Creature seed: Tillinghast’s Remora.

Blame this.

Tillinghast’s Remora

This delightful creature was first discovered in the 1920s by Dr. Tillinghast, a researcher of some notoriety who did not, alas, survive the moment of discovery. Ironically, this had nothing to do with the Remoras: in fact, a Tillinghast Remora might have been able to save the life of its erstwhile discoverer.  Certainly they’ve been a boon to metaphysical surveyors ever since.

Tillinghast’s Remoras do not exactly exist in our plane of existence; or, at least, they cannot normally interact with this plane of existence (due to a peculiarity in quantum mechanics that nobody reading this would be able to understand anyway).  However, if a particular device known as a Tillinghast Resonator is operating in the vicinity, the Remoras can then see us, and we them.  And then they can latch onto our bodies and start to parasite them.

This is actually not a bad thing; once the Resonator is switched back off, the Remoras become imperceptible to human senses again and they’re just eating waste energy anyway (Remora-ridden humans typically have slightly cool skin and their breath does not steam in cold weather, but there are no other obvious physiological effects). On the other hand: Tillinghast’s Remoras appear to… well, stink.  Or whatever the equivalent is, in their home plane of existence.  Nothing from their reality will willingly go near one, which means that a Remora-ridden human can much more safely use a Tillinghast Resonator to go exploring the Remoras’ home dimension.  Given that gleaning valuable ‘biological’ and ‘chemical’ samples from that place has become increasingly big business over the last ninety years, you can understand that there’s always a demand for competent Remora hosts.

Just… make sure that you’re getting infected with the right parasite, though.  There are a couple of creatures that ‘look’ just like a Tillinghast’s Remora; and one of them will make your brain implode, and turn all of the blood in your body to sand.  The other one is worse.