Unreviewed Tarnaci Blight

[Helix]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To create a deadly and terrifying technovirus for the Dzara
• Image Source: Generated via ChatGPT
• Canon Link: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: N/A

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

• Manufacturer: The Dzara
• Affiliation: The Dzara
• Market Status: Closed-Market
• Model: N/A
• Modularity: No
• Production: Minor
• Material:
  • Inorganic Components: Blightsteel
  • Organic Components: Formgel

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Highly mutative
• Hive-mind sapience

STRENGTHS

• Cyber-Zombies: Tarnaci Blight transforms any who succumb to its effects into hideous, quasi-organic undead technobeasts.
• Protean: Tarnaci Blight is semi-sapient, and shows a bewildering ability to change its mode or speed of transmission, incubation period, and other factors to strategically control the speed of its spread of its effects.

WEAKNESSES

• Inoculated: Tarnaci blight has no effect on non-organic life, droids, incorporeal creatures, or anything else that is physically incapable of becoming diseased.

DESCRIPTION

Despite the name, this affliction is in fact a form of technovirus, engineered by Helix on behalf of the Dzara.

Tarnaci Blight is designed to terrify and disgust as well as kill, in keeping with the Dzara's philosophy of destroying hopeful resistance wherever possible.

The "pathogen" itself is difficult to classify properly. When viewed under a microscope, individual blight-cells possess hallmarks of both machinery and organic structure, betraying a clear unnatural origin.

This pernicious "life" form is indiscriminate in its targeting, and even more indiscriminate in its mode of transmission. It can attack and infect virtually all known forms of organic life, a trait owed to a remarkable ability to adapt to a wide array of alien physiologies. Particularly unusual or resilient biologies may resist the effects longer, but given time, the organism can tailor itself to interact with almost any living thing.

Unpleasantly, Tarnaci Blight displays an extremophile nature, capable of spreading through air currents, fluid transmission, and direct skin contact under even the harshest of environments. More unpleasantly still, it appears able to employ a degree of strategic thinking in its actions, on a mass scale. For example, the Blight might spread through the air in the early stages of an outbreak to ensure wide saturation, then change to primarily fluidic transmission to render the spread more controllable for military purposes. It may even remain inert and asymptomatic for extended periods, and infected persons may be long unaware that they harbor the Blight at all. Naturally, the Blight's gestalt intelligence answers only to Helix himself.

This exceptional variability in form and behavior renders Tarnaci Blight very difficult to prevent, though diagnosis is as simple detecting Blight spores with a blood test. Care should be taken when collecting such samples, however, as those carrying dormant organisms have been known to suddenly become active when threatened with detection.

When the organism does decide to trigger the change, the effects are swift and hideous. Under most circumstances, the Blight attempts to kill its host through the most expedient method available, usually through attacking the central nervous system.

Should it succeed, the Blight begins its ugly work upon the fresh corpse. The result is a truly repugnant combination of rapid physical disfigurements, usually including dramatic mutation/reshaping of the body's flesh, accelerated tissue necrosis, and most unusually, the development of artificial metallic body parts. In effect, the corpse is transformed into a reanimated, heavily-cyborgized monster commonly referred to as a "Blightspawn".

For example, one human male corpse in initial testing degraded into a near-skeletal state within a matter of seconds, sprouted an integrated energy weapon of some sort on its right forearm, and proceeded to massacre several Helix-contracted scientists before being put down by Dzara Firemen.

Reanimated specimens display a bewildering variety of physical forms and adaptations, though most typically incorporate some sort of ranged weapon and melee weapon. Most will display a degree of adaptation to the environs in which they find themselves.

The Blight is used both as a deployable terror weapon and a laboratory utility, used in the creation of stable strains of cyborgized undead creatures of various types.