Talpi - The Mole People of the Asteroid

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Talpi, from Talpidae.

Overview

Talpi are a race of space-dwelling, bipedal mole people that live in the asteroid field of Tau Cet. They are 1.6 meters tall on average and are covered in earth-toned fur. They have clawed hands and feet. Their eyes and ears are small and underdeveloped and they are incredibly short-sighted and hard of hearing. However their sense of touch is extremely well-adapted, making up for these deficiencies. They form small tribes in asteroids and worship The Great Star Nosed One. They are formed into small tribes operating as communes. In the distant past they traveled between asteroids by clinging to migrating space carp herds. In recent decades a few encounters with spaceborn factions has let them gain the knowledge to build 'Carp Carriages' - metal boxes towed by domesticated carp. Because of their awful eyesight and hearing their ability to reverse-engineer anything is hilariously inept. Because they can mine for resources with their specialized claws they often try to trade resources with any local station or ship that they find, trying to get weapons and armor to fight or bribe other tribes. They domesticate carp and carps are non-hostile to them.

NanoTrasen has taken a completely dismissive attitude towards them, and station or ship Captains have full autonomy in deciding how to deal with them. They are sentient but are seen as having really low intelligence because they can't communicate with spacefaring races due to their lack of proper eyesight or hearing, and their generally primitive lifestyles.

 

Who Can Play Them?

Any ghosts can spawn as them, being randomly placed in one of their faction settlements with a random gender and name. They have 2 defined settlements where they spawn. Molepeople can identify members of their own tribe from an icon. Hostile tribesmen can be converted, changing their allegiance. There is a maximum of 5 Talpii per faction (assuming all slots are taken at spawn) for a hard cap total of 10 Talpii ever allowed to spawn at a time.

-A surface settlement with a few burrows, a large metal room with a shrine inside, and a lot of domesticated carp in an open area. These Talpi of the Solen Tribe arrived in a carp migration and are new migrants.

-A main level settlement with burrows and a few simple metal structures, one with a shrine. These Talpi of the Sorici Tribe have lived here for a long time.

What Do They Do?

Each mole faction has a goal for that round. They can be:

-Build a shrine to the Great Star Nosed One. (Requires A LOT of smelted resources, which they need the station to make.)

-Conquer the other Talpi tribes. They must be converted to the attacker's faction. If a moleman faction gets enough members a Mole King is crowned, and all molemen automatically join their faction. The molemen are now united and can do as the King wills.

-Place a Curse of Doom the Invaders. 3 - 6 playable-species must be brought to a shrine and sacrificed. (RARE - basicall an antag roll)

-Recover totems of the Great Star Nosed One. (5 totems are randomly spawned on the asteroid, including in the station. A tribe must place all 5 on their shrine. They cannot be removed from a shrine except by another moleman).

The simple nature of these 3 goals means that the evolving storylines (if any) generated by the mole people are entirely up to the players playing them.

Like merchants, they will NOT appear every round. Rounds without mole men will still spawn the single abandoned village somewhere on the asteroid, indicating the occupants packed up and left.

 

 

Mechanics:

-Resistant to radiation. Rad-storms do not bother them.

-Extremely high cold resistance.

-Vacuum resistant. Do not breathe.

-Pressure sensitive. Take damage in pressure above 105kpa.

-Extremely high vulnerability to heat.

-Increased burn damage.

-Can only speak their native language, Talpii.

-Night vision.

-Ability to mine rock and resources without any tools, using their clawed hands and leaving behind resources.

-Can rapidly tunnel through rock, leaving it undamaged but letting them be mobile. (Think disposal tube travel but you can go in any direction)

-Can sink their talons into the ground to avoid falling, and do not lose speed when doing so.

-Can climb.

-Eat glowshrooms and carp for nutrients.

I have gotten help from Itanimulli for the sprites.

 

 

Edited February 28, 2018 by Marlon Phoenix

[Snakebittenn]

I'd be more interested if they weren't literal anthro moles. Otherwise, A+

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'd be more interested if they weren't literal anthro moles. Otherwise, A+

 

Every single species is an emulation of an earth animals or insects. The Skrell are an exception but are Twileks from Star Wars. Using another vaguely humanoid species as the obvious inspiration for a race doesn't mean they have to be literal anthromorphic copies. Moles are just the best comparison, just like unathi have lizards, tajara have cats, vaurca have termites, etc.

Even if we avoided making a stand-in earth animal we'd just combine characteristics of 20 different animals into them and it would be really dense.

Plus mole people are an established concept in scifant and scifi. The mole people and the mole kingdoms will rise again!

[Chada1]

I'm onboard for sure, I love the idea of a consistent non-Station based faction, even if it's just on the Asteroid. My only peeve is I think it'll just become a Moleslaughter 8/10 rounds where Security/Science/Mining seek them out and exterminate them enmasse, so not much room for RP there. It'd probably just encourage ganking and murderboning on both sides if something isn't put in place to prevent wanton slaughter which could be said to be a good thing but i'm gonna say doesn't encourage an HRP atmosphere and would be a bad thing.

[Snakebittenn]

We must prevent cutemoles.

[Chada1]

We must prevent cutemoles.

 

Actually a good way to do that could be to make the Talpi grow violent or something the longer they're near a non-Talpi, but enabling the Crew to outright exterminate their settlements non-stop probably isn't the way to go about it.

(Edit: Infact, just making something valid has traditionally not worked for ensuring that sorta thing didn't happen. Mice and others as an example. Might be time to try something new, and since the Talpi are actually expected to roleplay from what i'm gathering from the blurb and junk, and not just be annoying obnoxious pests, related to objectives (The only other option is gank) it seems counterproductive to an HRP setting to enable Crew to wanton slaughter them unless it'll be made an administrative issue which i'm not so sure administration will be onboard with.. All i'm saying is something may need to be done to ensure they keep their gimmick and yet still foster an HRP atmosphere. Pest mole people who are expected to roleplay and yet exterminated enmasse without roleplay every round isn't gonna do it, sorry.) NOTE THIS IS DEFUNCT SINCE JACKBOOTS REPLY

Edited February 26, 2018 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Murderbone by molemen against crew is discouraged because the mole people are not equipped to take on the station as well as the other mole faction gunning for them. Most of their objectives need them to try to work with the station. Granted they could also raid it but at that point just slay them. We can include a blurb saying they should try to trade with miners or the station but otherwise actual murderbone is an admin issue.

I don't know a cutemole is, nor do I want to try to have us create complex plans within plans in order to prevent their creation.

Slaughtering the molemen is probably not going to be immediately undertaken by the crew. I trust the playerbase enough to get the gist of it at least half of the time. There are enough characters that would be uncomfortable doing that that it wouldn't be a station-wide seizure of bloodlust. If it becomes a consistent problem then that could be addressed but ideally the relationship between the talpi and the station fluctuates each round. In any case their mobility and night vision encourage kiting, so they can at least harrass any invading sec officers. And the more officers out killing molemen leave less officers in the station fighting the antags. Which is a great boon for station antags - enough that they might intentionally flame a conflict between the molemen and crew maybe??? Lots of options here.

[Chada1]

Well there went all of my concerns, still fully onboard. Thanks for the explanation Jackboot.

The conflict and RP fuel this could bring to the round setting and is pretty high, on the level of Merchant except more indirect. I think if handled right and the spirit of the concept is preserved it could be great, so yeah i'm onboard, it also fills the gap that the Asteroid monsters never filled.

[Kaed]

Wasn't there a standing semi-official policy by the staff team about not adding more races?

And who is going to sprite and code all this?

[Theplahunter]

This sounds fun, I could see this providing more interaction and experiences. There are most likely plenty of races that aren't fully 'accepted' by the rest. +1!

[Fire and Glory]

Wasn't there a standing semi-official policy by the staff team about not adding more races?

Policy as set by Lord Emperor Skull was that no new races would be added unless* they replaced an existing race or are sufficiently different enough from the regular races*, these molemen probably fit the latter criteria.

*Along with being deemed not to be a waste of time, of course.

**aka aren't part of the crew working in security/engineering/medical/science/civilian like every other race.

[Butterrobber202]

Cool, I’ll be the next mole king then

[Zundy]

I like this as long as they're not literally mole people and are instead freakish creatures that resemble a cross between a neomorph and the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth.

[Kaed]

I don't really see the point of doing this race. For a race to be a regular part of the game (i.e. not just a one off event mob), I feel like there are some basic criteria they have to meet:

-Able to communicate with the rest of the players (mole people are forced to awkwardly mime, since they don't have the ability to speak people language). If there isn't a viable way to communicate with them, then why would we want to be around them? Mimes existed before, but they were a silly gimmick that was removed, and they could still TALK if they wanted to.

-The ability to have a connection with the crew. This one is similar to the first, but is a bit more subtle. What purpose to the mole people have for existing? Antagonists exist to create conflict, merchants exists to provide the crew with access to goods they could not procure on station. What do mole people have that make people want to be around them? They mine rocks and eat them. Are they going to trade us for rocks we are already capable of mining out with much greater efficiency with tools than they can do with claws? What incentive do we have to interact with them?

-Having a defined purpose in the lore. What you've made here is a bunch of primitive asteroid mole people. Politically speaking, they are barely above monkeys or dolphins. They contribute almost nothing to the story other than being there to look at at and go, 'huh, neat'. The way they are written, they don't even sound like they're considered to be people Nanotrasen, the authority on station. What is to stop a captain tired of their shenanigans one round from ordering them all hunted down and killed like animals? That prevents this from happening literally any round, or even in the greater lore? This is in human space, and humans can be fucking assholes, and are capable of exterminating the species for fun if they wanted to. Why wouldn't some of them be driving around in space space bikes, shooting at the mole men with their shotguns and lasers while they're drunk? Are some whiny xenoenvironmentalists going to cry and hold up holo picket signs in front of Nanotrasen's corporate headquarters? I'm sure they'd super care about that.

The problem with this idea is it's not something that feels like a player race that belongs. In a futuristic space game, what incentive do we have to play as space cavemen, beyond 'let's try something else for a change'? If you want to try something with such a vastly different tech level, why not... play a different game, that caters more to that aspect of society? Or just have an event about it?

[LordFowl]

Wasn't there a standing semi-official policy by the staff team about not adding more races?

And who is going to sprite and code all this?

 

The policy is unofficial, however it's ruling was that there should be no new races that occupy the same niche as a current race without removing old races. Or in short, there should be no more crew races. Skull even encouraged concepts such as the above with the qualifier that he wanted to see more innovation with races. I can find the exact quote if you'd like.

Typically coders code suggestions, although spriters are a good question.

Edit; further qualification. I'd really only even begin to consider thinking about this positively if:

A) They were a sporadic thing, like merchants.

B) They were something other than molemen. That we currently have a full roster of anthropomorphized aliens does not justify the addition of a further one. Some creativity should be encouraged, especially when the movement is spearheaded by the lore-master :eye_roll:

[Azande]

Slaughtering the molemen is probably not going to be immediately undertaken by the crew. I trust the playerbase

 

The developers of Ultima Online introduced a simulated ecology of animals and plantlife that was self-replicating but as soon as it was introduced to the players, the players conducted mass slaughter and basically drove all the NPC animals to extinction despite there being little to no benefit in killing them.

If you introduce small animals, people will kill them. People still kill cavern dwellers which are neutral unless provoked and pose no threat.

plz don't trust us

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Wasn't there a standing semi-official policy by the staff team about not adding more races?

And who is going to sprite and code all this?

 

Adding a new race is relatively easy if you do not include wholly new mechanics. Once I figure out where all the relevant code is for species then all you really have to do is mix and match. The mole people do have their own unique mechanics - namely their ability to dig, travel through rock, climb walls, and eat ore for nutrients.

The official policy is no more crew races. Ones you can spawn as a chef as. Mole people cannot be chefs. They live in the caves.

 

I don't really see the point of doing this race.

 

For a race to be a regular part of the game (i.e. not just a one off event mob), I feel like there are some basic criteria they have to meet:

-Able to communicate with the rest of the players (mole people are forced to awkwardly mime, since they don't have the ability to speak people language). If there isn't a viable way to communicate with them, then why would we want to be around them? Mimes existed before, but they were a silly gimmick that was removed, and they could still TALK if they wanted to.

Miming is a form of communication. Synthetics can also translate any language to Basic. Because their senses focus on touch and vibrations and all that crap they can even understand Basic if we want them to, but they cannot speak it. The language barrier is necessary as it prevents meaningful co-existance and reinforces the mole people as an alien "other".

 

-The ability to have a connection with the crew. This one is similar to the first, but is a bit more subtle. What purpose to the mole people have for existing? Antagonists exist to create conflict, merchants exists to provide the crew with access to goods they could not procure on station. What do mole people have that make people want to be around them? They mine rocks and eat them. Are they going to trade us for rocks we are already capable of mining out with much greater efficiency with tools than they can do with claws? What incentive do we have to interact with them?

Creatively, what is the reason for anything to exist? We decide the reasoning when we make it. Why do Unathi exist? Why does Tau Ceti exist? Why do drones and mice exist?

Mechanically and playstyle-y, mole-people are a wild card for rounds. They may do their own thing all a round and the station doesn't interact with them at all. They may become a focal point of the round. They include an element of unknown randomness in how a round develops. Being sent off in a squad of security officers to investigate reports of a miner being kidnapped by the molemen and trying to rescue them means there's less heat on the backs of the vampires on the station. There are many scenarios that can play out. They don't hAVE to eat rocks but mechanically they should have something that's reasonable available to eat unless we want to commit fully and say there are delicious protein filled grubs crawling through the asteroid. Which, I mean, would be rad but that would be a rather large ballooning in scale.

 

-Having a defined purpose in the lore. What you've made here is a bunch of primitive asteroid mole people.

Politically speaking, they are barely above monkeys or dolphins.

That's pretty problematic.

 

They contribute almost nothing to the story other than being there to look at at and go, 'huh, neat'. The way they are written, they don't even sound like they're considered to be people Nanotrasen, the authority on station. What is to stop a captain tired of their shenanigans one round from ordering them all hunted down and killed like animals?

A basic sense of morality in 1/3 of Captains or Heads of Security. Characters that willingly write off the natives to be gunned down en-masse every round are probably worthy of a complaint. I am being very concise in how they would fare in their relationship with NT for the sake of ease of explanation. I do not want to write a 20 page SOP about how to deal with mole men. The Captain decides that round's policy or the crew just reacts to whatever happens. Both sides are expected to start on neutral terms. It's not like CM where we have to emote shock and awe every single time we see a new xeno. We just have to emote a wary curiosity on what these weird alien migrants are gunna do.

 

[what prevents mole murder] from happening literally any round, or even in the greater lore? This is in human space, and humans can be fucking assholes, and are capable of exterminating the species for fun if they wanted to. Why wouldn't some of them be driving around in space space bikes, shooting at the mole men with their shotguns and lasers while they're drunk? Are some whiny xenoenvironmentalists going to cry and hold up holo picket signs in front of Nanotrasen's corporate headquarters? I'm sure they'd super care about that.

What a sour outlook on Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti is a scifant version of the American Dream and the City on the Hill philosophies. While the mole men are no doubt going to be rather sidelined and abused it's not going to be something so grim and dark that it's an on-the-nose analogy of native american death marches or anything. A bunch of picketers protesting a new asteroid mining operation because all the mole men on it lost their houses is great, though, because it's the kind of thoughtless corporate exploitation that the lore deserves.

 

In a futuristic space game, what incentive do we have to play as space cavemen, beyond 'let's try something else for a change'? If you want to try something with such a vastly different tech level, why not... play a different game, that caters more to that aspect of society? Or just have an event about it?

It was either this or mindless horror boss monsters like baystation's Ashwalkers. I'd like to roleplay with the miner I captured and not just eat them and lay Xenomorph eggs everywhere, thanks.

 

Slaughtering the molemen is probably not going to be immediately undertaken by the crew. I trust the playerbase

 

The developers of Ultima Online introduced a simulated ecology of animals and plantlife that was self-replicating but as soon as it was introduced to the players, the players conducted mass slaughter and basically drove all the NPC animals to extinction despite there being little to no benefit in killing them.

If you introduce small animals, people will kill them. People still kill cavern dwellers which are neutral unless provoked and pose no threat.

plz don't trust us

 

lmao I read about that. The difference is on Ultima the mobs dropped resources that were useful. Killing them rewarded you. There is no immediate benefit to killing mole men - they don't drop loot or furs. Just running around gunning all the mole men would just make your character a psychopath

 

Edit; further qualification. I'd really only even begin to consider thinking about this positively if:

A) They were a sporadic thing, like merchants.

B) They were something other than molemen. That we currently have a full roster of anthropomorphized aliens does not justify the addition of a further one. Some creativity should be encouraged, especially when the movement is spearheaded by the lore-master :eye_roll:

 

The nomadic nature of molemen serves as a method of explaining why they can be present on one round and absent on another. They can be a random presence, with the empty main level settlement simply being handwaved as having its occupants packing up and moving to a new asteroid.

This second point is echoed by Zundy, and I have grievances with it. There is no maximum limit on how many anthro races we have, on top of the fact that this is not a literal self-insertion of IRL mole people. Once we shift the goalpost of an ideal new race away from 'anthro' we start wildly hurling the goalpost all over the field. Bipedal races? Too passe. Six arms! They constantly secrete slime! If oxygen touches them they burst into flames! If you look at one in bright light you fucking DIE!

They're not LITERALLY moles. That is their ethos. If we embrace the inspiration of an animal then we dont have to spend all this time justifying them and explaining them. Making something so alien like the diona would make them dense. And even the diona are textbook gestalts who's 'uniqueness' comes from their lack of a weighty presence in the pop culture that SS13 draws inspiration from. And that comes with the fact you literally have no idea what diona are until you read up on them.

Trying our hardest to make a species that is meant to have a simple conceit into some complex creature never before seen in all of scifi will come off as insecure. I do not want a cave race to be our GAS.

You know what a mole man is. You have immediate mental pictures. They borrow. They scurry.

I dont know what an Ashwalker or a GAS is nor how to play one of them. My mental picture of GAS was even WRONG because despite being walking death machines they have the strictest whitelist standards I've ever seen on top of having the most timid responses to violence i've ever seen.

I know how to play a Mole Man.

I dig lmao

[Zundy]

The concept is solid in my opinion. Getting hung up on sprites is silly at this stage because jackboot with his subtle anthropomorphic mole man fetish won't be spriting them anyway. I agree with the concept.

[LordFowl]

After going through the idea in my head I've become more lenient towards the idea. The concept of asteroid natives has always been on my mind, and given that "mole" men aren't a meme they could fit the hole well enough. Sprites however will be the greatest impediment in my mind, and I don't see this idea going anywhere without them. Other than that code-wise all of the suggestions presented are reasonable enough to implement.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Edited the OP after a fierce, passionate debate with Lordfowl. They no longer eat rocks, and instead consist on a diet of glowshrooms and carp.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

 

Version 0.6.4 sprite of the Talpi, including a proof-of-concept style for clothes.

A stretch goal for the mole people is giving them the ability to create clothes and other crafts out of leather and other resources dropped by carp that they butcher. It is A LOT easier to sprite clothes than it is new mobs, and I can churn those out at a semi-reliable rate.

Creating a distinctly non-human looking mob would make wearing regular clothes impossible, and I think being completely unable to use anything from the station would gut a big reason to trade with the station.

So Talpi will be able to try to sell carp-based crafts to the station, or other factions they encounter such as the merchant or whoever.

[Zundy]

How about giving them the capacity to regurgitate a resinous substance at the expense of nutrition which can be used to build various tools and as a building material. They could make resin walls etc.

[Chada1]

On further thought, I came to realise this could also give some jobs a lot more substance. For instance, it would give Xenoarcheology an actual culture to study and Xenobiologists could be given a means of studying their tribal habits as well, something akin to tracking implant or tag with a camera on it that keeps an eye on ones that were marked. This ontop of Mining having to be a bit more careful while out adds a whole lot of extra flesh to the Asteroid setting beyond just the conflict that could be stirred.

[whiterabit]

 

why is there a dick hanging out of its skirt

jb is a trap lover confirmed

[Azande]

I actually really like the idea. [mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention] is there any way they can be combined with current Xenoarchaeological-Vox lore to make... Sense?