Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Splint on August 07, 2012, 12:04:00 am

Except Mr Frog, he's on hiatus to rebuild his possibly damaged ego.

Nonsense! My ego is locked in an adamantine-plated strongbox and buried at an undisclosed location on an undisclosed planet in an undisclosed universe. It ain't getting no damage no how.

Okay, yeah, it pretty much deflates if someone looks at me funny :V  I'm a pansy, I admit it.

I'm mostly just embarrassed, though; I wasn't exactly on my best behaviour there.

Just do what I do, have an ego so over-inflated that it automatically writes off anything that could damage it as spiteful LIES from your enemies.

Whatever the answer, I think this should be listed under the TvTropes page as fridge horror.  But really, do we even want to know?

I always saw the spawn as just dilling and eating everything they ran into. Hungery? Walk outside and kill something. Thirsty? Drink it's blood. Larva demanding food? Kill it and feed it to the rest so they shut up.

As I said, this started as an unique race of it's own, and you are welcome to keep it that way or adapt it for the Hollistic Spawn.

I must ask though, who here thinks the guys I listed should be adapted into Hollistic Spawn and who thinks they deserve to be kept a unique race in themselves?

LIST OF POSSIBLE SPAWN TYPES
please note that this was originally conceived as a unique race, and I won't bother changing details that won't work for spawn of hollistic.
Splint, Talvieno, and Mr Frog, as the ones who created the spawn used in the first place, feel free to alter anything because of the above.  Or maybe split into their own race as I originally envisioned, if you feel such is worthwhile.

Spawn(base): Does not actually exist, only used for comparing each variant.  Compared to dwarves, have slightly above-average strength and toughness, and equal dexterity.  Size of a human, but with four arms, and sharp claws and teeth.

Workspawn: Slightly below average in all stats, but are the ones that do all the non-military jobs.  Never show up in fort mode, but will engage in self-defence.

Darkspawn:  Slightly smaller, weaker, and more fragile, but slightly more dextrous.  Adept at sneaking and have trap-avoid.  May show up as thieves or in ambushes.

Waterspawn:  Amphibious, but otherwise basic spawn.  Show up as specialist troops.

Venomspawn:  Otherwise basic spawn with poisoned claws and teeth.  Poison causes extreme pain, with a delayed effect of gradual reduction of physical stats.  Show up as specialist troops.

Warspawn:  Slightly stronger and tougher, can wield weapons and enter martial trances.  Main warriors and may lead ambushes.

Deathspawn:  Very strong and tough, but somewhat less agile.  Noticeably larger than others, prone to rage, and are building destroyers.  Heavy support and shock troops.

Spawnlords:  Leaders of the spawn.  Taller, stronger, tougher and more agile than base spawn.  Have trap-avoid and building destroyer.  Two arms may wield weapons, and may enter martial trances.  Only show up leading sieges.

I've been making more of an effort to be open with what I'm working on, and though said efforts are still pretty lacking, I can only do so much on my end. The only solution for this sort of problem short of everyone posting a gigantic list of every single little idea they've built up about the canon is for us to run things past each other to make sure everything gels, which didn't happen here.

I'm just looking for possible ideas that can explain established canon problems and clear the confusion.  Therefore feel free to ignore all my ideas that clash with it.

@Splint: They can't possibly be "cheap knockoffs" - why would you have had Ballpoint attempting to capture a specimen if they were? I'd say Mr Frog's task was to figure out how the HS-2a were different from the HS-2b. This would've occurred after the Spawn were re-released into the world. If we assume the Spawn had been around 200 years by the beginning of Spearbreakers which they HAD been, if you count worldgen time, then Mr Frog couldn't have possibly been alive that long, thus, he couldn't have released them himself, or engineered them.

Edit: (soulslicer'd)
All right, so gathering enough for an army is out of the question. In that case, you have to assume that Ballpoint would WANT an army at all (which they would, it's in their nature), and then you have to assume that the specimens they have aren't suitable to those ends. Thus, they want a different variety of Spawn - the Spawn of Parasol. Parasol's may be better in some ways, and different in others. Perhaps we faced Parasol's Spawn near the beginning of Spearbreakers, and we're only just now facing that of Ballpoint. No matter what you believe, the Spawn of Ballpoint and Parasol have to be different. Parasol wasn't intending to weaponize theirs anyway - they're kind of like Aperture Science, in a way - they're in it for the !!Research!!.

I went back to your post on portals at the bottom of page 254, and it says nothing about time-travel (as in having 2 portals to the same place, but linking to different time periods).  On your edit reply, I was thinking under the assumption that the spawn THEMSELVES mutated in some way.

edit: Splintja'd again  Edit2: And now Frogja'd  Though I feel like I'm with you here on this Mr Frog, working on assumptions that ONLY ballpoint introduced the spawn

Ah, but in thier adaptation, things are happening that went unanticipated. Spawn with the intelligence to withdraw and capable of joining other races is a far cry from the mindless zombie-esque swarms he originally introduced.

Therefore, adaptable spawn can be seen as far more desirable to even the already deadlier ones they had (if they're smart enough to run from the field, then they don't need to keep sending contractors out to capture the damned things. If we're particularly unlucky Ashaber and Softa might figure out a way to open thier cells.)

What's next, those becoming spawn start to do things to help spawn-kind overall even before they transform physically?  (like 'forgetting' to close the bridge during a spawn-seige knowing it would be seen only as normal dwarf stupidity and putting themselves in the middle of large groups of civilians while far away from any military dwarfs just before they fully change)

And SoulSlicerJames, I apologize for calling you out on that. You were right.

all is forgiven.