Fleshwarping

An irnakurse fleshwarp.

Fleshwarping is the violent transformation of a creature's body and mind into a completely new form through combinations of alchemy and magic. Creatures created through this process are commonly known as fleshwarps.

History

During the Age of Darkness, the demon lord Haagenti claims to have gifted the secrets of fleshwarping to mortals, who then iterated upon and improved those processes over the ensuing ages. Alghollthus also engaged in similar practices across multiple ages of Golarion's history, and Darklands scholars suggest that breeding and mutation programs that created the first megafauna not only occurred in the Darklands but also were predecessors to fleshwarping practices.

Fleshwarping was practiced in ancient Thassilon, namely in the production of sinspawn and fleshdregs; the survivors and descendants of such experiments live in the Darklands layers of Nar-Voth and Sekamina beneath Varisia. Sinspawn were the first Thassilonian fleshwarps, and the techniques used in their creation have since influenced modern practices. Thassilon's modern re-emergence as New Thassilon has also reintroduced sin magic-related fleshwarping practices there and inspired other fleshwarpers to travel there in search of potentially lost Thassilonian fleshwarping techniques.

Fleshwarper followers of Tar-Baphon crafted tentacled corpse-puppeteering fleshwarps known as trighouls more than a millennia ago and gifted them to allied orc raiders, a practice that is now considered shameful among orc holds even though they are rarely still employed as traps. From these practices orc alchemists also derived puppetmaster extract, which if properly prepared produces tentacles that perform a similar function as those of a trighoul when drank.

Belcorra Haruvex implemented fleshwarping laboratories among the many horrors within her Abomination Vaults. Seugathi fleshwarpers of the Vaults, led by the alchemist Jafaki, performed fleshwarping experiments and developed new techniques within these laboratories for Haruvex, who then distributed the techniques to other alchemists for further study and reproduction.

Fleshwarping is also openly practiced and researched in Nex, particularly Ecanus and Oenopion, where massive fleshforges produce willing fleshwarps. Mercenaries in Nex known as the Strickenguard voluntarily consent to be subjected to fleshwarping in order to serve as well-compensated enforcers and experimentation subjects.

Intentional fleshwarping is also practiced to a lesser extent in Ustalav.

Cults of Haagenti and Yamasoth also practice fleshwarping upon victims as part of their unholy rites. Sedacthy communities engage in fleshwarping to strengthen themselves and their animal servants, including the development of air-breathing abilities, self-moistening gills, and the implantation of crab legs to traverse land. Xulgaths also continue to employ ancient fleshwarping practices handed down over generations.

Environmental hazards and disasters have also spontaneously created fleshwarps, such as exposure to the Mana Wastes or from drinking toxic Numerian fluids.

Process

Fleshwarping can be performed intentionally, or it can result from accidents involving alchemy, magic, technology, or divine curses. It must, however, involve a living creature, or at a minimum an undead being; corpses cannot produce living fleshwarps.

Modern fleshwarping laboratories are filled with all manner of surgical devices, some of which bear more resemblance to torture implements. Scalpels, forceps, spreaders, and other more specialized equipment are common in a typical laboratory. All are meticulously sterilized before slicing, poking, or otherwise exploring the skin of a subject—though they care little for their patients, they hardly want infection to set in after they are done and destroy their work.

Some creatures require modification, such as through invasive surgery, to survive fleshwarping. For instance, the seugathi fleshwarpers of the Abomination Vaults successfully fleshwarped morlocks into dreshkans by replacing their fragile bones with an augmented, electricity-conducting metal skeleton. Subjects sometimes die at this stage, which often eliminates frail or unhealthy subjects from being considered.

Subjects of fleshwarping experimentation—almost always unwilling captives—are fitted with a breathing tube and typically immersed, in whole or part, in a large vat of alchemical reagents that separate their flesh and prepare it for magical manipulation over the course of an hour while continuing to add reagents to the vat. The process continues over days, and sometimes weeks, as fleshwarpers then manipulate their subjects while magically pacifying them in order to complete their transformation into a fleshwarp.

Components

In addition to raw flesh and bone, fleshwarping components can also include rare fungi, pulverized ooze remnants, vermin venoms, hydra blood, flesh-loosening sloughing toxins, and skin-decomposing chemicals also used to brew ichthyosis mutagens. Precise mixtures vary by culture, fleshwarper, and the desired outcome, but they are consistently expensive due to their rarity.

Failure and waste byproducts

Intentional fleshwarping occurs in vats of magical reagents in a tortuous process typically inflicted on a fleshwarper's foes. Many die soon after their removal from the vat, as their organs fail or their bodies collapse from the rigors of the process, and fleshwarpers recycle the failures back into their batches.

Creatures who die as failed fleshwarps, or who are harvested for their components and left to die, sometimes rise as undead from the horrific nature of their deaths.

Conscious fleshdregs sometimes accidentally form from such failures and remain stable enough to survive outside of the vat, and many infest fleshwarping facilities in a manner similar to vermin. Skinskitters of the sewers of Ecanus form from mindlessly animated mixtures of discarded fleshforged body parts and nervous-system components.

Shanrigols also form from discarded combinations of wasted bone, flesh, alchemical mixtures, and aberrant energies. These feral byproducts seek only to absorb more raw living materials to grow and expand from a meager heap into a massive behemoth.

Even successful fleshwarps are sometimes subject to rapid unscheduled failure, such as the seugathi-developed mulventoks warped from urdefhans. These exoskeletal fleshwarps rip apart at their seams from their overdeveloped musculature within weeks of creation and explode in a bloody burst.

The smallest minority of fleshwarp failures are from attempts that outright fail to significantly affect the subject's body as designed, for instance due to a failure on the part of the fleshwarper or a subject's especially strong immune system. Such discarded fleshwarps are sometimes labeled as "discard on discovery", instructing others to destroy the subject upon encountering them.

Fleshforges

Nexian fleshforges are configured in a manner similar to a factory or foundry, with various machines and contraptions smelting flesh into raw materials and manufacturing bones by design. Workers in these fleshforges engage in design reviews and follow production schedules to meet targets set by the nation's Principle Fleshforger.

Runoff from fleshforges can also pollute natural features. The once-magical lake of Bath in Oenopion, Nex, has become a sentient hive-mind ooze consciousness from centuries of being used as a reservoir for fleshwarping waste runoff, and independent fleshwarps have formed a community in Oenopion's undercity around and in communication with the Bath.

Fleshwarpers

Fleshwarper refers to the alchemist-butchers and unholy worshipers who perform fleshwarping rituals. Haagenti's fascination with magical concoctions and unnatural experimentation upon living creatures is legendary, and he imparted his knowledge to mortals so they can both aid in his research and reap the benefits of his work. Fleshwarpers are sometimes also known as fleshcrafters, and Nexian fleshwarpers prefer the more polite term fleshforgers, though the distinction is largely academic.

Fleshwarpers have very little regard for life outside of their twisted curiosity and perverse need to experiment. Despite their interest in crafting monsters, they often have neither the ability nor interest to control their creations, instead restraining them for further study, employing them as guardians, or simply releasing them into the wilds.

Nexian fleshwarpers often consider their creations to either be the property of their nation, or at worst accidents to be destroyed. Fleshwarper-abandoned fleshwarps compose a significant demographic within Nex's cities, and in recent years have begun to emerge from the sewers and aqueducts of cities like Oenopion to lobby for their rights as the Unwarped.

Fleshwarps

Victims of fleshwarping are known as fleshwarps, of which there are numerous forms. Examples include slug-like grothluts and tree-like irnakurses. While some survivors and escapees of Nexian fleshforges or other fleshwarping operations become feral, malignant wanderers in places like the Mana Wastes or Mendev, others form communities of their own in those inhospitable wastelands or within cities where fleshwarping practices or phenomena are or were once common.

Fleshcrafting

A fleshcrafted antennae.

Some followers of Haagenti create temporary modifications, such as the claw of a scorpion, the fangs of a spider, or the chitinous shell of a centipede. Temporary physical alterations via a fleshcrafting poison provide enough of an advantage for most short-term goals. More permanent alterations involve the terror of fleshwarping and offer larger benefits, but come with numerous drawbacks. All permanent alterations run the risk that the procedure will result in death.

References

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.