AMCO
I'm Sorry Dave
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Waste not, want not.
- Image Credit: Unknown Artist - [X]
- Canon: Sithspawn
- Links: House of Progress, Sith Sorcery, Sith Alchemy
- Name: Amalgafiend
- Designation: Semi-sentient
- Homeworld: N/A
- Language: Broken Basic, largely nonsensical; typically "programmed" to understand certain commands in Sith during the creation process.
- Average Lifespan: 13 | 4 years --- can survive considerably longer in locations heavily tainted by the dark side, making them good tomb guardians.
- Estimated Population: Rare (Terrors) | Scattered (Butchers)
- Description: Appearing to be a sickly grey abomination in a roughly humanoid shape, often with partially absorbed body parts hanging out, Amalgafiends are a truly horrifying sight to behold. Despite their gruesome appearance, they are a creation of callous pragmatism, not conventional malevolence, being primarily composed of test subjects that would otherwise have been "wastefully" disposed of. The vile creatures retain some slight trace of their old selves, but, in truth, the subjects themselves have long since become one with the force; whatever remains is an unintended byproduct of the subjects' brain mass being absorbed into these abominations, being more akin to nervous twitches than actual sentience.
- Breathes: N/A
- Average height of adults: 3-12 metres
- Average length of adults: N/A
- Skin colour: Shades of grey.
- Hair colour: N/A
- Distinctions: While highly different in appearance based on what (or rather who) they are composed of, they are, for the most part, functionally identical. The largest difference is their height and mass, which determine their strength, as well as what their creators intended to use them for, e.g., most have claws, many have arms twisted to resemble bladed weapons or clubs, and some have fairly normal looking hands. There is no noticeable difference between young and old specimens, except that old ones tend to be somewhat larger due to having absorbed additional biomass. Specimens that inhabit locations strongly tainted by the dark side are sometimes found to be stronger and more durable than baseline specimens, though they have a tendency to become reliant upon the ambient energy, causing them to be drastically weakened or even perish outright should they leave the location for an extended amount of time.
- Races: The original variant, now known as "Amalgafiend Terrors", are now outnumbered by "Amalgafiend Butchers", due to the fact the latter are both quicker and easier to produce.
- Strengths:
Formless Resilience: Heavily influenced by the Gen'dai, Amalgafiends are boneless creatures made up mostly of corded muscle and nerve clusters, leaving opponents with no clear target to strike. In combination with a particularly resilient body, this makes them mostly impervious to small arms fire, though it does little to protect against lightsabers and similar weapons. Furthermore, their formless nature allows them to "patch themselves up" by absorbing new biomass, preferably dead and dying sentients. Even when killed they can be used to kickstart the creation of a replacement unless sufficient measures are taken to destroy their vile remains. - Raw Strength: While their exact strength depends on their size and the skill of their creator, their bodies are made up mostly of dark-side enhanced muscle, making the very weakest of them comparable to a particularly strong Wookie.
- Replaceable: Unlike many Sithspawn, the creation of Amalgafiends is a relatively simple and expeditious affair as long as one has the formula, the necessary expertise in Sorcery and Alchemy, and a sufficient amount of "spare biomass", at least some of whom must still be alive.
- [Horror Incarnate]: One of the few successes of the failed experiment resulting in the first Amalgafiend, the "Terror" variant has an innate ability to inflict crippling fear upon nearby weak-willed organics, similar to the force horror ability. That being said, they lack the finesse required to differentiate between friend and foe: It's an all or nothing affair.
- [Vile Might]: The "Terror" variant is stronger, faster, and more resilient than their lesser cousins, though not much smarter.
[*]Weaknesses:
- Sithspawn: As a result of their dark side origins, Amalgafiends have a crippling weakness against force light, with even a small dose being enough to cause them to flee, while a major dose would cause them to collapse into a pile of inert biomass. Furthermore, they, especially the "Terror" variant, are heavily tainted by the dark side, allowing force users to detect them from a distance easily enough.
- Blunt Instrument: Despite their great strength Amalgafiends are severely lacking in the intelligence department, being just barely intelligent enough to understand and obey basic instructions. Don't expect finesse, subtlety, or even low cunning from these vile creatures; in fact, it would usually be wise to consider them more akin to proton torpedos than soldiers --- just point the way towards the target and enjoy the destruction.
- Limited Senses: While capable of sensing vibrations and possessing a limited ability to detect living beings through the force, Amalgafiends lack sight, hearing, and smell, putting them at a considerable against clever opponents, especially droids and those capable of concealing their presence in the force.
- Sterile: Despite the relative ease of their creation, the fact that they have no natural (or unnatural) means of reproduction serves as the primary limitation on their numbers.
- Electrical Vulnerability: A side effect of being composed mostly out of muscle and nerve clusters, Amalgafiends are extremely weak against electricity. A Knight level dose of force lightning or electric judgement would be sufficient to reduce them to a spasming pile of sizzling flesh in a matter of seconds.
- [Cost of Quality]: The creation of Terror variant is considerably more time-consuming than the Butcher variant. As a rule of thumb, it can generally be assumed that an average Terror takes around as long as five average Butchers to create.
CULTURE
- Diet: Omnivores, but it is recommended that they be fed "spare biomass" at regular intervals to keep them in optimal fighting form.
- Communication: Anything but their current master/controlled is ignored or attacked. Some growling may occur.
- Technology level: N/A
- Religion/Beliefs: N/A
- General behaviour: Amalgafiends do not sleep. They do not eat. They do not talk. They do not even care about their own survival. They are purely dominated by one of two things: For controlled ones, they seek only to serve their controller. For rogue ones, they seek only to destroy all nearby life. The reason for the latter is unknown. Perhaps it is their madness, or the dark side, or the shreds of their former selves experiencing jealousy for the life and body they lost. In combat, they tend to be painfully predictable and straightforward in their approach unless directly ordered otherwise, having little understanding of tactics aside from charging the enemy and crushing, slashing, and tearing them to bits.
When practising the dark arts of the Sith, failures are frequently horrifying to the uninitiated; that does not mean they can't be put to good use.
In a remarkable display of immense overconfidence, Adrian Vandiir, a mere Acolyte of the Sith, set out to create the perfect assassin using his (somewhat limited) knowledge of Sith Alchemy, coupled with a healthy dose of Sith Sorcery. His assassins would be faceless, formless, horrors. They would be capable of regenerating almost any wound, of ripping a grown Wookie in half, of driving fear into the hearts of their victims with unparalleled precision. They would be cunning killers. A crime against the natural order to occupy the nightmares of his foes.
In the end, the last part, at least, was successful.
The early prototypes turned out... less than optimal. They were stunted. Misshapen. Their minds shattered and depraved. They lacked the regenerative properties from the Gen'dai sample used as part of their creation and their bodies were far from as malleable as intended. They could not change themselves in the field, could barely be changed in the lab without falling apart. Overall, it was a resounding failure. Despite his best efforts, despite spending a great deal of time on the project, he was unable to resolve the issues. In the end, the project had to be scrapped. The specimens were disposed of in a large pit, dumped there like the waste material they were.
Then something interesting happened.
The dead and dying specimens, the residue energy, the miscellaneous byproducts dumped alongside them... it all began to merge. The process was slow, and would probably not have gotten anywhere, had Adrian not taken note and decided to see if he could glean some benefit from his failure. Through the vilest of sorcery, the process was accelerated, altered, propelled towards a twisted form of unity. From that process, the first Amalgafiends were born. They were far from what he had intended to create. For a great deal, he had accomplished very little, but his work did not end there. Reverse engineering the amalgamations of flesh and residue energy, he came up with a formula. A way of turning people, normal people, into such horrors. Eventually, this process was honed further. It became possible to create a lesser variant, a variant that was nonetheless normally preferable due to being much easier to create.
Eventually, the technique would be further refined. It became possible to water down the ratio of living to dead, making these creatures well suited for "conscientious disposal of spare biomass", a friendly sounding euphemism for the many dead test subjects that had a tendency to pop up around Sith workshops. While this worked poorly for the more complex Terrors, in the case of the Butchers this process could be stretched to the point where the recently deceased outnumbered the living, though some living subjects would always be required to produce even the smallest and weakest Amalgafiends.
In the end, failure was turned to success, and an important lesson was learned: Waste not, want not.
