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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8690138" data-attributes="member: 72555">The video game Stellaris provides a treasure trove of tropes.  Only a few are elvish.Mossy rocks: Your species is a bunch of rocks covered in moss.  Their communication, when translated, is very slow; on the other hand, they consider other species communication also slow, because their languages are optimized for different things.  An analogy might be, someone who is only able to type out arithmetic expressions having a discussion with someone who is only able to paint landscapes they can see.  The arthmetic expressions make very poor landscape drawings, and the landscape drawings don't communicate basic arithmetic very efficiently.They are Spirtualist.  They consider human-style science to be something akin to a board game.  I mean, it passes the time?  But as far as they are concerned, it doesn't provide efficient ways at finding truth or beauty.  Their technology is simply alien, and human science really has a problem understanding it.I mean, study produces useful insights, but usually not how it works or replicates what it does.  Like, humans studying how their ships move around might produce insights on how to make better holographic projectors or medical scanners or batteries.  But no clue on how that "machine" actually moves a ship.I say study it, because when asked about how their technology works, you get what appears to be an extremely long and complex philosophical and moral discussion which devolves into technical details that no human philospher has managed to decode.  If you read serious philosophy you can easily see how this would happen; now imagine one where the important referents are obvious to the other party, and completely unknown to you.They have similar problems when they try to understand human technology.We aren't sure if the creatures are the rocks or the algae growing on the rocks.  There is evidence they are both the rocks and the algae, and evidence they are not the algae, and other evidence they are not the rocks, and evidence that they are neither rocks nor algae.They have managed to use some basic human-style technology and find it useful.  For example, "segways" to move them around are considered quite useful and popular.  Similarly, they have produced a few pieces of technology that humans find useful for everyday use; maybe a substance that both heals broken bones and removes muscle strain after exercise in seconds.  Neither side really knows how this useful technology works.(This was inspired by an alien species mentioned in an actual playthrough of stellaris; spirtualist rock people.  I embellished.)</blockquote>

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