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Old September 23rd, 2004, 09:16 PM   #1
p.s. Cargile
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Default Mudstalkers of Orion's Fist



These are the first ideas I had for a new alien species.



Getting refined. I fiigured out what enviroment they live in and how they hunt food.



Final revision. Decided to blunt the toe nails.

The mudstalker's home is the fourth planet orbiting Pi 3 Orionis--what I call Orion's Fist in regards to the constellation. In the vally of deep canyons exist shallow pools and areas of thick mud. The mud is home to a variety of creatures which the mudstalker hunts, such as flatworms, and mudskates. My idea of the mudstalker is simular to cranes and other fishing birds. The mudstalker waits patiently for tell-tale signs in the mud that prey is near by and stabs it with its chin-beak. It uses its hand to remove the prey. It will either eat the food there, or toss the food to a shoresman who will keep it in a woven basket. The spinal spikes protect the mudstalker from rockcrawlers. The clubbed tail is used for fighting and is excellent for beating off any lucky rockcrawler.
The mudstalker is at a lower intelligence level than man, but smarter than a chimpanzy. Thay have a rudimentary language. Their voices sound simular to a dirigidoo.
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Old September 23rd, 2004, 09:28 PM   #2
Darrell Lawrence
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Very interesting, Paul... very interesting indeed

Usually when someone creates characters, the characters are the supreme race of whatever planet.

It's nice to see a "lower classed" species.
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Old September 23rd, 2004, 09:37 PM   #3
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Yeah. I'm trying to find some excuse to use my foldrunner spacecraft in a short story, and a plot that doesn't involve predator aliens trying to kill the hapless humans. The mudstalker is the smartest being on the planet--like homo erectus. The challenge would be how to go about studying a species non-intrusively and non-destructively.
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Old September 24th, 2004, 11:07 AM   #4
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These are great illustrations with a very interesting backstory. What do the rock crawlers look like?
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Old September 24th, 2004, 01:21 PM   #5
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p.s.Cargile,

What a wonderful idea for a story. Sounds very refreshing for those of us that really don't care for nasty looking and mostly brainless aliens attacking people. There usually is no real story to these and they exist only for those who have a taste (or craving) for blood and guts. The concept of studying these creatures in a non-invasive manner is also intriguing

Do you plan to post it on this website somewhere when you are finished with it? I, for one, would really like to read it.................FDIMH..................Darlene
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Old September 24th, 2004, 09:15 PM   #6
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I'm brainstorming the story and really don't have the conflict decided or the protagonist and antagonist worked out. I guess what I really need to research is how wildlife biologist do what they do when filming wild animals. I see this being the general direction and I have one scene already in mind.
I'm taking a hard science fiction approach to this whereas I believe that life is not a greatly spread throughout the galaxy like in Star Trek or Star Wars, but only thrives where conditions are just right for life to start. I also believe that life transforms the ecology of a planet to better make that planet habitable. This stems from Frank Herbert's assertion that "Life serves life."
The space travel I'm using is wormhole technology that seems more like instantaneous space folding. Explorers have not discovered any habitable planets in systems like Alpha Centary or Tau Ceti. Pi 3 Orionis is roughly 26 lightyears away, a main sequence F6V star with a habital zone at 1.75 AU. To show how life can effect planetary ecology, the fourth planet will have a large companion making it a double planet. IVa is smaller than Venus, wile IVb is larger than Mars and unsupportive of life. I would imagine that IVb was an escaped moon of a gas giant that got captured by IVa early in the system's life. Both worlds pivot about their center of gravitational mass and are tidally locked so that each presents the same face to the other. I have no idea how far apart they need to be. Such rotation makes for temperature extremes on IVb, while conditions are milder on IVa because of the ecology and climate.
The creatures aren't going to be all that alien because I feel that carbon is the only element that is versatile enough to give rise to life. I also believe that evolution solves the same problems everywhere. In other words, these creatures could exist on Earth if there were parallel conditions for them to evolve as such. Mudstalkers bleed red blood. And that is why they have some earth-creature-like forms.
As far as the rockcrawlers go, I haven't worked on them. I was ghoing to call the rockcats, but making them feline in appearance had to many simularities to cougars, eventhough I wanted to establish the paleolithic man/sabre-tooth tiger parallel. I'm currently thinking Golum in the Two Towers crawling around the rocks.
I also see some shoremen welding slingshots to ward off encroaching rockcrawlers. My orginal thought was long pikes, but I want to show some sophistication of their intelligence. I'm making them more paleolithic because its unrealistic to have a technically savvy species like humans coming across another technically savvy species. Take out the universal translators, begin dialogue. Not in this one.
I have an idea that one explorer will call the Mudstalkers "Bohica" from the phrase Bend Over Here It Comes Again, due to the hunting stance.
Non-intrusive observation may become difficult because of the curious nature of the Mudstalkers and their own intrusive means to explore the Explorers. Non-destructive means comes from the current research and development that the US armed forces are doing in the area of non-lethal weapons. (Who else would seek out means to disable military forces while respecting the sanctity of life?) The army is working on a transmitted microwave "pain beam" which causes one to involuntary lurch away from the sudden intense pain. This is from Popular Science May 2003 issue. Field weapons will be of non-lethal variety. I don't know if I will include a true rifle or not as part of the standard equipment.
I haven't come up with planetary names yet. I was thinking along the lines of the Egyption pantheon, but Orion is Greek so I'm not going that route. This does lend to a good name for the story, "The Hunter's Fist," which is a play on the constellation, the star, and the Mudstalker species.
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Old September 24th, 2004, 09:20 PM   #7
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Oh yeah. I'll post it.
But my true desire is to write a short story collection and get them published. I have finished a 5600 word story but I'm hesitant to post it because of the graphic sexual situation, which if edited out, leaves a hole in the story.
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