Arilou

Arilou (short for Arilou Lalee'lay) are a fictional race of beings featured in the sci-fi Star Control computer game series who belong to the Alliance of Free Stars. They are the series' version of the popular grey aliens and their ships resemble the stereotypical flying saucers.

The Arilou live in one of what they called "easy places", an alternate dimension nicknamed QuasiSpace, quite separate from Truespace and Hyperspace. They have had peaceful relations with the Umgah prior to them joining the Ur Quan Hierarchy. Arilou also supposedly are familiar with something called the Nnngn, that they claim to have captured and let free again. Orz are another dimension-travelling race, however, the Arilou refer to them with: "Perhaps you know of the Orz. Like us, they are dimensional travellers but that is where our similarity ends. Do not trust the Orz, my Human Captain. They are dangerous."

The Arilou have clearly had much to do with the humans through mankind's evolution, and they hint of a "vested interest" they have in the human race. They have visited the Earth often, apparently in order to "check up" on the young sentients, although what exactly is it that they're after remains unrevealed.

The Ariloulaleelay Skiff is a small, extremely manoeuvrable vessel, which - like the Slylandro Probe - is unaffected by inertia or gravity. Its main weapon is a extremely short-ranged auto-targeting rapid fire laser, that will always aim in the direction of the enemy, thus requiring only some weapon energy and close proximity to the enemy in order to score shots. The secondary ability of the Skiff is a teleportation device, which will instantaneously move the ship into a random place in the battlefield. The teleport can be used both to escape from an enemy and to attempt a surprise attack against enemies that might be hard to approach by other means, like a Chenjesu Broodhome. However, it should be noted that every teleportation carries a negligible chance of you rematerializing inside a planet or an asteroid, resulting in an instant destruction of the vessel (a feature that was not present in the first Star Control).