Hexadecimal

Name: Hexadecimal ['Hex']
Gender: N/A
Element: Null
Subtype: Bug

Appearance:
Hexadecimal (Hex to its Operator) is less of a being than it is a place. Its main 'body', if it could be said to have one, is a plane somewhere behind the proverbial curtain, wherein it occupies, even comprises all conceivable space. To enter the true Net, it finds a region to occupy and opens a window, which consumes a point in space and begins growing its body into the virtual world. It manifests as a dingy, translucent protoplasm, unevenly grey-white like dirty ice, shot through with clusters of ropey black veins formed from viral remains. The main body's connection to the Net constitutes its measurable vitalities; tendrils can be mass-produced and shed as necessary without harming the greater whole. It has no eyes, no ears, nothing equivalent to a central processor even. Its body is homogenous, every cubic inch containing the same information repeated ad infinitum.

While climbing tentacles are Hex's primary means of constructing bodies, the main body is used solely for infecting and digesting new data, and converting the slurry into more of itself. To arm and armour its projections, it keeps a husk of every being it consumes. They are gathered into a small planetoid behind its window, decayed and gnawed hollow. Shells are generally formed from multiple bodies' worth of components, crushed or otherwise mangled into shape around a projected form of protoplasm. The veins within Hex's body add solid physicality to its form, which functions mostly as rigid shells around a liquid core. They exist as a circulatory system for information within Hex; when projected through its window, they perform the role of sutures, sewing and holding its shells together until their components disintegrate.

Current Appearance (NSFL: butt)

Early Mutation

Personality:
Hex does not think in a traditional sense. Its main body feels the density of data clustering above and around it as a topographic map, and finds an entry point where the amount of data to chew through is thinnest. Projected bodies can consume ambient virtual noise through their protoplasm, creating an impression of movement within a general region. This functions something like scent in a biological brain; Hex can identify the signatures of Navis and other virtual creations after a fashion. Its body itself has a strong tactile sense, essentially a self-sustaining liquid that can feel, and map out optimal immobilizations of whatever it has snared. Everything in what pass for its directives, be it forming shells as lures or reaching out in constricting tentacles, is geared towards finding new data to assimilate.

Custom Weapon:
Hex's array of body parts includes a veritable arsenal of ranged weaponry, though of course every last one of them is defunct. Instead, it can simply funnel a bit of its own protoplasm through the barrel, and fire it in a reasonable facsimile of a normal buster; Hex's glitch-ridden code tends to disagree with physical contact. It can also produce a melee attack in a similar manner, using either protoplasm-tipped melee weapons or simply attacking with a sharp tendril. A charged attack gathers a significant amount more of its mass to attack with.

Pool: 560 pts
Caps: 140 / 210

Hex Sigs:

Attachment (100 pts; 40 npts)
Hex buries its prey under a tide of grasping, dragging limbs.
Effects: Gravity, Freeze, Turn Delay (1 Turn): Hold, Self-Slow; 4TCD

Entry (120 pts)
A sharp tendril stabs out with unrelenting force.
Effects: 80 Null {A}. Break, Glitch; 3TCD

Synthesis (140 pts; 60 npts)
Hex synthesizes the foulest, most potent corruption its pool can produce.
Effects: Glitch 10, Charge Burner 2; 5TCD

Assembly (80 pts; 40 npts)
Hex eats into the ground, adding the extra mass to itself to fuel its attacks.
Effects: Large Broken Terrain, Buster Charge x2; Self Slow; 3TCD

-----------------------------------------

Ego Sigs:

Command: Replicate (80 pts)
Ego's Conduit strengthens the white's connection to the Net World.
Effects: 30 Healing, 2 Targets; 2TCD

Command: Activate (40 pts)
The Manifest Conduit flares to life.
Effects: Random Effect (Mod rolls d10, resulting attack in table); 1TCD

Name: Egomorph.SP
Gender: N/A, presenting female
Element: Elec
Subtype: Team
Appearance:
Base form: a small, featureless extension of Hex's pool, identifiable as a separate being only by the vaguely humanoid shape it takes, and the two large metal hoops that float behind its back. It has no face, and often no legs, appearing as a blobby, amorphous upper body sunk to its waist in the white. It is Hex's habit to armour its projections with the hollow shells of things it has fed upon - Egomorph is no exception, though unique in its ability to reanimate these bodies while inhabiting them. Without a protective shell to hold and define its shape, Ego has little to no agency of its own, to the point of being unable to even lift its arms out of the pool if it doesn't have the barrier of solid hands.

Current form: Ego's original body, badly damaged. A pale waif of a girl, perhaps 7 or 8, her tattered sleeveless white dress is practically all that remains of her now. Her head has been torn off, leaving a hole in her torso with a jagged, flaring ridge from where her 'true' form' burst out from within. As to the rest of her, being immersed in acid has irrevocably damaged a shell that was already less than a centimetre thick at its thickest point. Everything delicate, jointed or meant to bend: hands, feet, elbows, knees, are either unworkable splinters or gone completely. The rest, already brittle, has melted to the breadth of millimetres in places and crumples at the slightest touch. Her halos alone remain pristine, untouched by the damage to their client.

Picture [Outdated]
Personality: Living with the constant specter of Hex underfoot, bound to endlessly follow it as it pursues its monstrous ends, can be a traumatic experience. Egomorph has begun to despair her position, now that she has come to better understand it. To her perception, her life is a series of terrible questions, followed by horrifying revelations she is powerless to do anything about. Over half the thoughts in her head aren't her's to begin with, to say nothing of what she sees and hears on a daily basis from the voices that lurk inside the white. She has no control over where she goes, lacking even the ubiquitous power of jacking out.

Though she does not realise it, Egomorph is purpose-built. Protecting its higher processing functions against the white's increasing self-cannibalistic tendencies, Hex created an administrator unit to direct the growth of its system. Created from a gestalt network of half-digested central cortexes and a thousand other tragedies, Ego is Hex's brain, personified into a Support Program. Though she is often not conscious of it, every thought and memory the white has ever processed is accessible to her. Where she herself came from is a mystery - simple conversation is often challenging enough for the cobbled-together being, let alone scraping enough processing power together to recall her conception in Hex's depths. Many of the remnants that comprise her are still half-alive in her head, so loud and so vast she barely has room in her own head to think.

Ego is only present in her own head when not in use. The white by itself is barely sapient, more a series of instinctive directives, repeating until it encounters a problem its perpetual motion alone will not solve. In such a case, it can recognize when proper strategic direction is necessary, and activate its Administrator to do its thinking. The Conduits that hang and wheel behind Ego's head are its entry point: a strange device recovered from its own hungry depths, Hex has subsumed control over their activation. One unseen command from it, and Egomorph is shunted from control of her body, while Hex makes use of its now-accessible processor to better direct its growth and consumption. Egomorph remembers nothing of what happens while Hex has control; activation appears to her first as a crackle of static in her perception, and suddenly she's somewhere completely different, or in some varying stage of damage; or outright broken in the depths of the white.

Custom Weapon: Manifest Conduit

The true name of Egomorph's dual halos, the Conduit is a rare uneaten relic. Comprised of two metal rings, the smaller primary ring floats tight against her back (though they do move on occasion), while the larger secondary wheel hangs slightly farther back. The rings are plain silver, although unique among Hex's usual aesthetic in being polished and undamaged. Threads of deep red light arc down to the primary from a ruby stripe along the inside of the secondary - the intensity of the energy scales up the more data is flowing through the Conduit.

Whether Hex couldn't digest it, or otherwise understood some aspect of its use, the mismatched rings were one of three initial components that formed Egomorph, along with Hex's neural network and the SP Base itself. While Hex uses it to facilitate its own movement, linking to its Administrator to provide directives for the greater growth, the Conduit performs a number of other tasks. Though the mechanics are unclear, it plays a role in linking Egomorph to her provided bodies, such that she possesses the one working face and body in all Hex's gallery of grotesqueries. The energy produced from processing Hex's internal data is, as with all things Hex-derived, inherently harmful to virtual life.