Jovian medusoids ate my Jack Russell

[Maitrejeanthierry]

It’s incredible how many gas giants in so many SF universes harbour creatures that share the same profile: medusa-like or octopoid, they flit about the « hellish » atmosphere (another cliché) of gas giants. They are usually huge and incredibly tough, they are quite intelligent with, very often, pacifist and/or mystic tendencies, and they frequently can do a lot of nasty tricks based on static electricity and E/M radiations. They are typically aloof of other sophonts but feel the same fascination towards us than the one we feel towards them.

They are the Sheol in GURPS Traveller, to take just one example amongst dozens. They are a fascinating and rather alien, well-designed culture, much more IMHO than the whole « you can see the zipper at the back » Disneyworld parade of so-called aliens (don’t get me wrong, though, I love my Vargr and my Aslan, but that’s about it. No Ursae IMTU, for example.

I quite like them, if only because they represent a role-playing challenge. Do you use this kind of creature/species in your OTUs? If so, are they one-of-a-kind, and by that I mean, can they found in only ONE gas giant?
Or do they occur several times? If so, how frequently is that? I guess one could make a case about medusoids being a typical inhabitant for giants, the way 4-legged or upright, symmetrical, mammals occur a lot on certain categories of planets?

Also, are the medusoids occurring on several gas giants in different systems part of the same species, or are they local variations, similar and yet different from

 

[Timerover51]

It’s incredible how many gas giants in so many SF universes harbour creatures that share the same profile: medusa-like or octopoid, they flit about the « hellish » atmosphere (another cliché) of gas giants. They are usually huge and incredibly tough, they are quite intelligent with, very often, pacifist and/or mystic tendencies, and they frequently can do a lot of nasty tricks based on static electricity and E/M radiations. They are typically aloof of other sophonts but feel the same fascination towards us than the one we feel towards them.

They are the Sheol in GURPS Traveller, to take just one example amongst dozens. They are a fascinating and rather alien, well-designed culture, much more IMHO than the whole « you can see the zipper at the back » Disneyworld parade of so-called aliens (don’t get me wrong, though, I love my Vargr and my Aslan, but that’s about it. No Ursae IMTU, for example.

I quite like them, if only because they represent a role-playing challenge. Do you use this kind of creature/species in your OTUs? If so, are they one-of-a-kind, and by that I mean, can they found in only ONE gas giant?
Or do they occur several times? If so, how frequently is that? I guess one could make a case about medusoids being a typical inhabitant for giants, the way 4-legged or upright, symmetrical, mammals occur a lot on certain categories of planets?

Also, are the medusoids occurring on several gas giants in different systems part of the same species, or are they local variations, similar and yet different from

I suspect that all of the medusoids are based on the A. C. Clarke story, A Meeting with Medusa.

 

[Timerover51]

Thinking of the medusoids, in the Clarke story, he did have the manta-ray looking predators also in the picture. Does any of the other uses of them have a predator present as well, assuming that the medusoids are not sapient?

 

[aramis]

Only gas giant dwellers I've seen are the Jagd-il-Jgd. They're sophonts, and sublight-colonizers, allergic to jump space. So they are predator free as presented in JTAS.

 

[Timerover51]

Only gas giant dwellers I've seen are the Jagd-il-Jgd. They're sophonts, and sublight-colonizers, allergic to jump space. So they are predator free as presented in JTAS.

Hmm, I have a couple of books on possible alien life forms that I should probably take a look at then.

 

[mike wightman]

Do a google search for gas giant life.

There's a nice youtube vid.

Look at the images results too

 

[Dragoner]

The Ship Who Sang has the Beta Corviki who inhabit a Gas Giant, they seem almost like an energy based lifeform though.

 

[Ackehece]

hmmm,
how about the Gas Giant itself as a life form?
The jet streams of gases part and parcel of life, the electrical storms thoughts, gravity as its power source, food could be the material falling into it.
Psionic gravity beams used to draw in food...
The eye of Jupiter (etc almost all gas giants develop eyes if our local group is an example) could be just that .. a photosensitive spot with a scary aperture size.

 

[Frankymole]

I suspect that all of the medusoids are based on the A. C. Clarke story, A Meeting with Medusa.

There was a White Dwarf adventure called "Sky Rig" which had a huge tentacular creature with its tendrils running throughout a GG atmosphere refinery (or whatever it was), quite difficult to puzzle out what was going wrong with the station.

Something more clumsily done in the 1978 Dr Who story "The Power of Kroll"! (Though that was a methane refinery on a swampy moon).

 

[Blue Ghost]

It’s incredible how many gas giants in so many SF universes harbour creatures that share the same profile: medusa-like or octopoid, they flit about the « hellish » atmosphere (another cliché) of gas giants. They are usually huge and incredibly tough, they are quite intelligent with, very often, pacifist and/or mystic tendencies, and they frequently can do a lot of nasty tricks based on static electricity and E/M radiations. They are typically aloof of other sophonts but feel the same fascination towards us than the one we feel towards them.

They are the Sheol in GURPS Traveller, to take just one example amongst dozens. They are a fascinating and rather alien, well-designed culture, much more IMHO than the whole « you can see the zipper at the back » Disneyworld parade of so-called aliens (don’t get me wrong, though, I love my Vargr and my Aslan, but that’s about it. No Ursae IMTU, for example.

I quite like them, if only because they represent a role-playing challenge. Do you use this kind of creature/species in your OTUs? If so, are they one-of-a-kind, and by that I mean, can they found in only ONE gas giant?
Or do they occur several times? If so, how frequently is that? I guess one could make a case about medusoids being a typical inhabitant for giants, the way 4-legged or upright, symmetrical, mammals occur a lot on certain categories of planets?

Also, are the medusoids occurring on several gas giants in different systems part of the same species, or are they local variations, similar and yet different from

The only time I ever heard of them was in Carl Sagan's old COSMOS TV series back int he late 70s, where he mentions the possibilities of floaters and hunters. Me, I think life on Jovian bodies unlikely, but, I did have a CT adventure all sketched out that centered on the possibility.

 

[BlackBat242]

James Blish's Cities in Flight makes mention of a bioluminescent, jellyfish-like beast which exists as the only life form on the planet Jupiter, making its home strictly within the atmosphere.



The game Star Control II includes a race of balloon-like aliens called the "Slylandro", who are native to a distant gas giant, living only within a certain air density. While intelligent and long lived, they have little technology and no means of travelling beyond their planet, as all material beyond a certain density sinks to levels of their atmosphere they cannot survive in.



C.J. Cherryh’s The Pride of Chanur (1981) and its sequels has three alien species I really like (for their sheer alien-ness).

I can't remember if any of them are from gas giants, but I'm sure they visit them.

Tc'a and Chi

Tc'a are large methane-breathing yellow five-eyed snakelike beings, and the chi are yellow arthropod-like creatures. The two species are related in a way none of the oxygen breathers understand, but are (presumably) symbiotic. They are very technologically advanced and powerful, although understanding them is tricky at best, since their brains are multi-part and their speech decodes as complex matrices of intertwined meanings. They run the methane side of most space stations.
Knnn

Knnn, the third methane breathing species, multi-legged tangles of wiry black hair, are the most technologically advanced in the Compact. Unlike other known species, they can maneuver in hyperspace and carry other ships with them. Only tc'a can communicate with them (or claim they can); the knnn are incomprehensible and therefore deemed dangerous by the other species, not to be provoked. They trade by snatching whatever they want and leaving whatever they deem sufficient as payment behind; it is an improvement over their prior habit of just taking trader ships apart.

 

[Vladika]

Also, are the medusoids occurring on several gas giants in different systems part of the same species, or are they local variations, similar and yet different from

Medusoids are solitary creatures that communicate telepathically over vast distances (measured in hundreds of parsecs) with no time lag. They, during rutting season, "Jump" instantaneously, mate and return to their own Gas giant.

Young are reared by their same sex parent. The parent teaches the young Medusoid everything it needs to know, then moves on. Just where is the subject of much debate and ongoing research.