No Volleyball Allowed

Ha! You thought I was joking. But now here you are, reading a post about airplanes.

Today's post started with just the top ten "cool" planes in my opinion, but there's been so many cool planes throughout history that I just couldn't limit myself like that. So because I can't pick favorites you're stuck here, reading about twelve planes. Incidentally, I hate flying.

P-51 Mustang

The ubiquitous P-51, first seeing use in World War II. It's traditional role was protecting bombers but also saw use as a dive bomber itself as well as work in reconnaissance. It was finally replaced by jet fighters in the Korean War, but even then it still served in a dedicated bomber role. Other countries continued to use it well after that even, especially Bolivia. How long after? Try the 1980's.

And if that's not enough, there's a rare few planes that look as good in chrome as the P-51.

Also, what's better than one P-51? How about two of them!

Supermarine Spitfire

It had an illustrative carrier in the Royal Air Force and it's elegant design lead it to earning a permanent place in British culture. That's all there is to it really.

Focke-Wolfe Fw 190

And then you have the villains. The Fw 190 had one of the best air-cooled radial engines of any plane, even well after the war. When it was introduced it flew circles around the P-51 and would only be outmatched by a radically redesigned Spitfire about a year later. Allied pilots called them the Butcherbird.

 

Incidentally, it wasn't the Fw 190 that made that wonderful, terrifying sound when it dive bombed. That was the Ju 87, which was outfitted with a special "Jericho's Trumpet" just for the occasion. When the Stuka went into a dive the siren would start to sound, making that haunting whine, alerting everyone of their impeding doom.

Vought XF5U

First of all, that's The Flying Flapjack to you. Second of all, stop laughing.

The Flapjack was an experimental aircraft. Though what it was made to test, I can't begin to imagine. What I do know is that it was almost inappropriately durable, surviving accidents that would outright destroy less breakfast-shaped planes, including landing upside down. Sadly for the Flapjack, it was built just as jet technology was starting to develop and was quickly made obsolete. The Flapjack was scrapped, but because it was so ridiculously strong they had to use a wrecking ball to actually destroy it.

Plus, how many aircraft are there that you actually get to call a flying saucer while remaining completely serious?

Concorde

A joint venture between France and the UK, the Concorde was the worlds first and only super-sonic airliner. Unfortunately, the project was wracked with numerous technical problems, even long before the infamous crash in 2000. Because of it's slim profile, the interior was surprisingly cramped for such an expensive flight. Overheating on the body and issues with structural integrity abounded. Apparently the Concorde was just too fast for it's own good.

But then again: Supersonic. Airliner.

Harrier Jump Jet

There have been a couple different versions of the Harrier over the years but all of them are famous for their vertical take off and landing capabilities. It takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane!

Oh and before you ask, no that wasn't a Harrier that raced a Bugatti Veyron in that one episode of Top Gear. At least I think it wasn't...

Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit

There are few planes as sinister or as geometrical as the B-2. Really, have you ever seen so many right angles on one plane?

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

Often accompanied by P-51's, the B-17 was a huge, heavily armored bomber with an almost mythical reputation after pictures started to circulate of them returning to base riddled with bullet holes and huge chunks of their wings missing. True to their name, the Flying Fortress was almost impregnable, bristling with plexiglass turrets along it's surface. Altogether, B-17's accounted for an overwhelming majority of Allied bombs dropped during the war, like, almost all of them.

Bachem Ba 349

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this?

Built as an interceptor, the Ba 349, or Natter, was a bizarre combination of dwindling supplies and improving technology. It wasn't jet powered, oh no. It was rocket propelled. Some poor sap would climb in, and take off vertically like any other rocket. Then, he would try and steer the contraption toward incoming bombers and shoot, what else, rockets from the nose to destroy them. The Natter was basically a guided manned missile, made of balsa wood no less. And it shot rockets. And it had extremely flammable rocket fuel. What it didn't have was landing gears. When the rockets sputtered to a stop the victim pilot was expected to parachute out, leaving the popsicle-stick rocket to plummet out of the sky and explode. Note that this was mostly wishful thinking and it rarely ended like that.

Honestly, I'm completely in love with the Natter. It's such an extraordinarily bad idea it swings around and goes back to good. Plus, it's not that bad looking. I actually like it's stubby wings and cigar shape.

Sadly thankfully, the Natter saw almost no use, so there's no way of telling how effective it would have been. Though with so many rockets flying around it's hard to imagine something not exploding in a huge fireball.

Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk

More sinister, more triangular than anything that came before it, the geometrical malevolence of the Nighthawk has yet to be surpassed by any other plane.

The Nighthawk was the first plane built exclusively with stealth in mind. At the time, researchers were starting to understand that a planes radar signature was more or less unrelated to it's size and depended more on how the signal bounced off the hull. With this in mind, they started to build a body that would reflect radio waves no matter what angle they came from, bouncing and diffusing the signal, rendering the F-117 all but invisible to radar.

Though the press called it a "stealth fighter" the F-117 wasn't intended to fight other aircraft, partially because it's priority was stealth, not speed and would be too sluggish for the task. In reality, it was almost exclusively a bomber.

Nonetheless the government denied the existence of the Nighthawk for the first seven years of it's operational history and tried to suppress any evidence of it's existence. A single photo was eventually leaked, depicting a grainy image of what might have been the plane, leading to speculation concerning a top secret super-fighter. By the way, can you guess where it made it's maiden flight back in 1981? Groom Lake, better known as Area 51.

Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

Too slow, too old and too useful to ever get rid of. The Thunderbolt II has survived over forty years of continued usage and multiple attempts at retirement. A great many of the Thunderbolts flown today are twice as old as their pilots, with electronics comparable to the original Atari 2600, yet they're still seeing service in a world of bleeding edge ultra-modern fighters. Why is an old clunker still in service? For one, they're extremely durable; capable of taking huge amounts of punishment that would outright vaporize less sturdy planes. Apparently, an A-10 can be missing one of it's engines, half it's tail and even one of it's wings and still make it back to base.

 

Besides that, the A-10 has a huge number of weapons it's compatible with, including the shockingly large GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon, the heaviest such weapon ever mounted on something someone expected to fly. The whole plane is built around the gun, which it then uses to cut tanks in half.

Plus it looks like a shark.

Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird"

This is it; the fastest, stealthiest, most evil looking plane in the world. Oh, that isn't an exaggeration either, it's an objective statement of fact. To date, the SR-71's speed record has never been surpassed. Any time a new plane is built that break's the Blackbird's record Lockheed responds by simply going a bit faster. Despite having been retired for fifteen years, it still holds the record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft in the world. As such, the plane's maximum speed is a complete mystery. It's so fast that when it's been targeted by surface-to-air missiles standard operation procedure was to simply outrun the missile.

The SR-71 was built to replace the aging U-2 spy plane. To put that in perspective, it's like replacing your Kia Rio with the Batmobile because you didn't like how it gripped the road in the turns. The SR-71 didn't just fly fast though, it  routinely operated at altitudes that would cripple weaker, less diabolical aircraft. Plus, it was stealthy, almost as much as it's decidedly more triangular successor, the F-117. It achieved this with exotic compounds in it's skin as well as cesium-based compounds in it's fuel to limit the signature of it's exhaust. Despite this, Soviet detection technology quickly outpaced the SR-71 and it was slowly fazed out by spy satellites. Still, I have yet to see a more villainous looking aircraft and that certainly counts for something.

Rock Lobster

In my continuing search for the elusive Übermensch my thoughts often return to the sea. In those briny depths live a great many creatures that could be the progenitors of some bold new master race; the honorable Mantis Shrimp, the wise Octopus, the steadfast Barnacle even the Comb Jelly, who spends it's solitary existence contemplating the cold, inky darkness of the Challenger Deep. These are all organisms that, with some bio-engineering, could rise up and conquer the Earth, maybe even the stars themselves.

Except for dolphins, they're all douche bags.

Granted, the title of "Supreme Race and Masters Over All The Earth" are some serious shoes to fill. We can't let any old starfish claim this privilege and abdicate the throne when things heat up. What we need is a wise creature with years of experience. Nay, decades. Centuries.

We need Homarus americanus, the American Lobster.



At first glance the common lobster doesn't look like it's up to the task of world domination. It has a crippling disadvantage when faced with it's two greatest enemies: rubber bands and hot water. Surely such weakness brings dishonor to it's name and disqualifies it for a chance at being the Übermensch. Right?

Wrong. What the lobster lacks in fortitude and general intelligence it makes up for in sheer longevity.

First, we need to understand why animals die of old age. Every time an animal's cell replicates it must copy it's DNA. Strands of DNA are "capped" with nucleotides called Telomere. Essentially, Telomere keeps the DNA strand from "unraveling" and losing it's precious genetic information during the act of replication (called mitosis). Therein lies the fatal flaw called the Hayflick Limit, with every replication the region of telomere gets shorter and shorter, like a roll of bubble tape slowly getting chewed to nonexistence. When the telomere runs out, the cell stops replicating, entering a period of senescence where it will eventually die off, never to share it's genetic material with a younger generation ever again.

A sorry state of affairs to be sure. But some cells manage to resist this biological death sentence and keep replicating ad infinitum to their tiny heart's content. Unfortunately these cells are more often then not cancer and this will not do.

We need a creature that can replicate it's cells forever, but we can't let it's cells conspire to kill it from the inside out. Again, we need the lobster. Only the lobster offers an elegant solution to the problem of the Hayflick limit: the enzyme telomerase. The enzyme's function is deceptively simple: it restores the telomere at the end of it's chromosomes, in turn allowing it's cells to replicate without limit, in turn allowing the lobster to essentially live forever.

Some lobsters have been captured and held in captivity who's age has been estimated to be over a hundred years old, such as George the lobster who lived in the City Crab and Seafood Restaurant in New York from December 2008 to January 2009. When was he estimated to have been born? 1869. This makes him well over one hundred and fifty years old, probably more since it's 2012 and we assume George is still alive down there in the murky depths (and I am most certainly going to assume that).

Plus, lobsters don't get decrepit with age. Research suggests that lobsters don't slow down, weaken or lose fertility as they get older. In fact, they become more fertile the longer they live. Lobsters are in essence, crunchy little dragons of the sea in this regard. Or Highlanders. Barring accident, injury or disease Lobsters are effectively immortal, able to pass their wisdom down their ever expanding family tree and grow to truly immense proportions, able to crush entire cities with their enormous claws. Now that's an Übermensch.



Plus, in a little quirk of genetics, one out of every two million lobsters produce an excessive amount of a certain protien which interacts with a red carotenoid in their shells to form a molecular complex called crustacyanin, giving them a festive blue color.

Thinking About Them Things

If there's one thing I like it's underground parking structures. They seem so futuristic to me, in a cyberpunk kind of way.



If there was ever a calamity that ended civilization I think I'd try living in a parking garage, even if it was for a little while. It wouldn't even be a big disaster either, 75% of the population would still be around and there I would be, hunkered down in my garage. Like a spider.



Keeping the electricity on would be an issue most likely and the threat of hobo invasion is an ever present one. Still, I could create my own garage society down there. They're practically bunkers. I could ally myself with the aforementioned disenfranchised invaders and we could set up a free market economy down there. We could use bottle caps as money.



Even if the garage itself wasn't viable for habitation I would still try out the air vents at the very least.

I'd like to think there's a secret shadow-civilization of people who have adapted for life in air vents. Perhaps in earlier generations the air vent people were secret agents sneaking into bases but got stuck, or maybe scientists fleeing their labs but got lost. They could even be hobos.

Either way, an entire generation of people got lost in the depths of the air conditioning system and started to mutate. We just don't know they're in our vents because their snake-like bodies don't make sound when moving through the vents. Plus, since they only feed on algae and whatever they can scavenge from the snack machine they hardly make a dent on the garage economy (after all, who's going to notice a few missing twinkies ever month or so?).

Who knows what they could be doing up there; staring at us as we dress, rerouting the pipes to create a makeshift spa from the redirected water heater, stealing cable, maybe they're even planning on stealing our precious bottle caps.

No, that won't do. I'm moving to one of those decommissioned ICBM silos. I heard they're actually cheaper then most houses.

Into the World, the Hallways of Wraith

Oh jeez, I've been meaning to make this post for a while now but there has been simply no time. I've tried for the past several days but never is there enough time for a proper post.

First thing's first: Insomnia has been downloaded over ten thousand times in the past ten days. That's an average of 5149.5 downloads a day and that's fantastic.

My ego has swelled to the size of a red giant and I'm loving it. My life means something again, I am the artist supreme. Now I'm starting to have delusions of godhood (or at least demi-dietyhood).



(This is how I've felt since Insomnia's release.)

Of course, the euphoria of unquestionable success hasn't been without a grain of salt. I've gotten quite a few complaints from map aficionados from the Garry's Mod Toybox:

"Paranoia was so scary and cool but this is just weird with action"
-006 spy killerCCPC/CP Commander

"I think I prefere paranoia better, this is missing something, I dont know what though."
-Straight Up Lazy

"I've didn't like this map, I prefered Paranoia. Insomnia isn't scaring and is very easy and short.

2/10 "
-Nicholas Da Costa

"wasnt that fun. he lost the mojo in this.i like parania better."

Now that's all fine and dandy, I don't mind if people like Paranoia more. I mean, I love Paranoia as my first born map. But keep in mind, Insomnia wasn't really meant to be scary. Paranoia was scary, but I dropped all pretenses of horror in it's sibling and opted instead to open the floodgates of abstraction and spill as much weirdness as possible into a single map.

Also, I'm not too into the whole "constructive criticism" thing. If a map shows promise and you have good ideas on how to make it better then by all means share them. Of course, if a map is bad, simply god-awful, then by all means call it bad and leave at that. Brevity is the soul of wit.

On the other hand, if you're talking about a masterpiece like Insomnia, especially when it's made by a God-Emperor, then you had better have something better than "lost the mojo". That simply will not do. It makes it sound like I misplaced some exotic salsa or worse, became infertile. And that's terrible.

Now, that's not to say the response has been overwhelmingly negative. Like every masterpiece from den Übermenschen, there will be nay-sayers. It's an unfortunate fact of life. It's exactly what happened when Atlas Shrugged was written, or when Citizen Kane was filmed or even when writing was invented.

Plus, this comment refutes all others:

"you my friend, you are a god"
-1st recon papa boomer

You hear that?

I AM BECOME AGAMEMNON!

THE CREATOR OF WORLDS!!!

My Favorite Aliens Part Three

That's right, the final chapter in this journey across space. Granted, this wasn't finished yesterday like I hoped. But that's simply because it's been proven that there is less time during the week and therefore it is impossible to get anything done after I get home.

ANYWHO!

5. Advisors

I promise you, this is the last we'll be hearing from Half-Life!

Geez, these things. I think it would be very upsetting to see one of these in real life. Imagine if you will a giant cybernetic slug that can crush you with it's mind. Sure, Vulcans can mind-meld but Advisors can, and have, twisted people like licorice and thrown them across a building.

Now, for anyone unfamiliar, the Advisors are like bureaucratic middlemen appointed by the Combine to rule over Earth. The Combine are, of course, an alien empire which we are lead to believe has enslaved countless different species, planets, galaxies and even Universes.

Again, either Valve didn't care enough to consider the implications of that or this is the single most efficient military force ever devised. I don't need to remind you how stupidly big space is, at our present state we cannot completely control a single planet. What kind of cold, unsympathetic, logical mind has the mental capacity to organize and weaponize a whole Universe let alone several.

I think the Combine are really under appreciated as enemies. The most we know about them really comes from the bumbling trans-human soldiers we fight throughout the game, when the awful truth is that the Combine is a Lovecraftian cosmic horror, totally inescapable and truly mind-boggling in scope. But it's worse then that, they're bureaucrats.

I like the Advisors because as a creature, they're not intimidating looking, pathetic even. They're these huge grubs, they don't have arms, or eyes, or any kind of sensory organs. Sure, in Episode Two they actually "hatch" and can live without their life-support, but it's still terrifying. One, because they seem to be totally invulnerable and two, because they're a stark reminder of what we might become. They come from a highly advanced society, they no longer need their bodies and so they start to wither and become useless. Who's to say we won't become like that when we become more advanced as well? The Advisors are totally dependent of their technology. Technology, and they're horrifying telepathic powers.

4. Martians

Imagine the above, only more squid-like and working on a much smaller scale and you've got the grandparent of every alien ever (At least the good ones). The best part is that the Martians from The War of the Worlds were totally unlike what people at that time thought aliens would be like. When people during Victorian Times thought aliens, they thought handsome Aryan men from another world. What did H.G. Wells suggest? Hideous brain-slugs with tentacles that drank Human blood. Just read this description of them when they first appear:

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively.

Cash.

It might seem like Wells was just trying to create the most grotesque monster he could, well that's because he was but he also had science backing him up. You see, Wells had a theory that as Mankind became more advanced our bodies would atrophy as our brains grew larger, so much so that eventually we would become little more than brains with hands sticking out of the side.

Aaaaaaaand, that's were the Advisors came from. Posers.

But it's not just the Martians themselves that make them so wonderful, it's that when they take over a planet, they do it in style.

Tripods are the DeLoreans of war machines.

3. The Thing


Just look at that. It's the opposite of the last two aliens, it doesn't need high technology, it's only weapon is fear.

Jeez, I remember when I first watched it. I heard all about this wonderful movie about an alien trapped in the Antarctic and I just had to see it. Eventually, I convinced my mother to buy it and watch it with my sister and I. The fact that the DVD case had a picture of what looked like a screaming face trapped in ice was just foreshadowing of what was to come.

The movie built up slowly, thankfully Kurt Russel's beard was there to keep things interesting when suddenly this happened...

...and I was like "YES.".

It just got better. Probably the best part is when a person infected by The Thing dies. His head rips itself from the burning body and falls off the table it was put on. After that, the head sprouts legs and eye-stalks and crawls away.

I'd like to think my mother realizes what a horrible, horrible mistake she made in watching this movie.

2. Anything by H.P. Lovecraft


Similar to how the Martians were the precursors to the Combine, Lovecraft and his menagerie of cosmic horrors are responsible for The Thing.

Simply put, Howard created the most weirdly fear inspiring monsters of the early 20th century (and arguably the rest of the 20th century if you don't count a certain mustachioed man from around the 1930's.). If I were to put all his creatures in their own spots it would take up a huge amount of space on this list.

The Great Race of Yith

Arguably the least threatening of his creatures, which isn't saying much, the Yithians are a race of telepaths that can hop from one body to another. They inhabited the Earth millions of years ago and built huge libraries underneath modern-day Australia. The Yithians had a war with another species, the Flying Polyps, and has a mass -evacuation. It was at that time they inhabited the bodies of giant primordial cone-shaped mollusks. Even later then that, they turned themselves into beetles.

It gets better.

Mi-Go

The Mi-Go are giant fungus-crustaceans from Pluto (which they call Yuggoth). They've come to Earth to mine for rare minerals and steal people's brains. They then take these brains back to Yuggoth. Also, the Mi-Go do not use spaceships, they just up and fly through space as is, in nothing more than their yeasty, crunchy carapace.

Elder Things

Like the Yithians, the Elder Things colonized Earth millions of years ago, especially Antarctica. Once there, they built huge cities in the then lush, tropical environment. Over time however, the polar regions began to freeze, but that's not what go rid of the Elder Things, it was what they created here on Earth...

Shoggoths


These protoplasmic blobs were mindless servants to the Elder Things, they were used to create the great basalt cities on the Antarctic. However, the Shoggoths rebelled and wiped their former masters from the Earth.

Just so we're clear here, Shoggoths are blobs that can assume any shape, any size, can produce organs at will and live in the Antarctic.

That's right, The Thing is a Shoggoth.

And number one is...

1. ...

No.

No, don't act like you're surprised. You knew this was going to happen just as well as I did. You knew that after all that, after the Prawns, Tholians, Buggers, Pod-People, Grovebacks, Antlions, Brazilians, Vortigaunts, Borg, Pythagorians, Martians, Yithians, Elder Things, Mi-Go, Things and even the entire Universal Union, number one would of course be Dale and his jerk friends.

I have no way of explaining why I fell so totally in love with these kitchen utensils. But if I had to guess I would say it was the screeching voice, the utter loathing of anything non-Dalek, the sheer absurdity of their battle-armor. Really, there's nothing not to like about the Daleks. They're at the same time adorable and yet deadly.

Plus, Mother hates them so they'll be around forever.

My Favorite Aliens Part Two

Another day, another opportunity to babble incoherently about creatures not of this Earth. So let's jump right in with...

10. Antlions

I make no secret of the fact that Half-Life is so deeply ingrained into my mind that my thoughts actually reflect it, so much so in fact that I actually see ghostly little heads-up displays in the corner of my vision and five tiny dots in the center of my pupils, it's helpful when I need to shoot actual guns as well.

Antlions are really dandy, I remember the first time I saw them. It was ten years ago when Half-Life 2 was still a brand new experience to me. The first time the player sees them is when they're in a car that is slowly being lowered down to a beach by a magnetic crane. The crane fails, drops the car and the player is immediately swarmed by giant inter-dimensional insects.

In Episode 2 we finally get to see inside an Antlion hive and this is the first time that I was really fascinated by them. It was here that we first saw the Worker Antlion and the larvae that they protect.

I think the best part about Antlions is that they're a total mish-mash of all kinds of arthropods. First of all, they're like real-life Antlions in that they burrow underneath sand only to come up to tear something to ribbons, they're like spiders in that they spin webs around their hive but they also make giant honeycombs like bees. But then again they have huge egg sacks like spiders (that quiver when you shoot them). On the other hand it's mentioned they have some kind of "spawning season", very much unlike bees or ants. They don't seem to have a queen Antlion yet they have other clearly defined castes. Plus, they produce some sort of magic "extract" so we might as well assume they produce honey as well.

It becomes apparent that the Antlion life cycle makes no sense. Like a lot of other things in these games it seems like Valve was either really lazy and just threw everything they knew about arthropods into one creature or this was all meticulously planned.

9. Paciencia UFO Sighting Aliens

I have very particular tastes, I demand my creatures to be bizarre. Well there's few things that are as bizarre as UFO Sightings.

Our story begins with Antonio La Rubia, a 33-year-old bus driver who encountered a huge object, which he estimated to be 70 meters (235 feet) across, sitting in a field near his home. He decided to retreat, but was unable to do so, for at the moment he started to run, an intensely bright light lit up the area, and he was unable to move. At that moment Antonio saw three "robots" positioned near him, and he was captured and taken into the disc.

And what did these robots look like?

That's right. These.

The first time I saw these terrors was in my Elementary School's library. I drew them all the time when I was seven but eventually forgot about them. A couple years later they were suddenly shoved back into my life in yet another book about abductions and once again I totally forgot about them after awhile.

A few years after that I suddenly remembered them again. "Golly!" I thought "What were those weird football-shaped aliens with the funny helmets called?"

Well, turns out they were the mysterious beings who, on September 15, 1977, abducted an unassuming man from Paciencia (near Rio de Janeiro), Brazil to show him their inter-galactic keyboard.

8. Vortigaunts

I'll be honest with you, this isn't the last time we'll be hearing from Half-Life. It isn't a bad thing I suppose that so many great aliens could com from a a single franchise (I didn't include any Xen wildlife besides the Antlions lest this become the list of my fifteen favorite things I like about just one video game.)

The Vortigaunts. They're a hive-mind, they shoot lightning out of their hands and they've got giant red eyes. I've always sort of identified giant eyes with being from another dimension, they just go hand-in-hand for me. Assuming Valve ever makes another Half-Life series (which they won't) I would like to play as a Vortigaunt. Plus, Sweepy is a Vortigaunt and Sweepy is cool.

The only problem I have with them is that they're a bit too humanoid. Granted, they've got three arms which is cash, but they still sort of look like hunched over people.

Maybe if they abducted someone from Brazil they'd be higher up on this list.

7. The Borg


When you get right down to it, the Borg are like a virus. They assimilate, consume and if you were to fight them, any casualty your side takes just helps to make them stronger. Plus, they're basically robot space-zombies.

I don't care if Cybermen came first, the Borg are cooler. Did Cybermen ever give me nightmares when I was a toddler? NO. Did the Borg? YES. Did the image of a disembodied Cyberman head getting attached to a body, spinal cord and all get burnt into my memory and silently terrify me until I was twelve? NO. Did the Borg? YES!

6. The Pythagorians

Antlions are weird, the Brazilian-Abductors are weirder, and the Borg still haunt me in my nightmares. But I think the award for most mysterious enemies on this list go to the Pythagorians.

That big machine in the above picture? That's what they look like. They don't speak, they don't emote and the particulars of their society are only ever hinted at vaguely, at best. Now, I'm not even entirely sure what these are even called, I just call them Pythagorians because they're from the (again) Half-Life 2 mod Mistake of Pythagoras. In the mod, the Pythags are from an alternate reality and invade Earth for reasons that are never hinted at. The player must correct some "mistake".

They're so great because I can't tell whether they're even alive or not. They're just big floating machines. Yet, this somehow makes them more endearing, it lets the player come up with their own interpretation of them.

After playing MOP a couple times I've built up a little theory as to what exactly happened: teleportation experiments caused some disaster in their dimension, creating another faction of black (or in the above picture, dark brown) Pythags that started a war with the white ones. Later in the mod the white ones, who are losing the war, help the player.

At the end the player makes it back to Earth, everything is all well after the "mistake", somehow related to the Pythagorean Theorem, is fixed. When suddenly, a single white Pythagorian shows up. At this point the player is well aware, or at least they should be, that the white ones are there to help, but the other characters don't. This white Pythag, apparently the leader, was the one who helped the player and enabled them to finish the game and when the player has returned the favor and essentially saved their "species" he goes to thank them in their own universe.

What happens? It gets mistaken for the enemy and is killed.

Now, I have no shame in telling you that when I saw this I was devastated and the ending cutscene didn't help. We see the very same army that killed it attending a funeral for the King Pythag. I teared up. I tear up thinking about it even now. Just the thought of the giant triangular head-piece, propped up on a metal stand, surrounded by flowers as soldiers watch and wonder what they did as a single piano softly plays as the screen turns black makes me overcome with emotions that scare and confuse me.

In hindsight, these should be higher up on the list. If inanimate shapes from an obscure mod for a ten year old video game can move me to tears when nothing, literally nothing else in life will that really says something about how great of characters they are, or how insane I am.

I don't know what it says about me as a person that I feel more emotion for a triangle than most people but there will always be a strange, soft spot in my heart and brain for these nameless, featureless beings.

(Unlike the Borg.)