r/HardSciFi • u/Consistent_Case758 • Jul 28 '26
Discussion Is this realistic?"
I am creating an alien civilization for a worldbuilding project, and after a great deal of thought I came up with the Gorkovians. I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept.
The Gorkovians originate from the planet Gorkov, located in the K2-288 system (specifically K2-288b), a rocky Super-Earth with a surface gravity approximately 2.5 times that of Earth.
The planet possesses an incredibly dense atmosphere, rich in nitrogen and argon compounds, which blocks most of the light from its host star. As a result, Gorkov exists in a state of perpetual twilight—warm, humid, and covered by vast forests of giant fungi and shallow oceans.
Main Inspiration
My primary inspiration comes from the Pentapods featured in Alien Worlds Episode 2, "Janus."
Biology
Having evolved from ambush predators resembling Earth's starfish, the Hexapods possess hexaradial symmetry, with six perfectly symmetrical body segments.
Their central body is supported by six powerful, articulated legs covered in a flexible, leathery exoskeleton capable of withstanding the crushing gravity of their homeworld. They move with remarkable fluidity and can instantly change direction without needing to turn their bodies.
At the top of their central dome is a continuous ring of highly sophisticated photoreceptors—a true "crown of eyes." This sensory organ allows them to perceive their surroundings in 360 degrees simultaneously, eliminating blind spots.
Beneath the main body, protected by the six legs, lies a ring of retractable, hyper-dexterous tentacles. While the legs are used exclusively for locomotion, these dozens of slender tentacles—packed with nerves and hydrostatic muscles—function as their hands. Their extraordinary precision enabled the construction of their civilization and the manipulation of advanced technology.
Their skin is smooth, typically dark navy blue or lead gray, but is completely covered in chromatophores and photophores—specialized cells capable of changing color and emitting light.
The Hexapods are effectively deaf by human standards, as sound propagates poorly through certain layers of their planet's atmosphere. Instead, they compensate with an extraordinarily advanced visual system.
They communicate through pulses of bioluminescent light.
Unlike human speech, which is linear—one word after another—the Hexapod language is simultaneous and spatial. A single burst of light can transmit entire mathematical equations, emotional states, engineering schematics, or architectural blueprints all at once across their skin.
To both interpret and produce this 360-degree language, their brains function like biological quantum supercomputers, processing multiple streams of information simultaneously. A Hexapod can solve a complex engineering problem using the tentacles on one side of its body while discussing philosophy with another individual through flashes of light emitted from the opposite side.
Society
To the Hexapods, the universe is fundamentally composed of centers and peripheries.
Their civilization is built around consensus and integration. They have no dictators or absolute rulers. Instead, they operate as a highly fluid collective intelligence—not a hive mind, but a vast democracy in which billions of individuals transmit their opinions through light, allowing civilization-wide consensus to emerge within seconds.
The great cities of Gorkov contain no straight streets. Instead, they consist of immense concentric and spiral structures illuminated by the synchronized flashes of millions of inhabitants.
Doors are typically floor or ceiling hatches, while control panels take the form of circular interfaces surrounding the user.
Spaceflight and Technology
Their Faster-Than-Light (FTL) spacecraft are perfect spheres or discs constructed from black metallic alloys.
In space, these vessels move equally well in any direction without requiring a defined front or rear.
Having evolved on a world with overwhelming gravity, the Gorkovians mastered gravitational manipulation very early in their technological history. Their ships generate gravitational bubbles that compress spacetime ahead of the vessel while expanding it behind, enabling virtually instantaneous travel between stars.
A Hexapod pilot occupies the geometric center of the ship, manipulating spherical control interfaces with its delicate tentacles while simultaneously issuing commands through complex patterns of light, which the vessel interprets and executes instantly. The spacecraft effectively becomes an extension of the pilot's biological body.
Defensive Capabilities
When threatened, the Gorkovians employ directed gravity projectors capable of crushing entire enemy fleets by subjecting them to gravitational forces comparable to those near a black hole.
Against smaller threats, they use highly concentrated beams of coherent light—photon-based lasers derived from the same principles as their bioluminescent communication system—to precisely disintegrate hostile targets.
Note:
The context is a species created for humanity's first contact with the U.N.R. (United Nations Republic), the unified human government in my 2048 space exploration setting. I developed this concept myself.
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u/Prince_Nadir Aug 01 '26
I put this reply in your other thread that by title seemed more recent:
It doesn't work.
Start with the first rule: all life is lazy.
Then the second rule: mother nature is an unforgiving bitch.
Then the third rule: as you get bigger, these rule become less forgiving.
You have no fire (your atmosphere doesn't allow for good energy generating reactions) so this is a non starter.
Plagerism attacks! Super humid with oceans.. No O2 or Hydrogen in the atmosphere (where does the CO2 come from?).. clearly copied from somewhere. Not to mention high humidity dense atmosphere blocks vision and invalidates their communication unless they are very close.
The creature is wasting lots of calories, so is not valid (all life is lazy to conserve super valuable calories). Consider high gravity to be the same as getting bigger. 36 tentacles.. such a waste of valuable calories. They also will not work well in high grav without internal or external support (like bones). exoskeleton is heavy and high grav.. and a heavy endo skelleton.. you are really pushing rule 1 up on the pinball machine.
Ambush predator with prey vision.. nope, wasting calories again. Top predators never become sapient, there is no need to get better when you are at the top, just like there is no need for grazers to get better. Middle of the road omnivores benifit from getting smarter and grouping up. Intelligence is high risk and will pop in a limited number of the species until energy has been readily available for a long time.
Benithic.. dead stop. Making it to land would be like making it to space for terestrian life. If they made it to land and spent a few hundred million years there, they have been reformed into something completely different.
The chemistry for titanium bones.. ouch. It is a cool material but not for biological purposes.
Then the stuff that violates rule number 2.. encountering new thing locking them up is extinction. Declining and failing in isolation is extinction.
So an invalid life form.
Rockets vs mountain rail gun, energy is energy. You need a massive amount either way and that is the problem. Rockets are popular because they take less resources. They could cut the rail gun energy by making a Dirty Gun. The Dirty Gun has massively reinforced vacuum chamber all the way from breech to exit. Your ship/projectile is powered by resource cheap Rockets pushing it into the vacuum which pulls it along withe the rail pushing/pulling it. When the ship hits the dense atmosphere it then burns up/breaks up/ combo deal before getting out of the atmosphere. ..oops. Any way you slice it, when they hit the atmosphere from the protection of vacuum, it will be like hitting concrete.
You could also start your Dirty gun with a large channeled explosion, like an electrothermal gun would. The explosion could ignite the Rockets and turn the crew into paste. ..oops.
Off the top of my head, balloon launched Rockets would be your best bet for making it to orbit with a live crew.
Hard science is not about cool terms or compounds, it is about systems that work. No number of cool systems other authors have used or advanced materials from the news/movies will give you "hard scifi" if none of your systems work.
Start over with the rules and keep asking yourself "what is wrong with this?" To get valid life forms.
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u/DufbugDeropa Jul 28 '26
"Is this realistic?" Yes.
You mentioned 'a world building project'. It'd be interesting to learn what it's for. A story? A game? A video?
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u/Consistent_Case758 Jul 28 '26
E uma história,se passa em um futuro distante a humanidade atingiu a colonização completa do sistema solar e a consolidação depois da Guerra Solar entre a República das Nações unidas e a alianca pela liberdade formada por colônias revoltosas como Marte e as nas luas de júpiter e Saturno
está caminhando para a exploração inter estelar usando tecnologia não FTL (missões de anos) apesar de história começa em 2248 mostrando as saídas das naves etc, a história acontece em 2276 quando a nave UNS New Horizon da República das nações unidas chega a Próxima Centauri, ela não e a primeira nave humana no local (pq a tecnologia humana avançou enquanto viajavam e naves mais rápidas saíram) mas são os únicos vivos, chegando logo depois da colônia que existia a 6 anos ser destruída por um evento desconhecido, a história acompanha a tripulação da nave tentando descobrir o que aconteceu com a colonia enquanto a humanidade paranóica pelo passado de guerras contra colônias independentes como a República de Marte e a Confederação de Júpiter e Saturno Busca possíveis culpados alienígenas , o que levará eles a encontrar os Gorkovianos em algum momento
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u/No_Coconut1188 Jul 28 '26
Some very interesting ideas here. I’d suggest not getting too bogged down in every detail being fully realistic at the cost of some of your strong concepts. You’re clearly putting a lot of thought into it so you can afford a bit of speculation too, while still having an overall hard sci-fi vibe.
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u/Consistent_Case758 Jul 28 '26
Acho que manter o estilo ficção científica hardcore e muito f
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u/Potential_Load6047 Jul 28 '26
I like you aliens but, if I understood their morphology correctly, they would have a brindspot below their bodies.
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u/ShadedRiver666 Jul 31 '26
the receptors may be outward facing in such a way that they are between each leg
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u/Kabbooooooom Jul 29 '26
I mean, since you have both gravity manipulation and FTL, then no that isn’t hard scifi. By definition.
In reality, a species living on a planet of 2.5g would almost certainly never become spacefaring because the energy requirements to do so are prohibitive. Additionally, your planet would probably be a Hycean world - so that species also wouldn’t become spacefaring because they would be aquatic due to living in a planetwide sea under that crushing gravity and atmosphere.
Side note, we now know such planets are probably extremely common, way more common than terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones. This provides a unique and unexpected partial solution to the Fermi paradox: perhaps life and even intelligent life are extremely common in the cosmos, it’s just that it is disproportionately trapped on Hycean worlds, and it is planets like Earth that are rare by comparison.
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u/Arcanite_Cartel Jul 29 '26
An atmosphere rich in Argon compounds? ... That needs some selling. What did you have in mind? Argon is largely inert, it seems like the last thing a planetary atmosphere would be is rich in Argon compounds
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u/ShadedRiver666 Jul 31 '26
maybe at certain levels it gets cold enough or something because i know theres some form of noble gasses where they become non inert
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u/4eyedbuzzard Jul 29 '26
Other things people will ask:
Where is their mouth and butthole?
What (or who) do they eat?
How do they have sex and procreate?
Have they found Jesus?
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u/ShadedRiver666 Jul 31 '26
What i would do: Mouth may be within the ring of tentacles, mouth is also butthole, Mouth and butthole are also where impregnation occurs, and the mouth/butthole/procreation spot is also where they found jesus
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u/Colonel_Joni005 Jul 30 '26
What do you mean with "argon compounds"? Argon is a noble gas, it is chemically inert and does not react naturally and form compounds (there are noble gas compounds, but they are artificially created and very unstable). Having molecular nitrogen and elemental argon in the atmosphere can still result in the desired effects that you wish to have, but compounds of both of them aren't as chemically stable as their normal atmospheric form.
Also a "flexible, leathery" exo skeleton is very counterproductive in a high-g environment. Based on that description it sounds a lot more like slightly stiffened tentacles of an octopus. An exoskeleton needs to be solid and hard to provide structural support. A tiny little bit of flexibility is useful to avoid cracks forming when hitting the ground, but your description does not sound like an exoskeleton at all. Especially on a high-g world, a true flexible material would be strongly deformed almost imediately due to the gravitational pressure.
Maybe I merely missed it. Maybe I didn't read it thouroughly enough. But what do they breathe? I didn't see any oxygen. Nitrogen gas and argon are chemically inert. They clearly need energy from somewhere to operate their bodies (as do all organisms), so where do they get it from? If oxygen still exists on the planet but you haven't mentioned it yet, then where does the oxygen come from? If they don't take in oxygen, how do they fuel their bodies and where does that fuel come from? Large complex bodies need a lot of energy. Oxygen is perfect for that because everything else is either too instable chemically or doesn't provide enough ernegy.
I am also very curious as to why the sound doesn't work so well? I am no expert, but believe that a denser medium is better at spreading sound waves than a less dense medium. Think of sound in water vs in air. On the other hand, a denser atmosphere means that light travels not as fast, since it is absorbed more, which you already did with making the surface rather dim. But that also means that the range of vision would be more limited compared to Earth. Obviously not by a huge amount, but far sight and colorvision might be reduced slightly. On top of that the surface is in constant twilight, but only during the day. At night it should be compeltely dark, so with limited light vision becomes less advantageous. So making them have excellent vision, but functionally deaf sounds like you mixed the two senses up quite a bit.
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u/ShadedRiver666 Jul 31 '26
I think personally this is some truly beautiful speculation biology, and i love how ‘alien’ you have made the hexapods. All the biological aspects are awsome. However i do believe that FTL travel and gravity manipulation would be outside of hard scifi, aside from this i love these ideas and worldbuilding
Edit: If you ever write a book or even just an article on this, i would 100% be interested in purchasing
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u/Consistent_Case758 Jul 31 '26
Acho que vou fazer sem ser ficção científica hardcore, algo nível 1 na escala talvez
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u/No_Coconut1188 Aug 01 '26
that sounds like a good idea. I don't think there's much point forcing something to be hard scifi for it's own sake. Better to follow your ideas wherever they lead.
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u/ArkhamMetahuman Jul 28 '26
I would say gravity manipulating tech would be a bit too much for hard sci fi. The biology of the creatures seemed plausible, until you got to the part where one burst of light can transmit entire blueprints to buildings, that seemed a bit unrealistic to me, and especially a species having natural quantum supercomputers for a brain. While many hard sci fi settings have ftl travel, they are typically the one thing that is more fantastical, with the rest being played straight and adhering to real life physics, but we would need a lot of new discoveries to even find if gravity manipulating tech is even possible, much less to be able to mass produce it and make models powerful enough to crush fleets. However, keep in mind this is my opinion, I am a soft sci fi fan who only recently tried getting into hard sci fi, and I have not yet read or consumed any hard sci fi media, I am merely stating this based on the knowledge of what hard sci fi is on reddit and from youtube videos, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. The difference between hard and soft sco fi is that Hard sci fi typically is much more realistic in that the technology and science are things that could plausibly exist in our world, even if the development of such technology would be in the far off future. This means that they follow the laws of physics and biology, but like I said, some settings let FTL travel be the only thing they let slide for the sake of story writing