Roofection

Roofection are an elusive and secretive species of infection found in Thistleland.

Having a lighter colouring then their Kangaroo namesake, Roofection appear somewhere between anthropomorphic and animal kangaroos, often having trouble wearing some items of clothing if they wear them at all. The most immediately noticeable part about a Roofections form however is their eyes. Instead of a pupil and iris, a Roofections eyes are entirely white, with a fiery light trailing their movements where their iris should be.

Highly intelligent and elusive, Roofection typically hide from people, using trickery, infection and tactical strikes to achieve their goals from shadows. They poses knowledge of magic beyond most of those in Thistleland, and have an intimate understanding of biology and genetics.

The way Roofection spread themselves is as their name hints at: infection. Wherever a Roofection touches a normal person, the place of contact will temporarily and rapidly transform into a form more akin to theirs. Roofection will typically rub their paws over a victim entirely to ensure all areas have the effect applied to them, usually finishing with the victims head to overwrite their mind with that of a Roofection. All knowledge the person once had now belongs to the Roofection alongside the knowledge of the Roofection that infected them, though no personality of the victim remains. The result is a new Roofection with hints of the old form, such as a taller person resulting in a taller Roofection. This new Roofection will then continue along the common goals of Roofection. Animals have been known to be infected with greater and lesser benefits and costs, though this is an unreliable process.
If the process of transformation is interrupted before the mind is overwritten, the process shortly reverses and fades away completely.

Roofection are known to carry trinkets of their victim with them, holding them in regards the same way as a hunter keeps trophies. Often Roofection can be found wearing their victims clothing, jewelry or tools simply as they enjoy the feeling of domination and satisfaction at claiming said victim for themselves.

Roofection have a few tricks that they can use to ensure victims are easily subdued and transformed:
Contact: A Roofection rubbing over a victim has a form of paralysis over said person, dulling the senses and making them pliable. This effect is enough to make weak willed people unable to resist the transformational contact. Victims report feeling a soothing sensation that tugs at their mind to relax.
Eyes: The fire within a Roofections eyes have a similar effect as hypnosis and their contact, making the victims mind grow foggy and have difficulty in resisting. Combined with the contact method above and it is rather hard for those of a normal or strong will to resist them. They can control this ability at will, and use it mainly only when starting the process of catching prey.
Desire Reading: Roofection are often considered telepathic, which is incorrect. Roofections can specifically only read a person's desires, not their thoughts or emotions. They use this to great effect though, making guesses based on a persons desire in order to understand how a victim ticks. This ability require line of sight, but not eye contact. It is usually a Roofections first method of attacking; they will typically use references to someone's desire, promising to grant them and fulfill their hearts wishes as a method to keep prey from fleeing.
Personality: In order to truly catch prey, Roofection are known to use all of the above with a confident and controlling personality. Their method of understanding others and keying their personality to work into someone's defenses are known well enough to be considered a weapon in it's own right.
Intelligence: Despite their half-animal appearance, Roofection are highly intelligent, able to master magic and skills thanks to their ability to learn from their victims. They use this to experiment and further their sciences and magic whenever possible, often inflicting results such as advanced hypnotism and transformation magic on people as much for amusement as for their progress.

Despite their numerous abilities Roofection are known to have at least two main weakness, based around the same concept.
Roofection transformation is not permanent. A Roofection infection will eventually burn itself out after three days, with the victim restored in mind, body and soul with memory loss of the event. This weakness is not tied to the victim immune response or willpower, but seem to be a problem with either Roofection' genetics or their magic makeup. It is the single motivating factor to Roofection activities. To compensate for this, they will regularly re-apply infection to each other to refresh their infection whenever they are able to.
Drinking grapefruit juice will burn out a Roofections infection in under half an hour. Contrary to expectations, Grapefruit juice does not increase a person's resistance to Roofection but in fact makes the body -more- bio-receptive to Roofection infection. This increases the infection concentration, empowering the Roofection at the cost of rapidly burning through the Roofections internal countdown. The end result is the Roofection rapidly burns itself out, leaving the victim restored and recovered.

Roofection currently have a common goal of increasing their infection time to being permanent, and are in a long and ongoing effort to alter their infection via both genetics and magic. This is proving an almost impossible challenge so far as Roofection magic and genetics are highly unstable; so far attempts to alter their genetic code and/or magic makeup has either ended with instant death, detonation or horrific monsters. As their skills and understanding increase the trend is progressing towards more making strange and dangerous creatures.

Roofection generally avoid the population of Thistleland due to the general lack of technology and magic sophisticated enough to finely alter Roofection makeup. Also the Adventure Guild has proven highly effective at wiping out Roofection nests, using Adventure Scouts to gain information and scout, and Adventure Groups to round up every Roofection at once to wait out the infection in a cell, burning them out and freeing the victim. Instead they campaign to assault, take over and use the high magic that can be found within the Dungeons that the people of Thistleland cannot access, one by one. Usually this results in a short period of Roofection progress followed by abandonment of these structures due to the monsters they create overrunning them. It is speculated that many of the old ruins and abandoned dungeons with their monsters in Thistleland have been directly caused by Roofection assaults.

Roofection have been known to exist for a considerable time, causing problems for Thistleland until the formation of the Adventure Guild. Under pressure of extermination, they were known to relocate away from Thistleland to The Dark Continent in the north in the east The Changed Lands. All Roofection on the Dark Continent are believed to have been killed due to the Darkness Engine, while the events on the Changed Lands seem to have ended activity of Roofection there, assuming the Roofection themselves were not the cause. Roofection are widely believed to have been exterminated from Thistleland after the Darkness Engine and Changing Lands disasters, though there are talks of occasional sightings.