(Author's Note: This idea came to me today, when I asked myself "why are there no dragon-y type race mods for Starbound?" well when I got home today I looked through the races and there is indeed one (it isn't updated for 1.0 yet sadly), but still. This idea came to me earlier while I was at work so I thought I'd present the idea. If anybody would like to make such a race, and wants some backstory/input/etc on it, they can let me know. I am not a spriter so it is pretty much nil chance of me making my own race mod, unfortunately) Flight of the Draaka Situated in a remote corner of the universe, neatly tucked away, there was a lush planet full of life in a system filled with nameless moons and other wasteland planets that offered nothing to adventurers and travellers. A diamond, hidden amongst many mundane and nigh-worthless stones. This planet had a very diverse eco-system, not too unlike Earth (before it was destroyed, of course) but unlike Earth, it had two intelligent and sapient species: The Draaka, and the Hormals. The Draaka looked a lot like what people on Earth would call a "dragon" or perhaps a "draconian" -- they are a bipedal race of winged reptiles who once ruled the skies for many, many generations. They mostly kept to themselves and they were a very traditional race, they passed customs, knowledge and culture down through generations and they kept mostly to the "Old Ways" and very rarely deviated from them unless it was utter necessity. This was, of course, entirely contrast to the Hormals: A human-like race of mammalian people who greatly enjoyed discovering and inventing something new. One could compare them with gnomes from Earth mythology -- they were a little shorter than humans (kind of like gnomes, but not that short) and had very bright and inventive minds. At first, the Draaka kept their distance away from the Hormals: their frail little bodies were no match for the muscle-bound scaly hides of the Draaka, and the Hormals had absolutely no answer for Draakan magic; the Draakan of old were powerful not only in physical might, but also in the ability to manipulate elemental energy. Over time, though, this started to change as the Hormals began to industrialize, and their newest inventions started to become a threat to the well-being of the entire planet. The Draaka stepped in, and hostilities quickly erupted between the two races. The Draaka, while clinging to their old ways, had no answer for some of the Hormals' latest inventions, which included guns, explosives, and even nuclear technology. Unfortunately for the Draaka, their mastery over the elements was slowly waning, despite their best attempts to preserve the "Old Ways". By the time the war had wound down, the Draaka were forced into hiding which only did more damage to their ability to preserve their olden ways of yore; their ability to control the elements along with the strength in their wings atrophied until they were but a shadow of their formal selves. Their numbers declined rapidly; at the height of the Draakan Empire, one might have numbered them in the hundreds of thousands; at this time there were but a few thousand left. Meanwhile, the Hormals had exploded in population in the several hundred million range. But, as with many species, as the humans know full too well, wars tend to erupt in the midst of peace. Disagreements flare up and soon, all of those weapons that were developed to be used on the Draaka were soon turned against each other as they lusted after power and position, forming into factions. The fighting was intense, and nuclear weapons were sometimes deployed, wiping out entire cities at a time. The Draaka weren't sleeping during all of this, however: They were watching, with what little magical strength they had, they watched, they waited in their deep underground caves, plotting and waiting for the opportune time. When that time had arrived, their warriors brought with them stolen weaponry the Hormals had made, and made a full-on unified assault. While in hiding, they had managed to replenish their numbers a little (there were about ten thousand at this time) and they hit with a fury and ferocity the Hormals were in no way prepared for, as they had spent their time warring amongst each other. They never knew what hit them, and they were wiped out quickly. Seeing the damage done, the Draaka swore off technology: They saw what happened to their planet, they gazed upon whole sections of some of the continents that were uninhabitable wastelands where cities once stood, they saw the twisted metal jungles, where entire square miles were covered in concrete and metal, where nothing grew, and they swore to never have anything to do with any of it. They wanted to return to their old ways, but they had found that the Hormals had destroyed everything they could find of the Draakan Empire. Their ancestors' graves, their ancestors' cities, all of it was destroyed. They decided that they would do the same to the Hormals' cities, but a young voice cried out amongst them, saying "NO!". It was the Prophetess A'ishmi, a renowed Draaka who had many visions of what they would later end up seeing for their own eyes. She very accurately predicted what they would find and where, once they had dealt with the Hormals, and it was her who helped them plan the surprise attack that wiped the rest of the Hormals out. "NO!" She cried out. "We mustn't if we wish to survive!" She near-squealed out. She was young, but very strong in her visions and dreams. She told them that the old cities of the Hormals must be sealed for a time, and then they will be unsealed later in a time of dire need. A vote was held, and her counsel narrowly won, and the cities were sealed off, forbidden. No Draaka touched any of the Hormals' Ruins for nearly two centuries. Two centuries passed -- the destruction caused by the Hormals was immense -- whole species of animals and plants soon went extinct as entire areas of the planet were rendered uninhabitable, and this even spread underground to where the Draaka had been living before they came out to defeat the Hormals. The ecosystem was on a downward spiral, and the Draakan Leaders could ignore the signs no longer: They had to do something or they would all die -- starving to death, or dying of a slow suffocation as both plants and animals were dying off as the ecosystem just could not recover from the devastation. At first, there were signs of it trying to repair itself, but then it began to flounder, and near the end of the two centuries, they saw species after species of animals and plants going extinct, one after another. The planet was dying, and they all knew it. Then, A'ishmi, now well into her years stood before the leaders telling them that the time had come: They must unseal the Hormals' cities, and learn their secrets. She told them that the answer to their problems lie buried, sleeping within the few intact ruins that remained. One by one, the ruins that were still accessible were explored by the Draaka as they stepped foot in places where no living thing had walked in two centuries. At first, they didn't find much, until they broke into an agricultural research facility, which contained many seeds of plants that were now extinct, preserved. This bought the Draaka some precious time, but they knew it would not last forever as it wouldn't magically bring the animals back that the ecosystem so desperately needed. Finally, when they were near the end of their ropes and nearly out of hope that they would find their answer, they found some old maps, and on one of these old maps, were satellite images of a mountain range known to the Draaka. They knew this mountain range formed a large bowl, and in this bowl was a big, flat, and unbearably hot desert. They never bothered with the place, but sleeping in there was an old Hormal city. They rounded up the few Draaka that were acclimated to hot climates, and sent them in, and they came back with an amazing discovery. Unbeknownst to the Draaka, the Hormals had been experimenting with Space Travel. The Draaka had seen their weird high-flying machines in the past, but thought little of them. This was a whole facility devoted to creating space-worthy vessels, and two prototypes sat in a sealed hangar, almost in pristine condition, along with the shipyard that built them, research notes, papers, and computers full of data. Once the Draaka figured out how to re-activate the computers (there were intact solar panels to power all of the equipment, and they soon discovered how to repair a nearby power plant for a more long-term energy solution), they found the answer. These ships were state-of-the-art, and the Hormals were planning to colonize a nearby planet, however they had not yet successfully established an ecosystem on the planet, and their outpost there required constant supplies shipped to them. They discovered frantic calls for supplies that went unanswered due to the Hormals working at the facility being killed by nuclear fallout, the Hormals at the outpost perished, leaving behind frantic calls for help and assistance. The new prototype ships, unlike the last ones, featured new things: The Hormals had managed to build a working teleportation device and built it into the ship, and the ship had a cryo-sleep system for long voyages, as they had planned to try to find more planets further out. One day, A'ishmi went into a deep, deep coma suddenly and was asleep for many days. This had never happened before, and everyone feared the worst. While she slept, the Draaka poured over the blueprints and notes, and began to build a new ship using the equipment and materials left behind, even bringing in new metals to be melted down and re-forged into parts according to the blueprints. When A'ishmi woke up, she frantically demanded some paper and pens, and she drew blueprints of a curious device -- a device that could take apart matter, and put it back together again. It could "cut" metal, turn it into atoms, and then re-shape those atoms somewhere else. The Draaka balked at the idea, but created the first functional Matter Manipulator, and it worked exactly as she claimed it would. None of the Draaka, nor A'ishmi herself understood exactly how it worked, and when asked how she got the blueprints, she merely shrugged and told them that she had a long conversation with some sort of being that she could not see, and it showed her images, the same images she wrote down upon waking up. The Draaka, within a few months, completed the first replica ship built from the prototypes parked at the facility and they successfully flew it into orbit, teleporting down to the planet and back up to it several times to prove that it does indeed work. They all celebrated and threw everything they had into building these ships as fast as they could. A plan was drawn up: They would make as many of these ships as they could, and they would send out one Draaka per ship, an equal number of males to females. Females would wait until they go into heat, mate, so that they would be carrying an egg before getting into cryo-sleep and the AI controlling the ships would be programmed to scan for habitable planets with little to no civilization present. Upon finding a suitable place to live, the ship would wake the Draaka up and they would attempt to assess the planet below and if it was a habitable planet, they would land their ship down, and make shelter and start a settlement, and send out calls in a coded language so that Draaka of the opposite gender would find them if they had not found planets of their own. It was the hope that if there could be a few Draaka who could set up colonies on distant worlds, the race would be preserved and survival ensured. Before running out of materials, the Draaka had managed to send out about 350 ships including the two prototypes (which were sent last). Each Draaka was given a Matter Manipulator, a weapon, some meager food, and some other basic survival tools, whatever they could spare. Sadly, the Draaka who stayed behind on their Homeworld would eventually perish as the rest of the ecosystem died out. Since the Draakas' ships do not have FTL travel, they would drift for hundreds of years before reaching any viable planets. Thus was the Flight of the Draaka. (Author's Note): This is a race concept... the player would be one of these Draaka, and the backstory would be simple: Your ship drifts and drifts and drifts and eventually somewhere along the way, the AI malfunctions and at some point, emergency wake-up is initiated. You wake up, and the AI is glitched out and your ship is hovering above a random habitable planet. You reboot the AI, and beam down to the planet. You find the ancient gate, collect the 20 fragments, and then at the Shipyard, they upgrade your ship, outfitting it with FTL engines (since your ship was originally not even capable of FTL!) and they'd install a new Universe Navigation System. I imagine that the T0, T1, and T2 ship would look different than the T3 ship (the engine would be larger, and the cockpit would be a little different and you could see clear signs of outpost parts added onto the ship, so the engines and cockpit should look like they don't really belong). But again, since I'm not a spriter and I'm a newbie modder at best... if anybody likes this race idea, I would need peeps to help make this a reality, lol. If anybody's interested of course. EDIT: Dunno what is up with the line breaks in the first couple paragraphs.....
This would be a pretty neat concept for a race mod. Their progression would also be pretty different as well I'd presume. Using materials to unlock new arcane abilities rather than technologies.
Dunno how that would work in-game, but I had imagine that instead of making guns, they would make staves. I would say perhaps 1 melee weapon and 1 wand/staff per tier, alternating (T1 would be 2H weapon/1H Wand, T2 would be 1H weapon/2H staff) with the last tier would have 4 to give the player a full choice. And their armor, instead of wearing armor, they would wear enchanted jewelry like amulets, bracelets, anklets, etc. Said items would be made with metal + monster drops (hardened carapace, phase matter, etc).
What part(s) do you feel are overpowered? The Draaka are meant to be physically strong, but their decline in their mastery of the elements combined with their reluctance to use technology probably means an energy nerf to balance it out. They would be rather bad gun users due to the energy nerfs, but yet their scaly hide and strong muscles would make them beasts in melee combat. Now, since the game does not have a difference between melee and gun/magic damage... Draaka would do high damage with guns/staves/wands, but yet they would run out of energy a lot faster which still would balance it out. Yeah you could fire off a rocket or a couple shotgun blasts, but you'd be out of energy. You'd be better off grabbing a melee weapon instead, especially with your higher defense. As for their wings... I imagine they'd get a slow-fall ability because they can glide, but yet the atrophy from them being forced to live underground for a few hundred years means that their wings are not strong enough to let them fly (which puts them in a similar boat as Avians, lol).
