Lore:Ghoul
Ghoul |
Denonyms: Ghouls |
Ghoul
Decrepit, twisted people whose flesh is fairly interchangible and loosely connected to them.
Reductively, Ghouls are effectively a 'meat golem'. Despite their theming and incoherent bodies, Ghouls are not undead abominations.
When DNA goes wrong, refuses to replicate or does so harmfully, various treatments exist to keep the person alive. These bypass the uses of DNA, though might still be able to use it, resulting in a person poorly coupled to their body. Ghouls structure their body via intentional design, not via the encoded shapes inherent in their DNA.
Ghouls can separate their limbs into meaty mass, and consume raw animal meat to regrow lost limbs. Through odd means, this means that muscle tissue is interchangeable for Ghouls, whether it originates from them or not. This also means the body does not care as much when any particular piece of it is lost; limbs fall off easily and are replaced just as easily, and as a result the person generally is exceedingly fragile.
Ghouls are not undead, in fact quite the parametric opposite. The undead reject death, yet stand stained by it. Ghouls biologically embrace death, shutting down entire pathways that should have killed them, yet there they stand, peering into death's window, pounding at its door and stealing its trash, digging through their receipts to buy their perfume and eat their clothes. Ghouls stalk death with a restraining order, a symptom of a modern age that no longer recognizes death as mandatory.
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Simple Skye says: "Ghouls are people who do not grow more of their own body, and so need to put different matter from another body on their own body to live. The different body matter becomes their body too." |
Despite everything, it's still you
Ghouls are reminders that the defining urge of life to persist is not inherently noble or kind.
Awakened Ghouls are those who are legally considered to have Post-Death Amnesia, in which great details of their prior life are lost to them, and as a result personality shifts may occur. While some suggest that the resulting Ghoul is an entirely new person (with a potentially new Resonance?), both the law and serious Resonance Researchers deem this individual to be the same, retaining all legal obligations and privileges in the eyes of SolFed. That said, ghoulification is considered a "no fault" reason for divorce (in jurisdictions that care), and is considered a "life-altering injury" for nations that allow mid-term special elections. More than once, a SolFed Senator has died, come back as a Ghoul with a distinct enough personality that their nation decided they were no longer who was voted for, yet immediately ran for the same position and won voters over again.
Unlike several other post-mortem bodily changes, Ghoulification does not inherently come with an imperative to alter one's name or identity. Those who do, do so because of the specifics of their personality.
Ghouls can come from most DNA-based species, though they are not classified independently in the DSM as the specifics of ghoulhood supersede medical treatment from any vestiges of their prior species. That, and most species-specific traits are based in the patient's survival and renewal, so losing the ability to interact with DNA also rots these specific features.
The Truth
Ghouls, as a concept, have... pre-existing notions of them, from various myths and commercial products, contradictory and ill-defined. Ghouls are commonly associated with zombies (which we know to be unrelated, even inversely related), mutants, post-radiation syndrome afflictees, and genetic abhorrationsYour mom.. Perhaps most damagingly, Ghouls are continually haunted by the pervasive question, "what is a Ghoul?"
Those who ask will rarely take the easy answer, the correct answer: they're people whose DNA doesn't work. Unfortunately, simple answers rarely yield satisfaction, and those who dig risk digging past the treasure they seek, to find layers of dirt with no basis in the question and ascribe them meaning beyond the concept of intent.
"The Ghoul Mystery"Fun fact, this was originally "The Ghoul Question" except hey no let's not do that actually. If it slips in later in this article, yell at me to change it, and I'm sorry! effectively supersedes "The Ghoul", as the obsessive mind ignores what makes the ghoul interesting (their personality, their livelihood, the gun in their hand) and demands truths from simple biological realities, and the mania of desire inflates a chalice of comfort too deep to ever fill with any basis in rationality. Pull at the strands in the tapestry of truth for long enough, and the pile of yarn takes new life. Ghoul Truthers rarely settle their viewpoints into a finished state, but their initial manias are well documented, usually starting with a fixation on one of a few "discrepancies."
On the Origin of Ghouls
Myth: Leonardo Da Vinci was a ghoul. Leatherface was a ghoul(The fictional Leatherface from a 1974 film, not the 2155 recasting). Mummies were ghouls. Thomas Edison became a ghoul. Nay, the modern Ghoul was first documented in 2455.
The 2273 Shambler of Ordoht stood as the first "Ghoul" for 30 years until being debunked and reclassified as an early form of Changeling, along with numerous other space cryptidsMostly sightings of the Goatman, and paradoxically also the Chupacabra. of the decade.
In 2455, tech mogul Arthur BrimminghamOf the Neptunian Brimminghams, who notably have never been recorded anywhere near Neptune orbit. died on the surgical table of the ill-esteemed biosurgeon, Biosurgeon Platinum-7Yes, their first name is "Biosurgeon." This has widely been regarded as hilariously unwarranted, but Plasma Men Customs and Culture weren't yet solidified and nobody was yet bold enough to tell the burning skeleton surgeon that they can't call themselves a job title., having been diagnosed of a degenerative muscular disorder(which has since been trademarked so heavily, that this wiki lacks the budget for more than a passing allusion to). Brimmingham was mid-operation to, in his words, "tie his nerves in holy knotsBrimmingham was notoriously atheistic. Historians remain unsure as to what the fuck he meant by this. to force the electrical connections to the muscles, whether those damnedAgain, unsure which anti-deity he believed had damned his muscles. Perhaps he did not understand the connotations of the word? strands of protein wanted to respond or not," when the nerves leading to his heart successfully failed. Arthur was successfully revived via analytical defibrillation, but this incurred the second complication of the afternoon.
This had not been Arthur's first attempt at treating his affliction, and the records are still unclearThere's a list of receipts which does not match known bank account transactions, implying that he received several bills he did not pay? just how many prior procedures he had attempted. Notably, a failed attempt to replace his nervous system with nanites, "nerve daemons," resulted in his myelin sheathsNot technobabble. Actual nerve coatings that has actual benefits. corroded and replaced with automatons, who themselves reacted poorly to the "holy knots" and sudden electrical infusion. A good 70% of the plutonium-238 batteries strewn across his body failed containment, uniformly denaturing"Breaking" for proteins. his DNA. Through means that our robotics expert refuses to clarify on (for legal/sanity reasons, we think?), this did not compromise the function of the nerve daemons, who continued to operate his muscular system.
The specifics of the medical report have been redacted, trademarked, made into major motion pictures, etc., and so we can only paraphrase a review of the Roseus Galactic Actors' Guild's production, "His Arm Just Fell Off When He Sat Up And Things Got Worse From There: The Brimmingham Musical," in the RGAG-sponsored Billplay Magazine: "Forsooth, for when he arose there was such a clatter, as the chemistry between the on-screen leads faltered away with a splatter! The screams were all fake, yet that made it surreal, it made the fear in his eyes feel all the more real. They exaggerate the moment upon which he could heal, through wacky hijinks, slapstick, and a plate of fresh veal. The effects were quite poor: it was stuck on with glue! And for that and that alone, I rate it one out of two."
The sole review makes no mention of the two-and-a-half hour musical monologue about the nature of the nanites' inability to discern his flesh from the added culinary disaster, and the biophysics of how the nanites operated the undercooked lamb flesh as if a new arm.
Myth: Ghouls aren't alive
For closure, it should be noted that Arthur Brimmingham survived an additional 30 years(about as long as expected for a healthy man of his stature, but easily 28 years longer than someone with his degenerative physique) before perishing in a Hot Dog eating contest. In perhaps the weakest evidence that Ghouls are "alive", he perished when a Death SandwichNot found in the Guide to Food, but a real game mechanic nonetheless. was submitted as an obstacle for contestants. By this point in the contest, the notion of what qualifies as a "hot dog" had lapsed severely, as the remaining contestants had easily consumed all potential supplies in a 30 kilometer radius over the six weeks of televised consumption, so this Death Sandwich did not read as particularly abnormal. Ghoul Truthers posit that this was not an actual Death Sandwich, but a concoction of another Ghoul's discarded flesh, which attempted to overpower Arthur when consumed, resulting in the final cessation of cognitive thought. Ghoul Truthers also posit that "he ate so much that the contents of his stomach underwent nuclear fusion, which upset his radioactive superpowers", "this is what passes as a 'natural death' for Ghouls" (it is not), and/or "his head just did that."
Myth: Ghouls don't breathe, bleed, or breed.
This is very observably untrue. Their heart still beats, their lungs still cycle carbon dioxide and oxygen, the oxygen is still used in aerobic respiration for mitochondria to process nutrition into chemical energy, and that chemical energy is still expended. The primary difference comes when a cell needs to be copied, that it has no DNA instructions on how to be built. A body that cannot reproduce itself, paradoxically, can still reproduce. The Ghoul body is adept at repurposing ingested and grafted proteins, so in addition to the gametes remaining from prior to biological cessation, additional gametes may be repurposed and redistributed as necessary. Ghoul pregnancies are both rare and have a high casualty rate: not from the fetus, which typically endures in some fashion, but the Obstetrics staff necessarily involved.
Myth: Ghouls have been among us the whole time
DNA damage has been well-documented(This also has a cognitohazardous effect where there's some uncomfortable grinning involved???) Amogus ghoulies sus? for centuries. Only modern medical advances have made it a non-terminal condition. The first intentional Ghouls came from experiments with replicating the Brimmingham Daemons, but since then numerous biological agents have been fostered to replicate the control override pathways and maintainsupersede the author's reflex to use the word supersede mental superiority over failing flesh. The worst of which is Romerol, which leads into the next myth.
Myth: Ghouls are infectious
Myth: If they bite you, bleed on you, touch your skin, touch your heart (physically or metaphorically), you'll become one of them. This is mostly untrue, but some of the ghoulification agents have stronger means of transmission than others. None are recognized by the typical organic body as anything but a hostile invader, and thus at worst are a week-long fever. These agents are designed to thrive in bodies no longer capable of a fever reflex(the agents will induce their own analogy of a fever as needed once they're properly seated in power), and thus coincidentally weak to a living body's defenses.
Immunocompromised folk should beware of transmission, as their body might not be able to fully reject the ghoulification agent, but also shouldn't fear, because in theory the agent is taking agency away from themselves over their body and giving it back to themselves? In practice, the few folk on record who've undergone this have reported "mild" distress. But also immunocompromised people should report to their nearest Interdyne clinic for an immune system overhaul.
The more plausible danger is in strong contact with the recently (or soon-to-be) deceased. Particularly virulent ghoulifcators may find a narrow window where infection and lack of white blood cell resistance overlap, and thus induce rescue of the central nervous system without repair of the bodily tissue. This is poetically (and incorrectly) referred to as a "kiss of life", which evokes Sleeping Beauty-esque notions of corpse-smoochingNumber four reason some folk are fired. It's not worth it!, but must actually be done several hours to several days before biological termination, depending on the ghoul, victim, and cause of death.
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.
