Syreen
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The Syreen are a fictional race of beings featured in the sci-fi Star Control computer games. Put simply, they are every cliché "green-skinned space babe" rolled together, full of double entendres and unabashed single entendres from their phallic starship, the Penetrator, onward. They are biologically compatible with humans and reluctantly fight alongside them in the Alliance of Free Stars at the beginning of the series.
The name is a reference to the Sirens in Greek mythology, whose enchanting song brought sailors dangerously close to nearby cliffs, where they would crash on the rocks and drown.
| Syreen | |
|---|---|
| Ship | Penetrator |
| Homeworld | Betelgeuse I ("Gaia"); previously Beta Copernicus I ("Syra") |
| Contacts | Humans, Mycon |
| Quote(s) | "Ah! My beautiful captain from Earth!" |
Syreen are shown as identical to humans, aside from their blue skin, slightly luminescent eyes and, quote, "certain parts." This is an acknowledged evolutionary impossibility (two life forms never evolve in exactly the same way in two separate and unconnected biosystems) and would've been examined in greater detail had the races not been engaged in a fight for their lives when they met. As it is, the best-known meddling element in humanity's history are the Arilou.
The lush world of Syra was Earth's near twin, though warmer and somewhat more hospitable. It hosted a peaceful utopia in harmony with nature from agrarian tribes to the first steps of interstellar exploration, right until the point where a stray asteroid smashed into the world and penetrated into the mantle. A year later, a series of supervolcanoes and fissures erupted planetwide, incinerated Syra's continents, poisoned its atmosphere and eventually shattered the crust. The largely female Space Patrol was the only faction off-planet, leaving the race with under 10000 members, 500 male. They added stardrives to anything that could be made to hold air and set out to the stars.
Several decades later, the sublight Habitat fleet found the formative Alliance-Hierarchy war and joined out of necessity, being unable to defend itself. When the Alliance fell the Syreen chose imprisonment on their world over thralldom as their slavery. Since the Syreen had none, the Ur-Quan gave them the terran planet of Gaia in the Betelgeuse system as the closest equivalent.
The Syreen suffer from severe racial trauma. While their affliction is nothing to that of the Ur-Quan, even those who never saw it take Syra's destruction as a massive personal loss. It was thus no surprise that when the "asteroid" was revealed to be a Mycon Deep Child terraformer, the Syreen threw away the respite they had been enjoying to fight against the Mycon, and by extension the Ur-Quan. They retrieved their starships, decimated the Mycon fleet and joined the New Alliance.
Talana, clad in an unintuively functional near-exact replica of Princess Leia's dancing girl outfit, is the commander of the Ur-Quan resupply starbase orbiting Gaia at the time of Star Control II. The player delivers to her proof of the Mycon's culpability and has the ability to engage in very, very heavily implied sexual relations. The two are implied to go on to have children.
[edit] Syreen Penetrator
Purposefully phallic in appearance, the Syreen Penetrator features a weak, energy-conserving main weapon. The secondary weapon - Syreen song - allows Penetrator captains to lure some of the enemy ship's crew into space, to be collected by the Syreen and used as crew on the vessel. This is a useful weapon as Syreen ships enter combat with only a small fraction of their maximum crew capacity filled. This weapon has no effect on the 2418-B self-replicating Slylandro Probes.
