Before I begin, I'd like to emphasize that I prefer to write about aliens who are similar to humans; such as Vulcans, Kryptonians, space elves, ect. I do not like aliens that look like mutant monsters from Hell nor have bizarre skin colors or things like rubber ridges on their faces. I just wanted to clarify this. I have been working on a novel for 7-8 years, with a handwritten rough draft in 4 120 sheet college ruled notebooks, another in the making; not counting additions, deletions, and edits made in a 182,059 second draft on Word, about an invasion of Earth by a race of aliens who call themselves Nladisha whose sole intention is to wipe out the human race. Originally, I intended the Nladisha to be a form of space elf. However, very early in the novel, before I had so much as filled a single notebook, I made the Nladisha into pale skinned, blond haired humanoids. Revisiting the first, hastily written scenes in my novel, it occurred to me how much the Nladisha might resemble the fictitious Aryan Superman. This was never my intention. The Nladisha are not meant to stand in for racist sentiments of any kind. Aside from their general appearance as blond haired, pale skinned humans, the Nladisha share little else. Nladisha males stand between 6' and 7', and females are between 6' 5" and 8'. Males are heavily built and muscular, and though they are physically larger than males, females are lithe, and delicate. Both genders have purple tattoos on their cheeks, one set given to them when they're less than a day old, and a second set given when they reach puberty. They are primarily carnivorous, though they can, and do, eat some fruits, vegetables, and cereals. Female Nladisha are up to two times as strong as human males, and Nladisha males – even the shortest ones – are much stronger than their women. Nladisha bodies can take more blunt force trauma than humans. They have many little differences in internal structure, including a single lung with a separate by-pass tube connected directly to their nasal cavity – incase something becomes lodged in their trachea, they can still breath – and a grossly enlarged heart. As hunters, they have sensitive hearing, smell, and vision acute enough to see through any camouflage (though they can only see in the visible light spectrum, like humans, and special kinds of bright white colors can temporarily blind them). The males are mean and aggressive, and make up the primary force of the invasion. Females are much more methodical, thoughtful, and careful. Because Nladisha females are more balanced than males, their society is matriarchal. In the Nladisha invasion force, the entire command and control structure is run by women, all the way down the equivalent of lieutenants in the infantry - though female infantry commanders are almost as reckless as males, and far more deadly. In the privacy of their own home world, the Nladisha are actually much more gentler and harmless than when they're on the battlefield. They have an intense love of nature. They worship a single mother Goddess, and believe Fear, personified in mythology by a renegade “daughter” of their Goddess, must be destroyed in whatever tangible form it comes in. Their quarrel with humans is nothing personal. Many years ago, the Nladisha were invaded by a race of space elves (called Tartarquians) who sought to incorporate the Nladisha into their ever expanding intergalactic empire. The Nladisha repelled the invasion, but the experience left them deeply traumatized. Since the Tartarquians, an extra-planetary species of sentient life (life forms capable of developing and sustaining civilizations), caused them fear, they made it their mission to hunt down and destroy not only the Tartarquians, but all sentient life. They see it is as a religious duty, akin to the way Medieval knights saw the Crusades. Using captured and reverse-engineered Tartarquian technology, along with and integrated into their own native military technology; the Nladisha began a crusade of their own to "cleanse" the cosmos and hunt down and destroy the Tartarquians. Earth just so happens to be their latest victim. At this point, you may be wondering why the Nladisha don't just slam an asteroid into Earth, pulverize it with nukes, or unleash a deadly plague instead of mounting a full scale invasion. In this particular universe, some species (Nladisha and Tartarquians included) adapt symbiotically to foreign micro-organisms - their bodies can adjust to the presence of germs with no harmful side affects such as illness or death. The Nladisha are aware of the potential for epidemics, but because they never had the need to research diseases since they themselves can never get sick, they don't have the knowledge or skills to create a species-killing virus. As far as simply wiping out all life on Earth from outer space, the Nladisha’s deep love of nature prevents them from doing just that. They are also just as curious and inquisitive as humans. They believe their quarrel is with sentient life only (less than 1% of all life forms on a given world) so they want to limit environmental damage as much as possible, leaving behind a pristine world for further research and as a sort of “sacrifice” to their Goddess. Although they are merciless and unrelenting in battle, due to their goal of eradicating sentient life, the Nladisha don’t end up killing all their victims. Even during the Tartarquian invasion, the Nladisha practiced a strange custom called the Oath of Protection. Whenever an individual alien life form performs an act of charity for the Nladisha – be it handing over sensitive military information, or something as simple as offering an individual soldier a glass of water and a loaf of bread – the alien is eligible to be offered the Oath. It consists of drinking a potion that induces a series of hallucinations that simulates, both sensually and emotionally, the initial Tartarquian invasion of the Nladisha; allowing the victim to empathize with the Nladisha. At the same time, it erases all the individual’s feelings of allegiance to their native species; rendering them loyal only to the Nladisha. In turn, the Nladisha are legally and religiously obligated to treat the recipients of the Oath, referred to as Protected Ones, and their descendants as equals with the same rights and privileges as biological Nladisha. Every species the Nladisha have encountered has had at least some of its members take the Oath, including the Tartarquians – the very first Protected Ones were members of the very Tartarquian invasion force that set the Nladisha off on their deadly crusade in the first place, and their descendants still live peacefully among the Nladisha. The Nladisha show no preference when offering the Oath to humans. The Nladisha favor no race or ethnic group above the other. Race has no meaning among the Nladisha, for their own racial variations are negligible. In fact, even skin color is alien to them: until humans, the Nladisha have never encountered beings with different colored skin than light peach, and the notion of different skin colors is seen as a novelty – perhaps, as one character suggests in one scene, skin color is an aesthetic touch placed by the human gods, since it serves no obvious evolutionary purpose. To the Nladisha, one human is equal to another, whether with blond hair and pale skin, or black hair and ebony skin. So, if you’ve stuck with me this far, there are 3 issues I’d like your help with. First, as a reader, are you offended by the portrayal of the Nladisha as having blond hair and pale skin? This is just your opinion: the Nladisha are already set in their final form. Second, if you were a human in my story, what would be your first impression of the Nladisha? Now, the Nladisha don’t invade like normal aliens are supposed to, as one character puts it: in “10 mile long spaceships hovering above the major cities with the panicked citizens and military not knowing if the aliens wanted peace or war – something along the lines of the movie Independence Day.” After surrounding the planet with unmanned satellites for reconnaissance, meteorology, communications, and navigation; the Nladisha spaceships take orbit around the moon (to give advanced warning in case of an attack from the planet’s surface). Dropships then insert fixed wing aircraft and helicopters above the planet’s oceans, just out of range of air defense radars. Nladisha fighter and bomber aircraft then attack the coastlines of the continents, concentrating on a particular area that will serve as a beach-head for the invasion, usually an airport or air base. The helicopters arrive, and insert ground troops, air defense vehicles, and tanks to secure the landing perimeter, followed by transport planes carrying heavy artillery and supplies to set up a Nladisha field base, such as fuel and equipment for cargo handling. Up until this point, the invasion resembles an airborne landing by a terrestrial foe. Only once the beach-head is established do the Nladisha begin landing shuttles of troops, and unmanned cargo pods from space. Unless the personnel manning missile defense radars know what to look for, only aircraft and ships passing through the area the dropships are operating will notice anything otherworldly about the invaders. By the time anyone suspects this is an attack from space, they will be too busy repelling what they think is a conventional invasion. So, would you think the Nladisha invasion was an attack by right-wing Neo-Nazis who went a wee bit overboard on the whole white supremacy thing? If not, who would you blame – another country, or another ideology? How would you react? Would you attack (physically or verbally) a member of the group you felt responsible for the invasion, the way Japanese or Arab Americans were attacked after Pearl Harbor or 9/11? (Assume the Nladisha are attacking your country. In the story, the Nladisha only attack in two locations on each continent with the exception of Australia where they only attack in the south, and Antarctica where they don’t attack at all. In North America, they attack in San Diego and the Dominican Republic). Finally, what nickname would you give the Nladisha? In the series World War (one of my inspirations) the author implies the aliens who attack Earth are some sort of intelligent dinosaurs, like raptors. They are referred to as Lizards by the Earth-men, with the exception of the Chinese, who call them scaly devils after the pre-Communist Chinese custom of calling foreigners “devils”. Remember, you’ll most likely get your first glimpse of a Nladisha from a grainy cell phone video or a news camera, unless you’re unlucky enough to be present at the landing zone, and they will have no visible props to show they’re from outer space yet.
Nicknames: If you're looking for the type of nickname that's a shortened version of their actual term, something like Naddies, Lads, Disha, Ladish, etc would work. As far as nicknames based off of their features, maybe something like "jumpers," "runners" etc if they're swift and raptor-like.
Just a note... If you're worried about offending someone you'd better stop writing now. You'll never satisfy everyone, man. And I actually do think that aliens would look like us, at least those that would be able to make it here.
