velvet worms whose front ends dissolve into a nest of eyestalks and tentacles.
2
two daddy longlegs fused back-to-back, with manipulating digits on the ends of their legs.
3
crabs with a trilateral body shape, stretched along the vertical axis.
4
beaked, furless, four-armed rats.
5
headless vivisected bluefin tuna.
6
a cross between a pyramidal tortoise and a stalk of broccoli, branching digits peeking out from shifting slats of shell.
7
slithering eyeless eel-mermaids.
8
something with the front half of a squid and the back
half of a crocodile. Where tentacles should be there are uncomfortably
human-like arms.
9
spiny, colourful sea-slugs that extrude and reabsorb slimy pseudopods.
10
bidepal giraffes with dexterous fingers lining their arms and faces like x-mouthed seahorses.
11
a ring of two-trunked elephant heads on top of a bear-like body.
12
starfish with the proportions of gibbons, and distended sensory/digestive organ sacs at the tips of their top arms.
13
skinless ferrets that wriggle and twist together into colonial swarms.
14
Donald Duck if he had a horrific body-wide fungal infection.
15
metallic jellyfish with manifold straw-thin limbs and escutcheon-shaped bodies.
16
termites that evolved into the niche and general body
shape of penguins. They’ve got grasping claws on the tips of their
flippers.
17
hairy pterodactyls that walk on their wings and manipulate objects with their feet and fleshy lips.
18
eight-limbed gorillas with a head like a cross between a
rose blossom and an anemone. A hive of symbiotes nests within their
petals.
19
a centaur, if instead of a man and a horse it was a mantis and a newt that were hybridized.
20
mounds of fuzzy folds almost like a pug’s face, only they’re the size of a sofa.
D20
These aliens’ technology
1
is all bespoke, each piece fitted to its purpose and user.
2
doesn’t take the form of distinct devices, but instead a nanomachine goop that is shaped with uploaded software to task.
3
was looted by them from the ruins of an extinct species.
4
is based on projected holograms and forcefields.
5
is designed to only work while in contact with a living member of their species.
6
seems to deliberately avoid automation and computerization.
7
is made of selectively bred members of their own clade.
8
exists on a spiritual plane, accessed by extraterrestrial entheogens.
9
is throttled for the invasion force’s equipment so that
captured and reversed-engineered pieces won’t jumpstart human
development.
10
is nauseatingly organic, all pulsing tubes and throbbing sacs.
11
produces a smoggy byproduct that is harmless to them but toxic to humans.
12
is made to be as subtle as possible, blending into furniture, ornaments, and clothing.
13
is all grafted onto or into their bodies.
14
is capable of making implausibly gigantic robots, which they are very fond of.
15
is capable of converting consumed organic matter into biofuel to power itself, and tends to “go feral” if left alone too long.
16
is strongly personified by them, given offerings, compliments, and funerals.
17
is so laden with update cycles and planned obsolescence that it is practically held together with duct tape.
18
is a parallel symbiotic species of synthetic life-forms.
19
can fuck with time itself: accelerating it to decay
enemies to dust, preserving samples in stasis, and so on, but not yet
full-blown time travel.
20
is symmetrical and crystalline, achieving spooky action at a distance through harmonious resonance.
D20
These aliens are invading
1
because they believe humans were engineered by a hated enemy of theirs.
2
because their religion demands conversion of non-believers at sword-point.
3
in order to neutralize humanity as potential rivals.
4
to extract the cultural and scientific developments of humanity.
5
to fulfill their philosophy of eternal war between primordial races.
6
to capture sapient slaves, the most prestigious commodity in their economy.
7
to test their military strategies before applying them against a more vital enemy.
8
to domesticate humans into useful components of interstellar civilization.
9
to convert the planet into a free-roaming zoo.
10
in accordance with the prediction-prophecy of their post-singularity AI god.
11
to keep themselves entertained.
12
because they believe it will harden humanity up for a hostile universe.
13
because their psychology doesn’t value individual lives, and this is essentially how they greet strangers.
14
to correct what they see as barbaric human cultural practices.
15
as a symbolic display of their superiority before taking humanity as a client species.
16
as a pretence to funnel money into their military-industrial complex.
17
to shut down human research into what they deem to be existential threats.
18
because their military intelligence indicated a rival
species was planning on doing it and they wanted to beat their rivals to
it.
19
because nearby human space exploration triggered their compulsive territorial defense instincts.
20
because their biology is improbably compatible with
Earth’s biosphere and they want to take it for themselves to save the
effort of terraforming elsewhere.
D20
This alien invasion is resisted
1
by only a few remaining pockets of rebellion.
2
by a united front of human nations.
3
with aid from a sympathetic alien faction.
4
by a clandestine organization that’s existed since the Roswell crash.
5
by a mass movement suppressed by human collaborators.
6
by warlords who are almost as bad as the aliens.
7
with the help of a drug that awakens psychic powers in humans.
8
by elite strike forces of artificial human-alien hybrids.
9
by cells of scientists and engineers who’ve stolen and studied alien technology.
10
by fractured guerrilla organizations sheltering in the least hospitable zones of each continent, with no unifying leadership.
11
by army remnants and militias blending in with subjugated populations.
12
by totalitarian regimes that took power in its wake.
13
with Pyrrhic victories and scorched earth tactics that
cede as much ground to the destruction wrought by the arms used as to
the aliens.
14
with sleeper agents, subverted alien operatives, and hacked computer systems.
15
by genetically enhanced cyborg soldiers armed with weird physics weapons repurposed from CERN devices.
16
by the neofeudal society which rose after the collapse of nation-states.
17
by plucky rebels all over the globe working with scavenged equipment, coordinating with AM radios.
18
by an alliance of the surviving international powers that operates out of extensive subterranean bunkers.
19
through infiltration and sabotage as humanity can’t withstand open battle against the aliens.
20
by the brave mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan.
D20
This alien invasion might be thwarted
1
by cracking open a rift between factions in tension in the aliens’ society.
2
by taking important enough hostages prisoner.
3
by pledging allegiance to another alien species that can fend it off.
4
by appealing to a body of interstellar law.
5
by dragging out the conflict until the aliens get exhausted and go home.
6
by evacuating all remaining humans to a legendary extraplanetary habitat.
7
by luring in an even bigger, badder alien species to drive them away.
8
by launching a surprise counter-invasion of their homeworld.
9
by developing a sophisticated enough understanding of their minds to unleash a devastating memetic virus on them.
10
by sneaking a small team into their mothership and detonating its core.
11
by obtaining and threatening to use an experimental superweapon that would convert the Earth’s core to antimatter.
12
by blackmailing central alien personnel to get them to back off.
13
by working together with malcontents among the aliens.
14
by becoming more desirable as partners to the aliens.
15
by cutting the solar system off from convenient hyperspace-lanes.
16
by breaking their spirit through crushing defeat in a pitched battle.
17
by amassing sufficient bribes to convince the alien commander to take it easy for a while.
18
by deflecting the invasion to easier pickings elsewhere in the universe.
19
by garrisoning key hyperjump nodes in the solar system, as alien spacecraft are helpless for a time after jumping in.
20
by rationally arguing against its premises to the aliens with facts and logic.
I like this one a lot
ReplyDeleteI'm glad someone enjoyed it. Straddled the line between plausible and ludicrous, proud that I did not include invasion for water or women.
DeleteYes. This is good. This pleases me.
ReplyDelete