Wizard's horrifying alien creation [Xenochimera application]

[DiscordWizardButNew]

Discord name: Wizard

Byond ckey: DiscordWizard

Job/Races you are applying for: Xenochimera

Name of the character you intend to be using (makes it easier for us to recognise and log): Jack Tillman

In the case of applying for a species, give us a brief summary of your character's backstory. Jack, or Special Biohazard Specimen 002-B as he was labelled at the time of his discovery, became its life like many other xenochimeras when a batch of cells contained in an asteroid managed to survive impact on a remote jungle planet, splashing down on a river and destroying the surrounding areas. The cells remained hibernating until water filled the crater once more alongside the life around it, eventually being able to latch into a slow and sickly fish that had parasites buried into its flesh. After consuming the fish, the batch of cells grew, choosing most traits from the parasites instead of the fish. It remained immobile, waiting for more food to appear, until a bigger fish decided to bite it, at which point the xenochimera strapped itself on his new hosts mouth and slowly began consuming it as it swam downstream into a group of fish of its same species. That’s when the xenochimera learned. It could hide in the prey, and the prey would seek their equals for safety, unknowingly bringing their doom. It kept feeding like this, growing and expanding, assimilating prey and predator alike until the river had no big enough specimens to hide in, at which point they latched to amphibian animals and moved to hide and feed on the bigger land creatures on the planet.

It was there, after having grown in size and hiding in one of the bigger game the planet had to offer that his host was brought down by gunfire. Confused and unsure what to do, he remained in it while two bipedal lifeforms he was not familiar with lifted up the prey while a third one watched the jungle. The new aliens brought him to a part of the jungle with a clear lack of trees with tents built around a fire, at which point they dropped the dead host and hid on the tents. He chose this moment to free himself, cutting out of the stomach he was residing in and scuttling towards those tents as an amalgamation of the various predators in the jungle. He waited, hungered, until night time as he watched from the shadows the bipedal creatures cut up his past host and consume it. When they finally retreated to their safe spots, he moved into one tent first, silently killing the host there and beginning to consume it. It was then that he felt a spark of something. A thought, a dart… a desire to know more. He leaved his prey dead and half-eaten to move to the next tent, silently dispatching the bipedal there like the last one and eating it aswell. The more he consumed and assimilated, the more he understood. The more he realized. The more he desired for more… It was until only the night guard remained that he took the decision to do what he did with all the animals in the planet: Latch, control, deceive and then feed on the unaware many. He jumped on the guard’s back, quickly overpowering him so he dropped the… yes, gun it was called. Then he carefully cut himself into it, making sure the new host wouldn’t bleed out or die, effectively lobotomizing him in the process. He rose with its body, move its hands, used its organs. He now understood the complexity, he understood what he did and what he took away from all these people. And he felt not a single regret. This was totally worth it.


Fast-forwarding in time, after many mysterious disappearances in a remote jungle planet outpost, Jack was eventually discovered when he and his host body went through a new kind medical check-up brought in by some off-world scientists. He did not expect so many red lights to beep at once, and even less the several guards popping into the room and aiming guns at him. He was forced to reveal himself, but when questioned he managed to avoid the details about how many people he ended up murdering. To these scientists, he was simply a new kind of parasitic lifeform that just killed the single person he was inhabiting. They offered him a choice, a place to work in exchange for being their ‘experiment’ and ‘test subject’ as they called him. He didn’t have any reason not to accept, since this was basically a promise of keeping him fed and happy in exchange for him learning how to become a profitable member of society. Even though he tried hard to adopt a comfortable and useful form, he opted to remain in a host he could control. He simply felt exposed, uncomfortable, in the need for a hideout when outside one. The scientists simply renamed him, allowed him to keep his current host body with the promise of un-sentient sleeves for when it deteriorates and sent him to work into a NT research station in a phoron-filled planet, but not after giving him a shock collar, a tracking implant and a lot of rules and teachings about how to act amongst others. And so, Jack Tillman, a seemingly normal human that is merely a Xenochimera with a suit, is working on the NSB Adephagia.

Summarize the species. As evidence that you've looked into it: (If you don’t mind, I’ll copy the lore summary since there is quite a good deal of it all through the massive page. Don’t worry, I've read it all as I can prove by the story I just pulled out of a wizard hat above this.) An extraterrestrial colony organism, xenochimera are unusual in that they have no real defining physiology of their own - effectively, xenochimera mimic other beings, or parts of other beings, by consuming them and mutating their own cellular structure to imitate whatever evolutionary advantages they may find.
On the cellular level, these creatures are composed of a hive of microscopic organisms - these form the basis of the majority of their bodily systems. When they feed on another being, effectively these organisms will consume the prey like a flesh-eating bacteria, rather than the more typical acidic digestion used by many other species (note: that doesn't mean that a particular example of the species hasn't found that a traditional stomach is a desirable evolutionary trait to copy) and, once having consumed enough, the cells will split, possibly mutating to mimic that which was eaten, and assimilate themselves into the rest of the hive. Individual chimera cells are capable of rudimentary communication with their neighbours, forming a sort of primitive neural network, but are not capable of anything resembling intelligence beyond primitive survival instinct. Effectively, the default state of a xenochimera is an order of intelligence on a par with an ant colony - not an individual ant but the colony itself, driven by little more than to survive at all costs.
That is, unless they manage to assimilate and mimic something with a complex nervous system. At this point, provided that the hive successfully copies it, they can find themselves awakening to a greater degree of understanding than they have ever managed before - however, they are still the colony when all is said and done, and pressing survival needs will override whatever refined thoughts they may hold in their heads, leaving them generally prone to panic and fight-or-flight responses in extremely stressful situations, when injured or damaged, or driven to feed when hungry. The most common term used to describe a xenochimera that has reverted to primitive instinct in this manner is "feral".

Xenochimera going feral doesn’t mean they go on all fours and begin eating everything in sight thought, they become more like literal animals. They will fight or flee for their lives, look places to hide from the dangers they perceive in a hostile station and possibly try to find some food without risking themselves. They simply revert to a more simple state of mind, shunning away useless things like society or law to hide away and protect their existence. That doesn’t mean also that they go in a murder-spree, no sane animal that cared for its life would do that unless literally being pushed into a corner by people that are going to murder it.

What do you expect to happen if you use this race/job to violate any of the server rules?: Oh boy. I expect everything bad from violating the rules to happen, either a simple note or a big ban bannu followed by the removal of this whitelist or any others I may have.

[HazelBailey]

An interesting take on how Xenochimera function, but still keeps in touch with the lore, and Discordwizard is a good player, so I'll give this my +1

[BlackMajor]

This lizard is a good wizard.
Know you pretty well to not be trash, and that's quite a snippet of an idea ya got there.
Moved to approved.