Bodiless Brains

Bodiless Brains

Their sensory systems are likewise mostly atrophies and greatly specialized. Some have eyes, either just like normal eyes on short stalks of nerve tissue or as fetus-like pools of darkness; a few have a fringe of baby blue eyes like an oyster. Many need no eyes, as they either sense their environment through a combination of "hearing" with their entire skin or use extra-sensory mental powers to learn about their environment. Some use sound-sensitive cilia for echolocation while others are sensitive to subtle (IR) heat modulations.

Some Brains are degenerate. They float in their nutrient fluid senseless and experience neither thought nor care. Others use technology which can read the subtle electronic signature of their thoughts; essentially telepathy machines. These may be in the form of external devises they must swim to in order to communicate, or they may be in the form of a filigree of metallic crystals and crystal wires, worn as a helmet or surgically implanted within the mass of the Brain.

Many, but certainly not all, Brains have advanced mental powers and need no machinery to communicate or manipulate their environment. There are tales of massive bodiless Brains with terribly, almost divine levels of genius.

Brute beast brains are more common in travelers' tales. While these brute-brains may lack true sapience, they use their considerable mental powers to wreck havoc. These brutes may have siphon-tentacles derived from veins or the spinal chord for sucking body fluids from their stunned or dead victims. Paralytic poisons are a distinct possibility.

Most do not think of "wired Brains" as being Bodiless Brains. Some wired Brains live in cybernetic bodies; they are permanently wired in and have whatever senses their cyborg body has, like Dr. Who's Daleks opponents. Others are similarly wired in but in life-support pods that may be integrally housed in the bowels of a ship or tower or city that is their "body." (SEE The Ship Who (SEE The Ship Who series by Anne McCaffrey.)

The Blood-Bath Sea has the second largest population of true Free-Swimming Brains living without artificial assistance; they are outnumbered by the great dirigible Brains which sail through the atmosphere of the gas giant Cerebal.

Blood Brain

These bodiless brains are horrific nightmare creatures that exist only to drain the blood and psyche of all they can ensnare. Many are able to levitate, and so can pursue prey above the waters in which they dwell.

Curiously, blood brains have no external sensory organs save for touch and a keen electromagnetic field sense. This latter gives then a sort of ghost-image of (most) living things and also the internal workings of electrical machines or other sources of electromagnetic energy. For most purposes, blood brains use their subtle and powerful telepathic powers to read the minds of those around them; they rely upon the senses of others, using their own senses only to double-check accuracy. For this reason, blood brains prefer to be in areas with other creatures, or "witnesses;" they rely on these others for environmental information.

This telepathy serves the blood brains well, for they can anticipate the movements of those they are observing. As a result, they are always a step ahead, having initiative and the ideal parry for any action a foe might take.

The brute blood brain beasts seem to be a sort of proto-caveman equivalent to the sapient Blood Brain Folk. The latter regard the former as something more than animals but certainly not as people. While they do not care for them as pets, they will no tolerate lesser species of Folk abusing their primitive cousins.

Blood brains prefer to immobilize their prey before physically feeding. They do so with their mental powers, rendering their victims, or paralyzed or unconscious, or even willing. Illusions, fear, sensory deprivation, and sleep are typical tools. Physical traps are utilized as well, with dark cunning by the brute beast blood brains or calm, cool genius by the sapient Folk Blood Brains.

The brute beast blood brain has a natural ability to master a wide variety of spells (or psychic powers). The particular spells / psychic powers of any given coven of blood brains, whether beast or Folk, varies. They often include enslaving powers; they brains, brute or sapient, prefer to let others do the physical work. The intelligent Folk version of the blood brains augments this mental might with studied sorcery or higher metal disciplines and is not at all averse to co-opting any technologies it can access.

Once the prey is subdued, the blood brain unfurls a pair of web-nets formed of tentacle-like veins. Each tipped with a hollow claw with which they siphon their physical meal; digging claws to suck out blood, body fluids, and - most savory of all - cranial fluids. At the same time, they drain raw vitality, the very essence of life, from their victims. When they are done, the dead husk, empty of life, fall vacant to the floor. Horrifically, the body may yet remain alive, like an unprogrammed zombie, but the essence that once animated it is gone forever.

This entry, a brief outline of the basic Blood Brains species, cannot begin to justice to their assorted civilizations. Whole societies of genius Blood Brain Folk are known. Some, despite being surrounded by other Folk who have barely achieved the early states of Iron Age technology, have developed very advanced mechanical civilizations, comparable to Victorian clockwork. Elsewhere among the known universes are entire civilizations of high-tech space-faring Blood Brains, often powerful in the inter-universe slave trade. Common to most Blood Brain civilizations are the development of personal protective technologies, such as stun-stud bracelets or paralytic poison prods, force-shield or rings of power, suitable for use on tentacles, and levitation equipment for those without the ability to float through air by pure mental strength (psychic or spell) alone.

While their natural prey emphasize the Blood Brains' mastery of tricks and traps, the Blood Brains themselves consider that but the equivalent of hunting and farming. They point out their high achievements in the arts and sciences (magical or technological), as brilliant as any species has achieved.

Blood Brains will mingle freely with any other Folk who understand that draining the mental force of other sapient Folk is simply the nature of a superior species. As this is a rare circumstance, Blood Brains tend to either live in isolated civilizations, where they are free to hunt or farm lesser species of sentients, or they live in hiding in the midst of prey populations, secretly feeding and using all their considerable wits to remain unknown. (This is a bit like some Vampire's existences.) Blood Brains may become quite influential, manipulating societies that do not even know the Blood Brains exist. A favorite tactic of both high-tech space-faring Blood Brains and Blood Brains of lower tech (fantasy) settings is to secretly infiltrate a target population en mass. They may become the secret masters behind entire planets of other species of Folk.

Leviathan Brain

It is somewhat odd to think of a whale-sized creature as "bodiless." The leviathan bodiless brains were developed through a rigorous, millennia-long breeding program from cetacean ancestry. SEE Somtow Sucharitkul's "Light On The Sound" (1982) and other volumes of his "Inquest" series for the wondrous setting of high science fantasy where these brains (or their ancestors) were first described.

The leviathan brains are very powerful and are capable of creating heart-stoppingly beautiful image-song symphonies of pure light and sound. The intuitive mathematics involved in this gives the leviathan brains visions of other worlds; they have a natural ability to navigate through the "overcosm" (similar to hyperspace) with far greater accuracy than any artificial contraption could. In this, the leviathan brains are somewhat like the Navigators of the Dune series.

The leviathan brains were harnessed by the Inquestors between worlds galaxies apart, other cultures may use the leviathan brains to slip between parallel planes or universes or other intra-cosmic travel. Technically, this makes the Inquestors' ships, and any others that utilized incorporated leviathan or other living brains, cyborgs.

It is believed that the leviathans are non-sapient. We must believe this, if we are to bind them in to the imprisoning shells of ship hulls. Even so, we must shield ourselves from realizing just how exquisite their sentience is. (SEE Somtow's writings for details on the development of a genetically blind and deaf caste, immune to the leviathans' heart-stoppingly beautiful image-songs, to catch and bind them.) While these great brains may not be capable of the cold logic we call intelligence, they are superbly attuned, with senses we cannot even begin to describe in the abstract, to their surrounds, both material and trans-cosmic.

Wild leviathan brains swim with fins like those of vast angelfish. Should predators approach, pairs of the great beasts can simply crush them. Usually this is not necessary, as the leviathans protect themselves with their symphonies of light and sound. The intense images, like holographs or illusions or divine visions can enthrall or bemuse, entrance or repel.

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Last update Apr 4, 2006