Battletech Mechs and Monsters (BattleTech/Monstergirl SI)

[Bear Ribs]

Biology Overview: General Monstergirl Physiology Notes

Monstergirls are ultimately derived from human stock and our systems are largely human except as noted otherwise. Most modifications are unique to a specific phenotype but a few things are universal.

The GeneCaste did not modify the brain directly in any way. All monster girls have a human brain as making modifications to it was deemed too difficult and likely to have catastrophic unintended consequences, potentially unnoticed until it was too late. Monster girls that do have an altered brain structure, such as the enlarged visual cortex of the Cyclops, are accomplished by the brain's own innate ability to form new connections and grow larger sections of itself in response to use, and in a few cases hormone treatments during prenatal and early development.

The head does have one significant modification in all cases, the back of the skull has several reinforced ridges and an absolute minimum of nerves and blood vessels pass through these areas. A number of nerves branch off the spine immediately below the brainstem that are not connected to any muscles or sensory organs. These extra nerves and the ridged rings of bone in front of them are designed to connect to cybernetic systems and provide an easy Direct Neural Interface system. Typically these nerves are stimulated repeatedly during prenatal and natal development, causing the brain to automatically adapt to accommodate them. This allows most Monstergirls to accept these cybernetics without the pain and mental trauma baseline humans suffer from adding circuitry to their brains. Additionally, a subgland attached to the pituitary secretes compounds similar to X3-A that further reduce any central nervous trauma, allowing monster girls to adapt to cybernetic systems with ease. All of the monster girls with installed memories from previous lifetimes require a DNI installed through which their past memories were downloaded into the brain during prenatal development.

As an additional nervous system modification, most varieties of monster girl possess “processing nodes” which are extra ganglea attached to our sensory organs. The human brain has a limited ability to handle sensory data and much of our brains are already devoted to this, because monster girls tend to possess enhanced senses of balance, hearing, or vision, these ganglia do a sort of pre-processing to ease the load, similar to the way the spinal cord can give limited commands in the form of reflexes without consulting the brain first. Conceptually imagine that each monster girl has a graphics processor attached to the back of her eye and a. . . yeah not sure there's an equivalent for sound but our ears have them. According to Dr. Witch, this is the most complex and difficult part of engineering a monster girl by two orders of magnitude; twenty-foot snake tails, wings, and color-changing skin are apparently child's play compared to building these ganglia.

To increase toughness, all monster girls have bones based on iron compounds instead of calcium. This causes our bones to have an orangey-yellow color and hardness is dramatically increased. This stronger bone structure allows a certain level of gigantism not easy with a calcium skeleton, making large species like the Wyverns and Mermaids possible. It also allows for tremendously increased muscle attachments without the risk of snapping the bones from sheer tensile shear, which is required to produce gargoyles. The tradeoff for this is that the skeleton is slightly heavier and, because the bones contain less calcium, the body cannot harvest emergency calcium from the bones to maintain brain functions or power the heart's muscle tissue. The weight issues are minimal and the allowance for significant extra muscle mass without risking breaking the bones easily compensates. To compensate for the lack of calcium reserves, monster girls have enlarged pouches on their gallbladders designed to deliberately generate and store “kidney” stones and the body harvests calcium from them as needed instead.

Because of the huge requirement for iron when building the skeleton, along with the muscles and blood supply, an infant monster girl cannot survive on human breast milk and requires supplements to give them sufficient supplies when growing, in large quantities. Monster girls in general tend to require a much richer diet than a baseline human and cannot easily survive in the wild simply due to massive protein, vitamin, and mineral requirements. Needless to say no monster girl has ever suffered from iron overload. . . ever.

Monster girls are created with self-regenerating telomeres allowing for an extremely increased lifespan. They also have a regeneration factor allowing them to eventually regrow limbs and organs if the initial trauma does not kill them, scars from injuries fade more rapidly than in baseline humans but still linger several years. Couple with advanced healing optimization genes this leaves them healing at only a somewhat higher rate than a baseline human would, but with minimal scarring and no permanent loss of function even in the case of severed limbs or highly invasive surgery.

The exact lifespan is uncertain at this point because no monster girl has died of old age, however even the lower estimates put it at mid tens of thousands of years and the limitation is not the monster girl's body but the eventual overloading of the brain with too many memories, which could take centuries.

Monster girls also have a dramatically enhanced immune system. Drugs and diseases of a baseline human simply have no effect, and even incredibly potent diseases such as Galax can be fought off by a monster girl's superhuman immune system. Our digestive systems contain cell structures and enzymes that cut out the middleman rather than relying on microbiota to assist digestion allowing for a far more aggressive immune response, and our livers are large and powerful. The GeneCaste have derived drugs capable of affecting them but the dosage tends to be massive and the drugs so potent that baseline humans cannot survive such a dosage. Caution is advised if any baseline human is being treated by a monster girl medic who hasn't been given specific training in human biology.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Biology Overview: Cyclops

Unsurprisingly, Cyclops aren't as hard to make as the Mermaids or Wyverns, but they are much more complex than you might think. The internal organs follow a normal human pattern while the brain is tilted slightly back and the nasal passages greatly reduced to make room for a single gigantic eyeball. They possess the typical Monstergirl iron-based skeleton, increased muscle density, and cut-resistant skin using genetic material from the Calabar burrowing python. They also suffer the typical dramatically increased appetite.

The eye is obviously the be-all of the Cyclops and it is amazing. Rather than a lens and retina, a Cyclops has a huge number of separate lenses and retinas, pretty much the entire inside of the eye is covered in retinal material with lenses taking data from the sides as well as directly ahead, and the Cyclops' star-shaped pupil aids this in letting lenses focus more light and allowing lenses to collect light from more angles, with each set of lenses drawing from a different arm of the star. Because the retinas are so much larger, the eye can focus on a wider area allowing for what amounts to microscopic vision. The retina also contains additional color-sensitive cells allowing the Cyclops to see into the near-infrared and ultraviolet spectra. A layer of reflective cells located behind each retina causes light to shine through the cells twice, allowing them to see better in low-light conditions but also requiring a protective covering in very bright light. As a side effect of this, a Cyclops' pupil appears to glow in the dark like a cat's. Genetically this was accomplished by combining the muscles of both eyes into a single organ as well as repurposing certain atrophied nasal muscle groups into the eye itself to give them a single eye vastly more complex than any ten normal eyes.

The net result of this is that a Cyclops can read a newspaper. In her peripheral vision. From two hundred meters away. They gain depth perception by having sets of lenses constantly focus and defocus, allowing them to judge distances by focal length rather than binocular calculations. One sad result of this is that Cyclops can't appreciate tridee or television, despite the image appearing normal to human eyes they can't focus properly on it and they can see the pixels quite clearly. From what Friday has told me, it's like a normal person trying to enjoy a video where the pixels are each the size of a bathroom tile and the frame rate is 0.2 fps.

Oddly enough although the brain has a massive visual cortex, the sum total actual genetic manipulation required to gain such a cortex is zilch, nada, nothing at all. Feed the brain that much visual data during its formative baby years and it will grow to compensate. Due to the reduced nasal passages the brain will notably reduce growth in that section of the brain and enlarge the visual cortex instead. Advanced and very careful hormone treatments during both natal and infancy periods dramatically help this process along.

As a side effect of this, Cyclops have a weird sort of synesthesia. Baseline humans have their sense of taste and smell directly linked, and food that smells good also tastes good. Cyclops, however, can barely smell and their taste center links to their visual cortex instead. In effect, Cyclops can taste colors and patterns; and foods that look attractive with vibrant color and pleasing patterns of arrangement on the plate literally taste better to them than bland-looking food just slopped on.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Biology Overview: Elf

At a glance elves look like they're just humans with pointy ears. That's not entirely the case, they're humans with really advanced ears and enhanced inner ears as well. Elves are to hearing what Cyclops are to vision, they have enlarged ears shaped for maximum retention and an enlarged cochlea that cannibalizes part of the space where the nasal passages would go, extending behind and under the eyes. The muscles to move the ears, largely atrophied in baseline humans, are restored allowing elves to twitch and move their ears to catch distant sounds and triangulate positions more easily. Many elves have a small tuft of hair on the tip of the ear for extra pickup though this is not a universal trait. This combination of traits gives Elves a very impressive range of hearing, exceeding that of a housecat by a wide margin. Still, overall elves are the most human-looking of all the Monstergirl races.

Beyond enhanced hearing, the enlarged cochlea gives an Elf extraordinary balance and poise. Elves make good acrobats and most of them could walk a tightrope if they had to without practice. An elf wearing a standard neurohelmet can pilot a BattleMech with its gyro blown out using only her own senses to balance it. An elf in a BattleMech with its gyro intact can make it dance. An elf with a direct neural interface turns it into Jackie Chan.

To top off their abilities elves have slit-pupilled eyes with reflective retinas similar to a cat's, granting them decent night vision. While not on the order of the Cyclops' incredible visual acuity, elves' combination of excellent night vision and superb hearing combined makes them excellent scouts.

Elves come in several types fitting various mythologies, though they don't always match perfectly. Drow have darkly colored skin full of radiation-absorbing pigments similar to the molds that grow in nuclear accident sites, allowing them to survive in more hostile environments than other elves. Aquatic elves feature a few traits from mermaids, webbed hands and feet, and brown fat deposits for thermal protection, along with myoglobin stores for increased breath-holding. They also have rubbery skin that does not absorb moisture readily, keeping them from “pruning” in extended dips, and muscles in the ears repurposed to close the ears off and prevent water intrusion. A typical aquatic elf can hold her breath for four to ten minutes. Wood elves have darker skin and the same pigmentation that colors gargoyles, giving them blue and green hair. Goblins are essentially a gargoyle/elf hybrid with an elf's hearing and a gargoyle's diminished size and enhanced strength.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Friday, Bear Ribs, Blammo, and Pants.

Spoiler

 

[Bear Ribs]

Biology Overview: Succubus

As with all “supernatural” monster girls the Succubi obviously have no real magic powers, nor demonic energies, nor infernal heritage. Rather the Succubi were designed to be the social butterflies and actors of the monster girl races.

Succubi feature a largely humanoid body structure with the addition of a prehensile tail and bony spurs that can develop into horns in several areas from the forehead to the temples. There're additional very tiny spurs on the shelf of the jawbone that are not visible. These horns and bone spurs serve as anchor points for their large number of specialized facial muscles.

Succubus skin contains a vast number of tiny muscles, especially in the head and face, allowing them to reshape their skin's texture and change their apparent facial bone structure. These muscles are actually present in all animals, used to jerk the skin across the muscles (try lighting touching a cat and see how its skin twitches) but are atrophied in baseline humans. Succubi re-strengthen the muscles and use them for minor shapeshifting tricks. They also have chromatophores and photophores in their skin granting them the ability to change color and even glow. Succubi cannot change their hair color via chomatophores but all succubi have naturally pale hair that accepts dyes readily and looks like naturally colored hair even when dyed electric blue. Somehow.

Together these abilities let a succubus appear to be any race, gender, or phenotype at will as well as letting them subtly change their apparent body shape, bust and rear size, and similar measurements. It's not exactly shapeshifting but it's a far better disguise system than any baseline can manage, and can be done in seconds. Succubi can also use their chromatophores to give themselves makeup and “tattoos,” most succubi will have a visible ink whenever it's socially acceptable and the more complex and multicolored her “ink” the better, as it's a boast of just how good her control over her own body is and her skills at color shifting. Highly skilled (and boastful) succubi may animate their tattoos and make them glow neon colors.

Succubi have slightly enlarged pointed ears to improve hearing, needed for their mimicry skills (Also easily hidden under hair or a hat), though their internal ear structure is nowhere near as radical as an Elf's. Combined with their tail, they have balance abilities as great as an elf's, but as the tail is involved, they can't match an elf in a BattleMech where the inner ear is the only part that counts. Succubi also can't balance as well if their tail is constrained by clothing in an attempt to pass as human. In some cases succubi have had their tails surgically to more easily pass as human, though like any monstergirl body part it will regrow with time.

A succubus's horns have more similarity to deer's antlers than the horns of species like cattle or goats. When her hormones shift in a specific way, she grows a sheath of blood-rich velvet that supports the bony growths on her head, then rubs away once the horns are fully grown. Apparently, this is incredibly itchy. Hormonal treatments can allow a succubus to shed or regrow her horns as needed (though it takes some weeks), and braces along with growth treatments directly on the velvet can let her direct the horn shape into anything from a single discreet prong to curled horns imitating rams to multi-spiked growths several feet wide. Horns can theoretically be used as weapons but few succubi would bother if they can put their hands on a gun.

Lastly succubi have a complex vocal cord arrangement combining both a larynx and a syrinx, and similarly to a lyrebird they have a tremendous range of vocalization. Not only are succubi excellent singers but they can effortlessly adopt most accents, duplicate noises like engines running or a zither playing, and even imitate voices and sounds well enough to fool voiceprint computers. Combined with their color change and facial restructuring muscles a succubus can make an incredible infiltrator and don disguises at a whim.

Socially, succubi refer to their horns as their “rack.” This is annoying to other monster girls, who use the term to refer to their busts. This is especially annoying because succubi still use “rack” to refer to their busts. I suspect Pants started that meme just to annoy everybody else. A succubus who grows her horns out long is referred to as a “coat rack” while a succubus who sheds her horns to look more human is a “hat rack.”