(Infestation Syndicate) A Pox Mother + Open world concept

[Crimsonblack]

Under construction

Quote

Of all the creatures that have confronted the infested, not one of them was seen as more than food to feed their endless hunger. Then came the tenno. There was something there. The aggression remained, but I saw something. Their movements slowed, their actions delayed. Unnoticeable to the naked eye, but laboratories compensate for such a qualm. They had...pity? Remorse? Regret? I don't know what was happening. Even against the sentry-controlled kin, there was none of that hesitation. What do they see in the Tenno that they saw in no other entity in the history that we've known them?

-Orokin Biologist log recovered from derelict.

Syndicate:

The infested are not as mindless as they would have many believe. The oldest have a minimal sense of self and, as such, can direct their lesser kin to survival and infestation. The technocyte virus has a beginning but it will have no end. They are certain of it. Tenno will be contacted by a heavily distorted message, a whispering voice calling them to a mass of orokin derelicts that have fused together thanks to their aimless drifting and the actions of numberless infested aboard. Upon reaching it and touching down on an extended slab of metal sticking outside the frame, the tenno will be greeted by a mass of infested flesh that snaps and pops into a compact form. The form takes on a long, serpentine figure thrice the height of the warframe, and it needs to hunch over to be able to talk to it. Its 'face' is a single eye on the right of the writhing mass of orange flesh and claws.

Javac is its name, and it is what will give the tenno bounties and be the start of many quests.

"Tenno," it whispers. Its voice flays about the skull of the operator like a telekinetic whip. "I did not think that our sub-species would heed our call." It extends one of its many long, clawed hands towards the warframe. Javac pulls his arm back when it sees the tenno put their hand on the handle of their weapon. "No need for that, cousin," it teases. "We wish you to join us. We are of one flesh, after all." It bobs its long head up and down, conceding. "Until then, we wish to ally ourselves with you for what is to come." It chuckles. "Naturally, we don't expect you to do it for free. We've seen through the eyes of our lessers and our fellows why you fight." It slithers away towards one of the few intact doors on the ruined hull of the ship mass and looks over its should, twisting completely to stare at the warframe through its single, visible eye. "You must keep the balance, right?"

The Tenno are shown the wide open space that has been carved out of debris and dried husks of long-dead infested. Several beetle-like infested are busy gnawing on the metal, their metallic maws sparking. Pieces fall down about the tenno while they look around to see the sprawling heights and the mass of infested flesh pulsating and growing along the metal inching evermore with each passing second. Unnoticeable at first, but when the light of the malfunctioning Orokin power junctions vanish...

Javac is at the end of the assortment of clustered hunks, towering over the other infested casually moving about and ignoring your presence.

Hourr(who're) is the one who gives the tenno pieces for primary weapons. Having only scavenged pieces, the weapons have an assortment of potential appearances as varied as the infested themselves. Inevitably, there will be corruption upon the weapons themselves as they were taken out of an infested's body; dead or otherwise.

To the immediate right is an infested made from an assortment of Corpus mechanical pieces, giving it the appearance of a poorly made Jackal with moa parts. "The cousins..." it hisses. Its voice is decorated by loud electrical buzzing produced by electrical surges in its body. It twitches violently when it speaks. "We are all one, but you do not understand." It twists left and right. "We have convened. Call me Hourr. I use what we scavenge from the malformed and the shiny. Give me nutrients, and I will give you pieces."

 

To the left and a floor above stands an ancient colored orange and thrumming with blue patterns across its body. It is slightly taller than regular infested and seemingly more passive than the others, and its crown is broken in several places. Orsd gives tenno mods for their warframes, companions, and weapons, aiding in survivability and combat. If you gather enough of the ultrarare mutations that require more than one warframe to hunt, you might get some rather dangerous items for your new companion.

"Tenno," it noted melodiously. "You will find peace here in our sanctuary." From its tendrils drips some acid that smokes upon the metallic ground. "I have called myself Orsd. I do not understand the reasons for naming, so I use sounds I hear." It gargles. "Out there, amongst the uneven pavilion of flesh, metal, and soundless air, await our kin that have not convened to our messages. They have not received our messages yet, so you must kill them. They will be repurposed, as with all things." It wipes slobber from its tentacles and swings the acid onto a wall beside it. "Among them are mutations. New evolutions of infested that are not part of our genetic pool. I want you to find them and capture them." It hands the tenno an infested orokin spear and several glowing yellow orbs. "The orbs will lock them in place for you to weaken them. Then you must impale them with...that." It instinctively hisses and growls."Orokin capture rod. Bring me more of mutations and you will get all you need to replicate them. We are cousins. Infested must help each other."

Ellan and Nalle are responsible for giving the tenno something that was usually left only to the infested. A new type of companion named "Blue Spores" by the Mycona. Said companions are essentially bipedal, infested creations that can be configured with various new parts and weapons. Some might even be able to explode, infecting everything around it and killing them slowly if they don't die immediately. The bodies and/or infested spores that grew within the victims let the companion regenerate. They can be fit with melee and ranged weaponry and genetically programmed to prefer one over the other or simply use both in balance.

Ellan and Nalle share the same body. The head is split down the middle, with the left (Ellan) sporting orange and pale-pink colors and the right  (Nalle) deep-blue and eggshell white. Their shared head is the size of a normal human's and round as such, but only sporting colored slits in place of eyes. Ellan's 'eyes' are shared among seven slits going from the top of their head to the bottom. Nalle's are clustered around the middle of its side. Their main body is twisting and mangled, only barely showing some bits of Corpus and Grineer armor through it. They sport three legs like Lephantis and four scythe-like arms ending in three sharp fingers that can join back into the bladed tips.

"The tenno approach," the two speak together. Their echo is disturbing within the mind of the operator. "Warframes of the Orokin twisting and melding our flesh to use us." Nalle laughs. "Give us solid flesh from the walls of the silent air, and we will give you parts in return."

"They are our children. We gave them life," Nalle croaks.

"But you must raise them. Teach them. Grow them," Ellan adds.

"Bring us the flesh of the malformed invaders and we'll give you nutrients or the bile with which to meld them into our children," Nalle laughs.

"Bring the flesh of the shiny invaders and the bile for evolved weapons shall serve the children."

"We find it fitting," the two spoke in tandem once more. "That the children of the Orokin teach and raise the children of the Infested." They lean closer. "The torch must be passed eventually," they hiss. The two clutch their head and shudder before returning to their corner.

Rank 5: Upon reaching Rank 5, Javac leads the tenno to a rising ramp of flesh and metal to reach a flesh wall at the end that splits apart, leaving some tendrils of gunk between the layers. Left to choose whether to enter or not, the tenno is witness to a room completely overcome by pulsating orange flesh and its air choked by a fog of spores. They also see the origin for the abnormal naming of the syndicate. A figure comes to life, raising from a mound of spore-like dust layers and shaking the area violently, loosening bits of calcified flesh from the walls to smash against the spongy ground and rails. The entity's body is pocked with holes stretched like rotten muscle and tendon. Its near-spherical form was long since lost by its age and time in the derelict. Now it was just an assortment of loose flesh held together by the will of the infested and fed by long ropes of taut flesh growing from the walls. Multiple eyes covering its body open wearily to gleam upon the warframe before it, making it chitter. The sounds fill the operator with sensations of pure rage and sweet delight, but they aren't left to ponder on it for too long. They are almost thrown out of the entrance by the torrential flood of spores that erupts from the rotting holes of the all-encompassing creature's body.

"Aaaah, tenno," the creature jibbers. It's voice fades in and out of the tenno's mind, disturbing them with echoes and visions of faceless figures in the corner of their vision. "We were wary of you at first, but you have proved to be of value to our hive." Its body spasms, shaking the room and loosening more flesh to shatter like glass upon the floors. "You believe us to be the core of this hive? To control the mind of the infested?" It twists its 'head', and its body follows, twisting and swaying like a toy. The walls of the impacted derelicts whine and scream against the strain, cracking and snapping. The infestation wastes no time in sealing the holes. "We have seen in the minds of children. Of story-tellers and readers." It blurbles and bubbles in what is, perhaps, a twisted simulacrum of laughter. "There are many of us. We are not individuals. We are all one. We do not control. We can create and send." A tentacle lowers from the ceiling, extending its bulbous end to the warframe. "We have many gifts to share with you, pet of the Orokin, but nutrients will be required, as always." Its body jitters softly this time, letting loose some spore clouds into the unencumbered vents above. "We can share much more with you, too. Hmmm. The beginning of the Orokin, the Earth before it was scoured, some of your life before the infestation." It 'laughs' again. "We have convened and do not find it necessary." It laughs again, disturbing the operator and making them question exactly who the infested meant by 'your life'.

Its many eyes glow again upon the warframe, and it feels itself being used as a window. A painful, burning sensation, and yet there is no reaction from the body.

The Pox Mother is the reveal for the tenno who reach max rank with this syndicate. It holds arcanes and pieces for customizable weaponry of greater strength than regularly available, but very costly in construction. It also has mutalist moa parts and infested weaponry pieces. There is also a chance that it might give the tenno a quest or two to explore the dark reaches of the Soundless Air, discovering lost data storages revealing some history of the mysterious Orokin. On very rare occasions, it might even talk to the tenno through their mind during missions, feeding them tiny fragments of history.

(Myconian branch in the works)

Soundless Air: Open World

The Soundless air is infested with technocyte beasts that are openly aggressive to the warframes. Even if they work under a hive mind, the reasons why they still attack you remain uncertain. No creature of individual mind can comprehend the concept of a true hive mind.

Because the mass of derelict vessels have done naught but grow over time along with their infested passengers, there is a false atmosphere enabling warframes to breath within the confines of the spore bubble, but other races still need to wear suits to breathe and generally exist in the space. The Soundless Air is a mashing of twisted and broken hunks of decaying metal and calcified flesh. Some have melded into labyrinthian amalgamations of both, hiding treasures in their walls, and the tenno must navigate in three dimensions to reach every nook and cranny available to them. Not everything is mashed into one confined space. That would be too convenient. With the passage of time, some debris and even whole ships have broken off the mass and floated off into space. Most tend to stick around for several decades before then, so the tenno must either use the floating debris or an archwing to reach these remote islands. That means entering space where the 'air' of the spore atmosphere is not present, so you better hurry along if you don't have an archwing.

Within these cracks and narrow corridors you might find veins of calcified infested flesh that merged with different materials long ago, turning into something new after decades of fusing and refusing. This lends the more audacious access to plenty of rich and flexible new minerals with which to craft, and then there's the mutations that wander about that you can capture if you so choose. Although, with the infested controlling this place, don't be surprised if you hear the whispers of long-dead souls swimming through the spores, weaving a fragmented tale to the Operator if they listen closely enough. They just might lead you to one of the most ancient derelicts in the enormous mass within space. Who knows what lies within?

Spore Trapping: Because the infestation spreads by spores, a tenno can receive or build a number of capturing nets in the form of javelins. When the javelin is close enough, it will open up, capturing a swath of spores in its energy-net. This can be the infestation's way of fishing, or that can be done in pools of infected and toxic fluids pooling about the toxic meat undulating across the Soundless Air.

If that's the case, this can be used to gather materials for a new type of infested weapon: Crystallized Blood or Cryl. Using the frozen essence of outer space, the spores mutate into an inert and harmless version of the infestation since they don't have herd protection. The new weapons can currently only be crafted into melee weaponry, but they cause guaranteed bleeding due to them shattering every time they hit an enemy. Spears can see their points shatter into an enemy's torso, or a sword can shatter over their shoulder and eat through armor and flesh in a shower of light. Depending on the number of enemies hit at a time, the weapon will need more time to regenerate to return to max base and slash/punct/impact damage, but its bleed damage and crit chance go up the more it's broken.

(More to come)

Edited December 16, 2018 by Crimsonblack

[(PSN)chris1pat8twins]

The title automatically made me visualize the helminth chair being a syndicate. And it worships or praises Nidus while the rest are treated “normally” and the Tenno is bluntfully hated. That or someone similar to Alad V, who gets mutated but actually maintains some of their sanity. Maybe talks a little like Ordis where they speak normally but sometimes another voice(a creepy voice) speaks and talks in metaphoric and plurafic ways. 

“We have survivors. I need you to... INFEST... recruit them to our... FAMILY... side”

You get the idea. But an infested syndicate is something we don’t have yet. Could be part of some new Eris open world map. 

[Crimsonblack]

Just now, (PS4)chris1pat8twins said:

But an infested syndicate is something we don’t have yet.

...That's why I made this.

[geo223]

 

interesting idea and I think you could also draw in the myconians in there possibly.

[Crimsonblack]

9 hours ago, geo223 said:

 

interesting idea and I think you could also draw in the myconians in there possibly.

That's part of the plan. We see them only once so I find it a shame that they're being wasted like that.

Edited December 12, 2018 by Crimsonblack

[Crimsonblack]

Added a little more. Still designing the Myconians and the Soundless Air.

[Crimsonblack]

Added some of the open world. Still needs lots of work, though.

[Crimsonblack]

Added 'spore trapping' and 'crystallized blood'.