WRT the aliens who left the bouy that the Miranda found/will find Dec 12 2012, I've had a few thoughts:
A: Two years of travel time back is a long, long way for story purposes, but the Miranda has been following a loose spiral out - it's entirely possible, even probablethat they have in fact circled around behind the aliens' home system, and will pass near/through it on the way back. I personally vote that they don't actually make first contact, or at most do so with some barely-established colonial group rather than any central body, but I'm very open to suggestions on this - my main plot involving them is the ship's holographic navigation and recreation computer AI, actually.
B: How alien are they? Judging by the audio clip played in the 12/12/2012 thread spamfic/scene, they're at least mentally similar enough to be comprehensible once the language barrier is overcome, and use speech and/or song to communicate, but that leaves a LOT of territory. My concept to start discussion is along the lines of cephalopodian/arthropodian, a squid with a hard "helmet" and (2-4) exoskeletal legs plus two more arms, ending in cartilage-skeleton "tentacle" fingers (though technically an appendage is only a tentacle if it's around the creature's mouth) and an elephantish snout that is its food/drink orifice and a separate mouth for breathing and speaking. Their atmo mix is roughly compatible with humans but has about 3x the oxygen, and they like it at heat-stroke-inducing temperatures and near 100% humidity - Like the... Cretacius, was it? ... period when plant life ran wild on earth and there were dragonflies with six foot wingspans... Only around a bluer star as well. This nicely shorts out the clich invasion plot, as they consider Earth a frozen, twilight, desert hell where they'd need an oxygen mask and humidifier just to syrvive, while humans can't take the temperatures in the areas they consider habitable planetary zones and sunburn in minutes under their preferred lighting. (The Senshi would undoubtedly love to get their hands on some of the Squidleigh plants for their terraforming, though - relatively high temperature, high oxy-output, and liking the extra solar energy from a closer orbit!) Close enough to visit, similar enough to get each other's dirty jokes, not really interested in setting up shop on each other's real estate.
That's not to say that militant factions can't find a reason to fight over if it's wanted, but "I claim this land for Spain!" is not an issue, or at least not an immediate one.
C: How long have they had the 'wave, what can they do with it? I say, 20-30 years, and not much more than we can, just on a production basis for the more basic applications rather than having to one-off handcraft everything. Maybe their drive technology is faster, if they are two years away at best human speeds, so that can be shortened. Still no lambent beams of energy to be seen except possibly short-reach, directed gravity manipulation for cargo handling, more's the pity.
D: Goodies! What kind of standard gear do they have!? I'm really not going to comment on this one, I'm a RABID gearhead and want them in meksuits too much. Just... Consider the possibility, as second or third generation Squidliegh-fen (or whatever, bird-men or cat-men or ameobaoid slime creatures, or just guys with a funny skin color and ridged foreheads, though I'm rather opposed to the last), that they've standardized on a van/station wagon with arms and legs rather than wheels as the typical model of small craft. When I get around to writing it, the first scratch-built fencar made aboard Gnarlycurl on camera has no wheels - who needs them when you have a speedrive for hover and flight?
Pi: Timeframe - none of this is urgent, per se - there's a couple years in-'verse and only the beginnings of plots in my head, but for a shared world something as mojar as first contact CANNOT be laid out by one person alone.
- CD
PS: the subject line comes from a trailer I once saw for a Disney-talking-animals version of ... Oliver Twist, I think? ... where they'd edited two lines from the same character together like that - it's just something that amused me and stuck in my head. SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
A: Two years of travel time back is a long, long way for story purposes, but the Miranda has been following a loose spiral out - it's entirely possible, even probablethat they have in fact circled around behind the aliens' home system, and will pass near/through it on the way back. I personally vote that they don't actually make first contact, or at most do so with some barely-established colonial group rather than any central body, but I'm very open to suggestions on this - my main plot involving them is the ship's holographic navigation and recreation computer AI, actually.
B: How alien are they? Judging by the audio clip played in the 12/12/2012 thread spamfic/scene, they're at least mentally similar enough to be comprehensible once the language barrier is overcome, and use speech and/or song to communicate, but that leaves a LOT of territory. My concept to start discussion is along the lines of cephalopodian/arthropodian, a squid with a hard "helmet" and (2-4) exoskeletal legs plus two more arms, ending in cartilage-skeleton "tentacle" fingers (though technically an appendage is only a tentacle if it's around the creature's mouth) and an elephantish snout that is its food/drink orifice and a separate mouth for breathing and speaking. Their atmo mix is roughly compatible with humans but has about 3x the oxygen, and they like it at heat-stroke-inducing temperatures and near 100% humidity - Like the... Cretacius, was it? ... period when plant life ran wild on earth and there were dragonflies with six foot wingspans... Only around a bluer star as well. This nicely shorts out the clich invasion plot, as they consider Earth a frozen, twilight, desert hell where they'd need an oxygen mask and humidifier just to syrvive, while humans can't take the temperatures in the areas they consider habitable planetary zones and sunburn in minutes under their preferred lighting. (The Senshi would undoubtedly love to get their hands on some of the Squidleigh plants for their terraforming, though - relatively high temperature, high oxy-output, and liking the extra solar energy from a closer orbit!) Close enough to visit, similar enough to get each other's dirty jokes, not really interested in setting up shop on each other's real estate.
That's not to say that militant factions can't find a reason to fight over if it's wanted, but "I claim this land for Spain!" is not an issue, or at least not an immediate one.
C: How long have they had the 'wave, what can they do with it? I say, 20-30 years, and not much more than we can, just on a production basis for the more basic applications rather than having to one-off handcraft everything. Maybe their drive technology is faster, if they are two years away at best human speeds, so that can be shortened. Still no lambent beams of energy to be seen except possibly short-reach, directed gravity manipulation for cargo handling, more's the pity.
D: Goodies! What kind of standard gear do they have!? I'm really not going to comment on this one, I'm a RABID gearhead and want them in meksuits too much. Just... Consider the possibility, as second or third generation Squidliegh-fen (or whatever, bird-men or cat-men or ameobaoid slime creatures, or just guys with a funny skin color and ridged foreheads, though I'm rather opposed to the last), that they've standardized on a van/station wagon with arms and legs rather than wheels as the typical model of small craft. When I get around to writing it, the first scratch-built fencar made aboard Gnarlycurl on camera has no wheels - who needs them when you have a speedrive for hover and flight?
Pi: Timeframe - none of this is urgent, per se - there's a couple years in-'verse and only the beginnings of plots in my head, but for a shared world something as mojar as first contact CANNOT be laid out by one person alone.
- CD
PS: the subject line comes from a trailer I once saw for a Disney-talking-animals version of ... Oliver Twist, I think? ... where they'd edited two lines from the same character together like that - it's just something that amused me and stuck in my head. SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows