The Matrons - the final stage of exo-symbiote evolution?

by Majestic_12 Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:00 pm

An ancient Siluvaran fairy woman, especially one over 800 years old, begins to slowly evolve into what is known as a Matron, an unnaturally powerful fairy capable of feats undreamt of by younger fairies.

Matrons are the leaders of exo-symbiote societies, including Siluvara. They can be found in the wild as well, although more rarely, due to the regular systemic genocides inflicted upon exo-symbiote colonies by Grue Combine orbital bombardment.

Matrons have many fantastic powers that are beyond the reach of younger mages. For instance, they can fly through space, and even teleport to other worlds without needing to use an existing signal connection. Matrons are also immune to the Bloodvine, and it is this immunity that often marks the fairy's full transition to a Matron.

However, Matrons have one frightening power that has made them enemies all over the human-colonized galaxy: A Matron has the ability to not only feed a human to her womb, but to also turn a human into a fairy, effectively becoming his new mother because she uses copies of her own DNA to alter her prey. And she has the ability to make the change permanent, preventing her victim from being reset to a human by another exo-symbiote.

Matrons are highly arrogant, often consumed with the belief that they and their species are superior to all others. Matrons have no problem starting wars with the Grue Combine or turning a Grue-infested world into a burning desert. Most modern day Matrons grew up as rebels in their youth, fighting to take back Siluvaran colonies from the Grue who had used the bloodvine to turn almost all of their Siluvaran peers into carnivorous monsters; the terror of watching their society collapse into mass cannibalism and the inability to pursue the Grue across the galaxy because they had to stay and rebuild, makes for a very angsty and hot tempered Matron hundreds of years later - it makes for a very vengeful matriarch who is just spoiling for war.

Matrons are, fortunately, held in check by their Royal Guard - fairy warriors in the very next stage of evolution beneath Matrons. The Royal Guard are masters of epic magic, and a small group - no more than a dozen fully fledged Royal Guard - can isolate (as in, prevent her from recharging her magic) and kill a Matron, though maybe only one Royal Guard would return from such a task alive.

Matrons, collectively, have a policy toward humans - embrace, extend, and extinguish. Basically, their desire is to befriend humans, lure them with the benefits of exo-symbiosis, and then convert their entire species into fairies.

This policy was carried out in the form of a mass-invasion by Matrons of a Bollar Imperial colony, 500 years ago. Millions of adult Bollars were fed to Matrons' wombs and turned into fairies. Memories of this invasion are carried telepathically by survivors; these telepathic signals have reached as far as Earth. This sparked a major revolt by opposing Matrons and the entire Siluvaran Royal Guard, ending in the deaths of many renegade Matrons; even so, this sparked an apocalyptic war with the Bollar Empire.

Nivalavi Matrons already exist even though the Nivalavi ethnic group has only existed for 500 years. Nivalavi Matrons are much more powerful than other Matrons, and they have the unique ability to take a human who has been converted to a fairy, feed this person to her womb, and restore them back to being human again, eliminating any genetic changes made by the previous Matron. Ironically, Nivalavi are highly sought out by the Bollars-turned-fairies to undo the changes inflicted upon them during the invasion 500 years ago. Suffice it to say, forces of the Bollar Freehold are "unofficially" friendly to the Dalassi and Nivalavi.

Evidence shows that the much younger fairy/human half-breed Dalassi will yield Matrons in a few hundred years as well, but no one knows what their distinctive powers will be. Nivalavi Matrons are deeply engrossed in training and mentoring these powerful upstart prodigies.