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From: "David Farnell" <pj.en.tta.awi|fad#pj.en.tta.awi|fad>
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 13:33:56 +0900
Andrew wrote:
And, while on the subject of Indian vampires (they sure had a lot…) there was also the Vetala. Interesting. A gigantic bat-type creature, which sometimes appeared as a man (first reference I've found to the bat/vampire connection…weird, since there's no vampire bats in India). Had the backwards feet and hands of the Rakshasa.
Maybe a byakhee?
Interesting — when I was recently describing a byakhee to my players, one of the things I tossed in was that it had double opposable thumbs on each hand, and the feet had forward- and backward-facing toes like a parrot (the reason this came up is that it was in tree one of them was climbing, and the first thing he saw was its hand gripping the trunk — he almost grabbed its wrist).
Anyway, bats are associated with darkness, evil, etc because of their hunting habits (most of them, anyway—there's a few daytime fruitbats). One show I saw recently said bats were associated with witches because the bats would swarm around the witches' bonfires to catch insects attracted to the fire. But I rather doubt the people who decided witches and bats are associated back in the old days had ever seen a witch ceremony; the explanation is simply that bats fly around at night, and are thus EVIL!
Besides, they get tangled in your hair and stuff.
Just kidding — I love bats. My hometown, Austin, is home to the largest urban bat population in North America. When the Congress St. Bridge was built, it turned out to have spaces underneath that made perfect bat homes. Soon after, the Mexican freetail bats (cute little things) moved in, and people were calling for tearing down the bridge and rebuilding it to get rid of the bats. Luckily, a group of bat scientists came down and edjukatid the public on the advantages of having bats around (lots fewer mosquitoes and moths, for example). Now the huge swarm of bats leaving the bridge at sundown is a big event during the summer — people set up lawn chairs, bringing picnics and making sure to stay out from under the path, though, as the bats are shedding extra weight as they take off (ewww!). It's very cool — huge, twisting black cloud of bats, the air filled with tiny electric-sounding peeps representing the 1% or so of their calls that are in human hearing range. Restaurant seats with a good view of it are reserved months ahead of time.
American academics often write that "In Japan, the bat is regarded as a creature of good luck and prosperity." Never met any Japanese people who knew that — they all seem to think bats are scary and get tangled in your hair.
OK, so does this have a point?! Well, what about wing structures? I already mentioned weird hand/foot structures above, and I always wanted to describe the byakhee's wings in a suitably alien way. I mean, all of the winged Mythos creatures seem to be typically depicted with bat wings. Cthulhu and the Starspawn (cool name for a band), the Elder Things, Hunting Horrors, Byakhee, Mi-Go, Night Gaunts, etc. Sometimes we try for more variety with insect wings, bird wings, pterodactyl wings (basically a variation of bat wings). Can anyone come up with better alien structures? Or alien descriptions of any anatomy, like the hands/feet above.
Here's how I describe Byakhee: Ozone smell and itching in brain (caused by use of flight organ). Multifaceted, red eyes, teeth like a mouthful of steel pencils, skull-like head. Skin apparently rotting, peeling away (a normal process), exposed ribs (actually part of the exoskeleton, overlapping plates of chitinous material). Hands and feet roughly identical: fingers and toes all prehensile, seven digits per hand/foot, five "fingers" (long, tipped by horny claws, center finger longest) and two opposable "thumbs" on ball joints, allowing them to be reversed, making all feet/hands excellent for clinging to branches and the like. Two long antennae sweeping back over the head. Knees and elbows also double-jointed. Huge wasp-like thorax: long hairs stand up and glow with blue light when the thing flies. Wings are tattered and look like they wouldn't work—in flight, they seem to serve only as guidance, not propulsion or lift.
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 01:27:54 -0500 (EST)
From: "Andrew D. Gable"
Just as a prelude to the reply, there's actually a feeling growing among cryptozoologists that the backwards feet of the Vetala (and other southeast Asian mystery bats) may have been an accurate account of a bat's rather odd feet.
Besides, they get tangled in your hair and stuff.
I read an article by Dr. Karl Shuker (Eglish zoologist & cryptozoologist) which stated that, oddly enough, this superstition is prevalent in cultures all over the world, and appears to have sprung up independently.
the byakhee's wings in a suitably alien way. I mean, all of the winged Mythos creatures seem to be typically depicted with bat wings. Cthulhu and the Starspawn (cool name for a band), the Elder Things, Hunting Horrors, Byakhee, Mi-Go, Night Gaunts, etc. Sometimes we try for more variety with insect wings, bird wings, pterodactyl wings (basically a variation of bat wings). Can anyone come up with better alien structures? Or alien descriptions of any anatomy, like the hands/feet above.
What about distinctly un-winglike structures like fins (similar to a whale or dolphin)? Or "wings" that are merely a row of spines moved in a rhythmic pattern (yeah, OK, that idea's stolen from some descriptions of El Chupacabra).
And remember that not everything that flies (at least in a supernatural setting) has to have wings. Witness Chinese and Japanese dragons. Few of them have wings.
hairs stand up and glow with blue light when the thing flies. Wings are tattered and look like they wouldn't work—in flight, they seem to serve only as guidance, not propulsion or lift.
Unusual—many winged cryptids (especially the rather dubious, IMHO, but awesome for a story element, Jersey Devil) are described as having wings too small for their body. What was that? Mother Leeds was a Hastur cultist?
And of course, there's the anatomic anomaly associated with bumblebees.
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 13:41:59 +0100
From: Davide Mana
American academics often write that "In Japan, the bat is regarded as a creature of good luck and prosperity." Never met any Japanese people who knew that—they all seem to think bats are scary and get tangled in your hair.
Have to agree with Andrew's reference: the tangled in the hair thing is really universal - you find it all over Europe, too.
OK, so does this have a point?! Well, what about wing structures? I already mentioned weird hand/foot structures above, and I always wanted to describe the byakhee's wings in a suitably alien way. I mean, all of the winged Mythos creatures seem to be typically depicted with bat wings. Cthulhu and the Starspawn (cool name for a band), the Elder Things, Hunting Horrors, Byakhee, Mi-Go, Night Gaunts, etc. Sometimes we try for more variety with insect wings, bird wings, pterodactyl wings (basically a variation of bat wings). Can anyone come up with better alien structures? Or alien descriptions of any anatomy, like the hands/feet above.
Nice question.
Your list does not include flying-squirels and flying fishes (both actually flightless, by the way), but is otherwise pretty complete.
Now let me see…
Here's how I describe Byakhee: Ozone smell and itching in brain (caused by use of flight organ). Multifaceted, red eyes, teeth like a mouthful of steel pencils, skull-like head. Skin apparently rotting, peeling away (a normal process), exposed ribs (actually part of the exoskeleton, overlapping plates of chitinous material). Hands and feet roughly identical: fingers and toes all prehensile, seven digits per hand/foot, five "fingers" (long, tipped by horny claws, center finger longest) and two opposable "thumbs" on ball joints, allowing them to be reversed, making all feet/hands excellent for clinging to branches and the like. Two long antennae sweeping back over the head. Knees and elbows also double-jointed. Huge wasp-like thorax: long hairs stand up and glow with blue light when the thing flies. Wings are tattered and look like they wouldn't work—in flight, they seem to serve only as guidance, not propulsion or lift.
Live from Piltdown!
The god that created Byakhees had a wild saturday night party and then decided to put the leftovers to some uses on sunday morning.
OK - a first wild guess: the glowing thorax-like structure is the one that makes the thing airborne in the first place - that's why the bristles glow during flight.
Sort of a biological anti-gravity generator: a similar organ is described in the first "Legion of Space" novel by Jack Williamson (screw biology - old space opera is real).
Shoot the glowing bit and the critter crashes to the ground.
Or maybe not.
The flight pattern of the Byakhee is controlled by a modulation of the anti-gravity field coupled with wing movements - the wings working as rudder, airbreaks and as a means to further move the baricenter (a bit like the tail of a jumping cat). A damaged byakhee can therefore still break/brake his fall - and on land he can be a killer anyway.
Just to make things more complex, let's also say that the whole "flight" thing is so complex (anti-gravitational modulation? Are you kidding?) that the Byakhee has a second, specialized brain-like ganglium at the base of its spine-equivalent, placed therefore as a conjunction between the central nervous system and the anti-gravity generator.
Nice touch when the guys perform an ultrafast post-mortem as the dead critter melts away (or whatever).
Also notice that the above means that the wings move during flight, but with a rithm that is not the rithm of a mundane flying animal - movements are much slower, less frequent and maybe strangely jerky.
The wings might also work as
. photon wing - Byakhees can notoriously travel through space, to other star system.
I know, I know - you guys out there are already fiddling with your slide rules to show that the average byakhee wingspan is ridiculously small for the purpose. But we can couple it with the anti-g generator. Or maybe Byakhees use the painfully slow photon wing propulsion when they swarm en-masse, moving from a system to another.
Plague of Byakhees, anybody?
. athmosphere re-entry thermal shield - the critter wraps itself up and shots through the athmosphere.
Meaning by extension that the wing are one of the best shields available, and would make the critter almost invincible. Not good. Let's say the thing is incredibly temperature resistant but highly brittle. This should re-establish game balance.
. thermal dissipation
I have this image in my brain somewhere, of the Byakhee shaking the frost of deep space from his wings. Thermoregulation for a critter that can go from almost absolute 0 of deep space to athmosphere re-entry extremes must be hell. Almost literally.
But why be shy?
Let's complicate things a further bit - evolution had a day out when Byakhees first surfaced, right?
. extra sensory organ
Let's imagine that the external layer of the wing is a chitinous shield (made of overlapping scales to retain flexibility), while the inner layer is made of some kind of sensory tissue - the B. uses it to get his bearings as he navigates through space, or to get his man when sent on a mission, or whatever. A carpet of low-specialization protoeyes - billions of them, sensible to a wide spectrum of electromagnetical radiation - would be nice, but we are open to further suggestions.
[the aspect of the inner surface might remind an observer the microdot-like pattern surface of a butterfly's wing]
Now we have some more reasons for the already mentioned double brainer - massive data input and elaboration need - and for the B. being rather shy when exposing his wings to direct attacks.
Alien enough?
A fina note: double brainer or not, Byakhee is only rudimentarily intelligent (let's compare him to a chimp, or to the average University teacher).
IIRC, there's no trace of B. culture or social organization in the texts. I just remember a mass of the things crowding the ceilings of Celaeno's Library.
Unless, of course, we are missing something.
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 00:34:44 +0900 (JST)
From: Jay and Mikiko
In my universe, the Migo wings are completely unaerodynamic — hell, they don't need to be, they fly through space after all. My explanation is that, as the Migo exist partially in another plane, they are, in effect _climbing_ rather than flying. The wings are actually tendrils that snake out and pull them forward through the fabric of the universe. What do you think?
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 15:21:33 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
The wings might also work as
. photon wing - Byakhees can notoriously travel through space, to other star system.
I know, I know - you guys out there are already fiddling with your slide rules to show that the average byakhee wingspan is ridiculously small for the purpose. But we can couple it with the anti-g generator. Or maybe Byakhees use the painfully slow photon wing propulsion when they swarm en-masse, moving from a system to another. Plague of Byakhees, anybody?
Note that these things set off the Tachyon detector (Beep Beep! There they go again) every time they glow. I believe that their glow is nothing more than the blue shift commonly associated with "The other side of light" (TOSOL). In order to properly motivate themselves via tachyon manipulation, their wings form a curved tesseract. The equations representing the hyperspatial contours of Byakee wings are central to the summoning and binding rituals for these creatures. Byakee wings (along with Elder Thing and Mi-Go) also resonate like the Pretorious Device which will be fully described in that RAINBOW thing, hopefully with a brief on the Royal Navy's SEAWRAITH cruiser.
From: "David Farnell"
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 10:17:29 +0900
What about distinctly un-winglike structures like fins (similar to a whale or dolphin)? Or "wings" that are merely a row of spines moved in a rhythmic pattern (yeah, OK, that idea's stolen from some descriptions of El Chupacabra).
Ooo, I like the spines! Maybe with a blue energy field around them, too. The tattered membranes between the spines could then by vestigial, or serve some purpose wholly unrelated to flight (I really like Davide's idea of them being "sensors"). Hey, tattered…could they be yellow? Could the KiY be wrapped in byakhee wing membranes?
And remember that not everything that flies (at least in a supernatural setting) has to have wings. Witness Chinese and Japanese dragons. Few of them have wings.
This connects to what Jay said about tendrils pulling the Mi-Go forward in other dimensions. There's also the Celtic riders whose horses could ride through the air and over the sea—one explanation I came across was that the horses could find footing in other realms. In these cases, if the "flight" is actually other-dimensional walking (crawling, whatever), then the movement will be very odd. The critters can't actually go wherever they want, but only where there is some invisible surface for support. (Alternately, there could be a dimension where everything has the consistency of cottage cheese, inlcuding the air, which would allow the creature to go wherever, albeit slowly. Let's pop an investigator in there and watch him drown!)
Unusual—many winged cryptids (especially the rather dubious, IMHO, but awesome for a story element, Jersey Devil) are described as having wings too small for their body. What was that? Mother Leeds was a Hastur cultist?
As many Mythos critters exist in more dimensions than we, plus the use of inexplicable organs like the hune, we can get away with explaining all sorts of ridiculous anatomical improbabilities.
And of course, there's the anatomic anomaly associated with bumblebees.
Now, I've heard that all my life, but isn't that kind of apocryphal? Is the bumbelbee's flight still impossible according to our aerodynamics theory? I'm sure it was at one point, but surely someone's figured it out by now.
Of course! Bumblebees have HUNES! That's why they're yellow! They're from Carcosa, where they pollinate the blossoms that produce that drug, shit, what was it called…yo! Tynes! What was the name of that drug? I can't find my copy of that story.
From: "David Farnell"
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 12:54:45 +0900
Your list does not include flying-squirels and flying fishes (both actually flightless, by the way), but is otherwise pretty complete.
I thought of flying squirrels, actually. Forgot about the fishes, though (I actually ate flying fish recently). Here's one: sea turtles. Great big knobby wings like an airplane. But how to stow them on the ground? Maybe they deflate like ballons…
Live from Piltdown!
The god that created Byakhees had a wild saturday night party and then decided to put the leftovers to some uses on sunday morning.
Heeehhehe!
Yes, the hune (looked it up in ECthanks once again, Danny boy!). Oops, there's another classic SF novel for me to check out. But yes, that is somethingI guess if you shot the hune, the byakhee would crash. But as you say, it could be a controlled crash, using the wings (although balance would be thrown way off—make the byakhee make a flight skill roll?). I like the second brain idea too.
And yes, MiB, they'd definitely be setting off MJ-12's Tachyon Detectors.
Of course, as long as we're talking about alien anatomy, remember that the head is not necessarily the only place for the brain. Deep in the thorax, surrounded by less important organs, muscle, and perhaps armor, is also possible. I suspect the head is a good place for humans due to nervous-system limitations similar to the old SCSI cable-length problems.
Then again, maybe not—I certainly seem to get plenty of sensory feedback when my daughter tickles my feet.
Or maybe Byakhees use the painfully slow photon wing propulsion when they swarm en-masse, moving from a system to another. Plague of Byakhees, anybody?
Hmmm. But why would they do it that way rather than just the usual extremely-fast hune travel? According to EC and CoC, we're talking FTL or near-lightspeed travel when in interstellar space. Maybe a mating thing?
(Yes, 10,000,000,000,000 mating Byakhee are slowly floating through space toward the Solar System, timed to arrive with the awakening of the GOO. They started with one breeding trio at Aldebaran…)
. extra sensory organ
I really like this one.
I think "missing something" describes our condition quite well. But that applies to everything. CoC gives the Byakhee 3d6 INT, which is slightly below human average, but the cleverest Byakhee are as smart as the cleverest humans. But we all know that this INT thing is like comparing apples and oranges. Certainly Byakhee aren't tool-users, but they might have some kind of language. I propose the hune, again, as the source—pulses from the hune carry long distance in space (like, parsecs, maybe), resonating with other hunes. A sort of whale-song/Morse-code/radio effect. I see them as loners who keep in touch with each other with ocassional messages (hey, that sounds too much like US!), gathering in swarms for special purposes and then going their separate ways.
But now here's something—how about that "Servitor Race" status? Are the Byakhee constructs (genetically predisposed to service), or were they enslaved? Or did they just strike a deal at some point to serve the GOO and their worshippers?
But back to smarts. One of my favorite adventures to run was one from I think Arkham Country—nutter summons a Byakhee (but doesn't know how to bind), sends it off to grab his old love-object from school, who's now happily married. The Byakhee does it out of amusement, killing and draining the woman, and later grabbing a couple of her kids, too. The players come to help out the distraught widower, and it turns into a great game of cat-and-mouse, with the Byakhee trying to get the last kid in the house, and the players trying to keep it out. The way I did it, the Byakhee got all the kids and killed half the players, single-handedly, and using only a couple of very weak spells. Cleverness is the monster's greatest asset.
From: Mark Mcfadden
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 01:06:22 EST
That Byakhee scenario you described was great.
The first postings about alternative flight configurations reminded me of some stuff I worked on in my (coff) ad+d days.
In the late 70's I saw an illustrated book named "After Man." It had the premise that mankind had disappeared in some manner that spared the ecosystem and the book was a zoology text about the ways that life continued to evolve. There were two flightless bat species that had adapted to extreme conditions. One was an aquatic bat that had become otter-like and had stubby muscular wing/fins for flying through water. The other developed muscular legs out of it's wings and ran on it's knuckles like an ostrich. It's strangest feature was it's long, clawed hind legs which swivel at the hip sockets to allow the hind legs to reach up behind the back and over the shoulder to end in 'arms' with grasping talons. Descended from vampire bats. I designed a dragon in a canard configuration (STOL). Behind the head are spreading ribs like a cobras, this is the canard surface. The long neck extends forward like a boom. The spine can be locked straight by flexing a special array of muscles. The wings are a combination of pterodactyl and bat. One webbed finger on each 'hand' juts up as a tail surface. The body has shortened and provides a good center of balance. The hind legs reach over the back yada yada. The long whippy tail is used like a stingray's. Spits corrosive flammable venom from it's fangs, maybe.
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 15:14:33 +0100
From: Davide Mana
(Yes, 10,000,000,000,000 mating Byakhee are slowly floating through space toward the Solar System, timed to arrive with the awakening of the GOO. They started with one breeding trio at Aldebaran…)
The bad news is, by the time they get here they all feel like a smoke.
End of flippancy, back to work…
Certainly Byakhee aren't tool-users, but they might have some kind of language. I propose the hune, again, as the source—pulses from the hune carry long distance in space (like, parsecs, maybe), resonating with other hunes. A sort of whale-song/Morse-code/radio effect.
The wing-as-sensory-organ might therefore work as space-ear! I like this.
I see them as loners who keep in touch with each other with ocassional messages (hey, that sounds too much like US!), gathering in swarms for special purposes and then going their separate ways.
What's the deal about Celaeno, then?
[the reference is to the "Fungi from Yuggoth" campaign of old - so maybe that's apocriphal, don't know]
But now here's something—how about that "Servitor Race" status? Are the Byakhee constructs (genetically predisposed to service), or were they enslaved? Or did they just strike a deal at some point to serve the GOO and their worshippers?
I've been thinking about this, too.
Q: Is there a byakhee planet?
Sure they look like put together out of old spare parts (and therefore artificial), but I like the idea of an older, saner Byakhee civilization that finally fell to the worship of the Great Old Ones - and Hastur in particular.
They were seduced, changed and became worshippers of Hastur (not necessarily in this order).
This ties-in neatly with the smarts problem - how do you like byakhees as degenerated race (species?) of cultists?
To elaborate further…
They are clearly a self-sufficient (self-contained, I should say) space-faring species. We could imagine the proto-byakhee as a pacific (?) race of space-beings, either living in the athmosphere of a gas giant planet or inside an oort cluster - no tools, no books, no great monuments left behind. A totally oral-tradition-based culture, probably more geared towards magic than we are.
And yet, they have some planet-dweller characteristics: bilateral simmetry, erect stance, limbs adapted to grasp branches and the like that mark them as jungle-dwellers to boot.
<pulp space opera mode>
As we have to explain the prehensile appendages and all that jazz - let's place the byakhee's interplanetary cradle somewhere on a fairly large moon, covered in Burroughs-style jungles and rotating on a low orbit around a Jupiter-like planet, so that its thin athmosphere brushes the outer athmosphere of the giant.
This gives the byakhee a home base, but also enables them to swim through the gass clouds surrounding the giant, evolving into space dwellers - and all the while, attrition slows the moon in its path and it slides sloser to the rim of the gravitational well.
The moon is doomed - of course - and a doomed world (IMHO) is the best bait available for the Great Old Ones.
Some of them surface through space-time, assess the situation and offer the peaceful byakhee an alternative to extintion.
The result is the more space-worthy race of degenerate creatures serving the Great Old Ones that we all know and loathe.
</pulp space opera mode>
Sounds too fancy?
I admit I spent my formative years reading Williamson, Hamilton, Brackett and the like. Be kind to an old misfit.
Any other ideas, out there?
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 14:39:45 -0500 (EST)
From: "Andrew D. Gable"
That's quite possible. However, I can also see another species that worships Hastur enslaving and genetically modifying the byakhee. Seems like the kind of thing Hastur-worshippers would do. But I think the idea of byakhee-as-former-cultists has a lot of room for exploration. Then again, so does exploring who modified them.
Ooh..Byakhee as interstellar Tcho-tcho? I like it. No ideas on who did the genetic modification. As far as I know, Hastur has no other interstellar race worshipping him, and saying Hastur did it himself is, IMHO, kinda corny.
Concerning the rather chimerical look of the Byakhee, maybe they were an experiment by the King in Yellow? That fits together with the decadent art so common to the King, and I rather like the idea of an art project that got a mind of its own. But, I guess, that's sorta corny also.
This discussion could conjure up interesting problems for the Brothers of the Yellow Sign. They believe in purity — so how would they feel about allying themselves (probably) with a race that's been tampered with genetically? My guess is that they wouldn't really care. They (or at least other Hasturites) are the ones doing the genetic manipulation, after all.
Heh. Now that I've introduced vampires to my players, I'll have to have a byakhee adventure. They'll think it's a rogue vampire…imagine going after a byakhee with wooden stakes and holy water. BWAHAHAHA!
I actually had an idea for something of this type…a scenario set in the Southwest somewhere (somewhere that belonged to the Spanish). An old monastery adorned with "gargoyles"…a vampiric legend associated with it…people in the area are killed by vampires…the PCs get there, and it's a bunch of Byakhee, and the monastery is a BOYS/K'n-yan outpost.
You could do something similar with Chthonians, too.
From: "David Farnell"
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 13:59:14 +0900
The bad news is, by the time they get here they all feel like a smoke.
Well, the tobacco companies will be happy, I'm sure.
The wing-as-sensory-organ might therefore work as space-ear! I like this.
Oh, yeah, I hadn't thought of that.
What's the deal about Celaeno, then?
[the reference is to the "Fungi from Yuggoth" campaign of old - so maybe that's apocriphal, don't know]
Ah, I knew I'd read that somewhere, too. Well, maybe the folks in Celaeno use a lot of byakhee help, so some of them just hang around (so to speak), on-call.
[snip stuff I really agree with]
This ties-in neatly with the smarts problem - how do you like byakhees as degenerated race (species?) of cultists?
That's quite possible. However, I can also see another species that worships Hastur enslaving and genetically modifying the byakhee. Seems like the kind of thing Hastur-worshippers would do. But I think the idea of byakhee-as-former-cultists has a lot of room for exploration. Then again, so does exploring who modified them.
To elaborate further…
They are clearly a self-sufficient (self-contained, I should say) space-faring species. We could imagine the proto-byakhee as a pacific (?) race of space-beings, either living in the athmosphere of a gas giant planet or inside an oort cluster - no tools, no books, no great monuments left behind. A totally oral-tradition-based culture, probably more geared towards magic than we are.
Very good, but no evidence to support that they were pacifistic.
[great ideas about byakhee homeworld snipped]
Ah, but there's one world out of SF that allows for both arboreal and microgravity life: Larry Niven's _The Integral Trees_. An ecology developed in a huge gas ring, and unformed planet completely circling a star, the center of which has thick enough atmosphere to support liquid water, life, etc. Gigantic trees are the key life formthey have a huge trunk and tops at each endno root (but with rootlets all over to grab passing blobs of water and other nutrients). The byakhee could develop in such a world, and use their weak wings to fly quite well in such a microgravity environment. The hune, though—no need for it, is there? Might that be something added later, by the mysterious enslavers? Or perhaps it did develop naturally…hmm.
Another point: metabolism. Byakhee seem to drink only blood. But if they range all over the galaxy (or at least this arm of it), they'd be hard-pressed to find human blood. So let's say they can drink many kinds of liquids and process them for nutrients. This all-liquid diet sounds almost something the Mi-Go would come up with—hyper-efficient but boring.
Heh. Now that I've introduced vampires to my players, I'll have to have a byakhee adventure. They'll think it's a rogue vampire…imagine going after a byakhee with wooden stakes and holy water. BWAHAHAHA!
Dave
From: "David Farnell" <pj.en.tta.awi|fad#pj.en.tta.awi|fad>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 11:01:06 +0900
Andrew wrote:
Ooh..Byakhee as interstellar Tcho-tcho? I like it. No ideas on who did the genetic modification. As far as I know, Hastur has no other interstellar race worshipping him, and saying Hastur did it himself is, IMHO, kinda corny.
I agree. In fact, I rather doubt Hastur is even aware of the byakhees' existence, even if he's surrounded by billions of them, cooling his brow with the waving of their wings. But he probably has quite a few races worshiping him, perhaps millions. Then again, worshiping may not be the right word.
Concerning the rather chimerical look of the Byakhee, maybe they were an experiment by the King in Yellow? That fits together with the decadent art so common to the King, and I rather like the idea of an art project that got a mind of its own. But, I guess, that's sorta corny also.
Mmm, a bit. I like the idea of their being the result of modification by another race, or by their own efforts. They might just have a highly technological race at some point, before throwing it all over in favor of being self-contained and in no need of technology. Or, like the Tcho-tcho, their changes are just a result of worshiping the GOO—perhaps the changes are wrought through the unconscious dreams of Hastur working upon their genetic structure?
This discussion could conjure up interesting problems for the Brothers of the Yellow Sign. They believe in purity — so how would they feel about allying themselves (probably) with a race that's been tampered with genetically? My guess is that they wouldn't really care. They (or at least other Hasturites) are the ones doing the genetic manipulation, after all.
I think the Brothers are just annoyed that the Sky Devils modified humans in a negative way, to make us more easy to manipulate. I imagine certain factions of the BoYS would be quite happy to be modified into supermen. Think Peter Hamilton's Edenists, but with no moral sense. (Recommended Reading: anything by Hamilton—he's the best British SF writer since Clarke in his top form.)
And there's something to keep in mind: the BoYS will help us fight the Mi-Go, but to them we are inferior mistakes, pitiful sacrifices for the GOO when they arise. On the other hand, if they ever got hold of Drakon-level genetic engineering, they might "infect" us with all sorts of genetic modifications to aid them in their fight. But they would probably turn us into a servitor race for them.
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 23:50:18 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
Concerning the rather chimerical look of the Byakhee, maybe they were an experiment by the King in Yellow? That fits together with the decadent art so common to the King, and I rather like the idea of an art project that got a mind of its own. But, I guess, that's sorta corny also.
Mmm, a bit. I like the idea of their being the result of modification by another race, or by their own efforts. They might just have a highly technological race at some point, before throwing it all over in favor of being self-contained and in no need of technology.
I think a combo of Hastur-worship, genetic mods by the Mi-Go or others, and an unusual sort of Art via Genetic modification works best as an explanation. The Mi-Go might do all that unnecessary surgery as a form of artistic expression.
Perhaps a "Super-MiGo" or a Mi-Go hive mind (?hindmost creche) decided to create a wonderful work of art using an entire species of Gas Ring Dwellers. If the proto-Byakhee could be turned to Hastur worship, they might have had a popular revolution and civil war over taking part in the Evolutionary Art.
Cultist Byakhee would undergo "The Change" voluntarily, while "The Originals" would rebel (or the Status Quo would try to qwell the uprising) against assimilation. Many experiments would fail before the final form is chosen. The original Byakhee solar system may well have become a Mi-Go monster factory by now, haunted by pockets of resistance and horrid experimental failures. Imagine one of the bubble oceans from Integral Trees made of protomatter (which the Mi-Go are only recently beginning to exploit, BTW).
Note that this Alien Art Theory borrows nicely from Tzimisce/Soul Eater stuff, Machine stuff from Benford's Galactic Center Sci-Fi books, and probably some other stuff too.
Or, like the Tcho-tcho, their changes are just a result of worshiping the GOO—perhaps the changes are wrought through the unconscious dreams of Hastur working upon their genetic structure?
I thought the changes were brought about by breeding with Moon-Beasts, Men from Leng and other inhumans. The worship inflicts no direct change, but the eventual genetic pollution of alien contact did. The change derived from worship is purely an indirect consequence, like how breeding with Deep Ones occasionally results from Cthulhu Cultism.
From: Escutcheon
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 01:07:34 EST
All that speculation about Byakhee origins makes me wonder: When did the race develop? Are we talkin' muchos eons ago, or are they upstart puppy critters like us?
If the race is not particularly old, perhaps they could be changing - warping into something even nastier. Their development at this time could be a sign of the stars coming right (Plant the needed genetic/chemical/magickal factors into the gene pool, set the timer for 65 million years, and "Poof!", Instant Servitor Race!).
If they recently developed, and that development was due to the influence of Hastur (or the GOOs collectively), what developments could be awaiting humanity?
Idea: A researcher associated with a well-known Bible college finds genetic proof that humanity's genome was not a product of evolution from primates. His research proves that certain sequences of human DNA associated with brain function will not naturally combine in the sequences found in human DNA. Naturally, many scientists lamblast his work as seriously flawed. After all, the DNA sequences exist, so they must have occured naturally, right? Right?
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:10:26 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
and, well, it takes two to tango you know.
Not if you're asexual. Or masturbatory…
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 02:26:40 +0100
From: root
«< And there's something to keep in mind: the BoYS will help us fight the Mi-Go, but to them we are inferior mistakes, pitiful sacrifices for the GOO when they arise. On the other hand, if they ever got hold of Drakon-level genetic engineering, they might "infect" us with all sorts of genetic modifications to aid them in their fight. But they would probably turn us into a servitor race for them. »>
Maybe , the B. may have their own BoYS , that USE them as a servitor race , in the behalf of Hastur by its own pourposes…. So , the byakhees we see on Earth are only "the Service"… the Bosses are in contact with them , controlling them , but with not real presence.
This can , also , be the justification of the hune (the antigravity generator idea is realy nice…)
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:20:13 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
Escutcheon soup can be reheated extensively without losing flavor. Simply add a bit more meat each time:
If they recently developed, and that development was due to the influence of Hastur (or the GOOs collectively), what developments could be awaiting humanity?
We will be extinct before any serious evolutionary changes can be wrought upon the species as a whole. Individual mutation, deliberate or otherwise, may result in just about anything. Lesser Outer Gods can mate with humanity and they can have any teratological morphology imaginable or unimagineable. And that's not considering Shubby, Nyarly, Deep Ones, Tcho-Tcho and about a thousand other mutagenic gods and monsters.
From: Escutcheon
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 22:21:06 EST
The MIB has been in the kitchen with Dinah, strumming on… something:
(Regarding potential changes to humanity:)
We will be extinct before any serious evolutionary changes can be wrought upon the species as a whole. Individual mutation, deliberate or otherwise, may result in just about anything…. »
What I meant to suggest was that humanity could have genetic "booby traps" already within the genome, genes that are designed to make us into a "lesser servitor race" as the "stars come right". Larry Niven's "protectors" might be the model these things are built on.