The Yarms which our allies will shortly begin transporting to Earth are their home planet's equivalent of whales. Large but innocuous, they require merely a large expanse of flat ground in which to live happily. We believe a portion of the Canadian t undra will serve as an ample habitat for the forty of these creatures currently surviving on the Xlp homeworld.

There appears to have been a translation error. Roughly fifty thousand of these creatures are visible in satellite photos of the Yarm preserve. They are also moving at approximately sixty miles per hour, apparently continuously. There is a possibili ty that the Yarms may be some form of tank or other weapon.

Upon consultation, the Xlp liason to the Agency states that the creatures are the Xlp equivalent of sacred cows, and will be allowed to run wild in the Xlp cities currently under construction in equatorial Brazil. He believes that they will be moved o verland sometime in the next few months.

The Yarm migration is in progress. Our satellite surveillance, however, reports that as many as two thousand of the creatures may have become misplaced during the journey to the Xlp cities in southern Mexico. Scattered sightings in the prairie states appear to confirm that, but our satellites are unable to corroborate these reports at this time.

Satellite photos of the São Paulo blast site show some form of heavy land vehicles, approximately the same size and shape as Yarms, being used in the blast area. We suspect that the Yarms are some form of disguised weapon. It is this agent's recommendation that the nation reject the Xlp request to transport an additional fifty thousand Yarms into the European Xlp zone.

My previous report was in error. Apparently the Yarms sighted in the blast site were there to stop the enemies of the Xlp from invading Earth. They succeeded in preventing alien landing, but were unable to prevent the blast. The Xlp are offering military assistance to help hold off the alien invaders. Xlp advisors report a large alien military force approaching Earth.

Atmospheric requirements: Significant quantities of N2, which is metabolized in an unknown process.

Physical structure: Imagine a loaf of french bread covered in multi-jointed appendages. The hollow appendages on top have adapted to serve as lungs; those on the lower surface are stronger but less suited to breathing. They can, however, roll without difficulty should rolling become necessary. They typically don't roll, for unknown reasons.

Now imagine the above, but 30 meters long and constantly moving at speeds no slower than 70 kph on flat ground. It is believed that the constant motion may be supported by some form of non-biological power source, as the nitrogen-metabolizing processe s that seem to power its brains appear to not produce the energy necessary for the typical movements of a Yarm.

Mind: Very high intelligence, but no ego. The Yarms are part of the Xlp administrative system. Their massive bodies are filled with ganglia, which interlink in much the same manner as those of the Xlp. Their primary function is analogous to the traffic control computers in human society, monitoring and regulating many aspects of Xlp behaviour.

Military profile: The Yarm has two direct weapons.

The first, and most obvious, is its mass - an object the size of a whale (but significantly denser) travelling at 300 kph will destroy most lightly-armoured installations, break open many midweight installations, and often shove the larger installations.

The second, and more rarely used, is their appendages. Should infantry attempt an attack from the side, they can flail to the point where any human in any currently-available armour will be ground to a pulp, along with many light vehicles. The appendages are also capable of throwing or pushing off any not-yet-detonated explosives, such as timed grenades.

Our best conventional explosives can, at best, knock off a few of the many appendages.

Some success with certain chemical weapons has been reported, but so far the best results have been a slight reduction in acceleration (~5%).

We do not yet know enough about Yarms to be able to devise appropriate biological weapons, and do not expect to anytime soon.

The best results to date have been with atomics and heavy particle beams - the Yarms' lack of ranged weapons makes particle beams particularly promising. Low-yield (10kiloton) fission blasts incapacitate and may kill them. A one-megaton weapon has been used in the field, apparently completely vaporizing the targets. However, Yarms well inside the lethal radius for humans were seen, by satellite, to be still moving ahead apparently unimpaired.

Particle beams were used to successfully vivisect one. From this, we were able to determine that they do indeed posess a ganglial structure similar to that of the Xlp, apparently filling a 1.5 meter outer layer of flesh exhibiting the chemical characteristics of all Xlp organic life yet analysed. Under the flesh layer is some form of armoured shell, likely protecting the inorganic portions of the Yarm. This shell is impervious to particle beams and low-yield nuclear blasts at ~5-meter range. No openings in this shell were detected in the time it took the Yarm to smash the five particle-beam cannons that were used to glean this information. After that, it evinced the first possible sign of emotion yet seen in a Yarm, running over the surviving humans individually, to the point of using its appendages to push aside humans in the way of its chosen target. However, this may have been ordered by the Xlp administration rather than by the individual Yarm. What happened afterwards is unknown, as it systematically levelled everything that could possibly contain a monitoring device over a large swath of ground.

[Xenology] [Main] [Yarm Rides]