#dres headcanons

[commanderguixi]

Confirmed Word of God (from the 16/10/2018 stream)

- The Commander in an Avatar just IS more powerful than a bunch of Elders.

- Bradford is a momma’s boy. His mom could single-handedly destroy ADVENT were it not for the laws of this land

- ADVENT taxes their citizens. Heavily.

- That being said there is an awesome night-life scene, which is radical considering they also pretty much just show propaganda for entertainment

- Big Sky is potentially alive, most likely to be with Vahlen, who is confirmed to be alive and out there with her own vision on how to destroy the aliens

- Aliens really be dumb as heck but it’s okay, we love them.

- Mutons and Berserkers do have a matriarchal social structure with a sort of, tribal theme, which we knew anyway

- Aliens are sterile or infertile and it’ll likely take the help of scientists like Vahlen (who specialized in alien genetic manipulation) to be able to propagate again.

- Chosen origins, specifically the Hunter, will be detailed in the upcoming graphic novel.

Other things

- That mutant cow being the source of ADVENT Burgers, huh.

- Scrapped concept of the Avenger crashing into the radio tower rather than just disabling it.

[commanderguixi]

claps hands together:

- Extremely fluffy fur-coated Chryssalids that adapted to keep warm. Later generations (as in, probably in about a year, maybe less), shed the fur and instead are just really fuckin’ internally hot. Venom is traded for a chemical that catches fire and gives the illusion it can breathe fire.

- Chryssalids that develop exoskeleton for wings to help traverse habitats their stabby little pincers have a difficult time navigating on. These wings just get stronger over time, and it takes about, oh, two months for an established, winged colony of Chryssalid to pop up as the apex predator of that region?

- Aquatic Chryssalids. Develop. Fish-related things. [Insert science-y terms here]. Kind of end up like a sea snake but, like, with venom. And potential electricity like an eel.

- Different shades / colours of Chryssalid that really have no purpose other than camouflage. Same breed of hunter-killer, now just in like a billion colours, depends where they are

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- Honestly, the Chryssalid is the only alien that the Elders really, really regret bringing onto different planets because 1) They literally cannot control them, 2) it’s now impossible for them to actually make them extinct. Because the last time they tried that, well, they accidentally forced a breed of Chryssalid to be highly resistant to psionic and nuclear radiation.

- The Elders test on either or not the Chryssalid have reached a human’s level of self-awareness is just currently sitting on an indefinite ‘inconclusive.’

- Chryssalid.

[commanderguixi]

Random Headcanon of the Day: The Hunter’s Darklance and his Darkclaw have the various ammo types built into the weapon. This is because he doesn’t use ammunition -- the weapons themselves generate the bullets.

The drawback is if he has a certain round loaded and wants to change to a specialty ammo, he has to reload (or more accurately, recharge) the weapon in question before he’s able to fire it again. But, that does mean with, essentially a push of the button, he can switch from armour piercing to venom rounds, or riot rounds, or Dhag-Mai’s personal favourite, hemorrhaging.

[commanderguixi]

Klaus would absolutely belt a German Opera version of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’, at least for the beginning before going for a pop vibe once the music kicks in properly. Kelly and Elena provides off-key backup vocals.

... The moment it hits 00:00 on December 1st.

[commanderguixi]

I’ll explain a bit about the psionic radiation, at least in terms of Lily.

The symptoms of psionic irradiation for those that do not have the Gift could range from strange auditory hallucinations to just. Pink irises of the eye. Vivid dreams or simply a deeper empathy than seems to be normal. Extreme sickness -- or permanently white hair.

In Lily’s case, she has several pure-white streaks in her hair that she tries to hide behind her other bangs. It’s most noticeable when she ties her hair up when getting to work. She experiences night terrors; of strange things she can’t really explain, define or comprehend.

This irradiation can be seen by those that naturally wield psionics (Chosen, Templars, PsiOps, etc.) -- and it does look different from the natural state. An afflicted person’s psionic signature looks ‘bolder, heavier’ than what a regular, non-Gifted human’s should look like.

Feng has offered to remove it for Lily, though currently she declined. The dreams don’t really bother her too much, and she’s confident she’d get the white hairs from Bradford’s piloting skills anyway. No point cleansing it when she’s just going to get ‘sick’ again working on the Avenger’s Elerium-based systems.

[commanderguixi]

To distract myself, I was thinking of some kinda-sad but ultimately wholesome things about the XCOM crew and Bradford.. definitely has a BUNCH of pictures from both his army days and the original XCOM project.

He also has a ton of pictures when Dottie and William took him on vacation during the extremely rare times Dottie was free with the kids. She took them all to Disney World and it was the best, okay.

Some pictures with Bradford posing with Kingsley’s kids, too. Got Lisa on his shoulders when she was young enough, or a baby Timothy in his arms. A picture of him that the kids took when Bradford was babysitting and just passed out on the couch from exhaustion and obviously they drew all over his face.

Most of these pictures have been lost but I like to think he’s kept a few choice ones he had in his like, wallet or something. And the ones of the kids, he returned to Kingsley and boy, if there is anything that just Gets to her it’s talk of her babbies.

Side note funfact: when I started this blog / writing XCOM stuff, I didn’t actually like Bradford that much. I loved all the characters, of course, but Bradford has like, grew on me. Now he’s such an integral part and I’m really happy the upcoming DLC has a focus on him. He deserves it.

[commanderguixi]

Fun fact!

In the early stages of Chosen, as in, when I was still planning it and creating my headcanons around the Chosen themselves, the Dhag brothers were going to be twins, hence their shared prefix of ‘Dhag.’

This was before I knew that there was a 5 year ascension difference, and I changed it so that Dhag symbolizes the related Elder that created them, which is why Jax-Mon is not Dhag-Mon as well. This also means any more Chosen created by Joy (’Mother’) would be Jax-[rest of name].

Because of the shared Elder DNA within the brothers, however, this does make them biological half-brothers, though not by choice.

[commanderguixi]

I think what gets me about the Hunter is, compared to his siblings, he really is the odd one out. Like, what I mean by that, is..

Warlock was taken as a child. The age is never specified, but we know it’s 13 or under because he wasn’t referred to as an adolescent or teenager. Semantics aside, he could’ve been young enough, and with the massive amount of psionic energy warping his mind, to see that the Elders are his legitimate parents.

Assassin was created. If they wanted her to see them as parents, they could. Simple enough.

But the Hunter was taken as a grown ass man. If the archives are to be believed (as well as himself) that he was a Reaper, Elena definitely seems the ‘youngest’ at around.. 30ish, at the start of the campaign? Personally, I HC that the Hunter when he was human was 33. POINT BEING, that’s gonna be a little difficult to get him to accept the whole ‘parent’ thing.

Of course one could argue the whole ‘child of the Gods’ aspect isn’t literal parentage, but more akin to the religious (akin to calling the Pope ‘Holy Father’) and even then, the Hunter has disrespected the Elders time and time again, taking the blunt, realistic, grounded-to-Earth approach when speaking of and about them.