Librarian

Alert

Control

Destroy

Type

Power to Shush

Silences Other Aliens

As a leader, after destiny, you may use this power to “shush” another alien by gifting them your mark. Whenever a shushed alien types a message in the text channel, commissions alien(s), or joins a voice channel, ravage either: one of that alien’s ships or a pod from their cache. During upkeep, vaporize all of your marks from other aliens’ nexuses.

Shushed aliens are muted in voice channels. Capital letters may not be entered in the text channel.

Legacy: All voice channels are muted.

After taking over as the official recordholders from the Minds, the Librarians have memorized intel on every alien’s strengths, weaknesses, and history. After striking out to put their knowledge into practice, they were quickly annoyed by how noisy encounters are. They now intend to take over the Cosmos just to quiet things down.

Leader: Destiny

Optional

Wild Flare

As a leader, whenever another alien uses a power, you may discharge this flare to zap that alien’s power. Burnout.

Leader: Any

Super Flare

As a bystander, after destiny, you may discharge this flare to use your power.

Bystander: Destiny

Modifications

The original power is called Silencer. Changed to remove redundancy and give the alien more flavor.
Originally the power to “silence”. Changed to match the librarian theme and better reflect the mechanics.
Original Silencer is designed to work in the physical FFG version of Cosmic. That version doesn’t include text or voice channels, so aliens are penalized for speaking instead. It also specifies sponsoring other aliens as a penalty, but that would be double-dipping with joining voice channels in my Cosmic.
Original Silencer uses a “silence token” for a mark and flips it to the “partial silence side” during upkeep. If it’s already on the partial silence side, it is then returned to Silencer. The idea is to stop Silencer from targeting an alien two invasions in a row. Since the power only activates leader-only, I decided to simplify the power and have it simply vaporize during upkeep.
Original Super Silencer can flip one or two partial silence tokens to the total silence side. I changed it to let Super Librarian use its power as a bystander, effectively letting it shush an alien every invasion.
Original Cosmic has no voice or text channels, so there is no capitalization or muted voice clause.
Librarian’s legacy effectively removes voice channels from the match, restricting all communication to text channels. The legacy is most punishing to aliens like Diplomat and Empath who specialize in negotiating, as well as haggling aliens like Pirate. Librarian can be punishing to any alien who is dependent on earning favor with other aliens like Union, since it makes it more difficult to build rapport. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Deciding the right target to shush is perhaps the most important consideration for the Librarian to consider. It is also important to consider whether the target values pods or ships more to maximize the threat factor.
Librarian doesn’t have to use its power to shush anyone. If aiming for a negotiation, it could be worth shushing no one to avoid unnecessarily angering anyone.
While shushing the opponent can often be a good choice, it will disincentivize negotiations. A negotiation will pull the opponent into a voice channel, resulting in a pod or ship being ravaged.
Aliens with optional powers can be better targets than mandatory powers for this power, since they have an additional attack vector for shushing. It is also important to consider who will have the option to use their power this encounter.
If you get shushed, consider how valuable it is to be noisy in any given situation. Breaking the noise rule will cost you either a ship or pod, and Librarian will decide which.

Development Notes

In my effort to simplify this alien, my biggest concern was making its control effect too oppressive. Librarian’s power is leader-only, meaning it only activates as invader and defender. In a full cycle, that might be about 3-5 invasions out of 5-10. Librarian has no restrictions when it comes to who it can target, so it is capable of bullying one specific alien and rendering them silent for a good number of invasions. The target isn’t fully prevented from being “noisy”. It simply provides a small and flexible penalty for making noise. Depending on the alien, they might greatly fear being silenced or not care much at all.
It was very important for this alien’s design that Librarian decides whether to ravage ships or pods. Otherwise, aliens like Zombie or Miser wouldn’t care about the shushing at all.
The original idea of “silencing” an enemy reminds me of the silence status effect in Fire Emblem. A silenced unit cannot speak, preventing them from using any speaking commands or casting magic spells. Based on this idea, I wanted to tweak the theme of the power from silencing to shushing. A silenced player doesn’t have the ability to speak, but this power punishes aliens for speaking. It is much more like a librarian shushing people for being too loud and doling out harsh punishments for it.
Despite having a career designed around books and organization, librarians are perhaps most known for their ability to shush. A library is designed as a place for people to read in silence, so it is important to librarians that no one is making a lot of noise.
This power seems to be right on the cusp of pointlessly optional. Librarian isn’t restricted in how it uses its power, especially in my version. The only reason it wouldn’t want to use its power is if there isn’t anyone it wants to shush. I could imagine a scenario where Librarian is going up against Mirror and doesn’t want to discourage them from using their power and also doesn’t want to disincentivize any potential allies from joining them. Forcing them to shush someone will create unnecessary hostility. I think it’s worth keeping the power optional just to avoid limiting the power in these fringe circumstances.
I like the distinction this power makes between mandatory and optional powers. Not many aliens make use of this mechanic, but it makes sense for this one. It would be too punishing to mandatory powers, and Librarian making an exception for aliens inherently noisy feels fittingly generous for the theme.
The extra bit of flavor related to no capital letters in the next channel is a reference to capital letters being the equivalent of shouting in text. Librarian removes capital letters altogether, making everyone text in unformatted text message speak.