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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 16:08:51 GMT -5
This topic is partnered with Creatures: Wildlife.WHAT THE HELL IS THATSet is home to a great many horrors, nightmares, and vicious monstrosities bent on the extermination of all other life. While there are simple, logical creatures roaming many of its habitats, there are just as many hateful beasts of unexplainability roaming free. Many are frenzied mutants, self-evolved machines, or something stranger still, acting as blights and terrors of their home territory. Many are ambivalent, wandering creatures that serve as nothing more than aberrant spectacles. Some are even familiar; family, friends, and loved ones, called up from death or horrifically parodied by face-stealing abominations. The following is a list, likely not exhaustive, of known monsters and nightmares that exist for no discernible reason. These are separate from wildlife, who serve important ecological functions and are dependent on their environments. This is an open topic.
If you'd like to invent a new monster type, feel free to post it here! Since Erf is a big, wide-open place, just about anything's possible. Go nuts!
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 16:09:48 GMT -5
MEAT MONSTERS
Prevalence: High
Dispersion: Meatscapes
Diet: Anything that moves.
Reproduction: N/A
Prominent Traits:
- Meaty growths.
- May still resemble a once-living person.
- Limited to instinctual behavior only.
- Will kill and eat other meat monsters.
- May grow limbs, claws, tentacles, or mouths adapted for combat.
- High strength, rapid recovery from injuries.
- Cannot reproduce, must be created or converted by the meat.
Of the most sinister, wicked horrors on Set, the meat monsters are the most viscous. Drenched in tumors, growths, malformed appendages, and meaningless muscle, they are little more than gore possessed by a senseless, all-consuming rage. Human, sorassan, bird, or fish, the meat monsters come from all walks of life, joined together - sometimes literally - by the meat. They roam across the meatscapes endlessly, searching for prey and victims, driven to eat whatever they can find. Even other meat monsters are fair game; if it bleeds, they will eat it.
Predicting the shape of a meat monster is difficult. Infestation by the meat comes in many forms and ends in many ways. Some are no more than subtle infections that drive their host insane, leaving a feral husk possessed by meat within. Some result from immersions in the meat and end in a formless mass of motile muscle seeking to absorb everything it can find. Some may be simply born from the meat itself, discharged from an autotomizing tumor, and take the form of a roaming bundle of murderous entrails. Variety is endless within the meat.
By the time the meat takes hold, most wildlife is too overgrown to remain mobile, unable to remove the viscous growths in and on their body. As a result, most meat monsters were once intelligent creatures, most often cultists of the Cult of Meat and lost wanderers. Many sport new limbs, mouths, or even heads, erupting from hideous growths across their bodies. Many will see their limbs transform, reshaped into spikes, scythes, or monstrous claws. Some retain the motor control and memory to use weapons, up to and including firearms. Only a scarce handful are still recognizable as people. None are capable of recognizing others.
Killing a meat monster is a difficult task. Few rely on their brains as a means of control for their body; most are animated directly by the meat. Some may require a piece-by-piece vivisection process, excising each individual meaty growth until they are no longer mobile. Some must be completely destroyed; incinerated, dissolved, or shattered by an explosion. Only a handful can be killed conventionally - and those that can will often recover later. Many are immeasurably-powerful opponents, backed by strength enough to rip a man to pieces limb-by-limb.
The meat monsters share some level of group consciousness with one another that, under most circumstances, is entirely benign. In others, it may lead hungry monsters to one another, where they will fight until one can consume the other. In the presence of senior members of the Cult of Meat, however, this changes considerably. The shared consciousness enables the educated of the Cult's transformed to take tenuous control of most meat monsters, and thereby contain their insatiable hunger. They can then be formed into a fighting force alongside the Cult, known simply as the Touched. Few are ready to stand against a Cult warband backed by the Touched - and those that fail often become part of it.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 16:10:01 GMT -5
GLASS SIRENS
Prevalence: Moderate
Dispersion: Arctics, Underground
Diet: Humans
Reproduction: Spores
Prominent Traits:
- Translucent skin.
- Imitates dead or living humans or redworlders.
- Preys only on humans or redworlders; cannot digest redworlder tissues.
- Capable of quick learning and mimicking behavior, but not intelligent.
- Can use simple tools with sufficient education.
In the colder, lower parts of Set, horror walks with the face of a man and the tongue of a child. Towns near colder climes and deeper tunnels are the feeding grounds for face-stealing abominations borne purely of deception and malice. They have infiltrated countless communities, stolen innumerable identities, and dragged off scores of settlers. They are among the most hated of creatures on the planet and the most feared of monsters. They go by many names in many places. To most, they are known as the glass sirens.
At the core of any given glass siren is a beige, worm-like creature that contains most of their vital organs. Unfortunately, there is little much sense to be made of their internal structure; by all means, they simply should not be able to function. They rely a form of hemolymph roughly analogous to insects, yet are incapable of transporting it throughout their bodies. They require oxygen to survive, yet they have no way of taking it into their body once their sheath has formed. They require monumental amounts of energy to develop from a nymph, yet they seem to receive it from absolutely nothing. There is simply no explaining how or why glass sirens are able to exist, much less reproduce.
The core of the siren rests in a sheath of transparent, gelatinous skin. For most sirens, their sheath is an accurate replica of the human body, as though they were a glass sculpture flooded with bile. The sheath is capable of animating, reshaping, and hardening itself to further the illusion. Many mirror the faces of people they have seen, often with uncanny precision. Most sirens begin with a female body, but can and will alter their form to that of a male depending on experience. Likewise, sirens near redworlder communities will adjust their body's shape to match.
Glass sirens demonstrate a level of intellect sufficient to learn common human behaviors and imitate them as is appropriate. With enough education, some may even be able to hold limited conversations with vocabularies cobbled together on the spot. Some may even learn how to use primitive weapons, such as bludgeons or javelins, purely by observing humans. Many understand the significance of clothes in hiding their glassy skin. Heavy coats and stolen blankets are popular choices.
While glass sirens are capable of emulating their prey with striking accuracy, less than half apply their imitation appropriately. Many mismatch voices; female sirens may well speak with a man's voice, adults may babble like infants, or a sibling's voice might come from the face of his brother. Some learn behavior patterns and go on to apply them in wildly-incorrect situations. Some may point sticks at people as if they were rifles, others might scream obscenities as greetings. Some may even replicate the face of a still-living person and go on to approach that same individual.
Whether effective or useless, glass sirens' ability to mimic humans is centered purely on their diet. They are dedicated exclusively to hunting mankind, and show a prominent preference for spinal fluid and fatty tissue. They are lone hunters and often stalk caves, tundras, and the outskirts of colder towns, preying on lone travellers in surprise ambushes. Some are able to slip into settlements and work from sewers or alleys. Most work under cover of darkness or in blizzards.
Sirens near redworlder communities often attempt to prey on redworlders, but are entirely incapable of digesting any they might kill. Moreover, redworlder flesh is toxic and fatal to glass sirens - and a corpse may well kill off scores of sirens obliviously attempting to scavenge the victim. Further still, redworlders have a pointed advantage in uncovering infiltrating sirens. Most are incapable of imitating the bioluminescence of redworlder eyes. The slim few that do are rarely able to do so correctly. As a result, most can be identified with little more than eye contact.
Glass sirens reproduce by ejecting pea-sized spores through their sheath. Spores exposed to sunlight die instantaneously, which encourages the sirens' natural predisposition towards caves. Over the course of 1-2 years, the spore grows into a small, winged creature, roughly resemblant of a ten-legged lamprey. During this larval stage, the siren is engorged with a limited supply of venom, which it injects via a barb in its mouth. They feed on larger creatures such as mice, insects, and small birds. Though painful, the venom is not dangerous to humans and siren larva rarely attack humans.
When the larva exhausts its venom reserves, its mouth seals shut. Soon after, it metamorphoses into a nymph - even if the larva is mid-flight when the change takes hold. The metamorphosis begins first with a fleshy sheath growing over the siren's legs and wings. Eventually, the nymph takes on an appearance roughly similar to that of an adult, albeit significantly smaller. It is unknown how nymphs sustain their growth. They are completely immobile, unable to defend themselves, and are not cared for by other sirens. They cannot eat or breathe despite requiring an incredible amount of energy to continue growing. Nevertheless, most eventually reach their adult size and begin production of their sheath.
Adults growing a sheath first exude a large pool of sticky, caustic substances that leach nutrients from their surrounding environment. This substance eventually serves as a basis for their sheath. Likewise, its remnants account for the bile-like substance inside most mature sirens. The siren's body is eventually drawn into their sheath as their spine. The sheath most often take the form of a blank-faced, clean-scalped human female, with slight variances depending on factors encountered during the nymph stage. Soon after, the siren goes to work seeking out towns or travellers it may have encountered during its larval stage.
Glass sirens live roughly 12 to 15 years from first germination. Sirens in warmer climates tend to live significantly shorter lives. As they age, their skin begins to partially solidify, preventing them from effectively changing their disguise. The result is a hideous merger of every person they have tried to imitate since, fused together in a mass of mangled faces and conjoined limbs. Likewise, sirens are vulnerable to the cognitive effects of old age. Their ability to mimic others degrades to the point where they slur words, speak out of order, or flail body parts for no discernible reason.
Legends abound about glass sirens. Many claim they can only be killed by burning them alive. While false, the rumor does have merit, as incineration can often destroy spores before they can germinate. Many believe they were descendents - or ancestors - of the paleworlders, but glass sirens have been present on Set since it was first settled. Some say sirens can only claim the faces of people they have killed, which is entirely untrue. Others claim that sirens are drawn to candle light and eat wax, both of which are entirely unfounded. Their origins are completely unknown; only myth exists to explain them.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 16:10:18 GMT -5
MEATMEN
Prevalence: Low
Dispersion: Swamps, Forests, Jungles, Meatscapes
Diet: Carnivorous
Reproduction: Parasitization
Prominent Traits:
- Animated skeleton lacking jaw and hands.
- Mostly osseous; lacks vital organs save for simple muscles and nerve clusters.
- Survives by pulling still-living organic material from prey.
- Preys on anything living. Ignores plantlife. May attempt to prey on meatscape flesh.
- May take on traits from harvested prey depending on material taken.
- Limited intellect, but strongly social.
When the uninformed hear the name "meatmen", the first thought is usually meat monsters. They're not far off - they're just a few ticks shy on the disgust scale. Meatmen are a different spin on the same, bloody pattern, with a parasitic twist thrown in for good measure. They live by harvesting meat from other creatures, slathering themselves in a sanguine harvest of still-throbbing organs. The result is something straight out of the meat's rulebook; a twisted mass of gore piled on top of a sickly yellow skeleton.
Without stealing other people's meat, meatmen aren't much of a fit to their name. Underneath all that squishy stuff, they're just skeletons. They've got slim muscles, some kind of brain, and some kind of nervous system, but that's it. If they can't steal enough spleens, they die. They starve, run out of blood, and collapse. For that express purpose, their handless arms are sharpened into long, flat-tipped razors. Their ribs are motile and flexible. The surface of every bone and stolen organ is sticky with a constant stream of mucus, churned out by repurposed bone marrow. Everything's about finding more room and surface space for extra lungs and kidneys.
Organs on a meatman's body don't quite work. Mucus and scavenged skin bind them all tight and keep them proofed against the elements, but not much more. They're slapped together with a toddler's understanding of anatomy and an infant's understanding of biology. Somehow, against just about every biological norm, the messy blob of breasts and bladders keeps the meatman alive. Over time, the organs die off from limited blood supply or internal failures. Dead tissue is slowly broken down and digested by the meatman's mucus.
When meatmen go on the hunt, it's not pretty. They're not bright, so swarming melees and half-hearted ambushes are their usual attack strategies. On most occasions, they prefer taking live victims, but they're not fussed as long as it's fresh and warm. They cut into what they've caught and squish their stolen stomachs into wherever's convenient. Blood's soaked into their mucus. Flesh is wrapped around anything not yet covered up. Most try to parody humans and redworlders; faces go on the face, lungs in the chest, and so on. Most can never get the proportions or quantity right. A successful meatman might have a face for each side of his head - with none of them angled right.
Meatmen mostly operate in packs. They hobble along together in a miscoordinated mess of sanguinated skeletons, ganging up on anything they can find. They aren't intelligent, but most have a wicked kind of utilitarian approach. If they've got the upper hand and enough meat on their bones, they'll steal their prey whole and keep them as a living flesh farm. They're hosed up in mucus, left de-limbed at the pack's nest, and harvested over a long span of time for their body's replenishable parts. The mucus seals up their wounds, staves off infections, and keeps them stable. Most of the time, it's nothing but animals. Sometimes, it's someone.
Preferred prey are usually humans, ideally adults with fully-grown skeletons. Even then, meatmen have a wide diet. Rabbits, redworlders, mutants, and cyborgs are all fair game. Grey and pink meat can happily coexist on a meatman's bones - as long as they're not feeding into eachother. Even meatscape flesh finds its way onboard, either as an infection or as food. It's not at all out of the ordinary for meatmen to cluster near meatscapes for easy eating. Most end up turning into meat monsters, but they're nothing if not persistent.
Meatmen don't mind if it's humans or redworlders, but reproduction usually needs a humanoid victim. The reason why has never been nailed down. Men, women, apes, and aliens are all fair game as long as they've got the right kind of bones and a working supply of bone marrow. When the meatmen need to breed, a live specimen is hauled off to somewhere quiet. Just like any other day, they're carved up for their parts. Nearby meatmen leave the still-bloodied bones soaked in a spread of mucus. Multiple mucus donors are both common and usually more successful. After about a week spent mutating the marrow and growing basic organs, the skeleton gets up and joins the pack. Thriving meatmen usually leave surplus parts with the skeleton to give it a fighting chance.
Meatmen are all the same on the inside, but their morphology is funny in a macabre kind of way. Some meatmen turn out with the proportions to earn the name "meatladies". Children are valid targets for new meatmen, and they usually go by "meatboys" or "meatgirls". On occasion, meatmen get desperate and break the mold with new kinds of skeletons. Meatducks, meatdogs, and meatbucks are rare, but poignant sights. Meatmen sometimes take on meat infestations and end up with a few extra intestines. Names like "double dippers" and "meat masters" are regular terminology out near the meatscapes.
There's no solid explanation on how or why meatmen exist. They're not common, but they're stubborn. Most populations hardly break even with organ harvesting. They still rebound every summer like a seasonal plague. Hot, wet climates are preferred, especially in areas with plentiful caves and hiding places. Experts on the subject say there's no link between meatmen and the meat, but meatscapes are still favorites. Regions with booming settlements and loose security are attractive hunting grounds.
First encounters with meatmen happened around 760-800 OSC, around the later years of the Pioneer Network. They were found wandering around present-day Patzaghd, making a nuisance of themselves to local wildlife. Threats to settlements were mostly just gagging and groaning at leaked news reports. At the time, the Network launched a research effort to try to explain them and dull some of the shock. What they found - or if they found anything at all - has been lost to time. The meatmen have kept up appearances since.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 16:10:29 GMT -5
BLACK HORRORS
Prevalence: Low
Dispersion: Underground
Diet: Carnivorous
Reproduction: Fission
Prominent Traits:
- Shapeless mass of black slime.
- Takes on new forms by absorbing other creatures.
- Can imitate biomechanical traits of absorbed creatures.
- Preys on other creatures based on familiar pheromone signals and other scents.
- Favors prey with light, flexible bodies.
- Often congregates in large groups.
The name's simple. It gets the point across. It's black. It's horrifying. It'll probably eat you if you're breathing too hard. Black horrors are as monstrous as monsters get; they're big blobs of black goop living down where there's no light to be found. They'll eat you, use your body as a skeleton, and go hunting for your family. About a hundred more will follow along behind, slurping up everything in their path. Not many people get a chance to see one. Not many want to.
Black horrors are something like overgrown amoebas. They're large, amorphous masses of quasi-organelles and simplistic organs, packed into a black sheath of slime. Most are about the size of a large dog, but man-sized blobs aren't much out of the ordinary. Weight usually peaks at 130kg, at absolute heaviest, and averages about 95kg. They move by contracting and extending their digestive organs, which causes their entire body to contort and flop forward. Microscopic flagella on their exterior surfaces help keep them from aimlessly rolling around. The result isn't what could be described as lucid or efficient, but black horrors are surprisingly spry for their size.
Black horrors eat by chasing after familiar scents, usually animal pheromones they absorbed when they were young. They blob up into a horde of horrors and wiggle their way towards whatever's making the strongest smell. When they get there, they flop themselves on top of their prey and swallow them whole. It's not unusual for a couple or more horrors to fight over their food. They end up stuck to eachother, connected by the victim's legs, arms, or tails. Over the course of a few weeks, depending on prey size and digestability, movement steadily breaks down the meal. Each contraction squirts digestive fluids onto it, while each extension simply tears it apart.
Food selection is primarily limited to things that move and give off strong scents. Black horrors avoid eating plantlife; most are unable to digest plant matter in bulk. Horrors that get too confused with plants end up as bloated, half-motile masses of unhappy slime. Likewise, black horrors can't digest redworlders or anything related to them. For reasons presently beyond science, doing so turns both parties into a weeping well of acids and poisons. Aliens with similar palatability problems usually end in a slow, painful death for the horror.
Where black horrors really get their name is what they do with their food. Digestion isn't good enough for them. Instead, if the prey's big enough, they'll mould themselves around it. They'll squeeze themselves to fit skeletal structures, distend their skin to wrap around faces. They'll make educated guesses on how something walks and start moving legs to match. Jaws, teeth, and claws might be exposed through their skin for the horror to put to use. Black horrors aren't intelligent, but if there's one thing they're good at, it's following an act.
More terrible still is that being eaten by a horror usually isn't fatal right away. It's awful, disgusting, and traumatizing, but the worst of it is the feeling of being stuck in a roiling sewer. Black horrors usually favor animals as prey, but people aren't off the table. Sometimes, when someone disappears in the night, they come back the next day - leading a horde of horrors chasing their family's scent. Spacers and Loonies get it the worst. Protective suits usually mean that the horror's digestive juices can't kill you. Instead of dying somewhere along the way, they end up a permanent resident of the blob. Even after giving up to starvation or suffocation, their suit and skeleton hang on as the horror's new look.
Black horrors aren't social, but they're not loners. They're naturally drawn to scents given off by familiar prey, which means they usually cluster together. Over enough time, the horde grows into an apocalyptic swarm of angry slimes. They spend their off days sniffing eachother as potential food sources. Cannibalism isn't all that uncommon; every once in a while, a horror just stinks so much that its friends decide they're a free meal. Likewise, when a scent drifts over the swarm, they all move together. Some just chase after their stink-buddies, others are following food on their own. When horrors come out for food, it's not far off from a crab invasion.
Black horrors reproduce through fission, not unlike giant bacteria. After reaching adulthood, they split into two new horrors every two years. Food availability and overall survivability can halve or even quarter that span of time. Left alone in a cage full of petrified pigs, a horror might split every month instead. It's not out of the ordinary for a horror to divide with food still inside it. Sometimes, it just tears the food in half. Sometimes, it drops them to the floor for the others to fight over. On occasion, the food's still alive in all that fuss - and it might just get away.
The two new horrors produced from fission are essentially new individuals entirely. They have to relearn everything the horror before them might've known. They go out into the wilderness and follow smells that seem savory. They mostly hunt by themselves, given they're usually chasing scents the swarm isn't familiar with. Usually, they're the trailblazers; the young adventurers that find new and exciting people to eat. On occasion, they bring back enough of the smell that the swarm decides it's worth eating.
Black horrors live in swarms that usually peak at 50 individuals. They favor the underground above all - something about sunlight and all the smells of the world above keep them away. Colder areas with dry climates usually see more horrors poking around above the surface. Penetration into the underground follows a similar pattern to human settlement. They're most common at the places just under the surface and slowly taper off the further down you get. There's a big spike in numbers near the Great Filter, then it all starts dropping off again.
No one's really sure when the first black horror was found. Loonies claim it was some time during the days of Madness Command Post, back in the murk of ancient times. No one has any hard facts to support it. Horrors appear in records from the Pioneer Network as far back as around 550 OSC. Some suggest the unionites had even brought some onboard Unity Station for study, back before the Hard Purge of 866. Even that claim's without much of an answer; ask a unionite and they'll tell you to ask a redworlder where the data is.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 17:44:15 GMT -5
CUTTER DRONES
Prevalence: Low
Dispersion: Arctics, Husklands; Darimesa, Patzaghd, Orbit
Diet: Machines, Electronics
Reproduction: Unknown
Prominent Traits:
- Artificial; aerial disassembly drone.
- Array of sharpened spikes and blades arranged around a central thruster.
- Outfitted with deconstruction tools, such as saws and cutting torches.
- Preys primarily on garbage haulers and other complex machines.
- Clusters in large swarms.
Monsters aren't always made out of meat. They aren't always horrible freaks bubbled up from condensed spite, either. The cutter drones fit both bills. A long time ago, someone had the idea to build a hauler-hunter; a robot to chew up other robots back when they were all causing a stir. It worked, for a while - up until the cutters got loose and started breeding out in the wild. Nowadays, cutter drones stalk the cold places on Set, looking for hardware to dismantle for repairs and fuel. They're a nuisance and a plague that's kept technology in check wherever they roam.
Cutter drones are something like flying knives. They're an engine, a sensor array, and a big collection of sloppily-welded blades circled around their guts in the middle. Tiny legs stick out from the center, capped in saws, welders, and hands. At rest, they're nothing but landing gear. When they're out hunting, they're the cutter's mouthparts. Everything is made of scrap and salvage the little monster's managed to steal away with. Old parts are preened of rust, cleaned of gunk, and kept as fresh and presentable as the drone can manage. As much as they might be aesthetically-challenged in the shape department, cutters usually find a way to look sleek for what they've got.
When it comes to hunting, the name says it all. Cutters track down other machines by way of simple cues, like exhaust, noise, and thermal signature. They home in like missiles once they've got a target, using their big ramming knives to gouge themselves into their prey's hull. Once they've got a good footing - or the target stops moving - they cut into it with their torches and welders. Stolen pieces are tucked into little brackets and cargo nets improvised near the back. Once the cutter's done, it heads off to its roost and sets to work fixing itself up with its new goods.
Cutters band together in big swarms and flocks that all work from a central roost. Most coordinate eachother with a jury-rigged neural network that helps collate sensor reports for better hunting efficiency. Rivalry is non-existent; when one cutter swarm finds another, the larger absorbs the smaller without so much as a single second of negotiation. Cutters of the same flock nest in cool, dry places, most often caves or abandoned buildings. Territory means nothing. If a swarm's found, they won't try to shoo anything away. If it's attacked in its den, the whole flock will empty out and start hunting for a new hive. Dead or damaged cutters serve as simple cues on where not to rest and where not to hunt.
Nesting preference is what keeps the cutters confined to specific locales. Just about every part of a cutter generates a terrifying amount of heat. Engines, processors, sensors, tool arms - if it's more complicated than a solid sheet of metal, it'll set something on fire if it gets too close. To keep up with their cooling demands, cutters stay close to snowy terrain or dark-side nebulae in orbit. Prey populations follow close behind. Garbage hauler processing plants sometimes host massive hives of cutters, waiting to jump any droneships coming in for a landing. Old derelicts in the Scuttler Slice are prime nesting grounds - and one of the main reasons why point defense guns are mandatory around junk fields.
No one knows how cutter drones breed. Not a single person on the planet has ever seen a cutter build another cutter. Scientific inquiry has turned up absolutely nothing. Most spacers think they're built by harvester drones as last-ditch efforts to find new salvage opportunities. People on the ground claim they're slapped together by harvester-infected AIs in and around Cloneston. Legend on both sides claims that they infect garbage haulers when they dig into them, prompting the hauler to start building cutters. The myth has plenty of grounding; it's not out of the ordinary to find a roaming hauler filled to the brim with nesting, docile cutters.
The relationship between the cutters and the haulers goes deeper than just legend. Somewhere between 680 and 800 OSC, the garbage hauler network was under attack by the harvester drones. AIs were working their way into hauler systems, ransacking processing centers, and flinging trash everywhere. Some were even escaping out into space. There was so much going on at once that the Pioneer Network couldn't keep up with it. They needed an autonomous solution - one that could beat the harvesters at their own game. Somewhere on the drawing board, the cutter drones came into the picture.
The cutters were meant to do precisely what they do today. They were meant to hunt down harvester-infected systems, rip them apart, and sustain themselves on the scrap. They could fly in just about all weather conditions, handle operations up in orbit, and solve complex salvage problems by themselves. They were designed to work off of neural networks that could dynamically rebuild and restructure themselves, all while reporting to Pioneer supervisors. They were cheap, hardy, and had systems so simple even the harvesters had trouble hijacking them. The plan was solid.
It was, and, for a time, it worked. Cutters brought down ailing and infected haulers in big, tightly-managed swarms. Harvester drone hideaways turned to parts on the wind when the cutters caught wind of them. Not long after, somewhere around 750 or 850 OSC, the project grew its own legs and ran off. Cutter networks stopped reporting to their handlers. Flocks started prowling for anything they could find; garbage, derelicts, mobile phones, pacemakers. No one knew why. Most suspected the harvesters had finally come up with a countermeasure. No one had any proof to back it up.
At first, it seemed as if the problem would - eventually - take care of itself. The cutters had no way to replenish their numbers. Every drone was built in a factory. Once manufacturing stopped, their numbers followed suit. Wild cutters ran afoul of parts shortages, bad weather, and Pioneer recovery efforts. Slowly, but surely, the cutters drifted into extinction. That changed when the Splinter Wars hit, between 780 and 850 OSC. In all the chaos, the cutters came back. Their numbers soared. They went right to work harassing Pioneer and Third Invader ships alike.
The Network couldn't rein them in anymore. They were too busy staring down the apocalypse. Their only explanation for it was that the cutters had simply escaped; their drones had jumped out of storage when orbital bombing runs started knocking out Pioneer facilities. As the war dragged on, the explanation lost its merit. More and more cutter drones came into existence, even as more and more flocks were reported as wiped out. In the end, the cutters outlived the Network. When the Big Split happened and the Space Loonies came up into orbit, there were already a few swarms waiting for them.
These days, the cutters have scaled back. Pioneer-produced drones could handle all temperature conditions. Some could even handle atmospheric re-entry. Modern-day cutters run too hot to be anywhere but ice clouds in space or skies over the tundra planetside. Some Pioneer models still kick around in the less-travelled parts of space and Set, but most are lumped in with their sweatier kin. To this day, not one concrete explanation has emerged on how the cutters continue to sustain their numbers. One way or another, just like the haulers they were made to hunt, the cutters are here to stay.
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