In fact, I've been writing up the various alien species that will be present (aside: someday it will be interesting to present books as an interactive wiki) in the galaxy; not just alien life, but a species that has risen to civilization and beyond.
It's not as simple as just doodling some crazy looking thing, slapping a name on it, and calling it a day (well, maybe for some). Life - sentient, civilized, technological and advanced life - raises quite a few problems beyond the immediate chemistry of self assembly. You wonder what form it takes, and consequently how it perceives and interacts with the world at large. You wonder why they develop civilization - it's not every top dog species that does so. On Earth, we frequently point to division of labor and specialization as being advantageous for survival (and thus traits that lead proto-humans to socialize and civilize as being evolutionarily advantaged). That is not always the case. In some sense, if you ARE the top dog species, that is a disincentive to gather and form a society; more frequently, it is an underdog species that forms groups, develops into a civilization, and thus becomes top of the pyramid.
Well, I say frequently, but really, all I can talk about is what humans have done.
There are other questions too: development of technology (particularly tools and metalwork), religion, societal rules, interactions with other planetary life, and so forth. Not all of it is useful or necessary.
Anyway, each of these gives me a firmer understanding of what was initially a nebulous idea for an alien species, and the role it will play. They're pretty fun to write up too, something of a short story in and of themselves. Today I present the first: The Xylanth. (I have written 3 more of some 12 or so)
The Xylanth
Plant Based lifeform | Scavenger
Ascendent Milieu
"The Puppeteer" (Meat Fuckers)
The Xylanth are a curious species of mobile plant. They are evolved from a carnivorous vine, similar in nature to the Rafflesia; seedlings take root in a corpse (preferentially; a living host animal can serve, but are more apt to kill the seedling, even if weakened; any living host is killed as the seedling matures) which serves as a manipulable, mobile frame for the growing plant as well as a ready source of food. As the seedling matures, root-like tendrils pierce through the corpse and intertwine with the skeleton, allowing the juvenile to draw nutrients and move about. By the time the new xylanthan reaches maturity, photosynthesis becomes the primary source of energy; the corpse will have been eaten away and replaced with a twisted mass of plant life. The outer most vines will harden and change in appearance according to the specific race (varietal) of Xylanth - fire resistant hardwood varietals exist.
The Xylanth do not naturally compete with one another, particularly as they are mobile. They are capable of moving about to seek sunlight and corpses (even hunting live animals to do so). However, the same mobility made attaining civilization difficult.
Initially, xylanth grouped to better hunt animals for corpses and to clear away vegetation for unimpeded sunlight. This naturally encouraged settling. Additionally, the best source of corpses were battlefields for the wars incessantly fought between the planet's various CHO-main (human) factions. These corpses became prized for their useful shape, as well as being frequently found with armor and weapons. Eventually, xylanth that worked together were selected for due to their numerical advantages in defending themselves against the local CHO-mains.
The human nations of Sylv warred against one another incessantly; they became terminally stalled at a medieval-equivalent level of development due to multiple large scale wars, each of which resulted in massive population die-offs, starvation, poverty, and general lawlessness. The generation of new knowledge was little in demand as laborers, not philosophers and thinkers, were needed. Progress diminished, then disappeared entirely. The discovery of Xylanthan "corpse puppets" swiftly led to the first unification of the human nations against a common enemy. It was also the last.
The Xylanthans won overwhelmingly.
Distrust followed on the heels of defeat; how could plants defeat the combined might of the human nations? The humans burned away large tracts of land, never realizing they were creating fertile new grounds for the Xylanth; every human soldier that fell became a Xylanthan terror. Soon, hardwood and fire resistant varietals appeared amongst the Xylanth. All the while, the humans scorched and salted farmlands, scores of peasents and farmers and poor drafted into the armies died, leaving no one and nowhere to grow and harvest crops. Starvation and plague ran rampant alongside bickering and blame in the aftermath, and on the brink of extinction, still the humans sought to kill one another.
This would not do. Rather than permit the obliteration of the human race (and thus, such wonderful corpses), the Xylanth mediated a peace, a pseudo-symbiotic relationship with mankind: the human nations pledged to turn over their dead to the Xylanth, to supply metal ores and teach the secrets of metallurgy, and in kind the Xylanth provided the human nations with agricultural goods, livestock, and maintained a peace between the three nations of man. The food the Xylanth provided was both delicious and nutritious - the humans soon found themselves in better health and living longer than they had before. But the Xylanthan foodstuffs, grown or husbanded by their techniques, was a shackle to bind mankind forevermore to the Xylanth - laced with addictive chemicals, the humans soon found themselves dependent on the Xylanth for their continued survival. They could not grow their own food, did not desire such meagre produce as they could manage, and poaching was punishable by death. The humans led longer, healthy, peaceful lives, and the Xylanth ensured themselves a continued supply of superior corpses.
A symbiotic slavery.
Membership to the Milieu was granted on the grounds that the Xylanth constitued a smbiotic civilization. They maintained a peace amongst the sentient civilizations of their home world and, not the least, kept what would otherwise be considered a Pandoran species of human firmly under control. Conveniently ignored was the matter of slavery by chemical addiction on a planetary scale and the role of the symbionts in the Xylanthan life cycle. In spite of the peace they profess to maintain, the Xylanth care little about the frequent skirmishes that occur along the outer borders; far better to let human nature create long-standing grievances and feuds, the better to prevent humans from ever reuniting under one banner. Their admittance was awkward then, to say the least, and considered something of debacle in the Milieu's history by various member species, especially CHO-main varieties.
Xylanth "see" in the IR/UV spectrum; the exact organs by which it does so have not been identified, but scholars generally agree that the flowers which sprout from the eye sockets are not eyes, but rather mouths - xylanth communicate primarily via chemical-pheromone signals. They are also proficient at a form of body-sign communication (Xyll), which is the primary means by which they communicate with humans on Sylv. They are capable of processing auditory signals, but are incapable of replicating them. Identifying marks of individuality and gender appear in the IR/UV spectrum, and is thought to play a role in "speaking" Xyll, at least between Xylanth when they choose to do so. The similarities between Xyll and Commain expedited first contact between the Xylanth and the Milieu.
The humans of Sylv had made a practice of identifying individual xylanth by a description of scent, such as "Droppings which have baked in the sun for two days before breaking open, borne on a breeze." By some irony, Xylanthan names take the form of descriptive scents and are translated thusly.
