Disclaimer: This is not a biology textbook. Whoever told you that is a liar. Probably. If they had carapace, then either you're hallucinating, or I'm an undercover zerg scientist. Which, actually, means this is still not a biology textbook. Also, don't own it.
(So apparently, there's a button in the doc editor here. This button adds horizontal lines. Which are commonly used as transitions. WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS.)
I was too busy laughing at the transition jokes. As an author, they're all too relatable.
-feauxen, the newly appointed beta
Catalyst
"Hello, and welcome to the Study of Ancient Runes," said the terran at the front of the class, a female that had identified herself as Bathsheda Babbling. "Now, this is not a class of immediate rewards, of waving a wand and setting a feather on fire, or of lifting up a pile of wood." Titters floated around the classroom. The terran paused. "Or was it the other way around?" Now there were open giggles from around the class. Not very many, as the room was nearly deserted, only with 15 humans besides Hermione in the sizeable classroom. And Abathur, of course. Apparently psionics weren't any more inclined to learn dead languages than their inferior counterparts. This was precisely why he had chosen the class. Abathur sat silently and waited for the teacher to continue.
"Now despite my jokes, this is quite a serious class. Even a simple mistake could have far-reaching consequences. In Charms and Transfiguration, and all the other wand-based classes, you can correct errant wand motions with only the occasional counterspell. In Ancient Runes, if you get so much as a single line wrong, well, anything could happen. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes you get a better result than you could have hoped for, and sometimes the results are quite explosive," Abathur could sympathize. He absolutely hated finding all the errors in the early versions of new strains.
The teacher continued, "The point is that a mistake is volatile, unpredictable. Attention to detail is of the utmost importance if you intend to keep those eyebrows in place." Hermione was furiously taking down notes. Abathur wasn't. He had learned these lessons long ago, albeit about a very different topic. There was no reason for him to write them down.
"This is not to say that there are no rewards for attentive students of Ancient Runes. A poor rune sequence can be disastrous. But when you get it right..." Babbling held up a moderate sized stone, with a number of lines carved into it, and tapped her wand to it. The stone lifted off her hand and lit up with a corona of light. With a low hum, it flew around the room rapidly, easily navigating around the students watching with awed expressions. It stopped for a moment in front of Abathur's face, allowing him a glance at the patterns inscribed upon it. The runes themselves were of course completely unknown. But Abathur could almost see something familiar in the patterns. He didn't get much of a chance to examine it closely before it zoomed back to outstretched palm of Babbling.
"The possibilities for this are as endless as your imagination. Runes can be combined in countless ways, if you have the right knowledge. Runes act as a set of instructions for magic, telling the very flow of power what to do and where to go..."
Babbling said more, but Abathur wasn't listening. He was too overwhelmed by what she had already said. Instructions, telling magic where to go and what to do. The human knew the essence of psionics, and was stupid enough to teach it straight to him!
(Transition)
One of the greatest strengths of the Hive's strategy of infestation was that it didn't need to spend any resources to defend its new territories. It was a simple task to send the new converts to patrol the forests surrounding the Hive, or to dig pits and weave webs. They had the forces to spare, and the coordination to pull it off. It was the way the Hive had always done it, which meant they had never had the challenge of guarding a new, abandoned territory. They'd never needed to grow their forces, never had to plan and map areas to lay defenses, never required specific resources for growth and defense. It was a weakness the new, incredibly numerous enemy took brutal advantage of.
Their attacks were not organized. They were not consistent, they were not even particularly strong. But they were endless. Hundreds of attacks could come for the Hive's new territory in an hour. Some attacks were crushed. The Mind had designed its forces to be deadly soldiers, far beyond their original capacities. Each was easily capable of crushing their lesser cousins, one on one. This was little help against the hordes that the super colony sent their way. Slowly but surely, the Hive was pushed back from their newly acquired territory. For every attack that was forced back or slaughtered, dozens more made their way through the Hive clusters. As quickly as the Hive had claimed the territory, they were being pushed out of it. The Queens were in disarray, each fighting desperately to preserve their colonies.
It was clear that a solution was needed. The Hive could adapt, or it could die. The Mind would not intervene; it was becoming increasingly distracted from them, remote. The Queens pooled their minds and thoughts, searching among themselves for a solution.
At that point, they realized they had already found the answer. Division was a weakness they could not afford. Their opponents outnumbered them, outpaced them in size, and that in and of itself could make up for any other advantage the Hive possessed, if their defense continued in such a poor manner. But a true merging of resources and thought, a true Hive mind, that just might stand a chance.
The Queens pulled together their thoughts, turning a discordant chorus of opinions and senses into a fine flow, ideas rushing like water. New thoughts, new concepts, previously unimaginable, seemed almost simple. Before, they had been colonies, fighting on the same side, but rarely fighting together. Now they were one. They were the Hive. And the Hive tolerated no threats to itself.
The Hive's defenses clustered together, then smoothed out along the borders, providing a solid front to ward off attacks. With this organization, the lone, chaotic attacks were deflected with ease. The previously rare Hive spiders spread and worked, covering the entirety of the front line in a layer of silk. Vibrations in the great web told the Spider Queens of all approaching foes.
Hive soldiers were modified to walk over it freely, even moving faster on it, while super-colony troops were quickly caught in the intricate trap.
The enemy's momentum was stopped in its tracks. The massive loss of Hive territory was halted. The two sides settled into an uneasy stalemate, with only the occasional probing attack that either ended in a quick retreat, or death by acid and mandibles.
It wouldn't last. Sooner or later, the war would escalate. The battles would continue, and one side or another would fall. But for today, the Hive survived. Tomorrow it would thrive.
(Transition)
Remus Lupin was quickly shaping to be one of Abathur's favorite teachers. Not only was he a fairly interesting specimen in and of himself, one Abathur continued to grab samples from, but he also brought interesting specimens into his class. He wasn't like the hybrid in Care of Magical Creatures, with all his patchwork creatures. If he wanted poorly made amalgamations, he would have consumed the cerberus. The hippogriffs were just dull, and Abathur wouldn't bother describing the flobberworms, even in his own head.
Lupin, on the other hand, brought the interesting essence. Creatures taking strength directly from water, even if they were dependent on water being present in their head cavity. Creatures that emitted flames from their bodies. And now, a creature that apparently fed on literal fear. Abathur watched eagerly as the Boggart transformed into a snake covered with a large red wig and makeup, a large, floating ball of flesh, covered with muscular, headless things with stubby limbs, a swarm of books leaping out of a tree trunk while a human above laughed, and a large, worm like being that burst out of a terrans chest and quickly grew into a towering, black creature, with a spined tail and an elongated head. Abathur took notes on the last one, that might be useful.
Soon enough, Abathur had made his way to the front of the line, extremely eager to get to the Boggart. He could barely hide his anticipation, having to stifle a grin. When he stepped forward, the Boggart twisted and writhed as it had for the others. Abathur didn't expect much; it had mostly used surface scares against the humans. It shifted between a terran space marine, a protoss void ray, Abathur even swore he saw a hybrid in there, before it eventually settled on Abathur.
Not Abathur as he currently was, a yellow-green eyed terran whelp, with poorly made grasper limbs and an inefficient digestive tract the size of a larva. It was him as he was. Tall, strong of limb and mind, a compiler and modifier of strands and essence on an epic scale. Scythes mounted on tendrils, extending from his back. Zerg. If the Boggart thought this was what he was afraid of, he may have to reconsider assimilating it. This was a pathetic showing.
It was then that Abathur noticed the details. Small things, things that anyone else would not see. The tip of a scythe was malformed, dull at the edges, with minor flaws along the joint. One of the growths on the side of his head was filled with a darker fluid, dull and inert. An eye grew deformed, a spine was off-angle, bits carapace were scraped off, the list went on and on. Flaws, imperfections, simple to fix, but for some reason they were. All. Still. There.
Abathur addressed his doppelganger. "You. Possess flaws. Amend."
The clone turned to look at Abathur slowly, seemingly uncaring about the time it was wasting. "Why?" it replied, through thought rather than sound. There was a tone of apathy, of giving up, so pervasive throughout that simple reply, that could never be fully expressed verbally. It gave Abathur chills down all of his spines.
"Correct to evolve, make better. Always improving," Abathur replied.
"Have stopped. Will not reach goal. Attempts, inadvisable. Will not continue," Abathur's doppelganger said. That stunned Abathur. He had, the doppelganger had given up. This was an impossibility. Telling himself that didn't help the tendrils of fear creeping through the back of his mind.
"Perfection, moving goal! Only goal! Cannot reach!" Abathur was shouting at this point, unwilling to accept the reality put before him. He was not, would never be this apathetic thing. Perfection was the eternal goal, and the only goal worth more than a moments notice. It would never stop continuing. He would never stop pushing towards it. Right?
"Cannot reach, not worth pursuing. Intangible, non-existent. Pointless," the Boggart replied. There was such carelessness, such lack of desire in that thought, such complete and utter sloth, that Abathur couldn't believe it was from himself. That's when he realized it wasn't.
The Boggart had managed to get into his head, manipulate him, make Abathur afraid. And for a while, it succeeded. The Boggart had made Abathur afraid. This time, Abathur didn't bother to suppress his grin. Abathur addressed the Boggart, "Effective predator. Intelligent. Highly efficient."
The Boggart became rigid for a second, then staggered back. The Boggart shifted into a distorted caricature of Abathur's fear, before desperately flying back towards the cupboard. Good, it wanted to stay alive. That saved him the trouble of adding that instinct. Abathur gave his wand a jab, and said, with the grin still on his face, "Riddikulus". The Boggart became a small worm, wriggling hopelessly on the floor. Abathur strode forward and picked up the worm. With a quick crunch, he consumed the Boggart in a single bite.
Ravager: The result of years of careful manipulation of the roach genome to points far beyond its original limits, the Ravager is a powerful force of the Zerg, specializing in cracking open entrenched positions. A towering creature of carapace and muscle, the Ravager's most distinctive feature is the pit of plasma fire sitting on the top of its body, surrounded by a crown of spines. Seen from above, the pit of biological fire could easily be mistaken for a single, burning eye. It is from here that the Ravager strikes, sending balls of plasma fire from distance to burn through enemies of the Swarm. The Ravager can also direct a more concentrated version of Corrosive Bile in an arc to burn through all in an area, from orbital craft to lowly foot soldiers, friend or foe. It is this ability that makes it so effective at attacking entrenched positions, using the Bile to strike down less mobile units such as Lurkers or Siege tanks, static defense, or Sentry force fields. The Ravager is the result of twisting and manipulating of existing strands to new purpose, a role it fills admirably and efficiently.