Science Fantasy Factions - Oh No! Necro-Tokyo! Go Go Godzilla!

My ongoing Tolkienian Science Fantasy project is all about creating an easy-to-understand "french vanilla" setting by replacing the common character and monster species of fantasy with some well-known examples from science fiction.

In personal communication, From the Sorcerer's Skull described the project this way: "I think this idea could broadly be placed in a category of setting creation: Make a D&D setting as derivative as possible, while employing as little as possible of the usual stuff D&D campaigns are derived from."

I think that sounds right. You get something different and distinct from a plain vanilla fantasy setting, but because all the pieces used to assemble this campaign are easily recognizable in their own right, the setting as a whole should remain easy to understand and remember.

Today's faction is the Lizard Kingdom, which occupies the Monster Island Archipelago, and the skeletal ruins of the once-great city, Necro-Tokyo.

 

 

 
The most numerous residents of the Monster Islands are the time-traveling Sleestaks from the original Land of the Lost tv show. The first Sleestaks to join the Lizard Kingdom were incredibly technologically advanced, although their numbers were few. But having found a haven for their species, and wishing to secure both their own past and future survival, these Sleestak scientists set about transporting other Sleestak communities from across space and time to coexist in the tropical region of the Archipelago. 

Alas, the time travelers discovered that they represented the pinnacle of Sleestak science. Most of the other communities they found were stone-age tool users. The few remaining scientists are outnumbered by their machines, and vastly outnumbered by the temporally-displaced Sleestak migrants.

The technologically advanced Sleestaks might also be able to produce a class of infiltrators capable of disguising themselves as humans (or whatever other faction they're trying to subvert) based on the Visitors from the tv show V.

 

 

 
The mountain and desert regions of the Archipelago are patrolled by the Gorn, highly skilled and solitary hunters who gather to socialize only rarely. They're strong, intelligent, and cunning, with a keen understanding of stealth and ambush tactics. They have an ancestral hatred for humans and Apes, and owing to some famous historical encounter, prefer to arm themselves with bamboo-barreled rifles when fighting against primates.

If I wanted to add more variety to the Monster Islands' wilderness, I might add in some technologically advanced Dinosaucers, who are armed with high-tech laser pistols and bio-scanners and the like, and who can temporarily "dinvolve" into unthinking monstrous dinosaurs.

 

 

 

At the heart of the jungle, in the seat of the science Sleestaks' technological civilization is a compound that holds their greatest science leader, Kraid from the Super Metroid video game. Kraid sets the Sleestaks' agenda, directs their research, and reaps the rewards of their studies. Kraid is a genius and, thanks to some successful experiments, a giant. Kraid's political machinations and self-improvement programs are aimed at the eventual goal of seizing control of the whole of the Lizard Kingdom.

 

 

The revered, godlike ruler of the Monster Islands is, of course, Godzilla, from the original movie. Godzilla is the only living permanent resident of Necro-Tokyo. A city of ruined skyscrapers and abandoned pagodas, Godzilla patrols streets haunted by a thousand skeletons of the ages-gone human residents. The skeletons arise again each night to reenact a long-lost battle, led by the skull giant Gashadokuro. Each night, Godzilla wins again, and each day, he wanders amidst the bones.

Science Fantasy Factions - Sub-Planetary Territorial Unit of the Apes

In my post about Tolkienian science fantasy, I suggested creating a "french vanilla" setting by replacing elves, dwarves, and hobbits with famous science fiction species.

Today I want to do a little more worldbuilding on that setting by imagining a faction the player characters could encounter. The idea is the same as before - create something that's consistent with the themes and tropes of vanilla fantasy, but replace the usual monsters with species with famous creatures from scifi.

 First up is the Empire of the Apes, centered on the ruins of Empire City, located on Skull Island.

Most citizens of the Empire of the Apes are, well, Apes, from the Planet of the Apes films and tv series. In the films and show, Ape society has a division of labor by species. Orangutans perform the social labor, they're the political and religious leaders, the ones who make and enforce rules and give orders to others. I'd argue it would be logically consistent for them to have caretaking roles as well - taking care of children, the sick, the elderly. Chimpanzees perform intellectual labor, they're scientists and doctors, and arguably anyone who needs to read or write or do math as major part of their job. Gorillas perform physical labor, they're the workers, guards, and soldiers. I like to think that Apes don't divide up any jobs by gender, since they've already got this complex setup related to species.

As NPCs, I would probably just use human NPC statblocks for Apes. I don't see a strong reason for them to have unusual abilities, and their appearance differences are basically cosmetic. If somehow a player wanted to make a PC Ape, I would just stat them up as normal in whatever rule system, let them pick the class, and then suggest that they describe their appearance in terms of the species most likely to have that job. Unless for some reason they wanted to play an Ape who leaves their tribe to pursue an atypical career. 

(But Anne, I can almost hear one of you asking me, doesn't that mean that in 5e, with the standard statblock, I could make a weakling Gorilla with 8 STR and 10 CON, maxed-out CHA and only middling INT, and turn them into an ineffectual Wizard, a job that matches neither their species nor their stats? It does mean that, yes. There's nothing stopping you except your own and your fellow players' sense of what's appropriate. If you feel a compulsion to look for things the rules don't explicitly forbid you from doing, to use those things to achieve results that offend your own sense of logic and fairness, and then feel sad about having done so, that's maybe something you should talk with a counselor about, not a constructive basis for gaming criticism.) 

In addition to the majority population of Apes, the Empire of the Apes also has some rarer members. The Mugato from Star Trek have essentially animal intelligence, and are like, pretty common wildlife in the lands controlled by the Empire. Mugato have white fur, a giant horn growing from the tops of their heads, spikes growing down the lengths of their spines, and prehensile tails. They're also venomous, although surely Ape doctors keep vials of the anti-toxin on-hand (or maybe Apes are immune to Mugato poison?) 

I would probably treat Mugato as bears by selecting a simple monster in the 3-5 HD range, adding poison to their regular attack, adding a giant horn special attack, and perhaps giving them a defensive bonus from their spine spikes. If you wanted more variety, you could add six-limbed Martian White Apes from A Princess of Mars as a second wild animal that roams freely within the Empire. 

At lower levels, I would make a lone Mugato and a group of soldier Gorillas the greatest military threat the player characters might face. At higher levels though, anyone who stirs up trouble inside the Empire is likely to encounter a crowd of Mugato led by this guy, the Robot Monster from the mvie Robot Monster. The robot monster has the body of a giant gorilla and a skeletal head beneath a futuristic space helmet. Robot Monster is the Empire's chief enforcer. I would make him about 10 HD, and I'd definitely include his badass death ray attack. If you want to give the Imperial Ape Army a second general, I would probably pick Beast Man from the He-Man cartoon.

Of course the unquestioned ruler of the Empire of the Apes is King Kong, who rules Empire City from atop his throne on the roof of the Empire City Building. You could use the original version of Kong from the first King Kong movie, or you could make him much larger, like he's been depicted more recently. 

I would imagine this King Kong is capable of intelligent conversation when he's calm, and unthinking berserker frenzy when he's enraged. I think he's probably aloof from the day-to-day administration of the Empire though. He's more like a figurehead, maybe even worshiped as a god by the Apes below. He's also the Empire's mightiest champion, capable of laying waste to entire armies of non-god-level beings. (I think each faction has a leader like that. The primary threat to any one of these giant rules would be one of the others, or perhaps PCs who've figured out how to fight a god.)

  

As I said earlier, the Empire of the Apes is centered on the ruins of Empire City, which is basically just New York as it appears in Planet of the Apes or Escape from New York. The Apes maintain the ground level for habitation, but the upper stories of all the buildings are just empty shells with broken-out windows. King Kong probably mostly stays at the top of the skyscrapers while almost everyone else stays down on the ground. 

I think there should be several ruined Statues of Liberty around the city. Perhaps a small army of living Statues once attacked the City and tried to expel the Apes, and were defeated and destroyed? Regardless of how they got there though, their severed torsos and heads are major landmarks now.

The Ghosts of Tortoises

In a class I took on museum studies, we read Tangible Things, a companion volume to a Harvard University museum exposition of the same name. The purpose of the both the book and the original exhibit is to showcase objects that potentially cross the traditional classificatory boundaries that define the different types of museums, archives, and libraries.

For example, a tortoise shell that's both a zoological specimen and, because it's been carved with graffiti, a historical document from the 19th century whaling industry.

The attention to systems of classification was interesting, but my favorite parts of the book were the 16 profiles of chosen objects. And my favorite of those was the story of the Galapagos Tortoise shell.

The Galapagos Islands are named for the tortoises, and not, as I had assumed, the other way around.

The priamry human inhabitants of the Galapagos Islands were various kinds of sailors. English pirates used the islands as a base for launching raids on Spanish cargo ships starting in the 17th century. In the late 18th century, the pirates were mostly replaced by British whalers, and after the war of 1812, American whalers were the most common 19th century visitors.

They all loved eating tortoises, apparently considering tortoise meat to be one of the most delicious culinary delicacies available anywhere on earth. It wasn't just their favorite thing to eat while sailing. It was their favorite thing to eat, period.

Charles Darwin at tortoise meat, but was apparently unmoved by its flavor.

Galapagos Tortoise skeleton via Atlas Obscura

Sailors carried "small" 75 pound tortoises back to their boats by wearing them as backpacks. Larger tortoises had oars put underneath them and were carried back like a palanquin atop the shoulders of porters, or a coffin being borne by pallbearers.

It was routine for ships to bring hundreds of tortoises aboard on a single visit. They may have removed as many as ten-thousand tortoises per year during the peak of the whaling trade.

Tortoises that were too large to carry were turned into walking signboards by sailors who cut graffiti into their shells, like messages carved on treetrunks.

Herman Melville hunted tortoises while whaling, and wrote a novel about tortoise hunting. Somehow he lost the novel, he rewrote it as a short story, which was published as "The Encantadas".

A giant tortoise of the Ghost Archipelago via The Renaissance Troll

"The Encantadas" or "The Enchanted Isles" is what sailors used to call the Galapagos. The currents running between the islands are variable, and mist is common, creating the illusion of haunted islands that appear and disappear, or rearrange their locations between visits.

More than going to hell, sailors who had been to the Galapagos feared being reincarnated ... as tortoises.

Later in his life, Melville reported being haunted by guilt over tortoise hunting, and being unable to stop himself from imaging tortoises following him wherever he went. The ones he saw in nature, in parks and gardens, mostly made him sad, but he was terrified of the ghostly visions of tortoises he saw emerging from the shadows at parties in rich people's houses.

"Such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows were thrown into the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise."

The vengeful ghosts of turtles via Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

 

When You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss

In D&D it can sometimes seem like your only two options for enemy royalty are the chess king model - where the king is realistically weak and helpless compared to the knights and castles defending him - or what we might call the Into the Badlands baron model - where the reason he has become and remained the king is because he is the single greatest fighter in his own army.

We could probably also call this the "chess queen" model

A third model occurred to me when thinking about character classes like The Extras, The Financier, and The Crew - that is, royal villains and their retinue of loyal bodyguards are represented within the game mechanics as a single enemy creature. So royal monsters get higher HD as their rank goes up, not because they become better fighters, but because they become better protected by a larger staff of intermediaries.

The king is always surrounded by his most loyal bodyguards, and initially, any damage is dealt to the guards. The figure of the king, in this model, represents the last Hit Dice, perhaps even the last hit point - you don't get to touch him until all the guards are down. With apologies to both Omar Little and Ralph Waldo Emerson, when you strike at the king, you won't kill him, at least not until all his guards are out of the way.

The question of whether the king escapes and returns later with a new retinue, gets captured, gets executed, or is simply thrown out of the palace and exiled - this is a question the players can answer outside of combat. And except for possibility of daring escape, these are all questions that can be answered simply by the players coming to a consensus. Once the king is at their mercy, they no longer need to roll any dice to determine what happens to him.

I believe it was also Emerson who asked
"Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"

I was reminded of this idea during a conversation with Trey of From the Sorcerer's Skull, who suggested "A mechanic wherein Underbosses were like the ablative armor of the Big Boss would be interesting. The heroes don't get a chance to confront them until they've taken down enough "points" of Underbosses."

Mechanically, Trey thought you could borrow rules from the 2nd edition of Robin Laws's HeroQuest rules: "You could encounter a Boss without going through the Underbosses, but at that point the Boss is really high on the challenge curve and you're likely to get beat." 

Richard from Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse thought this was similar to the "onion skin campaign model" that's used in Sandy Peterson's Masks of Nyarlathotep. He adds that Patrick from False Machine is already using a rule like this in one of his current games where Richard's a player: "Having reduced a rival to 0, the attacker has to state they specifically want to kill/capture the king and use their forces against the remaining 1hp point."

And finally, Steve from Kaijuville thought this reminded him of a mechanic that sometimes shows up in Warhammer 40K: "Characters joined units that basically meant the unit became a Wound sink for the character. In hand-to-hand combat, enemies couldn't wound the character until they dealt with all the unit models."

Two Good Sources for Random Monsters

Below are a couple collections of links to the monster randomizers written by two prolific designers.

The links in the first collection are by Lum from Built By Gods Forgotten, who used a "remix" approach to randomize the abilities of the most classic D&D monsters.

The randomizers in the second collection are by Richard LeBlanc of Save vs Dragon. He uses a series of d30 rolls to randomize a creature's appearance, combat statistics, and special abilities.

Fortunately, both authors are from the pre Google Plus era of the Old School Renaissance, so they've both made each randomizer available as a one-page pdf. (Richard also wrote a number of unique new monsters, and both wrote a number of other generators worth looking at.)

Remixes - Built By Gods Forgotten

Dragons & Chimera
Esoteric Animals
Fey Woodland Beasts
Fey Woodland Humanoids
Gorgons Lycanthropes & Gargoyles
Humans
Humanoids
Otherworldly Monsters
Slimes Molds & Jellies
Undead

BONUS - Treasure Maps
BONUS - Treasure Hordes

EXAMPLE - The Widow of Hamelin is a beautiful woman's skeleton that's capable of a paralyzing touch and summoning rats, and is vulnerable only to silver and magic.

2 HD, AC 5, Atk 1d6 or special, Number Appearing 3d6-2. 
Special: must transform into a hideous monster to use special attacks, touch (save or paralyzed for d6 rounds), summon (call d100 rats, 3 times/day).

d30 Variations - Save vs Dragon

Bandits
Bards
Berserkers & Barbarians
Chimeras
Dinosaurs  
Dragons
Dwarves
Elves 
Fiends
Ghouls & Ghasts
Giants
Gnolls 
Goblins
Hauntings
Jellies Oozes Puddings & Slimes
Kobolds 
Minotaurs
Mummies
Orcs
Paladins
Plant Monsters
Rats
Sea Creatures
Skeletons
Snakes
Spiders
Troll Mutations
Wizards 
Worms
Zombies

BONUS - Treasure Maps 

EXAMPLE - Runed Skeleton, immune to divine damage, weapon: short sword (1d8)
 AC 7, 1 HD, Atk  1d6 or by weapon, Number appearing 3d4, Save as Fighter 1, Morale 12, Treasure nil, Alignment Chaotic.

Procedural Generation Demonstration - Two Chromatic Islands

Evlyn at Le Chaudron Chromatique has created a minigame for referees to create island ecologies. She recommends starting with an encounter list, removing half the inhabitants (maybe they went extinct, maybe they never made it onto the island), then allowing the surviving inhabitants to speciate to enter the vacant ecological niches, and finally allowing the original survivors to evolve due to genetic drift.

Even starting from an extremely mundane encounter list, it's a procedure that's guaranteed to lead to weirdness.

Evlyn uses the Labyrinth Lord "Forest/Wooded" Wilderness Encounter Table.

For fun, I thought I'd try it again, using the D&D 5e "Sylvan Forest Encounters" from the Dungeon Master Guide. (I've modified the list to remove the non-creature entries, and to separate entries where you would encounter 2 different creatures at once.)

Also for fun, I thought I'd see what would happen if two different islands separated off the same mainland.


Step 1: First we see what species survive on each island. Evlyn suggests that half the mainland die off or fail to migrate, and half survive on the island.

ISLAND A
1 displacer beast
1d4 gnolls
2d4 hyenas
1 giant owl
1 dryad
1d4 satyrs
1d4 centaurs
2d4 elven scouts
2d4 pixies
2d4 sprites
1 owlbear
1d4 elks
1 giant elk
1d4 blink dogs
1d4 faerie dragons
1 elf druid
1 treant
1 unicorn

ISLAND B
1 displacer beast
1d4 gnolls
2d4 hyenas
1 giant owl
1 dryad
1d4 satyrs
1d4 centaurs
2d4 elven scouts
2d4 pixies
2d4 sprites
1 owlbear
1d4 elks
1 giant elk
1d4 blink dogs
1d4 faerie dragons
1 elf druid
1 treant
1 unicorn


Step 2: Next, we allow existing species to split off new species to fill the vacant ecological niches. Evlyn has a table to roll on to see which traits the new species "pick up" from convergent evolution into the niche, and any trait not "picked up" in this way should stay the same from the original species. 5e doesn't have Morale or Hoard Classes, but it does have official creature types and bolded descriptors used to organize the entry in the Monster Manual, so I'm going to use those instead.

ISLAND A
1d4 gnolls - replaced by unicorn, adopts 4 traits (AC, HD/size, special ability, appearance)
2d4 hyenas - replaced by treant, adopts 5 traits (AC, attack type, damage, special ability, Appearance)
1 giant owl - replaced by treant, adopts 3 traits (AC, saves, special ability)
1d4 centaurs - replaced by displacer beast, adopts 3 traits (alignment, movement, creature type)
2d4 elven scouts - replaced by giant elk, adopts 6 traits (number, AC, HD/size, descriptor, special ability, appearance)
2d4 sprites - replaced by giant elk, adopts 4 traits (alignment, movement, AC, HD/size)
1d4 elks - replaced by treant, adopts 3 traits (AC, descriptor, appearance)
1d4 blink dogs replaced by displacer beast, adopts 4 traits (alignment, attack type, damage, creature type)
1d4 faerie dragons - replaced by treant, adopts 4 traits (number, alignment, special ability, appearance)

ISLAND B
1 displacer beast - replaced by dryad, adopts 6 traits (alignment, movement, AC, attack type, saves, appearance)
1d4 gnolls - replaced by satyrs, adopts 4 traits (number, movement, attack type, special ability)
1d4 centaurs - replaced by giant owl, adopts 3 traits (movement, damage, creature type)
2d4 elven scouts - replaced by pixies, adopts 4 traits (attack type, saves, creature type, special ability)
1 giant elk - replaced by sprites, adopts 2 traits: (number, saves)
1d4 faerie dragons - replaced by hyenas, adopts 5 traits (number, movement, HD/size, damage, appearance)
1 elf druid - replaced by sprites, adopts 5 traits (movement, AC, HD/size, damage, special ability)
1 treant - replaced by giant owl, adopts 4 traits (movement, AC, HD/size, appearance)
1 unicorn - replaced by blink dogs, adopts 6 traits: (AC, attack type, saves, creature type, descriptor, appearance)


Step 3: Third, we allow each of the surviving species to experience genetic drift, so that they chance from the mainland baseline.

ISLAND A
1 displacer beast - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 dryad - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 satyrs - random characteristic variant (modify: descriptor)
2d4 pixies - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 owlbear - random characteristic variant (modify: appearance)
1 giant elk - random characteristic variant (modify: creature type)
1 elven druid - hyper variant (intensify: damage)
1 treant - hyper variant (intensify: saves)
1 unicorn - random characteristic variant (modify: saves)

ISLAND B
2d4 hyenas - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 giant owl - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1 dryad - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 satyrs - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
2d4 pixies - stunted variant (dilute: number)
2d4 sprites - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 owlbear - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 elks - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1d4 blink dogs - hyper variant (intensify: HD/size)


Step 4: The final step is to put it all back together into an encounter list for each island.


A - THE ISLAND OF CATS, ELK, AND TREES

1d4 dwarf displacer beasts (as displacer beast, except: size medium, 10d8+20 hp)

1 gnoll-like unicorn (as unicorn, except: size medium, 5d8 hp, add Rampage ability, appearance "feral humanoid with one-horned horse head")

1 hyena-like treant (as treant, except: AC 11, attack bite +2 melee weapon (1d6 piercing damage), add Pack Tactics ability, appearance "huge fallen tree with knot-holes like spots, stalks on four limbs")

1 giant-owl-like treant (as treant, except: AC 12, save S+1 D+2 C+2 I-1 W+1 C+0, add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability)

1 giant dryad (as dryad, except: size large, 5d10+5 hp)

1d4 variant-descriptor satyrs (as satyrs except: remove Hedonistic Revelers descriptor, add descriptor Abstemious Perfectionists "satyrs spend long hours practicing and perfecting their music, forswearing any distractions or mind-altering substances, living only to prepare themselves for seasonal concerts which they carry off flawlessly")

1 centaur-like displacer beast (as displacer beast, except: alignment neutral good, creature type fey, speed 50 ft)

2d4 elf-scout-like giant elk (as giant elk, except: AC 13, size medium, 3d8+3 hp, add Scout descriptor, add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability, appearance "humanoid elk with antlers")

2d6 dwarf pixies (as pixies, except: 1d3-1 hp)

1 sprite-like giant elk (as giant elk, except: alignment neutral good, speed 10 ft / fly 40 ft, AC 15, size tiny, 1d4 hp)

1 variant-appearance owlbear (as owlbear, except: appearance "panther body, wooden face, lion's mane of leaves")

1 elk-like treant (as treant, except: AC 10, appearance "huge fallen tree with crown of antler-like branches, bounds on four limbs")

1 variant-creature-type giant elk (as giant elk, except: creature type plant)

1 blink-dog-like displacer beast (as displacer beast, except: alignment lawful good, attack bite +3 melee weapon (1d6+1 piercing damage), creature type fey)

1d4 faerie-dragon-like treants (as treants, except: alignment chaotic good, add Innate Spellcasting ability, appearance "huge fallen tree with pair of leafy wing-like branches and root tail, hops and flits about")

1 hyper-damage elven druid (as elven druid, except: all attacks increase dice by two sizes, quarterstaff deals 1d10+2, produce flame deals 1d12+2, shillelagh deals 1d12+2, thunderwave deals 2d12+4)

1 hyper-saving treant (as treant, except: save S+12 D-2 C+10 I+2 W+6 C+2)

1 variant-saving unicorn (as unicorn, except: save S+0 D+3 C+3 I+4 W+2 C+2)


B - FAERIE AND GIANT ISLAND

1 displacer-beast-like dryad (as dryad, except: alignment lawful evil, speed 40ft, AC 13, attack tentacle multiattack, two +6 melee weapons (each 1d4 bludgeoning, 1d8+4 bludgeoning with shillelagh), save S+4 D+2 C+3 I-2 W+1 C-1, appearance "woman with dark green skin, black leaves instead of hair, two legs, four arms, two leafy vine tentacles growing from her back, cruel laugh, glowing emerald eyes")

1d4 gnoll-like satyrs (as satyrs, except: speed 30 ft, attack bite +4 melee weapon (2d4+1 bludgeoning damage), attack spear +4 melee or ranged weapon (1d6+3 piercing damage), attack longbow +3 ranged weapon (1d6+3 piercing damage), add Rampage special ability)

2d6 dwarf hyenas (as hyenas, except: size small, 1d6 hp)

1 giant giant owl (as giant owl, except: size huge, 3d12+6 hp)

1 giant dryad (as dryad, except: size large 5d10+5 hp)

1d6 dwarf satyrs (as satyrs, except: size small, 7d6-7 hp)

1 centaur-like giant owl (as giant owl, except: Speed 50 ft, Attack: Talons +3 melee weapon attack (2d6+4 bludgeoning damage), creature type monstrosity)

2d4 elven-scout-like pixies (as pixies, except: attack multiattack, two shortswords +4 melee (each 1d6+2 piercing), two longbows +4 ranged (each 1d8+2 piercing), save S+0 D+2 C+1 I+0 W+1 C+0, creature type humanoid (elf), add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability)

1 stunted-number pixie (as pixie)

2d6 dwarf sprites (as sprites, except: 1d3-1 hp)

1 giant owlbear (as owlbear, except: size huge, 7d12+28 hp)

1d6 dwarf elk (as elk, except: size medium, 2d8 hp)

1 giant-elk-like sprite (as sprite, except: save S+4 D+3 C+2 I-2 W+2 C+0)

1d4 hyper-sized blink dogs (as blink dogs, except: size huge, 4d12+12 hp)

1d4 faerie-dragon-like hyenas (as hyenas, except: speed 10 ft / fly 60 ft, size tiny, 4d4+4 hp, attack deals 1 piercing damage, appearance "cat-sized hyenas with rainbow-hued fur and butterfly wings, they wear sharp-toothed grins and their tails twitch with merriment")

2d4 elf-druid-like sprites (as sprites, except: speed 30 ft, AC 11, size medium, 5d8+5 hp, attack deals 1d6 damage, add Spellcasting special ability)

1 treant-like giant owl (as giant owl, except: speed 30 ft, AC 16, size huge, 12d12+60 hp, appearance "a huge owl with feathers like green leaves, its face like a mask carved from wood")

1d4 unicorn-like blink dogs (as blink dogs, except: AC 12, attack multiattack, horn +7 melee (1d8 +4 magical piercing), paws +7 melee (2d6+4 magical bludgeoning), save S+4 D+2 C+2 I+0 W+3 C+3, creature type fey, add Divine Guardians descriptor, appearance "white furred dogs that twinkle like starlight as they blink in and out of existence, a single spiral horn grows from each of their foreheads")


Final Thoughts: There's always something meditative about solo procedural generation, but trying to do this for a 20-item list (twice!) is maybe pushing the boundaries of what's feasible as preparation. This would probably work best with a shorter initial encounter list. More cosmetic and fewer mechanical changes might actually affect the player experience more.

It might also be interesting to utilize something like this method for an island-hopping game where the players will get to see multiple alternate ecosystems - especially if they can see them without having to fight all of them.

Three Alternate Monster Lists

Brother Juniper from Goblin Flowers recently asked a question about alternate monster lists that jogged my memory for a few classic ones.
 

 
Roger G-S from Roles, Rules, and Rolls made Varlets & Vermin, 28 pages of low HD monsters and a smattering of public domain woodcuts that are exactly what you'd expect from the author of the Pergamino Barocco.

"Demi-Real Monster - When a summoning goes partly wrong, or an illusion of a living thing takes on existence, a demi-real creature is created. The monster starts out half-transparent and shaky in form. The monster gains hit dice by leaving its mark on the world - most often this means scoring damage in combat. Once it has its full hit dice it is permanently real. If killed before then, its body will waver and wink out of existence. A demi-real creature that is aware of its existential condition, and able to communicate, may very well try to negotiate a different way to gain full reality than fighting a dangerous group of adventurers."
 
 

 
Zenopus Archives wrote One Hit Point Monsters, which is 20 entries of exactly what it sounds like. I've admired this blog's creativity before, so I'm not surprised I enjoy these.

"Danse Macabre - Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters for 2d6 turns. Only attack if resisted. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving a reward. Entire group turns as ghouls."
 
 

 
Al Krombach from Beyond the Black Gate made 6 tables of 20 monsters as Alternative Wandering Monster Tables. There are no descriptions here, so the evocative names do all the heavy listing. Al is coauthor of Warlords of Mars (which really would have looked lovely in a color edition), and his collaborator Thomas Denmark wrote his own OD&D monster book called Beasties.

"Level One - Beetle, Nuclear; Level Two - Ooze, Stop Motion; Level Three - Obsidian Judge; Level Four through Five - Wereslugs; Level Six through Seven - Spiderbear; Level Eight - Toad of the Abyss."

Two Salt-Throned Alien Cultures

Over at Throne of Salt, Dan has set up a series of generators for making alien cultures, at least partial inspired by Ursula LeGuin's Hain Cycle of books and stories. Dan recommends choosing 3 of his 25 cultural trait tables, and maybe 1d3 mutations from Coins & Scrolls biological mutation list. I'm also going to assign each culture a trait from one of Melsonian Arts Council's planar culture generators.

These took quite a bit of thought to make coherent sense of, so I can't recommend trying to do this at the table. These procedures should be used during preparation only.
 
 
Culture 1 - The Skyminders
 
Danscape cultural traits - age, learning, rank
Age: "Transitions celebrated: child to youth, youth to adult, adult to elder."
Learning: "Learning must be active, rooted in traveling and interacting."
Rank: "Higher status means more trepannations, so as to let more spirits of the open sky into the mind."

Melsonian cultural trait - dress
Dress: "Nudity as social scale. The rich wear nothing while the poor dress in endless filthy layers. Nudity represents the access to warmth? The opposite may be true, where the rich wear clothes 'cos it's valuable, the poor are prevented. Like the the old Imperial Purple. Origins or traditions may be misty. Skin painting a distinct possibility."

Biological mutations - burst of speed, cilia lips, mirrored hands
Burst of Speed:  "Once per day, can double movement for 10 minutes."
Cilia Lips: "Wriggly. Seals food inside. Like kissing a millipede."
Mirrored Hands: "They swap sides."

The Skyminders' ancestors were fully aquatic, and their lowest classes are still required to dwell fully underwater, their minds closed to the sky. The working and middle classes live in partially flooded districts, the water level in any given neighborhood carefully indicating its status. Only the elites live fully on land, atop spires, in fact, to be closer to the sky-spirits and further from the sea.

The Skyminders' bodies and attires are as closely calibrated to their social position as their homes are. The elites have the entire tops of their skulls removed, so that their brains are fully opened to the air, and their minds fully opened to the sky-spirits. They alone are permitted to go nude. Beneath them, the middle classes may, over the course of a distinguished life, attain a filigree of trepannations, while a worker at the start of their career has only their fontanel open to the heavens. It is a crime to wear fewer clothes than the holes in one's head would indicate, and a mark of shame to wear more. The lowest classes go swaddled in public, with even their heads and faces wrapped tight to prevent them from polluting the sky-spirits by contact. Criminals are welded into a prison of metal masks and clothes that block them from the sky.

Outsiders, of course, are the lowest of all, though it is confusing that they arrive from on high, closer to the sky-spirits even than the highest of spire-dwelling elites. But they must be low, for are they not covered completely? Do they not wear impervious suits to separate themselves from the sky? Do they not bring their own gasses in tanks, so that they may breath without inhaling the sky?

Skyminders are born shelled, and as they age, shed their stiffer skins for the supple blubbery leather of adulthood. Each shedding is a great occasion, celebrated as fully as a new trepannation, or the glorious skull removal ceremony. Each upward (or downward) movement in status is also a going-away, it must be accompanied by travel to a new place, to be around others who now share one's new caste, and away from those who might remember one as they were before. The Skyminders' bodies still bear the signs of their aquatic past. Their hands are fins, their mouth adapted for bottom-feeding, their thick skin requiring no clothes to stay warm atop the coldest peaks.

Though outsiders are obviously the lowest of the low, still when they visit, they are sometimes allowed to accompany a Skyminder into areas where their level of clothedness would otherwise be forbidden. For though they must surely be great sinners and criminals to be locked in such suits and shunned from the heavens, still, the Skyminders appreciate the tales of anyone who has traveled so far.


Culture 2 - The Dragonkin
 
Danscape cultural traits - learning, child-rearing, work
Learning: "Oral histories and folklore, taught by extended family members."
Child-rearing: "Members of eunuch caste act as teachers and caretakers."
Work: "Labor ought serve the public good first, and the personal good second."
 
Melsonian cultural trait - family
Family: "All social engagement is official. Marriage ceremonies, friend ceremonies, enemy ceremonies. Most significant interactions must be played out within the confines of a relationship or else is considered illegal/immoral."
 
Biological mutations - snake tongue, the vapours
Snake Tongue: "Can extend up to 1'. "
The Vapours: "Your breath comes out in foggy white burps. -2 Stealth."

The Dragonkin are the descendants of dragons, those great firebreathing beasts that still dwell in the Kins' zoological gardens and nature preserves and on the Forbidden Continent. The Dragonkin still hatch from spherical amphibian eggs like their ancestors, and their juvenile forms look just like miniature dragons, until they metamorphose into their adult bodies.

Like the ancestral dragons, the Kin possess tongues that extend half their bodylength, and blazing chemical furnaces inside their chests that superheats any moisture they inhale past the boiling point, so that their breath comes out in a great billowing fog. The poets of the Dragonkin have always practiced a form of cloud calligraphy, using their long tongues to shape their exhalations into cloudforms that either mimic or provide ironic commentary on their words - although few lay Kin possess the skill to practice this art.

The dragons are a perpetual reminder to the Kin of their animal past, and so the Dragonkin place great importance on rules and rituals, the only things (or so they believe) that keep them from reverting to their ancestral brutality. The most fearsome monsters in Dragonkin folk tales are monsters with the hearts and minds of dragons hidden in the bodies of Kin.

The Dragonkin have ceremonies for all good behaviors - and any behavior not honored by the proper ceremony is automatically not good. Every interaction between business associates, friends, even family members, plays out in a choreographed ritual, a scripted dance that allows slight improvisation, but only within strict confines. There are rituals for working, for shopping, for eating and bathing, for sports and games, for love. Every ritual is for the benefit of others, for the good of the community of Kin.

To take any action outside the prescribed ritual, to perform any service purely for the good of oneself, is to give in to the beating heart of the dragon that races inside every Kin's breast; each step outside the path is a temptation to wander further and further away, to venture into the Forbidden Continent of the soul. The choreographers who devise new rituals are among the Kins' greatest artist, but they are also seen as heretics, their new dances perhaps invitations to enact the old and bestial ways.

The tales of the dragons, the history of the Kin, every dance and ritual, every useful skill, these are taught to the young by a blessed caste of sacred eunuchs, who perform a special rite just before the final metamorphosis into the Kin's mature and gendered forms. The eunuchs give up the chance to lay eggs or fertilize them, to become the matriarchs and paters of Kin society, in order to birth adult minds rather than infant bodies, in order to become the parents of civilization itself.

It took some time for the Dragonkin to recognize the morality of the outsiders, who wear Kin-shaped eggs over their entire bodies, for the outsiders' behavior did not initially conform to the Dragonkin's own ceremonies, and the ceremonies of the outsiders are strange and all but invisible to Kin eyes. Many Kin still fear the outsiders, who (though they have eunuchs) have no single caste that fulfills all the eunuchs' sacred duties. Many Kin fear that the outsiders, inside their strange eggshells, have the hearts of dragons, the secret sinful souls of the ancient monsters.

The Invaders - Invid, Inheritors, Dreamers, Ividia

The Invid were one of the first monsters I ever wanted to fight. The Invid are the villains of season 3 of Robotech.

The villains of season 2 of Robotech, the Robotech Masters, spend about half the season worrying that the Invid are coming. While the human heroes of the story are all going crazy wondering whether they can beat the Robotech Masters and their seemingly invincible army of clone pilots and bioroid mechas, the Masters themselves are going crazy because they're certain they CAN'T beat the Invid, and their only hope is to hurry up and finish things on Earth so they can run away before the Invid get here. In other words, the Invid are introduced by reputation as the REALLY BAD GUYS that even the regular bad guys are scared of. I have to tell you, as a suspense-building device, kid me found it pretty successful.
 

The evolution of the Invid from the Legends of Zor comic

 
Season 3 of Robotech opens with the Invid coming to Earth and completely wrecking up the place, so that the rest of the season is set in a ravaged, post-apocalyptic wasteland where humans are barely eking out subsistence. Which is to say, from the moment of their arrival, they absolutely lived up to their reputation.

The Invid we see appear to be crab-like crustaceans with partially mechanical/electronic components. On the show, it's ambiguous if what we're seeing are the Invid themselves, form-fitting suits of battle armor the Invid wear, oversized mecha with the same body-plan as their human-sized pilots, or mecha with entirely different looking aliens inside. (It's possible, for example, that the blue-green ooze that bleeds out when the armor is pierced IS the pilot, not the pilot's blood.)
 

Invid Scouts
This and subsequent images from the Robotech Picture Archive

 

Invid Armored Souts

 

Invid Trooper

 

Invid Shock Trooper

 
The Invid come to Earth seeking the Flower of Life. In season 1 of Robotech, a battle fortress crashes into the Earth, and the alien Zentradi come to seize it. Humans eventually repel the Zentradi  invasion. The battle fortress is so desirable in part because it's fueled by a large supply of a power source called Protoculture. In season 2, the Robotech Masters come to Earth to try to retrieve the Protoculture for themselves. Unfortunately, over the course of the season, the Flower of Life starts growing in the Protoculture, which makes it both useless to the Masters, and irresistible to the Invid, who can sense its presence from across the galaxy.

There are some interesting anti-colonial themes and themes of decadence at work in all this. The Robotech Masters enslaved the Zentradi, turned them into giants, and gave them their fleet of warships, but by the start of season 1, the Zentradi have escaped from the Masters' control, and are just a roaming army. They know how to pilot their warships, but not how to repair them or build more, and everything looks pretty heavily worn, even broken. They're hoping the battle fortress that crash-landed on Earth will include schematics that will let them make things and not just use them.

The Robotech Masters have also forgotten some of their technology. They can use Protoculture to grow clones, build bioroid mecha, and fuel their whole civilization, but they no longer remember how to make more Protoculture. They want the battle fortress basically just to buy time. The entire season, we see them fighting at far less than full strength because they're almost out of fuel. They want to seize the Protoculture in the fortress to replenish their supply, and it's pretty heavily implied that if they fail, they'll go extinct. They might be doomed even if they seize it though, since they have no particular plan to relearn how to synthesize the stuff for themselves, and the fortress might be the last great untapped supply anywhere in the galaxy. What they need is renewable energy, and instead, they're going absolutely all-in on using up the last bit of irreplaceable fuel.

Meanwhile, the Flower of Life itself is like a prion or a parasite, at least from the Robotech Masters' perspective. They describe it as both a pest that grows in Protoculture and as a mutation of Protoculture itself. Regardless, the Flower of Life contains all the energy of Protoculture, but in a form that's unusable to the Zentradi or the Masters. The Invid, we're told, were once either non-sentient, or at least a non-technological species from the same planet where Protoculture originated. The Masters' uplifted the Invid and enslaved them to either grow Protoculture, or to grow the Flower of Life and convert it into Protoculture. By the time of the show, the Invid have also escaped the Masters' control, and now outnumber and overpower them. All the old Protoculture farms are controlled by Invid who use them to grow the Flower of Life for themselves, and when they come to Earth, it's to enslave humans to farm and harvest the Flower of Life for them.
 

The Invid Flower of Life

 
The Invid use bio-technological Genesis Pits to experiment with ways to better adapt the Earth to their own purposes. They also use the Pits to transform a few of themselves into human-like bodies.

So to summarize, the Invid are simultaneously the sympathetic victims of a colonialist empire, and a terrifying unstoppable invasion force. They come to Earth to transform it into a slave-tended garden for growing their sole food-source, the Flower of Life. And they control their own biology to such an extent that we see them as both giant crab-robots and as humanoid spies.
 

Marlene was grown to be an Invid spy,
but her egg was damaged and she hatched with amnesia

 

Sera retained her memories,
but found that her human form gave her human emotions

 
Now these are absolutely some monsters I want to fight. BUT, they also remind me of some other monsters, and so rather than leave well enough alone, I want to put my own take on them for Gilded Age horror gaming. What shall we call these not-Invid? I think I would call them the Invidia, the Invaders.

In Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford's novel The Inheritors, the eponymous Inheritors are humanoid invaders from the Fourth Dimension who are endlessly fascinating to actual humans, and who are successfully able to exploit this fascination to ascend to fame, power, and prominence within British society. The book ends at about the point when they're about to move from acquiring power to using it to remake the world.

The Inheritors look basically human, but their presence is like a superstimulus that overwhelms most people's psychological defenses against being abused or manipulated. It's sort of not clear to me if Conrad and Ford intended these characters to be alien invaders, or just like a new "breed" of modern humans who are unbounded by tradition - but for the sake of gameability, let's go with aliens. Likewise, it's not clear if they intend the Fourth Dimension to be a literal place, or just a metaphor, and both interpretations of 4D were pretty popular at the time, but again, for the sake of gaming, let's assume it's a place. If the Inheritors are from another world, and take on human-like bodies when they come to ours, it's possible that they have another appearance entirely when they're at home.
 

The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story by Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford, 1901

In Samuel Delaney's short story "Aye, and Gomorrah", Spacers are essentially a third gender of humanity. Delany describes them as being agender and asexual. They live full-time in space stations that orbit the Earth, but can teleport down to the planet for recreation. When they come down, they're idolized, exoticized, and fetishized by "frelks" - people whose only sexual attraction is to Spacers. The story seems to imply that most people have a low opinion of both frelks and Spacers, and Spacers seem to see frelks' attraction to them as basically a joke. Throughout the story, frelks basically beg Spacers to exploit them, and Spacers are easily able to get cash, or a favor, or a laugh at a frelk's expense.

Although Delaney writes about a public that is distinctly un-sympathetic to his main characters, he seems to be pretty sympathetic to both the frelks and the Spacers, while showing that their relationships aren't healthy for either party. They kind of can't be, since they're fleeting, and so one-sided. But what if Spacers were more like Inheritors? What if almost everyone fell in one-sided love with them the way frelks do?
 

Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison, 1967

 
In James Tiptree's story "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side", humans have encountered aliens, and have joined galactic civilization. We're the newest members, so we have the least technology, least political power, and are economically the poorest species in galactic civ. And a significant portion of humanity becomes sexually obsessed with aliens from the moment we first meet them.

Tiptree describes this almost exactly like superstimulus - whatever qualities we find attractive in other humans, aliens simply have MORE of those qualities, more than any human ever could, so much MORE that we become unable to feel attraction for other humans again. The humans who love aliens love them desperately and one-sidedly, and never seem to get more than a pity-fuck out of their pursuit. Tiptree never says if the aliens who go along with this exploit their human lovers, economically or in any other way. But the relationships are clearly unhealthy, both emotionally and physically, as every human who loves aliens is shown to have permanent injuries they sustained during sex.

The Invid spies with human bodies do elicit deep feelings of affection and attraction in season 3 of Robotech, but throughout the series, love between humans and aliens occurs over and over because both sides sometimes find one another alluring and irresistible. The difference is, in Robotech, this love is shown to be reciprocal and valuable. The xeno-philia or xeno-sexuality of humans and aliens alike proves again and again to be the first step toward greater mutual understanding and diplomacy. Robotech is a war story - three war stories, really - but in each season, it's people who feel inter-species attraction who make the first overtures to peace. Tiptree's vision is different, like Delaney, she imagines a lopsided attraction that leaves one side willing to sacrifice everything, and the other side only willing to condescend to interact at all for the sake of receiving their sacrifices.

(Quick thought that serves no purpose: what if there were a setting were "homosexual" referred to ANY humans who loved humans - who loved the SAME species as themselves, who loved other HOMO sapiens? What if "heterosexual" referred to humans who loved aliens - who loved DIFFERENT species? That has no real relevance to what I'm talking about here, but I would find that to be a fascinating linguistic drift.)
 

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1972

 
To take another tack, in D&D's Eberron setting, the Inspired are humanoid bodies inhabited by the minds of extra-dimensional aliens - the Quori from Dal Quor. The humanoids are explicitly described as being not quite human. Their species, when not combined with a Quori to become an Inspired, are simply called Empty Vessels. The art depicting the Inspired often shows a phantasmal Quori floating behind the Inspired body. Personally, I interpret this not just as a way of illustrating that we're looking at an Inspired rather than a human, but as an indication that the Inspired sometimes project psychic images of their Quori when they're being overt about their identities.
 

Inspired and Quori

 

Inspired and Quori surrounding adventurers

 
In Jack Shear's Umberwell setting, he describes a species he calls Dreamers. Just describes Dreamers like this: "Dreamers are a rebirthed race; they are the souls of an insectoid species originating from a lost age of the city’s history reincarnated in bodies indistinguishable from the human form. If the theory that the city’s islands are the remains of a dead god is true, it may be the case that the insectoid souls of the dreamers achieved their initial sentience and innate psionic powers by feeding on a divine body as parasites. When they sleep they dream only of Scarabae - the precursor city that stood on the islands currently occupied by Umberwell."

You could imagine Dreamers as being like the Inheritors - human bodies with alien minds. You could imagine them like the Khepri from Perdido Street Station, as humanoids who simply followed a different evolutionary path to arrive at much the same place humans did. You could imagine them like the Insect-kinden from Empire in Black and Gold, as humans whose psychic powers and tribal identities draw on actual insects as a source of imagery and fictive-kinship. Or you could imagine them like the Inspired - humanoid bodies with phantasmal insects hovering behind them, like the totem animals that appear DC comics' Vixen or Mera use their superpowers.
 

Umberwell: Blackened be Thy Name by Jack Shear, 2018

 

Lin the Khepri by Justin Oaksford, 2011

In Greek myth, Invidia is the goddess of jealousy. Invasion, I think, could be imagined to be like jealousy. You want what someone else has, and you try to take it away from them.
 

Circe Invidiosa by John Williams Waterhouse, 1892

 
From there, it's a simple misspelling to arrive at Ividia, a genus within the family of pyramid-shelled snails. Is there any animal more D&D than a snail? It's almost too perfect to learn that Ividia snails are hermaphroditic, and usually parasites.
 

Turbonilla acutissima, not a member of the Ividia genus,
but still part of the Pyramidellidae family

And that, I think, is enough to start building our Invaders, our Invidia.

The Invaders come to us from somewhere beyond. Some of them claim to hail from the Crab Nebula, situated in the night sky between Aldebaran and the Pleiades. Others claim a kingdom within the Fourth Dimension, a realm but a sidestep away from our own reality.

The Invidia appear to us in humanoid guises. They are intoxicatingly beautiful, with flawless androgynous features. Some dress in men's clothes, others in women's, others in some mix. They claim no human gender, and each addresses itself like royalty, as "we" and "our". Those humans who have seen the Invidia without their clothes claim that all their bodies are alike, no matter what they wear, and that the resemblance to humanity only goes so far before giving way to impossible alien anatomy, unattainable foreign beauty. Those humans who have been trusted to see the Invidia like this are inevitably too far gone to really return to humanity. The rest of their lives will be spent as the Invidia's evangels.

Humans are like thrall before the Invidia. We lack the strength to refuse them, lack the will to oppose their desires. The first encounter with an Ividia is an unsettling, uncanny experience. They seem too good to be human, too perfect. Their strength of personality is overwhelming, their very presence, overaweing. Many who meet the Invidia fall instantly in love with them. They become suitors, followers, hangers on who accompany their beloveds everywhere they go. Others fall so deep in thrall that they become almost insensate. These "sleepwalkers" are uncanny in their own right, nearly mindless servants despite their human form.

It is as easy as breathing for the Invaders to enter the highest echelons of human society. They collect socialites and celebrities as their most valued sycophants. The Invaders' power over humans with worldly power makes their domination almost instant, almost complete.

The earth, to these Invaders, is like a garden, where they seek to grow Golden Lotus. This flower is life to the Invaders, it is the source of their abilities and their only food. It is also a powerful narcotic that affects them as opium affects humans. The effects of Gold Lotus on humans is even stronger. It can turn lotus-eaters into "sleepwalkers" or put them into a near-permanent twilight sleep. It can also imbue seemingly magical properties on the eater. The Invaders have come to earth to grow their garden, and though their vanity seems insatiable for our adoration and our praise, what they really want humanity for is to labor as their gardeners.

Though they usually appear in their humanoid form, the Invaders have other bodies as well, kept just a sidestep away in fourspace. When roused to anger, or high on Lotus, these ghostly golden bodies appear just behind the Invidia, always behind, no matter which angle they're viewed from. The translucent gold bodies of the Invidia are not human. They appear as the ghosts of giant, monstrous snails. A lesser caste of Invidia exists, who dwell on earth in their snail-bodies, and are summoned to act as soldiers when their leaders' charisma and diplomacy fails them. Sightings of the soldier caste are rare, for few can refuse the Invidia any request.
 

Should the Invidia be snails? or crabs, like the Invid?
Should they just have golden eyes? or entirely golden bodies like the Sovereign from Guardians of the Galaxy?
Consider this idea a work in progress.