(Infested Concept) Poly-Morph: Living Hard Drive

[Crimsonblack]

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Its age is as unfathomable as the knowledge it has accumulated. Beyond the past of the Orokin, into a present that doesn't exist, and into futures that make no sense. A sacrifice is always needed to weaken the mass enough to peer into its memory, but the corpus don't see any loss in acquiring yet-to-be or never-made technology and scientific principals, and the grineer can always clone more of themselves. I just want to know where this thing came from. -From a self-proclaimed 'temporal physicist'.

Background and Discovery:

The Poly-Morph was discovered by a corpus exploration party that went beyond the boundaries of Pluto to investigate an infested signal unlike any discovered before. What they discovered was a mass of ships of unknown origin and age floating back into the solar system. Only one of three teams managed to sneak their way into the vessel, sending back valuable data on old, faded text, architecture, and the infested on-board.

Said infested were unusual in appearance, taking on more avian shapes and seemingly made from gray metal themselves. The team leader of the time surmised they infused themselves with the metal of the ship, explaining its melted interior mimicking caves on Earth.

At some point in their exploration, the team was ambushed by a large group of these infested including a jackal-sized infested of massive girth. Only one soldier survived the encounter, having fled deeper into the infested mass of the ship and eventually coming upon a thrumming room of blue and orange where a shining mass of infested flesh sat, its surface devoid of anything but random swirls. It appeared so massive that it could have been the size of a destroyer, engulfing so much of the stone and metal that had become encrusted into the ships' corpses. Those who watched the recording could not determine why, but the soldier approached the mass, his hand outstretched, and as he made contact, he began screaming about a past unknown to anyone. A continuous stream of data rushed through his suit then into the dropship waiting behind, which bounced back to the Corpus investors. While most of the data was corrupted garble, a few bits and pieces of unique history and tech were found. Among them being a suit of armor made by a corpus scientist, dated long after their death in the current present.

Soon, grineer, corpus, and third parties alike starting swarming to the anomaly shifting in and out of space-time to grab whatever they can in hopes that they might procure a treasure to help them defeat their foes, but the guardians are a vicious, unending lot, and seem to devour all that enter.

 

Details:

The Poly-Morph is an infested whose age is impossible to define, just like the mass of ancient ships it dwells in. Its strain is completely foreign to the infested of the Sol system and the mutants aboard are just as mysterious, having taken a completely different path of development to the more widespread strains found about the system and those growing on Deimos.

The Poly-Morph's 'nest' is a temporal anomaly that shifts in and out of our timeline at random intervals, bringing with it more and more of its strain of metallic, avian-like infested that are even more aggressive than the infested on Deimos, which is a feat that many survivors would have preferred to never learn of.

Thanks to its very nature as what several infested researchers consider as 'one of the oldest, still living infested' and 'a living computer', the Poly-Morph can be overloaded with organic material thanks to its mass that stretches beyond whatever its original host used to be, allowing anyone present to take historical, technological, and theoretical research from it. Because the technocyte virus is always mutating, the data is usually just jumbled trash code with no real meaning, but there's always a few bits of treasure within. Rumors claim that the Poly-Morph carries information on ancient orokin tech and even the blueprints to tenno equipment not just from our timeline but many others. How that works is beyond the caring of the treasure hunters. Many have already taken advantage of the Poly-Morph and started developing the technology found, but the hunters have already begun stressing out thanks to their shared foe: The Tenno.

It's only a matter of time before the Tenno start exploring the ship and acquiring new equipment, increasing their power even more. There's already sightings of a warframe that appears at random after every few phases of the 'nest' that assaults and hunts everyone aboard the ship, including fellow Tenno. It's surmised that it's been infected by this ancient strain and assimilated into the hivemind.

With anomalous properties at hand, it has been seen forcing others out from our reality temporarily, only for them to return in pieces and bring in hordes of the new strain into place from the very walls themselves. Large infested sharing physical attributes with the tenno also make occasional appearances, usually when close to the Poly-Morph's lair.

While the origins of this extremely ancient strain will perhaps always remain a mystery, it is still a treasure trove of technology from peers in other timelines just waiting to be grabbed.

And no one seems to care that the nest is slowly crawling closer to the Sol System, ready to spread its infectious spores everywhere thanks to it.