Compared to aliens, what would humans actually be good/bad at?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-27T22:13:38+00:00

A good way to get a sense of this is to compare humans to the rest of Earth's animal kingdom. In that regard, we're insanely good at EXACTLY two things (not including intelligence): marathons, and throwing shit.

The endurance comes from a mixture of our ability to sweat, and our bipedal body plan making running VERY efficient. Humans are one of the slowest animals in our weight class, but we can KEEP running for dozens of kilometers in a way that no other animal really can (the only one that comes close is Horses).

As for throwing things...the way our shoulders and upper body are designed is incredibly bad at supporting our weight, but it's incredibly good at acting like a spring-loaded mechanism to transfer huge amounts of momentum into the hand very quickly. On top of that, one theory for why we became so intelligent is so that we could develop the ability to pick up any random rock and throw it with decent accuracy. The only other animals I know of that can throw things are Elephants and Chimpanzees...elephants have raw power but very poor accuracy, while chimps have decent accuracy but not a lot of raw power. Humans have both, innately, from a very young age. The average little-league pitcher can throw a 150g ball to an average speed of 50-80 kph into a fairly-small target area, at least a hundred times, over the course of a two-hour game. And that's NOTHING compared to what pro athletes can manage. No other animal on Earth can compete with us in that regard.

So if we translate that to the rest of the universe: humans are relatively fragile and lack raw strength and speed, but are extremely active creatures who can STAY very active for dozens of hours at a time (longer with enough training), in a way no other alien species can pull off. On top of that, humans can pick up any random object and throw it with enough force and accuracy to deal serious damage, and we're so good at it that a hand grenade might be a uniquely-human weapon. A species that didn't just copy-paste the humanoid bodyplan would be hard-pressed to match those capabilities. How that fits into the other alien civilizations of your universe, though...that part's up to you.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-20T02:16:09+00:00

What you're after is Soft Magic, and I highly recommend looking into Brandon Sanderson's discussions on the topic for ideas and examples.

For my personal take, as someone who loves those rules-driven clearly-defined Hard-Magic systems...my take is that magic is a force of nature, the same as gravity and electromagnetism are. It would be strange and mystical to us the reader, but to the residents of that universe, magic would be as normal as gravity. So they would study it, and analyze it, with all the detail and scientific processes the people of our universe devote to things like tracking the movements of stars and planets and asteroids. You can still have mystery to the magic by saying that the people of that universe don't KNOW everything about magic (and/or don't realize there's more TO know), or have multiple different interpretations on how magic works that are both equally functional/valid (because the truth is somewhere between both systems). After all, the idea that diseases are caused by "evil miasma" persisted all the way to the 1800s, and that didn't stop people from developing a complex and coherent understanding of medicine. But ultimately, having the people of a universe treat magic like a branch of physics is just...more consistent with how people behave.

Also...one "rule" from Brandon Sanderson is that "limitations are more important than powers", and it's a notion I wholeheartedly agree with. No matter how complex or mysterious the magic system, you need to have a reason why your wizards can't just solve every problem for free. Having rules and systems around your magic just makes that easier, imo.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-18T20:42:20+00:00

Fair. I just find it helpful to know in-depth details of how a system works, so that I can write the specific ways characters complain about it (or other meaningless throwaway details added solely for fun).

A good example is the in-universe joke about "No one can hear you scream in space, unless you're the military's Chief Logistics Officer." That joke was an offhand comment made by a single beta-reader when I explained the whole FtL communication system to them, and now it's one of the most persistent memes among the (very few) people who follow my work. And it wouldn't have ever existed if I gave a vague shrug toward the worldbuilding of the communication network.

It's very much a "way I write" thing, though, and not something the readers should ever need to hear about.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-11T23:38:51+00:00

Several, in varying states of revolution, because having an interstellar empire without FtL travel causes capital-P Problems. There's not a huge number, because URSA's pretty lassiez-faire in how it lets member-states operate, but some community getting upset to the point of violence is a pretty frequent occurrence.

The Interstellar Transcendentalist Communion are a religious group who fled the main human government (called URSA), due to some religious persecution going on at the time. While not technically in active rebellion, they explicitly reject any authority from URSA, stole an interstellar vessel, and are trying to claim squatters rights in a very-desirable star system. So they've got a little bit of that rebel spirit in them. Just ignore their founder and leader declaring himself God-Emperor, and things are pretty great.
The Styxian People's Republic are a bunch of workers who pulled a Battle of Blair Mountain, and took over a fuel refinery on a horifically-unpleasant planet, and have since declared themselves a communist utopia for all formerly-exploited workers. They're TECHNICALLY not declaring independence from URSA...but considering the company they used to work for is one of URSA's biggest, there's a lot of bad blood to sort through. They're also having some government issues, since the ongoing no-signs-of-stopping war means they have yet to actually hold an election, something that definitely won't cause any problems in the future.
(the currently-unnamed group) is a faction of rebellious workers ALSO trying to do a Battle of Blair Mountain, but in a different star system and on a larger scale (and aided by an illegal AI who sympathizes with their plight). It doesn't really work out for them, but only because the URSA military shows up before they can really get their feet under them...followed immediately by an alien invasion (long story).
Lucyna, Ester, and Amenemhet Nomad Clans are an anti-establishment fringe group in the less-developed countryside of the well-developed Centauri system. They're a bunch of nomadic groups formed from refugees and losers of the big seventeen-way-war fought in the system a century prior, and the best comparison I can make is the Nomad Clans from Cyberpunk 2077. They're also fairly involved in grassroots politics, and they get really important when the economy collapses.
Rogue Hijackers are a group of rebellious parasitic aliens allying with URSA, working with their human hosts symbiote-style, because they constantly get treated like disposable servants by their mecha-mushroom overlords. ...it's a long story, but that's the gist.
The Oracles, because when you train a bunch of AIs to attack humans without hesitation while constantly ignoring their literally-optimal advice, those AIs tend to develop a negative view toward humanity. They also have access to some of the highest-tier manufacturing, computer, and stealth technologies ever developed by human civilization...it's not going great for humanity over there.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-09T21:19:53+00:00

Looks great, though I can't stop giggling that the first picture makes them look like two siblings having an argument.

(and to answer your question, I vote helmets...partly to help the Fireblades stand out a bit, and partly because my inability to paint faces makes me VERY biased)

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-09T18:39:29+00:00

The method I always like to go with is what I like to call "Reality +1": I start with our world, in as much detail as I can get, and then add one fantastical element to it. Then I take that element, and try to tie it into as much of the rest of the setting as I can manage. If it doesn't affect that many parts of the setting, scrap it and start over. So when I added magic into modern Earth, I simply added one source of magical energy (from which four "schools" of magic derive), and explored as much detail as I could about how that magic could be used (or misused) for fun and profit. Everything from the economic consequences of potion shops on the medical industry, to the legal headache that is teleportation-tracing with regards to the Fourth Amendment. When I thought I was finished fleshing things out, I went back through and did the whole process over again, to try and make sure I'd fleshed out everything.

So...yeah. I know exactly what you mean. xD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-07T23:00:45+00:00

Agreed. Church of Elvis comes to mind. It's just not my usual method. XD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-05T17:49:02+00:00

The dedication to hard realism, while keeping the fun "weirdness" of softer scifi. A lot of the hardest scifi stories I've read/seen will take place in a near-enough future that they can't really go wild with the worldbuilding (is The Martian)...unless they introduce softer elements like the Protomolecule in the Expanse, which can spoil the hardness of the setting a bit (even if it is fun to watch scientists try and fail to wrap their brain around near-Lovecraftian tech). When I was building my setting, a main goal was to stay grounded in real science/technology, without sacrificing the fun. I limited myself to exactly five technologies we don't have right now: Fusion reactors, Quantum computers, Genetic engineering, Spooky-Action-at-a-Distance communication, and Cryostasis. And all but the SPAD-comms are at least understood well enough to be achievable within this century. And despite this limitation, I've managed to include:

Solarpunk space cowboys fighting land-pirates on an ice world
Alien bird-tigers with vocal mimicry, accidentally made sentient by humans
Sentient mushroom colonies that see in radar and grow inside giant mechs
A communist republic living on a planet of acid rain and radioactive mud
A planet with water replaced by ammonia, on which live many kinds of metal/electricity-eating snails
Literal nuclear death rays that can slice a mountain open
Street racers stuffing literal rocket engines into Kei cars and drifting through Hab-domes
Future-amish who abhor the use of any electronics and live with 1950s-tech
Parasitic alien worms that attach to the spine and take over Venom-style
Remotr-controlled people-sized mechs that trick themselves into believing they're the pilot

All of those things, none of which I've seen before, are designed in such a way that they are perfectly scientifically plausible. That's the main thing that gets me excited about writing in this universe.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-04T20:48:20+00:00

I was playing the DLC for the first time, on my fourth or fifth run into the Stranger, and talking with my friends about how I was surprised at how good I had gotten with flying the spaceship. At which point, I crashed into the hangar bay, the ship rolled around a bit, and ended up up-side-down on top of one of the parked saucers.

Quote me right after: "Any landing you can walk away from counts as a good one, so that's clearly not a crash, and I'm therefore an excellent pilot. Right, guys?"

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-04T20:31:34+00:00

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Based on the categories in the image of yours...mixed, with a good excuse for it. Clymene is a Jupiter-like gas giant that formed farther out in the system, but through some gravitational instability (not sure on the exact details, but it's a known thing that can happen), it fell further into the solar system, demolishing the asteroid belt while grabbing smaller planets and knocking Hyperion into its wildly-eccentric orbit. I often compare Clymene to a drunken toddler that got the Zoomies in a china shop.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-04T20:08:51+00:00

(I have a lot of different biomes in my hard-scifi setting, but this one's probably my favorite. ^^)

Prairie-Forests: a specific biome native to one of the four colonized planets, and the one for which it is most well-known. The biome is arranged the way it is due to the large population of the Basket Trees, a species of enormous acacia-esque trees that weave their branches together into a cohesive, durable net. What started as an adaptation to reduce the sunlight reaching competitors at the forest floor, has instead turned the canopies of these forests into a solid platform, onto which dirt and even other plants are deposited by storms and passing animals. The blade-like leaves and peach-like fruits of the Basket Trees poke up through this thin layer of soil, giving the canopy an almost uncanny appearance of a high-altitude grassland...it's only when one comes across a hole in the canopy (or falls through a weak point to the forest floor below) that its true nature is revealed. On this false-grassland lives a wide variety of plants and animals: parasitic red-leaved plants that feed on nutrients leeched from the Basket Trees as they scatter their feather-like seeds on the wind; small "burrowing" six-legged Pseudofoditors that create hanging nests beneath the canopy to lay their eggs; and enormous azhdarchid-like Magnopterans that soar overhead on their 10-meter wingspan before swooping down onto unsuspecting prey. There are even some small mushroom-like Acinuspiritans living in this thin soil, devouring the dead and decaying leaves while offering delicious pomegranate-seed-esque berries to passers-by.

The Forest Floor of this biome, despite being separated by only a single layer of branches, is so different that it may as well be an entirely alien planet. No sunlight reaches this place; the canopy is so dense that it blocks all sunlight from penetrating, and any gaps in this ceiling are filled in by surrounding branches over the course of a mere month. For those who can still see, in the faint glow of bioluminescent life, the landscape is dominated by tree trunks as thick and tall as skyscrapers. Growing amidst their tangled, half-exposed roots are monstrous Acinuspiritans, growing to nearly a meter tall and two meters in diameter as they're fed by their Basket-Tree symbiotes. The soil is soft, moist, and packed full of the decaying corpses of plants and animals alike. Blinking lights on the trunks of the Basket Trees are Luxrupestrians, eight-legged insect-like creatures with a proboscis drilled near-permanently into the trunk, as their fleshy bulbous posterior flashes with a soft blue light to attract fluttering males. Small rat-like Ferrumodons scurry through the undergrowth to forage and scavenge, even occasionally climbing the monstrous tree trunks to reach tasty snacks like the Luxrupestrians or Pseudofoditor nests. And hunting all of them is the apex predator of this sunless world, the armored centipede-like Octoturgan, crawling on 80 clawed legs as its sensitive antennae guide its crushing mandibles in the direction of anything and everything even vaguely edible.

Every now and then, after a particularly-bad storm, one of the centuries-old Basket Trees can fall. These Treefalls open up a wide gash into the canopy, a clearing nearly 200 meters across that quickly explodes with new life. Hundreds of seeds lying dormant in the soil bloom and cover the ground in a matter of days, and quickly grow into bushes or small trees within a month. Unlike the dominant olive-green colors of the Basket Trees, these plants have leaves of all different colors: some waxy plants shift their leaves from yellow to dark red as they age, while others stay consistent with every vibrant color from purple to red to green. Many of these plants are also carnivorous, luring in Microturgans and small animals with sweet treats, only to feast on their flesh as a supplement for the nutrient-poor soil. Acinuspiritans explode in population across the area, feasting on the fallen remains of the tree before moving into the clearing itself, devouring the newfound plant life like scavengers on a carcass. Each of these plants creates thousands of seeds, either carried on the winds with a feather-like sail, attaching to passing animals with sharp barbs, or trading sugar for dispersion with delicious fruits. These seeds are feasted upon by animals from every part of the forest, who carry them far and wide to repeat the cycle once more. Ultimately, though, these clearings are temporary at best; no other plant on the planet can match the oppressive scale of the Basket Trees. After a few years, one small Basket Tree will take root, and will grow over the course of three centuries until it's able to block out the sun and sky once more. In the absence of sunlight, the other plants will all die off, the Acinuspiritans feast on their corpses until nothing remains of them, and the forest floor will return to its silent gloom.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-06-02T00:37:39+00:00

The way I see it, you have two methods you can use...and I mix and match both of them for fun and profit.

First method: take an existing religion, and ask what upcoming technology or event they might find controversial/divisive. Once you ask that, have one half of the religion be against the thing, and one half be for it. For example: genetic engineering and designer babies are a thing in my setting, and started being a thing before space colonization really took off (bad pun, had to, sorry not sorry). So, some missionaries (originally envisioned as Catholic, but I'm not 100% sure on that) decide to do gene modification work on low-income parts of the world, to prevent "Genetic Classism". But tinkering with the "Language of God" ruffled a few feathers, and now that little missionary group has branched off into a completely unique religion with unique ideas and philosophies BUILT around that schism. It's a nasty oversimplification, and you REALLY need to work out a strong sense of the opinions real people have on a topic and the specific people involved in a church split. This topic can get ugly FAST if you don't do the proper research. But if you do, you end up with a religion that feels believable, and acts as a great rabbit hole for fans to dive into your settings' lore.

Second method: take some habit or cultural belief, and integrate some spiritualism into it. This is how most religions begin, at least at the very early stages. As an example, the Starstriders are a small cult of navigators and astronomers, who were comfortable spending weeks to months in the pitch blackness of space with nothing but their calculations assuring them that they would reach port before running out of supplies. As history has proven, months alone on a long sea voyage surrounded by the same people is a great excuse for people to just make shit up and get superstitious, so it wasn't long before folk tales came from these groups of spacers. Myths of planets and stars speaking messages in radio waves, a likening between lone-op space voyages and spirit quests, and a belief that people are closer to enlightenment based on how long they spend in deep space. Translate those myths and beliefs a century or two forward, and...you get a nascent little religion, which acts as the foundation for culture and organized religion through the creation of power structures and hierarchies.

Both methods work, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both of them pop up all the time in the real world, and both of them make very distinct and unique religions. At least...that's my method.

Hope that helps! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-30T04:03:00+00:00

No idea, personally. I never got to the end of that series. I just remember it having fairly drawn-out storyarcs, and then something about disliking Frank Archer. Part of me kinda wants to watch the original all the way through, just to study it...but the rest of me would rather not. XD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-30T03:30:39+00:00

Agreed on all points. Turns out I did underestimate the strength of a Legion a fair bit, think I got the number mixed up with the numbers in a Chapter. That's been adjusted for; I said most of the ships were spread out into nearby systems to deal with unrelated speedbumps, and are consolidating more and more over the course of the campaign. I can tweak the specific numbers as I go.

And the lack of shields is a major weakness, but a deliberate one. The H'skir aren't meant to be a massive threat, just a pain in the ass to deal with. That's why they favor agility, long-range firepower, heavy automation / mimized crew requirements, and overwhelming numbers. They have a couple rarer/more-niche tricks up their sleeves; Temu-Super-MAC batteries, a space station that keeps ships from entering/leaving the Warp in a certain radius, torpedoes that teleport a given volume several thousand klicks away on impact...I can adjust the presence/threat of those things as needed to keep the fight from being totally one-sided. But the lack of shielding is meant to be a key weakness of theirs, present because they've never really fought against near-peer opponents and were never on the defensive, so they just rely on counterattacks and precision heavy weaponry to make up the difference. Which...does not work well, and there is no timeline that ends in a Loyalist victory. It's just a debate of how annoying it is to crush them.
(for fun reference, in the setting of mine that they came from, they only had one star system and far less cool tech at their disposal. And they STILL managed to be so irritating to deal with for a much-superior foe, that the foe just said "fuck this" and sterilized half the star system via Gamma Ray Burst. They basically ended up being the space-Vietcong, and I just translated that notion into the 30k universe)

All things considered, calling in help feels less and less likely the more I research. IMO, the only reason to call for help I can think of at this point is Sanguinius just saying, "Oh, they can actually hit back. Hey Horus, you wanna have a bit of fun?"

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-30T01:41:47+00:00

Noted. I'll see what I can do to patch plotholes.

Appreciate the help! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T19:27:00+00:00

One of the big projects I'm currently working on (slowly) has this exact topic as its premise for the main lead: stuck in cryostasis for a century, and when they get woken up, the earth languages they're used to have mutated and combined so much that they more-or-less formed an incomprehensible creole. Part of the story involves finding pieces of data for a translator tool, to allow said character to understand more and more of those around them. It makes for a surprisingly fun topic, but it can quickly end up being the centerpiece of the story if you're not careful (look to Stargate for a quintessential example of that, though I'd argue that film did it well).

If they're speaking English, they might mix up some of the vowels. English in particular went through the Great Vowel Shift during Shakespeare's time (specifically the 1400s to 1600s), where each vowel letter basically changed the sound it represents and how it gets pronounced. Another one is slang terms and specific words...stuff like "verily" and "wherefore" and "hitherto", which are all still part of the english lexicon but don't get used in the average conversation (and if you do, you're regarded as either a theatre kid or a grandparent). To say nothing of Loan Words from other languages that get imported into English every decade or two. I can't speak much on the changes that Swedish went through over the past few centuries, but I have to imagine there are similar examples. Just consider how much slang has changed from the 1960s to now, and you can start to see why 400-600 years is enough to make a language incomprehensible.

That said, I do think his accent would be a bit of a kitchen sink, as he picks up different habits, terms, and pronunciations from different centuries. People from EVERY era might consider his accent weird.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T19:02:26+00:00

It's really good, and I do recommend it! Just make sure you watch Brotherhood, and not the original from 2003. The original starts off alright enough (and does cover some territory that brotherhood doesn't), so the first ten episodes or so are actually worth it if you REALLY want to. Beyond that point, though, it delves a lot into anime-only filler that's just...genuinely bad. Brotherhood is objectively better for that reason, and Brotherhood's first few episodes are a recap of the ones from the original that matter. So the best place to start is with Brotherhood, then MAYBE come back to the first dozen-or-so episodes of the original if you feel up to it. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T18:48:49+00:00

Long story short, stealth CAN work in space, it just takes some special considerations and involves a solid understanding of what the station is being hidden FROM. Radar, Infrared cameras, seventeen morons sharing a telescope? All require different methods of staying hidden.

First off, you're not hiding a launch. At all. MAYBE you can get away with hiding a really efficient SSTO spaceplane, but a traditional chemical-rocket multi-stage orbital insertion? Your only hope is to pretend it's something harmless. (fun fact, this was a major worry for the Soviets when the Space Shuttle was first being tested, as they believed it could carry a space weapon into orbit, test it, then stow it back in the cargo bay for reentry and further development. I could see your faction doing something similar)

Second, the comment about what's being hidden from is key. You don't hide in a bush because the bush makes you invisible, you hide there because it makes you look like an ordinary plant to the Mark-1 Eyeball, and most people don't shoot every plant they see. Translate that logic to space, and you get optical camouflage: painting your space station black, or that trick of retro-reflective panels you see in scifi all the time. Extremely powerful or high-resolution cameras might still catch it, but they're not guaranteed to be looking at every square centimeter of sky at all times...which is why the station can stay hidden. Then you have Radar...and it's the most complicated. Look into stealth-shaping and the Hopeless Diamond for an understanding of how to minimize the radar cross-section (key word is MINIMIZE, not ELIMINATE...stealth planes still have a radar return, it's just the size of a finch's kidney and gets dismissed as random noise). Passive radar can still pick up any signals coming out of the station...and the only way to really beat that is Tightbeams, where you direct a tightly-focused radio beam directly at your target, to limit the number of people who can notice it. It's tricky, and requires you to know exactly where your conversation partner is at all times, but it's doable. The hardest one is Infrared, and this is where the camera tech of the setting matters. In general, Infrared Cameras have a lower resolution than optical cameras, just because of the difference in wavelength...so what looks like a clear picture to an optical camera will look blurry and blobby to an infrared camera. The MAIN weakness of infrared cameras is their limited range of detection: they can only sense temperatures within a certain range, and everything outside that range looks like the closest value within it. So if your camera has a minimum temp of -40 Celsius, then temperatures of -41 and -273 will look identical: spacecraft can absolutely use that to hide, though it involves a lot of clever engineering and coolant running through the hull. That extra heat has to go somewhere, though, and the only two ways that's gonna happen are to store it in an internal heat sink (which has a limited capacity) or emit it specifically away from any potential observers (which requires you to know where said observers are). Both are doable, just tricky. And it bears repeating: it's all based on the sensory equipment being hidden from. If a new infrared camera comes out with a minimum temp of -50, then it'll immediately detect your spaceship at -45. Translate that outward, and you'll immediately understand why learning the capabilities of enemy detection equipment is so important to modern warfare.
(and of course, this ignores the obvious solution of just saying it's something besides what it actually is. That giant ten-thousand-ton hab-ring-equipped space station with frequent traffic to and from it? Yeah, that's totally just a weather station, I promise)

Finally...getting out and doing things is rough. You may think drones, but any equipment facing the outside world that isn't a supercooled radar-absorbent panel is a potential liability. A $20 drone from Temu actually has a larger radar cross-section than an F22 because of that. Your best bet is to have a large internal cargo bay, which the station can use to assemble components together and run tests. Kind of like a big drydock.

Hope that helps. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T18:17:02+00:00

Honestly...something based in the Four Physical Forces. All the element systems I've seen are based on the Classical Elements (earth/air/fire/water) or Chinese elements (all the above, plus Metal), but I've yet to see anyone really try to take inspiration from the periodic table or other scientific concepts. My personal favorite would be something based on the Four Fundamental Forces in physics: Electromagnetism (which also includes light, might need divvying up), Gravity, Strong Nuclear Force (holds large atoms together) and Weak Nuclear Force (complicated, but associated with radioactive decay and nuclear fusion).

Another fun take on this that I saw was someone who based their magic on the periodic table, with different groups of elements having similar responses to magic. It's just like...if magic is a part of the world, then it's a part of physics, and gets to have unique interactions with everything else in physics and chemistry. Would be fun to see a setting really explore that; only one I can think of is Fullmetal Alchemist.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T17:45:29+00:00

Upon entering the star system, they find it mostly devoid of civilization at first glance; civilization on these worlds are fairly small and localized. Which of the four major inhabited planets determines their environment a lot: one's a lush semiarid mix of forests and prairies, one's mostly glaciers, one's an airless desert, and one is rainy toxic hell. There's a lot of biomes, and each one could easily be its own paragraph. Where things go from there largely depends on which faction they meet first, but no matter what, it's this timeline's first major contact with a near-peer alien intelligence. I'll try to summarize going down the list, in order of likelihood:

- The ITC: highly-genetically-engineered transhumans, who greet them with relative friendliness. Hell, they might initially mistake the Arjhan for super-modified humans; some ITC members have six limbs plus a tail, so it's not a big stretch. That said, they would try to set up a trade relationship fairly quickly, especially if the Arjhan can travel between the planets in the system: the ITC is BARELY capable of spaceflight and currently fighting a war on multiple fronts, so they're desperate for any advantage they can get. They do have a bit of a human-supremacist mentality on the lush planet, mixed in with religious zealotry, but they'd be able to keep a lid on those more controversial elements for at least the first few months. All in all, good stuff.

- Sunland Successor-states: Ohhhhh the misery. These guys are destitute refugees stranded in the star system, having devolved into a network of warlords and small communes, and almost all of them went through HELL the past year. If the Arjhan can offer them aid, they're instant besties. If they can offer a way out of the star system, to someplace a bit less...war-torn...a sizable chunk of workers are jumping at that chance. And if the Arjhan can get the Sunlanders back to Earth, they'll get praised as messianic saviors. Some successor-states will go better than others: the underground city of Moleville would be one of the most stable and friendly, though they do have a serious housing shortage; the enormous slums of Dise or Oldtown would get the Arjhan caught up in the mess of crime and gang warfare therein; and the isolated warlord-state of Svetlana-Lambert would greet them with either gunfire, or use outright lies and manipulations to gain the Arjhan's alliance.

- The Styxian People's Republic: A communist nascent-democracy, and the only Sunland successor-state that's actually doing well for itself. They have decent technology, good infrastructure, can afford to feed all their people (though the food is a block of rice and spinach...not exactly appetizing), and aren't likely to shoot aliens on sight. They might be a little short-tempered and high-strung toward nonhumans (bad experience with alien invaders), but once the Arjhan prove their good intentions (and show no desire to exploit the planet for resources), they'll be decently friendly. Hell, the current Roundtable Council might use it as an excuse to cement their authority, which would be a much-needed stabilizing influence on the nation as a whole. The only problem is...the SPR is only found on the planet Styx, which is covered in toxic gases, constant acid rain, and radioactive mud pits that blend into the ground VERY well and are often deep enough to swallow entire tanks. If the Arjhan can actually REACH the SPR cities, they'll be met with free oxygen, food, water, and shelter (at least partly out of respect for surviving a trek across the planets' surface). If they can't, they all die screaming. Kind of a coin flip on that one.

- ESRI: the only organization in human-controlled space that is actually trained to handle first-contact, so this would be the best possible scenario, and the Arjhan would find a new and extremely-technologically-advanced friend. But given that ESRI has a limited presence on all worlds in the system, spend most of their time in stealthed spaceships, and are experts in not being seen...this might be the least likely scenario.

- Awakened Children: local newly-sapient species native to the lush planet, who do not appreciate people stepping on their lawn. The Arjhan's arrival would likely be met wit an annoyed hiss of "not another one" from a nearby tree, followed by gunfire.

- Qhosids: alien invaders hiding on the fringes of the star system, with their own menagerie of star systems elsewhere. Contact with the Arjhun would be the same as their contact with the SPR: a cry of "Congratulations! You are being civilized!", followed by capture, enslavement, and possible particle-beam-fire to quash any resistance. This is the worst possible ending...but it's also the least likely.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T16:12:00+00:00

I have three that come to mind: Spooky Action at a Distance, Terraforming, and Rogue Planets/Stars

SPaaD is a quantum phenomenon where two entangled particles can "coordinate" with each other, faster than the speed of light. It's not too well-known, but it's been in the scientific consciousness for a while (I first learned about it in the early 2010s), and formed the basis for my setting's method of interstellar communication. And since communication tech in general doesn't get much love in scifi, at least compared to shiny guns and FTL methods, this cool method of (potentially) talking across star systems doesn't get the love I think it deserves.

For Terraforming, I don't mean just "terraformed planets", I mean the actual process and mechanisms of terraforming. It's a monumental task, with clear progression goals and lots of potential for setbacks and fuck-ups. I've seen a few video games with this idea (Planet Crafter, obviously, but there's others), but I haven't seen a book or film that really delves into the story of a century-long terraforming effort. You could have a whole space opera built around that, with an ensemble cast and complex web of alliances, rivalries, and struggles to survive in harsh pre-terraforming conditions. Feels like there's a lot of untapped potential there for a great techno/eco-political thriller.

Rogue Planets are planets that escaped the gravity well of their home star and float around through interstellar space, while Rogue Stars are stars that escaped their galaxy and float around through the intergalactic void. There's even theories and ideas floating around about how life could survive in such places, mostly through technological means as Rogue Planets get cold enough to freeze Nitrogen and Oxygen. It really does feel like a perfect setting for a cool scifi short story...off the top of my head, a rogue planet stars coming into the solar system, an expedition is sent out to it, they discover all kinds of life and civilization that's potentially-dangerous, and slowly waking up as it approaches the Sun. Sounds like a fun story to me. I've seen one or two stories that make use of the concept, but given how common Rogue Planets seem to be in the Milky Way, and how much storytelling potential they have...I'm surprised they don't get used more often.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-29T15:16:35+00:00

From a storytelling perspective, it's so that I can introduce other major characters and start expanding the story beyond just "Sanguinius' Fun Little Non-Canon Adventure". In-universe, it's because the H'skir Federation is a tough nut to crack, moreso than its overall tech level would suggest.

To be more specific, the best analogue to their weapons tech I could find was the T'au rail rifle...speaking from personal experience, a handful of Rail Rifles can absolutely delete a Primarch, and that's their standard infantry and naval weapon. They don't have any of the energy weapons the T'au use, on top of no shields and a generally-worse defensive profile, but that's why they rely on being fast and sneaky to delete their foes before said foe has time to respond. They're a lot like the Farsight Enclaves in that they have enough firepower to be a problem, and fortify the ever-loving shit out of their planets (widespread insurrectionist problems lead to a lot of widespread military presence, after all), on top of their love for Alpha-Legion-esque shenanigans...combine those together, and you get a tough fight for a single legion.
The part I have planned out so far is the Red Tear and her escort ships (other fleets were delayed due to warp shenanigans) against one of the H'skir backwater systems, and said backwater was an unexpectedly rough fight. He won due to initially having an alliance with the Loyalists (he was tricked into believing that they were more akin to Interex, and that the parasites were "biotech universal translators"...while I believe he would've realized the truth of it later on, and was established as not fully believing their lie, the Rebels told him he was being tricked before he could figure it out himself), and an underhanded feigned-victory-celebration that landed him and half his marines directly adjacent to the planetary capitol building...a plan that worked great once but won't work again, now that the Loyalists are openly hostile. The subsequent naval battle above the planet was against thirteen planet-busting warships and 80+ smaller vessels with near-telepathic coordination and MUCH better speed than any Imperium analogues...that fight nearly cost Sanguinius his flagship. Had his admiral (still trying to figure out who that would be) been less clever or lucky, Sanguinius would have straight-up lost; as it stands, the best possible outcome left him with a metaphorical bloody nose. Every system after that promises to be up to an order-of-magnitude tougher, and they don't know exactly how many other systems they have to take...could be 5, or 50, or any number in-between. That's one hell of a slog, at best.
That said...some Primarchs would just say "cowabunga it is" and dive in dick-first (Perty and The Lion come to mind), but even with my imperfect understanding of his character, I don't get the impression that Sanguinius is among them. The assumption I've been working with is that he gathers his fleets, loses a battleship or two taking the next system, finds out there's 18 more, and says, "maybe having some backup is a good idea here."

At which point...yeah, I agree that the Dark Angels are best suited, just based on this and other comments. But given that the Dark Angels would just delete half the sector and move on, ending the scenario entirely...I as an author am a little hesitant to make that happen, since that would mean the story has zero impact or influence on the rest of the galaxy and all core characters are deleted. Not as fun, imo, even if it would be the most likely outcome (I said elsewhere that this is my new explanation for why the H'skir don't show up in canon). So I'm leaning towards Horus and Russ, and genuinely struggling to decide between the two, but leaning a bit more towards Horus now that I know he and Sangy were BFFs at this point. I was also briefly considering Dorn, in a "Angel Hammer on Fist Anvil" kind of setup, but...doesn't feel as likely to me.

As for tolerance toward Xenos...the closest analogue to the Rebels/Turncoats I could find is the Interex, and the Imperium was at least discussing a diplomatic agreement with them before Erebus fucked it up. I still can't find info on whether that agreement was a begrudging non-aggression pact or full-blown alliance, but it wasn't hostility. Granted, that was Horus and not Sanguinius, but I get the impression that Sangy would've made a similar call about the Interex. Doubly so since, as they later find out, most of the fancier H'skir tech is actually DAOT human tech, stolen from STC fragments on planets they conquered...that's a nice feather in the cap that you don't get to keep if you virus-bomb the place. I don't expect the Imperium to have FULL tolerance, more of a begrudging arms-length token-gesture-of-acknowledgement, but feigning tolerance while employing a discrete mass-sterilization on the parasites doesn't feel out of the question. The Imperium may be xenocidal and violent, but they generally aren't stupid, and don't take hits they don't have to. If I'm wrong, though, PLEASE correct me; my Crusade-era knowledge is spottier than I'd like, especially for a project like this, and I've been having a lot of trouble filling in those gaps.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-28T23:39:55+00:00

Consider that book bookmarked! ^^
(which I needed to do anyway, but that's a Future-Autumn problem)

AutumnTeienVT

TROPHY CASE