Origins of Nex Mons Mortis

[supercommando]

Well, as I said earlier, I’m impressed that you went so far as to make a whole forum for your ‘Nex Mons Mortis’ universe. I’d be interested to know how you came up with all this stuff. The planet, the zombimorphs, stealth bots, everything. It must have taken you a long time and lots of work, so I offer you a heartfelt round of applause.

[Nex Mons Mortis Elder]

Well, I thank you for your round of applause, and a public congrats on being the first member of this brand new forum! Well, to tell you the truth, I wanted a thread on Predator: The Hunted message board for Jehdin, who I made up about a month ago, and couldn't for the life of me think of something epic enough. He was the most powerful, intelligent, cunning, resourceful, and downright mean monstrosity of a Yautja that the universe had ever known. So, I thought, and I thought. I figured out I wanted an AVP theme, obviously, and I kind of wanted it to be a solo mission, so I figured no other Yautja for that thread. I'm assuming everything on this board happens AFTER that mission, so that people can still have tons of freedom while roleplaying. I asked your advice, and that night I had a movie marathon with a few of my friends. We headed over to the local Family Video to pick out about 12 hours of movies, and after a long debate we settled on Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Though why, I will never know... what ever happened to story lines?), Predator, Aliens, Terminator, and iRobot. While watching the last one we decided to watch (We saved the best for last: Aliens. Our local Family Video only has the Special addition with the little extra tid-bit about Newt's parents and brother going to the ship, so that was fun) I got the idea while watching the scene where Ripley fights the Alien Queen. Robots! But I didn't want them to be the classical, clunky monsters that you see Weyland-Yutani industries using. I thought about the ideas for the iRobot and Terminator movies, the more sleek looking things, and then thought "Wouldn't it be awesome if the robot was able to pick up that M4A1 or Plasmacaster and just blast the hell out of his enemies with it."
I started thinking along those lines, making the thing robotic like the iRobot instead of being all Terminator makes-no-sense movement makes-no-sense skin, but still wanting to keep the blending. I was struggling with how to make a 12 foot robot invisible, then one of my buds thought it would be cool if he was Predator, so he could cloak and check the answers on tests so he never failed one again, and that gave me the idea for the Predator cloaking. From there, I just played around with the most awesome robot I could, gave it a few strengths, a few weaknesses, added a cool letter-number combination and, because it was designed with Stealth in mind, called it a Stealthbot. And that is how I made the stealthbots.
As for the Zombimorphs, I decided I wanted zombies, quote "Just so I could show the morons who made the Resident Evil movies suck with a such a great video game base what a zombie is supposed to freggin' be." unquote. After watching a Dead space commercial and reading the predator message boards for a while, I decided I wanted the word 'morph' in there too, because it just sounds so awesome in a name. You can even make a kitten sound awesome with the word 'morph.' Watch: Kittenomorph. See? Well, I combined the two words to get 'Zombimorph', then began working on bare mechanics. I decided I didn't want them to have the rotted look all zombies have. They needed to be biologically possible, so the world wouldn't seem too much more fantastic than the average AVP universe. I went with a more xenomorph look so that it could have the brand of horrifying-ness that only something based on H.R. Giger's fabulous work could have. Added spikes and thickened armor to make them more impressive, and just began working with different combinations of traits for different creatures till I came up with all the Zombimorphs we now have. Also, as a little tip, that Bestiary, once this place gets up and running, is going to be getting a new entry every two to three weeks or so. Viruses naturally mutate, so these Zombimorphs will as well.
The planet I came up with while thinking about a horror setting, and I actually came up with the idea of a zombie-planet about a year ago. An isolated planet, a light year or more from any civilization, filled with dying and decaying plants that have contracted a strange disease. As you delve further into the dungeon, beasts kill your men... but your men don't stay dead. It sounded great, and I was going to use if for a video game I was designing with Game Maker 7... then summer vacation ended and I didn't have any time. Teachers love piling on homework...
Anyway, the zombie planet was great, and I also decided I didn't want the place to be open in any way, shape, or form. Its all the more horrifying if no matter where you are on the planet, its going to take a while on foot to get to your position. I was originally going to make the place a huge swamp with crocodile like creatures and venomous insects, but I didn't want every threat to be killable. So, I made environmental threats instead. Core-temperature gas spouts, cliffs to fall off of, great lakes to drown in, and mountains where the air is almost too thin to breathe. Having a threat that is literally impossible to destroy by conventional means just seems way better to me than a couple of extra kinds of monsters. The zombies were easy to include, the whole 'virus that causes zombies' was easy, and seeing that I already made the place mountainous, I could put a reason behind the mountains and our Zombimorphic friends in one fell swoop.I put lakes in the valleys for water so things could survive, trees around to give rain forests, mountains, swamps, and open plains on plateaus that water couldn't be held on.
The next step was the robots. How do I get a race of robots that are made of the most advanced technology in the universe on an uninhabited planet? Answer: Inhabit it. Weyland-Yutani Colonial Marines and colonists come to the planet because of a breathable atmosphere, hell ensues. Colonial Marines can't fight Zombimorphs, get a robot to do it for you. It is the future after all! I'm a fair story writer, though I wouldn't really call myself 'good', and it wasn't hard to piece together the Stealthbot's location on the planet. Then, I had to think of how to put Predators and Aliens on the planet. Predators could obviously hunt here; These were some of the fiercest monsters in the galaxy, and very honorable trophies, plus the ultimate price for failure. It would be a very nice hunting ground for our masked, crab-faced friends. And if a mothership full of thousands of Facehuggers were to land on this planet, well, it'd be AVP-R on a more massive scale. And that is how I made the planet and everything on it. I hope you enjoyed reading this.

[Sgt.Wild]

What an great script do we have here,nex mons mortis have an excellent background,i was wondering if we could make an story from survivors from the crash from the predator ship!
Since they had never came to Nex mons mortis the story would be filled with surprises as they came ever closer to an alien hive,they could seek high ground to communicate with another ship and stumble with a hive perhaps,we could make an excellent fanfic...
I have a question however,does anyone here has drawing skills?

[Nex Mons Mortis Elder]

Actually, I happen to fancy myself an amateur artist. I'm good with details and can make some wicked looking stuff, but I suck at both the arts of coloring, and shading, meaning I basically do blank sketches. I can color occasionally, but it usually doesn't come out as nicely as I like.

[Sgt.Wild]

Well...maybe you could draw the creatures from the bestiary you created,it would be really nice if we could not only imagine,but actually see...what we are facing.
I am almost certain than ''the shagratian''(or something like that)also happens to drawn very well....maybe we could kidnap him and bring him here,and force him to drawn every single encounter that we will face...i mean,help you with the bestiary...sorry,i was listening to black sabbath,it gets to me sometimes...

[Nex Mons Mortis Elder]

Now Wild, that is NOT NICE. In the paraphrased, copyrighted words of that one guy from Aliens who's name escapes me at the moment,
"Stow that (censored), Hudson!"
Replace Hudson with Wild and I think that'll do for right now.
Oh, and to answer you question about drawing things for the bestiary, sorry, no scanner. Can't get anything on the computer.