Technological Terror
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a large, powerful war beast for the Dzara
- Image Credit: Link
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Name: Cymera (Blightspawn)
- Designation: Semi-Sentient
- Origins: Created by the Dzara via the Tarnaci Blight
- Average Lifespan: Indefinite
- Estimated Population: Scattered
- Description: Large, repto-feline horrors created from the Blight.
- Breathes: N/A
- Average Height of Adults: 3.8-4.5 meters
- Average Length of Adults: 7.2-9.3 meters
- Skin color: Typically a pale, bloodless white or yellow for their organic portions. Blightsteel portions are usually a rusty brown or black.
- Hair color: N/A
- Distinctions: Great height and weight, feline body structure, ravenous appetite
- Races: N/A
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
- War Beast: The Cymera is enormous, standing several times the height of the average humanoid adult, and possesses speed, strength, and durability to match. Additionally, each head is capable of spewing Atter at its prey.
- Hellspawn: The Cymera is a nightmare fusion of reeking undead meat and cutting-edge cybernetics. Few are the troops who can face one down without their morale wavering.
- Apex Predator: Cymeras are impervious to fear, poisons, diseases, radiation, extremes of heat and cold, or any attempt to cloud, control, or delude their minds.
- Disobedient: The Cymera is nearly-uncontrollable, being of only high-animal-level intelligence. It may choose to obey, or may grow bored, wandering off to find something to eat. Only a particularly strong-willed and resilient handler has any hope of commanding it.
- Man-Man Horror: Cymeras are exclusively crafted in a laboratory through a lengthy and complex process. They cannot naturally replenish their numbers, though they may still spread the Blight to other creatures.
- Diet: None needed, but nonetheless is fiercely carnivorous, devouring great quantities of meat.
- Communication: Oddly-mechanical roars and howls, can be taught to understand (but not speak) most spoken languages.
- Technology level: N/A
- Religion/Beliefs: N/A
- General behavior: Cymeras, when not at war, can usually be found strutting about their enclosure as though they own it. They are incredibly territorial and unpredictable, and personnel not trained in their use are generally advised to leave them be. Under most circumstances, they behave much like the cats they resemble.
Filling the niche of "heavy support" amongst the Dzara's Blightspawn, the Cymera is a particularly deranged solution to that role. A monstrous, triple-headed thing of mingled meat and metal, the Cymera strikes a terrifying figure on the battlefields of the 900s.
Cymeras are a bit of an odd duck amongst Blightspawn, being created from a fusion of animal corpses. Nonetheless, the resultant technobeasts are broadly similar in appearance. Most are far larger and heavier than the average humanoid, and possess a distinctly-feline mean streak that renders them somewhat difficult to control.
The legs are sophisticated, offering surprising dexterity and agility for so large a creature. It is capable of moving with shocking speed and grace, resembling nothing so much as a jungle predator on the prowl. Each terminates in claws capable of shredding dense metals, to say nothing of flesh and bone.
The tail and spine are constructed of triple-reinforced, segmented metal layers, and the former ends in a blade that the creature can wield with dextrous ease.
Cymeras typically sport three heads, each capable of spewing Atter at separate prey. Occasionally, the Cymera's heads may quarrel amongst themselves, but the central head possesses the dominant brain in most cases. Due to this, Cymeras are exceptionally difficult to permanently destroy, as the loss of a single head does not seem to meaningfully hinder the creatures in any way.
Cymeras are fierce and bloodthirsty predators, far more reactive and intelligent than the smaller and more common varieties of Blightspawn. Most are so bloodthirsty, in fact, as to be uncontrollable. In yet another feline trait of their being, they may or may not heed commands, instead electing to wander off and find something smaller than themselves to rend apart. As a rule, only especially patient (or especially fearsome) handlers can earn the respect of these hybrid terrors. Showing weakness or hesitation is likely to earn a would-be commander a spot in the beast's rotting innards, but they can be surprisingly loyal to one who takes the time to earn their respect.
Tormenting weaker lifeforms is arguably a Cymera's favorite pastime, and they can often be observed batting around a terrified victim with their forelimbs, drawing out their dinner's suffering for quite some time before finally ending it.
Like all Blightspawn, Cymeras appear to not actually require physical sustenance, but will seek it anyway, devouring huge quantities of raw flesh from their victims. As Blightspawn do not actually possess functional digestive systems, this flesh mostly collects inside the creature, gradually being transformed into Atter.
This accumulated fluid is often used to dispatch anything the creature finds annoying, and it will belch great roiling streams of raw or plasmoid-state Atter at anything which earns its ire. Blessedly, Cymeras are not especially accurate, usually simply dousing a wide area in their vomit.
More blessedly still, these creatures are somewhat uncommon, and due to their compound nature cannot occur through the natural actions of the Blight. All are constructed in laboratories, and let loose on a wholly unprepared galaxy.
In combat, Cymeras roam through a battlefield, plucking up enemy soldiers with their serpentine necks and messily devouring them. When faced with an armored vehicle or fortification, the creatures are scarcely less lethal. Horror stories abound of Cymeras peeling the hatch off a tank and flooding the cockpit with Atter, leaving the crew to painfully boil alive. Likewise, there are few worse fates than being trapped in a pillbox with one of these terrors battering at the door.
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