Generic Space Opera Bestiary: the Parasite

 

Generic Space Parasite

I’ve done most of this series based on real world creatures and while this one is no exception, this was more driven by my curiosity for the sorts of creatures I don’t often explore or often see explored. Bestiaries brim with the equivalent of lions, tigers and bears, but mosquitos, blow flies and leeches are pretty rare, and Space contains some modifiers and options for parasites. So what does a “generic” GURPS Space Parasite look like?

As has been the case in many of these posts, I’ve learned that Space doesn’t actually support me all that much, offering just a few paragraphs and a scattered handful of modifiers, so we’re left largely in the dark. So I had to my own research on some elements and narrow down exactly what I wanted and what I meant. And what I want, of course, is gameable, a “monster” that players can fight back against with more than “Roll HT to not get worms.”

And in this research and exploration, what I discovered is… there’s no other word for it, I suppose, but “horrifying.” I won’t share some of the stuff I found, or some of the images I found, other than to say that some people should consider seeking counciling… or an exorcist. I also won’t share some of the images I found. There will be no images in this post. What didn’t really occur to me while I conceived of this post is that parasites are essentially the core of all body horror. Parasites are the thing of nightmares.

This post is not for the squeamish. Turn back now if you’re bothered by anything remotely related to body horror. I’m not going out of my way to make this topic horrific, it is just, by its nature, a horrific topic.

 

Parasites in GURPS Space

A parasite is, of course, is a parasite. Tautological, really. But to my surprise, while you can roll it up, it doesn’t show up in the text as a carnivore or anything. Instead, they get a side-bar. This sidebar effectively discusses everything that matters, and we’ll get very little help from the rest of the text, (the only place that even mentions Parasites in the rest of the text is a modifier for size). So we can touch on some of the rest, but for the most part, we’re on our own.

According to Wikipedia, there are six forms of parasitism:

• Parasitic Castrators, which, yup, do exactly what they sound like. Probably not an option here, though interesting to think about.

• Directly Transmitted, which just plop themselves onto you; fleas and lice, for example.

• Trophically Transmitted, where you eat it (such as eating worm eggs and getting worms)

• Vector Transmitted, typical of diseases, which I’ll touch on again in a second.

• Parasitoids, which kill their host eventually (think the xenomorph life-cycle from Alien)

• Micropredators, there’s a great quote by E. O. Wilson: “predators that eat prey in units of less than one.” These are mosquitos, ticks and leeches.

This is useful, as it clarifies what we might think about parasites and what it is we might want to “stat up” as a generic space monster. There’s a few things that pop up as unexpected, or perhaps even inappropriate. For example, we clearly don’t want to stat up microbial parasites; they’re parasites, of course, but in practice we’re just talking a disease. Similarly, something like tapeworm is better handled as a disease than as a creature.

So, really, when it comes to parasites-as-space-monsters, I think we’re talking about one of three things:

• A parasite that has a mobile juvenile form that changes into an immobile form once it has attached to the target

• A parasite that has an immobile juvenile form and a mobile adult form (“Parasitic Young”)

• A micropredator.

The micropredator seems like the best option, because I expect players imagine fighting a parasite to look something like a creature that attaches itself to their character, and they have to remove it before whatever bad things happen, things like draining the character’s blood slowly, etc. That makes a pretty gameable scenario where you try to fend them off and then carefully remove the bloodsuckers or “mind parasites.”

When it comes to the environment for a parasite, there’s no modifiers in GURPS Space, so in principle it could come from anywhere, but in keeping with the idea of swamps and jungles as being filled with diseases and biological dangers, I’d tend to favor one of those. So, similarly, there’s no real argument for any specific sort of mobility (a generic swamp creature tends towards slithering, digging or walking, and a generic jungle creature tends towards walking or climbing). I tend to lean towards slithering, as I tend to imagine parasites as being disgusting worm-things, rather than flying or walking things, but these are, in fact, possible. A flea is a “walking parasite,” of course, and a mosquito and a vampire bat are “flying micropredators.”

When it comes to Size, it is impossible, per GURPS Space, to get any (land-based) parasite larger than “Small.” If we had a plain-dwelling parasite that didn’t slither or fly (with wings), on a roll of a 6, we could get “Human-Scale.” So small it is. How small? Well, I’d argue for the size of a rat: large enough to actually shoot with a gun, or physically grab and yank off of someone, but not especially large. About the same size as a brain slug from Futurama, actually. That suggests between SM -6 (ST 1) and SM -5 (ST 2).

When it comes to a body plan, we have no guidance here. Most of our micropredators are bilateral, even leeches. If we want a disgusting worm micropredator, we’re looking at a limbless critter. We could make a case for a tail (Gripping?). No manipulators, obviously, as it’s limbless, and we’d expect the skeleton to be either an exoskeleton or hydrostatic.

The section on Skin doesn’t give us a lot of help. Essentially, it could be anything. An exoskeleton might make for a slightly more interesting challenge if we have a rat-sized segmented worm-thing with vampire-fangs and a DR of 1, which means you need to do 2-3 damage to kill it, rather than 1-2. But then we couldn’t see the pulsating, disgusting thing, so perhaps skin after all. If we make it amphibious, it might be worth discussing how it breathes or its temperature regulation, though I’m inclined to suggest disgusting wormy things are probably cold-blooded. Goes with the territory.

Reproduction is quite a trick for most parasites, especially those that are internal to the host. We’re not going that route, though, because I want a critter people can physically pull off of others, or see, pulsating on the target. If we’re talking space leeches, we’re talking hermaphrodites that lay eggs, but it should be noted that parasites generally have some of the weirdest reproduction schemes in the world, so nearly anything here is on the table, and the parasitic young is especially interesting (perhaps those who are bitten by our space parasite have to roll HT to avoid being injected with eggs that will hatch later within the body of the target for, uh, additional body horror). I would tend to imagine them being as R-strategy as possible, though it should be noted that I suspect there are k-strategy micropredators (vampire bats, perhaps).

I don’t really know how to handle Senses. As best as I can tell, lleches are Near Blind, Hard of Hearing, but they have a reasonable sense of taste and smell. 360° Vision seems likely, as much as they have vision. Detect (Heat) would also seem to be interesting, if they primarily hunt warmblooded animals.

When it comes to Intelligence, between its small size and its r-strategy, we already expect something dumb. Mating behavior is certainly Mating Only, no pair bond, and social organization depends on whether you consider them carnivores or not, but if we do, we’re looking at an average of “solitary.”

This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism -3 (Undiscriminating), Concentration 0, Curiosity -2 (Incurious), Egoism 0, Empathy -1 (Oblivious), Gregariousness -2 (Loner), Imagination -1 (Dull) and Suspicion +2 (Careful).

Generic Space Parasite Stats

At the end of the day, we’re talking about some sort of worm… thing. Assume if it gets a hold of you, it inflicts one point of damage and then slurps down one point of blood before being sated and wandering off. Swarms might be scarier.

ST: 1	Basic Speed: 5.5	SM: -6
DX: 10	Basic Move: 2
IQ: 1	Perception: 8
HT: 12	Will: 10	DR: 1 (tough skin)

Traits: Acute Smell 2; Helminth; 360° vision; Acute Touch 4; Blindness; Detect (Light); Detect (Heat); No Legs (Slithers); Restricted Diet (Blood); Wild-Animal;

Toothy Suction (10): 1 cut; follow-up 1 tox;

Variations

So this is probably the least impressive parasite ever, but it gives us a start to layer some additional options. One option I don’t explore here is a parasite that has a large, mobile form ala Alien. For that, just take one of the other aliens of the space bestiary, and declare it to have such a juvenile form. You can even treat it like a disease (for extra horror).

Walking or Flying Parasite

Just take the stats for space rat or the space songbird and adapt them to the generic space parasite or use the lenses below.

Lens (Flying Parasite): replace No Legs (Slithers) with Flying (Winged); add Air Move of 11. Remove Blindness and Detect Light and replace with Nightvision 9; increase perception to 10.

Lens (Walking Parasite): remove No Legs (Slithers); increase Move of 5. Remove Blindness and Detect Light and replace with Nightvision 9; increase perception to 10.

Vampiric Parasite

Parasites eat blood, they don’t regenerate their HT with it. But space opera ones might, who knows! Further variations might eat something other than blood, such as mental energy or intelligence, etc.

Lens (Vampiric Parasite): add Vitality Reserve 1 (Only fillable with Vampiric Bite) and Vampiric Bite

Mind Control Parasite

The “Brain Slug” is a pretty classic concept in space opera, and gets called out in the Space Sidebar. It suggests parasitic possession, which is a fine idea, but that assumes infiltration, which we’re not assuming in this specific instance. We might instead go with something that subtly manipulates behavior in some way.

Lens (Mind Control Parasite): Improve Will to 11; add Mind Control (Based on Will; Contact Agent; Suggestion Only; Only to prevent the parasite from being removed). Add Affliction (-1d Will; Contact Agent; Malediction 1).

Parasitic Brood

While not strictly necessary, it might be fitting if the parasite doesn’t feed on humanoids, it also deposits its young to hatch. This touches on the danger micropredators pose in spreading diseases with added body horror! In this variation, people bitten by the parasite might suffer a an additional effect the next day. Roll a 6 or less to see if this happens (or the GM can just declare that the parasite is fertile). This is an intentionally downplayed version. You could make it much worse!

Lens (Parasitic Brood): Innate Attack 1d cut (Onset, 1 day; Resistible; HT; Side-Effect, Terrible Pain; Nuisance Effect, worms that crawl under skin before chewing out of the skin via small lesions or bodily orifices)