Strange Stars: Gelmorphs

Metal Aerogel

During the days of the Radiant Polity, it was commonplace for infosophonts to download copies of themselves into service substrates known as gelmorphs. These substrates were manufactured and extruded from raw material fabricators in the form of simple polyhedrons. They were then typically laser sculpted into a useful form desired by the infosophont, after which the infoporous substrate was imprinted with a copy of the infosophont.

Gelmorphs provided a convenient way for infosophonts to get around, particularly in war zones and other hostile environments. They are immune to vacuum, and difficult to damage using conventional weapons. Gelmorphs were one of the ideal-typical soldier types during the memetic wars which fractured and destroyed the Radiant Polity.

Mindless, ever-appetitive wild-type gelmorphs still prowl abandoned Radiant Polity complexes on isolated and long-forgotten worlds. The substrate is virtually immortal, and can even replicate if sufficient organic material is present. Wild-type gelmorphs are often still imprintable by informorphs, although an infomorph copy imprinted onto a wild-type substrate typically degrades quite quickly.

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Wild-Type Gelmorph (Threat)

• Aspects: Mindless hunger; Hard to see until it's right on you; Slimy and resilient; That scraping, shuffling sound; Susceptible to infosophont implantation

• Skills: Superb (+5) Engulf; Great (+4) Digest; Good (+3) Physique; Fair (+2) Athletics; Average (+1): Notice.

• Stunts: 
• Tough Substrate: The gelmorph substrate is completely resistant to stress dealt by piercing weapons and projectiles, and ignores the first two stress inflicted by any hit using energy weapons.
• Vacuole: Once a gelmorph has inflicted physical stress on someone using its Engulf skill, it may spend 1 FP to encapsulate its target within a digestive vacuole. The target is then assigned a temporary aspect such as Captured, Stuck, or Being Digested.

• Stress: 4 Physical stress boxes, 2 Mental stress boxes 

• Consequences: One Mild, one Moderate.

Special: An infosphont may attempt to imprint a copy of itself on a Wild-Type Gelmorph; they are are highly susceptible to this kind of attack. The infosophont makes an Engineering skill roll using the Metascape Sculpting stunt in an Overcome action whose difficulty is the gelmorph's Physique. If the action is successful, the infosophont has imprinted a copy of itself upon the gelmorph's substrate. Roll 1 Fate Die: on a (-) face, the imprinting lasts for one Scene; on a blank face, the imprinting lasts for one Session; on a (+) face, the imprinting lasts for one Scenario. The gelmorph reverts to its mindless wild-type nature once the imprinting is gone.