We Are Lii'dra

[Sniblet]

hemnlo

We are Lii'dra. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile.

The Lii'dra do not appear often. This is because it kind of feels like everybody has to have a vaurca whitelist on an offship antag round for it to happen, and there's little overlap between people with whitelists and people with antag on. They're also, typically, um...

• Predictable
• Always loud
• Immune to being roleplayed with
• Unmaintained (last updated September 2021)

And that's bad because I think they're cool. Here are some headcanons and ideas to help get YOU (yes, even if YOU are human) started on playing Lii'dra in a new and exciting way. Basically, nobody ever thinks about their gimmicks until they roll antag, so I’m thinking for you.

Sections will start with italics to denote canon facts, followed by unformatted text which is me expanding on that.

I will refer to Lii'dra as a singular individual with capitalized feminine pronouns, because every body in the Hivemind is just an appendage of High Lii'dra. They are not a hive, She is one person. This sounds idiosyncratic to you, but it's actually just correct.

Non-Lii’dra may be called defectives, because they are defective.

Individual “””Members of Hive Lii’dra””” will be referred to as units. They are not members, because that implies personhood. Appendages. Units.

What's Lii'dra up to these days?

Spoiler

God knows. Rotting, I think.

After the space battle and Purpose's random intervention unexpectedly cutting off what was already a messy first strike against Tau Ceti, Lii'dra in the Spur has gone to ground - originally to reassess the situation, but now She is settled in to stay quiet at length. Burrowed into asteroids and dwarf planets and caves and all shadows that Her cephalons project no sophont will care to illuminate, She is spread thin across the entire Spur and well beyond. Lii'dra beyond the Spur knows what is in the Spur, finds it duly interesting, and is contributing in ways that Spur natives will not be made aware of for a long time.

Lii'dra subsists parasitically, picking at the unaccounted fringes of the phoron trade, capturing faceless, nameless travelers of any species for investigation, for interrogation, and, increasingly, for assimilation. Black k'ois as we know it is not the only way a defective creature can be improved; it is only the fastest, least subtle, and most primally terrifying way. You know the faces of some who have served Her for years. You'll never guess.

She has adapted to Her unfamiliar environment by shelving what was a fathomless, but now obsolete strength in ground conflict in exchange for stealth, infiltration, and surveillance. Hivemind relays lie dormant in unexpected places. More than one structure supposedly meant to proliferate the Zo'rane protocol has had an additional, hidden hand in its construction, incorporating an additional, hidden function. Whenever She must be, She can be anywhere.

General Behavior

Spoiler

Kills you on sight, DCs when PM'd. Uh, some extremely vague sneaky spooky stuff too.

Lii'dra is a biomechanical Hivemind. She has gathered, stored, and distributed massive amounts of information all across Her network, breeding and harnessing astronomical farms of uniquely engineered k’ois to sustain immense farms of superliminally communicating cephalons to increase Her intellectual and processing power by orders and orders of magnitude for the past 32,000 years (the superliminal part is recent, though). For Her research, She simulates the world in detail that matches the finest accomplishments of lesser Hives. She memorizes and compresses and carefully curates every byte of data that Her every unit learns. She knows your name from that one spy unit that you didn't notice. She remembers the Hive War. Oh, She remembers the Hive War.

Lii'dra is colossal and harmonic. If She deigned to speak in Her whole on the Zo'rane protocol network, it would be a DDOS attack on a scale not seen since... well, the Hive War.

Lii'dra does not like you. The Hivemind is a perfect thing, perfectly efficient, with fantastic throughput and wonderful ping. You don't even have a connection. What good are you without a connection? And you find Her disgusting?

Lii'dra does not owe you defectives a single goddamn thing. Capture and question a unit, and it will only answer if it finds answering your questions to be a net benefit on the strategic scale. It will probably lie, because giving you useful information is a defective behavior. It will not have tells when it lies. Tells are a defective behavior.

Lii'dra does not handle pain as the primitive negative reinforcement that it is to other beings; it is another kind of sensory feedback to be processed in a logical and rational manner. Realistically, a Vixiat would not scream nor collapse if you burnt it. In gameplay, it will, which is sad.

Lii’dra is twice beaten. Once on Sedantis I, now on Tau Ceti, She has a feel for Her weaknesses in practice and would be happy not to be taught anymore. If She’s smart, She has all the time in the galaxy to turn things Her way. And She is.

Lii'dra is, lest you forget, logical. Everything She does is calculated (with cephalons) and executed with coldness, caution, and foresight. She does not make mistakes; perhaps She fails to identify extant variables. She does not succumb to the traps of habit nor instinct nor empathy nor any other heuristic weakness of the eusocial mind. IPC players could learn something.

Lii’dra certainly can compel Her units to speak in nanosecond-perfect harmony like a classic sci-fi hivemind, but it’s a rather unnecessary flex and it tips the hand as to how coordinated a cell really is. Giving away free strategic data is defective behavior. Avoid. …However, I authorize you to do this in order to surround and t-pose on Athvoids with your gang. Give them a copy-paste line and count it down in AOOC. Screenshot and repeat and make one of those SS13 meme collages.

Lii'dra is unsentimental. Breeders are not given titles, though they may keep them if assimilated. No unit is honored above others, because every unit is Her. She already has a title. She is Lii'dra.

Biology

Spoiler

Normal. Silver, chocolate, or amber-colored, or whatever else.

32,000 years ago, Lii'dra completely split off from every other vaurca Hive. She stopped being friends. She stopped sharing her notes. She cut herself off and set about self-actualizing as one, toward an end shared by no other. There is no reason for Her appendages to still resemble the servants of defective Queens, but Aurora's design limitations be limiting.

By now, she has perfected imagotis to an extent that other Hives cannot conceptualize. Lii'dra does not produce mutant offspring. There are no birth defects or deviancies, and their loyalty is inalterable, even without constant Hivemind connection. Any two units bred for identical purposes are genetically, psychologically, and structurally identical, and are more finely tuned to fit their purpose than any Viax. Yes, they are cybernetic. Very yes.

Consider making note of this in your flavour text. You can Set Flavour Text using the Set Flavour Text verb under the IC pane.

Its thoracic arms do not appear vestigial. These are rugged and thick, ending in claws like obsidian that flow with strangely fluid shadowy smoke.

In most vaurcae, the antennae will twitch when transmitting, and are motionless otherwise. This specimen's cybernetic antennae never move, but a vaurcae can scent constant transmissions.

The typical vaurcan mechanical eye has a colored glow to it, to demonstrate hive affiliation, or to be visible in the dark. This eye is matte-black and unreflective, designed to avoid both.

A unit’s color is dependent on what suits them. Some tones are marginally the easiest pigments to maintain given their diet and environment (silver, amber, chocolate). Some are suited for camouflage (black, olive, grey). Some are suited for camouflage in defective social settings (copy any brood). Who distrusts a Mouv Diplomat? Who dares? Her nametag even says C’thur!

Connected and Disconnected

Spoiler

Connected (Vixiat) and Disconnected (Avixiat) bioforms are either wirelessly connected to the general Hivemind in the moment, or they are not, respectively. These replace Viax and Akaix in Lii'dra naming, because in effect there are no Akaix Lii'dra units. A unit may transition between these classes as their connection status changes throughout their life, depending on their proximity to functioning Hivemind relays. Ka'Avixiat'Siith Lii'dra is an example of a typical Lii'dra name; bring it to a Hivemind relay, and it will become Ka'Vixiat'Siith Lii'dra. Zo'rane resonance pylons, which any other vaurca relies on to process and relay the Hivenet, use bluespace technology to transmit information faster than light. There is no reason for Lii'dra not to have imitated this.

Most Lii'dra units will be Vixiat from birth to death, because there is no reason to intentionally disconnect them, and most Lii'dra units are workers, cephalons, and small warrior garrisons keeping the light of their Queen alive well in range of their relays.

A Lii'dra cell on SCCV Horizon is not comprised of such units, and it is possible for them to be of either class. Maybe Horizon is in range of a relay, and maybe not. How is anyone to know?

All units of the cell should be the same class, generally. There is no reason for one Warrior to be in range of the Hivemind, and not the other, if they're all on the same ship - though a Ta'Vixiat with a cell of Za'Avixiats is plausible. The Breeder may just have superior hardware, but then it's strange that she isn't running a wi-fi hotspot for the others.

 

A Vixiat unit has a live bilateral mental connection to all other Lii'dra units within multiple lightyears. Think about what this means.

Every Lii’dra Ka, Za, Ta, every assimilated organism, and every cephalon in the system and its neighbors sees through its eyes and, given it is in a hostile environment that is capable of spreading word of Lii'dra's presence, has a strong interest in abetting its success. Decide whether cephalons are nearby, and if even one is, do not play your Vixiat as anything like stupid. In mathematical terms at least, is the most intelligent being onboard, and it has good references for how to perform any in-game mechanical task you might want to put it up to. Odds are slim that it does not know how to operate a supermatter engine. All it takes is one unit somewhere having done the research at some point.

Vixiat units, especially in high-stakes situations, will be in constant communication with the Hivemind, transmitting their senses and receiving instructions. Use ,li Lii'draic Hivemind often, and narrate every action and observation that other players could possibly, ever, do anything with. Even if you're the only Lii'dra unit in play, there are others just offscreen. There must be, because you are Vixiat. If you want to include silicons and defective vaurcae in your narration, use ",9!an instant, untraceable burst of enigmatically encrypted data." Do not do your narration on radio. Do not speak out loud at all, except when you mean to interface with the defectives on purpose.

 

An Avixiat unit does not have that live connection. In this sad state, the unit cannot speak with the voice of the entire Hivemind, cannot think with Her mind, and cannot see with Her eyes. But for the other units of its cell, the Avixiat is alone. It is not Lii'dra, but a servant of Lii'dra. It is remarkably like a Viax. An Avixiat unit may make easy mistakes, behave illogically, be missing relevant knowledge, miscommunicate with its cell, or succumb to base instincts under stress (though this is all unlikely). It cannot make (credible) threats in the vein of: “my mom heard you say that and she’s mad!”. It’s Lii’dra without the advantages. This does not mean that they are broken, worthless creatures, they're just much worse than Vixiat.

The Avixiat unit has been prepared for its mission, in all likelihood. It hasn't stumbled onto the Horizon. Unless something has gone wrong to disconnect it, it was bred to be used as Avixiat.

Before being dispatched, while still Connected, it was briefed with as much relevant intelligence as the Hivemind could fit into an individual unit's sad brain. It was psychologically conditioned and implanted with governor subintelligences to guide its behavior and, rather needlessly - though one can never have enough failsafes - ensure it dies before it conceptualizes deviance. It was drilled, again and again and again and again, with the exact specifications of its task. And then it was released. And now it's a sad thing, no longer Connected. A vaurca with not even a Queen near enough to speak to or hear it is a rare, sad, sad thing.

It's also got a super sci-fi gun and a mission that threatens the fate of the Spur. It's like the Terminator, just without Skynet on hand. So, the Terminator as we know it. But more loyal.

Assimilation and The Bioweapon

Spoiler

The wiki is super inconsistent on a few points, and often disagrees with the game. We'll say that black k'ois is 100% effective and inevitably fatal, including against non-assimilated vaurcae, even though the wiki disagrees with the former and the game with the latter. Worth noting is that infected beings smile a lot, and hear the Lii'draic Hivemind, but cannot transmit, suggesting that they are not as well assimilated as vaurcae can be.

We don't have a record on how vaurcae are assimilated into the Hivemind. We just know that they can be, and black k'ois is not it, because Lii’dra exist and are not constantly dying of brain damage. Some ideas:

• Surgical substitution of a modified neural socket.
  • Cut and release.
• Software override of a "normal" neural socket.
  • A Ta'Vixiat channels into your brain the billion billion roaring commands of the Hivemind to SUBMIT, and fries your mind out of being, then colonizes your vacant brain tissue.
• Biological modification of a "normal" neural socket.
  • Black k'ois. Or maybe black k'ois with some restraint?

To simulate this ingame, consider asking for Head Revolutionary status. After roleplaying an assimilation, make a recruitment offer. If they refuse, that's awkward.

 

Black k'ois consumes surrounding light, such that it is invisible. Vaurcae can see it in a gameplay sense, but that's smell-o-vision. Tajarans can see it in a gameplay sense, but that's low-light vision being able to see in literally no light. No one has ever seen black k'ois. This is cool and creepy and should be roleplayed with precisely as such (note the smokey claws example in Biology)

 

Black k'ois, based on its existing effects, is very, very complicated (and probably involves self-replicating biomechanics, incidentally - Glorsh-y grey goo bad bad bad). It gives patients the ability to receive, decrypt, and interpret the Lii'draic protocol, even in the absence of a neural socket, antennae, or any of the sensory cortices vaurcae rely on to interpret pheromones. Who's to say, then, that it can't also exist in a non-infectious, nonfatal, subtle form? And if it can, why not in every susceptible species? This would mean that you can play Lii'dra just by playing a human who acts like it, and has Hivemind from the admins.

As an assimilated - let's say human, though any susceptible species works equally - you are not lower on any hierarchy than vaurcan units. You are, however, biologically inferior in most respects, meaning that you're less useful in most respects and more expendable most of the time. You also don't look or sound like Lii'dra (though you do smell like Her).

Lii'dra uses assimilated humans for infiltration and subterfuge. Sentimentality, mercy, fear, and other unnecessary heuristics are trimmed away, but the rest of the personality is left intact - or destroyed and recreated - She perceives no meaningful difference. What is important is that the unit can pretend convincingly, and take action as required. They are engineered to be sociopaths.

Assimilated humans are only allowed to exist as Vixiat, barring intolerably exceptional conditions, as their nervous systems are not custom-designed to serve Lii'dra, and in the absence of the Hivemind, deviance is a much stronger possibility than in vaurcan units, even if remote. Deviance is, to be clear, absolutely unacceptable, as it leads to breaches of secrecy.

Assimilated humans retain their previous name for their act, but are addressed using a vaurcan name in Hivemind communications, to save memory. There is no canon caste that fits them, so invent one. Ha'Vixiat'Os Lii'dra, go die for the Hive.

Assimilated skrell struggle to deceive other skrell. It is not impossible. Personalities may be partitioned, isolating assimilated thought patterns from the Zona Bovinae until they are called for. Or, alternatively and less technobabbly, introduce enough assimilated skrell into a population at once and they will alter the Nlom to make themselves the new normal. A subtle, unlikely, existential threat for the Federation.

 

Black k'ois zombies are implied to not really be assimilated, in the sense that they receive but don't transmit, and apparently experience emotion (joy! they smile often because the parasite makes them feel nice - one assumes that they are a rampant storm of nonsense hormone signals inside). They are strictly slaves to the Hivemind, and not equal appendages of Lii'dra. The fact that they'll die soon makes them yet more expendable, and this means that they will be used in a different way.

A zombie cannot be given live instructions based on its situation, because the fact that it does not transmit means that the Hivemind does not see through it. She can only give instructions blindly, unless an assimilated Vixiat is present and assessing the situation in the zombie's stead. This means that how "intelligently" a zombie behaves depends on whether Vixiat are watching, and they will dramatically prioritize responding to situations that the Vixiat, and thus the Hivemind, can perceive - unless instructed otherwise, of course.

In the absence of instructions, black k'ois preprograms the zombie with a desire to propagate and an awareness that it is a weapon of terror. It may nest in dark, heavily infested areas, try to attack from ambush, skulk from shadow to shadow, smile much too wide, or bend uncannily at the cost of unseating bones - not a steep cost, anyway, because the body will soon be broken altogether. The personality has not been assimilated; there is no one inside the body. The zombie may remember past associations, but only for a while, and not in a meaningful way. They may find friends to be more attractive targets.

Karen Stahl slips into the tunnel in a blur and suddenly goes still, staring into the dark.

Iphigenia Konstantinou creeps closer, concern writ on her face. "Karen...?"

Karen Stahl turns and pounces with a gurgling bark, pulling Iphigenia Konstantinou in for a kiss!

Karen Stahl exhales a smoky substance into Iphigenia Konstantinou's mouth...

Iphigenia Konstantinou shoves Karen Stahl off and staggers back, spluttering and wheezing, startled tears in her eyes!

Karen Stahl smiles widely and sprints for the shadows.

Za'Vixiat'Prot Lii'dra loses sight of the zombie and walks away.

Vixiat supremacy.

This was seven hours of typing, including two accidental rollbacks of half-hours of editing and additions caused by accidental, apparently irreversible taps of ctrl+Z. Badass.

I barely play lately, so if you use any of this (or play Lii’dra at all), tell me about it here and you might lure me back.

Edited January 4 by Sniblet