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. Continue reading Creature seed: Tillinghast’s Remora.
Pseudo-Hair
This particular creature is waiting for us on the first planet we find whose life has a common ancestor with ours (so if panspermia isn’t real, don’t worry about it). It’s an… interesting parasite: as you might guess, it infests a human’s hair follicles, effectively replacing a host’s hair. The effect looks rather like normal human hair, except for the random wild color shifts and the way that Pseudo-Hair moves independently. You can cut Pseudo-Hair without pain… to yourself; the organism itself doesn’t like it very much, although it won’t take lasting harm unless you do the equivalent of a depilatory.
Blame this.
Aqualions
If you are asking yourself “Why would anybody mutate a lion by giving it gills and making it amphibious?,” congratulations! You’re not a Mad Scientist. Mad Scientists never ask themselves questions like that. They’re often not self-aware enough to ask themselves “Why wouldn’t people mutate lions?” Mutagens are there to be used. Of course.
Of course.
In this particular case, Aqualions were the brainchild of Captain Sir Humphrey Walsingham-Reynolds, RNR, RCS, KCB, etc. etc. etc. According to his scattered, decaying, and somewhat gnawed notes the idea was to create a mascot for British ships of the line: Sir Humphrey was apparently quite upset that ‘sea lions’ did not even remotely live up to his mental images of them as a boy, and felt that the Empire needed something with a bit more puissance behind it. So he went and created lions that could breathe water as well as air (they needed the air in order to roar, of course). And could swim effectively underwater. And then he increased them in size to about one ton each and made them more aggressive, because why not?
The Malaysian Assassin Butterfly
Geez, have one butterfly species mutate into a magic-sensitive version with distinctive skull-and-crossbone markings, a stinger, and hallucinogenic venom and then suddenly everybody wants to go Full Metal Pulp Adventure on it. To begin with, the stinger is demonstrably incapable of piercing human skin. Seriously, some very, very unsavory people with a strange sense of drama conducted some rather immoral human testing along those lines. Second, sure, if you grind up a bunch of the butterflies you’ll end up with a paste that will make you see things. But you’d have to grind up a lot of butterflies to get the effect. It’s cheaper to go out and score some LSD, by far.
Continue reading Creature seed: the Malaysian Assassin Butterfly.
