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Vitaelioes are actually invisible to the naked eye. It is not because they are invisible, but rather microscopic. This insect can live on its own for several years, but eventually must find a host body to survive.
Vitaelioes cannot take over intelligent creatures and cannot really steer themselves around a macroscopic world on their own. They will actually wait until they can latch onto a passing BTM. As these wonderful machines work their magic, the Vitaelio will get off in the creature’s central nervous system and take over. The Vitaelio will gain complete control of the victim. This first stage of overtaking usually occurs in smaller animals, such as rodents, insects, or small birds. In this new form, the Vitaelio will viciously attack anything it can which it believes to be capable of beating. Once it kills, it will dismember the victim’s body looking for spare parts. It can attach these limbs to itself, just like a changeling can attach its own missing limbs to itself. It takes only a matter of seconds for the Vitaelio to become proficient in using this new limb. Adding new and more limbs makes this creature look like a grotesque abomination. If a Vitaelio is strong enough or clever enough to kill an intelligent being which uses tools, the Vitaelio could be seen later carrying an unlucky adventurer’s sword and donning his armor. Just as they can adapt quickly to new body parts, a Vitaelio can quickly learn how to effectively wield a weapon by watching a combatant use it in battle. Some vary popular body parts include the following: poison or venom sacks with fangs, such as from a Birok Serpent; large-bulky arm with a claw, such as from a Deco’Carr; wings large enough to carry itself from a great bird, such as from an Osperian or Avian; a stinger, such as from a scorpion; strong, sprinting legs, such as from a horse or cheetah; and others. Body parts taken onto the body from the Vitaelio function, but are still dead and will eventually begin to rot. For this reason, a Vitaelio must continually kill, and will usually do so to anything in its path, just to keep its body with a constant supply of fresh parts for strength. A Vitaelio is nothing without its body and becomes very weak if it lets its body become too decayed. Remember, a Vitaelio with rotting flesh might be weaker, but that also makes it more desperate. A Vitaelio’s fighting style will obviously be different depending on its body. Some are stronger and will fight like a truck, and some are very quick and will strike like a fox. Whatever the body, they all share a few tricks in common. If the Vitaelio have a limb with opposable thumbs or has another way to wield a weapon, it may try to disarm its opponent after watching him or her fight with his or her weapon for a short period to learn how to do so itself. The second tactic is to dismember it opponent as it fights. If a Vitaelio can rip off an opponents arm or leg, it can attach it to its body in the middle of the fight, learn to use the new limb, and continue the fight with the extra fire-power. A Vitaelio will even settle for just a hand or foot. It is also possible that a Vitaelio, after stealing an arm or hand, will attempt to follow up with a disarm attempt, especially if it becomes the first hand it has. A defeated Vitaelio is not killed. Even though its host body is broken and unable to be repaired, the microscopic insect itself can still escape the battle through the air on a BTM and start the cyle again. Vitaelioes are capable of intelligent thought, which includes the capability of memory. A defeated Vitaelio my return for revenge several months or even several years later with a new body and its old and never-deterring thirst for blood. Vitaelioes are vicious and brutal killing machines, but would probably make lousy companions, even to those who are vicious and brutal killers themselves. Because of the constant upkeep needed for the Vitaelio to survive, it may become hostile to its master or its master’s allies if it does not constantly kill, just like a Vampire that denies itself feeding. Vitaelioes on Solaris as well as Vitaelioes anywhere else all have the same history or ruthless killing. They go from creature to creature killing anything they can, taking its enemies’ bodies and limbs as prizes. Vitaelioes have to kill constantly to maintain themselves and they seem to enjoy doing it. BTM’s can move very swiftly and so Vitaelioes are spread out to the corners of Solaris and even the Nomaverse. (Outside of Solaris, Vitaelioes cannot use BTM’s for transport and therefore die off more often and are less prevalent.) They can appear in the forests, infecting rodents and moving up to Kran Tigers, Deco’Tuks, and Osperians. Alternitively, they could appear in a desert, starting on scorpians and moving up to even the great Locustian Sandwyrms. Still however, they could appear in the oceans, starting on plankton and working up to sharks and Brunta. No matter where they appear, a Vitaelio can always be easily identified by its mismatched limbs attached grotesquely to a core of pure evil. Once a Vitaelio becomes powerful enough, it can separate into two Vitaelioes. Each of these offspring is weaker than the original, and they usually fight (on the microscopic level) for control of whatever form the original Vitaelio had when it split. The loser is projected from the body mass and must start its cycle of overtaking and killing all over again. Newly separated Vitaelioes will fight over custody for their current body, but other than that, they do not seem to fight amongst each other. It is speculated that when a Vitaelio separates, the two new Vitaelioes share a consciousness. If this is true, then it is possible that all Vitaelioes have a single identical ancestor and have a complete racial collective consciousness which would weed out the need to fight themselves or be territorial. When a Vitaelio takes over a body, it “teaches” the body to create the enzymes it uses to attach new body parts so quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately for the Vitaelio, these enzymes, as so the bonds, are weak to extreme changes in temperature. Heating up or cooling down some of the sensitive areas with some well placed Fire or Ice elemental abilities might cause the Vitaelio to, literally, fall apart. *The stats of this creature depend on the primary host creature. |
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