Lore:Plasmamen
 Plasmoid |
Denonyms: Plasmoid, Plasmoids |
What are they?
A plasmoid, or 'plasmaman,' is a sentient hive mind, a colony of fungal myconids that use plasma in all parts of their metabolic processes. Liquid plasma is transmitted through channels across the surface of their body, frozen-solid plasma forms a normally unmelting ice around the bones, and gaseous plasma is used as a communication medium and means of respiration across the body. Known to originate in realspace, these myconids are thought to have developed potentially billions of years ago in response to the formation of plasma wells in anomaly-rich environments, requiring high amounts of intellect to travel to and later exploit the genesis of this miracle substance.
Technically, an individual plasmaman myconid is a single celled organism, fully capable of being autonomous from the colony and surviving independently. However, this single myconid is hardly more intelligent than a heavy portion of a slime mold. The true wonder behind these myconids is through communicating with one-another through electrical and chemical impulses, achieving sentience in millions and bilions and trillions. However, this electrical form of communication naturally comes at a price; ignition of their constituent matter when exposed to an oxidant.
Normally seen using corpses as a means of locomotion and travel, plasmaman in the humanoid sense were discovered by humankind as happenstance - the common story goes, a NanoTrasen scientist fell into a vat of liquified plasma, and what emerged after an extreme fire was noted to have fungus subsisting upon the corpse. Further study revealed that the corpse was no mistake, the myconids were actively attempting to use the body to exit the river they were located inside of. Further study revealed the capacity for complex thought, and eventually in enough numbers, that they could quite rapidly be taught speech; and with further nourishment and sporing to other parts of the carcass their intelligence grew by bounds until they were fully capable of a human range of intellect.
Partial examples of myconid sporing have been known to exist in still-living examples, typically from accidental exposure. Plasmaman myconids can exist in numerous states of partial 'consumption,' anywhere from individual fingers to entire limbs. Reports have been verified that even in plasmaman colonies with surface area as comparatively 'small' as an arm, the members of it are fully capable of independent action and thought, as well as connection to the host's nervous system for 'manual input.' Patients have been interviewed alongside their 'alien limbs' detailing that typically, the colony will 'wake up' in response to threats to the group or their host, long-term pairs noting that the colony will pick up and assist with things that were thought to have only been muscle memory. While a full human-sized colony will normally burst into flames when exposed to normal Earth-type atmosphere, partial takeovers will only result in a warm plasmatic vapor from low gas output.
Plasmamen, gestalt consciousnesses and essentially localized hiveminds, tend to think in terms of 'currents.' A member of a colony will chemically convey information to the members next to it, which will either remain 'inert' or pass it onto those next to them, and those next to them, a microscopic model of the way 'singlet' crowds will react to stimuli. Parts will feel something, it will have others feel something, and if enough of them feel that thing it becomes a 'what they are doing' or 'what they are thinking' or 'what they will say next.'
It is known to biologists, governments, corporations, and encyclopedia-delvers of the current age that a plasmaman's capacity for identity and emotion are tightly bound to the nature of their full takeover of the target substrate. A colony that chose to eat away the 'useless parts' of their host in under a day will lack any preconceived notions of the world around them, being the most truly alien until they begin to develop true opinions. However, slower acts of consumption lead to more 'sampling' of the host nervous system, more integration of their original patterns of thought, and giving the colony more of a starting personality. Bonds have formed between still-living hosts and their myconid passengers, unwritten agreements that the colony will help the host up until the point the host naturally expires, upon which it will be allowed to fully take over. These plasmamen are normally the ones reaching the zenith of 'human experience,' close enough to their original hosts that it's debatable whether their life ever ended-- or if they simply changed state of matter.
Where are they?
In the core worlds of various factions, plasmamen are a rarity due to the normal restriction on humanoids getting close to even still-forming plasma wells. The majority of sighted plasmamen in places such as core Sol or the fiefdoms of the Tajarans are there as part of scientific research and cultural outreach programs, or as carry-on passengers on living hosts as partial takeovers; plasma miners being the number one source of myconid hosts. However, where safety restrictions surrounding plasma sources are loosened or nonexistant, the amount of plasmamen sightings drastically raise-- especially in the frontiers of near and deep space, where a murky process known as 'recycling' has taken place.
Normally done to non-revivable corpses with no trace of Resonance left, corporations with less moral fiber have taken to intentionally exposing these otherwise-vacant bodies into sites known to host myconid colonies and normally fishing them out rather quickly to encourage faster consumption. These plasmamen exist in an utter lack of preconceived 'currents' of thought, nominally exposed at first only to what would make them a productive worker and remaining adrift in a world of known unknowns for a long time.
How are they?
In the current age, plasmamen were initially brought into frontier-based companies to assist in engineering and scientific research, which they excelled at naturally due to their durability, computational power, and unfortunately, inability to negotiate effectively for better working conditions, given their demand for plasma to breathe. Rapidly, they gained a dark first impression in corporate departments as a sign that one's job was on the line, that your department was underperforming, or that your loyalty had been put into question. It wasn’t that the quality of their work was massively better, rather, that the effective control the corporation can leverage over their employees is far more effective when their literal breaths were held at NanoTrasen’s beck-and-call. Soon having the reputation as the 'ultimate scab worker,' their status amongst the aliens around them only grew more complicated due to the quirks of their biology.
Simply existing and not being psychologically 'on the level' with other races-- partly due to their insistence on 'We' rather than 'I', as well as being suited purple revenants in terms of form, plasmamen were equally reviled by those thinking of what the plasma they breathe and consume could be otherwise used for. However, this reputation began to change after the first waves of plasmamen had begun to mature as groups. Sharing information and learned experience both vocally and through sharing parts of their colonies; both the myconids or 'spare parts' in physical, the plasmamen in the frontier developed extreme competence in their fields of work, the cold and impersonable veneer they carried also dissolving. In truth, plasmamen were quick to insert themselves within the social chains and departmental 'subcultures' of the workcrews they had formerly replaced members of; both figuratively and sometimes literally. Owing to their regenerative capacity and overall willingness to put themselves in harms way, plasmamen were quick to both help and protect their coworkers, and ever-curious about their habits and nature and thoughts as 'singlets.'
But do they..?
Plasmamen are a hive-minded organism that communicates with itself even when otherwise silent, but are readily capable of communicating with eachother - if rarely aboard the same shift. In the halls of maintenance, in the bowels of the engineering department, scrawled on pieces of paper stuffed under desks, are the sproutings of a culture free from corporate influence, something uniquely their own.
That culture consists of sharing the plights of stations and staff, effectively forming shared dossiers on coworkers, for practically everything - who can smuggle plasma under-the-table, who can be relied upon, who can be convinced by what, who is hostile, unique traits and behaviors of their crewmates. The near boundless capacity for information storage of each colony provides ample opportunity to detail everything in minute detail - they are merely limited by their ability to transmit it. It also means - and has been noticed by NanoTrasen staff in particular- that some plasmamen are seemingly supernaturally informed about the crew they are spending a shift with, oftentimes before ever even meeting them formally.
Plasmamen have formed a sort of social alliance with heavyworlders for their typical mining trades, with AGI thinking machines and slimepeople for their relatability in not always starting with a coherent personal identity, and with all sorts of plasma-consuming races; all for efforts in smuggling, gathering, and using sources of the enigmatic ore. For mutual aid, for consumption, or for any other scheme, this alliance has become heavily intertwined not only based on their chasing of the miracle substance plasma, but equally for their social acumen. Like wartime spies, this underground movement sticks their information in shadow and plain sight, using every available avenue to communicate coded messages that mean nothing to casual passers-by. An article on the 'net advertises an after-work 'small' party, a newscaster's turn of phrase concerning the need for a certain drink clues the locals into a full crate's worth of the substance.
Plasmaman culture consists of various decorative tips for their ever-present envirosuits; a lively debate exists on whether or not the outside of the envirosuit is their ‘face’ or if the skull they subsist on is their true ‘face,’ or even if they should be subsuming themselves to organic-inspired biological frameworks such as a face at all. A trend has recently caught on where extensive and expensive decorative cloth has been wrapped on and around their envirosuits, as a means of spending their limited discretionary funding on making their polymeric prisons slightly more appealing to the outside eye.
That culture even consists on introspective debate on where plasmamen as a 'race' should go - should they, as colonies, refer to themselves as individuals? As we? Are all plasmamen in existence one We, or many Thems? A conclusion has yet to be reached on this matter, and likely never will - it is perhaps the single biggest dividing line.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
| Nova Sector Lore
| |
| Common Species | Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons |
| Other Species | Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Hemophages, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Xenomorphic Hybrid, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species |
| Nanotrasen | Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps |
| External Groups | The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan |
| Nova | The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja |
| Concepts | Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death |
| SolFed | SolFed, Earth in 2565, |
