(New) Chryssalid concept art!

[Skonar]

Apparently some concept art forum was having a contest, and they picked Julian Gollop to give 'em the theme - Chryssalids!

 

Chexxor --> https://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=84308

[Gimli]

Some interesting entries. Woodlandwalker's is my favorite.

[Zombie]

*Zombie runs in and excitedly points at the X-COM Fan Art Page*

 

My criteria for a good Chryssalid revamp is simple: it should scare the socks off me. Woodland's is fairly scary but doesn't show the finished alien, just the hatching sequence. If I had to pick one, it would probably be GorgothofSuburbia's entry (found in this thread). Unfortunately, it's just a thumbnail and I haven't found the full size pic as it was removed from photobucket. But it looks like a Predator-ish type of alien which always gave me tingles. Of the big images I was able to recover, my pick would be between Panagos or TroyWilkerson.

 

Thanks for pointing this out Skonar!

 

- Zombie

[Gimli]

Mine would be a bit closer to the Alien. Though now that I've actually taken a closer look at it (never watched the movie *ashamed*) it would only really be the mouth, which would have the same kind of teeth and would be slobbery.

I started thinking about its design again, and now I have 95% of the general design solved, leaving just the evolution of the spores unsolved.

[NKF]

It's the signature Happy Grin ™. Got to have that. Otherwise it's just a plain old ordinary every-day creepy alien.

 

- NKF

[Pete]

Yup. Your first impression of a Chrysalid at a distance in real life would be "aww, it's a happy smiling crab-man".

 

They lull you into a false sense of security they do. Honest. Then they just gets jiggy and makes you feel all gooey inside. Literally

[FullAuto]

In the redesign stakes, Hurricane's is the best. Freaky.

 

Sticking to the traditional look, Radunz's is excellent, quite like cognition's chunky one too.

[JellyfishGreen]

Mine would be a bit closer to the Alien. Though now that I've actually taken a closer look at it (never watched the movie *ashamed*) it would only really be the mouth, which would have the same kind of teeth and would be slobbery.

I started thinking about its design again, and now I have 95% of the general design solved, leaving just the evolution of the spores unsolved.

 

Gimli: I hereby grant you special leave to go watch "Aliens: Directors Cut" before returning to duty as an X-COM operative. This is important.

 

Spore design: Off the cuff, if Chryssie is a designed biological weapon based off some creature, designed with heightened metabolism, kept in storage and useful only in combat, it doesn't have to be a viable creature with an evolution-stable reproductive system. Sorta like the seedless grape varieties, except in reverse.

 

One unnatural setup for a biological weapon would to have them be "born pregnant", like that other biological anti-Klingon weapon, the Tribble.

 

Or the "spores" can be fully-formed adult "deflated" exoskeletons, for instance, that "inflate" by consuming the host (especially the host's liquids) rather than going through a more complicated (slower) growth process. Like a folded-up Transformer or an inflatable pool toy that hardens like epoxy when exposed to air. Growth hormones and other metabolic cocktails can be assumed.

 

These "spores" don't even need to be produced by the Chryssies, necessarily. The producer could be a breeding machine or "queen" or genetically co-opted host animal. In this sense the Chryssies are loaded with ammo for the mission, like any weapon, instead of growing their own.

 

A weak point of this approach is the "new" Chryssie wouldn't have room for internal spores when in spore form; we could further posit the "parent" could deposit more than one spore - one to grow, and a few more for the "child" to load into its own ovipositor when mature.

[franconbean]

I really like Paolo13's entry, very cool.

of course, woodland walker's is the most striking with it's gore. Overall very good entrys there.

[SectoidEmperor]

Spore design: Off the cuff, if Chryssie is a designed biological weapon based off some creature, designed with heightened metabolism, kept in storage and useful only in combat, it doesn't have to be a viable creature with an evolution-stable reproductive system. Sorta like the seedless grape varieties, except in reverse.

 

This is what I always thought. The aliens probably keep the chryssies in stasis when they aren't in use, occasionally letting them wake up to infect some captured humans or animals in a controlled environment to boost their numbers (less time consuming than growing new chryssies in a cloning lab).

 

This would also explain why they don't just drop a few hundred chryssalids and let them destroy the world. With their artificially accelerated metabolisms, the chryssalids have a lifespan measured in hours. The one limitation of what would otherwise be a bioweapon of world-ending power.

 

Or the "spores" can be fully-formed adult "deflated" exoskeletons, for instance, that "inflate" by consuming the host (especially the host's liquids) rather than going through a more complicated (slower) growth process. Like a folded-up Transformer or an inflatable pool toy that hardens like epoxy when exposed to air. Growth hormones and other metabolic cocktails can be assumed.

 

These "spores" don't even need to be produced by the Chryssies, necessarily. The producer could be a breeding machine or "queen" or genetically co-opted host animal. In this sense the Chryssies are loaded with ammo for the mission, like any weapon, instead of growing their own.

 

A weak point of this approach is the "new" Chryssie wouldn't have room for internal spores when in spore form; we could further posit the "parent" could deposit more than one spore - one to grow, and a few more for the "child" to load into its own ovipositor when mature.

 

I like this idea; newborn chryssalids are actually infertile, but borrow some embryos from the parent during implantation. Really enforces the idea that this is an engineered species, changed vastly from its natural behavior and development cycle of its ancestral species. Its also an elegant solution for the "why don't chryssalids overrun the earth" problem I brought up earlier in this post.

 

As for the conservation of mass issue; what if the chryssalid isn't a parasite, but a virus? After infection, the viral agent travels to the nuclei of each cell and attaches itself, turning the host into a chryssalid. When the process is over, all that's left is the host's skin and hair (since those are made of dead cells), with all the living tissues transformed into chryssalid. The only problem with this would be the extracellular matrix of the bones, but I guess the chryssies will never be 100% scientifically plausible no matter the explanation.