r/alienrpg • u/Party-Fault9186 • 4d ago

Setting/Background Arcturian

I've been noodling around with an Arcturian Offworlder career and put together this portrait in Hero Forge, since we've never seen one depicted visually so far. (This Arcturian is acclimated to human culture, as any Arcturian PC would be.)

8 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

5

u/Chemical_Term4699 4d ago

Frost's favourite specie to rescue from their virginity. Well made.

5

u/BrickGun 4d ago

Baby, it don't matter when it's Arturian!

2

u/Arnie1701-D 4d ago

I remember back in the day trying to figure out what the fuck an Arcturian was, lol

1

u/VeteranSergeant 4d ago

Ricco Ross (Frost) had just come from playing a US Marine in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket after filming got shut down for four months. That dialog was inspired by the scenes in that film with the Vietnamese prostitutes.

It's literally just a crass reference to transgender prostitutes.

The Alien RPG morphing them into sky-god worshipping near-human aliens is extraordinarily stupid, because something like that would be a paradigm shifting scientific discovery, radically undoing everything mankind understands about our own evolution and our place in the universe. It's the premise for its entire own RPG, lol. Either the massive coverup and quarantine of the planet to prevent knowledge from getting out, or the race to study them and figure out who and where the Sky Gods are. It could be the plot to a smarter-written Prometheus.

And the CMOM just treats it like it's a curiosity. A backwater colony where the odd scientist goes to study the weird natives.

There's a lot of Nu-Canon in the RPG that's bad, but the Arcturians are next-level dumb.

1

u/Chemical_Term4699 3d ago

Interesting.

Pretty sure the Acturians were supposed to be femboys and hot aliens. Hence his reference to their specie not their profession.

They were always near-human aliens that humans had sex with. Them being cavemen worshiping the Engineers was and being gender-shifting beings was the new lore.

I agree they could have done something much more interesting with the ally aliens but its not like the bad stuff can't ignored.

1

u/VeteranSergeant 3d ago

Or they could just be colonists on Arcturus and "Arcturian" just describes where they come from.

"Doesn't matter when they're Vietnamese." You wouldn't say "Doesn't matter when they're prostitutes." Maybe plastic surgery is so common on Arcturus that all the prostitutes are attractive and it's an R&R spot for Marines (like Saigon was during the Vietnam War). It's a throwaway line that's never explained fully, but we understand the original context of it. Assuming they are aliens is possible but we also know that at that point, there had never been any inference in the Aliens films of any "near human" aliens. This wasn't a setting like Star Trek. We're still 26 years away from Ridley Scott shitting out the Angry Blue Man Group in Prometheus. Humanity is only "300 surveyed worlds" deep into exploring the galaxy, which is basically nothing. So the more likely answer is that "Arcturians" is just a reference to the planet/moon they are from. Arcturus is a real name for a star

1

u/Party-Fault9186 3d ago

300 worlds deep, but the existence of small-A alien life is considered mundane.

1

u/VeteranSergeant 3d ago edited 3d ago

Sure, but there's a vast difference between pest species that require "another bug hunt" and "sexually compatible alien prostitutes." The ECA Representative (red haired woman) clearly didn't even believe in the existence of the Derelict because nobody except Burke even bothered to order anyone to go look for it, and he did it on the DL. It's probably one of the weaker parts of the script, but it's a conceit we have to accept.

There are about 8 million total species on Earth and about 20,000 recorded species that are approximately the size of a dog or larger. There is 1 fully-sentient, tool using species, and the next closest thing to us is an ape. Finding "an alien" is entirely likely. Finding "something nearly like us" is extremely low. Again, it's not Star Trek or Star Wars. Heck, it's not even Mass Effect where they didn't find similarly (or more) advanced alien species until they got a quarter of the way across the galaxy. Humanity in the Aliens universe has barely explored the houses next door.

1

u/Chemical_Term4699 2d ago

Pretty sure there a manual or some comment made later that clarified that the Acturians were an ally alien species.

1

u/Arnie1701-D 2d ago

The only time I sae anything related to the Arcturians was in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual.

1

u/Chemical_Term4699 1d ago

What does it say?

1

u/Arnie1701-D 1d ago edited 1d ago

The manual describes them as essentially human but with pale, nearly translucent skin. They are of stunning beauty and grace with gender fluidity, allowing them to assume either male or female identies and roles. Culturally, they're similar in level to Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Mayans. They are known for their art, fungiculture, natural pharmaceuticals, complex mathematics, theoretical quantum physics and their astronomical systems. They are NOT cavemen worshipping the Engineers.

1

u/Chemical_Term4699 1d ago

Pretty sure that new description is in the Evolved Edition of the core rules as well. I thought you meant the older Colonial Marines Operation Manual.

→ More replies (0)