Speculative Biology; Vy’keen
(First off, please excuse the sketchiness of the artwork, the length of the post and dreadful penmanship, secondly let’s get on with the show) Alrighty. So I’ve got about my first 260 hrs sunk into a save file & have just started a new one to get a fresh look at the game with all its new updates installed from the beginning. I spawned in a Vy’keen system as opposed to a Gek system like my first file. Learning the language over again reminded me how interesting the Vy’keen were as an initial alien species, and how that interest was fueled by…a lot of questions. Vy’keen biomorphs are weird. They’re just strange, from the very beginning there’s some pretty glaring inconsistencies between the head shapes & eye placements, with a notoriously-outdated-and-scrapped head shape appearing in the game’s past updates/promotional material. The opening text for the first Vy’keen you meet aboard a space station specifies the Vy’keen have unconventional lips & sport mandibles, but that doesn’t seem strictly true for all forms. Some have large cetacean-like melons on their faces with exceedingly low-slung eyes, and no visible teeth or mandibular lips. Others have close-set eyes, relatively-simian facial features (two eyes with emotive pupils, nose, mouth, etc.) I know that NMS is based largely on 60’s-80’s scifi pulp artwork, a lot of which wasn’t overly concerned with biological viability or steadfastness of design. Additionally, I gotta acknowledge that the game’s highly randomized, so not everything is going to be thought out the same way it’d be in a conventional story-driven game. That being said—between the ungodly proportions of the average in-game Vy’keen’s massive noggin, their awkwardly shoehorned posture and the game’s limitations on unique humanoid bodyplans, I knew I had to take a crack at redesigning the Vy’keen if there were a little more room for interpretation. Tried to make sense of their face muscles, figure out a new body shape that’d have them feel strong, alien and brutal with still opportunities for graceful movement (i tried pulling muscular shapes from animals like rhinos, big cats, elephants, bears and whales). The four pitted sensory organ sites along the back of a Vy’keen’s head are sometimes adorned with small metallic circular mounts, sporting an array of metallic spines or horns which range from smooth to angular/faceted. These could be jewelry or technology, as the smooth metallic ‘horns’ that appear on some Vy’keen look to have a seam line which could indicate hidden mechanisms within. Coupled with these “Sensory Caps”, some Vy’keen are shown to have other metallic scales or implanted armor that runs down the crest of their skull/down the nape of their necks. Still others have a distinct metal disk or ball implanted in their forehead melons. This got me thinking. The Vy’keen empire, in my mind, evolved from a planet or ring of planets with very similar lifeforms, primarily coming from an advanced branch of cetacean-like swimming creatures which eventually gained limbs for land-dwelling. Another species could have branched off of this and went back to the water, similar to the evolutionary path of whales on Earth. These two lifeforms could have evolved separately, flourishing and specializing into even more castes that eventually give us the three large groupings we see in the game. Genetic manipulation of these castes could produce space faring variations, and futhermore an empire worthy of beating back the Sentinels. “Soldiers”- usually have rather expressive faces, make use of lip mandibles, strong binocular vision for focusing on prey. Often shown in promotional material to have all four Sensory Pits adorned in some way and will generally be more likely seen with implanted spinal armor. Some aquatic species like Wolf Eels, Belugas, Humphead Parrotfish and Napoleon Fish on Earth have similarly-shaped heads to these Soldier Vy’keen. “Engineers”- sport thick facial plating & lose their brow ridge, adopting wider-set eyes with lower sockets than the Soldier caste. In exchange they maintain more of their ‘Ancestral Melon’, which is what I’ve been calling the big lumpy foreheads on Vy’keen. Totally unfounded; but to me this structure reads as some sort of communication or balance/sensory organ developed to help navigate a past environment. Paired with specialized muscular lip structures which could have been much much more developed for manipulation/feeding without primary limbs in the distant past (& diminished into vestigial communication/feeding aides), I start to see some throughlines that could be drawn between all the morphs. “Pilots/Navigators”- Big, Huge Noggins. These goofy bastards are the reason I made this whole post to begin with. Representing the most specialized morphs in the Vy‘keen empire with their broad lipless mouths, extremely low-slung eye sockets nearly appearing on their bottom jaws, and huge Ancestral Melon structures evocative of terran Humpback Whales. The melon structure in this case has been accentuated by either genetic manipulation or natural selection and its surface area maximized; on Earth this usually happens when the structure is supporting a wide network of nerves or for stabilizing an impact surface. Space-faring Pilot Caste could use additional technological interfaces to more-accurately and efficiently amplify their natural sensory capabilities to ensure safe passage through the galaxy, becoming one with their freight-liners and battle frigates. Pilots have hidden mouthparts too, so their mode of nutrient consumption must be pretty basic (i would imagine a lot of processed semi-solids and liquids a Bomber Pilot Food Tubes). Does any of this make any sense?? I’m dying to hear what people think of the Vy’keen and what their first impressions where upon meeting them in-game. Do you hate their design?? Do you love it? What are your Vy’keen biology headcanons? submitted by /u/TipYourDM |