The Blood Hound
Not an accurate representation
- Intent: As with many things, it started as a joke. But then I thought… why not? Killer Spuds – because this galaxy simply needs 'em.
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Scherezade deWinter
- Evil Potato Wants You Dead
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- Canon: n/a
- Permissions: n/a
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- Permission to Use: If you've stumbled across this sub and you like my taters, feel free to use them anywhere, no permission required.
- Name: Screaming Killer Spuds
- Origins: The Garden of Death, the Scintilla
- Other Locations: Any place that has soil is a potential place for the Killer Spuds to grow. At present, there are no known other locations., though seeds have been given out to be spread in other parts of the galaxy.
- Classification: Starchy root that wants to kill you.
- Average Growth Cycle:
- Day 0 – The seeds of the Killer Spud are very resistant, and if kept in cool temperatures of between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius, are estimated to last as much as up to three years. The seeds can be created in two ways; in a lab, or from existing Killer Spuds.
- Day 2 – We have a baby tater! At this point our Screaming Killer Spuds are small, about the size of an extra-small egg. On top of the earth, a small weed seems to be growing…
- Day 4 – Our 'tater has doubled in size and is now a big potato! The big potato also has what looks like a gentle dainty flower with five pedestals that are white to icy pink color to them. If the big potato gets unearthed, DANGER will ensue!
- Days 5-14 – While our potato has still not been unearthed, a new sprout will be created every other day, and the potatlings that come from those sprouts start at our Day 0. If unearthed at this stage, the potato will do the DANGER thing, and pull along with it all the potatoes that are connected to it, who in turn pull the potatoes that are connected to it, and so on. The connections work both ways, so theoretically, if an entire crop shares the same Mitochondrial Parent, they could all rise at once.
- Somewhere between day 15 and day 20 - It's dead, Potato.
- Viability: Screaming Killer Spuds are huge fans of high humidity and moist soils, typically of a dark sand variant that is full of all the good vitamins and minerals. The more the merrier – they will suck the ground dry if they could (sometimes they can. More on that later). They can also grow in poorer soil, as long as there is enough within it to grow your average vegetation, but the resulting Screaming Killer Spuds will be weaker as a result. The flower on top of the Screaming Killing Spuds enjoy the sunlight very much, but significant differences to the potatoes themselves had not been discovered during clinical trials. It has been noted that without sunlight, the flower does not grow at all. In soil that is average for them, the spuds will live underground for 15-20 days in total. You do not really harvest these potatoes, but even if you did – only some parts are safe for consumption, the rest will kill you, and even the good bits will go bad in less than a day. These potatoes have never been designed with food in mind, unless you count those evenings during which the scientists ordered McYoda's.
- Description: Under the ground, these potatoes look like any potatoes. Certainly, some vary in color, others in texture, but a potato is still a potato. Above the ground, they grow beautiful and gentle white flowers that most species consider a pleasure to behold. As long as the potato is left along under the ground, it will sleep peacefully, not disturbing anyone, just sucking nutrients from the soil, reproducing, and eventually, dying.
But beware if you ever awaken one of these potatoes. Should a potato be disturbed and suddenly find his potato part above the ground or even peeking from the ground, hell shall be unleashed. The potato will open its very human-looking like eyes and mouth and shriek to the heavens. As the shrieking begins, the potato will grow sprouts that will serve as hands and legs, and in each hand hold a "knife" – a huge suction of the traces of metals within the soil to create their weapon.
Screaming Killer Spuds' weapons, while incredibly impressive to the eye, are virtually ineffective. Any sort of protection their target has that is heavier than lightweight airy flowy fabric, will simply cause their "knife" to shatter upon first impact. The screams of the spuds never cease until that potato getssmashed.
- Average Height: 15 to 30 centimeters when standing.
- Average Length: 5 to 20 centimeters diameter for a mature potato.
- Color: Beige, Brown, Creamy, Pink, Yellow, Purple
- Nutritional Value: 100 grams of the edible flesh of the Screaming Killer Spuds contained about 165 calories, 17 grams of carbohydrate, 2 grams of protein, and 0 fat.
- Toxicity: If the wrong parts of the potato are eaten, the eater may experience extremely liquid diarrhea, migraines, missile vomiting, seizures, and complete heart stop. Some of these symptoms may be mild, sometimes you just drop dead. As little as a mouthful is enough to trigger the effects, but of course, the less you accidently eat, the less you suffer, and vice versa. At present, the spuds have been fed to about 1,712 different species and they all reported similar inabilities to digest certain parts.
- Other Effects: If you wake those Screaming Killer Puds, they will scream. And when someone does not screaming – it's annoying, and to some, maddening. Each of these spuds shrills at a high decibel, and being exposed to enough of them screaming together for a sufficient amount of time, hearing may be damaged.
- Distinctions:
- Pretty flower on top, with five pedestals that range from the white to the icy pink.
- Underground, it's just a potato. Above ground, it suddenly has legs and hands and knives and eyes and mouth! Flower may in this stage be used as hair if it's still connected.
- Potato screaming can potentially drive someone out of control when exposed to it for too long.
- Potato screaming can damage long term hearing if exposed for too long.
- Potatoes are strong in numbers. Imagine a field of thousands of these, running towards you with their pin-sharp knives, screaming all the way. Even big creatures might at least consider running away at the sight of that.
- Incredibly quick breeders by any account.
- These are potatoes. Screaming or not, knives or not, you can still break them as easily as you would a normal potato.
- One potato is just a one potato and nothing else.
The Screaming Killer Spuds are one of the fresh new results from the research labs at the Garden of Death. Based on the Potatoes of Murder, a holonetwork soap opera series that has been broadcasting for the past 102 years, providing five episodes per standard galactic week, and an endless amount of reruns all around the clock, the Screaming Killer Spuds are the answer to the question no one's ever bothered asking outside of the GalactiQuora social media, "What happens when super smart people really need a break?"
The Spud Project had begun as a diversion, something for the scientists to mess around with while taking much needed breaks from the pressure of being among the front of the research front of the Agents of Chaos. The Garden of Death, under their careful care, bloomed, and the labs split into groups that all worked on new and different terrible sorts of plants that could help them further the goals of their organization.
One day, one of the younger researchers stared at a potato from the pile in the cafeteria, and decided to sharpie an angry face on it. Others who'd seen the angry potato added more details – eyelashes to the eyes, an old sock cut to look like two legs, and someone had even placed a knife next to it, building a scene that indicated that knife had been in the potato's hand until moments ago. In the following days, more and more people began to draw faces on potatoes, and the research center's secretary ordered several crates of the root vegetable, since drawing those faces apparently helped calm them down between rounds of incredibly hard work.
Soon enough, someone posed the question that everyone had been dreading to say out loud – "Hey, what if we make killer potatoes?", and someone else added – "And what they screamed, like, really loud?" Granted, the speaker of that second question had been none other than
Scherezade deWinter
who just happened to be visiting the center that day and had absolutely nothing to do with the nudging of several leading scientists into thinking that not only they can, but they also should. Nothing at all.No one had really expected the spuds to be such a huge success. It only took a few months of testing, adding more and more elements to them, and giving them a final finish with Sith Alchemy, The Screaming Killer Spuds (named officially so by that person that had nothing to do with them at all and hadn't nudged anyone into working and pushing this project for a single moment) were ready.
The scientists, joined by the maintenance and clean up teams, began to test the potatoes out, growing them at home, in the garden, and there was one reported case of an attempted growth nearby a children's playground.
The result was a wonderful breed of spuds that wasn't really meant for consumption, though parts of it are. However, the edible parts aren't really good in flavor, and using regular potatoes for food is a much superior idea. The spuds grow incredibly fast and reproduce fast as well. The seeds created in the laboratories of the Garden of Death are truly easy to use, as even tossing them on soil can produce crops, for when the flower begins to grow, it shoves the potato part of the spud deeper underground.
An undisturbed potato will forever a potato be. Unbothered, it will do nothing but live out its natural lifecycle and die. But exposure of even a little bit of the potato, will wake all the potato – first the one who had been exposed, and then they will send signals down their sprouts, awakening each and every potato connected to it, who will rise to above the ground.
The potatoes are soil-suckers, for when they come above the ground, they suck out all the trace minerals that they can, and digest it incredibly quickly, the expulsion of the contents coming out as two knives; one in each hand of the spud. These knives might look menacing in the hands of a potato with eyes and a mouth, but they are as sharp as a pin's prick and too easy to destroy. When the potatoes rise form the soil, they leave it an empty earth, void of many of the substances required to grow vegetation on it. The soil can heal from this naturally over time, or receive standard treatment to reinfuse it with essential nutrients by farmers and specialists.
But the spuds do not have to be buried in fields. During one of the experiments, one of the scientists filled a large cargo box with soil, and the potatoes still thrived, until someone exposed one of them. In another experiment, an entire cargo of soiled filled to the brim with the Screaming Killer Spuds caused them all to awaken upon landing, even if a third of them had sustained heavy damage from meeting the ground and simply died.
The objective of the Screaming Killer Spuds in a battlefield is to demoralize the enemy, terrify the crap out of them, and slow them down because of "What the krakking heck are these?!" sort of thoughts.
Upon awakening, the potatoes will immediately grow two human-looking eyes, a large mouth full of sharp teeth, two hands and two legs, and two knives (one in each hand). They will charge with their screams at the first enemy they see moving, be it a puppy, a child, a stormtrooper, or a dragon. Once their knives shatter, usually upon first impact unless the target is protected, they will use their teeth as well. The sharpness of their teeth is just slightly less than the sharpness of human toddlers, which means that while they can indeed cause damage, there is no reason for it to be lethal (unless one is allergic to Screaming Killer Spuds). The richer the soil the spuds grew in, the strong they will be, and the longer they will last.
The effect of the killer spuds only lasts for up to several hours. Should they still be alive by then, their vitality will drop significantly. Their legs will no longer be able to hold them up, and their screaming will be replaced with gradually weakening screams until they fall into the category of whistle-whispers. Looking at the potatoes as they die can give one a very clear visual of how fleeting life is. Another hour or two after the whistle-whispers have begun, the potato will be completely dead. A dead potato will rot away quickly, leaving nothing behind but dust-mold that quickly blows away, unless otherwise preserved.
Seeds are currently being given freely to those who travel off the Scintilla, to be spread around the 'verse in as many planets as possible. The scientists expect to see economic damage on a grand scale from the spread of the spuds, but are currently mostly keeping tabs on the news to see if their theory checks out.
Now that the Screaming Killer Spuds project is over and other than monitoring the galaxy, there is little left to do, the researchers and scientists are looking at other things to play with during their down-time.
One of them has been seen eyeing a tomato.
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