Sunday, April 10, 2016

H-space MGB Profile: Latexian Scylla

Name:  Latexian Scylla
Type:  Scylla
Habitat:  Lake Latex

Description:
At first glance the latexia scylla looks like a beautiful noblewoman lounging on a floating circular platform.  The woman resembles, but is not human.  Her eyes are octopoidal and her ears are pointed and stick out from the side of her head.

The platform maintains buoyancy through a series of gas-filled bladders on the underside.  Hanging down from the platform are a multitude of black, segmented tentacles.  The tentacles terminate in a variety of different appendages and are likely specialised for different tasks.

While it looks as though the woman is wearing a full latex dress that covers the whole platform, in reality this is to disguise where her body merges with the platform, as the woman, floating platform, and tentacles are all part of the same organism.

Attack Strategy:
While the latexian scylla is capable of astonishingly quick vertical movement by regulating the contents of her gas bladders, they are not capable of rapid horizontal movement.  At first the latexian scyllas took advantage of our unfamiliarity with them in order to get close.  More recently they've taken to hiding their approach within dense clouds of ink.

When faced with a group of targets, the scylla first blinds and disorients them by spewing out copious clouds of black ink.  During the resulting confusion she snatches a man up in her tentacles and rises to an altitude where she can feed undisturbed.

The latexian scylla feeds by draining the energy and fluids of their prey.  This is done through a special suction tentacle they attach to the genitals of their captive.  While they're capable of generating a large amount of suction, the scyllas do not exsanguinate their prey, instead—as with other H-space indigenous organisms—the feeding process is unusual and complex.  They need us aroused, sexually, before they can feed off us.  Her powerful suction does nothing until she stimulates her captive to ejaculation.  Then it's as if a conduit is opened up between her prey and her, and she is able to drain them completely of their life and fluids in a few short minutes.

Some of my colleagues see the complex feeding behaviour of the H-space indigenous organisms—the way they seem to need their prey to be sexually stimulated—as a conundrum to be picked apart and dissected until science discovers the answer.  I do not share their enthusiasm or optimism.  Nothing makes sense from a biological perspective.  It's insanity... pure insanity.

Countermeasures:
Latexian scyllas are tricky to engage in combat.  Now that they know we're aware of them, they stay hidden within dense clouds of ink.  They are not impervious to bullets, but as with other higher H-space organisms, they are capable of rapid regeneration.  Eyewitnesses have reported seeing bullet-hole punctures in their air bladders close up almost instantaneously.  Despite this I still think the best strategy is to target the gas bladders with sustained bursts of fire.  Bring the scylla to the ground and then target the head.

Threat Level:
Moderate-to-high.

Personnel stationed at FOB Rigg have reported that the "ink storms" seen out over Lake Latex are becoming more frequent and severe.  This is a troubling development.

2 comments:

  1. Would I be remiss in guessing that the scientist who is putting this beastiary is the real Peter Bate; and all of the encounters we are reading are from something that allows him to find out exactly what happened to the bodies that are discovered ... via experiencing it without having the same fatal outcome?

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    1. I'm going to avoid confirming or denying anything at this point as I don't want to spoil it for anyone. It's not something I'm going to drag out for too long, though. The clues will start to get a lot more blatant in upcoming stories ;)

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