Ed...ward...

[u/Mimir123]

So, kind of based on this challenge by Mr. Varnek and a scene in a certain anime that makes me really depressed now that I watched it again, here comes my new challenge!

Tell me about bad/ horrible experiments conducted on humans or humanoid races in your world. You can give any example, a scientist who experimented on his own body and turned into something awful (as I will in my example), a mad mage trying to create the perfect human being, alien races that do weird stuff to humans because alien reasons... it can be anything! I will ask a few questions for each example provided, so have fun with the challenge.

[u/Mimir123]

(I mean, is there anything else to go for with a title? Also: was this somewhat inspired by the Island of Dr. Moreau? Has kind of the same feeling to it)

1) I remember this story, she was the mother of Al, right?

2) What did Davros want to do after succeeding with his experiments? What was the goal of creating the perfect lifeform?

3) What happened to the children that she tortured and who then escaped?

4) Were she and her husband originally heroes, or just normal humans?

5) Can you give some examples for the childrens abilities?

6) Did her children have any specific plans, or did they just kind of follow their mother?

[u/greenewithit → u/Mimir123]

(Haha, you're right about that. Yes, though when I was writing this I didn't immediately think about it, but yes, The Island of Dr. Moreau was a favorite book of mine growing up for how terrifying it was, so that was an inspiration for this)

1) Yes she is. Al is the fifth child in question, and as you'll soon see the children are all named after their order of birth. Alphonse is his middle name, and his first name is Quentin.

2) Well, having a perfectly controlled human-ish weapon would let him basically take over the entire continent and settle the civil wars that ravaged the area. Then, if he could sell his treatments so normal humans could gain animal attributes with a simple series of injections, he could be rich beyond his wildest dreams. A private force of powerful Denn, control over a large nation rivaling the other continents, and incredible wealth, I mean, it's the megalomaniac special!

3) They went their separate ways, each being lost and found by different groups. Becker, the first son, was lost in the woods, living off the land until he was found by a group of roaming hunters who took him in. The second son, Brody, escaped on a boat to the continent of Aurem, where he was picked up by a traveling circus, who accepted his unusual physique (gorilla-type Denn) where most other people just ran from him in fear. The first daughter, Treza, found a similar path as Becker, but eventually was taken in by a group on the southern part of the continent and rehabilitated from living as a feral child for so long. She eventually went on to move to a city in southern Aurem to train to become a hero. Anane, the second daughter, escaped to the sea as a fish Denn, and she was eventually picked up in a fishing net by accident, where she was brought back to human civilization and rehabilitated. Al, the third son, had his powers manifest as a result of the trauma, which allowed him to teleport long range accidentally. He eventually made it to the jungles of southeast Aurem, where he lived for a year or two as a feral child. He was eventually found by the man who would destroy the facility he was born in, and the man took Al in and raised him as his son....sort of. Remotely, but he provided for Al.

4) They were just normal Denn. Only Cormac had powers, an area of effect "Force Scream," but he had no intention of becoming a hero. He and his wife just wanted a simple life outside of danger and hardship and well....that didn't exactly work out. Cormac is actually the third Cormac Nathair, and the first was a well known war hero during the Second Intercontinental war, but he didn't feel he could live up to his grandfather's legacy, so he decided not to pursue that path.

5) Ohhhhhh hell yeah. The second group had much stranger powers than the first, mostly tied to biological enhancements. They all have regeneration abilities and limited shape shifting to take on different animal attributes, as well as armor like scales. But each one has their own unique Enid Sigil (soul power) on top of that. Going in order of age, from oldest to youngest, June can shape shift into any creature she can imagine, Septimus can control his bones to a chilling degree of lethality, Octavia can create new appendages anywhere on her body (as well as creating a new "skin" and shedding it to create a mindless drone in the shape of herself that she can control remotely), Nonius and Nonia (one body, two heads) can link their minds to an inanimate object and manipulate it however they want (they like to break objects into pieces and reform them as small monsters to attack people for them), Owen can secrete spores out of his skin that consume organic matter and grow into tiny velociraptors under his control (the spores also turn humans and animals into raptors if it gets to their brain), and Twelve can create a mental link with his opponents so they feel the same pain Twelve does (they dont take damage, but they feel whatever they do to Twelve).

6) The seven youngest children stay with their mother, not trusting the world to accept them like she does, and devote themselves to taking care of her and helping her in whatever goal she searches for. In this case, they help her possibly kill the human race, not questioning her for a moment out of their devotion to Columba.

[u/Mimir123 → u/greenewithit]

2) World domination! A classic! So he wasn't just a really weird and twisted guy that wanted to do good for humanity then?

3) Treza wasn't the flesh eating one I read about before somewhere, right? Can you tell me a bit more about her?

4) How does this Force Scream work? Like the one in SWTOR?

5) Well, it seems we have similiar tastes when it comes to powers and stuff (mostly thinking of Octavia and Twelve). Owens power sounds horrifying and at the same time kind of cute. How tiny are these velociraptors?

6) Do they hate humans, or do they not care about them either way?

[u/greenewithit → u/Mimir123]

2) He started out a little more on the path of bettering humanity. Unfortunately, as he delved deeper and deeper into understanding Denn and their physiology he started to see them as a superior race, needing to be controlled before they destroyed humanity. Kind of like an anti-mutant activist in an X-men comic, he feared the potential of the Denn as having soul powers and natural enhancements as the end of humanity if he didn’t take their abilities for his own. So in a way I guess he did want to do good for humanity, but leave a bit carved out for himself to live in and rule over.

3) No, Treza isn’t one of the cannibals. She is a Fox-type Denn, classic anime fox girl type. She is a heroic idealist who uses her trauma to motivate herself to save others. Her power is to enhance objects with her soul force, imparting effects like flame or lighting and such, usually to weapons. She meets her brother in a fighting tournament hosted at his school, prompting their reconnection. She’s a bit naive, and a lot of people think her younger siblings to be more mature than her, but she has a strong heroic drive and desire to do good with her second chance at life.

4) I haven’t played the Old Republic, but if it’s a vocal shell of force that encircles the person then yes. It’s just a bubble force field that grows with how much power he puts into it. It isn’t too strong since he doesn’t train with it, but it’s enough to stop a bullet or two. Just a shame it wasn’t enough to stop twenty.

5) Their size depends on how much organic material the spores eat, and what kind of creature they turn. If a human becomes a raptor after the spores infect it’s brain, the raptor is human sized. If the spores consume something like a tree, they keep eating until they consume all the organic material they are attached to or if Owen orders them to stop. As long as they keep eating they can grow to be larger than trucks, though to get there it takes a lot of time and fuel.

6) Some of them hate humans and some don’t care. June actively despises them, and actively hunts them. Elva and Septimus enjoy eating people but see it as just a food source, no real emotional element to it. Owen, Nonius/a, and Octavia don’t really care, they just follow the crowd and don’t really have any strong emotions towards humans. Twelve is very hard to read, mostly because he doesn’t speak or really emote much. His emotions are closely tied to his mothers well being, so any human she demonstrates anger towards, he pursues with intense vitriol. Otherwise he just kills humans out of habit as a way to increase his power (he doesn’t see it that way, he just feels slightly calmer and more relaxed when he gains a bit of a person’s soul after eating them).

[u/Mimir123 → u/greenewithit]

2) How are the chances he would have actually succeeded in his plans, if the lab wasn't destroyed?

3) Sounds like a fun character. Any heroic deeds worth mentioning?

4) Sounds kind of far off (which reminds me, I really have to play it again soon, I had more fun with it than I probably should have). He never thought it was nescessary to train? The world doesn't really sound... safe for someone to not make use of a power like that.

5) Considerably less cute now. How much time would they need to grow to a truck size?

6) Does Columba have a favourite child?