I’ve spent a lot of Sundays now developing alien races and the year is coming to an end. Is it time for PDR to do something different? Well, if it is, I’m going to ease myself back to those “human” things by looking at a couple that have been interacting with aliens.

Alien Abductees

Dan Hastings is a university student who has a part-time job at a grocery store. If he were asked, he’d probably say he was a pretty ordinary guy. The truth is, though, that Dan has trouble sleeping. For as long as he can remember, he has had dreams of strange beings surrounding him and doing strange things to him while he can not move. At least, he tells himself that they’re dreams, though he believes that they are real. What Dan doesn’t know is that the beings who have been doing this are a Strondovarian science crew that orbits the planet in a secret station and is experimenting on Dan’s mind. The first Strondovarians to discover the planet they are interested in testing the limits of the human mind by giving Dan Hastings mental powers like telepathy to see what he does with them.
Universe: Blue

Unlike Dan, Paula Parker has not returned to Earth after she was abducted. Paula was only seven years old when she went missing during a family picnic. Her family never got any closure to her disappearance, because she had been stolen by an alien who had created a wormhole to reach the Earth, taken the child and left. The abductor, whose purpose Paula never learned, was a large creature with advanced technology but never expected that the child could be a threat. Paula lashed out at her kidnapper, smashing a piece of alien equipment and causing an explosion. The alien died, leaving Paula stranded at the alien’s headquarters on an apparently otherwise empty world. Paula survived, learning what she could of the alien technology. She eventually figured out how to use the wormhole device, but had no idea how to tune it back to Earth. She had adventures on many strange planets and met many strange peoples, none of whom had any idea what humans were or where they came from. The universe is large and finding a single planet in it is near impossible if you don’t know where to start. Paula had to give up on ever seeing her world again, and for over a decade has fought for her survival among the stars.
Universe: Orange

It must be noted, however, that humans aren’t the only ones who are getting stolen by weird forces from beyond their homeworld. Carmohka is a Hivrhin One, the strongest warrior of her city, perhaps of the entire planet. She was participating in a plan to raid a neighboring city’s Queenhouses, if the mission had been successful, her city would have become the dominant power in their hemisphere. But without warning, while en route to the job, a strange flying craft appeared above Carmohka for just a moment, and Carmohka vanished. Her allies never got any explanation, her superiors had to assume she’d become a coward and fled. Even Carmohka doesn’t know the truth, because as soon as she was aboard the strange craft, she was placed in suspended animation by her captors, an alien race intent on capturing the best warriors and preserving them for a threat they predict will arrive in the future.
Universe: White

Vrangens

The Vrangens are a ten-legged species with compound eyes and poisonous spines at their mouths and tails. Their fragile-looking legs are actually extremely tough and flexible (similar to pipe-cleaners in that way). Their planet is tidally locked toward their sun, so one side is always warm, one is in perpetual night, and the weather is violent and intense. The Vrangen, and all life on the planet, live beneath the surface. Though there are tunnels and caves that reach into the warm and cold extremes of the planet, most of Vrangen society exists under the surface along the twilight areas where day forever meets night.

Tiffoy is a medic and a surgeon. Though Vrangen poison is deadly to other Vrangens, medics devote their lives to their craft, which includes eating a unique diet that weakens their poison. This allows them to sting their patients, putting them into a sleep instead of killing them, so the medics can operate. Tiffoy is a grumpy old sort, but is very good at the job.

Denning is a power engineer. Vrangen technology uses electricity gained from wind turbines that are extended to the surface of the planet, where the winds are extremely strong. While no Vrangen has been to the surface, engineers like Denning have come close enough to poke their machinery up there.

Yuddy is a scientist studying the nature of space-time itself, looking to develop a method to move into higher spatial dimensions. At this stage, Yuddy’s work is all hypothetical, but it may be on the right track considering that there are several Higher Dimensional beings who have taken notice and are now actively trying to help, or hinder, Yuddy’s progress.

A Fact About Vrangens: Vrangens do communivate with a spoken language, but they go about it in an odd way. When conversing, they emit a constant monotonous hum, which is broken by sudden quick silences. These silences are the Vrangen language. In a way, their words are the opposite of ours, being patters made out of noiselessness, instead of patters made of noise.

Universe: Brown