Brainchild (Patreon)

Parasitic Thoughts Expanding their Host’s Mind

Originating as nothing but a notion in the mind of another, the Brainchild is a horrific and transformative parasite. Spreading through psychic probes into their own minds, these creatures grow within the host’s brain, increasing their mental faculties while withering their bodies. The psionic powers granted during the transformation can be quite intoxicating, but always lead to one thing: the complete usurpation of the host’s mind, its body dangling limply from its enlarged floating cranium. What hope do we have against this zygotic abomination if the very thought of it causes its spread? 

Intrusive Thoughts. No one knows from whence the Brainchild originated, but its propagation is extremely insidious. When a creature makes a psychic connection to the Brainchild, it implants the very notion of itself into the creature’s brain. This begins a slow transformation as the aberration changes its host to fit its needs.

Cerebral Gestation. Within the brain of an infected creature, the Brainchild must grow to accommodate its raw psychic potential. It softens the skeletal structure around itself to allow it to expand, growing the host’s cranium and intellect while weakening its physical form. Before the host becomes immobile, the brainchild lends the creature its psionic abilities, such as its power of levitation. The transformation can be reversed with the novel use of a Modify Memory spell to remove the incepted notion, but sometimes the host is too far gone to accept treatment. Whether by psychic ambition or the host becoming protective of its “child,” many infected creatures succumb to the transformation before the transformation is complete.

Psionic Apotheosis. When a host fully transforms into a Brainchild, what was left of the creature’s body dangles from the enlarged brain, its translucent skin revealing the still-gestating creature within. The psionic might of the Brainchild becomes undeniable, its form surrounded by a field that repels everything around it, and its psychic assaults grow in intensity. If this creature is still gestating within its host, one shudders to think what would happen when it is born into this world.

You watch in horror as the floating creature comes into view. A limp humanoid form dangles from a massive cranium, its face hollow and expressionless. Its translucent skin reveals a swollen brain, misshapen in a mockery of a fetus, complete with large glowing eyes staring out from under its flesh. Stones and debris shift alongside it, an unseen force raising them into the air, as its subdermal gaze locks onto you.