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I had played around with the idea with creating several new races for Warhammer 40k's spaceship vs. spaceship game: Battlefleet Gothic a few years back, but with its falling interest and lack of players in my area, the idea got quickly abandoned. Instead, I was wondering if anything here is of merit, at least enough to adapt it into something for starfinder. I dont have names for either race yet, but I wanted to get the ideas posted and maybe get the creative juices flowing again.
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Coral Race
Physical Description:
This race appears to be made entirely from a strange type of coral at first glance. It’s only when you when you peel back the layers of coral that you learn of what truly dwells inside their shell. Inside, an entire group of bonded creatures work together as if they were one creature.
Society:
The race has three life stages, in which they are only sentient in the middle stage of life. They begin live as a varied number of polyps, which bond together in groups to defend themselves from aquatic predators. As they grow, they begin to create the outer shell of their coral body, eventually becoming sentient as they enter their second stage. They live out their second stage as one being connected by psychic energy, before eventually becoming too heavy to move. As their second stage ends, they become immobile spheres of coral for the final stage. They often end their second stage by returning to the sea, becoming the building blocks for coral reefs and homes for the next generation to live around. While not dead in their final stage, they become dormant and practically comatose.
Relations:
Alignment and Religion:
Adventurers:
Warfare:
Weaponry:
Sample Introduction:
As you finish navigating your ship around the dark side of the moon, you let out a gasp. An immense ring of colorful coral comes into view, floating high above the little blue world. While it is a complete ring, it appears unfinished. One side of the ring is considerably thicker in diameter than the other side, with long spires of coral extending outwards from the center.
As you cautiously pilot your ship closer this ring, your sensors begin picking up movement. Tiny coral ships of all varieties move within the center of the ring. From your angle, the entire thing reminds you of a Coral Atoll, complete with fish swimming in its lagoon.
You set your ship’s destination to thickest side of the Coral Atoll, sending messages translated into their strange language. The response comes quick, assigning you a docking station within one of the coral spires. You breathe a sigh of relief. You’re finally here.
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Plant Race
A race of sapient plant beings who harness solar energy to spread bliss… and sometimes war
Physical Description:
While humanoid in form, they have a number of features the reveal them to be more of a mixture of plant and fungi than animal. Their skin appears to be similar to a smooth, soft bark in varying shades of dark green. They have pigment cells in their skin, which allows them to display changing colors and patterns, but they always return to a general shade of green when at rest. Their faces have sharp and angled faces, featuring either a split or ridge line (or something similar) right down the middle of their nose-less face. They have two lower jaws, which completely divides into left and right jaws when opened.
Their most striking feature is their ‘hair’, if they choose to have it. They have the ability to grow in just a few short weeks a nearly endless variety of plants, vines, or fungi on their heads. At any time they have the ability to remove this growth by cutting out the nutrients they provide to it or change it to another type entirely by weeding it out. Their ability to do this is considered an art form, and typically reflects a lot about their personality, overall health, and style.
They tend to be quite thin and small, generally only standing about a meter in height and typically weight around forty pounds. They are not very strong, but try make up for it with enthusiasm and skill. They have brains centralized in their heads, like most races do. Theirs are predominantly located in their chest, but it also spreads throughout their body. Their hands are very delicate, each having five fingers and a thumb.
Society:
Their society is meritocratic and near Utopian, where they believe that through hard work, patience, and skill can rise to greatness. There are passionate about the arts, music, and education. They are a curious, passionate, and intelligent people, constantly seeking out new discoveries and adventure. They have quickly spread throughout the galaxy, and are well known for their skills and openness. They are sensitive and understanding. Their very nature seems to make them quick to adapt and change, warmly referring to it as “growing with the ebb and flow”.
They require shelter, food, and water for basic survival, much like any other race. They also require sunlight as a sort of nutritional supplement. If they don’t obtain this, certain sicknesses and disease can take root in their bodies and minds. They are sensitive to certain toxins, and tend to not do well on certain worlds with strange contaminants.
They get sluggish and jovial when in strong sunlight or during other strong solar events. Their celebrations around such events are quite hedonistic.
Relations:
They are generally well liked by others, as they always attempt to be as courteous and respectful as possible, but they have made mistakes. With their habit of trying to learn as much as possible and attempt to participate whenever possible, they have made unwanted enemies. Some of the more aggressive or short tempered races tend to not like them as much as others.
Alignment and Religion:
They tend to be more lawful or neutral in nature, rather than evil or chaotic.
They are not overtly religious, but they do have some practices and rituals, usually based around the cycles of nature, change, and the cycle of birth, life, and death. To them all life is precious, merely borrowed time and energy, which must return to the cycle of nature when the time comes.
Adventurers:
Their love for adventure and discovery makes them natural adventurers. They can be found on nearly every world that hosts a multitude of other races, and they flock to worlds rich in sunlight, water, and life.
Warfare:
Weaponry:
Sample Introduction:
admittedly, the last one is more complete, but it really like the first one.
i dont know the state of psionics in starfinder, but I initially wanted them to be somewhat psionic. The sea polyps join together for safety in numbers, eventually becoming one through a psychic bond. Together, they become a sentient creature.
I figured that they would have several thin tentacles that slither out of their coral shell to work sort of like hands.
They would require lots of water for their first and last life stages, so Id definitely see them orbiting water worlds in their coral rings, both seeking resources and a place to breed.
They strike me as something reminiscent of snails or other shelled sea creatures.
Perhaps a defensive curl ability to retreat into the coral?
Maybe a natural slam attack with their rough (maybe spiky) body?
They wouldnt have a swim speed... Too heavy and not mobile enough. they'd just sink to the bottom and walk around.
I think the polyps would increase the shell body's diameter by one inch per year,starting from medium size. Once they approach large size, theyd enter into their final life stage.
Perhaps they could have a cultural taboo of individuals carving off chunks or layers of coral to artificially prolong their second stage? It would be an interesting parallel with a human's drive to look young for as long as possible and to prolong death.
For the sentient corals, it would be cool if they worshiped the ancient coral bodies of their ancestors. They would probably be lawful neutral as well, with an ingrained need for structure and order. It might also be cool for them to have the Slow and Steady racial trait. As for weaponry and warfare, they try to stay neutral but if they do get embroiled in wars, they hunker down and create powerful defenses. Their starships bring up an interesting idea. Perhaps the polyps are molded into ships during their first stage of life, so they can ascend to the stars during their middle stage. The ship itself would be the pilot. As for the life stages, the first would probably be a mass of polyps, which need water and light to form the coral shell. The second stage is the one people are most familiar with. They have grown their coral shell and can move and fully percieve and interact with the world. The final stage is when the all the polyps have become coral. Most coral people go to "die" with their ancestors, and their consciousness links together and forms a semi-intelligent collective mind.Their adventurers are always in their middle stages, sometimes seeking to quench a thirst for adventure before they enter the third stage, or sometimes fleeing their coral atolls for committing some transgression against their people. AS for naming, I'd suggest the Karang, which means coral in Indonesian.
Only vaguely tangentially related: here's this thing I made. Sorry it's not commenting on the things already here, but... time. :I