ALIEN - CONTRACTED: Synthetic creatures

An issue I have always had with the ALIEN/S universe is that Weyland-Yutani's hunt for the "xenomorph" for "weaponization" never made too much sense in the confines of the ALIEN/S universe that we were presented with. Would the creatures become acid-blooded, glorified K-9 units? Some of the ALIENS comics follow that suggestion. The 1991 Leading Edge Publishing ALIENS Adventure Game RPG had a few suggestions that went beyond this, stating that the star-faring corporations were always trying to find new exotic materials to play around with. The Weyland-Yutani Report contains a few considerations that follow that line of thought, where the creature's various qualities are turned into other products like acid-throwers and such. I wanted to explore another approach.

Yes, the idea of "war beasts" is a little silly. But then this is a setting that is at the same time a little silly while also being horrifying quite frequently. Does this fit with the established canon? If we only look at the movies, we actually never see that much of the whole ALIEN/S universe. We don't know much of its history, beyond that corporations are powerful, human life is cheap, and that deep space exploration is happening. The keyhole through which we have seen that universe is rather small. And a "bio-weapons program" existing at Weyland-Yutani that would find use for the creatures can actually mean a lot of things. So why not lean into that? And why stop there? With the idea of the "war beasts" I'm also plugging some things that bugged me forever. I wildly re-interpret the throwaway lines between Lt. Gorman and Pvt. Hudson from ALIENS talking about bug hunts and xenomorphs, but basically saying "bug-hunt" is a generic term marines use to describe fighting off a dangerous, nonhuman enemy. The most bug-hunts are actually against war beasts. "Xenomorph" describes war beasts. And what Lt. Gorman is saying is that he suspects another corporation having dropped some of those on a promising colony world. Which he would find more believable than the nonsense Ripley is saying.

I am also introducing and playing with the old idea of the Blade Runner / ALIEN/S crossover by introducing replicants as a staple of the universe. Basically, if we look at the BLADE RUNNER movies, and just pretend they take place in 2119 and 2149 instead of a hundred years earlier, then they seamlessly fit into the ALIEN/S universe. That is what I would have Earth look like in Contracted. Not exactly like this, there isn't necessarily THE Tyrell Corporation, there is not THE Niander Wallace, but, you know, similar vibes, similar things going on.  All of these things make the ALIEN/S universe bigger, and populated with more and different ideas and concepts.

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War Beasts

In the mid-21st century corporations sought to change the face of warfare through innovations in genetic engineering. For a long time the scientists looked to improving the human genome, creating better soldiers. These engineering feats were difficult, producing many, horrifying failures. The more promising results resulted in the development of replicants, human clones tailor-made for specific tasks. The scientists working on these experiments also kept running into ethical hurdles by corporate watchdogs and national medical committees. It was the Soviet Union however who looked to genetic engineering for a creation of a different kind.

 

Instead of building a robot soldier, or creating a super-human, they instead combined machine and life into a terrifying hybrid being: the war beast, a living, biological weapon. The first war beasts the Soviets used were essentially souped up Siberian tigers with control implants and armor plating they unleashed on unsuspecting corporate security forces in the 'belt. The tigers were a by-product from a different project - an attempt to resurrect the species that had gone extinct in the first decades of the twenty-first century. These early beasts were not terribly advanced, but the idea was solid, and the psychological impact on the opposing forces immense. That started a new arms race, and before long, both Soviets and corporations bred ever more disturbing, ever deadlier monstrosities to throw at each other's troops.

Today's war beasts are essentially genetically engineered robots, every bit as artificial as a Bishop android, just much more mean spirited. They are very hard to kill, smart, autonomous. But they're not infallible, and a good hacker can find the command codes their handlers use. Still, they're widely used, both inside and outside atmospheres. Zero-G war beasts are a thing to behold, weird creatures that can survive in hard vacuum longer than some humans can wearing space suits.

 

The Union of Progressive Peoples' approach to the beasties generally differs from that of their western counterparts. UPP War Beasts keep following the old Soviet blueprint: a living base, enhanced with cybernetic implants. The War Beasts employed by the corporations feature only a minimum amount of implants for control, with the creatures themselves having in-bred features that the UPP beasts use implants for. This makes the corporate beasts less prone to hacking attempts.

 

Many modern war beasts operate in small groups. They are often employed in softening, and sabotage missions. They also frequently find use as stay-behind traps when space ships, stations, or colonies have to be abandoned. Often a group of war beasts is dropped behind enemy lines ahead of the first attack.

 

The corporations especially prefer to fight war beasts with human soldiers. War beasts are expensive to produce, and human soldiers - complemented with replicants - are cheaper to replace. War beasts tend to be too overspecialized to be very effective against other war beasts. Human adversaries still tend to beat the creatures at improvisation. The Colonial Marines in particular face off with these creations on a somewhat regular bases. Due to the insectile appearance of many UPP beasts, this has led to the USCM referring to missions that target non-human combatants as "bug hunts." Since the creation of war beasts involves a process referred to as "xenogenesis" the creatures themselves are often referred to as "xenomorphs" in professional jargon.

 

Corporations frequently use war beasts in corporate warfare. When beasts get out of control, routinely, the Colonial Marines are called in to clean up. War beasts do not, can not, reproduce. However, some models have reproductive instincts increased, in order to increase aggressiveness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Replicants

More human than human, replicants are re-classified, and re-branded human clones with reduced emotional features and highly enhanced physical traits. Replicants were a by-product of genetic enhancement projects western corporations undertook in the 2050s. They are fast-grown. A replicant usually takes somewhere between six and fifteen months to fully mature. Produced as scale, many corporations use them as a worker vanguard in colony building. Their hyper-accelerated metabolism drastically limits their lifespans, however. The initial mass-produced replicants would expire after four years. Current models, depending on maintenance, can last up to twelve years. However most current model lines require tailor-made nutrition programs that can only be exclusively bought from their manufacturers. Replicants lack creativity and intelligence, but not empathy. They are comparatively cheap to produce, but the current corporate practice that locks a model in to branded maintenance and sustenance makes them still more expensive to operate than human labor in comparison. This means replicants often times are used for foot soldiers, strike breakers, and for heavy-duty labor. In the seedy underbellies of Western-run colonies and countries illegally produced, or genetically jailbroken replicants are also frequently used for sex work. 

 

The UPP shuns the use of Replicants even more than it does the use of androids, believing that replicants are simply walking violations of human rights, as well as a dangerous violation of the autonomy of workers. Combat replicants encountered by UPP soldiers will receive no quarter.

Rogue replicants are less of an immediate problem compared to rogue war beasts. However, they can still cause tremendous amounts of damage through sabotage. Replicant commandos and infiltration units are an asset many corporations use in inter-corporate warfare. Limiting them to specifically branded nutrition was thought of as a measure to prevent any of them to go rogue of off the grid, since they cannot survive without otherwise hard-to-acquire branded replicant foods.

Androids

Artificial persons have been around for more than a hundred years, and the current models are far exceeding their creators in terms of intelligence and physical strength. Androids however lack empathy and human compassion. This makes certain in-built restraints that keep them from becoming dangerous a dire necessity. Of the three big synthetics, Androids are also by far the most commonplace. They are also the most versatile, and generally the least controversial in terms of ethical considerations. Androids are machines, through and through. But since androids in the way they are built still require atmospheric pressure, they are not necessarily a panacea for space labor.

 

Androids are strong, but at the same time tend to be rather fragile. The more sophisticated models are also not quite cheap, neither in production, acquisition, or maintenance. However, a well-maintained android of the twelfth and higher generation can without many troubles have a life-span of upwards of fifty to seventy years, projected.

 

Androids are generally ill suited for outright combat. However, like replicants, most more advanced android models are visually indistinguishable from humans. This makes androids excellent infiltrators, however replicants have the edge over artificial persons here, insofar as that they are clearly biological, whereas the white fuel blood of androids will immediately give them away.

 

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Image sources: 

https://www.deviantart.com/gabe-mcalpine/art/Proko-Challenge-Entry-831947689

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yNwVJ

http://jeradsmarantz.blogspot.com/

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3qogo

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o9xPO