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Approved Submission [Species] Alien Goo

Jimmy

Jimmy

Lover of Purple
Inactive Member
Submission Type: Hostile Alien Species
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=species:alienum_ire_vulgaris (New link)

OLD LINK: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=species:alien_goo No longer functional

Faction: None
FM Approved Yet?: N/A
Faction requires art?: N/A

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No.
Contains New art?: No.
Previously Submitted?: No

Notes:
Another one of my side projects which I've been working on over the last six months or so in my off hours. This one is designed as a typical growing threat which produces nightmare creatures for PC's to do battle with and try to contain and destroy. Good fun for any GM's interested in such.

Draws inspiration from the aliens in Natural Selection, the Blob from SS13, and I'm sure some other bits of pop culture in the back of my addled mind that refuse to rise to the surface. Designed to be able to be molded into whatever the GM needs for the occasion.
 
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I think we're going to need a more specific name than this, since SARP is a setting full of goo varieties, most of which are alien. Maybe name it after where it is first encountered? Is this for a particular plot? I'm worried about it being kind of overpowered.

The formatting needs fixing, with the hyphens either removed from the front of paragraphs or replaced with bullet points as appropriate.
 
Gave it a fancy sounding scientific name for more distinction. To be honest, I couldn't really think of a name when I sat down and started this, and the name just stuck as I continued working on it. Also, hyphens replaced with bullet points.

The Goo isn't for any plot, but it's designed to be easy to slot into one for a single mission or so. I imagine any faction affected by it has their own records of it. The Goo itself can be scaled by the GM to fix the plot, you could have space janitors fighting to hold back goop from spreading around the ships corridors, all the way to a full PA-troop incursion to deal with an out of control infection zone.

Considering the Goo has little agency beyond spreading it's a pretty easy species for GM's to make use of.
 
I'm a little hazy on how the stuff works. The sub-organisms it makes, are they like creatures fashioned out of the goo, like clay figures or something? Or are they organic fleshy things? How does the stuff consume its prey?
 
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It's okay to be hazy. This thing lives in haze. The sub-organisms are usually fully formed creatures to my reckoning, with skin, eyes, teeth, all the good stuff, at least, that's how it is in my mind. Goo doesn't make very good vertebrae, but perhaps some of the larger mobile feeders are clay form-like? Hmm.

I mentioned biological reaction chambers, basically a large stomach. Sub-organisms bring material back to these stomachs, and receive nutrients through the goo itself as required as post-digested nutrients into their bloodstreams (if they have them). The goo also interacts with the surface it's on at a molecular level. It cannot forge high density bonded materials like steel, but it can detach the surface layer in microscopic amounts and use it for the creatures growing in its womb sacs. Maybe claws with metallic edges from reclaimed steel of the walls and floor.

Basically the Goo is designed to allow for different visions and methods in regards to the tastes of the plot or the GM who uses it. This makes it flexible, but requires a little more imagination from a would-be user.
 
I think I get it. So it very slowly digests its victims from the outside in? And forms new creatures out of the material it ingests, depending on its environment?
 
Depends on your idea of "very slowly". The average human body digests a meal in maybe twelve to twenty hours roughly. A Goo bio-reaction chamber could probably digest a whole human and turn them into raw materials in less than four hours. So yeah.
 
I've commented on all criticism so far. Been waiting for a free tech mod to come and give it the look over, they were busy for a while when this was first put up although recently I had forgotten about it as early starts and late finishes dragged on at work.

Giving it a once over, I may adjust some header sizes and swap the names at the top of the page around to the fancy sounding one is the title since none of the mod team want to touch a page with the current name on it until now, apparently...

But yeah, hit me with your best shot, I guess. Might as well get this thing down from NTSE one way or the other.
 
Reading over it, there's got to be a better thing to call this stuff. Though, that's more minor in comparison to other things.

As this is intended to be wildlife of sorts. the vagueness of its biology and such is ok. The main thing that the article needs is focus - I highly suggest having the article heavily concentrate on the 'knowns' of this thing, and specifically state that scientific studies so far had pretty much ended up turning up more questions than answering any. In the opening About/History area, also suggest that this be more specifically mentioned as dangerous vermin or something along those lines to set the tone for the rest of the article.

Overall, I have to say that it should be reorganized a bit and written more as an encyclopedia entry, doing away with the bullet points and bringing them together into proper paragraphs/headers telling about the thing. Growth Process, Behavior and Destruction are some things you could rename the sections under 'Observations' for an example.
 
Sorry about the hold on this thing. I've been preoccupied with stuff breaking on me at work as well as having to speed up a few other projects for others sakes. Expect more updates on this soon as I get around to it, hopefully over the next few days, that's if my telco can fix their bloody phone towers around my work speedily.

The bullet points were meant more to make the article quick and easy to read, an experiment more than anything. Trying to breeze through the vagueness with a series of short sharp bullets on what is known to help ground it. I'll play with it some more and see what works.
 
Finally got around to getting back to this thing. Moved the page, renamed it, added a short About section which pretty much slaps the reader in the face with how much vermin this is. Adjusted formatting so majority of page is under the About heading to weigh out the short content otherwise. Expect minor content updates as I spot areas of improvement and adjust white space.
 
Alright, after much delay and hoo-ha and being sick and stuck in bed and consulting with Cadet, this seems to be done. Even added a biology section.

This should be finished bar any other change requests and review items.
 
Though the idea is good, it's not ready for approval yet.

Being easy to read is important, but right now, a lot of the information in the article is scattered throughout it rather than being gathered up into the relevant areas. Because of that, I am finding it very difficult to handle and believe that it'll have to get overhauled, piece by piece. The about section is probably the most important place, so that's where I suggest we start. It's supposed to summarize an article and its contents without going into depth. Basically tell us about whatever it is in brief, hence the name.

I suggest it contains the following info, again, in brief;
  • Dangerous invasive pest
  • Biology is largely unknown
  • Impractical to contain and study
  • Can take on many different physical forms for various tasks
  • Creates infestations/hives
  • Consumes biological matter
  • Highly resilient to bullets and energy weapons, but vulnerable to fire
The about section can, very literally, be just a bunch of sentences, each stating exactly what I just listed, even though that would be crummy. However, something like that would still fit the bill.
 
No.

This side-project has been fun but after half a dozen iterative changes based on unofficial feedback from the reviewer the energy expended is way beyond the return expected. The only reason it has been kept from approval is because the reviewer doesn't like the way words have placed on the article, and moved, and sliced, and moved again, and redone, and moved again based on their own feedback.

The article already is more than up-to-spec with what the reviewer has asked for, and has been since very early in writing. Almost every new change since early development has simply been moving sentences around in a, apparently meaningless, attempt to appease the reviewer. Unfortunately, this project is no longer the fun side-project it started as, being a very simple concept that has had the book thrown at it for no reason I can discern except the reviewers own grammatical taste.

Everything listed as a problem item by the reviewer is already in place in the article. Repeated attempts to fix the article have only resulted in vague, continued complaints of it not being palatable enough from the reviewer themselves.

Unless a new reviewer comes to oversee this thread, this project is dead. That is all.
 
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