Lifeforms · Unique · City/ Ruin
Corpse Buds
Nine times out of Ten, it's the undead that do the running.
Nine times out of ten, it’s the undead that do the running.
Not strictly animal or vegetable, the Corpse bud is a peculiar individual that shares characteristics from multiple kingdoms and species. In appearance, all corpse buds bear a shape of a large rounded top bud divided into four lateral segments, and a much longer, narrower bottom bud, also divided into four segments. Between the two halves are a set of four radial limbs, rounded on top and flat on the bottom, covered with tiny serrated hooks facing towards the body. In overall size, it’s limbs reach as wide as a spread hand, with the body being as thick as a fist. It is as long as a human hand from top to bottom.
Internally, the top bud of the corpse bud contains a bacteria filled membrane that produces the hydrogen that the corpse bud uses to stay aloft, and a series of fungal gills for the dispersal of spores for reproduction. The lower half of the bud contains a number of fine filaments, as well as a sharp barbed stinger containing a powerful local anaesthesia.
The Corpse Bud mobilizes by inflating its top bud, and steers by rotating its arms rapidly about its body. The corpse bud ordinarily drifts with the wind, orienting towards the scent of recent decay and death. It preys on the recently dead, burrowing the lower bud into the victim, using the anaesthesia in case the victim is dying, and not truly deceased. Once embedded, it releases its filaments into the body, replacing the current nervous system. This gives it full animation of the body, and allows the corpse bud to direct it.
Corpse buds are not a malevolent species, being primarily concerned with breaking down the host body for food, and infecting the body with spores in order to release them into air upon total decay of the host body. To preserve the corpse for these purpose, Corpse buds will seek out dry locations to prevent bacteria from destroying the corpses. This often causes a large number of corpse buds to gather in a single location.
In culture, Corpse buds are used to repair broken spines or degenerative diseases, as the sentient mind will easily overcome the mind of the non-sentient corpse bud. Once infected by a corpse bud, however, removal is usually fatal, and total nervous control is never completely regained. Thus, it is a technique often reserved for the elderly, or a last resort. Occasionally, prolonged contact with a sentient mind will give the corpse bud a rudimentary intelligence. In thse cases, the corpse bud becomes highly attached to the host body, and will continue to animate the host's skeleton long after the flesh has rotted away.
Necromancers and other dark sorcerers will often preserve the corpses of their victims magically, and infect them with corpse buds, creating traditional undead as well, so as to seed their lairs with undead both offensive and non, in order to throw their enemies off balance. They will also enslave the rudimentary minds of the corpse buds, and transform the docile things into a plague. There have also been accounts of magically transformed corpse buds with stronger minds and a taste for living flesh, but thus far all accounts are unproven rumors.
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diabolical. I do like the symbiotic (well sort of) relationship between living and dead, and it certainly lends some science to the traditional view of the undead. The bud itself was hard for me to envision without drawing it out, but once I had it visualized, very cool and very undead looking (if a strange plant-bacteria-thing can look undead.)
Upon thinking about it, I think you should have a 5. You presented a number of logical scenarios, and uses both malevolent and benign, as well as offering a more sinister version of the corpse bud that hunger for living flesh (dare I say sentient?)
Okay, do I understand this correctly? The corpse bud animates dead people and makes them... hump other dead people?
If it's so, it's too much for me, and you should put up a warning in the post header. This thing is on the front page, and Strolen's is not marked as 'mature'.
adjusted the reproductive cycle to something more benign, and added an interesting result to the corpse bud-living being relationship. I hope that I took all of the squicky out of the post, scaring people with them isn't the intention. They were supposed to be something more like a local pest with a bizzare method of reproduction, but I'm sorry that I made it too bizzare and squicky. I sincerely hope that I fixed it satisfactorily.
Well, you don't need to censor it, just warn people. It's not like no one here wrote anything NSFW.
Interesting. I didn't find anything here that I wouldn't have had to learn about in my 8th grade biology class. It was certainly less graphic than my sex ed class. Perhaps our ideas on NSFW are far in disparity, but I didn't find this selection all that gritty.
Well, because he already edited out the section about dead people bumping uglies with other dead people (at the time of your comment it was already gone).
Eww, nasty things. 4.5 for your trouble.