Aliens, Human and Non-human

Writing about the Solomani and the existence of different human races within Traveller's official Third Imperium setting reminded me of the approach I opted for when creating Thousand Suns. One of my cardinal principles was that alien species would, for the most part, never be humanoid in appearance. I'd try, whenever possible, to make my alien species alien, both in mind and body. That's why, for example, one of the main antagonistic species of the game's meta-setting are cephalopods – I wanted them to be as far from human in appearance as possible, while still being somewhat relatable. 

Science fiction roleplaying games have an unlimited "budget" when it comes to imagining non-human species, so there was no reason to restrain my imagination. At the same time, Thousand Suns is still very much a space opera in the vein of most popular SF. Even if my goal was to be a bit more grounded than other space operas, I'm still including stuff like faster-than-light travel that are almost certainly within the realm of fantasy. Consequently, I make no claims that my non-human aliens are necessarily plausible from a xeno-biological perspective. I simply wanted them to look and think differently than human beings when possible. I believe that makes them more compelling allies and adversaries within the game.

Even so, I retain an affection for human "aliens," which is to say, humans whose cultures or societies are so different that they think or act in ways that are unlike what we typically encounter on Earth. The Zhodani of the Third Imperium setting are the kind of thing I mean. In Thousand Suns, I naturally included Terran humans as a baseline species, but I also introduced the idea of clades or sub-species of Terrans, who'd been genetically engineered in the past for a specific purpose and have since developed their own unique societies and cultures.

For instance, there are the Myrmidons, who are a bit like the Dorsai of Gordon R. Dickson – born and bred for war and having a society driven by Social Darwinism. They're my answer to the Klingons or the Jem'Hadar of Star Trek, an attempt to include the "proud warrior race" archetype that's not quite as lazy as it's usually portrayed. Whether I succeeded or not is a separate question, but that was my goal. By making the Myrmidons a sub-species of human rather than a non-human race, I hoped I could focus more on their harsh society than one their biology, since that's (for me anyway) the real draw of this archetype. 

There are other clades besides the Myrmidons, like the rationalist Delphic. They're also a baseline option for play and fill the role of Star Trek's Vulcans and similar space opera species. Since the Thousand Suns rulebook includes an alien creation system, I assumed referees would use it to create their own clades. My plan was to provide more examples of my own, too, in later supplements to the game, but, as I've said, I never quite got round to that. As I've found myself focusing more on science fiction these past few weeks, it's possible I might return to that project. Time will tell.