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Thursday 8 April 2010

Abraxas: the rivals of Man

Humans are not the only intelligent species in Abraxas. There are others, some of them well organized and genocidally hostile. The eventual ascendency of Man is not a foregone conclusion.

Vlis

An intelligent pre-human Terran race descended from pterodactyline ocean gliders. When the vlis's distant ancestor adapted to life on the ground, the powerful forelimbs evolved into its legs and the smaller hind limbs became its arms. Several hundred million years on, the hind limbs moved around through a widening of the pelvic girdle and the legs moved back. The creature thus has a low hunched stance with the thorax and head supported like a table-lamp on strong backward-jointed legs; the overall height is about five feet.

Possessions are typically carried in a pan or bag strapped under the thorax; the vlis's long slender-digited arms can easily undo the flaps, remove a needed item, and reseal it with horridly unhuman dexterity. Sometimes this pan will be found to contain a freshly-severed human head; the vlis are believed to collect such heads in order to restore them to sentience in their laboratories, where the head can be maintained in a vat indefinitely while the vlis subject it to interrogation and experiment.

The vlis are man's deadly rivals on Earth, regarding humanity as usurpers of their rightful supremacy. In addition to being skilled fighters, usually with a spear held in both hands, the vlis can use magic and have a sonic screech attack which can distract or stun an opponent.

Ulembi

Creatures from a star cluster beyond the Coal Sack, who came to Earth by psychically broadcasting themselves through outer space to escape their own dying world.

Ulembi have large heads whose hard ridged integument resembles a walnut. This skull protects the creature's huge brain. A ring of dark globular eyes protected by deep recesses allow the ulembi to see in all directions at once. There is a short neck and then the ulembi's trunk bifurcates, the two stout limbs resembling large serpents. At the end, each limb divides into four tentacular fingers. The ulembi can balance on one limb or on its "elbows" while holding something in the fingers, but rarely needs to do so because all ulembi are able to manipulate small objects by telekinesis.

When fully reared up on its limbs, an adult ulembi's head can be as high as eight feet off the ground. But it can also splay its limbs out low, moving with ghastly stealth through undergrowth no more than a few feet high.

In combat the ulembi is able to bristle its scales, giving the limbs a rough jagged surface like pineapple skin. This allows it to flay the skin off an unarmored opponent. Young adults sometimes wear bronze vambraces on the lower limbs, with which they can deliver powerful whip-like blows. Older ulembi disdain physical combat altogether, preferring to use their psionic power to instill a feeling of dread and despair in a foe.

Given a short time with a subdued victim, the most powerful adepts of the ulembi can psionically rewire his brain so that he will serve as their agent. This can even take the form of subliminal commands, so that the victim does not know he has been affected. Eventually tumors form in the brain of the victim, however, and madness and death soon follow.

Eremen

The offshoot of humans altered by an ancient wizard's genetic sorcery. Eremen are recognizably human in origin but have the features required for survival in the desert: large membranous ears, heavy brows, a limber frame, folds of fat around the belly, and elongated webbed digits. A dorsal fin that usually lies flat along the spine can be erected for temperature control as well as conflict and mating displays.

The genetic changes have caused some reduction in these creatures' intelligence: you might be attacked by one wielding a metal club it had found, the club actually turning out to be an ion pistol that it lacked the wits to operate.

Churuk

Hive-dwellers, the descendents of an alien race stranded on Earth in the far past. The churuk thrive best in the sulfurous atmosphere of volcanic rifts, but are hardy enough to tolerate normal air for days or weeks at a time.

The basic body form of a churuk is of a lozenge-shaped torso armored in chitin and with three limbs arranged around the rim. This form can develop in quite different ways, however, according to chemical jellies administered to the eggs during development. Some churuk hatch as Brains, others as Workers, others as Striders. The Striders have powerful legs. The Workers have one of their limbs developed massively for heavy labor or combat; for travel they can move slowly with their other limbs or latch onto the back of a Walker. The Brains are the most intelligent; they have only limited mobility but can latch into the back of a Strider or Worker and directly take charge of its cerebral ganglion (its eyes then close in sleep).

Mottling on the chitinous shell allows a churuk to identify the members of its hive and egg-clutch.

11 comments:

  1. All of this information must have fans dying to purchase the material, I know I am :') I'd guess that Abraxas and the Fabled Lands series won't be available until 2011, since the iPhone app has been delayed until September.

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  2. I just heard September for "The War-Torn Kingdom" on iPhone. Some of our other gamebooks may not be long after that. New material (including Abraxas - in whatever form we do it) will not be until 2011, but we'll keep you posted!

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  3. I'm thinking of purchasing a Tapwave Zodiac which runs Palm OS 5.0. It has 3d graphics capabilities and isn't that old (2005, I believe). Do you think that the iPhone game will be compatible or is it an Apple proprietary format?

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  4. I'd have to check the contract, Mike, but I think Megara (the developers of the War-Torn Kingdom game) are just doing it for iPhone.

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  5. Oh, it's just that I don't have the means or the need to purchase an iPhone and was wondering if it would be compatible with any other devices (even PC).

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  6. Another question would have to be: What do you mean when you say, "Some of our other gamebooks may not be long after that." Do you mean that the old materials will be released in digital format, print, or both, or even holodeck virtual reality :") Just kidding about that last one, but wouldn't that be just peachy?

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  7. Hi Mike - I don't have an iPhone myself, though I might get an iPod Touch so I can play the War-Torn Kingdom. We are looking at some of our other old books, for example the Virtual Reality and Blood Sword series, as possibly worth converting to various digital formats. Currently the Fabled Lands Studio is talking to a major publisher about that - hopefully not just for iPhone but Android, Kindles, etc too. We just have to prove to them they'll make money... but don't ask me *how* we prove that :-)

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  8. Are you trying to reprint the titles as well? You could do each series as a boxed set, such as what's being done with the Fighting Fantasy and Sorcery boxed sets in the UK. Although the Fabled Lands series would need an awfully big box! Did you check out all of the leads that I gave you a while back? There's still plenty of room for print in the digital world.

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  9. That kind of depends on the publisher. I know the Fighting Fantasy books still sell respectably well, though I think we'll have to prove the sales figures in electronic form first and then coax the publisher back to the printing press.

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  10. But you are checking out some of the leads I gave you, right? You're absolutely right about needing sales figures to entice the publisher into selling the titles. How many digital copies of each title would you need to sell in order to secure print rights? I'd imagine that you'd need quite a respective number since the titles haven't been around for quite some time, I was born in 1988. Would people be willing to purchase the print titles as well as the digital editions? I believe that you could do a limited print run and print more if there's a large enough demand, if you have a hard time finding a publisher. You could also use a publish-on-demand service to print them and set up your own website and list them on there, but that would kind of ruin the collectibility factor of the print titles.

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  11. I found out about this blog recently and it has been pleasure to read material here, I especially like these aliens that really are alien instead of just humans with pointy ears.

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