#the evolution of horror

[thewormsingularityisnear]

[rizzager]

Warden species

[bagofbonesmp3]

thinking about horror genres and indigenous readings again... the home invasion genre is largely the settler's fear of being colonized

[charyou-tree]

I need people to understand that Uranium is an eldritch horror

I'm not talking about radiation, or nuclear weapons, or anything that you can do with uranium, I mean its mere existence on Earth is a reminder of cosmic horrors on a scale you can barely conceive of.

When a nuclear power plant uses Uranium to boil water and spin steam turbines to keep the lights on, they're unleashing the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star.

Allow me to elaborate:

In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. The primordial fires of the Big Bang produced almost exclusively the two lightest elements, along with a minuscule trace of lithium. It was a start, but that's not much to build a universe out of. Fortunately, the universe is full of element factories. We call them "stars".

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion, smooshing light elements together to make heavier elements, and releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process, powering the star and making it shine. This goes on for millions to billions of years depending on the stars mass (although not how you might think, the bigger stars die young), the vast majority of that time spent fusing hydrogen into yet more helium. Eventually, the hydrogen in the core starts to run low, and if the star is massive enough it starts to fuse helium into carbon, then oxygen, neon, and so on up through successively heavier elements.

There's a limit to this though:

This chart shows how much energy is released if you were to create a given element/isotope out of the raw protons and neutrons that make it up, the Nuclear Binding Energy. Like in everyday life, rolling downhill on this chart releases energy. So, starting from hydrogen on the far left you can rapidly drop down to helium-4 releasing a ton of energy, and then from there to carbon-12 releasing a fair bit more.

But, at the bottom of this curve is iron-56, the most stable isotope. This is the most efficient way to pack protons and neutrons together, and forming it releases some energy. But once its formed, that's it. You're done. Its already the most stable, you can't get any more energy out of it, and in fact if you want to do anything to it and make it into a different element you're going to have to put energy in.

So, when a massive star's core starts to fill up with iron, the star is doomed. Iron is like ash from the nuclear fire that powers stars, its what's leftover when all the fuel is used up. When this happens, the core of the star isn't producing energy and can't support itself anymore and catastrophically collapses, triggering a supernova explosion which heralds the death of the star.

What kind of stellar-corpse gets left behind depends again on how massive the star is. If its really big, more than ~30 times the mass of the sun and its probably going to form a black hole and whatever was in there is gone for good. But if the star is a bit less massive, between 8-25 solar masses, it leaves behind a marginally less-destroyed corpse.

The immense weight of the outer layers of the star falling down on the core compresses the electrons of the atoms into their nuclei, resulting in them reacting with protons and turning them all into neutrons, which creates a big ball of almost pure neutrons a couple miles across, but containing the entire mass of the star's core, 3-5 sun's worth.

This is the undead heart of the former star: a neutron star.

If, like many stars, this one wasn't alone but had a sibling, it can end up with two neuron stars orbiting each other, like a pair of zombies acting out their former lives. If they get close enough together, their intense gravity warps the fabric of spacetime as they orbit, radiating away their orbital energy as gravitational waves, slowing them down and bringing them closer together until they eventually collide.

The resulting kilonova explosion destroys both of the neutron stars, most likely rendering the majority of what's left into a black hole, but not before throwing out a massive cloud of neutron-rich shrapnel. This elder-god blood-splatter from the collision of the undead hearts of former stars contains massive nuclei with hundreds to thousands of neutrons, the vast majority of which are heinously unstable and decay away in milliseconds or less. Most of their decay products are also unstable and decay quickly as well, eventually falling apart into small enough clusters to be stable and drift off into the universe becoming part of the cosmic dust between the stars.

However,

Some of the resulting massive elements are merely almost stable. They would like to decay, but for quantum-physics reasons decaying is hard and slow for them, so they stick around much longer than you might expect. Uranium is one such element, with U-238 having a half-life of around 4.5 billion years, about the same as the age of the Earth, and its spicier cousin U-235 which still has a respectable 200 million year half life.

These almost-stable isotopes were only able to be created in the fiery excess of energy in a neutron star collision, and are the only ones that stick around long enough to carry a fraction of that energy to the era where hairless apes could figure out that a particular black rock made of them was emitting some kind of invisible energy.

So as I said at the beginning, Uranium is significant because it stores the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star, and we can release that energy at will if we set it up just right.

When you say it like that, is it any shock that the energy in question will melt your face off and rot your bones from the inside if you stay near it too long?

[filurig]

SO my old basilisk refs and things felt grossly outdated esp now bcs i have changed some things about them. So now have a new ref and some more extra informations about them. or at least the basilisk community most relevant to pareidolia...

[crawlingdrawing]

Skip to chapter 8 part 2

The Cage - Chapter Eight, part one

<- previous next ->

master post

Well, we reached the bottom. This is as bad as it gets :(

[hxudini-dreams]

lucian

Underworld (2003)

[whereserpentswalk]

You're a parasite possessing a human’s body. The hunan in question was doomed the momment they touched you. Of course, you didn't know it at the time, your species is only as intelligent as what it latches on to, and you happened to latch on to one of about a dozen truly sapient species in the known universe. You killed them, but you were no smarter than a bug when you killed them.

You exist in this weird space between humanity and inhumanity. Your body is human, your voice a human’s voice, your face a human’s face, but none of that is yourse, you're a creature that crawled in through that body’s mouth and replaced the brain. They were just someone searching around an alien forest, you barely know who they were, and now you're basically puppeting their corpse.

There are also ways you're not human. Most people who meet you assume genetic modification, cybernetic implants, or just some sort of mental illness makes you act the way you do. You useally don't admit what it actually is. Your mannerisms are off, even though you feel human emotions your voice and face rarely reflect them well. When you infected the body, your very nature changed it, you neutered it and made it soft and sexless, you made it take in the minimum amount of food making it skinny and frail. You feel more like a monster than you would if you looked more inhuman, like you're puppeting a corpse.

Still you have freinds, a steady job, a human life on a planet far away from the one you originated from. Despite everything people like you, there are humans who care about you despite you not even being one. You never told them of course, you just said it was faulty cybernetics. But you can live life, read books, enjoy the view of the rain from your apartment, listen to music faintly playing on a street corner. And it all feels stolen, like you can only enjoy all of this because you're stealing someone else's chance at it. The thought rarely crosses your mind but it does so frequently enough, perhaps once every few months, to truly upset you with what you are, to make you feel like everyone who loves you only loves you because they think you're something you're not. You remember that you're an invasive species, that you have no mother or father, that your very existence isn't meant to be.

There was a time when you met someone on the street who knew the body you once inhabited. She recognized it, ran up to you wanting to talk to you, saying she thought you were dead. When you came clean to her you expected to be horrified, to want to hurt you. She didn't. She said she understood, and that she's happy the person your inhabiting still exists in some regard. A lot of people die in the forest, how blessed your body was to birth something new.

[victoryrifle]

UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (2006)

dir. Len Wiseman

[georgeromeros]

Underworld: Evolution (2006) dir. Len Wiseman

[minakomatsuoka]

Birdbug horror

Sometimes it useful to turn around, you never know if you are alone in the dark…

•

Creatures created by @iguanodont

[thequantumranger]

🧛‍👻 Halloween 2023 🎃🦇

Underworld: Evolution (2006)

[thebad-lydrawn-sanses]

Killer's/Horror's Species (Homo Venator Carcharodon // Human Hunter Shark)

  Upper Half: cartilage and muscle, mostly

  Mouth: large mouth full of very sharp teeth (lined in red for easy viewing)

  Caudal (Tail) Fin: vertical

  Top Fins: dorsal fins (2)

  Side Fins: pectoral fins (4)

  Bottom Fin: anal fin (1)

  Variation 1: stops growing once an adult

  Variation 2: continues growing once an adult

  Both: grow from birth like sharks

  Both: ages only slightly faster than humans

  Diet: evolved to primarily eat humans (can digest other things)

  Extra Notes: no swim bladders, no gills

Dust/Cross's Species (Tristis Apparentia Anguilliformes // Sad-Looking Eel)

  everything is covered in mucus

  Below Upper Body: stomach

  dorsal fin (1)

  anal fin (1)

  Hair: oddly shaped fin (mimics hair)

  Mouth: eel teefers

  Face and Hands: fine motor controls

  Face: every facial expressions is purposeful/voluntary except for the pupil direction

  Eyes: rolled back eyes are the default

  False Thumbs: dewclaws, not thumbs

  Hunting: grab food and shove into mouth

  Woman 1: it- it looks human??

  Woman 2: WHY DO YOU HAVE A FACE, SIR? CEASE

  Eel: <- mermaid ancestor

  Evolution: eels split into anti-social and humanoid due to humans

Main/Stereotypical/Common Mermaid (Homo Venator Bivalvia // Human Hunter Clam)

  a beautiful, conventionally attractive HOLY SHIT

  Stem of Lure: grabs shit

  Body: clam creature

  Body: clam with teeth

  after hatching

  maturity (will never stop growing)

  Lure: <- stagnant face, but eyes latch onto movement (if the clam is big enough it'll eat the whole ship)

  live pirate reaction

Pirate 2: TELL HER TO GO AWAY

Pirate 1: FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME I'M NOT A MERM-

Killer: HOW ARE YOU EATING THROUGH YOUR UPPER MOUTH THAT IS ILLEGAL

[cloudfishh]

Such a silly. Such a silly goofy goober.

[styllwaters]

351 / GAZI-MIAH

At last this monster of a ref is finished. Introducing the first canon Knight character for Vivere 44!

351 is a mountain Knight from Ferhaht, though their host is part Fejga; hence the brown fur and stocky build. They act as the secondary antagonist in parts 1 and 2 of the story. In part 3, the final 'season', they feature as a protagonist. 351 starts out as a ruthless, aggressive soldier working for Genizix, intent on completing the mission assigned to them. Under the direction of their officer, 909, 351 has been dispatched to quickly and efficiently eliminate targets who threaten to expose the company's activities in the Zhagaviit galaxy.

Eventually they come to realise that they are being manipulated by both the weapons company and their abusive superior, and in part 2 351 challenges 909. Their fight results in 351 gaining an array of scars and a terrifying near-death experience, and though they survive, they are permanently mentally separated. Unable to go into the Trance which binds the consciousnesses of the Helmet and the Host, they must learn how to work together as two people again. 351 escapes to their homeplanet of Ettera, surviving in the wild as they race against time to deliver an important message and rediscover who they are. During part 3, they discard their identification number and take on a new name, Gazi-miah.

More in-depth lore, facts, and extra art below the cut!

BACKSTORY

[cw: abuse, drug use, general dark themes]

351 was always told that they were born in Genizix like 909, though this is not the case at all. 351 had a life before they were turned into a killing machine, living on the Ihmna Stretch with their Ferhahti order. Their life was upturned on the day of their scouting Expedition, a journey that all Knight squires must take on before they can become full soldiers (More on Knight social structure here). They were tasked to deliver a message to an allied order along with two other temporary scouts. Upon arrival, however, instead of friendly greetings they were met with a chilling scene - the order was being attacked by another, the two groups set against each other in a fearsome battle. The fight was secretly orchestrated by Genizix in a plot to evaluate the strongest soldiers to recruit to their cause, unbeknownst to anyone but them. Feeling that it was necessary to aid their allies, 351 and their peers rushed into battle. They fought fiercely, but the young Knights were up against fully-fledged soldiers and 351's companions perished. 351 themselves was severely injured, and in the aftermath, blacked out - but not before catching a glimpse of strange figures.

When they awoke, they were not on Ettera any more; rather an unfamiliar place with black walls and machines. They could barely remember anything from the night before; and slowly the rest of their memories on their homeplanet receded as Genizix toxins that they were injected with took effect. Later, 351 would be introduced to 909, an experienced Knight officer with an extensive history of working for Genizix, and placed in their unit. They were assigned a number for a name and moulded into the perfect killing machine. 909 fed 351 a constant stream of lies about where they came from, and like all soldiers recruited into the system, promised that in fighting for the company they had a chance to participate in something greater than themselves; to see the real universe outside of Zhagaviit. But 351 was driven more by fear than the potential for glory. They had seen what happened to those who disobeyed the higher-ups, and what could happen to them if they did not complete the missions.

909 stripped 351 of their individuality and left nothing but brute force and a desire to please. What the agent feared more even than Genizix was invoking 909's anger, so they pushed themselves to do any dirty work asked of them. The organisation became their whole world, their 'family', and 909 made sure they could never leave their clutches - manipulating them, threatening them and twisting their worldview. The process was sped up by specialised toxins designed by Genizix intended to distort perception and slow brain activity, inducing a dreamlike state. On Knights, this had the effect of triggering and enhancing the Trance, making it incredibly difficult for one to mentally separate the helmet from the host. With time 351 came to believe that they were one person, and they had no reason to think otherwise as their exposure to information was carefully controlled. 351 was conditioned to see their targets as non-sophont and they were rewarded for using cruel tactics. The more time they spent with 909, the more they began to lose their sense of self entirely until they were nothing but a weapon. Such is the fate of most soldiers who have wound up working for Genizix.

Despite the deep emotional (and physical) scarring and conditioning, during the events of Vivere 44 seeds of doubt are planted in 351's minds. These would only germinate further as they gain more clarity of their situation. Standing up to 909 was the first step they took towards breaking free of their chains, although it came with a cost. 351's host was physically Separated from their helmet in the fight, an injury which in most cases is lethal. They were repaired by a scientist who stitched them back together and managed to salvage a sliver of the bond which connected their minds. 351 could never enter the Trance again, though the helmet and host could still exchange thoughts between each other. As they were two separate entities now, the helmet guides the blind host with directions.

Instructed by the scientist (an Arrow named Nimbus, who will be introduced later) 351 left the facility on a new mission - to deliver an urgent message to Jes-ren, a Kaata Plains Knight living on a Ranch on Ettera. They traversed the land they once called home, now unfamiliar to them, relearning how to work together as a pair that might as well be complete strangers to each other. They recover their memories; or at the very least parts of it, as they cannot remember their original name. However, they gain a new one; Gazitkaar-Miahlad [meaning: lost messenger / returned to us].

The road is long and tremendously difficult; Gazi-miah struggles to unlearn years of aggression, addiction and lies, all the while carrying immense trauma. They eventually find peace, and settle down with Jes-ren in Kaat following the climax.

PERSONALITY

During their time at Genizix, agent 351 picked up on a lot of nasty habits and traits from 909 who brought out their worst attributes. They became merciless, taught to discard feelings and remorse. 351 was not afraid to make a show of their strength, and at times was needlessly cruel and taunting. The toxins affecting their nervous system tended to spur on their host's prey drive to a concerning degree, and a part of them enjoyed the power trip they got from hunting down targets. Though everything they did, they did for 909's approval - and to avoid getting disposed of by Genizix.

When their host and helmet were Separated, and the effects of the toxins wore off, gradually their aggressive attributes took a backseat as they grappled with their new situation. With great effort they gain an understanding of both the horrors they went through and the atrocities they committed for the sake of a corrupted system.

Once they escape Genizix's hold, it becomes clear that 351 is incredibly socially inept and any interaction that isn't violence or taking orders is new territory for them. Freedom and agency are difficult concepts for them to grasp, but with the aid of others around them they begin to adjust to their new life.

The helmet, Miahlad (my-a-lad) is the more practical of the two. He has one goal in mind; keeping the both of them safe. Miah is resourceful and smart, though when it comes to social interaction he's just as clueless as his host. This doesn't stop him from offering advice via their mind-link. He is firm, distrustful, and judgemental, but cares deeply for Gazitkaar even if he won't say it. At first he is reluctant to uncover the truth in fear that it will harm them both, preferring to stick to familiar ground. Despite his realistic worldview, more than once he considers going back to Genizix due to the simple fact that it's all they've ever known - even if it hurt them. As a helmet he cannot speak out loud but relearns sign language to communicate with other knights.

The host, Gazitkaar (gaz-it-car) is constantly questioning everything. She is less focused on the personal safety and wellbeing of the Knight body and more concerned with the wider truth, always seeking to know more. Gazi is not one to back down from a challenge, whether it be traversing dangerous territory or mastering a new skill. But like Miah, she is averse to touch, and will bite if boundaries are pushed far enough. She is more open to listening than her helmet, and is a fast learner. Though she is more adaptable than Miah, her curiosity can sometimes go unchecked and lead them into trouble.

EXTRAS

They are 37 years old and tower over everyone, including other Knights. Their prescence could fill a whole room.

The engraved bone necklace was given to them by a Polar Knight commander from Ehtte Thannoeh where they first landed on Ettera. The carving depicts an Aikka deity whose horn always points northwards, and is said to watch over lost travelers from the northern lights.

Gazi-miah's piercings were put in by the scientist Nimbus, intended to firmly fix the helmet to the host.

As a Genizix agent their build is very toned and muscular due to their intense training and strength-enhancing substances which also speed up wound recovery. Such a lifestyle was placing immense stress on their body, and as they spent more time on Ettera they gained more weight and adopted a healthier diet.

Their build and design is inspired by bulls and rottweilers.

Their fur is spiky due to chemicals and unnatural cleaning products resulting in an unpleasant, rough texture. In the future it becomes softer thanks to proper grooming.

Here's some of the first concept art I have of them (and also showcases their pelt colours better)

Aaand a simplified version of the ref without all the notes for your viewing pleasure.

I'll stop here before this post gets insanely long but if you have any questions I shall be delighted to answer!! ;] Thanks for listening to my tedtalk