of monstrous and queer creatures 8: the mimic

GENERAL

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up above in the skies, in the realm of the sun monarch, the heavenly spheres and their stellar cohorts, lies the realm of the fae. It is a stunning and incredible place, infinite in size , populated by uncountable, unknowable and powerful creatures, and extraordinary in its beauty.... and in in its cruelty. Mortals are despised , absolutely hated by the fae: They live in the blink of an eye, and are ugly, three dimensional things that are prey to all kinds of diseases and base impulses. But what the fair folk hate most of all, is that mortals are fertile: they can create, they can dream and produce offspring, somethign that the creatures of the sky simply cannot do. And yet, their palaces are immense and grandiose, full of incredible furniture and amazingly crafted treasures; how can these barren beings attain so much wealth if they have no means to craft it? the answer is the mimic.

A BEAUTIFUL DISEASE

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the mimic is a fae virus that is absolutely everywhere in the upper realms of the sun monarch. It is airborne, and if the technology would be available it would look like an iridescent,transparent pair of butterfly wings attached to a single eye-like structure, once observed under a microscope.  Basically, The mimic virus turns mortals into furniture and  objects in the span of a couple nights of infection , using its surroundings , its host, and what strand it belongs to as a basis for its creations. The mimics are non-fatal and absolutely self aware and intelligent, and were enslaved from a far away realm by the fairies , to wich they are deeply loyal . 

STAGES OF INFECTION

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as said before the mimic virus is airborne: mortals can contract its infection by wandering without protection in any place of the fae realms, but of course the virus tends to cluster and be more infectious in rooms full of people that have been already turned and that act as carriers fo the things. Infected people start feeling drowsy and lazy after being infected for a few hours: they develop a high fever . lose all of their energy and are forced to lay down somewhere. Aside from the high temperature, the infected doesn't actually feel any discomfort and is actually more sociable, less inhibited and unusually aroused.  During the first night of infection , the victim of the mimic virus starts to change into whatever the disease has decided to turn them into; they will try to hide any sign of transformation instinctively, like a hydrophobic dog would stay away from water, but they'll have no qualms into exposing themselves around other infected. By the second day the victim's sense of self starts to deteriorate, and they appear even more sluggish, loopy and amorous: the virus is trying to infect anyone close to the carrier before they lose their mobility. If nothing is done by the end of the second night, the infected will totally turn into an immobile object , their conscience locked into a state of foolish ,drunken bliss. The transformed creature is still able to communicate in their sloppy and incoherent way of speaking, and while they can recall bits and pieces of their old life, it's extremely hard to conduct a proper interaction with them, as they'll be too distracted, sleepy or incoherent to fully get to any point. The oldest transformed infected, while still perfectly conscious, after yers of century of transformation have forgotten they were ever anything but an object, and will often refuse to speak to anyone, except for fae lords who they are instinctively loyal to. 

STRANDS

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the mimic virus has slight differences and variations, depending on what kind of structure they'll end up creating : some strands are specialized into furnishing lounges, others bathrooms, and others again barns or stables, and all kind of room a fae lord might need. A particularly numerous and fast acting strand is the structural strand, that turns people into outer walls, roof tiles and other architecture that might be needed on the outside of a fae dwelling. An area infected with the mimic virus has multiple strands coexisting usually, but the virus is very competitive and each strand tries to outdo the other to impress their masters, so much that it's not rare to find a house completely chock full of kitchens or bathrooms and nothing else. These buildings are of course immediately abandoned by the fae lords because of their uglyness, and are actually way more viral than the other kind, because the mimics that infests them are absolutely desperate  to impress the lord that abandoned them, in the vain hope that turning more people into rooms will make them return.

ECOLOGY

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the bulk of the mimics victims are goblins that wander around the fae realms, their hybrid forms not enough to protect them from the dangers of the virus. The creatures are actually used very often by the fae as building materials as they are expendable and annoying to have around. The fae are completely immune to the virus: not only they are not technically alive in the quantum sense and  are in a way incompatible with how the virus operates; they have forbidden the creatures to ever lay a finger on them aeons ago, when they enslaved the virus. Even with all this, the fae seem to respect the microscopic beings , and place them on a higher rank than goblins and even ogres. It is unknown if it's because they secretly fear they could one day rebel agains them. Some mimic colonies , expecially the ones that lived amongst the higher ranks of fae are extremely selective , and won't infect someone unless they possess some specific feature their fae lords deems favorable. The mimics cannot live on the world, their physiology makes the planet of the mortals lethal to them; even so, many a magician and wizard have found a way to  reproduce their habitat (that is ,coincidentally, innocuous to most mortals) into their dungeons , and use them as living traps under the threat of destroying them . The mimics coerced in this way can of course be convinced and swayed by offering them a way to return to their world.

ps: as usual you can find  the high res version of the pic and the version i just posted in the rar archive attached