Yautja Roleplay Standards
This page is meant to help applicants and whitelist holders in better understanding and building a Yautja character, as they are quite different from human ones. It is also meant to go hand in hand with the Yautja lore page, the Yautja honor code page, and the wiki page.
The intent of this page is not to dictate every aspect of Yautja roleplay, but to give people a strong framework to work with and modify to their whims in accordance with the lore page and the honor code page, as well as establish some boundaries and baselines that are strictly necessary to not be in violation of roleplay standards.
This means that, for example, you yourself can change how your character views things marked by ‘typically’, though you should have a good reason to do so since the way Yautja are brought up is quite narrow-minded.
Of course, applicants and whitelist holders will still have to do their own research, both ingame and outside of it, and this page is only supplementary. The council encourages consuming Predator and Aliens vs. Predator media to help you better understand.
- Contextualizing the Yautja
Who are the Yautja?
The Yautja are a technologically advanced tribalistic space-faring species. They are most renowned for hunting dangerous game: however, as their civilization is highly advanced, they also cultivate some conventions seen in human society, such as literature, entertainment, education, etc. All this is pretty malleable as you will see in the ‘How do the Yautja live’ section.
Where are the Yautja?
The Yautja are just about everywhere in the galaxy. Some own planets, others own cities, most own smaller holdings, and some unlucky ones own nothing but their own names.
On CMSS13, the Yautja are on a shared hunting ship.
How do the Yautja live?
The living conditions of a Yautja can widely vary from clan to clan. Some live in palaces, others are ship nomads, and some live in huts. There are, however, some things that are universally true to all Yautja.
Their society is divided in clans, which are much more pronounced and diverse than human ones, culturally and biologically.
The Yautja forums and wiki lore pages have more information about Yautja society.
Why do the Yautja do it?
The Yautja hunt because of honor, tradition, and a myriad other reasons which will be elaborated upon further below - and as said above, also because they plainly enjoy it.
- A Yautja’s views on…
Themselves
The Yautja see themselves as the one species entitled to the universe. They have the best society, the best history, the best technology, and the best physical and mental attributes in the universe: however, some may see some merit in humans and other more highly intelligent species (i.e. not xenomorphs).
Honor
Honor is the most highly valued social construct for the Yautja, and it has many facets.
In a society often governed by ‘might is right’, honor is combat prowess and physical and mental strength; but honor is also honoring religion, one’s clan, traditions, ancestors, elders and ancients; honor is also often tied to a Yautja’s age, the longer having gone on living, the more experienced and looked up to. It goes without saying that partaking in and succeeding in the activity of hunting is also honorable.
In a nutshell, it could be said that ‘honor’ in Yautja society is anything that helps uphold or reinforce the status quo of the caste-based, clan-based, hunting-dependent and strength-ruled society.
Honor should always be upheld and defended.
Clans
A Yautja is usually devoted to and will remain in the clan they were born into for the rest of their lives. Some Yautja may change clans for a multitude of reasons, and this is allowed, but it is ridiculed as it’s usually seen as quitter or turncoat behavior by their fellow hunters.
The clanless are seen negatively: some can feel sad for them, others make fun of them. Of course, the clanless may also join/‘be adopted’ by a clan, but it’s unlikely.
Religion
While the Yautja worship a pantheon of deities, the importance of religion varies from person to person or clan to clan. Most times, it is secondary, with Paya taking the spotlight.
Life
The purpose of life is often to increase one’s own and one’s clan honor. How one does this is open-ended, or simply put, life is what you make of it.
Death
Death is common and inevitable. Dying in combat or during the hunt is one of the greatest honors a Yautja can achieve, and in the case of imminent death, activating the self destruct is seen as an even higher honor.
Prey
Views on prey differ, but typically, the more deadly and more intelligent they are, the more highly respected and sought after they are. As stated in the ‘view of themselves’ section, prey is always seen as below the Yautja, though they may have merits.
Humans
While physically weaker than the Yautja in all ways, humans are viewed as deadly due to their cunning and intelligence. As such, cowardice and underhanded tactics are to be expected.
Humans are capable of understanding honor and the honor code, as well as upholding them in rare cases.
Xenos
Xenos, known as ‘serpents’ by the Yautja, are one of the deadliest prey in the universe. As they are animals that are less intelligent than humans and bound to their hivemind, one shouldn’t be surprised that they also fight in underhanded, cowardly ways, nor that they want to capture Yautja to be hosts.
Given their lack of intelligence, individuality and personal agency, a xeno also can not understand or uphold honor.
Engineers
Engineers, known as ‘artificers’ by the Yautja, are possibly the rarest, deadliest and most intelligent prey the Yautja hunt. Not even they know much about their origin, with how rare and discreet they are.
- Yautja roleplay expectations
A Yautja’s role on CMSS13
The Yautja are antagonists meant to make the round more interesting. This does not mean randomly hailing prey and talking to them or being ‘nice’ to them. You are a hunter, not a duelist.
How they should hunt
As seen in all Predator and Aliens vs Predator media, the Yautja rarely and very shortly stay in plain sight, opting to instead stay hidden, stalking and and observing their prey from afar before striking prey at the most opportune moment (meaning either in a moment of weakness or strength, depending on how deadly the prey is). Yautja should seek challenge in the hunt, such as look for prey that has defeated other prey.
How they should speak
When speaking to other Yautja, a hunter’s language varies on status and education, much like a human’s would, though as a rule of thumb it shouldn’t be too informal nor too complex. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t speak like a jarhead, but nor should you speak like a character from Hamlet unless the situation is appropriate, i.e. talking about literature, conducting a religious ceremony, a political talk with another clan.
When around prey, interaction aside from stalking/hunting/combat is usually rare and kept to a minimum, unless the predator has a good reason to (e.g. they earned a piece of gear, the predator is issuing an ultimatum during gear retrieval, they are very worthy).
When interacting with prey, broadly speaking, you have three approaches.
- Via emotes, gestures, and mimicry. This is ideally preferred over the translator, but there is a time and place for it, and you shouldn’t bother if you think the topic at hand is too hard to be conveyed with emotes, if the player is just unable to understand, or if the circumstances are too risky.
- Via translator. The translator plays back garbled human audio from the current hunt or from previous ones. When using the translator, you should either use words and phrases you heard in current round (don’t use anything stupid, use own initiative for this), or you should keep messages hard to understand and/or very simple (also use own initiative with this, distort them, make them fun, etc, use common sense). For xenos, only keep things simple: imagine it as a very basic literal translating software.
- Say nothing. You don’t always have to speak, and sometimes this will be the best approach: for example, taking a piece of gear from a gear carrier, ignoring questions that don’t deserve an answer, etc.
Military and human jargon like ‘FOB’ and ‘xeno’ are something the yautja do not use themselves, even if they may know what it means - though they may ‘play it back’ on the translator when speaking to humans.