Eminently Enigmatic Race

Of all the various Hats possessed by a species in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, by far the rarest and the most difficult to maintain is that of mystery. Here, rather than being known for producing great warriors, scholars, or merchants, a race is known primarily for how little anyone in the setting actually knows about them.

The species itself is not a secret; people are aware of their existence, but details concerning their culture, technology, biological makeup, and (in some extreme cases) even their basic appearance remains a mystery to observers. In some cases, it may eventually become clear that any facts that have come to light are completely wrong, and perceptions of this species are hilariously inaccurate as a result.

Often, this is because the race itself is deliberately secretive and resides in some kind of hidden realm where they cannot be bothered by outsiders; in others, it's because they're a breed of Precursors who left very little information about themselves before going into decline; in more sinister cases, it's because the species is up to something horrific and wants to keep a low profile. As such, it's common for this species to become Shrouded in Myth.

However, if the narrative gives any degree of focus to this species, there's a good chance that all these mysteries will be cleared up by the end of the narrative, possibly resulting in the species wearing a completely different Hat once their secrets are revealed. However, exceptions do exist.

May overlap with Lost Tribe in some cases, and Nothing Is Scarier in the case of more eldritch unseen species.

Compare and contrast Inscrutable Aliens, where the sense of mystery is applied exclusively to science fiction and almost exclusively played for horror, antagonism, or both.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Films — Animation

• In The How to Train Your Dragon films, Night Furies are the most feared of dragon species, precisely because they're the least known. They are too elusive to capture, and so swift and stealthy in their attacks that no one has lived long enough to study one. It's only when Hiccup manages to wing one by sheer luck that he is then able to befriend and tame one, naming him Toothless. That said, no other member of the species appears until the third movie.

Films — Live-Action

• The mysterious alien who left the Monoliths behind are very much this in 2001: A Space Odyssey, although they grow less enigmatic in the novel series that continues the story.
• Star Wars: Master Yoda's diminutive, big-eyed, large-eared and bright green race are a total mystery. Only three specimens have ever been seen: Yoda himself, Yaddle, a female who makes a brief appearance in The Phantom Menace as a member of the Jedi Council, and of course The Child / Grogu in The Mandalorian. All are long-lived and very Force-sensitive, but nothing else is known about them or their origins, not even the name of their species or homeworld. This is per a directive from George Lucas himself to leave Yoda’s history mysterious and is still in effect at Lucasfilm.

Literature

• Excession: Absolutely nothing is known about the creators of the titular Big Dumb Object other than that their technology is incomprehensibly advanced. Ultimately, they decide The World Is Not Ready to meet them and remain hidden.
• Imperial Radch: The Presger aren't seen or even described. What's known is that their technology defies human understanding, they're the Appeal to Force that interspecies diplomacy is based on, and they're alien enough in mind and body to need Artificial Human "translators" to communicate on their behalf — and even their translators are a bit on the eerie side.
• In Larry Niven's Known Space series The Outsiders might sell you information about themselves in theory, but they usually make sure that you can't afford the price.
• In Tolkien's Legendarium, the Elves have lived in seclusion for so long that by the time The Lord of the Rings begins, they're Shrouded in Myth to the hobbits of the Shire and the men of Rohan. Sam and Eomer each express surprise that they are actually real when they first encounter them.
• In The Lost Fleet, the first alien race encountered by humanity is still only known by terms like "the enigma species", because so little is known about them. They have exchanged brief messages with humanity, but use Uncanny Valley human avatars rather than show themselves, and are suspected of framing their demands so as to mislead us about their motives for making them. They are fanatical to the point of mass suicide about not letting humans properly observe their planets or see any members of the species (even corpses). The best humanity can guess is that their survival instinct is based around concealment and secrecy, and that humanity's curiosity and desire to explore make us the last people they want to have next door. Accordingly, they have been universally hostile to humanity so far.
• Ology Series: The "Incognito" dragon, Draco americanus incognita, is almost completely unknown, with the only concrete fact about it being its habitat deep in the Amazon.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The Others are frighteningly inscrutable even after all the books released so far. Commonly depicted as an eerily beautiful ice-themed version of The Fair Folk, it's known that they have their own language and culture, can make bargains with humans, have a lethal weakness to obsidian weapons, and are probably returning to bring the apocalypse; legends also suggest that they may be capable of taking husbands and wives from humankind... but their origins, the details behind their culture, and their true motivation for the nightmarish things that they do has yet to be revealed. For good measure, it's almost impossible to get within spying distance of them without being horribly murdered.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Anzati are infamous throughout the galaxy as a race of vampiric killers, but so little is actually known about them that they're widely considered a myth. As it turns out, most of what is known is just rumor and hearsay: for example, several people believe that Anzati actually drink the blood of their victims just like classical vampires — when in reality, they eat the brains of their victims. With so many inaccuracies clogging up public knowledge, Anzati are able to make their way through society without even being recognized.
  • The Shi'ido are known to be shapeshifters and have gained a reputation for working as spies and assassins, but other than that, nobody knows anything about them. Part of this is due to their ability to fog minds, but it's mainly due to the fact that most of them want nothing to do with the rest of the galaxy. Their homeworld has actually been visited by outsiders on several occasions, but the local Shi'ido spend these visits disguised as inanimate objects so that nobody will bother them or frightening explorers away by posing as monsters, so their culture remains a mystery to outsiders. To date, only a handful of Shi'ido have lived off-planet without posing as other species, and they aren't inclined to talk about their culture much; even Senior Anthropologist Hoole, arguably the most prominent Shi'ido in the galaxy, prefers not to share the secrets of his people.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • This is the modus operandi of the Vorlons. They don't let anyone see what they look like inside their encounter suits. When an emergency forces one to leave his suit, he still hides behind telepathic projections. Their ambassador to Babylon 5 seldom bothers to attend council meetings, and tends to speak entirely in Koans. He ultimately turns out to be one of the nicer ones in a race of Abusive Precursors.
  • Prior to a disastrous first contact with humans that led to a war between the Minbari and the humans, humans had almost no information on the enigmatic Minbari beyond the fact they existed. This was due to the Minbari propensity to largely keep to themselves and not bother other races that did not bother them. Even after the war with few people being allowed on Minbar the Minbari were largely a mystery to the humans.
• In season 4 of Farscape, Einstein's people are a total mystery; unlike the Ancients, their significantly-modified representatives in our dimension, their true nature remains completely unknown. The one example of their species we meet never removes his human disguise, is only able to communicate with Crichton via a dimension of his own creation, and implies that meeting on their own turf would be lethal. We have no idea if his powers are inborn or technological in nature, what the species really looks like, or even if Einstein is typical of the species. For good measure, Einstein spends most of his appearances playing his cards very close to his chest and mentions his species exactly once — without actually naming them.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Though the viewers come to know the Harfoots' culture entirely, they are a mystery to most of people, believed to be this dangerous creatures.
• Star Trek:
  • Many details of the Romulans, such as their physical appearance were not known by the Federation in Star Trek: The Original Series until the episode "Balance of Terror", with the Federation only being aware of their existence, despite having limited interactions with the Romulan Star Empire. This resulted in racial tensions/racism on the Enterprise when Romulans were found to look like Vulcans.
    • In a Star Trek: Enterprise relaunch novel a human doctor who encountered a joined Trill wondered if the symbiont was a Romulan.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Clues", the crew encounter a race of non-corporeal aliens who are so secretive, they use a fake wormhole to fool people into thinking their region of space is too dangerous to venture into, and erase the memories of anyone who learns of their existence.
  • Early in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the mysterious leaders of the Dominion — a race known only as the Founders — are a complete mystery at first; though worshipped as gods by the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar, they're never seen in the field, their true nature is unknown, and the location of their home planet is a best-kept secret. At first some members of the Dominion weren't even sure that the Founders actually existed and considered them mythical. However, in "The Search Part 2", Odo eventually learns that the Founders are actually his own people, a race of shapeshifting Changelings, leaving him in the awkward position of being the Token Heroic Orc. As Odo learns more about the Founders, they become more prone to appearing in public — until by the end of the show, one Founder is openly commanding Dominion troops.
  • Also in Deep Space Nine, the Breen are notoriously enigmatic, to the point that even the Q Continuum is better-understood so far. Though the Breen have been met in person many times, they are never seen out of their all-concealing refrigeration suits, their language cannot be translated, and nobody knows anything about their culture other than a few vague snippets of information. Even the expanded universe hasn't revealed much about them.
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Unforgettable," the crew encounter a race of humanoids who emit a pheromone that makes it impossible for other races to remember them. They also have advanced cloaking technology that keeps them from being detected and computer viruses that wipe out any record of them, so the only way to maintain any record of their existence is with old fashioned paper.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Prior to their formal introduction, the Ancients were largely ciphers apart from the technological wonders they left behind, most prominently the Stargates. Indeed, so little was known about them that the suitably alien Dagra of Stargate Infinity was briefly thought to be an Ancient. However, later seasons of SG-1 featured meetings with Ascended Ancients, and bit by bit, their mysterious nature gave way to a reputation for being Neglectful Precursors.
  • By contrast, the Furlings remain infuriatingly mysterious to this day: they're believed to be a highly advanced species that were one of the legendary Four Races alongside the Ancients, the Asgard, and the Nox, but apart from that, nothing is known about them. In all the Stargate media, none of them have ever featured a single confirmed appearance by a Furling except in an Imagine Spot, during which they are depicted as a Higher-Tech Species of Ewoks who immediately get their planet blown up. For good measure, nobody's even sure if they're extinct or still out there somewhere.

Tabletop Games

• La Notte Eterna: Dwarves were once common enough on Neir that their language influenced the languages of the Karevi and the humans, but they went into seclusion in the mountains centuries ago, and now the endless night and its many dangers has made people less inclined to go looking for them.
• Pathfinder 2E features the Goloma, weird-looking horse-things descended from prey species. Their main strengths are looking scary (they resemble horse-demons with masks, if anything) and being really good at hiding as a result of being prey.
• Warhammer 40,000: The hrud are an intensely secretive alien species, and have an almost supernatural ability to hide almost anywhere. As a result, very little is known about them to other species, and what is known is shrouded in mystery, contradiction and rumor.
• Warhammer Fantasy:
  • The Old Ones are largely a mystery, even in comparison to their counterparts in 40K; a race of legendary Precursors responsible for creating the Lizardmen and a vast swathe of the other main races in the setting, almost nothing is known of their culture, why they terraformed the world, or even their basic biology: apart from a few unconfirmed cases, they're extinct, and the few immortal witnesses to their arrival are either dead or not talking. All that's known is that they might be as reptilian as the Lizardmen themselves, and that's it.
  • The Skaven — at least to human beings. Most of the Old World has discounted the existence of the legendary rat-men, and only the few vigilantes dedicated to combating their spread have the slightest idea of their under-empire; on the few occasions in which Skaven corpses have been left behind, they've been disregarded by authorities as elaborate fakes or some minor species of Beastman. For good measure, the Skaven themselves are very good at erasing any proof of their existence — along with people who might have seen it.
  • The gnomes, being a Dying Race who look like either puny dwarves or skinny halflings with beards, have been largely written off as non-existent and the stuff of fairy tales by the humans of the Empire. The gnomes, who aren't very fond of humans due to being persecuted for their inherent affinity for Ulgu, take full advantage of this, shaving off their beards and wearing padded clothing to pretend to be halflings.

Video Games

• Dinosaur Planet and Star Fox Adventures have the Krazoa, of which little is known about them besides they can control dark matter and built the Krazoa Palace, Shrines and Force Point Temples seen in Sauria. Dinosaur Planet reveals that they once ruled Sauria and much of the universe, until they raged a galactic war with a race known as the Kamerian Dragons that destroyed much of it, most of the Krazoa and birthed the dinosaurs, and that the remaining Krazoa may still harbor conquering intentions...
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, the Dwemer ("Deep Elves" or Dwarves) once occupied a vast swath of Tamriel, but disappeared centuries ago under mysterious circumstances. While artifacts from their civilization are still around, knowledge about what the race themselves were actually like is scarce and often inaccurate. Due to the events of the "Red Year" between Oblivion and Skyrim, which included a volcanic eruption that destroyed the epicenter of their former culture, the mysteries surrounding the Dwemer deepened in-universe. Even one of the greatest experts on the Dwemer, Calcelmo, knows less about the Dwemer than some amateur archeologists in Vvardenfell during the time of Morrowind.
  • In Morrowind, invoked in-universe. The Dunmer people once shared Morrowind with the Dwemer. After an initially antagonistic relationship, they formed an Enemy Mine to drive out the invading Nords. This was such a success that the two races formed one nation, Resdayn, under the leadership of the First Council, with Indoril Nerevar at the head. However, after discovering the Heart of Lorkhan beneath Red Mountain and attempting to tap into it to become gods/create a new god, the Dunmer waged war on the Dwemer. Exactly what happened next is recounted differently by the surviving parties, but the Dwemer vanished, Nerevar died, and the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur used the Dwemeri tools on the Heart to become gods. The Tribunal then actively demonized the Dwemer while surpressing knowledge of their technology and culture to consolodate their rule and prevent anyone from learning too much about their means of divinity, further adding to the enigmatic nature of the Dwemer.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Sheikah. Regardless of the era, the average Hylian (and, by extension, the player) knows very little about them beyond the fact that they're secretive, skilled in magic, and devoted protectors of the royal family due to their status as descendants of the Goddess Hylia. In many cases, Impa, a bodyguard or close confidant to the titular princess, appears as their sole representative. This is finally subverted in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where Link learns a great deal about the Sheikah's culture and history due to the plot revolving around Magitek created by their distant ancestors. It's still implied, however, that the rest of Hyrule has had very little contact with the Sheikah and the average person doesn't know much more about them than they do in other games.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The Zonai are an ancient, vanished civilization about whom very little is known. They left megalithic ruins across the Faron region, revered the Triforce, and viewed the Springs of Courage, Wisdom, and Power as sacred; everything else — what they were like, why they left monuments across all of Hyrule, why they vanished — is left as an unexplored mystery. Their name is even a pun on "nazo", the Japanese word for mystery. They become more central to the plot in the sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
• Mass Effect:
  • The Protheans are arguably the most famous example of this in the setting. Renowned as a legendary race of Precursors, their deeds are well-known — they created the Mass Relays, they uplifted the Hanar, they built the Citadel — but other than that, nothing is known about them other than the fact that they vanished over fifty thousand years ago. Even their appearance is a mystery. Over the course of the series, more is learned about them: first, they didn't build the Relays or the Citadel, but merely found them; they were imperialistic and extremely Darwinian, to the point of assimilating species, enforcing homogeneity, and annihilating anyone who didn't comply; they were destroyed by the Reapers. Even their appearance is cleared up in Mass Effect 3 when you thaw out a Prothean commander and have him join your team.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the Collectors are known mainly for their habit of trading highly-advanced technology for rare biological specimens, and are believed to dwell beyond the Omega 4 Relay, but other than that, they remain a cipher to the galactic community. For good measure, most of their business is done with pirates, slavers, and other disreputable types who won't be missed if deals go awry; it's not until they begin raiding human colonies that their secrets are dragged into the spotlight. They're actually former Protheans, rendered down into pawns of the Reapers after being harvested in the previous cycle.
  • The Leviathans are barely known prior to the events of Mass Effect 2, save that one of them somehow killed a Reaper (a near-invulnerable eldritch spaceship). As the player character investigates, he finds they've done everything they could to hide their tracks, up to mind-controlling an entire space station to stay secret. Even as Shepard learns more, they still refuse to come out of hiding, and for good reason: they're what's left of the actual Reapers. They were a forerunner race that controlled the galaxy; their attempt to stop their slave races from accidentally destroying themselves by making robots that inevitably rebel only caused their own robots to do the same to them, using their genetic material to turn many of them into Reapers.
• Meteos has the Gelyerns, a race of ninja-like creatures who are described as being exceptionally mysterious and hidden, specializing in strange arts and tools. The sound set their planet uses is an ominous drone interspersed with deep drum sound effects, adding to their mysterious nature.
• In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Rakata were one of the first known spacefaring races and occupied a territory called the Infinite Empire, but by the time of the Old Republic, they were long extinct and almost all signs of their culture had become lost to history. Consequently, what little is known of them is restricted to myths and tall tales.

Webcomics

• Spacetrawler: In the first volume, the rest of the galaxy just knows the Mihrrgoots as a species of violent savages — brutes who wallow in mud pits when they aren't devouring anyone unfortunate enough to land on their planet. While this is an accurate enough picture of the surface dwellers, there's also an advanced subterranean Mihrrgoot civilization, who've developed some of the most sophisticated technology in the whole galaxy. The underground Mihrrgoots let their inbred surface-dwelling cousins deal with the majority of interlopers — and on the rare occasion some outsider does discover the underground, the Mihrrgoots amnesticize them to prevent word from getting out. They've hidden themselves from the rest of the galaxy so successfully, their mere existence is a major reveal in the comic.

Web Original

• In the Veil of Madness stories from 4chan's /tg/, humans eventually Invoke this after a bungled First Contact. When all attempts at friendly contact fail, they accept being the "bogeymen of the universe" and only appear before aliens in scary Powered Armor and voice synthesizers.
  Looking back, it's actually worked out in our favor. After years of contact, most alien races know almost nothing about humans other than exaggerated horror stories; they rarely bother us, and the ones that do never return home.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: The Olms. An insular race of Amphibians that keep to their hidden underground city of Proteus and do not interact at all with the outside world (by necessity, since they have a fatal vulnerability to sunlight). At the time the series took place, no one had even seen one for thousands of years until Sprig and Polly ran into a pair completely by chance, and they had been exiles.
• The Dragon Prince: The Startouch Elves. Of all the all the different elf races in Xadia, the Startouch Eleves are the most mysterious and the rarest. The records found state they all but vanished years ago, and the only one seen in the show (Aaravos) is a Hidden Agenda Villain and an Un-person who has been struck from all written record.
• Hey Arnold!: The Green Eyes are a Central American tribe who make a point not to show themselves. They only trust a select few outsiders, and even then, most of their interactions are indirect — such as setting up a safe place to give birth to Arnold without actually being present when his parents arrive.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • The First Ones. We know they had advanced technology, a peculiar way of writing, they were Horde Prime enemies and that they exploited the magic power of other planets (not only Etheria). Also, we know they looked humans, because of Mara and Adora. But, excepting for the two, we don't know anything else about the First Ones, their past, their culture or how their planet looked like. Or even the true name of their race, since First Ones was the name given by the Etherians.
  • The Krytians (Melog's race) are worse. We know they were neutral-gendered beings that take different forms and can make a Psychic Link to someone they touch, but nothing else.

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