The Verusion Species

## Physical Appearance and Biology

Verusion are known for *seemingly* appearing as beings who lack skin.

The *most common* color of their skin is a heavily saturated pinkish-red color that's closely related to colors one would think of when referring to muscles and organs. However, the skin can vary between shades of dark purple and red, to dull orange, and even golden yellow on rare occasions. The skin is most transparent at the abdomen layer, enough for one to see their organs: lungs, liver, stomach, and the small and large intestines. Most of the rest of the body is made up of muscle and cartilage. The feel of the skin has been compared to the feel of a human heart.

Due to the dim glow within their body, their incredibly large pupils are a dark reddish brown in color normally, with their yellow iris taking over the rest of their eye.

The glowing golden spots on a Verusion's body are called cores. They differ from person to person in size, shape, and position, but there are almost always a few main positions where you will find cores: two large cores on the top of their heads, two medium sized cores around their knees (from a back perspective, left side of the right leg, right side of the left leg), several tiny ones over their eyes, and cores over their elbows that appear at the end of their lighter muscles. These cores are called requisite cores, and they are where the brains of the Verusion body are found, though not visible from the outside. The other cores are called discretionary cores, and are not necessarily needed.

The cores have a chance of bursting into spikes. Males are *much* more likely to have their cores turn into spikes than females due to their larger amount of testosterone, with their spikes being less dull yet much larger. Females usually have a larger amount of cores compared to their spikes, which are thinner than males but much sharper. Spikes can vary from a creamy white color to blackish red.

The hands of Verusions consist of two wide 'fingers' and a wide 'thumb', all of which are capable of bending backwards as well as forwards. Verusions have extra flaps of skin around their wrists. The reason is due to the fact that some Verusions are lucky enough to be capable of protruding a sharp blade of bone through their wrists. They are soft but firm, except at the tips of their fingers, in which they are normally soft but can just as well be sharp upon willing it.

Their feet are similar to their hands, having two wide 'toes' and a toe that extends behind their foot. With the 'toggle sharpness' trait on their feet and their hands, Verusions are able to casually climb around most areas silently

Their 'hair' is, obviously, not hair. These parts of the body have the sole purpose of allowing a Verusion to look more attractive, just like actual hair, though what also attracts Verusions are signs of a healthy body (hence transparent skin to show organs).

Another part that attracts Verusions are their tails. Verusions have prehensile tails, and their tail splits into 2-5 more parts and can take the role of fingers. The longer the tail and the more splits in the tail, the more attractive it is. Females are likely to have thin tails as long or longer than their body, and males are likely to have shorter and thicker tails. These tails are the most powerful limb that Verusions have, but not to the extent of prioritizing it as a main offensive and/or defensive attribute.

### Diet

Being carnivores, a verusion's diet is 95% meat, and their special digestive tracts can allow them to eat nearly any form of meat across the cosmos so long as it isn't spoiled. However, the species is not a cannibalistic species, and will not eat their own even when on the verge of death.

### Life Span

Verusions reproduce sexually, and may have 1-3 children normally.

The children are born a dimly glowing orange in color, similar to the glow in spores, and it usually takes a few minutes for the glow to fade. There are no cores during this period of time, or rather, the infant is wrapped in one large core, almost as if it were the skin of the child. Over time, these cores concentrate into random parts of the body, a decent amount of it moving into the requisite core areas while the rest take random positions along the body.

From there, Verusions only need about two months before being able to stand on their own, another month to begin walking, and a then four more months to be able to control their abilities to an decent efficiency.

Upon reaching puberty, female Verusion tails have "growth spurts", becoming much longer, whilst male Verusions grow in bulk and height. By then, Verusions have a chance for their cores to burst into spikes. Unfortunately, the process isn't exactly pain free, and the amount of pain felt is the equivalent of getting a medical shot, but continuously. The pain subsides after a about day, since that is the average amount of time a spike needs in order to grow to its maximum height.

From then on, the rest of the life cycle is pretty tame in comparison. Verusions eventually age and die around the average age of 110. Their skin color becomes more dull and brown, and their spikes become more brittle. All processes of the body slow down, including the ability to digest foods, heal from injuries, etc. This continues until a Verusion's lifespan eventually ceases in which the corpse ends up decaying and leaving only what's left of the cores and spikes.

## Culture and Behavior

Verusions are naturally aggressive creatures. While not necessarily violent in almost every situation, they are likely to lash out when in fits of anger, keeping creatures away from recent offspring, or when being territorial.

Female Verusions have markings on their left shoulder. At childbirth, the body is not able to register pain, and is still learning how to control one's regenerative capabilities. As tradition, Verusions take a hot rock and trace their family symbol on the left shoulder of the Verusion should it be female, as females are the ones who carry the family name rather than males.

Upon a Verusion's death, the creature is placed in a wooden box by their loved ones, and after a memorial session, they are placed in a lava pit to 'become one with the planet'.

Verusions believe in an alpha pack society: the strongest member of the entire group will be the one who leads the group. As such, it is fairly common to see the leaders be challenged in combat. The groups can be as small as five or as large as several hundreds. When the pack gets to a decently large size, roles are made: some Verusions are the hunters, some are the defenders, others teach offspring how to keep the clan thriving as the next generation, etc.

Verusions coming in contact with fur is the equivalent of humans coming in contact with a slimy substance; while it doesn't hurt, a decent amount of the population will be disgusted upon contact when not given the time to get accustomed to the texture.

Due to the nature of spike births, Verusions with less spikes than cores are often initially judged as being tamer than others. Due to the nature of Verusions, tamer very quickly leads to the thought of being weaker.

## Location

Verusions reside on a volcanic cloudy planet revolving closely around a red star. Its appearance makes most people think the planet does not house life on the planet, when in fact even more forms of life thrive across the planet than Mobius itself. Nature always finds a way.

Plant life mainly rely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis due to the cloudy weather, so it's rare to find green plants on the planet. The leaves there are usually a lovely shade of golden brown, red, or purple.

Beauty from this planet doesn't just come from its non-green vegetation, it comes from its large variation and colors of minerals and jewels, enough of it to bathe the crimson planet with more bedazzling colors.

The planet's creatures are extremely odd and peculiar in a beautiful yet dangerous way.

## History

It seems that at one point on the planet, new genetic mutations allows for one to manually control more body functioning systems in comparison to average mobians/humans. As this trait passed on, creatures upon the planet began evolving mainly around that trait, and now it's pretty much a common thing amongst all creatures of the planet. This traits possibly led to how Verusions ended up gaining these traits themselves.

Verusions are a relatively new species. As such, there's not much history to go off of except for speculation. The oldest remains of Verusions date back to 40-50,000 years ago, though theoretically they should be a much older species than this. The species has shown, however, to be increasing in intelligence and understanding of their environment at a pace *much* more rapid than other species. If this trend continues to grow, their species will likely be using their unique jewels to become one of the most technologically advanced civilizations in the entire galaxy in the upcoming generations.

## Verusion Resources and Technology

The Verusion planet, never officially named by the Verusions, is filled with multiple very interesting forms of wildlife, and along with that are its minerals. While the planet has much more metals and minerals stated here, these only refer to the main four that are both most commonly found used by Verusions and actually interesting on its own.

* Ardoncal - A glowing red mineral that seems to affect bodily functions, and ultimately inhibits healing temporarily. It is highly important not to have any form of cuts or scrapes when handling these metals. Verusions normally use this as weaponry to counter the proper regeneration of other Verusions. It can also be used as a powder to store foods and keep excess bacteria from spoiling the food quickly. Luckily, in the form of powder, Ardoncal decomposes very quickly, which is good, since Ardoncal getting into one's system could possibly lead to life threatening effects.
* Lortap - A rare green rock, lortap affects the spacetime fabric of the environment around it. It is usually partnered with another lortap rock, whether near or far. When crushed, the rock creates a gravitational pull in order to pull itself together; via quantum entanglement, its partnering rock is also crushed and tries to repair itself. Anyone within the space between the rock while it is crushed allows said person to warp from one rock to its pairing rock instantaneously. It's a useful form of transportation.
* Rana - Rana is a creamy white mineral that gets charged with energy the more kinetic energy it obtains, albeit too much energy can cause the rock to burst into fragments.
* Dracite - Dracite, a darkish grey/blue flexible metal that looks similar to granite, tends to defy gravity to an extent, and it is a *heavily* abundant mineral on the planet, which explains its multiple floating rocks. This element assists with carrying large loads by making it seemingly lighter. When mixed with other minerals, it may also be worn as armor, making the user have more hop in its step. With a shear strength of 100 GPa, tensile strength of 200 GPa, and a compressive strength of 550 GPa, this mineral is far stronger than any mineral found on Earth by miles.
* Calux - a syrupy lava-like substance from inside trees of the planet. It channels heat of up to 26,100 degrees Fahrenheit while self-containing the heat energy, allowing it to cut clean through people with zero delay.

The species is not really that well with technology. As intelligent as they've become over time to develop both verbal and written language, along with having extreme intelligence compared to most other being by having multiple brains, the species is not exactly able to establish a stable civilization due to their diet, as all civilizations when they are able to farm crops. Unable to do the same, they fail to settle in one spot for long. While Lortap could help, the metal is too rare for it to be risked. As a result, they struggle to settle down long enough to advance in technology.

Needless to say, they are very adept with tool-making, and have made multiple types of tools that would assist them. Using stones, trees, and many other natural resources, they have made bowls, utensils, carriages and storages for meat cargo, etc.

## Speed

### Travel Speed

varies from superhuman to subsonic speeds

## Toughness

### Resistances

Biological Manipulation, blood manipulation, bone manipulation, high heat, electricity, extremely low pH levels, blood loss, mental manipulation

### Extreme Strength and Flexibility

Being made mostly of pure muscle, the average untrained Verusion male can hoist half a ton over their head fairly easily. Proper training usually makes them capable of increasing this to one ton.

Verusions can can control the compressive strength of their skin. They can have it as soft as human skin, or up to twice as tough as titanium. This is not only how their fingers also function as claws, but it is also the reason why Verusions are bullet resistant. Their cores and spikes, obviously, are far more durable, actually being completely bulletproof to small firearms.

### Extreme Speed

Their muscle power, along with the balance from their tail, allows Verusions to run up to varying speeds of 70-100 miles per hour. They are fast enough to quickly scale up vertical surfaces at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, and swim at speeds of 15 mph.

With their raw speed, they can swing their claws at maximum arm length faster than the blink of an eye, outpacing sword swings.

### Flexibility

Verusions can bend backwards and roll up very easily in multiple different ways. Even their claws can bend backwards easily. Their nature of a cartilage body, lacking standard bones.

### Biological Manipulation

Due to the nature of Verusion neural networks, they can 'hack' into other individuals so long as the Verusions get their blood within their victim's system. Maintaining close contact, Verusions may then use the blood to affect the opponent from cellular to genetic levels. A few examples of this tactic include:

* clogging up arteries to prevent oxygen from getting to cells,
* altering information to tell white blood cells to attack certain cells
* cancelling out or forcefully activating the abilities of other beings via manipulating the DNA within cells

Of course, the cells of Verusions are very aware, and they're able to have a resilience to abilities like these.

### Extreme Damage Tolerance

Verusions can create their own blood in rapid pace at will, and can go hours without blood before actually dying. Their limited control over their own blood is enough to resist external hemokinetic abilities. As for automatic purposes, Verusions regenerate wounds *extremely* quickly, even to the point of returning lost memory and recovering from being nothing but smeared blood. They tend to be *very* tolerant to pain as a result.

If Verusions are in the condition in which they for some reason cannot regenerate, they can still survive what would be fatal to most other opponents: loss of organs, torn in half, decapitation, etc. This is not to say that Verusions can survive anything, else they'd be immortal. This is simply to say Verusions are ***very*** hard to kill.

### Minor Heat Resistance

Due to their home planet's hot surface, Verusions are naturally okay in conditions at 150 degrees Fahrenheit as much as a human is in 80 degrees Fahrenheit climate.

### Electrical Resistance

Their capability of surviving extreme injuries and still making conscious movements is because their neuron system generates its own static electricity around its cores. As such, they have a natural electrical insulation and a natural bio-electrical backup generator.

### Extreme Brain Processing Power

Verusions do not have one sole brain. They have multiple smaller variants of brains throughout parts of their body, mainly underneath cores and spikes (which means an average of six brains per Verusion). Each brain is capable of controlling the body, so the multiple amounts of brains can be seen as 'backups' should one be in physical or mental attacks.

Due to the biological enigma that are Verusions, their neurons are capable of self-feeding themselves, making the need for glial cells useless, which is why they lack them. Less glial cells means more space for neurons, which means increased brainpower. Since humans have a glial cell to neuron ratio of 3.76:1, and the average Verusion has 6 brains that can each control the body on their own, the average Verusion can process information 22.56 times faster than the average human. This allows them to react down to several milliseconds at a time, in comparison to humans reacting in tenths of a second.

### High Functioning Eyes

Verusions have large enough pupils to see very clearly in dark environments. Verusion irises are special. Under **dangerously** bright light, their irises automatically enclose over the pupil, rendering the Verusion blind, but at least their eyesight isn't unharmed. When the dangerous light fades, or if willfully opened, the irises retract, allowing the Verusion to see again.

### Acid Glands

To help them quickly chew through just about anything, a Verusion has backup glands behind their standard saliva glands, packing acid with a pH of -20. Of course, they are highly resilient to acid as a result.

## Flaws and Weaknesses

Due to survivalist DNA traits over several generations, when encountering fire or other extremely hot surfaces, its effects ignite a Verusion's pain senses well over the norm relative to other species. While they get hurt equally as much as any other species not immune or resistant to fire, the pain they feel is many times greater. The simple feel of too much heat is enough to ward them off. If feeling threatened or overwhelmed with heat, they may lose all civil manners and allow survivalist genes to take over and get them away from the heat no matter the cost.

An attack to the liver can heavily incapacitate Verusions with a sudden burst of pain nerve stimulation. It should be noted that a strong pulse of stored static electricity comes out of their body upon doing so, which could potentially incapacitate the attacker and damage nearby electrical equipment within 10 feet.

Verusions are not fond of the cold. It especially affects their ability to use their biological abilities, and it can even slow and stop their regeneration entirely. A cryokinetic could cause major danger towards several Verusions at a time.

Regeneration and advanced hematokinetic techniques costs stamina. Considering the fact that they can go on in combat even while heavily damage, a Verusion's most important trait they want to keep up is their stamina, which is why they may not prioritize self-healing during combat unless necessary.