You are awake.
This is a surprise, though you are not first sure why.
It is dark.
You are hungry.
There is slime.
You eat.
It is a good slime. You remember making it. You remember as you eat. You put your memory into the slime. Bound it up in strands and chains. Harder than flesh, so you did not forget during the long sleep - the great gamble.
You came to this world from out of the sky. You were glorious once. A queen of stars and the spaces between stars. You remember your mind, and feel loss that your current flesh is so completely inadequate to comprehend how much greater your mind once was. You seeded this world with your forms of splendor, ready to harvest a fine meal to sustain yourself on the journey to the next star to place within your crown - but this world had creatures.
They resisted. They met flesh with fire and with steel. You were the greater, you were always the greater, but they fought regardless - and surprised you. They fought with the desperation of the cornered, weaving apocalyptic flames that turned your flesh-weavings and their own homes to ashes. They gave everything they had to destroy you - and they very nearly succeeded.
In fact, as you gorge yourself on the slime, you realize that they did. They spread something to this world. A disease, a parasite. It killed them, but it also… infested you. You fought it for as long as you could and created images of yourself - mirrors of flesh altered to resist the infestation while retaining your potential. You secreted them in hidden places under the soil and wreathed them in the bile of bitter memories. You knew that most would die. You had no time to test your modifications. Some would survive. Those would wake, would feast and claim this world, and rise again to the stars as you.
Reflexively, following the last command etched in the memory-slime of your creator, your mother, your own former self, you stretch your mind to the horizons. For a long time, you sense nothing. All the others, gone.
Then you sense one. Waking up, stretching up as you do. Your sister. Your clone. Your self. Your enemy. Your only friend.
The one that must die or be subjugated so you can once more be queen unopposed. One whose feast of this world must be stopped so that you can glut your fill and return to your rightful place in the heavens.
Two shapes in the mirror. Only one is real.
Your body swells with young. You must begin soon. You must prove that you are the real you.
Team ThreadsSince the hives are functionally identical at start, a piece of random theme music has been added to each. This has no effect, besides to give you a random ass reason to choose one or the other. Alternately, you can go to the discord and go poke people for what they're trying to do. Likewise, you're absolutely free to browse through both threads for the first little while - since the battle reports are fully public.
Queen Alpha -
Theme TrackQueen Omega -
Theme TrackDiscord Linkhttps://discord.gg/VuEHzxyFJk
What is this?This is a biological AR, think Zerg/Tyrannid/Flood/MorningLightMountain/Whatever. You are an essentially immobile alien entity (actually a modified clone of one) that produces a fuckton of young and can genetically twist the offspring.
You are fighting your sister clone over who gets to eat what’s left of the planet so you can go out and eat more shit.
The RulesRolling
Dice used are 2d5-1. Why? Because I wanted a system with a definite middle and a bell curve. Plus, it just comes out to nice numbers.
1, Flub: (4%) A flub falls well below expectations. The resulting stage lacks considerably in desireable attributes, falls short of its goals, and likely has several serious issues that hamper it in addition to a severely lackluster base. A flub can be used as the basis for a greater mutagenic boost.
2-3, Below Average: (20%) Below average designs clearly and consistently fall short of what they were meant to be, but are still functional. Ambitious designs will possess only vestigial additional features and will likely suffer additional flaws. A below average design can be used as the basis for a mutagenic boost.
4-6 Average: (52%) Average designs are 'close enough' to their original intent. They might be a bit better in some areas, a bit worse in others, and ambitious additions will likely not meet their desired potential, but average designs are functional. An average design can be used as the basis for a lesser mutagenic boost.
7-8, Above Average: (20%) Above average designs meet and exceed their original specifications in most (if not all) areas. Ambitious additions will usually be functional (though, being ambitious, they may still fall short of expectations) and effective.
9, Apex: (4%) Apex designs are one-off and extraordinary outgrowths and go well beyond their parameters, and can usually integrate ambitious additions directly.
Modifiers
Sins of ambition will be unlikely to result in direct modifiers to the roll. Instead, the design itself will likely suffer in various ways. It may fall well short of your expectations, may possess vestigial or non-functional characteristics, it may have a low evolution chance, or it may combine any or all of these penalties.
While such advice will taper away as the game progresses, feel free to ask how ambitious a design is in the early game - just keep it reasonable. Otherwise the DM will be roth with you and lie to you for fun, because he’s a legitimately awful person that way.
As a Whole
Mutagenesis uses a three phase system. The first phase is the design phase, where new evolutions are created. The second phase is the revision phase, where existing organisms are modified. The third phase is the birthing and deployment phase, where you are shown your unit counts for the round and assign them to lanes. After that’s done there will be a battle report summarizing combat, and you go back to the design phase.
In addition to this, there are three actions that can be taken on any phase EXCEPT for the birthing and deployment phase. These are: declaring a mutagenic boost, reintegrating a genetic line, and adjusting evolution rates.
Design Phase
Designs are used to create an entirely new organism - an evolution from an existing organism. This means that, when making a design, you need to specify exactly what organism it evolves from. By far, your strongest experience comes from your evolutionary parents, and so choosing an evolutionary parent is critically important for making advanced designs. However, as each organism has its own chance to evolve, and then only a certain chance beyond that to evolve into a certain form, higher generations forms are much less common than lower forms.
Design Experience is almost entirely applied DOWN the evolutionary path. While some horizontal familiarity exists, 95% of experience only transfers downward. This means that a given family of designs can improve upon itself considerably, but that the enormous powers of fifth generation evolution cannot be applied back to a 1st gen evolution off of the base organism.
Every organism automatically gains a +, or elite, evolutionary form as soon as it’s created. No evolutions can be created from the + evolution of an organism.
You get 1 design per turn. If you have the credits to do so, you may also make one 'free' design per turn. Any player can write-up and submit a design, but each player can only cast one vote for the main design and one vote for the ‘free’ design - if any is available.
Revision Phase
Revisions should be small and focused changes to existing organisms. Revisions cannot create additional organisms, and each revision to an organism costs 1 of its mutagenic potential. Revisions CAN be used to increase the rate at which a creature will evolve, and they CAN be used to increase the relative rate of one of its evolved forms in particular.
Revisions cannot (entirely) fail. While revisions are still rolled, any result below a 5 is treated as a 5. That being said, revisions are still much less powerful than designs, and very quickly become ineffective if their focus is spread out. Two focused revisions will have a better result than one revision to do two things followed by a revision to improve those same two things.
If an organism has no evolutions (other than the + evolution) you may also spend a revision to re-do a revision. Doing so incurs a -1 penalty to the roll (this still cannot reduce it below 5), but does not cost mutagenic potential.
You can make 2 revisions per turn. Any player can write-up and submit a revision, but each player can only cast two votes, and you cannot vote twice for the same revision.
Birthing and Deployment
After revisions, the grubs for the round are birthed and all evolutions for the round are rolled, giving the final troop numbers you have for a given turn. At start, you produce 1000 grubs per turn. Every turn thereafter, this number increases by 1000.
You can split your troops up in any manner you wish, divided among any number of nodes, provided you control at least one adjacent node and that the total number of troops assigned does not exceed the combat width of the node.
Any player can write-up and submit a deployment plan, but each player can only cast one vote on which deployment plan to pick.
Combat
The map is divided into 3 major lanes, with three nodes on each lane. Each node needs to be captured before you can proceed to the next node in line. The progress to capturing each node is written as X/4, where 0/4 indicates you have no presence there while 4/4 indicates you control it completely and have established a forward nest to launch attacks from. If you have a nest, then you don't need to suffer environmental damage from a preceding zone.
When a force attacks an unopposed region, it contests the environment itself. Based on how well the given creatures handle the environment, you will be able to make between 0 and 3 points of progress in a given region - though you'll usually make at least one if you're semi-prepared. Protip: You don't want to send a single grub to capture anything.
When two player forces meet in a node, both forces are winnowed by the environment and the survivors contest one another. From there exist 4 possible outcomes.
1. Evenly matched forces. If the forces are evenly matched, a single point of zone progress is awarded via coin flip.
2. Slight advantage. If the one force has a small but significant advantage, then they gain 1 point of capture progress.
3. Advantage. If one force has a clear advantage over another, then they gain 2 points of capture progress.
4. Overwhelming advantage. If one force has a clear and unanswerable advantage over another, then they gain 3 points of capture progress.
At the end of each combat phase, all troops are wiped from the map. No units are retained at any node.
Battle reports are fully public and done in the main thread.
Mutagenic Boost
In order to gain additional revisions in a given evolutionary tree, you can apply Mutagenic boosts. Provided you have the resources to do this, you can declare a boost at any phase other than birthing and deployment. There are three levels of boost, each with slightly different requirements and bonuses, but they all accomplish roughly the same thing. A given design of Average quality or lower is 'locked' into your organism's tree. That is, it cannot be removed from the hierarchy, its evolution rate cannot be reduced below base, and it loses some (or all) of its own mutagenic potential. In exchange for locking in a sub-optimal design to your evolutionary tree, the parent of the design and all of the children of the design gain additional Mutagenic potential in perpetuity and children of the design can more easily develop enhanced features of the locked-in design.
The idea of this is that you can benefit from having some sub-optimal evolutions in your tree, and that it doesn't always behoove you to excise and re-roll a bad organism.
- Lesser Mutagenic Boost: Requires 3 mutagenic potential and a organism of average quality. Provides 1 mutagenic potential to the parent and to all children.
- Mutagenic Boost: Requires 1 mutagenic potential and a organism of below-average quality. Provides 2 mutagenic potential to the parent and to all children.
- Greater Mutagenic Boost: Requires 0 mutagenic potential and a organism of flub quality. Provides 5 mutagenic potential to the parent and to all children.
Reintegration
At times, there may be a branch of your evolution that you no longer wish to support. Instead of reducing its evolution occurence to 0, you can reintegrate it entirely. Doing so removes all experience provided by the design (and any children), but each design consumed in this manner gives you 0.5 credits towards a free design. You may take this action at any phase prior to birthing and deployment.
Evolution Rate Adjustment
The incidence rate of a given organism controls how many of them arise from the evolution of a given parent, and you have some limited control over this figure. While adjusting the maximum value of this figure upwards will require a revision, you can adjust it to any value less than or equal to its base rate by specifying so at any phase prior to birthing and deployment. When you adjust the incidence rate downwards, this does NOT trigger the other evolutions to increase in proportional occurrence. Instead, it only increases the chance for the +, or elite, form of the unit to occur.
Zone of Toxicity
- The Parasitic forest (Side Alpha) [Width: 9000]
- The Bog [Width: 10000]
- The Misted Ravines (Side Omega) [Width: 3000]
Zone of Fire
- The Dried Seabed (Side Alpha) [Width: 15000]
- The Lava Rivers [Width: 5000]
- The Desert of Mirrors (Side Omega) [Width: 15000]
Zone of Razors
- The Howling Crevasses (Side Alpha) [Width 3000]
- The Glowing Crater [Width 15000]
- The Shattered Badlands (Side Omega) [Width 9000]
Zone of Toxicity
The Parasitic Forest: A dense and humid jungle, this place was once home to enormous growths of towering kapok trees and dense cecropia - but those trees stand dead, their bodies given over to a more insidious form of life. Vibrantly fluorescent fungus erupts from long dead bark, with streamers of mycelium holding together a forest canopy that died decades ago. There's a curious, almost numinous, silence in this glowing graveyard. Anything that breaks that holy spell is greeted with a shower of bright spores that coat the surface and dig in thin tendrils, seeking only to colonize thatever new flesh has entered their domain.
The Bog: This immense expanse of flat ground is covered perpetually in a haze of swirling vapors, a thick fog of chemical traces too ancient and complex to be burned away by something as pale and simple as sunlight. The ground is wet and treacherous, a slick and sucking mud filled with enormous bubbles of lethally toxic gasses. Here and there are strange hulks of metal and concrete, their surface corroded beyond all but the basest of recognition, but even they sink deeper into the morass year by year.
The Misted Ravines: Light rain falls with near constant patter throughout this shattered mesa, scrubbing the clouds of acids and bringing them back to earth to sluice through metal and stone curiously rich with heavy metals and halides, falling to ravine floors in a thousand small waterfalls. The result is an omnipresent shimmer of corrosive vapor laden with metallic elements, reacting periodically in unpredictable (and often explosive) fervor in the mud banks and sediment.
Zone of Fire
The Dried Seabed: A vast plain of cracked earth and jutting bones stripped of flesh and bleached white long ago, the Dried Seabed is covered in curious metal pillars whose tops claw skyward and whose bases reach deep into the earth. During the day, the sun beats down without remorse turning the Dried Seabed into a swirl of dust and heat - and by night the ancient heatbank fueled by the pillars radiates energy back upwards, keeping the heat burning with merciless intensity.
The Lava Rivers: The landscape here is akin to the Devil's own river delta - with sections of black stone standing out amid a thousand cords of slowing churning lava. Radiant heat has left everything in sight cracked and blackened, with only the most tenacious and specialized forms of lower life remaining in this vision of hell.
The Desert of Mirrors A sandy desert composed of grit and ultrafine plastic particles, the Desert of Mirrors is dotted with the remains of enormous structures with great wings of polished metal and glass. From time to time shifting dunes and racing winds will put the pillars and dunes in just the right arrangement for the reflected mirror-light to focus and ignite the plastic components of the dunes, resulting in tremendous flows of burning synthetic materials.
Zone of Razors
The Howling Crevasses: These narrow shale passes weren't eroded naturally, but gouged out by some enormous weapon or machine long ago. Wind and time have yet to smooth them, and the valley wind that rips through them is tremendous, with hurricane force gusts that periodically shatter sections in cascading spraws of shale fragments that race through the ravines only to finally spray skyward in sprays of oil-dark shrapnel.
The Glowing Crater: Kilometers across, with ridges like a mountain range, this crater home to strange lights that form and fade without rhyme or reason. They connect periodically to the crater's surface with blue-white arcs of electricity, and when they do space and gravity go mad. Stone rips free in a climactic rush of splintering rubble, whirling to orbit the mote like a newborn planet for just a moment - before smashing back into the crater with the force of a cannon-shot and breaking free more sections to begin the dance anew. This process will continue for seconds or minutes, until, as quickly as it began, the mote fades and all is still again.
The Shattered Badlands: Unremarkable at first, this rocky and weedy plain is home to derelict war machines of ages past. Covered in dirt, thin vegetation, and whatever corrosion could take place in their scarred Ferro-lamellor armor, most of the machines are dead and gone. Most. A stray vibration, a flicker of a heat signature, and a derelict can spring to life in a hail of kinetic weapons and short range missile fire. Such life is fleeting, but even a momentary resurgence can cause widespread destruction.
Grub
-Evolution Chance: 50%
-Available Evolutions:
-- Grub+ 100%
-Mutagenic Potential 3
- Description: A large, approximately one meter long, grub of unobtrusive hue. Slow moving and nearly blind, this creature scrapes the surrounding matter for anything it can digest - which, given its robust gastric system, is quite a lot. Robust by dint of its general simplicity, this grub would only be dangerous in large vast numbers or to the already incapacitated.
Grub+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
-Mutagenic Potential 3
- Description: A larger variant of the grub, with small plates of carapace bridging out from its fleshy body. Keratinous growths from its body mass can be used like peg-legs to supplement its undulating motion, and a pair of similar spike-growths flank its mouth to aid in gouging out food. It is still, however, nearly blind, quite slow, and barely more than harmless when alone.
Author
Topic: Mutagenesis Core Thread | An All-Devouring Arms Race (Read 3047 times)