Meet the Medusians

The idea that aliens have visited our planet is obviously not a new one. Some people even believe that alien visitors were worshiped as ancient gods. This is a really interesting theory in that to a primitive society, even someone with our current modern technology would be looked at as a god. If someone had the technology necessary to travel between planets, they would certainly be looked upon as some type of deity or mythical being. As I enjoyed Greek mythology when I was in school, it was only appropriate that I base the third aliens encountered in the game on a Greek Myth.

When you think about it, the Medusa is an ideal alien. Imagine, the Medusian landing on the planet. Seeing some peasants coming to investigate, it creates statues of the creatures to present as gifts to show it comes in peace. The peasants see the hair which sort of looks like snakes and the statues and immediately come to the conclusion that the Medusa turns people into stone. They flee and start telling everybody. Meanwhile, Some want-to-be-hero named Perseus went overboard with his boasting while he was in a bar and claimed to be the son of Zeus. To save face, he is forced to accept the quest to deal with the Medusa monster. The result being that some innocent alien ends up being beheaded.

If such an event were to happen, the aliens might retaliate by destroying the human race, but that is not the only possibility. If cooler heads prevail, and the snake-like protrusions must be for heat-management, then the aliens would leave the primitive race alone to mature. After all, the aliens had to go through many stages of development to reach their current technological level.

When designing the races for this game, I took the approach that many science fiction writers use and simply assigned a behaviour to the entire race. The Medusian’s are bureaucratic. To make this alien, I decided to make this bureaucracy different from the ones I deal with. They are efficient.

When trying to come up with a monetary system, I decided to go with the most valuable thing that I could think of. Time. When you think about it, this actually does make sense. If you are working, you are spending your valuable time doing something for the benefit of someone else. The more experienced you are, the more valuable your time. The more dangerous the work the more valuable that work is.