standards (well, the skimmers do, but they have forced their cultural standards upon the others) and they wear quite a lot of clothing; usually covering as much as they can without restricting flight. They are like little space Victorians.
Centaurs come from a planet fairly similar to Earth, and their biology is convergent with Earth’s in many ways. Their evolutionary ancestors were savanna pack predators who used ambush and speed to hunt prey. Modern centaurs emerged when they started to use tools like spears to help with hunting. Centaurs are obligate carnivores but they supplement their diet with grain, starchy tubers, and small amounts of roughage and vegetation. Much like humans, they have a two-sex reproductive system where the individuals with the larger gametes give birth to live young.
They are very vocally talented. With their trunk they can produce a wide range of pitches and consonants, while with the muscular tissue near their breathing outtake they can make subsonic booming noises. The booming is mostly inaudible to humans and avians, but ferrets can detect the low-frequency vibrations through their numerous whiskers. There are a variety of simple subsonic languages collectively called ‘boom-speak’ that are traditionally used as contact calls over long distances.
Most centaur cultures are matriarchal, with family groups of about 20-30 living together in a small village of interconnected houses. These clans are run by the oldest females of the family, and younger females are often expected to stay in the same clan their whole life. Males are often expected to marry outside of the clan, and although they will usually join a new group for one or more specific mates within it, the ‘marriage’ for most cultures is between the new member and the entire family. Despite this, many individuals may never mate to reproduce, and instead help care for their family members’ children.
The centaurs were discovered by a ferret planetary exploration vessel, but they weren’t a spacefaring race when they were found– they were barely starting to use electricity and radio. The Interspecies Summit (a council including humans, avians, and ferrets) met on the matter and it was agreed that the centaurs should be left alone until they were capable of space flight. Unfortunately, this policy proved impossible to enforce, and human and avian ships began visiting the centaur homeworld to trade technology and resources for centaur laborers. Today, most centaurs in space work as manual labor under human and avian companies, or they run pirate vessels.
Top left: Semi-aquatic cuttlefish people called Saluri. They live on the aquatic world Helia 9, and they have camouflaging abilities that allow them to alter their shape, texture, and color like octopuses and cuttlefish. They need this camouflaging to hide from the massive, carnivorous bone fish that prowl the waters of their homeworld (think three times the size of a blue whale).
Middle left: Large, four-armed omnivores called Rokor. They live on Vadam, which bears resemblance to Africa climate wise. They’re a mainly farming species that dedicate most of their resources to tending their crops and cattle. They’re tough as hell, though, and have to fight of swarms of scavenging Hellmouths to keep them from eating their cattle.
Bottom left: Archivists are tall, delicate, six-armed, semi telepathic creatures. No one knows much about them or where they come from—all they really do is watch, learn, and record everything and anything that takes place in the intergalactic community. People regard them with suspicion because of their abilities and enigmatic nature, but so far they’ve proven themselves to be nothing but gentle and curious.
Top right: The Initi are bony, digitigrade-legged aliens that live on the nigh inhabitable world of Vesiphone (pronounced Vess-IFF-oh-nee), which is basically just rock and lightning and cliffs. They survive through extreme discipline, and are very close with their gods. This particular Initi is a scientist named Doctor Arko Raxa, and the reason for the odd mask is that he fell down a 35 foot drop onto sharp rocks when he was a teenager, snapping his spine, splitting his head open, and crushing his ribcage. He was comatose for 6 months, and when he finally woke, he had to remain hooked up to clunky equipment to keep him alive. Well, being the smart little engineering prodigy he is, he created his own completely mobile, groundbreaking implants and life support systems to enable himself the quality of life he had before he fell. He’s made huge strides in the fields of bio-engineering and is one of the smartest guys around—and though he looks really evil and scary, he’s actually an undersized, self-absorbed prickhead. He thinks he’s funnier and smarter than everyone he meets and doesn’t care if he makes that apparent, and can be incredibly obnoxious to everyone around him. His coworkers have a joking support group for having to put up with him day in and day out. He’s a good guy, though. He just has a shitty attitude. Uncovered Initi faces look like this:
Bottom right: Vulbusa are peaceful, reclusive plant-based aliens that live on Bellivarum. They cannot speak, but rather communicate through slight color changes, body language, and pheromones. They grow their children in groves, worship a giant underground glowing plant, and are totally oblivious to the fact that everyone thinks they look like exotic vaginas. Out of all these aliens they have the most biodiversity and come in thousands of wildly different shapes, sizes, colors, and functions.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 