Thursday, June 16, 2022

Greater Homunculus, Malformed

A greater malformed homunculus is a tortured creature, controlled by an overpowering conviction that they are incomplete. They wander the world, seeking new body parts to add to themselves.

What it wants: New body parts. They will take anything new, cutting it from its former owner as best they can (with whatever claws, pincers, or fangs they have already acquired) and attaching it to themselves. Attachment is simple, as their blood has a mysterious way of melding flesh. The homunculus needs only to slice itself open and jam the new part into the wound, and the blood will rapidly clot and bind. When the wound heals, the new organ will be perfectly integrated into the homunculus.

What it needs: Food. Greater homunculi have prodigious appetites that only grow stronger as they add to themselves. Their mismatched bodies have strange nutritional needs, needs that can change seemingly at random as their metabolisms shift.

Morale: Cautious. They will only fight if they believe they can win, and will not hesitate to flee if they begin to lose. They do not feel pain, but sense damage and seek to avoid it.

What happens if you eat it: Greater malformed homunculi are made entirely out of flesh, and so are as edible as any animal. What animal any given part was originally part of can be impossible to determine, however, making for a challenge for chefs, a delight for the culinarily adventurous, and a toxic surprise for the unlucky.

What can be crafted out of it: Greater homunculi blood is the basis of many powerful medicines. Note that in its raw form it is highly dangerous, able to fuse flesh to flesh even in small amounts. Many foolhardy adventuring parties have had to be surgically separated after being inadvertently conjoined by blood.

Thursday, June 9, 2022

Chisel Poem

 Noah awoke in the dark, no lights being required for a ship whose occupants were all supposed to be in suspension. He lay there for an unmeasured length of time, until he was sure that no one else would awaken, that it was only him, that there had been a mistake, and that he was now the sole resident of a light-hugging sarcophagus filled with those sleeping so deeply they were legally dead.

After the sobbing, the praying, and the screaming, he sought only to escape. He drowned himself in fiction of every medium, the more colorful the better, for decades. Until finally he realized he was closer to the end of his life than the beginning, and considered he could still leave some sort of legacy. He found a power tool leftover from the ship's construction behind a bulkhead, and began to engrave his thoughts into the surface of the ship. Every floor, ceiling, and wall became his parchment as he wrote a single massive poem encompassing his life, his thoughts, and the dream that had been denied him.

The other passengers awoke to find their ship transformed, and they took his poem with them onto the new world.