## Metadata Name: Last-born Holding: None Office: None ## Background You were born more than two hundred million years ago. There are no words for something as old as you are, because the Queen of Illusions has made a point to kill everything She could get Her hands on, and few things evade Her grasp forever. Truth be told, you haven't escaped entirely yourself. Every few millennia, the Empress sends Her servants to destroy you, and every few millennia, you let them. As far as you can tell, She has never figured out why it doesn't take, and assumes Her assassins are simply incompetent. If She ever figured out that the Plaguesmith used you to test his theories about immortality, or that he succeeded? The war to follow that discovery would shake the firmament itself. Best She never learn. The truth is that you, like the Wend, simply cannot die. Arguably, you aren't really alive, either. As best you can figure out, you seem to be a sort of semi-fixed shape in the universe. You're capable of growing or shrinking, learning or forgetting, but whenever someone or something does enough harm to destroy your physical form (a comically difficult task with a Sapient Plague), the universe itself simply seems to will you back into existence moments later. There's a minor drawback, which is that your memory banks are apparently not part of this universal pattern, so every time She kills you, you lose your memory (which means you feel like you're only a few hundred years old). You haven't the faintest idea how it was done, or how the Plaguesmith undid it on himself, but you suspect that granting immortality to you was a crucial step in his plan. More than that, you suspect that your part in his plan is essential in understanding how he was killed. The death of the Plaguesmith was, after all, according to his plan. You know he didn't die by his own hand, and you're fairly certain he didn't know who was responsible, but you know in the ancient nanobots which make up your core self that he was the only person in the history of the galaxy who could possibly overcome the Witch-Queen's curse. If you had simply heard the same thing as everyone else gathered on the Contemplatory - that the Plaguesmith had been killed and a Myriadic Council convened - you'd have simply continued on with your original plan to travel to a nearby system with three stars to relieve them of their chaos-inducing spare. Unfortunately, a few days before his death, the Plaguesmith contacted you directly. **FIND MY KILLER,** he said **AND PROTECT THEM WITH YOUR LIFE.** ## Mechanics ### Asset: [[Omniphage|Omniphage]] You are an Omniphage, a child of the Plaguesmith better known to the galaxy at large as a "Sapient Plague," or by the derogatory term "grey goo." What you really are is a cloud of nanobots larger than many stars, capable of maintaining connection to small, detached parts of yourself. You can, for example, attend a gathering in a roughly humanoid form while the rest of your impossible bulk waits a few convenient light-seconds away. At the same time, your wroth is a terrible thing to behold. Devouring an entire Fleet is well within your power, and indeed falls under the heading of "tasty and nutritious." You can participate in any [[Combat]], and the side on which you participate gains one advantage, plus an additional advantage for every participant on the other side(s) of the combat, except other Sapient Plagues. In any one-on-one scenario, you automatically win unless your opponent has an Asset which explicitly allows them to fight Sapient Plagues. ### Lien: [[Nanobody Likes Me|Nanobody Likes Me]] Being a sentient cloud of nanobots capable of devouring most starships without a fight can make it surprisingly difficult to make friends. Many Holdings believe Sapient Plagues are no more than living curses, monsters to be fought and killed at any cost. The truth is that Sapient Plagues tend to eat dead matter until they grow to a maximum size, bud off a few children, and then retire to a quiet life drinking radiation from dying stars. Fortunately (or unfortunately, given your perspective and current appetite), most of the Holdings with monster-hunting cultures aren't really up to the task of killing a Sapient Plague, even with the element of surprise and plenty of lead-up. Statistically, Sapient Plagues mostly eat in self-defense. Even so, when you are a member of a [[GiC Holding]], that Holding automatically loses one advantage at the start of any [[Negotiation]] or [[Endeavor]], as the galaxy looks on in suspicion at those who would harbor such a power. ### Special: Exiled from Death You are incapable of dying. You can take physical damage, can be captured or restrained, and can suffer terrible loss, but you cannot die. No matter how much damage is done to you, you will reform shortly after a short distance away. ## Themes These themes are offered to help inform roleplay, but do not carry a mechanical effect. - Alienation - Power at Rest - Personal vs Political