Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[10ebbor10]

GSA: (1) TricMagic, 10e10

[TricMagic]

GSA: (2) TricMagic, 10ebbor10

[Doomblade187]

GSA: (3) TricMagic, 10ebbor10, Doomblade

[flabort]

GSA: (4) TricMagic, 10ebbor10, Doomblade, Flabort

It's not the absolute worst plan. I made my opinions of where a few changes should/could be made clear, but this plan works.

[Draignean]

It is now Design Phase 4
You have 1 Design and 0 Free Design Credits. You have 1 lesser advantage credit.


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.

[Taricus]

Unforgotten
Long ago, a foe once herded us here, killed us, separated us. They were not at all like us, girded in metal and plastic. Yet for all the hive's abilities, they brought us low. Perhaps there is strength in their form, and the unforgotten serve both as a reminder of that memory, and as a stepping stone to reaching back to the stars, and remembering those that drove us here.

Hence, the form of the Unforgotten takes is as an imitation of them, in our image; two compound-eye basins and a wasplike set of mandibles are placed on a structure akin to our former adversaries, a... 'humanoid' structure gifted with dexterous grasping hand-claws for grabbing and fighting, and sturdy feet-claws to ensure agility and stability in movement. But most important of all as a gift of intelligence; an ability to judge and react based on their surroundings beyond the simplistic thinking of the grubs they were born from. Moreover, the Unforgotten's intelligence is re-centralised into it's brain, in order to avoid vestigial damage affecting thought and to making protecting it a simpler affair.

Of course, in regards to mobility the Unforgotten take a rather unorthodox approach to speed themselves up; The use of grubs. By stepping on a grub with it's feet, and gripping it, the Unforgotten is able to use it's psionic power to aid the grub in levitation, and via using one leg to push off of hard surfaces can more easily bring the lifted grub to speed at ease, along with making stopping easier for both the grub and unforgotten on them

Our former foes have not been forgotten, and the lessons learned from fighting them will not either.

[flabort]

First draft.

What you look like: The Omega queen is a bloated creature, similar in shape to an ant or a termite, divided into a head, then a thorax where all of her limbs are attached, and then an abdomen. Like a queen ant, her abdomen has swollen to be several times the size of the rest of her body; the somewhat transparent carapace of her abdomen throbs, and inside one can see developing grubs moving around, with various appendage-like tubes veins and chords bringing different nutrients to young at different stages of growth, only to detach and seek younger fetal grubs. Her capacity to produce young is directly linked to this swollen factory, and so with each generation birthed, her abdomen is mutilated and extended further to accommodate expanded production. With the first proper generation, it had grown into a tube-like length, which was long enough for her to turn around and start cutting at and manipulating with her fore-limbs in order to influence the growth and evolution of her children beyond the basic grub form. If you scaled her down by a factor of several thousand, and removed her thorax and head, you may even mistake her for a very very long grub that just keeps growing.

Her thorax is relatively small compared to her abdomen. She has six pairs of limbs with three joints each, two pairs with pointed tips for stabbing into the ground and dragging her distended body about, one pair with scalpel precise blades at the end useful for self-surgery, two pairs with a three-fingered two-thumbed hand shape with each digit ending in pointed claws, useful for shoving and moving organs or subordinates, and the last pair resembles the limbs with hands, but the tips of the fingers exude a green gel that acts as a healing agent, accelerating her own body's metabolic systems allowing her to patch herself up after a self-surgery. Each of these limbs and the thorax itself is plated with a black chitinous carapace, which has then been augmented and "decorated" with shiny reflective pastes and fluids from her children.

Her head is where her serious hardware is. Her mind is segmented, similar to the prototypes she created in her grubs, but each fragment is more than capable of handling the entire body, plus commanding her army from afar. She has a triangular face, with two massive multifaceted eyes on either side capable of seeing in 5 different colors, plus with thermal vision and ultraviolet vision. She also has eight smaller eyes on the front of her face, these ones have a single retina each, and are each a different color, but are able to look in different directions all at once. Towards the bottom of her face are a number of mandibles - eight, again, all surrounding a single mouth. This mouth is ringed with teeth, and there is a second lamprey-like jaw within to grab at whatever she puts into her mouth and hold it there while she mashes at it with her teeth and mandibles. The outside of her mouth, and her mandibles, are stained in dark colors (mostly reds and greens), because she does not care to wipe away the remains of her food after having eaten it. She also has several tentacle-like antenna with feathered ends, each as long as one of her other limbs, sprouting from the back of her head, which exude and smell different pheromones and growth hormones, which are useful to redesign parts of her abdomen when she redesigns her children.

She often bleeds from her self-surgeries, and this has revealed her ichorous blood to be a yellowish green in color.

What your ethos is: Omega's not happy with there being more than herself. She sees herself as THE END, and her children as little more than a means to bring the universe to her. She desires above all for everything else to stop existing, and so the origin of her name, Omega, the last letter of the greek alphabet. She has vague memories that some civilization her mother, progenitor, or whatever you call her fought against used that alphabet. So she plans to grow, expand, and build the means to break this planet down, turn it into an extension of her own will, mind, and body, and then use it to devour everything else in the universe before ultimately consuming it itself, and lastly herself. She cannot rest until all is undone.

What your Mutageneic quirk is: When Omega creates, she sees the different ways something can be destroyed, and the different ways it can be hardened against destruction until it ultimately returns to her to be reabsorbed. She is very good at making something durable, standing up to elements foreseen and unforeseen; whether by making this muscle system have a quicker reflexive reaction, or by thickening this plate, or by having an organ to handle these otherwise toxic chemicals and break them down into something helpful for the body.

[Taricus]

Eh. Nihilistic destroyer is... kinda overdone honestly. Rather go for something more esoteric in regards to a hivemind

[flabort]

Eh. Nihilistic destroyer is... kinda overdone honestly. Rather go for something more esoteric in regards to a hivemind

OK, that's not a problem. If you ignore the ethos and quirk categories, how's the part I actually put work into?

[Taricus]

Well written, but... well, it's a bit boring in what it all adds up to. I mean, especially given our flyer we can definitely go more out there for the queen's physical form, aside from the carapace which is actually pretty good.

[10ebbor10]

What you look like: While the Queens were gestated, the war was still ongoing. As disease swept the surface of all life, automated defenses waited patiently in orbit to give the world one final cleanse. They failed of course, destroyed by teeth and claw of dying voidforms. But even as many of the satellites were destroyed, others fired. Omegas nesting chamber shuddered and collapsed, crushing the fragile egg.

To any other creature, such damage would have been fatal, or grossly disfiguring. For Omega, it allowed perfection. More so than any other queen, she needed to manipulate her body, and with great devastation came radical innovation. Though Omega is one queen, she is not at all times one creature. Her eggsacks wander the cavern seperatly seeking the greatest nesting posts. Her claws are always on the edges, exploring the cavern. Her heads and forelimbs stand st every entrance, devouring the food that grubs bring.

In times of danger or need to move, she can pull together into a fearsome tentacled amalgam. At times of rest, she looks like herself after the cavern collapsed, a grand beast torn apart.


What your ethos is: Omega is, like all of the creatures, driven by a constant desire to improve herself. She would like to believe she has surpasseed 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 lie these fears to rest, or see them confirmed and remake herself once more.

What your Mutageneic quirk is: Omega's spawn, like herself, does not die easily. Even torn apart, they will cling to live, dismembered though they are. Claws will still bite, wings will still beat, all that can be done will be done to ensure that every last piece of the hive fights till it has completely consumed it's last nutrient.

[TricMagic]

Granroze Wyrm
The Granroze Wyrm is created from Rozers in small numbers, and occurs when a specific Rozer has developed enough organelles to exceed their own body. The Rozer undergoes a gorging process and grows larger, and larger, and larger.
It's body hardens to a texture not unlike gravel, pores secreting it's substances constantly. The Psionic Core of the grub has emerged within it's head, and swelled in size with it. It's body has fully developed the psionic channels, and it's body is riddled with primary brains and much ganglia. Perhaps most impressive however, is the systems the Rozer possesses. It has developed to it's full state, able to intake any material and break them down quickly with internally produced chitin to grind, acids and bases to melt and neutralize, and an astounding number of organelles serving myriad processes to keep the Granroze Wyrm functioning off it's diet of everything. It is something that can eat anything, and even survive a swim in lava thanks to it's body's naturally high biological operating temperatures. The amount it eats to fuel this is immense yes, but earth is a perfectly edible foodsource for it thanks to it's organelles and gizzards. (Note that eating lava is not advised, as it tends to cause gizzard blockages. So in most cases the mouth is kept closed) Organelles also allow the production of needed oxygen for the body from the earth it eats, and it has storage for air it can devour aboveground allowing it to stay under for quite a while.
The Granroze Wyrm's physical ability is that of a vibration sense, a type of echolocation through sensing vibrations in the earth or liquid, much like the machines did against Rozers previously. It can tunnel through everything with gaping bites, swallowing it all and quickly processing it, before extruding a mix of materials to form walls and repeating it again. It can also forgo this and just tunnel through the earth with the telekinetic ability that let the grubs hover and it's own eating and extrusion out the back from the Rozers. This same telekinesis lets it travel over-ground with lethal speed, much like a snake with the option to make forward movements frictionless while it pushes with it's body. It swallows prey whole, and it's body, even when pierced, quickly seals the holes with it's extrusions, as they run throughout it's body. The Granroze Wyrm is a creature to be feared, though a rare one. And to be swallowed by it is to be torn apart alive many bits at a time as it's digestion does away with you, with no escape while you are grinded down to manageable pieces.

Granroze Wyrm(Lesser Advantage): (1) TricMagic

Anyone know the gizzard which uses stones to aid digestion? Yeah well, here it is. ARolling 3 dice is nicer than a new design. We're just make something that lives up to the name of wyrm.

Probably fits with ebbor's idea too. You're on fire, we'll eat you anyway. You just taste spicy.

Likewise, tunnels. Big tunnels. Made pretty quickly. Their small number is because of their rarity. For now anyway.

[dgr11897]

Stymphalian Crab:
Upgraded from the Medusa, the Stymphalian possesses an incredibly heat resistant carapace, allowing it to survive better in extremely hot and cold environments. It also possesses the ability to produce small growths along its back similar to the medusa, though these are spike shaped, possess a hardened carapace, and have the ability to produce and store a gas which is non-reactive, heavier than air, and impedes oxygenation, pressurized within the spikes for optimal flight and maximum effect. These growth are separated Via controlled necrosis and launched with the Stymphalian's improved telekinesis. The other primary focus of the design, achieved by creating enlarged and more effective Telekinetic organs, and specializing its telekinesis into two modes. One which acts like an additional limb, picking up and aiming the spikes and manipulating the creature's environment. And another which is an incredibly strong blast of psychokinetic energy, launching the spikes with great force, or slamming a target with that same force.

[flabort]

I'm not exactly satisfied. Granroze Wyrm is ok, and Stymphalian Crab is more or less what I had expected but without much imagination. But we can do better than just OK.

Here's my take at the same idea as the Symphalian Crab.

Bazooka Crab
An evolution of the Medusa, the Bazooka is a hardier design, with its polyps being armored with blood red carapaces topped with "thorned" points, and with more advanced minds of their own. Their psychic prowess has advanced to allow an individual polyp to hover at speeds surpassing those of grubs, and drive themselves into an enemy's armor point first, whereupon they pierce through and are able to then eat from the inside out. Lacking an enemy, the polyp is able to act as an improved set of psychic "eyes" for the Bazooka Crab; they are able to pierce the ground with their psychic tendrils and scout out through dense brush and mineral deposits ahead, although this was developed primarily to scout out where the most vulnerable organs or systems of an enemy are, living or mechanical or eldritch other. Further, rather than produce particulate binding agent to filter toxins out of the air, the Bazooka's polyps produce and store a boron-based denser than air compound that impedes oxidation, and is seldom reactive - an exception being that with enough heat and certain common gasses present, it will endothermically react to cool the area down slightly. The polyp produces this over it's whole lifespan, and releases it all in a suffocating brown cloud after separation upon impacting something; whether this is something on fire, or an enemy.

The Bazooka itself is not without advancement. To match it's independently thinking polyp's psychic ability, it has gained the ability to impart a great deal of thrust into one, and even impart force upon it after launching it to curve its trajectory. It can also use this psychic strength to push at other nearby targets, explosively shoving rocks at bigger rocks to break them open or pushing allies out of the way of threats; or it can tone down the strength of its push to manipulate things with a finer touch, carefully carrying supplies or food. Its shell is more densely armored, with obvious weak points being where the polyps grow from, which is why they have been shifted forward and into dense clusters, to appear as four tight arrays of projectiles ready for launching at enemies ahead, or above. Its claws, already strong for crushing like the Medusa's claws, have spikes added along the outside, and have the ability to hold objects of extreme temperature thanks to the very thick armor around them. It also gains two extra pairs of legs, partly to support its increased weight, and partly to improve its ground speed. It still cannot feed on its own, instead still absorbing food through its growths, but can store nutrients for quite some time, so that even launching all of its polyps at once is not a death sentence, and that it can retreat and grow more.


I know it's not strictly better than the Symphalian Crab, but I feel like concentrating the projectiles to allow for better armoring was important, and granting the projectiles themselves more psychic control for homing attacks is a contribution I personally believe to be important.

Granroze Wyrm (Use lesser advantage): (1) TricMagic
Granroze Wrym (no advantage): (0)
Stymphalian Crab (With advantage): (0)
Stymphalian Crab (no advantage): (0)
Bazooka Crab (With Advantage): (1) Flabort
Bazooka Crab (No advantage): (0)

[TricMagic]

Design Proposals
[Lower End of Very Hard]Granroze Wyrm (Use lesser advantage): (1) TricMagic
[Solidly Hard]Stymphalian Crab (With advantage): (0)
[Solidly Hard]Stymphalian Crab (no advantage): (0)
[Higher than Granroze]Bazooka Crab (With Advantage): (1) Flabort
[Higher than Granroze]Bazooka Crab (No advantage): (0)

To note, my Hydra proposal from a while back is Hard+. Pretty nice for something meant to be the beatstick in our armies. Benefits of Mutation.
Body Plan Change (reverse prior+Novel), Improved armor (slight, modified), sight+smell (evolved/novel), greatly enhanced speed (novel in form), carrier ability (evolved).

So, argument time. Here is mine,

Granroze Wyrm. Location advantages,
Desert of Mirrors: Perfect. Being able to dip in lava and being a heat creture means it can just rule here without penalty. Being able to keep a store of air and eat and process anything only adds to this. And it's tunneling would be a thing of beauty, even if it may need rozers to patch up the heatproofing after it cools down.

Misted Ravines: Issues of size, but it's pretty tough. No issues. Unless you count setting off reactions. Probobly best to let the rest finish up here and devote the Wyrms to DoM.
Bog: Poisonous, but without the reactions. Once again, the Wyrm rules, and it's heat can dry the mud it tunnels through for solid tunnels.
Parasitic Forest: Once again king, but more for the fact it has the full version of what the rozers have. Further improvements can be made if needed, but the heat will help it survive to make the counters.

Crater: People are worried the ground will rip open and the sky will devour us. I'm not so pessimistic. The ground will, for the most part, stay where it is, in the ground. Benefit of it being a crater, the top level is likely to be more compact, so lower tunnels should stay intact. And well, we do have aerplanar who don't care for it, but may lightning.

Crevasses: Rocky. Wyrms eat everything, grind it down, and use it for food. No issue, just stay out from aboveground.

To combat, well. Wyrms can eat their fire based creetures, they spicy. Tough enough to be dangerous, and can swallow foes from below, and move pretty quick above ground, crushing grubs by the 100s. And they are still so slow compared to ours. And then it goes underground again for the next attack. Pretty decent for a giant worm.
Desert of Mirrors brings to mind the giant sand worms. Which this creature is based off of, still scary to face given the Desert of Mirrors can be known as it's natural habitat of them all. A great defender if they manage to get that far. And good in the seabed even though there is no fire there.


Counted, that is 7/9 areas it should do well in. No revisions needed. I open the floor to the other designers now to debate their own points for their proposal.