Unreviewed Green Tarnicite

[Helix]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To create a new strain of Tarnicite for the Dzara
• Image Source: Generated via ChatGPT
• Canon Link: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: N/A

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

• Manufacturer: Helix Privateers
• Affiliation: Helix Privateers / The Dzara
• Market Status: Closed-Market
• Model: N/A
• Modularity: Yes
• Production: Minor
• Material:
  
  • Red Tarnicite
  • Blightspawn Atter

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Highly Mutative
• Rapid Growth and Spread

STRENGTHS

• Creeping Conversion: Green Tarnicite is a self-replicating crystalline substance, spreading throughout the matter of what it touches and converting it to more of itself.
• Mutant Molder: Green Tarnicite tends to non-lethally colonize its victims, forming a bizarrely-alien symbiosis. Most often, the resultant mutants are aggressive and animalistic.

WEAKNESSES

• Infestation: Green Tarnicite is generally less likely to quickly kill its victims than other varieties, and its effects can even be halted surgically if caught quickly enough.
• The Flesh is Weak: Green Tarnicite is much less dangerous to inorganic materials or beings, generally only producing minor cosmetic alterations.

DESCRIPTION

The latest (and likely most horrific) variety of commonly-produced Tarnicite, the Green variety is designed to terrify as much as debilitate.

As with the naturally-occuring Red Tarnicite (and the numerous lab-created varieties, including Black and Blue) Green Tarnicite is inherently hazardous to living things. The infectious self-replicating properties seen in other Tarnicite varieties are not absent here.

However, the danger posed by the Green variety is a little more complex, particularly in regards to its relationship with living things. Unlike the other variations, Green Tarnicite is profoundly mutagenic. While it still indiscriminately infects and colonizes any organic tissue it comes into contact with, Green Tarnicite (usually) alters its victims rather than killing them through complete transmutation.

Areas exposed to this substance are famous for their fever-dream qualities. Trees might be warped into swaying, hungry tentacled predators, while normally-harmless wildlife becomes alien and disturbing. Even something so commonplace as grass can become fields of fine glass-like razors, or fleshy grasping fronds dotted with tiny, staring eyes. There is little rhyme or reason to these mutations, but a Tarnicite mutant is usually easy to spot and identify: with few exceptions, visible clusters of the crystal sprout from their flesh in the latter stages of infestation.

Sometimes, the result is still fatal. Tarnicite crystals spreading through a heart or central nervous system puts most of these mutants out to pasture early. This is particularly true of the particulate forms of the substance, which if inhaled or ingested, are often quite hard on internal soft tissues. Still more collapse under the weight of their own freakishly-changed anatomies, with flesh assuming configurations not suited for sustaining life. Nonetheless, some do still survive, and are most often maddened by their condition. Needless to say, these life forms should be avoided, as exposure to them could well infect their victims.

This quality results in Green Tarnicite frequently being utilized in a variety of cruel terror weapons, as it tends to warp and debilitate its victims rather than quickly killing them. As it isn't a disease proper, it can often overcome even the most resilient of physical constitutions. Even those impervious to poisons and plagues would do well to avoid exposure.

Fortunately, this does mean that (unlike the other varieties) Green Tarnicite exposure is theoretically curable in the early stages. However, all but the briefest infestation will likely require extensive removal of tainted bodily matter, and similarly extensive cybernetic or biotechnical reconstruction.

Green Tarnicite's effects on inorganic matter are significantly more muted. Nonetheless, it can afflict metal and stone with a variety of strange (though usually harmless) changes, generally including slight color or texture alterations.

Most often, this manifests in the form of a multicolored iridescence baked semi-permanently into the material, displaying a phenomenon similar to thin-film interference. While harmless, some warriors wear this on their gear as a badge of honor. After all, few can claim to have gotten this close to Green Tarnicite and escaped unchanged, and these unusual marks are seen to display resilience and courage.