BY LETTER
Red Masters
Red Masters playing | |
 Image from DSPE | |
| A group of Modern-Era Red Masters engaged in a game of Ki-Showa, a sport enjoyed by many sophonts derived from predatory ancestors or templates. | |
Biology
In their initial motile form, baseline Red Masters are quadrupedal creatures approximately one meter in length, with a compact oval or oblong body, a prominent set of mammal or reptile-like jaws at their anterior end containing numerous sharp teeth, five-toed feet with curved claws, and four reptile-like eyes spaced around their body, with two toward the anterior end and two near the posterior end. Their skin is hairless and a vivid rust or blood-red in color, from which their name is derived. In their original habitat, this coloration served to camouflage them against their surroundings, as the soil on Newlife d is extremely rich in iron oxides.In their "natural" state, motile Red Masters are obligate carnivores, consuming either smaller prey animals or larger creatures which they can overwhelm by hunting in packs. However, upon sighting a potential host of suitable size and desirable attributes, they will instead attempt to forcibly bond with it, triggering the second phase of their life cycle. Typically, a pack of Red Masters will work together to chase down, corner and restrain a potential host animal, at which point two or more of the highest-status individuals in the pack hierarchy will fight to determine which will get to claim the host.
Prior to bonding, a Red Master will climb to an elevated point on the victim's body (in the case of nearbaseline humans or similarly-configured bipeds, the most favored implantation site is on the upper back, between the shoulder blades) and firmly anchor itself in place using its claws. It will then extend an array of numerous short, sharp spines or quills from recesses on its ventral surfaces, which it will drive into its victim's skin until its underside is flush with the implantation site. Each spine is lined with thousands of near-microscopic barbs, rendering it difficult to remove an embedded Red Master without specialized surgical equipment.
Upon implantation, the spines pump an analgesic compound into the new host's body, reducing its pain and stress responses, and also begin to ingest bodily fluids from the host to feed the attached Red Master; the injected compound also serves to prevent other Red Masters from attempting to claim the host, as it will produce a toxic effect upon entering another Red Master's circulatory system. From this point forward the Red Master remains attached to its host, with its skin fusing with the host's and its mouth and limbs gradually being absorbed. Eventually, the Red Master comes to resemble a large red lump on the upper surface of the host's body, with its four eyes providing a 360-degree field of vision.
Red Master on human host | |
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| A Red Master fully integrated with a nearbaseline human host (note: image depicts a historical reconstruction; no sophonts were harmed in the making of this image.) | |
When the host becomes too old, sick or damaged to remain useful, the Red Master triggers a physical transformation, injecting specialized cells into the host's body which break down and consume its structures. These cells replicate within and subsume the body until it becomes an undifferentiated, non-sentient mass of immobile red flesh, which then begins to grow root-like tendrils that secure it to the ground. These tendrils absorb water and nutrients from the surrounding soil, and in combination with the nutrients contained in the host body these are used for the growth of dozens of membranous egg-like structures, within which are gestated new Red Masters. These grow until they reach their full motile-stage size, at which point the Red Masters rip themselves out of their gestation pods and begin hunting for food and hosts.
History
The Red Masters were created around 4800 AT by one of the many copies of Deorvyn that were spawned from the original after e had completed terraforming Newlife c and d, who had claimed a territory within the equatorial zone of Newlife d initially spanning roughly 5,000 square kilometers. As with the territories claimed by the other Deorvyn copies, the effective borders of this region immediately and rapidly shifted in response to the incursions and withdrawals of neighboring Deorvyns and their associated clades; in the case of the Red Masters and their Deorvyn, their initial territory expanded by more than ten-fold within five years.Initially displaying intelligence somewhat less than that of a baseline human, the Red Masters' ability to parasitize and merge with larger and/or more intelligent sophont hosts allowed them to augment their mental capabilities, achieving spikes of Superior-level cognition that enabled an acceleration in their technological development. Aided by the guidance of their Deorvyn, within three centuries they had developed genetic engineering and interplanetary spaceflight, and by 5300 they had established a planet-spanning technological civilization on Newlife d. This civilization was built in large part upon the subjugation of several dozen other sophont clades native to Newlife d, which the Red Masters later gengineered into sub-sophont versions to be used exclusively as hosts.
By this time Newlife d had been almost entirely overtaken by a neogenic biosphere designed by the Red Masters, engineered from their own biology and largely consisting of a more extensive version of their sessile reproductive forms, but also incorporating many distinct gengineered organisms which each served the Red Masters in various ways. This gengineered biosphere also served as a computational substrate for their patron Deorvyn, who by this point had elected to largely remain in the background, passively observing and occasionally providing insight and assistance to the Red Masters upon request, but generally refraining from overt instruction or direct intervention.
Between 5300 and 5603, the Red Masters launched a campaign to colonize Newlife c and subjugate the local clades. This was partially a response to the deteriorating planetary conditions on Newlife d, as the Deorvyn copies had discontinued local terraforming activities, and partially a product of the Red Masters' intrinsically expansionist natures. The Red Masters were opposed by an alliance of Deorvyn-created clades native to Newlife b, principally led by the mormyrid fish-based Kanumae and plant-derived Keruing, resulting in a war that lasted nearly three centuries. While the Kanumae and their allies were only able to temporarily slow the Red Masters' advance, they were nonetheless able to infiltrate the Red Masters' information networks and use stolen and hijacked communications equipment to send a coded message to the Nova Antananarivo orbital habitat in the nearby Thorin system.
Although the Nova Antananarivans and their neighbors did not take any action upon receiving the message, the decoded broadcast was published on the Known Net by a Francisclaran missionary, and some time later an S2 transapient, Amida19, reached out to the Zoeific Biopolity and Negentropy Alliance for assistance in assembling a rescue mission. The mission arrived in 5603 AT, by which time the Deorvyn copies had all erased themselves and their records. The Red Masters' military capabilities were swiftly neutralized by Amida19's rescue team and, following the peaceful resolution of the conflict, the surviving Red Masters were relocated to the terraformed Neogaian moon Paarlo IV in the Utopia Sphere, where they established a new and thriving civilization under the auspices of their transapient overseers.
Today, Red Master culture has evolved beyond its warlike beginnings, allowing the clade to become integrated into broader Terragen society. Populations of Red Masters may be found throughout the Sephirotics, typically living as semi-communal groups organized around one or more S1/S2 transapient members embodied as a sessile reproductive form, which may produce offspring at will; individual motile forms are no longer required to irreversibly bond with a host or undergo transformation into a reproductive form, and may remain at this stage of their life-cycle indefinitely. In public spaces, motile individuals may most commonly be seen "driving" artificial non-sentient host bodies tailored for their use, which they may freely unpair and re-pair with as they wish. While as a clade they no longer share their ancestors' goals of conquering and subjugating other sophont cultures, many still retain a deeply-rooted instinctual drive to spread out and expand into new territories, which frequently manifests as Red Masters being among the earliest modosophonts to explore and colonize new star systems in the Periphery and Outer Volumes, alongside members of other similarly-motivated clades such as Faber and Tavi.
Related Articles
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by Andrew P.
Initially published on 19 July 2026.
Initially published on 19 July 2026.
