#7 - Lore: the Knaves

The following is some lore I wrote as a part of the world-building for Alienhead. Without giving away everything, I want to share some details on these things that I'm calling "the Knaves". Collecting them is ostensibly the purpose of the game. You can probably guess where I'm going with these little guys.

One of the earliest intelligent lifeforms to emerge -> the Knaves evolved past the need for language as we understand it. They seem to communicate somehow visually or psychically; The Knave's physiology appears to have evolved in such a way that entirely abandons physical strength and prowess - instead favoring mental faculties. Little is known of the downfall of their homeworld. The dominant hypothesis suggests that the Knaves had once uncovered a method of energy, on a sub-atomic level. This energy completely transformed them, dramatically altering their morphology. They unlocked the purest form of energy, with no apparent limits - accessible at will. Their bodies, and perhaps even their minds are now vestigial, relics of a form of consciousness that needed to manipulate matter. However, a shred of their corporealness remains, as if their evolution has not yet crystallized. And thus a head, arms, legs, a tail are still the components of their form, their physical ingredients. To outside species, the Knaves appear as tiny sprites with haphazard and capricious movements. Minute, bug-like creatures who flicker and dance, like fairies or fireflies. Their bodies give off massive amounts of ambient energy. Which, when harnessed correctly, has the potential to catapult a civilization into enormous technological progress.

Concept art of the 5 Knaves in the game, and one mysterious little guy that I'm calling a pseudo knave. The player will need to collect all 5 to get to the ending. The Knaves connection to the story of Alienhead: Standard issue for Apprentice Travelers, Alienhead’s downed Logarithmic class 9 vessel was quickly picked up by the same human government entity that imprisoned him. Unclear as to what happened to the ship itself, Alienhead seeks to reassemble the components, including the precious power-source and to return to his original mission along with his old life. This is the primary struggle of the game.

As Alienhead slumbered, the humans attempted to reverse engineer the craft, but they lacked the proper power source – the Knaves. They were released all at once in the crash and were immediately flung themselves in all directions, eager to escape the Orb that held them.

The Knaves, of course, are the secret sauce in the (Alienhead home planet)’s technological advancement. Little is known of their origins even to the Elders, except that they emit a particular frequency of near-infinite current. By simply existing, the Knaves generate enormous energy, which can be harnessed and directed. The Orb we see in the Alienhead’s ship, often pulses with crackling energy, its multicolored core denotes that several Knaves are trapped within.

How this "collaboration" between Alienhead’s species and Knaves came to be, is not known. Communication between the two beings has not occurred for millennia - and if it ever occurred at all - is no longer remembered. That is, the Alienhead and his kin- are simply not even aware that Knaves are alive – to them these tiny spritely dots of color flit and fly around as if they were a piece of dust or an eyelash- inanimate, and insignificant.