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--- thorns [2016/06/20 16:11] – pinkgothic
+++ thorns [2017/11/18 15:34] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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-**Thorns** (or **Chesters**) are [[:Humans|human]]-[[:Cheshires|Cheshire]] hybrids.
+<blockquote>Like a painless fist full of needles, the numbness slams into the rest of his cognition, the transition curt, palpable out of some strange hesitance. It's as if a chain reaction grasped his mind and converted his thoughts into hard crystals, as if his skull were full of water being flash-frozen. His consciousness shrinks to a pinprick, swallowed up by a black hole.
-That's not to say they are somehow the unholy offspring of a human and a Cheshire getting intimate - that wouldn't work, they're not even remotely biologically compatible. No, instead, they're hybrids in a sense that someone has taken pieces from a human and pieces from a Cheshire and grafted them together artificially.
+And then it's gone. It's gone, but he's still thinking. The pain is still registering. There's still a disembodied awareness of his surroundings, of the pinprick eyes, of the impossible darkness wrapped around him. A greater awareness, by some measure, an almost infinitely more numb one in another. Not quite fully there. Not quite fully //self//. But enough to know that //self// was missing.</blockquote>
-Usually, this 'someone' is [[character:Chimera]].
+For [[:Cheshires]], water is a problem. One Cheshire's experiments ([[character:Theta|]]) with water, searching for some way to reliably endure the substance, some way to survive the weakness or sickness it brings, occasionally take on a literal life of their own.
-It's worth noting that Some of the Thorns make up an organized resistance against the Cheshires: [[:Nightshade]].
+**Thorns** (sometimes called **Chesters**) are hybrid creatures, part animal, part Cheshire. The hybridisation is not genetic - a Thorn still has their full set of animal DNA, and a full set of the equivalent Cheshire structures. On a technological level, they are best considered Cheshires with avatars - Cheshires protective of the flesh they've taken on, identifying with it. The reason for this identification can be varied:
+  * most often, the Cheshire grew along the neural structures of the host and in adopting their form adopted much of the thinking as well
+  * an urge for self-preservation manifested early in the Cheshire and became an ideological thought
+  * given two equally alien structures (fellow Cheshires versus animals), the Cheshire component of the Thorn opted to identify with animals in a form of loose allegiance
+  * it was quicker for the Cheshire component to learn the capabilities of the host than its own full capabilities
 ===== Method of creation =====
-In the broadest sense, Thorns are created using biotech. This is not a screwing around on a DNA-level, though, because Cheshires don't have DNA, but it is making the two species compatible with each other on a 'natural' level by simply replacing certain modules with interfaces to modules in the other component, e.g. carving out a bit of a human brain in favour of putting an interface to the Cheshire mind there, such as to grant the creature the kind of instincts that Cheshires have.
+Generally speaking, Theta takes care to conduct his experiments with //non-sentient// donations of Cheshire 'cells' taken from himself. That said, a collection of Cheshire cells, while there is a chance they might remain dormant, are notoriously difficult to keep from dying or from expanding into something pre-sentient, then sentient, then loosely sapient. The fine line takes careful balancing. Theta would rather err on the side of a sentient experiment, as a dead one would not serve his purposes well.
-Broadly speaking, to make a Thorn, you need an actual live human being (or other animal). The Cheshire parts do not need to come from a live Cheshire, they can be synthesised.
+The following things need to happen for an original Thorn to arise:
-Note that there is much variance in the degree of hybridisation. Even after Chimera got good at the process, a lot of hybridisation attempts (about half of them) just end in death.
+   * one of Theta's experiments adopts sentience (~50% chance)
+   * the sentience does not attain sapience or is otherwise not subsequently convinced to rescind its consciousness (~90% chance)
+   * it needs to understand its host and its own capabilities sufficiently rapidly to rebel (~20% chance)
+   * it must successfully survive Theta's attempts to destroy it (~25% chance)
-It's worth stressing that almost none of the Thorns wanted to be in the state they're in. They've either been a victim of Chimera's initially, or they've been fed to Chimera in an effort to give Earth a better fighting chance. It's vanishingly rare that someone lucidly opts for hybridisation -- not only is it a painful process, it destroys some of your self and doesn't really offer identity-continuity.
+This means that only about one in fifty of Theta's experiments becomes an original Thorn. Three months into the subjugation of humanity, he's done approximately 120 experiments. Of those, an early one resulted in [[character:Adrian Roche]], the founder of [[:Nightshade]]((**WARNING**: This has not been established with certainty yet.)).
-===== Appearance =====
+Thorns are not necessarily human, though sapient Thorns almost exclusively are.
-Thorns universally appear like normal humans most of the time, but it’s not very different from a Cheshire whose 'at rest' corporeal avatar is a human being -- they can adopt different appearances. However, unlike real Cheshires, their transformations are mass-preserving.
+It's possible for Thorns to create other Thorns (by deliberately doing what Theta did on accident), but it requires a Thorn with an actual understanding of the process of fleshgrafting. In addition, given that it's a personality-destroying process, it will likely rarely be done.
 ===== Abilities =====
-Average abilities, italics relative to pure Cheshires:
+As Thorns are simply Cheshires grafted to flesh, they inherit all of the Cheshire abilities and weaknesses, though their fleshbound nature alters quite a few of these:
-  * Take on any (//similar mass//) shape
+  * They continue being able to **dematerialise** substances.
-  * Pass through walls
+  * They're unable to pass through solid objects. They could make this work by rotating their flesh out of regular 3D space, but even if kept brief, this would likely kill their flesh component by fragmenting it (and they know this).
-  * Dematerialise things (omnomnom), //albeit at a less impressive rate than a Cheshire//
+  * That said, they can still **warp spacetime**, assuming they acquire the knowledge of the associated mechanics somehow.
-  * //They cannot do space-time warping//
+  * They can still do **shadow play**. Generally speaking, the Cheshire component of Thorns can be very expansive depending on how much the Thorn has fed their Cheshireself, so there's no theoretical limit to how far they can stretch their shadows.
-  * //They cannot do shadow play//
-  * Immune to the 'curiosity toxin'
+Technically, Thorns could rearrange their fleshselves into any other form, but this would take a lot of time and care, possibly killing the flesh component.
 ===== Weaknesses =====
-The have all the same weaknesses [[:Cheshires]] do.
+Thorns continue being weak to water. They can drink it and digest it (their Cheshireself is grafted to those parts of the flesh that aren't preoccupied with these things) and if their Cheshireself is small enough they can swim through it, but their Cheshireself is just as vulnerable to it as a proper Cheshire. The high water content animals typically possess tends to cause Thorns a very low background level of chronic pain, but it's low enough that they may not be conscious of the effect.
+Despite the ability to swim through water, Thorns are typically //extremely// thalassaphobic. They also tend toward being rather dehydrated, due to their avoidance of water.
-That said, one of the //disadvantages// Thorns have toward Cheshires that have nothing to do with any physical handicap is that, being rather human in their thought processes, including empathy, they are not really laid out toward differentiating Cheshires from other Cheshires other than by the territory that they claim.
+All that said, one of the //disadvantages// Thorns have toward Cheshires that have nothing to do with any physical handicap is that, being rather human in their thought processes, including empathy, they are not really laid out toward differentiating Cheshires from other Cheshires other than by the territory that they claim.
 This extends to their own kind, meaning that they would not, from appearances alone, be able to determine that a supposed Thorn ally they’ve had a year of experience with is actually a Cheshire spy since the past week.