《The Fourth Faction》Chapter 06 - First specimens

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AN: ...

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Some of the children without psionist ability were used for experiment with minds. The zerg had no real self-awareness, aside from the cerebrates and the overmind. Without those, the zergs are mindless killing beasts. The Grand lord wanted to make administrators, just like the Overmind created cerebrates. He wanted one to help with general management, and one for defense and war. Those 2 would be his queens, the ones with the highest authority after him. After those 2 he also intended to make more administrators.

The zerg, without the management of the cerebrates and the Overmind, are mindless bloodthirsty killing beasts. He wanted the member of his race to have more self-awareness, a minimum of individual personality. If for a reason or another, a group found themselves without any administrators, they wouldn't turn into a chaotic mess. For that, he needed to engrave into his race something akin to pack mentality. He wanted both pack mentality and hive mind, so even if a group was separated from the rest they would survive on their own and still remain loyal to the rest of the race.

During all those years, he made experiments on sensory organs, muscles, bones, exosequeletons, skin, scales and other thing. He was still unsure of what would be the appearance of his queens, administrators, and other members of his race. As a former human, for him and his queens he wanted a humanoid appearance. As for the administrators and the rest of his race, he didn't know. He liked the idea of making differents monsters with differents specs, for differents uses. But he also though that wouldn't set him appart from the other zergs enough.

Also, he wasn't sure what kind of mean of reproduction to use. Still having the whole differents individuals come from the larvaes, or having more specific larvaes born from eggs from specific breeding queens. Or maybe ad sexual or asexual breeding. He wanted to keep a good control on the number of members of his race. The biggest advantage the zergs had over the other races were their overwhelming number. He wanted to restrain that as well to a certain extent since that also made them kind of destructive.

Finally, he was a former human. He grew up with games, movies, series, novels, music, arts, sports, clothes, cooking... He still missed all of those things a lot. The zergs had no culture, all they did was stay idle or kill. He wanted to change that. He spent quite some time on one of the basic part of the zergs, the creep. It was a symbol of the invasive nature of the zergs, consumming everything, rocks, plants, growing over water. And always the same color. Boring.

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The Grand lord was developping a new creep. The new one would be less invasive, looking like short and soft lawn and it would have random patern on its surface from different colors depending on the composition of the ground. More importantly, it would also grow plants and trees, all with some red, blue, green or yellow small bioluminescent bulges. Using its sensitivity to psionist emanations, it would be possible to decide the place they grow and what to grow to a certain extend.

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'Humm, it's already been about 9 years since my rebirth... Things are going along well for now. My new creep was really a good idea, much more pleasant to the eyes. But there is still no other psionist among the Gipis aside from those 2 girls. Alpha is 32 this year, I guess I'll keep her alive for another 8 years before assimilating her. The 2 psionist girls will take over her work afterward... I'll have Alpha teach one of them what she knows about fighting and weapons, and the other she will teach her what she knows about engineering.'

'I should also seriously decide what my race will be like. I already decided there would be the humanoid branch and the monster branch, with the humanoid branch having self-awareness close to that of a human, and the monster branch being a bit less than the humanoid branch. As for the administrators, I'll just make humanoid ones for the humanoid branch and monster ones for the monster branch.'

'Hmm, Starcraft was made by Blizzard... Maybe I should use elements from Warcraft or Diablo as source of inspiration? Should I make a mix between the dranei and the night elves or something like that? Wait, since I'm an alien, then maybe I should make predaliens or something like that, they would make good soldiers. Let's focus on the monster branch, it's more fun. I'll use them to expand my territory while assimilating other life forms, and when I've secured a large enough area, enough time would have passed for me to be fixed for the humanoid branch.'

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First, the Grand Lord remodeled the zerglings so they would look more like felins, and the end of its elongated tail was akin to a spiked mace. People would still be able to see the similarities between it and the zerglings, but wouldn't confuse one for the other. He decided to rename them zercons. They were his base ground unit, and to complement them he developped a base aerial unit.

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He got inspiration from the fly and the dragonfly to make them. They were a hybrid between an insect and a lizard, around 125cm tall and 225cm long. They were fast flyers, able to make sharp turns and hover, but couldn't fly backward. They could see in the visible and infrared spectrum with their third eye, the other 2 eyes were more like fly eyes, specialised in motion perception, and only able to see in infrared. They possessed small and sharp poisonous scythes on their forward pair of limbs as weapons.

He named this new unit the flycon. He then modified the “zergling colony” into a “micon colony”, with zercons generated in the lower floor and flycons generated in the upper floor, 9 of each. Of course it would also generate 2 micon drones. Now, his basic defense building also housed his basic ground and air units. Once he was done developping them, he actively started to expand toward all tunnels that didn't go over a certain maximum size, to avoid coming into contact with a big and strong life form.

Even with the zercons and the flycons cautiously scouting the tunnels and caves, the Grand lord though they weren't stealthly enough. So he started working on a stealth ability mixing that of a chameleon and the theory developped to make clothing with invisibility system. He wanted the skin to be like that of a chameleon, but at certain places there would be small eyes. What those eyes saw would be displayed on the skin on the other side of the body. Those eyes would see in the visible and infrared specter. The body would have a variable temperature, adjusting to that of the surroundings.

However, since he had no chameleon or something similar around, he would have to work on it from scratch. It would be the same for the body temperature control ability. He would also need to make a good nervous system to link the eyes with the related parts of the skin and issue the right commands to change the appearance of the skin. It would probably be possible to even change the texture of the skin to a certain extent. It would be used for 3 stealth units: a ground unit made for infiltration, an air unit made for scouting, and a space unit made for observation and information gathering.

Since he was living underground, he also developped a zerg specialised in digging the ground. The zerglings and hydralisk already have that ability at a basic level, using vibrations. For the mocon, as he named it, it was pushed further. It looked like a 50cm thick, 300cm long caterpillar, with 6 front limbs to dig the earth, and spike all over its body to help move around the ground. The mocon has 3 pairs of eyes, 1 that sees in infrared, 1 that sees in xrays, and 1 that sees in gama rays. X rays and gamma rays pass through solid objects, meaning through rock as well. It also has a strong sense of smell and taste to indentify the minerals.

It was clear that the area of the ground he was in had an incredibly large amount of caves and tunnels, and that they spread through a very wide zone. He though that some interesting places would be inaccessible without digging th ground. He also wanted to collect valuable minerals. The mocons were deployed at the edge of the territory covered by the creep, and started to dig in directions differents from where the tunnels led. Some of them were used in the inner territory to look for concealed caves and cristals. One was used to dig a small tunnel leading to the surface.

He was also interested in the surface of the planet. The sensors present in the rear part of the ship were able to do a basic analysis of the planet before the crash. So he knew the surface of the planet was covered in ice and snow, and there were no traces of advanced civilisation on the surface. He needed to explore the surface and observe the space around the planet, because at a point in time he would need to leave it. He would need to,make some kind of spaceport at a suitable place. Lastly, the place he currently was had volcanic activity. A single eruption could destroy everything, and he wanted to avoid that.

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AN: If you have ideas for the kind of zergs he can make (though I have some ideas already)...

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