Nazzadi

Recently, one of the guys on the forums got a little insulting regarding the Nazzadi. His words were, "the concept is lame." Everybody's entitled to their opinion, but there are a few things to be said about that.

The reason the Nazzadi exist is because I knew people would want some sort of non-human race to play. I didn't want that race to be truly alien, because then that would take away from the alien-ness of the horrors that exist in the setting. The race needed to be closer to human than anything else, and I also didn't want the "slap a prosthetic on their forehead, ears, or face, exaggerate some value or behavior and call it alien" kind of race.

I was also inspired by the Zentraedi from Robotech. They were a human-like race manufactured by the Robotech Masters to be their army, who ultimately rebelled and decided to join with humanity (after they were shrunk down from being giants, of course).

So, I decided on a race of beings that was cloned by the Migou. They used the DNA with which they already had mastery (ours), since they have a taboo against cloning themselves. Actually, I made it so that the Migou generally have a taboo about cloning, but they broke it to make the Nazzadi. Our DNA is simple for them and something they could crank out quickly, so that's what they based the Nazzadi off of. Then, they wanted to modify them a little bit – but not a lot, for that would require a bunch of meddling and that would complicate and slow down the process. The Migou opted for something that would put Humans off, maybe even scare them. When's the one time that Humans are at their worst and most likely to be afraid? Night-time. Human beings are not designed to function well at night. We don't see in the dark, we don't compensate with other senses, our bodies are designed to shut down and rest, and we all carry a primal fear of the dark. Don't believe you have a primal fear of the dark? Go out into the woods, away from civilization, and turn your flashlight off.

So the Migou made the Nazzadi night-creatures. Their body doesn't naturally want to shut down at night, they can see in the dark, and their skin is black to blend in. They are also generally more agile, so that they are less likely to be hindered by their environment. As frosting on the cake, the Migou made their eyes red to give them a subtly demonic cast, something else to scare Humans. And the Nazzadi gave them sharper incisors, so that if they snapped at you, they'd probably take a bite out. Of course, in the Strange Aeon, people have seen way scarier stuff, but during the First Arcanotech War, the Nazzadi were terrifying.

There they were. A race of non-alien aliens that had a cool look derived from their function that weren't far off Humans. A race with flavor and not a lot of rules, one you could wrap your head around pretty easily.

A couple people have accused them of being dark elves from Dungeons and Dragons, also known as Drow. They are black-skinned, white-haired elves with red, purple, or otherwise oddly colored eyes who live deep underground and have a culture based on spiders and evil. So, the Nazzadi also have black skin and red eyes. So what? In today's media flooded world, try creating something that doesn't remind someone of something else. I could have done any number of things with the Nazzadi and somebody somewhere would have said, "they're just like this…"

What they are certainly isn't reminiscent of dark elves or things like that. One of the things I like about the Nazzadi is the subtlety of their culture. They are not some whacked out alien race with some exaggerated aspect of our culture to make them archetypal. They are a race of people who have only been in existence for a few decades. Everything that was told to them about who they were was some rehash of Humanity, tied up into a nice package that would give them the motivation they needed. Since breaking from the Migou, they have rejected nearly all of it and are now questing to create a culture and racial identity that is there own, in and amongst their Human brethren. They are open-minded, experimental, and have a lust of living that lots of people have forgotten.

Something that I am thinking about in all of this is the benefit having black skin would have on night-time stealth activities. I'll explore this in another post, however.