[quote=@Tortoise]
[@Lady Lascivious]

This is probably one of the best sheets I've ever gotten, in a story-telling sense. I love the feeling that, by the end, the Tiamat are a completely traumatized people: trying to wipe out the natives because they might speak of the Terrible Truth. They even gouged their own eyes out so they don't have to see it. Spoopy.

Questions:
How would the redundant brain be able to transfer memories in the event of physical-death? Like, say you got shot in the head. How can your primary brain, that [i]just got shot and is dying[/i], have time to transfer anything to the secondary, redundant brain? Wouldn't primary brain die first? It can't be instant, since- if I remember correctly- the brain stores some things physically. Unless all memories, thoughts and feelings are always been stored on both brains, simultaneously?

You never explain what the Hive strain is, or where it come from. I guess that's intended to be in one of the archives?
[/quote]

First of all, thank you very much! Your praise means a lot ^-^

And second: The redundant brain is essentially a small, real-time backup located within the armored organ sac of the Ishtari. If you are shot in the head, you will be for all intents and purposes dead - but a snapshot of your consciousness in the moment preceding it will continue to function. Some times this organ can malfunction, and begin to develop a secondary consciousness that cannot actually control the body but can some times war with the main one, and it's always a massive can of worms figuring out what to do. So it is, well, yeah - it's two brains operating in tandem, with one sending everything it decides to the other to be stored or overwritten. 

Third: The Hive Strain will be partially explained in one of the archives, but it's also intended to retain some mystery about it to fuel people's imaginations about just what could impart such primal fear in them at the mere similarity to it. Essentially, the hive strain were the at first cloned, and then... I think the best way to put it is "reprocessed" organisms derived from the DNA of a contemporary of Tiamat herself. A well regarded geneticist, exactly what experiments lead to him becoming the first Hive Strain is unknown, but they formed a hive mind that was in part enabled by a fleshy web of nervous tissue that covered the surfaces of the regions of the ship they held. The Hive Strain resembled... pretty much a fusion of human and spider, I've attached an image below that's pretty close to what I envisioned. They were in many regards even harder to kill and more adaptable than the current Ishtari, even able to survive vacuum exposure for some time, and attempted to forcibly assimilate the rest of the ship's crew. Tyranid style ^-^

[img]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/11/09/article-2230610-15F0B587000005DC-861_634x340.jpg[/img]