I was reading a national geographic article a little while back on Meerkats. I thought that a race based off of them would be interesting to come across. The Meerlings are a race that have not advanced past the industrial age. They live exclusively underground, except to go to the surface to hunt. They are excellent miners and iron workers. They highly value family and friendship. When Florans first became spaceworthy they spread out throughout the galaxy conquering and ravaging resources. When they came upon the Meerlings one Floran leader had the idea to exploit their industrialist behavior, instead of killing them. The Florans transported groups of Meerlings to various systems and used them as slaves to mine the valuable minerals deep within the planets. After the majority of the planets resources were mined the Florans would abandoned the Meerling outposts and move on. Any thoughts? Ideas? concept art?
I cannot resist meerkats. But I'd recommend you try and expand on the idea yourself a bit. History, culture, biology, etc. Sounds like you have a pretty solid idea of it, but it's a matter of getting a sufficient level of detail for the idea to stand out.
Sounds like a great idea! They could be ore merchants or something similar if implemented. Or maybe even have a sidequest in which you need so help a Meerling find his family which he lost (since they value family).
I honestly dont like the idea of simply slapping earth animals into a game and calling them aliens, i think they need at least SOME distinction from common meercats in order to prevent waves of pissed off hatemongers going "RABRABRABRA STARBOUND SUCKS CAUSE IT PANDERS TO FURRIES AND MANCHILDREN BRABLABLA". ....because we get enough of that already simply because the game has anthropomorphic birds.
Good point. Maybe we could change them from something like Meerkats to some form of underground insects. That would also work.
Eh, thats kinda detracting from the idea -too- much. All theyd really need is some freaky shit to make them "alieny" enough that the people looking for excuses to hate them could be told to piss off because "im not a meerkat! Im my own original character bleerkat!"
All the great Sci fi have anthropomorphic alien creatures. I really envisioned a race based off the social bonds and ingenuity of meerkats. I'm not personally a fan of furries, but a mammal liike alien race seems to be more rare than others. this race would be a race that gives quests that involve going deep underground. They would also trade ores, gems, and other underground treasures. I suppose any race that fits this description would be cool. I would like to see more non player races in the game.
