Xenobiology & Xenofauna: Antagonist Organs and You

[ChevyChevron]

At present, the purpose of Xenobiology is centered almost entirely around slimes. In my opinion, slime science is largely a relic of ye olden days of SS13 and has little purpose in an HRP environment. Be that as it may, I'm not going to argue for the removal of slimes as I would prefer to see them reworked into a more appropriate form. I don't have any ideas for that, so instead I'm going to share my ideas for antag organs.

A feature of many rounds of changeling or vampire I've participated in has been, on the occasion where not only has the antagonist been captured by security and they're able to transport them without so much risk that it would be impractical, taking the sucker down to xenobiology to have the xenobiologist on staff look at them. Figure out what they are. Maybe threaten a vivisection or two.

My idea is simple: Add gameplay for the xenobiologist in the form of vivisecting various forms of alien life, from carp to changelings, and give the research department rewards for carrying out this task. In the case of most simplemobs, getting a live animal on the surgery table would give the scientist the opportunity to extract intact organs from them. Merely butchering the carcass would likely ruin these delicate organs, and so there would need to be some way to render an animal unconscious that it might be transported safely to the table. Maybe a fire selector could be added to the xenofauna guns in the checkpoint, it would give security a reason to interact with science more often.

These organs would be usable in one of three ways: You could stick them in the destructive analyzer and they would likely be quite valuable earlier in the round. You could package them up and sell them on the cargo shuttle. Or, finally, recipes could be added that use these organs. Maybe space carp livers are a delicacy in Dominia or something.

The second part of this suggestion is to add new and exciting organs to various antagonists. Specifically; Changelings, Cultists, Loners, and Vampires. If we still had wizards, they'd be on this list as well.

Changelings and Vampires would have various regular organs changed into variations specific to their antagonist type. These organs would have ties to the various abilities at their disposal and (initially) would be undetectable via scanner. A vampire's heart may have some unique and wacky abilities, but it will only show up as a heart when scanned unless the vampire has already gorged itself on a serious quantity of blood. Changelings in particular would be proficient at hiding their organs' true forms and organs extracted from a changeling who is not currently using their abilities would likely remain disguised for some time after removal. Similarly to the animal organs, these could be used for research or shipped via cargo shuttle. However, I'm also picturing scenarios where a xenobiologist implants these organs into either a monkey or (hopefully) a willing test subject to see what happens. This likely wouldn't result in giving random people access to antagonist abilities (more likely the organs would be rejected outright) but it could create some interesting scenarios. Maybe an organ that had been extracted from an antagonist, implanted into a test subject for some time, and then extracted again is worth even more research value or cash value. Maybe implanting these organs into people spreads the disease, so to speak, and creates more antagonists. That's probably a bad idea.

Cultists, in this concept, would have a tumorous growth on their brains that directly connects them to the voice of Nar'Sie (Or whatever entity the cultist players have decided they worship. You get the point.) and is thus important for their cultist activities. A cult member whose tumor has been removed will not be able to speak the cult language or hear cult broadcasts. Removing the growth is not enough to cure an individual of Nar'Sie's taint, but it will cripple their ability to use cult powers for a time as the tumor regrows in their skull. As Cult is a gamemode centered around conversion, I think a decent idea would be to give some value to the crystal therapy pod by enabling it to de-convert a cultist who has had their tumor removed. This would give the station a means to permanently deal with cultists outside of murder and would give the cultists a reason to target the upper floor of medical beyond it being a convenient place to build a fort.

Finally, loners (and by extension wizards, perhaps technomancers, and other psionically/magically inclined mobs) should have differences to their brain from the baseline of their species. As they gain power in the various forms of psionics, the brain would begin to grow and change in color. This would largely be a roleplay benefit (There are very few uses for a brain ingame for a number of reasons, as well as the fact that extracting it kills the poor sap whose skull gets cut open. For obvious reasons.) but it would permit xenobiologists/surgeons something to do in the case the antagonist was killed early in the round. Maybe a fax could be sent to Central about it, who could then display an interest in the carcass for scientific (And only scientific, we assure you) reasons.

Edited September 26, 2021 by ChevyChevron

[Myphicbowser]

I can agree with this but I firmly believe instead of focusing on Antag organs, at first, we should focus on alien organs. The idea of harvesting organs from other creatures and implanting them into test subjects is a good idea, most species could probably be given a fluff organ or organs based off of existing ones, such as insulated lungs for species from Adhomai. I'd also say most xenofauna would need some level of work as well to not only add organs but more things worth making them interesting, the easiest would be gremoirians, with organs that can add some of their abilities but implantation is incredibly risky and likely impossible without constant anti-toxin meds. I'd also say that we couldn't extract the most insane powers like space proofing or internal respiratory for space carp, but just SOMETHING to study with them, maybe the Cargo idea for these organs or just more biological research with them.

 

I love your ideas for antagonist organs, but those would be incredibly powerful and potentially even abused