Um, what's up with the ever-increasing size of Aslans?

Azgulor

Banded Mongoose
I just looked at the JTAS 13 preview and the Aslan artwork in it portrays them as ogre-sized. I thought I had noticed a trend towards larger and larger Aslans, which don't seem to conform to the descriptions in Aliens of Chartered Space, Vol 1. I'm fine with larger-than-your average human, but these Aslan wouldn't fit in spaceships and "standard" chairs/workstations. Can someone explain the logic behind it. If there isn't a reason for it beyond artistic license, can we start reigning things back to a more reasonable depiction?

Or is it just me? I don't run my campaigns in the Third Imperium, so I may just not be familiar with the lore. But from the sourcebooks I do own, I can't find anything that supports the more recent depictions.
 
I just looked at the JTAS 13 preview and the Aslan artwork in it portrays them as ogre-sized. I thought I had noticed a trend towards larger and larger Aslans, which don't seem to conform to the descriptions in Aliens of Chartered Space, Vol 1. I'm fine with larger-than-your average human, but these Aslan wouldn't fit in spaceships and "standard" chairs/workstations. Can someone explain the logic behind it. If there isn't a reason for it beyond artistic license, can we start reigning things back to a more reasonable depiction?

Or is it just me? I don't run my campaigns in the Third Imperium, so I may just not be familiar with the lore. But from the sourcebooks I do own, I can't find anything that supports the more recent depictions.
The Robot Handbook lists Aslan as being twice the volume of a human. lol... pg. 13 under equivalent size.
 
Twice the volume is what, about 20/25% more in all 3 dimensions?

So, if a human is 180 cm tall, the equivalent aslan is 225 cm?

Whats the art showing? If its 300 cm thats a problem, but ogres kind of fall in the whole range of 225 to 300 depending on the source, so im not sure based on the original post..
 
AoCSv1 says they're "like a human, an upright biped averaging two metres in height and 100 kilograms in mass". Males are cited as having "increased size" over females.

The art I was referencing in the JTASv13 preview has a picture where a human woman barely passes a male Aslan's waist in height and rises to the height of the female Aslan's chest. Let's say she's a short human female that is 4' 9". The male Aslan would be over 8' tall.

A second picture shows a human male shaking hands with a male aslan. He only comes up to the bottom of the aslan's chest and the aslan's hand looks like he could palm the human's head and his arm is thicker than the human's torso. The human appears to be young, but even allowing for a pre-pubescent teenage human, the aslan looks like a giant.

Most of the aslan artwork depicts them as larger than humans and vargr (though I don't know why), but not to this degree.

Also, in AoCSv1, there's an image of a human speaking with a k'kree. The k'kree is taller, but only by a head. They are said to average 2-2.4m tall and mass 8 times as much as the average human. The k'kree art I have in my TI books depict aliens smaller than these oversized aslans.

I realize it's not a huge deal, but I would never show this artwork as in-universe depictions if I were running a TI campaign because they're so exaggerated.
 
Yeah, that sounds like the aslan equivalent of andre the giant. There would certainly be aslan that large, but, theyd be celebrities for it.
 
CT Alien Module 1: "The Aslan which has evolved from those beginnings is, like humans, an upright biped averaging 2 meters in height and 100 kg
in weight."

Mongoose AoCS Volume 1: "The Aslan that has evolved from those beginnings is, like a human, an upright biped averaging two metres in height and 100 kilograms in mass."

Aslan art in The Imperial Navy:

1721510825789.png
Aslan Art in the JTAS kickstarter teaser:
1721510941827.png
 
I've noticed some pieces do seem to have them.. gynormous man. Funny though.. I finally got around to ordering the Deep and the Dark this morning and at least they got the cover art right. Had wondered what the hell the two Aslan on the cover were out on the town with and the first thing I looked at once I downloaded the PDF was what that thing was... and it is roughly two meters tall and it did seem taller than its two Aslan buddies so the cover art did them right... probably slightly taller than the average human
 
Given the male-female ratio and tendency for male-male conflict in the species (and of course committing the cardinal sin of assuming Terran standards for non-Terran life), I suppose animals like the elephant seal come to mind, and the urge is to make the dominant males big, big, BIG.

Given that sex ratio, your standard Aslan would be female, and I believe female Aslan have been consistently described and depicted as about the height and mass of a tall male Human. The males I guess range from female-size to towering?

In MegaTraveller Challenge Magazine material, there's a great piece of cover art showing humans and Aslan (notably, there's an adorable detail of two children having a silent hello beneath the gaze of the adults), which I think gets the male Aslan-Human ratio perfect. The Aslan males are *big* but not, to my mind, excessively so.
 
I just looked at the JTAS 13 preview and the Aslan artwork in it portrays them as ogre-sized. I thought I had noticed a trend towards larger and larger Aslans, which don't seem to conform to the descriptions in Aliens of Chartered Space, Vol 1. I'm fine with larger-than-your average human, but these Aslan wouldn't fit in spaceships and "standard" chairs/workstations. Can someone explain the logic behind it. If there isn't a reason for it beyond artistic license, can we start reigning things back to a more reasonable depiction?

Or is it just me? I don't run my campaigns in the Third Imperium, so I may just not be familiar with the lore. But from the sourcebooks I do own, I can't find anything that supports the more recent depictions.
The artist basically had a bunch of femals aslan bodybuilders posing and those are a tad on the large side...
 
+1 Strength would seem to indicate the average Aslan is only slightly larger than the average human. They could of course have a lot of non-muscle tissue in them. Like A LOT. But the images also seem to be more muscle-bound, and not so much the Jabba-the-Hut body type.
 
+1 Strength would seem to indicate the average Aslan is only slightly larger than the average human. They could of course have a lot of non-muscle tissue in them. Like A LOT. But the images also seem to be more muscle-bound, and not so much the Jabba-the-Hut body type.
Has anyone even looked at the Encumbrance rules lately? STR + END + Athletics (STR) + Athletics (END) x 2 = You heavy load carrying capacity with a -2 penalty to all skill checks. Max human carrying potential is then (15 + 15 + 4 + 4) x 2 = 76kg or 167lbs. I am nowhere near the strongest human, but I can carry a load of half of that all day without issue. (Or could before several failed ageing rolls... lol) According to the Traveller rules, only the Strongest and Fittest humans are even capable of such a thing. So, a +1 STR for Aslan is meaningless. Ooooo! Aslan on average can lift a kilogram or two more than an average human. I doubt that would even allow for an increase in muscle mass.
 
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