Okay have time, my own canon as I see alien franchise or has since 2003 with updates when new material is released, and as its 04.01 in the morning I apologize for my bad writing.
-Dark horse explanation of xenomorph background: they were part of a ecosystem on one planet where they were one of the top predators but still having rivalry which keept them at bay, until the space jockeys found their planet and captured some of them and found them to be perfect for making into weapons and its here the black goo was created from xenomorph dna. The space jockeys itself are shown as none humanoids but are rather grown into the tasks they are made for.
Anchorpointessays.com debated that the eggs carried onboard the derelight ship was their weapon in a civil war of their species. Space jockeys creates the space enginners who try to look like them in their honor. But the space jockeys got wiped out by the xenomorphs and one crashlands on LV-426. The space engineers on their planet start to use the black goo to recreate their works and starts to seed planets and also recreate the xenomorphs as the murals in prometheus shown.
Yet again infestations of the black goo cause several of their labs to be overrun but they are a space traveling civilistation but like the space jockeys a rare and dying species.
-The events of prometheus happens, pathogen is discovered as a weapon and a mutagen that mutates whatever it gets in contact with besides already infected creatures. Deacon is born but ends up becoming a mountain after eating more pathogen. Deacon is first sign of the pathogen trying to become xenomorph like creature. We also see the space engineers worshipping the xenomorph, having altars for it and unknown crystals together with jars of black goo.
-David finds one of the space engineers species that was created and wipes them and the planet out and shawn crashes the ship when she realise what he has done, and David kills her and uses her body to experiment on together with the pathogen and the mutating creatures found on the planet. The pathogen is spread like nuclear fallout in rain and wind and overruns the planet. David find lots of the space engineers designs and work and also the pathogen is like xenomorphs, replicating and trying to become like a xenomorph again. David manages with the last creatures and last pathogen to make the preatorian/protomorph alien eggs which differs from the original ones and arent the same but close to the xenomorph.
-Covenant happens and David get to test his creature and also finds the neomorphs and try to learn about them too but the covenant crew kills them and we find out they dont have acid for blood, nor did the other creatures born from the pathogen, the protomorph unlike the xenomorph grows to adult form in 20 minutes time and is born fully formed and transparent, their facehugger is bigger than normal facehuggers and dont need to stay attached to the host, it will implant its embryo within seconds. Protomorph lack the design of the original and their harder exosuit skeleton, and is shown to be more dumb and more aggressive than the original alien and they are taken out by 2 humans. David taking control of the colony ship and most likely starts experimenting on the colonists and create hsi own planet to control with his own strain of xenomorph.
-Alien: The distress signal is discovered on LV-426 by a vessel passing close to the planet and WY get report of it and some insiders with access to knowledge of prometheus expedeition throws together a plan to get their hands on what is likely what prometheus was after, sends ASch to infiltrate nostromo and have it rerouted. Finding the derelight ship and the eggs of the original aliens and find out they still live after long time, the facehugger needs ca 8-12 hours time to implant its embryo inside of kane, and after release it takes aprox 2-4 hours before the chestburster breaks out(taken from
anchorpointessays.com) state of chestburster depends on individual gestation times and this one is mostly snake shaped but signs of arms. The creature takes 2-4 hours to grow to adult size and starts taking out the crew who was seen as a threat to it, and also for starting a colony/nest onboard. It captures Dallas and have him coccooned in its nest with brett who is morphing into an egg which contains a queen facehugger. Ripley starts the self destruct and finds the nest and destroys it with dallas. The xenomorph is later shot out of the airlock and the engine of the shuttle cant burn or kill it but enough to send it out into space, most likely hibernating as the xenomorph dont need air to live.
We also see when parker tries to attack it from behind, the xenomorphs head contains advanced sensors and detects him as he do and wipes him with its tail, my own theory is that they have a 360 view of field.
-Alien isolation: Ripleys daughter visits sevastopol and finds it in distress and severe alien ifnestation, finds out another crew got to LV-426 and got infected and went to sevastopol and starting this infestation, they also turned off the distress signal. Ripley survives the ordeal and is picked up by a ship.
-Aliens: Ripley is found and is sent back to gateway station where its unheard of for someone to survive a such long cryosleep, and is called for a hearing where no one beleives her story and starts working as a dock worker, while burke investigate this and finds info on those insiders was into and sends an order to investigate ripleys claim. Jordan familfy finds the derelight which is damaged after volcano and earthquakes hitting it and find the eggs which is still alive and soon infects the dad of the family, which ends up with the colony being overrun, 3 survivors escapes the planet and they seek ways to get revenge on weyland yutani. Ripley gets visit from burke that they lost contact with the colony and she accept to return there. The marines find that the aliens built a hive in the atmosphere processor, due to the xenomorphs keepign memories of their hosts and built their hive in there both for its heat but also for the danger that if someone shots weapons it can cause the reactor to go critical. The hive is a living being of itself that feeds/nurture the xenomorphs as it slowly breaks down metal. The xenomorphs can communicate through the hive through the hive resin. Also the resin leaves spores that the xenomorph can track, amking it easy to find intruders. We also find the xenomorph to be less aggressive and leaves the marines in peace until they kill their newborn chestburster. Xenomrohs cant be seen in infra red and soon takes out most of the marines. The xenomorphs being older have a more armoured head and blades on their arms but else looking just like big chap. Also we see the xenomorphs sacrificing itself to save the hive when one kills the pilot of the lander. The atmosphere processor is damaged and will blow and take out the colony in the blast and 40 km around it. The xenomorphs cut off the power showing their inteligense and also likely that the xeno born from the colonists had memory of how the generator works. The marines escapes and get to the drop ship but ripley goes in for newt and finds the queen. The queen lays an egg every third hour (according to
anchorpointessays.com) and the queen shown to be even more inteligent and can understand ripley and calls off its guards when ripley threatens her eggs. The eggs however arent smart and cant be controlled but opens up when they discover a suitable host. The queen can detach from its eggsack and also regrow it, she follows ripley and shows she can operate a elevator and climbs onboard the lander. In combat we see the queen being quite slow and its walking style seem to indicate its not built for walking but be immobile and egglaying. The queen is thrown out of the airlock and is sucked down to the planet and most likely burnt up when entering lv-426s atmosphere. We also learn that its not possible to remove the facehugger from a host without the host dying, they did this before the facehugger had managed to lay its embryo inside the host, showing that they need several hours to do its job, same facehugegr was later released by burke to infect ripley or newt but the plan failed.
In the hive we learn the eggs grow rotes that gives the eggs nurturment and most likely can absorb food from metal or materials its connected to. We also learn and mostly from earth war comics that the xenomorphs are like coachroaches and can survive radiation. The derelight might been destroyed in the blast but mountain ranges could have sheilded it from the blast, it remains unknown if its there or not anymore.
Although the queen had laid a emergency egg onboard the lander.
-Alien 3: the emergency egg hatches and the facehugger seeks a victim and finds ripley and lays its queen embryo in her, this causing a fire that starts a evac and the eve shuttle crashlands on the planet, due to the fire damage it dont land but crash into the sea, its computers guiding it into the sea. the facehugger on ripley feeds ripley air and makes sure she survives. The facehugger later finds a dog and infects it with the second embryo it carries which will be the guard to the gestating queen.
The dog runner/guard xeno gestates just as slow as the other xenos and not until almost a day after its birth is it moving around and taking its first victims, we also learn the xenos take traits from its hosts and creature they gestate from. While the queen in ripley took almosta week or 4 days aprox to gestate but was killed when ripley threw herself down into the furnace. We also get shown that the xenomorph can survive extreme temperatures but its exoskeleton can crack and explode by rapid temperature changes. They can also smell or detect if someone carries a chestburster or a queen one, and facehuggers dont hatches onto a already infected host. The queens dont take traits from their hosts but are born pure xenomorph, making it possible for the species to keep their purity in check, making queens and their daughters closer related than to their offsrpings that takes dna/traits from hosts. We also find out that the xenomorphs can spit acid at close range that contains poison to paralyse potential hosts.
-Aliens thanatos encounter
-Aliens dead orbit
-dust to dust
- Aliens labyrinth we get to see xenomorphs able to reproduce ina new way, its yet unknown how they do it, best theory is they force several facehuggers to do their job on any species females but its a last ditch resort.
-Alien rpg book and alien 3 ideas: UPP and all factions and space goverments.
-more than human: we see xenomorphs of the body guard type that only is around the queen mother, which would explain why the people on the planet is possessed and is hostile and is going to the xenomoprh hive, and this part to me makes earth wars lore of the queen mother to occur here too. queen mother have the ability to make weak minded humans to obey the xenomorphs and can control several xenomorph hives across the universe.
-Alien resurrection: ixenomorphs encounters have pretty much disappeared and to get their hands on it after WY collapses, they clone ripley and manages to clone her somewhat successfully, the xenomorphs onboard are abominations and have a more fleshy look, almost similair to davids protomorph, and arent as dangerous as the original aliens as they kill their own instead of escaping by spitting acid, showing human thinking when they instead kill one of their owns, they after that fails to cause major loss to the few people left onboard, more xenos than humans die but they display xenomorphs ability to understand their enviroment and use it to their advantage. We also see first step of the adult xenomorph is to have the smooth dome head, which grows to the armoured/ridged one in aliens as they age when born from a human host and also taking as long as the original alien to gestate, and the facehuggers confirming they need to attach to a host for long time to put in an embryo as one that hatches onto ripley wasnt able to while the protomorphs didnt need that and some other examples in the lore that makes them uncanon in my head.
Xenomorphs with their heads can communicate with eachothers by hive mind, how it works are just theories. Due to the human dna and thinking they arent as protective of their eggs or queen as they use most of their eggs, if not all in an trap which failed, as the queen wasnt egg laying anymore their hive is doomed. The queen how she most likely was able to escape and get to the waste tank: she most likely had stopped egglaying as the novel says and had the newborn growing inside of her, and had detached from her eggsack, then the xenos escaped and she was able to move to the wastetank and set up her hive and almost directly grew the womb part, she then ordered her drones to bring ripley to her as she knew something is wrong but couldnt tell what and ripley maybe can help, hence they try to kill her first but now brings her to them. The enwborn when mature enough burst out of the womb like a chestburster, and like mammals as its an obimation between xenomroph and humans, sees ripley first and inprints on her, making it think ripley is the mother. Auriga crashes and kills the 1-3 xenomorphs left alive.
-sea of sorrow
Okay now im way too tired to think properly but might add more details of data from various alien lore but I think I got the most of it, skipping the too obvious stuff but gladly answer questions. But then again this is my headcanon and how I try to see everything fit from all alien material, comics, games, community ideas, novels etc.
Best canon in my opinion else is: all alien material is as valid as anything else and there is no canon but what one like in the franchise as canon is subject to change each time a new movie or comic etc comes out and we still have the old material left to enjoy and themes and ideas in the past disappears with new, I would see all release as just as valid.
