Time to discover, experiment, and learn about yourself

The orc didn't last long. More bodies followed. But you learned, and Uldar couldn't stop himself from helping you learn, and from finding you bodies. He was as fascinated by you as the Dark Lord hinted he would be. Time passed. He reported often to the Dark Lord of your progress, and sometimes the Dark Lord came to you himself.

You learned that you can be more or less invasive when you took over a body. You can almost replace an entire brain, destroying it; or you can leave the mind of your host mostly intact. In your latest body you tried to be less intrusive than ever, and discovered you were even beginning to be able to read the thoughts of the goblin you currently inhabit; its trapped thoughts, squirming and panicked thoughts, and could even allow it some false control over its body, some supervised autonomy at your discretion.

The filaments you spread over the body of your host - through the muscles, veins, and bones, strengthen it; and further you are not limited by the normal restrictions the mind places on the body to protect it, even without your physical support you can push any body you take to its utmost breaking point at will, performing feats reserved for moments of true fear or rage. As you grow inside it, whatever body you inhabit will be stronger than it could possibly be naturally.

To grow properly, though, you need nourishment. And to sustain your host, it also needs food. The sensations you received from your host - pain, thirst, and hunger are distant things that don't bother you, but you learn quickly to pay attention to them anyway, or lose your host.

With full access to your host's body and brain, your explorations enhance your personal knowledge of biology and body mechanics grow exponentially. Most of the hosts that died under your control, died from your own experiments in their bodies. Your own tests of their systems and secretions. But each time a host died you learned, and both Uldar and the Dark Lord encouraged you to continue despite the rising body count. You can very nearly replace some full systems with your own biology, and certainly enhance others, but in order to do so you discovered that first you need enough time in one body to modify its immune system with one of your own design, that wouldn't fight or reject modifications you made. That was your hardest, and biggest discovery. Afterwards everything became simpler. Organs, routes, more could be shaped to your will.

Given nourishment and time you can completely redesign a body, inside or out.

And while you learned so, so much about your host's internal structures and systems, how to manipulate them, you also learned about your own.

All that you are, or at least the most important parts that you carried with you, is housed in a small, hard black shell. How hard your shell is you can't say, but you survived a direct blow from the Dark Lord's own hammer without injury.

Inside that hard, black shell are softer things, milky white and pink.

You have your eye, or if you choose eyes - long stalks topped with a sensory organ that you can look around with. The first growth you achieved upon awakening.

You have your main tentacles. A sharp tip can be forced through them, or they can be soft, but they are always tough and strong, with a slippery, waxy texture. With them you can move, lift, strangle or force even large and strong beings.

You have your feeder - a tentacle modified with leech-like teeth on the inside. It can suck blood, or masicate food. Meat. Organs. You've tried some other foods, with some positive results, but you could tell that nothing helped as much or as quickly as meat.

You have your threads, the ultra-fine filaments that you spread through your host's body, that along with your tentacles help you read and control your host's mind, spine, and nervous system, and can spread through a body to strengthen it and more.

Finally, the organ, the modified tentacle that you can tell Uldar is most nervous about - your breeder.

You sometimes have thought back to the Dark Lord's question - asking what you desire. Every body that you have inhabited is a little different, but they desire similar things.

Food, always.

Life, shelter, protection, always in some form or another.

Blood or conquest, sometimes.

Strange things. Family, love, structure, honor, justice, acceptance, sometimes, in different, wavering, and contradictory forms.

And sex, procreation. Like food, like life, and unlike those other strange twisty things, feelings, that is always, always there in your hosts.

You don't know whether it's their influence, or even Dingro's influence, the first body you inhabited, the first time you gained consciousness, but you desire the same things as your hosts. Not every fleeting thought, every silly fear, but you desire food. You desire life. And you desired to spread yourself, to procreate. To impregnate.

There is a fluid in you, that you can create. And little eggs too. In a warm, wet place you can combine the two, creating seeds. Seeds like you, but not like you. It isn't clear yet exactly what their full potential is, but instead of a black and hard shell the seeds you create have a rubbery, waxy shell, and like your tentacles they are milky white and pink. They appear to be able to host inside a body, but are not nearly as resilient as you, and take more time to take root and grow. They are weaker, that much is certain, and without the same level of self-direction - and more reliant on their host for understanding, gaining or losing intelligence and independence based on the mind of the body they inhabit. They appear to try to follow the regular plans of their host - allowing their host to go about their daily routine with only some disruption to support the seed. With one exception - when given the chance they try to breed themselves in healthy adult hosts, and they savagely defend themselves and each other. As yet, they appear unable to transfer to a different host than their original, the one that they root in.

The next generation, the ones your imperfect seeds create, are not shelled at all - resembling nothing so much as great maggots with tentacles that stretched from their mouths. They can also inhabit a host, but the resulting abomination is a mindless, shambling thing - only focused on sustaining itself and attacking anything that disturbs it or another of your kind, and will fight with little regard for their own safety or the safety of its host. If not placed in a host, or if their host died, they do not live long on their own.

They try to breed as well, but as yet it appeared they were unable to. They are impotent, brainless things, but fearsome in their way.

You don't need sleep, but it helps your host's mind when you allow it sleep, and helps its body stay healthy and recover from injury. It takes time, motionless time, but that doesn't bother you. The time doesn't bother you. You are patient, and your waking hours are filled with plenty of amusements. You are interested in preserving this host for now, to see how far you can take it, so you allow your host body sleep for the moment.

When your host awakes you know something is different. You go to the dungeon, which is close to your quarters.

Dead.

All that you had seeded, they are dead - killed, except for a small few. You understad immediately - experiments. Uldar. The few remaining will be kept alive for further experiments by Uldar. But your own time to experiment is up.

The Dark Lord and Uldar approach from behind. You heard them from far away, but only turn when they will be in sight. Your goblin face is impassive.

You understand. You are to either be unleashed, or killed.