[Eberron] Alien Invasion

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, they already sort of do. They reproduce by injecting elder neogi with their eggs. The elders swell into grotesque monsters with barely-animal intelligence, the so-called "great old masters". The spawn incubate within the neogi body for a period of months, then burst out, killing their host.

You are right! I completely forgot about that...

So just replace "elder neogi" with "people" and you've got something really nice and icky for the players to find - the neogi people-farms. Which are also their nurseries.

Perhaps they have had that ability all along - their eggs can grow within any sapient being. It's just that some senior neogi began objecting to this and used this as an additional impetus for the invasion...

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

It's also similar to how at least the genestealers reproduce unless that got changed in the recent edition. However once infected, the victim turns into a genestealer instead of hatching one. Some humans would form cults just to be infected and often lure fleets to those worlds.

The rest of the 'nids are grown and hyper evolve to what's needed tho some species show traits of races that've been absorbed - genestealers with humans, biovores with orks, zoanthroapes with eldar (powerful psykers IIRC) and tyrant guard with Space Marines (from wikipedia) with other races showing fluff reasons explaining their appearances (lichtors resembling mantises, etc).

More or less the Borg, descending upon a planet like a plague of locusts and harvesting everything til only barren rock remains, tho the upstoppable Borg are seen in the Necrons (kinda Terminator-ish).

Tyranids seem more like aberrations like the neogi. As for magitech, the humans weren't saved by technology in War of the Worlds unless bacteria is considered a "machine god".

Edit - Oh, there was also the 2E module "Tale of the Comet" of an alien invasion. I believe the main antagonist was a computer that would use its minions to animate corpses and also used technology (naturally) for the "tech vs magic" scenario. I think there's a module where a clockwork creature achieves sentience and does something similar (one of White Wolf's spinoff companies).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Tyranids seem more like aberrations like the neogi. As for magitech, the humans weren't saved by technology in War of the Worlds unless bacteria is considered a "machine god".

Essentially, the humans in that novel were saved by a Deus Ex Machina. Which can work in a novel (it did in this case), but it makes for crappy gaming. In this framework, the world should be saved from the invaders by something the PCs do. Thus, the actual Weakness is not really defined here - the DM should adjust it to whatever the PCs decide to research and whatever cool tactics they come up with. That doesn't mean that it should be easy, though - after all, we want to tell some thrilling adventures over the course of the campaign.

With the fate of the world at stake, should we really settle for less?

 

[werk]

Perhaps they have had that ability all along - their eggs can grow within any sapient being. It's just that some senior neogi began objecting to this and used this as an additional impetus for the invasion...

Taking a cue from the Aliens RPG (I think) the spawn takes on some of the attributes of the host. So the typical Alien alien, was from a human host, but in the third movie, it was rather dog-like, smaller/ran of all fours, because of the dog host. I remember something about the corps making aliens with rhino and gorilla hosts that were quite powerful.

Maybe work out a neogi spawn template that you can throw on umber hulks, behir, purple worms, dragons, whatever.

But this is getting more organic and less technological, so may just be used as a side plot or 'isn't that interesting' flavor for the main story.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Taking a cue from the Aliens RPG (I think) the spawn takes on some of the attributes of the host. So the typical Alien alien, was from a human host, but in the third movie, it was rather dog-like, smaller/ran of all fours, because of the dog host. I remember something about the corps making aliens with rhino and gorilla hosts that were quite powerful.

Maybe work out a neogi spawn template that you can throw on umber hulks, behir, purple worms, dragons, whatever.

But this is getting more organic and less technological, so may just be used as a side plot or 'isn't that interesting' flavor for the main story.

I'd probably say that the intelligence of the emerging neogi is limited by the intelligence of the host and leave it at that. I mean, the neogi as a race are not particularly eager to become frontline fighters, so creating neogi variants that are physically tougher seems a bit pointless...

 

[sword-dancer]

Another idea, shamelss ripped ob Professor Zamorra, is the Noguyi transform with magitech the people of eberron in androidzombieslaves.

They implant a crystal in their brain which enhances their physical and intelctual-mathematical abilities.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Another idea, shamelss ripped ob Professor Zamorra, is the Noguyi transform with magitech the people of eberron in androidzombieslaves.

They implant a crystal in their brain which enhances their physical and intelctual-mathematical abilities.

In this case, I'd actually use biotechnology again. Some creepy worm which burrows into the brain and acts as a symbiont...

 

[sword-dancer]

I thought some things a bit different would make it more surprising, and use the worms for the infiltrators.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I thought some things a bit different would make it more surprising, and use the worms for the infiltrators.

And naturally, these worms are remote-controlled via psionic items that serve as nodes and control mechanisms.

And if the local control mechanism is destroyed, the worm will go rogue and eat more brain matter. Soon the victims will shamble around, attack other, uninfected people, and groan: "Braaaainsssss..."

Eventually, the brains of the victims will explode and a dozen new worms emerge which scuttle into the shadows and will seek a new sleeping host...


Mind control devices and biological terror weapon! There, how did I do?