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This character was created by Kittyluvver, do not use without permission.
This character may (emphasis on MAY) be gifted / adopted out soon!
Anima, code ANM999, is (or are) a honeybee-SandWing variety of genetically recombined Warborn dragon. One of the crowning achievements of the Warborn project, the being known as Anima is comprised of many drone bodies sharing a single hive mind in a vast collective consciousness.
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"What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to the mind? Our unity is full of wonder, which your tiny individualism cannot even begin to conceive. We are Anima. We are legion, for we are many."
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The collective mind is very much sentient, a single will spread out amongst many, many bodies. This consciousness identifies itself as "Anima." Anima considers herself a female entity, although its physical iterations - drones - are both male and female (but overwhelmingly female). This stems from the dominance of the female queen in eusocial honeybee colonies.
Anima may consist of anywhere between just one to several hundred api-dragon bodies. Each drone resembles a typical SandWing dragon, though a little smaller than normal. Each of them is golden-yellow in color, and has a long and formidable stinger on their tails. But the most remarkable thing about them is their glowing compound eyes and their wings. Their wings are translucent, veined and insect-like rather than draconic, and they buzz and hover in flight instead of flapping and gliding.
Anything seen or experienced by one drone will be remembered and learned by all of them. The drones have absolutely no sense of individuality, and are no more than extensions of her will. Although Anima’s iterations are mortal and do die extremely often, a few deaths here and there aren’t catastrophic enough to affect the health of the collective. Losses can be easily replenished through continuous spawning. Her drones are fertile and heterogynous, with both males and females - though the females tend to outnumber the males. They can reproduce by both sexual and asexual reproduction, fulfilling the constant need to add to the swarm’s numbers. Under normal circumstances the females reproduce asexually, each of the young a clone of the parent. But they can also reproduce sexually in order to reap the benefits of mutation and evolution to adapt to a changing environment.
As a result Anima is self-propagating, able to maintain her population and her collective through the course of time. The collective mind is immortal so long as it has at least one physical body to inhabit. As a result, Anima cannot be truly killed unless every last drone is destroyed - a near impossible feat, since she is not foolish enough to gather all her drones into one place.
This also makes her a formidable foe, as the deaths of one or two or ten drones matters very little to her - they can always be replaced later. The drones do not know fear of death and are little more than simple extensions of Anima’s will. The drones are not terribly dangerous in a one-on-one fight, but rarely will they attack alone. Anima prefers to overwhelm with sheer numbers.
Psyche[]
Anima goes against the rule that Warborn are typically strong but not smart. Although individual drones are exactly that, the combined sum of their intelligences results in quite a formidable cognizance. Anima’s intelligence and mental capacity are very much dependent on the population of drones she has at her disposal. When she only has a handful of drones, her intelligence is no greater than that of a normal dragon. However, when she numbers in the hundreds, the shared capacity of that many brains is almost limitless. As a result, Anima very much prefers to keep her numbers up.
Anima, naturally, believes quite firmly in the power of the collective, and of unity and harmony over individuality and discord. She looks down upon individuality, which she perceives as selfish and detrimental to dragonkind's interests as a whole. Concepts like "free will," "opinion," and "liberty" are entirely alien to a hive queen who has never experienced such things for herself. She takes no interest in things like compassion and never hesitates, instead acting in the most rational and efficient manner possible. As a result some of her actions (described further below) can be considered quite horrific and abusive, although they always have basis in logic.
Her main concern is to ensure the survival of her drones and in connection, herself. She believes quite strongly in the survival of the fittest and natural selection, and is forever searching to improve the gene pool of her drones. However, in later times her mission has extended to ensuring the survival of all dragonkind - albeit as drones under the rule of the hive.
Biology (detailed)[]
Anima’s central consciousness is usually housed within a single female, who fulfills the function of the “queen” and directs the activities of the swarm. The queen is a potential weakness, and although killing her will not kill Anima for good, it will damage her psyche and cause the swarm to lose focus and retreat for a while as the collective consciousness struggles to regroup. This can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks or even months. Eventually Anima will find another suitable female drone to fulfill the role of the queen. The queen is always well hidden and well-guarded.
The premise behind Anima is a further step in the quest for Scienceborn immortality - instead of striving to make the body immortal, Anima's designers strove instead to immortalize the mind through a superorganic collective will enduring through generations. Anima's drones, like cells in the body, die both through injury and through natural causes. The ranks are quickly filled with fresh-spawned drones. Because Anima's life does not depend on the survival of any one mortal shell, she is quite resilient. The scientists originally intended for all of the drones to be asexually reproducing females, with the exact same genotype through the generations, but then they realized that that would leave the populace unable to quickly adapt to threats like disease. To address the matter, they added a degree of genetic variation and introduced male drones. Through constant sexual reproduction and a fast cycle of drone life and death, the scientists also allowed Anima to mutate and adapt to changes in her surroundings, enabling her to endure through possibly catastrophic changes in her environment.
Anima's ability to adapt wasn't truly put to the test until the radioactive disaster that ended the dragon world war and brought about the Fallout era. Her drones do not live long enough to experience the delibitating effects of radiation poisoning, but a great many were sterilized from exposure. Anima's population bottlenecked, her numbers sank to a record low of only five drones, and for the first time she found herself facing the threat of extinction.
However, Anima managed to survive and eventually began to replenish her numbers again. The short term danger was past, but the long-term threats were still yet to be addressed. Anima knew that her gene pool was severely inbred and nowhere near as diverse as was optimal. If she wanted to survive another few hundred years, she would need to diversify. As a result, she has begun... seeking out new genetic material. In short, she has begun hunting down and capturing dragons with features that she feels her drones would benefit from. Fertile males and females - any tribe or type will do - to contribute to her gene pool.
Breeding[]
Anima has made a rather interesting and beneficial discovery while trying to solve the problem of her narrow gene pool. It turns out that the control she exercises over her drones is not a result of a hereditary or physiological trait. It instead results from the properties of a nutrient-rich nectar that she feeds her newborn drones for the first few weeks of their lives. As a result, any young dragonet - api-Warborn or not - can be successfully assimilated into the collective mind so long as they are fed the nectar during their first few weeks after hatching. The nectar is only effective for dragonets and must be administered precisely on a set schedule, although an adult dragon who has consumed it will be unaffected past maybe tuning in to Anima's thoughts and commands every once in a while.
Although Anima still favors her traditional bee-dragon iterations, she has begun to realize the advantages of RainWing, SeaWing, IceWing, etc. drones. Over the course of a few generations of cross-breeding between regular dragons and her drones she hopes to completely integrate their hereditary advantages into her gene pool, to create a cohesive, genetically superior population.
Her long-term goals, though still quite murky, seem to be to create a world where there are no more tribes and no more conflict. She takes the nuclear war as a prime example of why individualism and selfishness, left unchecked, would destroy all dragonkind. In her ideal worldview, the positive aspects of each tribe will be incorporated into her drones, which will be sole form of the draconic life on Pyrrhia. In short - the hive will rule all.
WORK IN PROGRESS