Bay 12 Games Forum

So I'm not sure if y'all remember way back when, but back in the relatively austere days of M15, Xan was still all flesh-horrory, but died due to STAN. He had a clone of himself on Heph, which ressurected, created a third clone, and promptly died during a Halloween event, losing control of itself and ending up being consumed by the Doctor. This third Xan is the one I've been playing as for a while now. While he'd like to get back to his original flesh horror form, there's no way since his powers were taken away courtesy of Miyamoto and Hasala.
That is what everyone thinks, at least.

What almost no one but me remembered is that the original Xan made another clone, before the one he hid in the vault on Hephaestus. This was an imperfect clone, the result of a 4 on the creation roll, hidden away in the infirmary. It was no more intelligent than a dog, but it still had the changing flesh Xan desired. No one knew about it save for me and the Doctor, who didn't care enough to tell anybody. It was the key to my ascension, free of the limitations of Steve, ARM, the whole lot of them.

It's why Xan suddenly took such a huge specialization in Medical for no apparent reason.

It's why he reacted with such glee when he was given the Vanessa body, and why he adopted that persona - no one could even suspect what he was doing for fear of foiling his plot.

You have to understand something about Xan - he is fundamentally terrified of dying. He initially started out thinking he was already dead, way back when I had no serious plans for him as a character. Then when he died and was reborn as the flesh horror, his psyche rationalized it as him becoming the only truly alive and sapient being in the entire cosmos. He shares many (completely unintentional) similarities to Nagash from Warhammer Fantasy - he's fundamentally a coward that doesn't want to die because dying is a total end, and when he ends (in his view of things) the universe does too, since why wouldn't it vanish when the only thing capable of observing it passes on? It's why he seeks to emulate the Doctor to such a great extent yet harbors such hate for him at the same time - to him, the Doctor isn't alive or an actual person, but a universal law that one can model itself after to become greater than it.

So Xan became Vanessa, and travelled to Heph to talk to the Doctor. I'm on a phone so I can't post all the PMs I have of their talk, but it ended up with Xan being granted a lesser form of the flesh horror, one that can modify itself and stuff, just slowly. It also can't create clones, but won't explode. Perfect, right? Actually, not so much. The reason Xan sought out his flesh horror form was because the creation of clones let him live on even if he died - insuring infinite continuity of the self, in other words. He needed the clone creation capacity of the original, because no matter how many defenses you put up around yourself, if you die, that's it, kaput. Xan wanted to change that. So he adopted the limited flesh horror body the Doctor gave him, got an Id Manifester, which in keeping with his massive narcissism turned out to be a copy of himself with flesh horror powers, got a few hapless meatshields, and ventured into the Deep Infirmary to claim his immortality.

This has all been several years in the making - my initial plan when I got the flesh horror body way back at ER's peak around mission 11 was to stay with ARM and drop off a clone at every planet we visited - that way if I died I could create another character and stay content that Xan was still out there doing Xan stuff. Then when I died and woke up on Heph I entertained dreams of mounding the construction pits for our flesh-sod forces and implanting them all with an innate directive to obey me, thus giving me ultimate power. Didn't pan out, obviously. Then I got banned from being a flesh horror entirely and promptly said 'fuck that'. My enthusiasm for the game plummeted a little, I'll admit, especially when I promptly died again due to taking off my helmet in space. But as I was reading through the missions where I did crazy shit like being a dragon and a flying eyeball and stuff, I ran across that action where I created the one last clone. Everyone had forgotten about it in the confusion, even me. I PMed piecewise about it, and got an affirmation that the clone was still in the infirmary, though out of my control, and thus my plans began. And now at last they reach their conclusion.

This assumes that I managed to find and capture my errant clone in the depths of the Deep Infirmary, and escape the universe with it and the Vanessa body - I'd planned to ask someone to program the latter to follow me around.

1. Find somewhere secluded where I could easily conduct research without being investigated - if that means staying with ARM forces as we colonize this new universe, so be it - just so long as I'm in a position where I can do sinister medical shit and not be lynched for it, I'm game.

2. Take advantage of my essential biological immortality and the fact that my Id is an exact copy of me - though with more potent powers - to basically level grind my Medical skill into the stratosphere and extensively study my clone and how it's flesh operates, and how I might be able to either fuse it's flesh to myself or adopt its qualities. Do this thoroughly so that there's no chance of me fucking the next steps up due to something I didn't know or somesuch.

3. Preferably after at least a few mortal lifetimes of study of how I might be able to make myself into a greater flesh horror again, whether that would be by performing a brain transplant on myself via my Id into the specimen's flesh or by altering myself in some way, perform the operation. Take all possible precautions, use stims of the appropriate kinds to make sure of it, etc. Being Saint-level careful. If Maurice wants to help me, allow him to.

4. Assuming I survive said re-flesh-horrorification, spend however much time is necessary honing my mental discipline enough to make sure I never STAN again. Focus on what the Doctor told me, obtaining that cold detachment he spoke of.

5. Create clones of myself. Like a billion of them. Not all at once, one at a time. Being cautious here. Destroy and recycle their biomass if they're not exact replicas of me. Each clone will go elsewhere to do whatever it is that a mind like Xan's would want to do, but also would in turn create more clones, also making sure each one is a perfect replica.
Oh, and put one clone in the Vanessa body, it'd be a shame to waste it.

6. With immortality essentially insured, research into forbidden science shit for the rest of eternity. Try to eventually figure out how the Doctor made his body like it is, and modify myself in a like fashion. Mayhaps discover if something like Origin exists in the universe I'm in, and perhaps try to harness its power. Basically try to become god. Write myself into the fabric of reality itself, become an extrauniversal god and spread myself amongst the multiverse, so that the entity that is Xan will exist in perpetuity beyond even the end of eternity itself. Make sure not to tango with anything I can't kill easily or that could kill me easily. The goal is eternal existence, after all, eventually becoming a universe-devouring apocalypse is just a side effect.