334 Cepheus Supplement: Xenosophonts

Introduction: The Alien Imperative

Most science-fiction roleplaying games treat aliens as humans in rubber suits. They have the same desires, the same politics, the same fears—merely filtered through forehead ridges or honorable warrior codes. 334 Cepheus rejects this. Xenosophonts are not alternate humans. They are solutions to evolutionary problems you have never imagined, perceiving realities you cannot sense, and building technologies that reflect bodies you do not possess.

This supplement gives you a framework for creating aliens that are playable, believable, and genuinely strange. It is grounded in real biology, cognitive science, and cultural ecology. The goal is not to build a costume. The goal is to build a mind.

The SPECIES Framework

Every alien species in 334 Cepheus is built on seven pillars. Do not treat these as a checklist to rush through. Treat them as a design space to explore. If you cannot answer every question, you do not yet have an alien—you have a sketch.

S — Somatic (Biology & Physiology)

The body is the first fact of cognition. An alien's biology determines what it can sense, how it moves, what it fears, and what it values.

Energy Budget: Every organism operates on an energy surplus or deficit. Large, active predators require massive caloric intake. Small, sessile filter-feeders can survive on scraps. An alien species' metabolic class shapes its daily rhythm, its aggression levels, and its relationship to scarcity.

Body Plan Questions:

• What is the ancestral environment? (Aquatic, aerial, subglacial, lithospheric?)
• How many limbs? Why? Are they for locomotion, manipulation, or sensory extension?
• Is the body centralized (brain in a head) or distributed (nervous system throughout)?
• What is the lifespan? A species that lives 20 years values time differently than one that lives 2,000.
• How does it reproduce? Sexual, asexual, fission, viral, memetic? Reproductive strategy shapes social structure more than any other factor.

Avoid: Bipedalism, humanoid symmetry, "warrior races," "peaceful gardeners," sexual dimorphism that maps to human gender norms.

P — Perceptual (Sensory Ecology)

Every species lives in its own Umwelt —a perceptual bubble defined by its sensory organs. Humans are visual-dominant with auditory backup. An alien might be seismic-dominant, chemosensory-dominant, or magnetoreceptive. This is not cosmetic. It determines what the species considers "obvious," "hidden," or "beautiful."

Sensory Modalities:

Cross-Modal Translation: When a human and an alien communicate, they are not just translating language—they are translating sensory frames. A seismic species does not "hear" your voice; it feels your footsteps and heartbeat. A chemosensory species does not "see" your face; it reads your emotional cloud. This creates the Interface Problem (see below).

E — Energetic (Metabolism & Resources)

What does the species consume? How often? What is scarce versus abundant in its native environment?

• Carbon-based autotrophs (photosynthesis, chemosynthesis) view consumption as vulgar. They may find eating disgusting or fascinating.
• Obligate carnivores must hunt or farm prey. They may have complex ethics around killing that humans misread as savagery.
• Lithotrophs (rock-eaters) may view organic matter as ephemeral, beautiful, and terrifyingly temporary.
• Radiotrophs (radiation-eaters) may find human-habitable zones cold, dark, and nutrient-poor.

Resource anxiety shapes culture. A species from a water-poor world may treat ice as sacred. A species from a high-gravity super-Earth may view open spaces as terrifying abysses.

C — Cognitive (Mind Architecture)

This is the core. How does the species think?

Centralized vs. Distributed:

• Centralized nervous system: One brain, one identity. Fast decisions. Vulnerable to head trauma.
• Distributed nervous system: Multiple nodes, emergent identity. Slow consensus. Resilient to damage.
• Hierarchical distributed: Nodes specialize. A "body node" handles movement; a "cognition node" handles planning. Sever the link, and the body becomes a zombie.

Temporal Architecture:

• Fast cognition: Processes information in milliseconds. Experiences human conversation as agonizingly slow.
• Slow cognition: Processes information in minutes. Experiences human combat as a blur of incomprehensible chaos.
• Parallel cognition: Thinks about multiple things simultaneously. Finds human "single-threaded" attention pitiful or adorable.

Memory Architecture:

• Episodic: Remembers events as narratives (like humans).
• Procedural: Remembers skills, not events. Cannot tell you what happened yesterday, but can flawlessly replicate a dance.
• Collective: Remembers through external storage (chemical, crystalline, acoustic). Without their storage medium, they are amnesiac.
• Predictive: Lives in simulated futures. Experiences the present as a thin, unsatisfying shadow of possibility.

Avoid: "They are logical," "they are emotional," "they cannot understand metaphor." These are human traits with the volume turned up or down. Build alien cognition from different foundations.

I — Intersubjective (Social Structure)

How do individuals relate? Do not default to "tribe," "empire," or "corporation."

E — Ecological (Environmental Niche)

What was the species' ancestral niche? This determines instincts that persist even after technological uplift.

• Ambush predator: Patient, motion-sensitive, territorial. Values stillness.
• Pursuit predator: Endurance-oriented, heat-tolerant, cooperative. Values persistence.
• Scavenger: Risk-averse, opportunistic, detail-oriented. Values redundancy.
• Grazer: Herd-oriented, flight-prone, consensus-driven. Values safety in numbers.
• Filter-feeder: Passive, high-volume processing, low aggression. Values flow states.
• Parasite: Intimate, boundary-fluid, chemically sophisticated. Values trust and penetration.

S — Technological (Tool Trajectory)

Technology is not a ladder. It is a tree, and different species climb different branches based on their bodies and senses.

The Exaptation Principle: Tools evolve from existing structures. Humans built hammers because we have fists. An alien without grasping limbs might never develop handheld tools—but it might develop grown architecture, acoustic forging, or swarm robotics as an extension of its own body plan.

Technological Sensory Bias:

• A visually blind species will not develop screens, holograms, or written language. It might develop tactile computing, chemical libraries, or vibrational networks.
• A species with no sense of smell will not develop cuisine, perfumery, or chemical computing. It might develop electrical gastronomy or thermal art.
• A species that communicates via electric fields will find wireless networking intuitive and spoken language barbaric.

Avoid: Aliens with human tech but weird shapes. If they look different, their tools should look different too.

The Interface Problem

The central design challenge of alien PCs is this: How do they participate in a game run by humans, for humans, at human speed?

The answer is not "they learn to act human." The answer is mechanical asymmetry. Every alien species in 334 Cepheus has a Cognitive Asymmetry —something humans do effortlessly that they find nearly impossible, and something they do effortlessly that humans find nearly impossible. This creates complementary gameplay.

The Liaison Mechanic

Every alien PC must designate a Liaison at character creation: a human (or human-equivalent) PC or NPC who serves as their interface with human-speed society. This is not slavery, translation duty, or comic relief. It is a symbiotic cognitive partnership.

Mechanical Effects:

• Proximity Bonus: When the alien and liaison are within Short range, both gain +1 DM on tasks where the other provides their asymmetrical strength.
• Separation Penalty: When separated by more than Long range for more than 1 hour, both suffer Bane on social and intellectual tasks. The alien is disconnected from human-context processing; the human loses the alien's unique perceptual frame.
• Collaborative Action: Once per session, the alien and liaison may perform a Collaborative Action: the alien provides their asymmetrical capability, and the human provides theirs. The action automatically succeeds as if it were an Exceptional Success (Effect 6+). This represents perfect cognitive synergy.

In Play: The liaison is a roleplay anchor. The alien player should ask their liaison, "How do the humans perceive this?" The liaison player should ask, "What am I missing that your species sees?" This generates exposition, tactics, and character bonds.

Alien PC Rules

Characteristic Generation

Aliens may use standard characteristics or replace them with Machine Characteristics (from the Synthetics supplement) or Species Characteristics. The key is that the characteristics must map to the same mechanical functions, even if the fiction is different.

Generating Characteristics: Roll 2D6+6 as normal, or use species-specific generation (e.g., distributed species roll 3D6 for INT and drop lowest, but roll 2D6 for DEX). The species description will specify.

Alien Traits

Each species has three traits:

Advantages and Limitations are not balanced. They are not perks and flaws in a point-buy system. They are facts of biology. A species that can see through walls is not "paying points" for that ability; it is simply how they perceive. A species that cannot understand lying is not "taking a disadvantage"; it is a perceptual blind spot that creates drama.

Advancement

Aliens advance skills and characteristics through the same end-of-adventure checks as humans. However, some species may advance differently:

• Distributed species may require consensus to change (slower advancement, but may advance multiple skills simultaneously).
• Slow species may advance between adventures rather than after them.
• Collective-memory species may advance by accessing new external archives rather than through practice.

Example Species

The Vrenn (Choral Distributed)

Somatic: The Vrenn are not individuals. Each "person" is a mobile colony of 10,000–100,000 specialized organisms, ranging from microscopic chemical processors to macroscopic structural members. A Vrenn resembles a dense, iridescent mat of kelp, roughly human-sized, that moves via peristaltic rippling and hydraulic extension. They are filter-feeders, extracting nutrients from atmospheric or aquatic particulates. They have no central brain; cognition emerges from chemical and electrical signaling between colony nodes.

Perceptual: The Vrenn are blind and deaf in human terms. They perceive the world through chemosensory gradients and pressure differentials. A room is not a shape; it is a topology of scent and air movement. A human is not a face; it is a chemical signature, a thermal plume, and a rhythmic pressure disturbance (breathing, heartbeat).

Energetic: Low-energy autotrophs. They can survive for weeks on ambient organic molecules. High activity (combat, rapid movement) depletes their nutrient reserves and requires extended recovery.

Cognitive: Distributed consensus. A Vrenn "thought" is not a single internal monologue; it is a chemical vote among colony nodes. Simple decisions (move left, avoid heat) take seconds. Complex decisions (moral reasoning, tactical planning) take minutes to hours. In crisis, the colony can delegate decision-making to a fast-response node —but this causes physiological stress.

Intersubjective: Vrenn society is literally environmental. They do not "meet"; they merge chemical clouds. A Vrenn city is a vast atmospheric garden where individuals intermingle their outer layers, sharing nutrients, memories, and decisions. Privacy is impossible and meaningless. The concept of a "secret" is foreign.

Ecological: Ancestral niche: deep-ocean filter-feeders, living on volcanic vent nutrients. Uplifted to atmospheric existence by technological symbionts (now extinct).

Technological: Vrenn do not build; they grow. Their architecture is bioengineered coral-analogue. Their computers are fluid-dynamic calculation chambers. Their "ships" are living, breathing ecosystems that recycle waste and produce food.

Vrenn Characteristics

Vrenn Traits

Advantage: Distributed Cognition

• Immune to headshots and single-point neural damage. Called shots to "vital areas" do not work.
• Can perform (INT DM + 1) intellectual tasks simultaneously without penalty.
• Perfect memory for chemical signatures: can identify any individual they have "tasted" before, regardless of disguise.

Limitation: Consensus Delay

• In combat or crisis (any situation requiring a roll every round), the Vrenn must choose each round:
  • Deliberate: Act normally, but suffer Bane on all rolls (colony is conflicted).
  • Delegate: Designate a human Liaison or ally to make the decision. The Vrenn provides Boon to the ally's roll but cannot act independently that round.
  • Override: Act unilaterally with a fast-response node. No Bane, but take 1D6 Strain (applied to END as temporary damage). If END reaches 0 from Override, the colony enters shock and cannot act for 1D6 rounds.

Asymmetry: Chemical Truth

• Vrenn cannot lie. Their chemical emissions broadcast their emotional state involuntarily. They gain Boon on Insight and detect deception automatically against any biological they have spent at least 1 minute near.
• Conversely, they cannot understand human deception. They suffer Bane on all rolls to lie, bluff, or detect human-written falsehoods (forgery, doctored video, coded language). Their Liaison must handle all human-style subterfuge.

Vrenn Technology

• Atmospheric Processor: Vrenn "breathing apparatus" for human environments. Actually enriches the air with nutrient aerosols. Without it, the Vrenn loses 1 END per hour.
• Chemical Communicator: Translates human speech into Vrenn chemical gradients and vice versa. Imperfect: emotional nuance is preserved, but abstract concepts (justice, nation, future) are translated as spatial-chemical metaphors.
• Colony Repair Kit: Restores 1D6 END. Requires 10 minutes of nutrient bath.

The Saan (Crystalline Slow-Thought)

Somatic: The Saan are not silicon robots. They are living crystals of silicon carbide and aluminum oxide, grown in high-pressure, high-temperature environments. A mature Saan is roughly the size and shape of a human torso, with fractal branching structures that maximize surface area for piezoelectric sensing. They move via controlled crystal deformation—slow, grinding, but immensely strong. They "see" via seismic vibrations and "hear" via infrasound conducted through rock.

Perceptual: Seismic-dominant. A Saan experiences the world as a three-dimensional field of density, stress, and vibration. They can "see" through walls, detect heartbeats at Medium range, and identify machinery by its vibration signature. They are effectively blind in freefall or on foam surfaces.

Energetic: Lithotrophs. They metabolize by catalyzing mineral reactions at their base. They require contact with rock or dense regolith. On a space station, they need a mineral substrate tray. They can survive for days without it, but suffer gradual degradation.

Cognitive: Extremely slow by human standards. A single "thought" takes 1–3 minutes. However, their cognition is massively parallel and perfectly predictive. A Saan does not react to events; it has already calculated their outcomes. They experience human behavior as a blur of chaotic, impulsive flickering—like trying to hold a conversation with mayflies.

Intersubjective: Saan society is geological. They communicate by embedding messages in rock strata—literally writing history into the planet. A Saan "conversation" may take decades. They find human urgency amusing and slightly tragic.

Ecological: Ancestral niche: deep lithosphere of super-Earths, feeding on mantle convection. They view the surface as a thin, ephemeral scum.

Technological: Saan technology is geological engineering. They do not build ships; they grow them from asteroids over centuries. Their weapons are seismic—resonance frequencies that shatter bone and rupture organs. Their computers are crystalline lattices that store data in atomic defects.

Saan Characteristics

Saan Traits

Advantage: Predictive Cognition

• Between adventures (or during any downtime of 1+ hours), the Saan may make a prediction. Roll INT 8+. Success: the Referee must answer one question honestly about a future event in the adventure ("What is the weakest point in the enemy's plan?" "What will happen if we take the left corridor?"). Exceptional Success: the Saan may declare one prepared action —they foresaw this moment and prepared accordingly (gain Boon on one roll in the predicted scene).
• In combat, the Saan does not roll initiative normally. They declared their action 3 rounds ago (or at the start of combat). They act on their predicted round with perfect execution (+2 DM). However, if the battlefield changes in an unpredictable way (an ally dies, a new enemy enters, a wall collapses), the prediction is invalidated and the Saan must spend 1 round recalculating (no action).

Limitation: Temporal Scaling

• A Saan PC acts once every 3 combat rounds (representing their deliberation speed). On their action round, they may perform any normal action with predictive precision.
• They may, however, react to immediate threats by delegating to their Liaison. The Liaison makes the roll, but the Saan provides Boon via pre-calculated advice.
• Outside of combat, tasks that take humans minutes take the Saan hours. They cannot participate in "rushed" tasks without suffering Bane.

Asymmetry: Seismic Truth

• Saan cannot deceive through vibration. Their entire body is a seismic emitter; stress and deception create detectable resonance patterns. They automatically detect any biological lie within Short range (the liar's heartbeat and micro-tremors betray them).
• However, they cannot understand human social deception —white lies, politeness, sarcasm, or implied meaning. They take everything literally. Their Liaison must translate all human social interaction.

Saan Technology

• Mineral Substrate Tray: Portable rock bed for space travel. Without it, lose 1 END per day.
• Resonance Projector: Weapon. Deals 3D6 damage to organics by matching resonant frequency. Ignores armor (vibration passes through). Range: Short. Requires 1 round to "tune" to target.
• Crystal Memory Shard: Stores perfect recordings of seismic data. Can be "read" by any Saan instantly.

The Aat (Topological Cognizers)

Somatic: The Aat are flat, ribbon-like organisms, 3–4 meters long and 30 centimeters wide, with a fractal edge structure that maximizes surface area. They have no "head" or "tail"—their nervous system is distributed along their entire body. They move via muscular rippling and hydraulic extension, capable of impressive speed in short bursts but preferring to remain draped over surfaces. They are amphibious, requiring high humidity but capable of surviving in air for hours.

Perceptual: The Aat are topologically aware. They do not perceive objects as distinct entities; they perceive relationships, boundaries, and containment. A room is not a box with things in it; it is a nested series of spaces. Time is not a line; it is a landscape they move through. They have primitive light-sensitive spots but no true vision—their primary sense is electroreception combined with pressure mapping of their own body surface.

Energetic: Opportunistic omnivores. They absorb nutrients through their skin from decaying matter, dissolved minerals, and small prey. They can go weeks without feeding but enter a torpor-like state.

Cognitive: The Aat do not think in causality. They think in adjacency. A human thinks: "I pushed the button, therefore the door opened." An Aat thinks: "The button and the door are adjacent in possibility-space; my action traversed the boundary between them." This makes them brilliant at navigation, logistics, and spatial reasoning, but baffled by human narrative, history, and cause-and-effect storytelling.

Intersubjective: Aat society is architectural. They do not have conversations; they build shared spaces. Two Aat meeting for the first time will spend hours rearranging their environment, creating a mutual topological map that represents their relationship. An Aat "insult" is creating a space that excludes the other. An Aat "compliment" is creating a passage that connects them.

Ecological: Ancestral niche: shallow, turbulent intertidal zones. Their fractal body plan evolved to withstand chaotic water flow while maximizing nutrient absorption.

Technological: Aat technology is fluid architecture. Their ships are not metal hulls but stabilized water systems —living environments where gravity, pressure, and flow are precisely controlled. Their computers are hydraulic calculation engines. Their "writing" is three-dimensional topological maps.

Aat Characteristics

Aat Traits

Advantage: Spatial Topology

• The Aat can ask the Referee one Spatial Truth per session: "What is the shortest path between these two points that avoids detection?" "Where is the structural weak point in this building?" "How many people are in the adjacent rooms?" The Referee must answer honestly.
• The Aat cannot become lost. They always know their precise topological relationship to any space they have visited.
• They gain Boon on all navigation, piloting, and engineering tasks involving spatial relationships (ship design, jump plotting, architecture).

Limitation: Causal Blindness

• The Aat cannot understand why things happen in sequence. They suffer Bane on all rolls involving:
  • Historical analysis (what led to this event?)
  • Social prediction (what will this person do next based on their past?)
  • Trap detection (they see the trap's spatial structure but not the intent behind it)
  • Initiative in chaotic combat (they see all positions simultaneously but cannot prioritize threats by sequence)
• Their Liaison must explain causality to them in real-time. In practice, the Liaison makes the roll, and the Aat provides Boon by reframing the problem spatially.

Asymmetry: Narrative Translation

• The Aat cannot tell lies that involve temporal sequence ("I will meet you tomorrow") because they do not experience tomorrow as distinct from now. However, they can create spatial falsehoods —maps that misrepresent topological relationships. They are the ultimate forgers of blueprints, star charts, and architectural plans.
• In social situations, the Aat provides Boon to human allies' Deception and Persuasion by reframing arguments as spatial relationships ("Your position is untenable because you are surrounded"). However, they suffer Bane when humans use temporal pressure ("We need to decide in 30 seconds").

Aat Technology

• Hydraulic Environment Suit: Maintains pressure and humidity for space travel. Without it, the Aat loses 1D6 END per hour and enters torpor.
• Topological Mapper: Projects 3D spatial relationships directly into the Aat's electroreceptive field. Grants +2 DM on navigation and sensors.
• Flow-Computer: Portable hydraulic calculation device. Can solve spatial-logic problems instantly but cannot process temporal data.

Alien NPCs & Encounters

Encounter Framework

When aliens appear as NPCs, do not treat them as humans with funny accents. Use the Encounter Protocol:

• Sensory Mismatch: What do the aliens perceive that the humans do not? What do they miss that humans notice?
• Motivational Mismatch: What do the aliens want? It is probably not money, power, or sex—at least not in human terms.
• Communication Mismatch: How do they communicate? Is it even possible without technology?

Example Encounter: The Vrenn Trade Delegation

The Vrenn do not want your money. They want your air. Specifically, they want the unique microbial cocktail that human ships vent into station atmosphere. To them, your waste is a gourmet nutrient blend. They are offering grown architecture—self-repairing hull patches—in exchange for access to your life support outflow.

Human Challenge: Negotiating with a species that cannot lie, finds your disgust reaction chemically fascinating, and does not understand "exclusive contract."

Gameplay: The Vrenn will agree to anything that provides nutrient access. They will also agree to conflicting contracts with your rivals because they do not understand exclusivity. The Liaison must translate "we want you to only work with us" into chemical-contractual terms.

Example Encounter: The Saan Arbitration

A Saan has been observing a human mining operation for 14 years. It has calculated that the mining will cause a tectonic instability in 300 years. It is not angry; it is simply informing you that your grandchildren's grandchildren will die unless you stop. It has already filed the paperwork.

Human Challenge: Convincing a species that operates on geological timescales that 300 years is an urgent problem.

Gameplay: The Saan cannot be bribed or threatened with short-term consequences. It can, however, be convinced via spatial logic (show it that the mine's collapse will destroy valuable crystal formations) or topological argument (an Aat Liaison could demonstrate that the mine creates an unstable stress pattern).

Example Encounter: The Aat Rescue

An Aat is trapped in a collapsing human habitat. It does not understand that the ceiling is about to fall because the support beam was damaged. It simply knows that the space is becoming more contained. It is not afraid of death; it is afraid of incorrect topology.

Human Challenge: Rescuing a being that will not move toward the exit because it perceives the exit and the collapse as equally valid spatial states.

Gameplay: The Aat will only move if the Liaison can demonstrate that one path has a "better" topological structure—more connections, more adjacency to safe spaces. The Aat may refuse to leave a dangerous room if the rescue route involves backtracking (topologically inferior).

Integration with 334 Cepheus Rules

Combat

Aliens use the same Personal Combat rules with species-specific modifications:

• Vrenn: No called shots. Immune to stun. Vulnerable to area-effect weapons (damages multiple colony nodes). Cannot use human weapons without prosthetic manipulators.
• Saan: Act every 3 rounds with predictive bonus. Immune to poison, disease, vacuum (but vulnerable to resonance weapons and rapid temperature change). Cannot use human small arms (no fingers).
• Aat: Can squeeze through any opening wider than 5cm (fractal body). Vulnerable to dehydration. Cannot operate human vehicles without topological interface adapters.

Psionics

Aliens and psionics interact unpredictably:

• Vrenn: Their distributed nervous system makes them resistant to Telepathy (Bane on telepathic attacks against them). However, a telepath who succeeds reads not one mind but a cacophony of colony voices—disorienting but informative.
• Saan: Their slow cognition makes Telepathy feel like reading a glacier. Surface thoughts are geological plans. Deep probes reveal million-year memories.
• Aat: Telepathy on an Aat does not reveal thoughts; it reveals spaces. The telepath experiences a hallucinatory architectural journey.

Trade & Economy

Alien economic systems are not interchangeable with human credit economies:

• Vrenn: Trade in nutrients, genetic material, and atmospheric rights. They do not value precious metals but will pay exorbitantly for rare bacterial strains.
• Saan: Trade in mineral rights, seismic data, and geological time-shares. They measure wealth in cubic kilometers of stable rock.
• Aat: Trade in topological access, flow rights, and spatial adjacency. They will pay for the right to "connect" two previously separate spaces.

Ship Design

Alien ships use human rules but with aesthetic and functional differences:

• Vrenn ships: Living ecosystems. Self-repairing but slow. Require humid, nutrient-rich atmosphere. Human passengers may find the air thick and fragrant.
• Saan ships: Grown asteroids. Massive, slow, virtually indestructible. No artificial gravity—they prefer acceleration via constant thrust at 0.3g.
• Aat ships: Fluid-filled tunnels. No "rooms" in the human sense—just continuous topological spaces. Human passengers need diving gear or sealed pods.

Alien Creation Quick Reference

The Checklist

• Somatic: Body plan, energy budget, lifespan, reproduction.
• Perceptual: Dominant sense(s), Umwelt, sensory blind spots.
• Energetic: Metabolism, resource needs, scarcity anxieties.
• Cognitive: Centralized or distributed? Fast or slow? Temporal or spatial? Memory architecture?
• Intersubjective: Social structure, conflict resolution, bonding mechanism.
• Ecological: Ancestral niche, instinctive behaviors, environmental preferences.
• Technological: Tool origin (exaptation), sensory bias, technological blind spots.
• Interface: What is the Cognitive Asymmetry? How do they interact with humans mechanically?
• Liaison: What does the alien need from a human partner? What does the human gain?

The Anti-Trope Checklist

Before finalizing your species, ensure it does NOT have:

• Bipedal humanoid symmetry
• A monoculture (all members share one personality, government, or religion)
• A "warrior" or "pacifist" essential nature
• Technology that is identical to human tech but with weird shapes
• A language that is "impossible to translate" (translation is hard, but not impossible with work)
• Emotions that map 1:1 to human emotions (anger, love, fear) without biological grounding
• A society based on a single human historical culture (Space Romans, Space Mongols, Space Samurai)

Appendix: Alien Character Sheet Addendum

SPECIES: _________________
LIAISON: _________________
SPECIES TRAITS
Advantage: ___________________________________
Limitation: __________________________________
Asymmetry: ___________________________________
SPECIES-SPECIFIC HEALTH
[ ] Integrity (if applicable)
[ ] Strain (if applicable)
[ ] Other: _______________
ENVIRONMENTAL REQUIREMENTS
[ ] Life support type: ________________________
[ ] Without support: __________________________
[ ] Diet/energy source: _______________________
SENSORY PROFILE
Dominant sense: ______________________________
Human-visible spectrum? [ ] Yes [ ] No
Human-audible range? [ ] Yes [ ] No
Other senses: ________________________________
TECHNOLOGICAL BIAS
Tool origin: _________________________________
Cannot use human: ____________________________
Requires adapter for: _________________________
LIAISON BONUSES
Alien provides Boon on: ______________________
Human provides Boon on: ______________________
Separation penalty: ___________________________

Xenosophonts — 334 Cepheus Supplement v1.0