The strangers, or the fourth pillar

Like all creatures players, I have thought up completely new creatures. All my friends that I gave creatures did this, even my little brother. Things like birds, amphibians or fish-people seem often the inspiration, though the list of geat breeds and the infamous naven attest to far wider interests. 

I have written about those geats in an earlier post here: https://conjurergob.blogspot.com/2024/10/geats-and-their-possibilities.html but what I didn’t know is that creatures labs themselves too had created a fourth type of creatures. Though it is technically an ettin in the game itself, the alien in creatures village has a completely different morphology. Eyes on stalks, tentacles for arms. Their body is made for a biome unknown to us, but it is one which would work both in the seas and a low gravity environment.

A possible clue that these creatures might have been intended to fill the fourth blank might be the fourth terrarium in creatures 3. Each of the biomes had a connection to each of the creatures types, yet the aquarium had no creature linked to it. Sometimes ettins or grendels would end up there during their wanderings, but besides the beach there was no space for creatures to live, and that had no ecosystem at all. An amphibious creature would be a more sensible choice, and the mollusc-like stranger would have been a fair fit.

admittedly, it is all wishful thinking on my part. Though creatures 2 added a new creature, and c3 could have seen another.

As for the origin of the alien, several options are open.For them to be descendants of Borland would be reasonable, certainly with the involvement of the Shee. For them to have been created almost fully by the genetic sketching and merging the shee have done would also be likely. The last explanation and perhaps the most fanciful would be for them to originate from the stars, having reached the ark and capillata by warp or coincidence. 

I use them in my stories, though so far only sparingly to retain their mystery and strangeness. In my stories I use the name “D’laak” for them, this name I borrowed from the Dlaak Norns, though I believe the name was made up by the converters: Erling & Marcus Kurzbach rather than Creature Labs. Their nature in my stories is partially completely alien to the protagonists and partially that of a natural saboteur. The way Ettins dismantle linked machines in creatures 3 and the dismantling curiosity aliens in supposed real life encounters inspired this and it makes for interesting writing.

https://conjurergob.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-way-and-pillars.html Is the only story so far they have made an appearance in. I have tried to explore an alien environment and to flesh them out somewhat without revealing too much.

https://creatures.wiki/Dlaak are Erlings version of the aliens. 

https://creatures.wiki/Ettin_Aliens are tarnedangels variant. These are ettins and sized as such.