User Guide

A NEW SUN
APPENDIX 5
223
may be a resonance created from the same “psychoactive” field that the mind
worms employ. Some (particularly among the Gaian faction, which believes
implicitly in the “Song of Planet” and has accorded it a mystical significance)
claim the song is ethereally beautiful. Others have alleged that prolonged
exposure can drive the human brain to distraction, or even madness.
MIND WORMS
The dominant land species on Chiron is the mind worm. From a distance, an
individual worm specimen, with an average length of 10cm, hardly seems a
threat. Get closer, however, and a human may experience the power of this
species. Visions of horrible tortures and frightful deaths assail the mind,
straight out of the victim’s worst nightmares. This effect multiplies with the
number of worms present, each individual adding its own voice to the attack.
With sufficient numbers, the victim goes numb with terror, causing spasms,
paralysis, and even death as the autonomous nervous system shuts down. This
attack is only a precursor to the worm’s main goal: to implant freshly hatched
larvae inside the host’s brain. One gravid worm, if sufficiently agitated, can
burrow through a human skull in thirty seconds — less, if the worm finds easy
entry through an eye socket or nasal passage. Once inside the brain casing, the
worm implants its ravenous larvae, which thrive and grow as they devour the
nutrient-rich tissue around them.
Adult mind worms live for less than a month (explaining their urgent need to
reproduce as quickly as possible), although they can enter a dormant state that
lasts for years when they are in contact with the xenofungus. They reproduce
sexually, but are hermaphroditic — each mind worm is capable of both impreg-
nating another and of producing larvae itself. In particularly harsh environ-
mental circumstances, a mind worm is even capable of impregnating itself.
Genetically, one mind worm is virtually indistinguishable from any other any-
where else on Planet, right down to the chromosomal level.
Giant swarms, or “boils,” of these mottled 10cm nightmares occasionally wrig-
gle out of the fungal beds, attacking settlements and their outlying farms and