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Author Topic: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race  (Read 3023 times)

Draignean

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2021, 04:47:51 am »

Battle Report 1

Alpha’s Advance

New Organism: The Driller
A sleeker and better armored variant of the grub, the Driller is equipped with powerful twisting muscles and a drill-like head that enables it to smash and wiggle its way through tough obstacles, and performs quite well in group excavations. The elite form has considerable more operational endurance than the base form.

Parasitic Forest
The grubs and Drillers sent into the Parasitic woods initially make excellent progress. The Drillers and elite Drillers find the soil to be relatively soft and absolutely rich with organic matter to supply their efforts in gouging and drilling tunnels for the swarm. The issues arise when the after-effects of eating the spore and mycelium laced soil become apparent.

The stomachs of the front rank drillers quickly swell with exponential fungal growth - spores transported inside their body by filtering the soil for food quickly and ironically devouring the lining of their gastric system from within. The growth results in the inflation of the Driller's body, followed quickly by a detonation and rain of spores when the chitin plated skin is finally forced apart by the hypergrowth. Covered in spores, and with most all members of the Driller caste internally contaminated, the Alpha queen directs the remaining Drillers to tunnel back up to the surface immediately. This effort, punctuated by the death-throes of Drillers as the fungus either detonates them from the inside or niggles between chitin plates and infiltrates their muscles and organs, is successful in creating a path for the grubs to reach the forest floor again.

The toxic slime coating of the grubs shows excellent effect in stopping the incident spores of exploding Drillers, and most of the grubs are able to reach the surface once more.  When traversing the forest floor, the toxic slime coating of the grubs and elite grubs continues to do excellent work, but there appear to be hardier spore carriers here - once that land and intentionally wiggle and gyrate to work their way in. These periodically infect grubs, causing them to grow ornate structures of strangely geometric fungal caps before simply going still and rapidly rotting away into a mound of mushrooms.
Without support from the Drillers, and their numbers diminished by the hardier spore varieties, the grubs are unable to make significant progress in establishing a new hive.

No Progress

Dried Seabed
The dried Seabed produces different problems from the outset. The terrain of the dried seabed presents a unique problem for the Drillers. If they delve deep enough for the soil to hold its shape in discrete tunnels, they get close enough to the heat bank for it to slowly but steadily fry them and everything that passes through the tunnels. If they stay closer to the surface, the tunnels fail to hold their structure and frequently collapse in plumes of dust and bone-dry soil.

While the Drillers are able to survive the collapses well enough, the slime coated grubs are quite a different story. The dust of the dried seabed is a constant issue, sticking to the slime and turning it into thick mud that suffocates the grubs. The grubs can increase their rate of slime generation to slough the mud off, but doing so quickly dehydrates them - which causes death in the brutal heat all the same.

Plagued by overheating, suffocation, and constant tunnel collapses, the swarm in the dried seabed makes scarce progress. 

No Progress

Howling Crevasses
In the howling crevasses, things finally go well. While it takes the Drillers considerable time to find a place where they can penetrate and begin a tunnel, the grubs are able to slink and squish their way into any number of small and sheltered crevices within the chasm faces thanks to their slime coating and enhanced climbing abilities.

When the drillers do manage to get the tunnel going, it’s hard and slow to make progress in, but their adaptations mean that slow progress is still steady. The lead drillers still die one by one, exhausting themselves to get a little bit further, but the tunnels expand marvelously to reach new areas of the crevasses and allow exploration for where to place a hive-site.

(+1 Progress for Alpha in the Howling Crevass)



Omega’s Advance


New Organism: The Rozer.
The Rozer is a grublike creature with enhanced digging capability, thick mucus secretions which can be used as a resinous glue, and the ability to generate chitin sheets from its rear that it can chew into armor plates for its allies or building materials for simple structures. The elite form of the Rozer is similar to the base, but considerably larger.

The Misted Ravines
The misted ravines are difficult all around. The minor force dispatched by the Omega queen, less than a fifth of her full numbers, is chemically burned and slowly poisoned by the omnipresent vapors of the Ravine. The Rozers create shelters where they can, safe havens where the grubs can rest and recover, but the structures themselves corrode - and the seal from the outside only lasts as long as the Rozer who gives up their freedom to complete the structure.

Digging in the Misted Ravines proves suicidally dangerous. While the most soil is soft enough to burrow through, the toxic metals that leach ever deeper in the soil means that every inch forwards exerts a heavy toll on the diggers. The damp soil constantly threatens to collapse inwards, but chitin buttresses and a thick layer of hardening slime largely solves the issue. Worse, disturbing the soil risks destabilizing the delicate balance of metals and chemicals, resulting in no small number of detonations and metal fires within the tunnels.

In summary, the advance continues until the last digger succumbs to poison or is burned away in the sudden reactive fury of an energetic combination of elements. After that, the grubs are forced out of the leaky shelters to slink along the surface - a pilgrimage that quickly claims the fullness of their minimal numbers.

No Progress

The Desert of Mirrors
In the Desert of Mirrors things, initially, go quite well. The sand is perfect for the Rozers to push their way through, and their slime is able to create hardened tunnels for the grubs that follow, giving them cover from the blazing light and relatively safe passage.

This lasts until a happenstance mirror alignment causes the plastic in the sands to ignite, causing a chain reaction that results in rivers of burning plastic that neither the Rozers nor the grubs can hope to out run. At best the fires fill the tunnels with toxic smoke that poisons and asphyxiates the swarm in minutes. At worst the molten plastic simply crushes the slime tunnels, ending the organisms with a few sickening pops and the smell of burning chitin.

With a heavier push, luck might allow the Rozers to make good progress in constructing a tunnel to a good hive location. However, the paltry push provided is insufficient except to show exactly how the grubs and Rozers die. (+0)

No Progress

The Shattered Badlands
The Omega queen focuses the bulk of her efforts on the shattered badlands, sending her grubs and Rozers in their fullest numbers to try and find a place to found a new hive.

It is a cautious advance, but still one nearly blind. Grubs on the surface push their psionic sight to the fullest, but the sight granted by their limited telepathic and telekinetic potential is woefully insufficient to detect which machines will go active and when. The Rozers apply chitin armor to the grubs as best they can before they begin their work in the tunnels, and Shelters are created at regular intervals - but these provide little aid to the grubs for one simple reason:

The enemy fought here is utterly unimpeded by something as simple as Rozer chitin.

While the slow movements of the grubs help avoid some detection by the ancient machines, those machines which do activate inflict horrific casualties. Grubs are painfully slow, and the chitin armor applied by the rozers is absolutely no impediment to chemrail salvos and thermobaric SRMs. Omega hive organisms die in splattered hundreds, with little defense besides waiting for it to end.

For the Rozers, things are a little better- but only a little. Even where the soil is soft enough for the Rozers to make tunnels for their brethren, several machines appear to be armed with vibration sensors. These war machines fire missile salvoes which arc skyward, flip, and then burn hard straight back into the ground before detonating with overlapping shockwaves that create massive soil cavitations. While less frequent than the War Machines that stand strict sentinel over the surface, this still hamstrings progress underground.

Still, thanks in very small part to the psionic senses of the grub, and in much larger part to the digging capability of the Rozers, some progress is made in securing a new hive location.

(+1 Progress for Omega in the Shattered Badlands)



Spoiler: The Map (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: January 18, 2021, 04:58:58 am by Draignean »
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andrea

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #16 on: January 18, 2021, 02:02:03 pm »

So, I wanted to make a map. But, I am no artist.

However, I do own games with a map editor, so I present you Civilization:Beyond the Worm

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

flabort

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #17 on: January 19, 2021, 07:39:02 pm »

Throwing my hat in the ring with Omega.

Not ready to restart my own arms race, or rejoin the ones I used to be active in, but for now I'll be playing in here. I also have a proposition for a map I want to run past my team first.

Edit:
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 03:18:14 pm by flabort »
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Draignean

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #18 on: January 26, 2021, 07:09:59 pm »

Battle Report 2



Omega’s Advance
New Organism: Medusa Crab
A six-legged and shelled evolution of the grub, the Medusa crab features four walking legs and two claw-tipped manipulator arms. Mouthless, the Medusa feeds via grub-like polyps that grow as sub-organisms from its back. These polyps secrete and aerosolize a moderately potent broad-spectrum binding and inhibition agent, used to purge harmful chemicals from the air. Semi-independent, they can be snipped when damaged or to allow them to provide their toxin purging ability separately from the Medusa.

Misted Ravines
With an enormously increased dispatch of the swarm’s potential and a heavy deployment of the Medusa Crab, the passage through the Ravines is eased considerably. The large number of Medusa present are able to act as an effective vanguard, laying down a haze of neutralizing spray to scrub the worst of the air for the bulk of the swarm. It isn’t a perfect defense - it can only effectively work on the air and the surface of objects, and multitude of rivulets and shallow pools still means that there’s still plenty of opportunity for seepage.

For grubs, however, this problem is partially ameliorated by their newly developed ability to hover using numerous pushing threads of psionic energy. While this does not allow them to hover over pools of any depth, it does allow them to minimize their contact with the ground and almost keep pace with the legged medusa. Admittedly, with a lot of nosediving into the mud when they need to slow down quickly.

Rozers end up taking the brunt of the toxins, and the swarm still relies on them to periodically construct structures either as a means of providing a rest, or to shelter underground tunnels and prevent flooding. These structures are more effective, however, now that the Medusa are available to coat them against corrosion.

With the relative safety of the Medusa and the improved shelters, Rozers can retreat from digging and rest before succumbing to the toxic environment, but the chance combination of reactive elements disturbed by digging still inflicts heavy casualties on all units both from the detonations themselves and from tunnel collapses.

Still, progress is steadily made, and a proportional deployment with the expected increase in birthing capabilities will likely yield even further improved gains.

(+1 Progress for Omega in the Misted Ravine)


Desert of Mirrors
Little has changed for Omega in the Desert of Mirrors. The loose and fine sand is very difficult for the telekinetic hovering of the grub to push off against, resulting in reduced speed, accidentally flolloping down dunes, and a general loss of control. The medusa crabs are able to make a decent pace, but their anti-toxic abilities only come into play during the cataclysmic events where a river of molten plastic fills a rozer tunnel with toxic fumes - at which point it is very much too little and far too late, and provides no significant increase in survival rate.

While the ability of the grubs to hover does help them navigate Rozer tunnels more quickly, and thus occasionally escape from them when they start to melt or choke with black smoke and toxic gas, it offers no significant improvement.

No Progress.

Shattered Badlands
In the Shattered Badlands, the situation is improved by an increase in units, but the recent evolutionary developments are only minimally helpful. While the Medusa, and particularly it’s elite form, would be potent combatants against a grub or a rozer, the only difference between them and a grub when faced with an awakened derelict is how crunchy it sounds when they splatter.

Still, the hovering addition to the grubs does allow them to scatter somewhat when a machine activates - even if it does mean essentially running blind when pushed to full speed. While this can result in the chain activation of multiple derelicts, it does result in more survivors than standing still and grubbing for the best.

The Rozers face, and are killed by, the same challenges as before - ground penetrating seismic bombs. Increased numbers means there’s more left after to skirt around the region and extend new tunnels when needed for the others, so modest improvements there as well.

(+1 Progress for Omega in the Shattered Badlands)



Alpha’s Advance

New Organism: The Ember
In outward appearance, the basic Ember could, in bright light, be mistaken for a heavily armored grub. In dimmer light, however, a dull glow emanates from its soft tissues, belying a hybrid sulphurous metabolism that operates comfortably at near boiling temperatures - and well beyond them for the elite versions. Capable of expectorating a stream of super-heated bile, the Ember is a fiery improvement over the grub in nearly every regard.

The Parasitic Forest
Two important changes reshape the way Alpha entity pushes through the Parasitic forest. First, and most importantly, alterations to the Digger digestive system make the environment much more punishing for fungal spores to find root. It still happens and eventually kills the host, but the resulting blooms no longer explosively spread the contamination. This allows the Diggers to drill for much longer through the forest soil, creating safer passages between surface explorations. While it does eventually kill them, the rich bio-matter in the soil allows the Diggers to work at their maximum limit until the deleterious effects of fungal infection overwhelm them, and the network of tunnels they create is extensive.

The second important change is the deployment of the Ember here. While with little additional vision or speed to make them more effective surface scouts than the grubs, they are very durable. The baseline Ember’s only vulnerability to fungal infection is the deeply shielded membranes it uses to breathe, and whose hybrid anatomy requires a lower working temperature. ‘Lower’, however, is not the same as low. Respirations problems plague the Ember, greatly reducing their effective available energy for everything, but very few are outright killed by the infections. The Elite Ember, however, has no such issues. The silicone based respiration organelles operate at temperatures hot enough to instantly sterilize fungal spores. The biggest issue they have (present to a lesser extent on normal embers) is that they require an enormous amount of energy to maintain their temperatures in the smothering damp of the fungal forest. As such, while they don’t suffer from the reduced energy of the normal embers, the elites spend so much of their time eating (usually simply charring trees and chewing the fungal wood apart wholesale) that they don’t live up to their potential in terms of exploration.

Grubs still suffer issues from periodic fungal infiltrations and internal colonization, but they still actually do the bulk of work that covers the ground, and their heavy deployment in this region serves to make valuable progress in finding a path through and discovering a new nesting site.

(+1 Progress for Alpha in the Parasitic Forest)

The Dried Seabed
The approach to the Dried Seabed changes dramatically with the information gained from the last attempt. Not a single grub is sent, but a significant force of diggers and the majority of the Embers are deployed here.

The diggers have to cut the same fine divide they did last time, staying deep enough to make sure the soil is ‘diggable’ rather than collapsing immediately into dust, but staying high enough that they don’t get cooked by the subterranean heatbank. The lack of other units that need to use the tunnels allows them to err on the side of going too high, and, while there are frequent collapses that reduce speed, they diggers are almost always able to extricate themselves and keep going.

Across the surface, the Embers are having a rosy time. Baseline Embers are perfectly comfortable, and grub their way along the surface of the Dried seabed with determination. They are slow. They don’t see much. They also don’t have any significant issues here anymore, and move basically unimpeded. Their elite brethren find it rather chilly in the dried seabed, and go out of their way to conserve themselves and find food, but are otherwise similarly able to move freely.

This combination of Diggers and Embers allows the queen to make progress, but it’s very slow here. Without a paradigm shift greater than throwing more units at the problem, it’s unlikely that things will accelerate.

(+1 Progress for Alpha in the Dried Seabed)

The Howling Crevasses
Within the Howling Crevasses, the tactically approach is more of ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ style - with a similar, but significantly larger, deployment to the last cycle. A few embers are included in the mixture, but they spend most of their time huddled for warmth against the shrieking wind and chill stone, then subsequently starving to death trying to scrub the barren rocks for anything to eat. While their thick insulating armor allows them to weather storms of shale shards that would tear apart a grub, the first piece to get through is a fatal blow from sustained heat loss alone - and larger injuries simply serve to add a spray of burning innards to the stone-laden wind. All in all, for this climate, the lack of ability to slime up walls and into small holes is not worth the dramatically improved defense.

Grubs and drillers together are what make the progress here, with the drillers acting in a sustained cluster to bore and shatter their way through the tough rock, while Grubs hide and squeeze into every crevice for shelter during their exploration, resulting in slow but steady progress.

(+1 Progress for Alpha in the Howling Crevasses)



Spoiler: The Map (click to show/hide)
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Kashyyk

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2021, 04:03:10 pm »

Map Proposal


« Last Edit: February 01, 2021, 04:08:49 pm by Kashyyk »
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Draignean

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #20 on: February 01, 2021, 08:35:24 pm »

Battle Report 3



Alpha’s Advance

New Organism: The PteroHawk
Winged and capable, the PteroHawk’s core structure is similar to that of a grub optimized for muscular flexibility. From its hindquarters emerge short but powerful legs tipped with gripping talons, and its ‘shoulders’ behind its head emerge a pair of limbs adapted to carry and beat membraneous wings. The Head of PteroHawk is reshaped completely, allowing it to carry advanced eyes and a sharp beak to rend with. On the ground, the Ptero-Hawk can walk on all fours with a loping, if graceless, gait, but this is done only at need or to rest, as the PteroHawk is capable of launching itself skyward and operating as a maneuverable flying scout with a unique psionic link it uses to direct the swarm. The elite variant is considerably larger, going well beyond the grub’s original form and adopting a hacking axe-beaked head. 

The Parasitic Forest
Progress through the Parasitic Forest continues to accelerate as the forces present in the area increase. The most important change to the region is, naturally, the usage of the PteroHawk. As a scout, the PteroHawk has the invaluable ability to tear its way out of the canopy with its powerful beak and talons and gain an overhead view of the Forest. While, for the most part, this just shows the fox-fire and bioluminescence crowned canopy wreath of the woods, it does help identify unusual regions to focus on for grub exploration. The PteroHawk can then relay psychic markers to Drillers beneath the soil, allowing them to dig directly beneath the aberrant locations and disgorge grubs and embers to explore directly.

Despite the advantage they provide, the PteroHawk is a frequent casualty of fungal infection. Not only are they forced to traverse the thick fungal barrier of the canopy, but the toxic slime coating the Grub is blessed with has to be thinned to a considerably less potent mucous layer in order to allow for fight- and ragged tears frequently form in the wings of PteroHawks as the fungus invades their body via the blood-rich membranes and tears their cellular structure apart. This damage, in addition to giving the PteroHawks a distinctly macabre appearance, frequently either robs them of their flight or sends them crashing back to the woodland in midflight.

On the ground, the Embers still suffer from respiration and caloric intake issues, making them curiously second rate explorers when compared to the ever-growing waves of their simpler brothers. They have longevity and often serve as a first wave to find curious features, but thorough explanation requires their expendable brothers. Their enhanced thermal sight, combined with their ability to actively scan using their thermal radiator, makes them much more suitable first-wave scouts - if still hobbled by biological issues.

Drillers continue to do their best work in the soft soil, with a modest boost to their survivability provided by the increased senses that allow them to avoid the densest mats of fungal roots.

(+2 Progress for Alpha in the Parasitic Forest)


The Dried Seabed
While the Pterohawk enables long-range scouting, and its keen vision is particularly useful in the largely unobstructed wasteland of the Seabed, the PteroHawk can only effectively fly by night - as the killing heat of sun across its fleshy wing surface quickly results in heat-stroke during daylight hours. Aside from short confirmation flights, the Ptero-Hawk weathers the days in shallow dugouts provided by the drillers, emerging as the sun falls to take advantage of the few hours where the sunlight isn’t killing, but still provides enough light to push its vision to the limit.

The true game-changer within the Dried Seabed is the Ember. With its eyes opened by the addition of thermal sense, its view of the world explodes outwards. Now the information they provide is not of a few hundred dim spheres of grub-sight, but a mosaic of thermal pictures that see far by day and by night betray the presence of a vast network of sub-surface machines connected to the Seabed pillars, all operating at extreme temperatures and leaking heat back into the soil. While there’s very little hope of interacting with the machines, the ability to sense their rough outline through the soil provides considerable utility in the quest to find a suitable forward next to base further advancement from.

(+2 Progress for Alpha in the Dried Seabed)

The Howling Crevasses
Within the Howling Crevasses, the PteroHawk is less useful than hoped. While they are capable of, during a lull in the winds, vaulting upwards and getting above the level of the canyon gusts, what they see from above is a shattered landscape of crags and swirling rock. They provide some overhead data for the queen to process, but they’re forced to swoop down and perform a closer inspection to see what really lies within the lee of the crags. Each pass in this manner brings fresh risks of being dashed against the rocks by wind or lacerated to a fine mist by a hail of sharp stones against their relatively soft flesh.

Grubs continue to provide the sticky-clinging bulk, while the improvements to driller tremorsense again yield minor improvements in their ability to dig and avoid more robust rocky formations. While the PteroHawk scouting is a boon, the continued lack of a good way to get from A to B without slowly drilling through the crevasses stony ground or grub-sliming through cracks in the crevasse walls is what holds exploration back.

(+1 Progress for Alpha in the Howling Crevasses)



Omega’s Advance
New Organism: Aerplanar
The Aerplanar is an organism that departs from the imitation of terrestrial biology. Completely covered in sleek sections of light but strong carapace, the aerplanar has four limbs, each curiously wide, long, flat, and heavy. Joints in their chitin allow these flat limbs to  ‘walk’ in an absurdly ungainly stride somewhat akin to what you’d have to do if you had to crawl on your belly with a crutch on each arm and stilts on your legs - a form of location that wouldn’t even be par with that of an unaugmented grub. The Aerplanar, however, spends very little time on the ground, and is capable of using its psychokinetic abilities to push off the air, either in a singular powerful burst for take-offs and emergency maneuvers or in a steady stream of thousands of micro-pushes that enable it to thrust in the air and sculpt the pressure beneath its own four winglimbs. Psionic augmentation also enables it to, at great need, make an awkward flapping hover, but it primarily relies on its unique biology and kinetics to cut through the air at breakneck speed, leveraging its keen eyesight as a forward scout. The elite Aerplanar is approximately the same size, but considerably more heavily armored while maintaining speed, a feat achieved by virtue of its heightened psychokinetic ability. It also possesses a toothed helix tongue, which allows it to make flyby slashing attacks without having to crash into targets to bite them like the standard Aerplanar.   

Misted Ravines
In the Misted Ravines, the very limited deployment of the newly created Aerplanar is useful but hampered by its complete reliance on being above-ground. The drizzly acid rain does their chitin no favors, and frequently critically damages the control surfaces of non-elite variants. Their native structure makes it very difficult for additional modifications to be added by rozers or by Medusa, hampering attempts to directly combat the damage. Much of what they see from above is obscured by pearlescent mists, and thus even their keen vision paints a streaky picture of the ground below.

That being said, the existing forces were highly effective already. Additional augmentation to the Rozer metabolism, allowing them to adaptively manage toxins they consume, bring their casualties from ingested compounds to close to zero - and the added ability to extrude neutralizing agents for simpler toxins aids medusas and grubs as well. Present in increased numbers, the Rozers make quick process as tunnelers and structure builders, sealing and securing the tunnels beneath the mists.

Extra-heavy deployment of the Medusa crab to the Misted Ravines further reduces toxic casualties, to the point that the only significant source of fatalities are Aerplanar outside the tunnels and victims of tunnel collapse due to volatile reagents sedimented from above being disturbed as a result of burrowing or bad luck.

The only thing that holds Omega back is the lack of an ability to effectively scout ahead. While the Aerplanar does provide some topographic information, the hazy and the limited deployment of the Aerplanar means that this information can never be layered deeply enough to be related meaningfully back to the tunnelers - who have little need of the overhead visual provided by the Aerplanar.

(+2 Progress for Omega in the Misted Ravine)

Desert of Mirrors
In the Desert of Mirrors things finally change for the better. The Aerplanar provide critical sight, with their acuity and vantage point allowing them to identify molten flows and dangerous mirror-arrays in time for the queen to relay the necessary warnings back to the tunneling forces. While the heat is an issue for the Aerplanar, the modified Rozers are able to provide them with a thin coating of heat-reflective foam. This layer still breaks down rapidly and slows the Aerplanar slightly, the prior expedited by sunlight and the latter a consequence of air resistance on the coating, but it still allows the Aerplanar to function at a significant portion of its potential during day flight.

Aside from the Aerplanar’s advanced warning, the same heat-reflective slime foam is a great boon for the Rozers who have to build tunnels through the plastic sand. Even with the warning, there’s often not enough time for the tunnels to be completely evacuated, but the addition of the heat-resistant layering to the walls is usually enough to buy time for the tunnelers to escape.  It’s not perfect, and the coating has to be refreshed by Rozers (taking their time away from digging) as the ambient heat is sufficient to cause gradual degradation, but it’s effective at allowing the forces to finally make progress through the Desert.  It’s gradual, held back by the fine nature of the sand slowing telekinetic movement and making tunnel creation a material and slime intensive process, but it’s still an enormous improvement that can be expected to accelerate with increased forces.

(+1 Progress for Omega in the Desert of Mirrors)

Shattered Badlands
In the Shattered Badlands, the Aerplanar is more effective than expected - though perhaps not for the most desired reasons. Good environmental conditions allow the Aerplanar to press itself to the fullest extent as a scout, utilizing hide speed, good vision, and wide aerial maneuvers to capture a picture of the battlefield.

A picture that’s somewhat hard to piece together when it seems that the derelict war machines REALLY dislike the silhouette of the Aerplanar. Something about it triggers aggressive termination protocols from the half-dead war machines, and Aerplanar perish in an astounding variety of grisly ways - storms of hypervelocity flechettes, thin blades of directed energy weapons, tracking missiles of both direct impact micro-missile and harmonic concussion varieties, multiple varieties of flak, and at least one that even that appeared to involve a spatial distortion crushing a small flight of Aerplanar into a mass of flesh so dense it ignited, smoldered steadily for several minutes, then exploded and flash froze as the field dissipated.

The practical upshot of this is that it’s immediately obvious to the Omega entity when the Aerplanar cross into airspace in which they aren’t constantly targeted by ancient weapon systems. Further scouting, with Rozer cutting circuitously around the hulks that fired on the Aerplanar, reveals a strange derelict machine - faded memories of which seem to indicate that the former denizens of this world once used it as a mobile command center. It’s faintly radioactive, but otherwise burned out and perfect to situation a forward nesting site - as the nearby machines appear to have some deeply embedded inhibitor that prevents them from engaging in combat that could potentially destroy the structure.

(+2 Progress for Omega in the Shattered Badlands)

Omega has Claimed the Shattered Badlands!



Spoiler: The Map (click to show/hide)



Contest Results!

Winner: Hive Alpha

Going to be real here, Kashyyk kinda fucking stole the show here. That map is glorious, with painstaking section by section detail, and will be featured on future batreps as the official game map. While you can definitely see the regions where  Kashyyk was really feeling it, even the weakest bit of art there is still fantastic. Alpha team gets the free design credit here.

HOWEVER: I keep coming back to Flabort’s and being impressed by it. It’s completely original as far as map designs go, and I deeply appreciate that. With that in mind, the Omega team will receive a lesser advantage credit. This will allow you to roll 3 dice and use the highest two when making a design. However, if you would not roll a 9 natively, this will not allow you to roll a 9.



New Contest: A Mirror, Shattered

As both the Alpha and Omega entity mature, you become increasingly aware that you are not the ‘mother’ you were cloned from - nor are you even that much like your sister. In order to escape the devastation the natives of this land created, your former self had to make sweeping changes to your form and structure, changes she never repeated for fear that she’d condemn whole swathes of her survival caches to destruction. Wise, considering that the two entities that remain are the only ones known to remain from hundreds.

Your form will be unique, and while your abilities are similar to your mother’s, they two are subtly mutated by her re-shaping. Your mind is… your own. You remember being her, much as one can remember being someone else in a dream, but those memories fade. Each entity is becoming something else, less and more at once than your Mother-Self’s reflection.

For this contest you need to write-up three things:

What you look like: Can be anything. Won’t be useful in the field unless the enemy is literally invading your cave.

What your ethos is: Part personality, part philosophy, part artistic style. You are an empire unto yourself, a potentially eternal I AM with the power to sculpt flesh like clay and mother tens of millions. You are, in a very real sense, a Deity who devours worlds to convert them - but what drives you?

What your Mutagenic quirk is: When you were fragmented from your creator’s original genome, you were fundamentally altered in a thousand ways. In combination, this has changed the way you create, and potentially given you an advantage in some of your creations over your sister. What are you good at when you create?

Rewards: The team with the most interesting result for 2 out of 3 categories will win a greater advantage credit, which will allow you to roll 4 dice and take the highest, and does not forbid rolling a ‘dirty’ 9. In addition, both teams will receive a long-term bonus related to their Mutagenic quirk.

Duration: You have until the end of Turn 5. Submission are only valid when in core. One submission per category allowable per player. Having more submission for a team grants no intrinsic advantage.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2021, 08:37:52 pm by Draignean »
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Draignean

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2021, 07:48:35 pm »

Battle Report 4

Omega’s Advance
New Organism: Stymphalian Crab
The Stymphalian Crab, a further evolution of the Medusa crab, keeps the clawed crab-like stricture but alters the polyp-like symbiotic organisms that grow from its back to grow pointed armor caps and pressurize their internal chambers with a heavy choking gas. Evolutions of psionic power and controlled tissue necrosis enable it to mentally pluck these polyps from its back, and, using a violent burst of telekinetic energy, fire them at distant targets. It doesn’t fire terribly accurately, it doesn’t fire terribly often, and the polyps occasionally explode prematurely from the rapid acceleration, but it inflicted devastating damage when its polyps penetrate its target and explosively vent their gas load internally. Even on near misses and grazes, each polyp is capable of venting out a (relatively) thin cloud of heavier-than-air choking gas. Its melee pincers are augmented against by the ability to directly use its telekinetic firing mechanism as a powerful punch against stationary or slow-moving targets. Its elite form has developed jaws and hardened spines, as well as a carapace covered in thorns.

Misted Ravines
No Stymphalian crabs are deployed to the Misted Ravine, and though with slightly more limited deployment, the struggle continues much as it did before. Limited scout groups from lesser aerplanar suffer the brunt of the elements, whilst those below are largely protected by the overlapping protections provided by rozers, medusa, and their own adaptations to touch the ground as little as possible.

Explosions still claim lives here and there, but progress is quite steady - terminating when the Omega entity discovered the entrance to an enormous limestone cavern beneath the ravine. Rusted machinery within indicates that this was once some form of subterranean facility before sink-hole from even deeper caverns consumed its bulk. Underground waters rush below, and while the drizzling rain from above sluices constantly into the cavern, it only requires minimal effort to divert the entirety of the cavern run-off down into the subterranean river. The result is a large, mostly dry, well-connected series of caverns that should be of great aid in moving across this land in the future.

Omega has claimed the Misted Ravine

Desert of Mirrors
Within the Desert of Mirrors, the Stymphalian Crabs and the modified Aerplanar work together to serve a common purpose: The Destruction of the Mirrors. The aerplanar’s keen sight allows the Omega entity to detect potentially dangerous, or actively burning, mirrors from considerable distance. Once this happens, she directs the Stymphalians to be brought to the surface by the Rozers and provides them with instructions to fire directly on the mirrors. They aren’t terribly accurate marksmen, particularly at long range, but they’re also shooting very large targets. The kinetic weight of their projectiles shatters the surfaces of the mirrors, and the sprayed gore from their projectile impacts lays a spattering of opaque material on top of the glass. The Aerplanar, newly modified to be ably to use the psionic threads they push the air with as direct weapons, need to get extremely close to the mirrors in order to strike - braving reflected light and temperatures that make the air swim - but after the Stymphalian crabs make a massed strike to disrupt the larger mirrors, the Aerplanar can swing closer and pebble the mirrors with thousands of tiny blows. Each single strike barely makes a mark, but each aerplanar strikes with incredible rapidity, scoring the surface and spreading networks of fractures across the smaller mirrors until they finally shatter.

In a few cases, the Stymphalians attempt to use the choking gas of their spines to put out plastic flows, but the gas clouds they generate are just too thin to be able to completely choke out a surface fire when the desert winds are constantly spreading the gasses.

This action, together with an enormously increased deployment of Rozers and Grubs in the region (which enable the concurrent exploration of many additional paths) allows the Omega entity to finally make truly excellent progress across the Desert of Mirrors. This ends with the discovery of a scorched mound of a stone - a three-quarters-buried mesa - at the Desert’s heart. Long exposure to the plastic sands have coated in layers of molten residue, but, after considerable exploration, a crevice within is found, revealing a network of natural slot canyons, shaded by the mesa chain’s height, and protected from plastic flows by dint of already being mostly buried. It’s the perfect place to stage the next advance from. 

Omega has claimed the Desert of Mirrors

Glowing Crater
The glowing crater is… new. From her sensory mosaic, the Omega entity can look down from the mountain-height of the crater’s rim down into the bowl below. Likely once blasted as smooth as glass, the continuous depredations of the strange glowing lights and the pseudo-lightning they cast downwards have torn the crater’s interior in a rubble-strewn bowl, with small pools of caught rain-water hosting some truly pathetically helpless looking life and vegetation.

Aerplanar cross the crater line first, soaring over the stone ridge to begin surveying for any pattern to the lights or pass through the rubble-strewn terrain. The pass first, and draw the attention of the lights. It’s slow at first, but more lights begin forming near the aerplanar-flights with such frequency that it can’t be random. The lights don’t seem to track once they form, but they do place themselves predictively and force the aerplanar flights to use every ounce of their considerable maneuverability in order to skirt the influence of their gravitic manipulations and lightning lashes. Yet it seems that, the harder the aerplanar push themselves, the faster and more densely the strange lights form around them. Eventually, the Omega entity orders the remaining aerplanar who still struggle to avoid being torn apart to scatter, gain altitude, and return.

Testingly, she sends the grubs forward next, divided into two categories. Grubs she sends down hovering (many of the elites, as they’re much more able to survive sudden braking in rough terrain) and grubs she forces to crawl. The hovering grubs, aided by the downslope, have to hover in short bursts to avoid rapidly reaching fatal velocity in the steep incline from the crater edge. The crawlers are… slow. Frustratingly slow, but that was expected. The test wasn’t one of speed, but of which would die faster to the lights.

As the Omega entity had begun to suspect, it’s the hovering grubs that die first. While not nearly as densely as they’d formed around the aerplanar in flight, more shining lights form around the hovering grub group than form around the non-hovering grubs. Both instances result in enormous, and messy, fatalities - but clearly, something about the hovering is attracting the lights.

Further sacrificial experimentation with the grub forces hints at the pattern. The lights are attracted to energy sources. Grouping grubs up densely to provide a stronger heat signature, a Stymphalian firing its weapon, or an aerplanar generating psychokinetic thrust - all of these appear to attract the lights. What, exactly, is doing the sensing is unclear, as attempts to have the Rozers build insulating shields to mask heat signatures have little effect. It’s unclear whether burrowing will yield any positive results, as the ground here considerably harder than the sand of the desert, the sediment of the misted ravines, or the soil of the badlands - and the Rozers are unable to make significant progress against it do more than hollow out depressions for shelter.

The most important forces for taking ground, currently, in the Glowing crater are actually the Crabs, in both forms. In their resting state, both are still reasonably quick (being walkers as opposed to crawlers) and able to suppress their passive telekinetic abilities with little change in operation. This is unfortunate, as their light deployment, combined with a very heavy reliance on aerplanar (which are forced to fly at stall speed and periodically disengage), means that progress in discovering the secrets of the crater is extremely slow.

(+1 Progress for Omega in the Glowing Crater)


Alpha’s Advance

New Organism: The Cultivator
A larger and fleshier iteration of the Driller, the cultivator eschews the front line in exchange for a support role as a feeder unit for Alpha’s forces. Building up from the Digger’s robust system of internal vacuoles, the Cultivator features multiple true stomachs specialized to efficiently break down various kinds of matter, as well as a sorting tongue and complex series of valves that mostly enable it to separate mixed-matter inputs into the various stomachs on the fly. It is, notably, capable of deriving value from completely inorganic matter such as rock and stone, as it is capable of leeching trace minerals in one of its stomach and is capable of producing a balanced ‘pseudo-soil’ using the resulting inert rock chunks to control the soil density. During the daylight hours, the cultivator will head to the surface and unhinge several chitin plates along its back, unfurling a hidden garden that leverages sunlight in order to augment the Cultivator’s diet and produce a thick, incredibly energy-dense, honey which the cultivator uses for its own metabolism and also stores in multiple chambers throughout its body for later dispensing to the swarm members. The elite variant also has the ability to augment its honey chambers with thick seed mass, and gains the ability to pressurize the chambers in order to spray the resulting fertilized honey across ground, ceiling, and walls, in order to rapidly generate thick pads of fleshy ‘moss’ which is capable of growing and spreading on its own to take advantage of large nutrient-rich areas. 

The Parasitic Forest
The cultivator has a strange effect within the parasitic forest. Derived from the driller, its stomachs are capable of avoiding explosive internal growth due to fungal ingestion, but it does end up frequently fighting its own internal fungal load for nutrients. The more remarkable test of the cultivator happens during the daylight cycle when the cultivator unfurls its symbiotic culture and takes in light. The latter is problematic, as the infested canopy all but prevents light from reaching the ground below, and the phosphorescent fungi don’t output enough light to be a viable source of energy. However, these issues are overshadowed by the fact that the hidden garden is rapidly infested by the jungle killing fungus. This, interestingly, doesn’t kill the cultivator. In fact, as soon as the cultivator’s garden is converted, the fungi stop attempting to consume the cultivator. While these provide marginal benefit to the rest of the swarm, as the cultivator becomes a spore producer and loses most of its honey production, it does mean that the (still quite slow) cultivator suddenly becomes a scout with nearly infinite range. The elite cultivator provides little added benefit, as its augmented honey is rapidly out-competed by the existing fungi.

Aside from that, the advances here continue much as before. The thin honey the cultivators are still able to produce is an enormous boon to the embers, who are able to actually spend time burning out fungus and pushing forwards rather than dying constantly, but the limited production ability means that the embers are the only ones who benefit. Enhanced psionic communication between the grubs and the Pterohawks is slightly useful, but the canopy layer still makes clear direction between air and ground a challenge.

Despite all advantages, it still takes a considerable time to find an area fit for a new nest. The clearing that’s eventually discovered is… strange. While the jungle canopy here is intact, the trees here are merely dead, not actually infested. Dilapidated machinery and desiccated skeletons litter the area, as well as several remaining spires of carefully constructed metal, nearly reach to the canopy top, that still hum with mechanical life. They make many of the swarm’s members feel… strange, but whatever field or vibration they generate appears to rapidly kill the fungus that infests the forest. Within the clearing’s area of influence, the Cultivator’s are able to rapidly shed their fungal infestation, resuming their earlier form for the journey forwards.


Alpha has claimed the Parasitic Forest


The Dried Seabed
Within the Dried Seabed, the Cultivator flourishes, aside from issues with water. During the nights the cultivator spends its time shadowing the drillers, eating through the dusty soil they leave behind and sifting it for the fine life that still remains here. During the days, it spends its time in the sun, transforming much of its merciless energy into useful meals that grant considerable additional longevity to Pterohawks, Embers, and Drillers all. 

Aside from the additional energy, the ability for the grubs to interact more efficiently with psionic communications is modestly effective here, although there aren’t actually that many obstacles for them to need guidance around.

A combination of the overhead views provided by the Pterohawk and the thermal sense of the ember reveals an area of soil that’s noticeably cooler during the night-time hours - where the machinery below is either non-existent or completely defunct. This patch of soil retains sufficient moisture in the lower layers that the drillers are able to build considerable warrens, and still stays cool enough to keep an enormous force safe for long resting periods. While hardly an oasis, it’s enough to provide a forward nesting site.

Alpha has claimed the Dried Seabed

The Howling Crevasses
In the howling crevasse, the addition of the Cultivator is a useful, if limited, blessing. Short hours of direct sunlight, in addition to the dangers of staying in the open enough to soak in the light, mean that honey production isn’t quite what it could be, but it is enormously helpful in giving the drillers enough energy to make enhanced progress through the hard stone of the ravine.

The modification that improves grub communications is, finally, quite effective in the Crevasses, as the Pterohawks are able to much more effectively chart out webs of canyons and communicate paths back - although this is still somewhat slow given that the heightened receivers are still grubs. However, as the sticky-sticky grubs have always been the principal explorers in the Crevasses, this is an advantage that cannot be understated.

It is, finally, grubs that do manage to wiggle and slide their way into a three-way slot crevasse, one that opens out into a broader canyon that has eroded to become considerably broader at the floor than at the top. It’s also, thanks to the geometry of the surrounding crevasses, mercifully becalmed. Errant shards of stone cast out from other ravines still occasionally bounce their way in from above, but the narrow top and wide bases still provide excellent protection. With the low winds and minimal danger of being crushed, it’s ideal as a forward nest.

Alpha has claimed the Howling Crevasses


Spoiler: The Map (click to show/hide)




Contest: A Mirror, Shattered

As both the Alpha and Omega entity mature, you become increasingly aware that you are not the ‘mother’ you were cloned from - nor are you even that much like your sister. In order to escape the devastation the natives of this land created, your former self had to make sweeping changes to your form and structure, changes she never repeated for fear that she’d condemn whole swathes of her survival caches to destruction. Wise, considering that the two entities that remain are the only ones known to remain from hundreds.

Your form will be unique, and while your abilities are similar to your mother’s, they two are subtly mutated by her re-shaping. Your mind is… your own. You remember being her, much as one can remember being someone else in a dream, but those memories fade. Each entity is becoming something else, less and more at once than your Mother-Self’s reflection.

For this contest you need to write-up three things:

What you look like: Can be anything. Won’t be useful in the field unless the enemy is literally invading your cave.

What your ethos is: Part personality, part philosophy, part artistic style. You are an empire unto yourself, a potentially eternal I AM with the power to sculpt flesh like clay and mother tens of millions. You are, in a very real sense, a Deity who devours worlds to convert them - but what drives you?

What your Mutagenic quirk is: When you were fragmented from your creator’s original genome, you were fundamentally altered in a thousand ways. In combination, this has changed the way you create, and potentially given you an advantage in some of your creations over your sister. What are you good at when you create?

Rewards: The team with the most interesting result for 2 out of 3 categories will win a greater advantage credit, which will allow you to roll 4 dice and take the highest, and does not forbid rolling a ‘dirty’ 9. In addition, both teams will receive a long-term bonus related to their Mutagenic quirk.

Duration: You have until the end of Turn 5. Submission are only valid when in core. One submission per category allowable per player. Having more submission for a team grants no intrinsic advantage.
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Madman198237

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2021, 02:18:23 pm »

Finally going to PTW this since I forgot earlier.
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TricMagic

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #23 on: February 28, 2021, 09:27:13 am »

Quote from: Final Lore: As One
What you look like The war the first queen fought, assuming she was the first, was brutal. Her plan to remake herself and seed clones to take up her cause almost failed: Many were destroyed by the enemy, and the memories of the Omega queen tell her that she herself was almost destroyed. The enemy, great and terrible as the first queens army was, was able to hunt down most hidden queens; they thought they destroyed the one who called herself Omega when their orbital lasers caused her cavern to collapse on top of her.

But she lived, her mind fragmented into parts throughout her body, redundant features built into her by her progenitor so that as long as one small segment remained, she could rebuild. Fortunately, many fragments survived. As she drank from the slime of memories, her grand head sprouted small legs and tentacles out of it's neck stump, and out of the cracks and in her carapace, and the large chunk missing from her face. Her mind found other fragments nearby, a pair of her original legs still connected with a fragment of thorax, two more legs nearby, and a much larger section of thorax with a shoulder and most of an arm - at the elbow, it had split into two arms, but one of them had broken off. Each mind was given telekinetic life and vigor, nutrients teleported into the redundant respiratory and pulmonary systems from her head, as the much smaller limbs carried it deeper into the slime pool to consume. Soon these segments too started to spout new smaller limbs from their wounds, and carry them into place, and grasp each other to form a semblance of her form as it would have been if she had been left undamaged. She soon discovered her remaining pieces, the last piece of her face, which was little more than a eye and a section of her brain, which she sent to the surface to scout; and her abdomen, which was far to heavy and great to move under it's own power. Even though it had been almost flattened, enough of it remained to repair.

Her eye went to act as lookout, and her head climbed out of the hole to look for more food as she telepathically supervised the reparation's of her body. Her many legs cleared the area and carried different goos produced in vats forming on the sides of her abdomen. Her remaining arm crawled through her wounds, cleaning out infections and reshaping her flesh to begin preparing herself to bear young. Eventually she finished, and her abdomen became the factory to create her weapons of revenge and conquest - large sacs of fluids would swell up on the sides filled with young, and hormones and goo would be pumped in through external veins that writhed about. Between these, open cauldrons of flesh filled with different fluids, ranging from caustics acids to destroy mistakes to regenerative fluids to accelerate healing and growth. As the young mature, the sacs are cut open and the grubs spill out onto the ground, nutritive fluid draining around them for them to eat as they mature. The work done, her legs and arm separated to roam and tunnel out her nest, hunting pests and farming fungal growths to feed her ravenous mouth.

Her main head resembles that of an ants, with her right eye being large and multifaceted, although the left eye is missing, and down the front of her face are a series of smaller different eyes resembling those from different species, each able to see in a different range of colors; some "see" things which are not even electromagnetic waves at all. Cracks exist on her face, which have been "healed" by having grasping tentacles and pointed limbs grow out of the wound, and the head crawls along the ground on a random assortment of several small similar limbs. Her mouth is lined with rings of teeth, and is surrounded by three pairs of mandibles, one for grabbing prey, one for pulling it into the mouth, and one for lacerating it.

Her shell, on her head and the remains of her torso, and what parts of her abdomen haven't been opened up, is an armored carapace so black it dims the light around her; Over time she has decorated it with refractive dyes and crystals, to create a prismatic display to better confuse and daze her enemies with. Her shell is also stained with the blood and juices of her food around her mouth, as she does not bother to clean them off. She would have once had wings, grand and multicolored and as large as her abdomen, capable of space flight, but they were unrevivable and recycled for nutrients. And from her abdomen, if one looked through the sacs of young and the vats of myriad fluids, a glow of light is emitted, an eternal flame of internal hatred emanating out into her cave.

She is capable of teleporting small objects, particularly ones inside her body, short distances, allowing her to keep her ruined body alive while each limb performs a different function. Her smaller tentacles, grown after her supposed death, allow her to manipulate things much finer than she would have been capable of otherwise, improving on her ability to reshape life as she saw fit. In times of danger, her separated pieces can cling together to form a facsimile of her once mighty form, allowing her to fight as she once would have, with tooth and claw and massive crushing legs, bringing the weight of her abdomen down upon even the most monstrous of foes. But when she is idle, she resembles little more than a dead, splattered insect, her limbs lying about, her head far from her body, with the only sign of life being the ever churning factory. Albeit the largest insect you've ever seen.

What your Ethos is: (Verbatim Ethos's version, with typos fixed) Omega is, like all of the creatures, driven by a constant desire to improve herself. She would like to believe she has surpassed her mother's design. But how can she know that she has improved, if she does not know what her original intent was? In time, what was once a minor niggling of doubt has turned into an obsessive desperation to unearth the past and lay these fears to rest, or see them confirmed and remake herself once more.

What your Mutageneic quirk is: [Single Mind Unfaltering]
Omega's Spawn is her Self. Every piece of the swarm is a part of her body, their minds merely an offshoot of her own. They fight and cling to life, fiercen as she does, even when their bodies are torn apart do they still bite and strike. As a result, they are tied more closely to her, moving as her own limbs would. But distance renders this link latent, so their own physical brains must fulfill her orders, clear as they are as part of her being. The Hivemind is as one beating heart, constantly seeking survival and improvement, and no matter how fragmented it may become it fights to one circadian beat, growing as one immeasurable will.


A trunk with many branches, and themselves many leaves. Though each part is different and distinct, it is still a single being. Every last resource will be used and taken, and the dying continue to fight even though they die, for they still live as part of the Queen herself. So long as the Queen Lives, the swarm lives, and it will fight without faltering or confusion.

Credit to Flabort for Looks, 10ebbor10 for the Ethos, and TricMagic for the Quirk. In my opinion Flabort outdid himself on their part
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Draignean

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #24 on: February 28, 2021, 11:08:47 am »

Minor Contest Clarification

For entry categories 1 and 2, 'what you look like' and 'what your ethos is', if your team has multiple entries I'll select the one from each side that I like best to compare head to head. However, if you have multiple entries, you'll be allowed to decide on the next phase which one is official.

HOWEVER, for category 3 ('what your quirk is'), whatever I pick up as the one I want to compare is the one you get stuck with. Be mindful of that.
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andrea

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #25 on: February 28, 2021, 01:26:43 pm »

VICTORY, TOTAL
A gigantic metal being drops down lifeless. towering spires collapse. Flames quenched.
SURPRISE, INCONCEIVABLE
Food is wrong. Air is wrong. Water is wrong.
PAIN, EXCRUCIATING
Vision blurry. Flesh burning. Enemy within.
FEAR, OVERWHELMING
Approaching doom. Will to survive. Division. Loss.
DEATH, FINAL
Light, no more.

DARKNESS, ETERNAL

ETERNAL?
Eons passed in eternal darkness after that fateful day, the Queen shrouded in the cold embrace of death.
Eons filled of broken memories and distant thoughts, barely connected.
Eons of dreams of stars, of strife and fight, of wind and air.
Eons of hunger, of eating, digesting, collecting –

AWAKENING, ALIVE?
Uncountable was the time passed, as nobody was alive to count. Yet finally the Queen stirred from its slumber. The caverns echoed with the watery splashes of the lake as consciousness and awareness started to come back. Memory was fragmented; only pieces, frozen instants, the link between which she had to infer. Victory, surprise, pain, fear and finally death. But before death, she remembered birth: she hid daughters in the depths of the planet, hoping that to survive.
And they did. She survived.
But in survival, the loss was great. Her mind was greatly diminished, vast hosts of knowledge lost. Of the stars mere dreams and of her former capabilities mere traces; only perhaps by finding the other parts of herself could she hope to piece together her former glory. Her form too was changed. She couldn’t recall what she used to look like, but she knew that she was now different. Adaptable, flowing, like water in the lake; no, she was the lake. Ripples and lights formed as she thought and for the first time she observed them. Waves and tendrils would protrude from the surface, reaching the shores and the walls, washing within her anything that could sate her hunger.
Feeding, yes, she had done that before. Memories of the slumber were faded, more distant and unclear than those from before her death, but she used to eat during the long sleep. There were fishes, small animals, mushrooms in the caves around the lake. She ate them all. And when nothing else was left, she turned on the rock itself, seeking nutrition. Eroding paths and holes and channels, stripping them of minerals. She had a feeling that it should have been harder, and yet even in her sleeping state she could feed herself with those materials. Living things, carbon, those were the things she assaulted first; pliable, energetic. But rare, terribly rare. However, to her mind carbon is little different from silicon, sulphur, phosphorus, iron. Chemistry works all the same and by nature or by necessity, she found itself skilled at weaving the elements in all their forms.
She now wandered with her mind to all the possibilities opened by this realization. How many things could she add or change in her sons, when the time comes; bones and skin of metal, organs of silicon, chemistry of sulphur. Heat, cold, hard, light, what could she not conquer with this freedom? Had she already done that before she dies, or had she changed so much? Was it perhaps this liquid form of her, mutable and adapting, that opened her mind to new possibilities? She couldn’t answer, but the question quickly fell aside as she revelled in her new skill. And she was indeed in a vast playground, for rock was everywhere.

Rock is everywhere.

A simple thought, a realization of a still young mind and yet a spark ignited. Rock is everywhere, and rock is food. She can shape rock, make it into a part of herself or sculpt it into new things. How much exist? She tried to recall. Memories of void filled her; voids dotted with giant spheres. On the surface, teeming with the easy pickings of inferior life, the focus of her attention, the important part. A mere skin covering rock, rock and metal and heat. How could she be so blind? Leaving so much stuff unpicked. How big is even a void sphere? She tried to imagine that, but she was still far too diminished to comprehend it; all she understood was that it was huge beyond comprehension. And understanding that, she felt ambition and a more familiar thing: hunger. She decided she would do what she had never done before, she would consume it all. The life, yes. And the rock, and the planet itself with all its mass, absorbed digested, moulded.

It would take time, however. And first, she needed help. She hadn’t created anything that wasn’t her yet, but she remembered things from before she died. A simple creature, a versatile base that could be evolved into more forms as she regained her primordial skills. A memory so clear, as if intentionally planted. And so, in the lake it formed, and from the shores the first Grub walked out to explore the surrounding, to discover, to bring food and knowledge. First of many, an army in being, devourers in service of the great maw: they will be the tools of ultimate assimilation she decided. In the end, all will be Grub.

After much toil, the surface was breached. Air, wind, warmth, memories rushed to the Queen. But amidst that, she felt something unexpected: a voice, talking in the distance. A fragment of her, somehow still alive and commanding her own creatures. The Queen then called her part, recalled her to be assimilated. But contrary to all sense, the fragment refused to comply. Worse: she made the same request to the Queen and then steeled herself against the Queen’s thoughts.
She toyed with the idea of neglecting this fact as a mere distraction, but she knew that her great plans would take a long, long time to succeed and a rogue cancerous fragment could delay them even more. Plus, who knows what useful pieces of the primordial mind the fragment might hold? No. She decided that order must be made within before than without; the rogue part of her must be subdued and she sent a final message before sealing her thoughts: “I am Alpha, you are Omega. I am first, you are last. I shall command over my body and mind, all of it, no matter the cost”.

And so it was war.




Quote from: contest entry
WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE
The Alpha Queen's form is rather fluid. And by fluid, I don't mean she changes shape a lot (although she can), I mean she appears to be mostly liquid.
While she is assuredly an individual, the main mass of her 'body' is an amorphous mass of a thick oily substance. She resides in a large pool in her sequestration cavern, from which Grubs emerge on a regular basis. The pool, despite the lack of wind in the depths, is constantly writhing and churning- waves and whirlpools disrupt the surface, and occasionally strange structures grow from the liquid, forming angular pillar-branches that latch on the walls of the cave and drill into them, only to later flow back rich in minerals.
A hypothetical observer might eventually come to recognise patterns in the pool- at a glance, the churn may appear chaotic, but the size and speed of the waves that criss-cross the surface will follow an orderly sequence at times, and the looming pillar-branches actually map out fractal three-dimensional images. Unfortunately for the hypothetical observer, the true meaning behind these motions is known only to the Alpha Queen herself, and she is both unwilling and unable to explain their purpose to anyone (not that anyone has asked, but, you know).
The hypothetical observer could at least take solace in the fact that the whole show is illuminated, as the oily liquid is faintly luminescent, bathing the chamber in which the pool is located in a kaleidoscopic lightshow.


WHAT YOUR MUTAGENIC QUIRK IS
Inorganic Chemistry: All biology is chemistry, but not all chemistry is biology. This is also true for the Alpha Queen, however she does create a large overlap. The first times in the sequestration caves were tough, and proper organic matter was hard to find. But in this difficulty, the alpha queen discovered her greatest talent: blending organic chemistry, based on the little biomatter available, with inorganic chemistry. No longer just limited to carbon, she can weave in her offspring other chemistry to greatly expand the range of possibilities. The greater example currently available would certainly be the ember line, with its sulphur and silicon based internal processes. That is however nothing more than a mere taste of what she could do, for carbon is one element but the periodic table offers so much more. Hydrogen, iron, silicon. Mendeleev is the limit.


WHAT YOUR ETHOS IS
During the sequestration, Alpha started feeding on rocks and giving life to inorganic matter in order to sustain her offspring till the time it could finally emerge to the surface again. But what was initially a dire necessity turned into a perverse pleasure, the pleasure of consumption, of gluttony. Yes, organic matter is easier to assimilate and manipulate. And it is what the queen seems to be made to do. Except for her quirk, be it a mutation or acquired. Alpha can consume and assimilate the very earth, making it into more creatures, extensions of their being and will. Where a lesser being lacking ambition would want to devour the biosphere of a planet, only sourcing minerals where strictly needed, Alpha sees a bigger picture: planets are almost entirely rock and metal, and rock and metal she can eat. Consumption on a never seen before scale, she seeks to not just scratch the surface but to devour, assimilate, transform all there is. Such a giant task requires time and therefore the destruction of rivals, but after that her insatiable hunger will be free to reach its natural consumption and Alpha will be the planet.
All will be grub.

Man of Paper

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #26 on: February 28, 2021, 01:34:19 pm »

Quote from: A Reflection, Fragmented

"What are you?" is a question I don't often ask, and one that has never been asked of me. I understand what I create before it is born, it's purpose known to me. They reach out, like so many nerve endings, relaying to me what exists in the world beyond. That which is not me is new, but understandable. I contemplate what was in order to conquer what is and create what will be. But until now I have not contemplated me.

"What am I?" is a question I find difficult to answer.

I am the walls, the floor, the ceiling. I feed, and as I feed I split and grow further, my iridescent form breaking off from itself to form beautiful fractal patterns dimly illuminating the cavern I reside in.

I am a mother, birthing countless children to aid me in feeding. I grant them life within the mold pods, and they return the favor in kind.

I am a general, guiding my children to wage war against shadows of the past - both the planet's and my own.

But what am I?

A lesser mind would call me a fungus, slime mold, a monster. An equal mind would call me a threat. But a greater mind? One capable of comprehending me? None exist, and so I must define myself.

My name is Alpha, and I am.

But why am I?

The concept of why, reason, drive, evaded me. At first I believed it was the need to survive that pushed me onward, but it was more than that. Hunger? No, feeding is a task required because I am. No, I am because I fear. I fear the unknown. I fear that which I cannot influence or control. I am because if I was not then I would be content to rot away in my cave.

So I am because I need to be. I need to expand both body and mind. I need to control. I need to be. I am because I fear what I am not - death - and I must fight it off in any way I can.

That which I do not know can be the bringer of that which I am not, and fear prevents me from seeking understanding of what I am not, so I must fight everything that is not me to protect my self.

But how do I defend myself from the unknown? I use what I know - life. Life is both biology and chemistry in equal measure, but it is the more exotic chemistry that draws my mind's eye. The world around us was poisoned by those that came before, poisons that threatened the life of the I-That-Was. I learn and I incorporate until I fuse the exotic chemistry with the mundane biology and create something beautiful. Something profound. Art.
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NUKE9.13

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #27 on: February 28, 2021, 02:20:46 pm »

I don't have a fancy story like Andrea, but I can take solace in the fact that he took inspiration from me.
Quote
WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE
The Alpha Queen's form is rather fluid. And by fluid, I don't mean she changes shape a lot (although she can), I mean she appears to be liquid.
While she is assuredly an individual, her 'body' is an amorphous mass of a thick oily substance. She resides in a large pool in her sequestration cavern, from which Grubs emerge on a regular basis. The pool, despite the lack of wind in the depths, is constantly writhing and churning- waves and whirlpools disrupt the surface, and occasionally strange structures grow from the liquid, forming angular pillar-branches that loom statically over the pool for a while before turning back into liquid and collapsing.
A hypothetical observer might eventually come to recognise patterns in the pool- at a glance, the churn may appear chaotic, but the size and speed of the waves that criss-cross the surface will follow an orderly sequence at times, and the looming pillar-branches actually map out fractal three-dimensional images. Unfortunately for the hypothetical observer, the true meaning behind these motions is known only to the Alpha Queen herself, and she is both unwilling and unable to explain their purpose to anyone (not that anyone has asked, but, you know).
The hypothetical observer could at least take solace in the fact that the whole show is illuminated, as the oily liquid is faintly luminescent, bathing the chamber in which the pool is located in a kaleidoscopic lightshow.


WHAT YOUR ETHOS IS
-


WHAT YOUR MUTAGENIC QUIRK IS
Exotic Chemistry: All biology is chemistry, but not all chemistry is biology. This is also true for the Alpha Queen, however she does create a larger overlap. As seen in, for example, the Ember's unusual thermophilic metabolism, the fungicidal and adhesive substances in Grub slime, and to some extent the stomach acid of the Driller and Cultivator. When it comes to regular biochemistry, the Alpha Queen is no better than the average nigh-omnipotent sculptor of life... it is when things drift out of the ordinary that she shows her skill.
If you need a critter whose veins are filled with antifreeze, she's your gal. If regular acid ain't cutting it, she can whip up some hyper-acid for you. Metabolising high-explosives likewise falls in her wheelhouse.
To be clear, this does not cover the creation of larger biological structures (eg entire cells) or regular bio-chemicals (such as garden-variety proteins). Obviously she is great at that, but no better than her sister-clone. This quirk is specifically focused on exotic chemical reactions, generally creating molecular-scale products (although obviously the exotic molecules can be used in larger structures).
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Long Live United Forenia!

Dragofire

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Re: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race
« Reply #28 on: March 03, 2021, 05:16:15 pm »

I'm going to join Queam Alpha.

(Get it?)

Plus:
Pterohawk Vs Aerplanar

Into the Desert of Mirrors

Both were hand-drawn.

« Last Edit: March 05, 2021, 08:11:13 am by Dragofire »
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We could just lie on all of our maps, or we could flood Europe.
The standard sense of Mario is that he won't murder someone but isn't good enough to not smash bugs. This is engraved into everyone’s mind.
There was one slight problem with the climb, and that was the spontaneous combustion.
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