Kel'Regar Technology

The Womb of Creation

The Womb of Creation is a complexly bio-engineered creature, a sessile thing half way between plant and animal. While it may be carefully controlled to be nearly any size, all of them are similar in appearance - A number of bark-skinned organs are arrayed on the ground around a low, broad vat built of bone and tissue, and covered in a grotesque mucus membrane. It may come in a variety of colors, but the vat is always full of a strange, palely orange liquid, one which smells of salt water, ammonia, and the coppery tang of blood.

The purpose of the Womb is extremely simple: It is the 'factory' unit for the majority of Kel'Regar. The pale orange fluid is raw, nutrient filled amniotic fluid, produced by the Womb in preparation for production of whatever is desired. One specialized organ is the 'programmer' organ of the Womb - raw genetic information, a few cells, are placed within the organ, and the womb produces them until a 'stop order' null code is passed into the programmer organ. Once the creature has reached the required stage for 'birth', it is fished from the amniotic fluid and sent to the next stage of its life-cycle.

Korxox, the Explosives Creature

One of the earliest triumphs of enclave bio-engineering, the Korxox is a limbless creature about the size of an infant, possessing little more than a mouth, an excretory portal, and an 'egg' pouch. Fed a few choice foods, the Explosives Creature processes them inside specialized organs to create energy to live, concentrated Urea, and Nitric Acid. Meanwhile, another series of organs produces, as a waste product, small amounts of partly stabilized nitroglycerin. These are then mixed and dehydrated within the creature, and the resultant mixture is laid within an laced 'egg', a small piece of high explosive, ready for immediate use, either in blasting, or as a weapon of war.

The Blade-Grass

A carefully cultivated plant, the blade-grass is not entirely unlike earthling grass, in its natural state. In the wild, this grass-like plant lives in sandy areas, where it takes up the sand and deposits it within itself for stiffness, growing strong, but perversely twisted, its edges sharp enough to cut the soft flesh of the mouth.

In the hands of the Kel'Regar, however, it is so much more. Taken and cultivated to grow straight and true, the leaf-blades of the Blade-Grass are carefully harvested once they have reached the desired size, and left in the sun to dry. Once they are fully dry, the hard, brittle material that results is slathered with certain clays, before it is given its first firing in a kiln. Without removing it, the air in the kiln's baking chamber is displaced with marsh-gas, allowing the clays to reduce to their metallic components. Heated once more, through the fires of the kiln, the process results in a cermet blank, hard, and shockingly durable. This blank is then ground to its final shape, and hilted. While it does not have quite the flex of steel, this cermet is far harder, holding a sharper edge for longer, yet, when worked into long pieces, has a tendency to shatter. This accounts for their historical preference for spears and daggers over swords, for their swords never lasted long on the battle field.

Chealitis Pattern Carapace Armor

Currently, the Chealitis Pattern Carapace Armor is the most advanced armor fielded by the Kel'Regar. Heavily engineered from a creature almost, but not entirely, unlike a Terran bee, it is 'born' as a large creature, a crimson-shelled thing, roughly humanoid, but with significant insectoid likenesses. However, many of the normal organs have been set aside, reduced to a heart and a few lung and intestine-like organs into which nutrient chemicals are fed directly, from a bio-plastic tank added later by the Kel'Regar. With these, it is capable of processing the suit wearer's wastes and supplying the wearer with clean air and water. In relatively non-hostile atmospheres, it is capable of filtering local atmosphere for itself and the wearer.

Engineered to interface with the Kel'Regar 'communication implants' that they add to themselves, these suits are effectively cyber-bonded to their master when worn, with their own minds being (deliberately) far too stupid to do much more than very, very basic stimulus response. When worn, however, their tough carapace of silk-reinforced chitin provides a composite protection of significant degree, readily able to deflect a significant number of projectile hazards, though their ability to protect against plasmatic or even laser weapons is low compared to the armors of more technological races. The armor also possesses its own musculature, far, far more powerful than the average Kel'Regar's personal strength. So potent is this musculature, in fact, that most races in conflict with the Kel'Regar tend to issue orders to power-armor units to avoid close combat with these suits - They are capable of a far more fluid and swift motion than almost any other power armor, and they have been known to rip full suits of armor to shreds with their terrible claws and hands.

While its self-propulsion mode in zero-gravity is weak, and the suit is not capable of full powered flight, large, dragon-fly like wings along the back of the suit allow for a limited glide in atmosphere.

Tan'Sleth, the Second Skin

Worn primarily by the elite males among the communes, and a few exceptional females, the Tan'Sleth is a tiny, compact creature, the solid portion of its body roughly the size of the palm of the hand. Yet, the majority of the creature's bulk is the deeply colored membranes that hang away from its body, carefully engineered to be roughly the size and shape of a jump suit. Worn high on the back, between the shoulder blades, the creature's strongly elastic membranes hug the body of the wearer in a skin-tight embrace over nearly the full body, save the place above the shoulders where the creature is entered.

Using the membranes to harvest the sweat and other excretions of the host-wearer, the creature in return provides many of the same benefits as traditional clothing, proofing him against all but the hottest of summers and the harshest of Regaran winters. Typically photosythetic as well, the creature is often a blend of brilliant green and blue hues, with occasional deep violets shown as well, depending on the photo-synthetic cycle engineered into the creature. Chlorophyll green is the most common.

An additional adaptation allows a related suit to serve as a simple environment suit, supplying a short term air supply to the wearing creature as well.

Elekos Blade Flinger

Perhaps the most valuable thing found among the stars by the Kel'Regar has been the biodiversity of Earth. It is not uncommon for the Ambassador to arrange the wholly illegal export of living creatures to Regar. Included in one of the earliest batches was the simple, humble electric eel, effectively granting the Kel'Regar the ability generate tremendous voltages organically.

Now combined into a complex and incredible chimera of creatures, the eel's electrical generation cells form the basis of the Elekos Blade flinger, a long, broad, pack-like thing with a single, long, stiff limb, in the shape of a tube. Worn on the back of a Kel'Regar female, with the limb mounted on the shoulder, it is capable of launching pieces of the Blade Grass at many multiples of the speed of sound, a sophisticated, organic version of a rail-gun.

Incredibly rare, this is perhaps the most potent personal weapon developed by the Kel'Regar.

Communication Implant

A complex symbiote, the Communication Implant enables the Kel'Regar to become one with many pieces of their technology, weaving their central nervous systems into one single thing.

Upon reaching neurological adulthood, the implant creature's eggs are placed in an incision at the base of the neck. The Kel'Regar receiving the implant is then placed under sedation for the next two weeks, as the eggs hatch, and the creature within extends its tendrils into their spine and brain, and down along the skeletal system, quickly fusing with the Kel'Regar, and tricking its immune system into accepting it. As the process completes itself, 'nerve patches' become visible at the recipient's wrists, temples, necks, and ankles, places where other engineered creatures can be attached to 'sync up' with the nervous system, temporarily joining it to the senses and will of the Kel'Regar.

While this creature has been carefully engineered for acceptance by the Kel'Regar body, the rare rejection can occur(less than 0.5%). This is not often fatal, though the raw pain of the mis-entwined systems will quickly make the receiving Kel'Regar wish he was dead. Removal requires extensive and significant surgery - so extensive is the process that suicide is occasionally the preferred method of treating rejection. To attempt the implantation without sedation will typically result in a different form of rejection; as the pain of having a creature fuse with the nervous system is so incredibly excruciating, the conscious and subconscious mind simply shut off, leaving the recipient a comatose vegetable.

In theory, the communication implant can be given to any humanoid with a spinal cord. In practice, a system that has not been specifically re-engineered for the target race will have a 95%+ rejection rate, and even if the body does not reject the system, syncing errors will occur, as the communication organism feeds data to the wrong part of the recipient's brain, resulting in bizzare and inexplicable movements and sensations on the parts of both the humanoid and whatever Kel'Regar device he is attempting to use.

Diamond-Bone

Perhaps the simplest of Kel`Regar implant technologies, Diamond-Bone is technically a kind of viral infection of the bones. Hopping a ride on the same cells that calcify to form the rigid structure of the bone, the infection hijacks the calcining functions, the new form expressing as an oxide matrix bound together by the shell structure of the virus, forming a suprisingly hard and tough composite material, roughly equivalent to a high speed steel in its properties.

This technology is often combined with other implants that express bone 'plating' or talons, to form weapons and armor systems.

Being viral in nature, the mutation rate of the virus is, unfortunately, relatively high. In a small percentage of cases, the virus can turn on its host, causing a disfiguring and painful form bone cancer, and this cancer can still express many, many years after the original implantation. However, it is also comparatively simple for the minor alterations for the virus to express in non-Kel'Regar body systems, and it is popular in certain segments of humanity, most commonly those who expect to see combat, and those who have aged enough to wish to augment degenerating bones.

Immune Response Augmentation Organ

Flat and circular in shape, this organ is often attached to the veins that deliver stale blood to the Kel'Regar liver analogue. Grown in part from the genetic code of the intended recipient, the primary purpose of the Organ is to bolster the natural immune system, by increasing the body's natural hunter-killer cell response. Accordingly, this is typically implanted in those demonstrating high risk factors for infection.

Initially, the organ begins by filtering assorted toxins from the blood stream, concentrating them in pockets within itself. When the chemical signals of infection begin to make themselves known throughout the body, the organ then releases hunter-killer cells augmented with the otherwise filtered toxins. When these cells encounter the infecting cells, they inject these additional poisons into the attacking cells along with their normal payload, thus killing many infectious bacteria that the body may otherwise take too long to adapt a response to.

Hanala and the weaver bug

The most common form of cloth worn by the Kel'Regar is Hanala, worked from the threads of the hanala'bemt, usually translated into galactic basic as the weaver bug. Bred in ancient times from a small, insectivorous creature, roughly analogous to the spider, the modern weaver bug is a small thing, striped in black and silver, its three body segments sporting a total of ten legs, four on the thorax, and six on the long, distended abdomen. Over the years, it has been domesticated to live on a supply of crushed grubs, and in turn, it instinctively run round the six pins of its traditionally hexagonal enclosure, spanning the distance between them with its valuable fiber.

At feeding time, the feeding mash is placed at one end of the enclosure, and as the hanala'bemt goes to eat it, the other end of the enclosure is removed and replaced, the pins withdrawn with the cover, bringing out the fibers. When spun and cured, the fiber greatly resembles polyester, and is used for the majority of common garments. Color is readily imparted at the curing step.

Being a lover of bizarre nature (and zombies), I would love to see a spin off of the Ophiocordyceps fungus. This fungus releases spores that infect and kill carpenter ants. Though the fungus harvests the ant's body for protein, it leaves the muscles of ambulation and mastication intact. The fungus then accurately manipulates the "undead" corpse of the ant towards other carpenter ants where it then climbs a tree, latches on with its mandibles, and grows into a spore sprinkler.

Infested Terran anyone? You could really spin this parasitic fungus a thousand different ways from Zombies to Body Snatchers.