The Beast

"The Beast has a thousand arms, and guards a sacred treasure!" - KrankralakThe Beast, THA BEEAAST, The Thousand Armed One, The Guardian of Sacred Treasure, Ruby Eyed Resident, The Evictor of Thought, Wilter of Souls, The Unendable One, The Unkillable, Horrid Mind Hermit, Tentacular Damnation, Plague of Worlds, The Great Urchin, Bane of Saints, Being of Infinite Growth, Parasite of Planets, Spined Horror, The Sentience Stealer, Embodiment of Pestilence is an immortal primordial zooid colony originating in Colkiverse D. It is billions of years old and seemingly cannot be killed.
== Biology ==
The Beast is not one creature but an uncountably huge amount of smaller organisms, each the size of a single spine. Individually, the spines have little intelligence, only having an insatiable instinct to seek out other parts of the Beast. If they are not within squirming distance of each other, spines locate the nearest ‘host’, any creature large enough, and burrow into its skin, placing themselves close to the victim’s brain. The Beast can subtly alter the will of hosts, giving them the same instinct to seek out other Beast-inhabited creatures. More developed clumps of Beast are also able to entirely cleanse the victim’s mind of all other thoughts, losing all memory in the process. To the Beast, other creatures are merely shells for easier locomotion.
In some cases, the Beast decides to leave its host, tearing out of its body violently and latching onto a new victim. The Beast needs to inhabit living creatures to be at full strength, otherwise becoming dormant until new opportunities arise. In far rarer cases, the Beast partially breaks out of the host, functioning as a symbiotic being with the strengths of its host combined with the ability to instantly jump to other hosts by contact. These monstrosities are invariably horrific in appearance.
Clumps of the Beast can compress themselves into surprisingly small spaces, making them ideal for stowing away in vehicles to help it spread. The Beast’s main food source is dark matter, which it absorbs most efficiently while in the vacuum of space, allowing it to grow quicker. It can survive being broken apart and all conventional means of murder, though exposure to fire slows it (Attempts to throw specimens into suns always fail, given enough time) and somehow cutting off its access to sustenance weakens it.
Whenever clumps of Beast combine, they grow and in doing so are able to create new synapses, giving it more brainpower. Huge specimens have fully independent thought and can be more tactical, while the largest specimen (Known as Beast Prime) can hold an unnervingly eloquent conversation. Still, the Beast has only one intention- to continue to live.
== History ==
The origin of the Beast is unknown, shrouded in mystery due to it having happened at least two universes ago, and due to the Beast itself being incapable of retaining memories for that long. All that is known is that the Beast exists with a single purpose- to continue to exist. Its unique anatomy is perfectly suited for this goal.
=== The Beast Undiminished ===
Several times in this universe’s history, the Beast has succeeded in collecting together all its parts in one place, forming a planet-sized mass (Known as the Beast Undiminished) with a high level of intelligence but no further goals. Ancient civilisations have learnt that in a complete state the Beast is actually ‘safe’ and neutral, no longer needing to collect hosts or harm anyone around it unless they pose what it deems a threat.
The Beast Undiminished is containable and a few civilisations have purpose-built cosmic megastructures as homes for it. Inevitably, though, these are never impregnable forever, and in each of their cases, millennia after the ‘temples’ have fallen out of memory, other species have happened across them and in their curiosity broken their seals to investigate. This always eventually ends in their fear causing them to attempt to destroy the immortal creature. Blowing it up spreads its parts across the cosmos and during the time it takes for each part to be dispersed it is weakened, unable to reform for further billions of years. Thus the cycle starts again, many suffering from its attempts to reform, which is always, eventually, successful.
=== Beast Prime ===
The largest currently existing colony of the Beast is a moon-sized twisted mass of tentacles floating in deep space, somewhere beyond the Kroglglop Galaxy. Due to it being entirely black, it has evaded detection by anyone other than Beast hosts for thousands of years, and still grows. It transmits the strongest signal to the rest of the Beast’s parts and when other parts are able to parasitize spacefaring hosts they set off to rendezvous with it.
=== The Beast of Caercaled ===
A castle-sized specimen lived on Earth in the 11th Century, inhabiting the fort of Caercaled, near Caernarfon. It was, perhaps involuntarily, served zealously by Krankralak, a human the Beast agreed not to destroy the mind of in return for a supply of other hosts- those being unwise adventurers who enter the nearby forests in search of 'the Holy Grail’. When Iolo and a physician visited the fort, the Beast attempted to ensnare Iolo to make him a host, after he’d escaped Krankralak on the way in.
The Beast was soon after fed Sir Arthur Cross, a member of the Square Table of Caernarfon, and became a new host for the Beast. Unlike all the unwilling offerings the Beast’s worshippers had given it, Sir Arthur accepted a deal allowing him to keep his own sentience on a personal mission to get revenge on Iolo and the physician, in return for their bodies as hosts for the Beast, and access to more in the future.
== Trivia ==
* Despite how awesome it sounds, the Beast is a puppet made of a red bike light on the end of a a set of giant pipe cleaner thingies used to keep leaves out of gutters.
Category:Villains
Category:Monsters
Category:Aliens
Category:Deities
Category:Psychic races
Category:Shapeshifting races
Category:Immortals
Category:Legends