Pisura27 Sickness Investigation

Year: 320 CE - tba

With the YNF finally defeated, the 'Pisura27 Biological Research Group' was formed out of surviving collaborators with inside knowledge about the Pisura27 Sickness in order to work towards a anti-virus to bring it down. Their first focus was figuring out how infecting Blargs caused it to mutate, though they didn't have any samples of uninfected Blargs to use as a reference, thus a CSIS 'runner-ship' was sent around the Blarg Horde to the Blarg Republic to convince them to send a group with them to help create a antidote to the sickness after explaining that the YNF had created it as a bioweapon. The Blarg Republic was hesitant as it believed that the sickness would consume all of life, which angered the CSIS as they believed this to be the only way to solve it, to which the Blarg Republic explained that all it was doing was ensuring that it would survive by barricading its people in places the sickness couldn't reach. Elsewhere, the OMM captured a Blarg Horde ship and analysed how the Sickness and infected functioned, discovering that they communicated telepathically and gradually became less intelligent the further away from a group of infected they were, that it accumulated near lungs and wounds in most species while it mixed with the main body of the Blargs, that the sickness 'assimilated' organic material into itself, and that the Blarg Horde generally lacked any cohesive social structure and was largely inert.

Later on, a 1.6 kilometre long YNF ship (named 'Manuzone-2 Defence Fleet Vessel #97') slowly made its way out of the Blarg Horde towards Agria, with inconclusive scans and its flickering power suggesting that it was damaged or malfunctioning. Lifeform scans suggested that only one lifeform was onboard, which the CSIS didn't decide to risk especially as it had begun rapidly accelerating in order to enter FTL Speeds, though the CSIS firing onto its engines disrupted this by causing a massive explosion which tore the aft of the ship apart, allowing the CSIS to drag it back into the Blarg Horde. The OMM decided to investigate (while making it clear to the CSS Jupiter that they were doing so) as well, sending in a salvage drone, combat drone, and survey drone lead by a coordinator ship known as the 'Valravn' onto the ship, finding it strangely empty with a odd liquid splattered onto the walls which was identified as the substance found in those infected by the Pisura27 Sickness. The OMM's crafts headed thru the hallways and looked for anything even if all electronics were offline due to the engines being destroyed, though even when they were powered on by the OMM crafts most systems appeared to be broken. Weird skittering sounds began being heard within the ship's halls, prompting the combat drone to deploy two gatling guns as it began searching for any threats while travelling to the command centre, finding in a quite damaged state. The blackbox of the ship contained a very choppy message which didn't make much sense; "The ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Compounding. ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Learning ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Prepare▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Blackbox Message Over ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒hghhhh. grrrgrgh. grrrowl. hghhgdhr rhhrhgh snarl snarl. growl. ghhhrhhg."

The CSIS kept trying to get in contact with the Blargs to develop a cure via their genome, which the Blarg Republic saw as unfeasible as it wasn't really a 'sickness' to be fought but rather something which caused people to die, and then reanimated their corpses under its own control, thus targetting specifically Blarg genomes would probably end up killing them, though despite this the Blarg Kingdom agreed to provide some genetic samples. After receiving these samples and setting up a permanent research facility on Proxima Centauri C (which was otherwise uninhabited), the PBRG officially began its research into the Pisuraa27 Sickness, with SDS Biological-Site-7, the CSIS Department of Health, the DCAE Biological Research Unit, the International Parahealth Institute, the Polsk Secret Research Group, the SDS Department of Science, AOF Department of Parapathology, and the Moebius Foundation all sending researchers to assist in the efforts, which first revealed that there were multiple different 'variants' which could occur based on infection method. The CSIS had to keep assuring the populace not to fear the ongoing crisis in order to main stability, though this wasn't universally effective as many still remained panicked, and a couple thousand people even seemed to 'worship' the sickness. The OMM continued its own research into how the pathogen operated in living bodies, seeing what changes it made to cells and how it interacted with microroganisms.

Blarra Prime, once a mountainous and rainy planet home to expansive wetlands and cities which served as the capital of the Blarg Empire, now laid in ruins as the billions of infected had begun accumulating on the planet, covering the planet in a ocean of black goo as the infected had begun forming a 'compound consciousness' out of their merged fluid-like reanimated bodies. The PBRG continued to try to understand how exactly the sickness did what it did by containing and studying the infected in a facility on the otherwise unihabited Proxima Centauri C, promoting Abathur of the Zerg Collective (whom had encountered the sickness during the Second Zerg Invasion of the United Rim) to note how he had discovered that the sickness spread by entering the body, building up fluid in the lungs in a lethal way, and then reanimated the corpse once it spread into the circulatory system by taking control of the subject's cellular structure to spread itself by attacking others, providing the PBRG with his personal research (that it was vulnerable to heat, his clone of the virus he was researching, and a primitive cure against infected Zerg). The PBRG also shared its own more recent research, such as that there were four distinct forms of the infection (the 'Chronic Infectious Variant', the 'Dissolvant Infectious Variant', the 'Compound Variant', and the 'Blargoid Variant') and that it either spread through the Pisura27 Variant of Ganymedian Bioweapons-Project#27 as aerial droplets or bodily fluids which would take a few days or a week to infect the victim or the 'Pisura27 Blargfluid' method exclusive to infected Blargs which took under 15 minutes to infect someone. The CSIS began gathering nukes to combat the infected, to which the PBRG stated that the infected should be rendered non-threats if simply incapacitated even if they couldn't be killed again, though they were unaware of how ffective this would be against Blargs due to their atypical biology, thus the CSIS decided to provide the PBRG with infected Blargs to assist in the studies.

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A CSIS ship was sent into Blarg territory in 'stealth mode' (cutting communications and lights) and released thousands of drones into the area, noting how desolate and destroyed the planets had become despite the infected continuing to move on their surfaces in an unnaturally coordinated manner as if they were forming some kind of Hivemind. A drone approached one of the many barely active spacecrafts drifting throughout Blarg territory, noting it to be externally already quite eerie due to the flickering lights and power supply as sparks occasionally rang out in the hallways, sometimes illuminating movement. The drone, with its many arms and cannon, broke through a particularly stained view-port into the ship, turning on its lights after briefly seeing a figure down a hall with black-stained walls covered in scratches. The drone took samples of the fluid staining the walls and scratches as it followed the figure it had seen and the gurgling sounds it appeared to be making, attempting to view it with a thermal camera while humming.

The drone reached the end of the hall it was going down, finding an elevator whose control panels and screens appeared to be non-functional, so the drone simply busted its way into the elevator which surprisingly appeared to be functional from the inside, riding it one floor upwards to a hallway with circular holes on the sides labeled 'BLARG DROPSHIP', within which it saw a large window overlooking a claw-structure intended to grab onto other ships. One side of the hallway appeared to lead to a dead-end towards the aft of the ship with a functional screen stating 'BLARG HEAVY CRUISER: SERIALCODE XB2398C', while the other direction lead to a more open space as the hallway turned into a bridge above a hangar bay containing many starfighters, with forwards leading to the front end of the ship where a two-floored room was seen alongside many other side-bridges connecting to other areas of the ship containing electronics and crates. As another drone had entered the ship, the (first) drone headed toward the front as another inspected the side rooms. The second drone noted that the area it had entered was a weaponry room containing ammunition and cannons, while the first drone noted that the room it entered contained a large chair overlooking many control panels of which very few (such as the starboard weapon systems) remained functional. On one of the screens near a large window overlooking the planet Kanalla, the probe read a very long incoherent message stating; "mother speaks you. mother directs you. mother gives you. nourishment nourishment nourishment. you will spread you will spread. for mother. for pisura. pisura speaks to you. pisura directs you. pisura gives you. you will serve The Pisungall. you are my pestilence, i am the horseman of the apocalypse, you are my steed. listen to mother listen to pisura we are one, and you will be one with us soon. Decree of The Pisungall."

After the drone lead the message, a large bang rang out from the hangar. Both drones ventured back onto the bridge to find the source of the sound, seeing the figure they had sighted earlier briefly before it stumbled off the bridge. Rumbling began to emanate from below the bridge, which when observed revealed that thousands of infected had accumulated down there and had begun climbing up after noticing the drones, whom opened their containment-tubes to capture several infected (who were 'pacified' with heat once inside) before fleeing thru the Bridge's window by firing an explosive round. The drones managed to successfully flee and drift back to the safety of the stealth-ship while the infected re-sealed the hole in the ship.

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Area where Blarg communications were recieved

The PBRG began work on analysing the infected Blargs, but also needed non-infected samples which the CSIS retrieved from the abandoned YNF-run 'Callisto Installation B' with its drones, which captured several subjects from a basement similar to the one seen in Quar.Zone--5 during the Accord-YNF War. During the analysis, the facility on Proxima Centauri Cbegan receiving communications from the Kanalla System within Blarg Space repeating the message that the drones had seen in the abandoned Blarg ship's bridge, with areas all over Accord space alongside parts of the Yelnik Hivemind, Astragenia, and The Altair also receiving the message seemingly at random. Concerned despite communications clearly being harmless, the CSIS and PBRG set-up a series of monitoring and military stations along the border with Blarg space, which later began observing several odd occurrences such as many ships gradually reactivating as various incoherent rambling communications began being broadcast such as one from the Bequenest System stating "Don't do it. You don't know what I'm feeling right now. Don't do it. Cursed race. They are not mine. Cursed. NO. NO. Don't do it. Their teeth cut through. I burn in it. I'm dying. Pain. NO. Pain. I die in it. Suffering. I get terrified when I feel. NO. NO. Don't do it. Their breath chokes. Their bodies. NO. NO.", though even when the CSIS tried to respond to these communications it was ignored, freaking them out enough to re-mobilize the CSIS Spacefleet on the Blarg border alongside its allies.

Thousands of Blarg ships had begun accumulating around the orbit of Pisura now that they had begun reactivating, concerning the Protoss Empire enough to offer its assistance against the Blarg Horde as they believed that they could be 'slaves of the Dark God'. The PBRG inquired on who this 'dark god' was, prompting the Protoss to explain that the Dark God was the one who created the Zerg-Protoss Hybrids, and was the one prophesised to end the 'infinite cycle' maintaining all mortal lives which was started by god-like beings known as the Xel-Naga which seeded life on all inhabitable planets (starting with the Protoss, then the Zerg, then others), which the Dark God had turned against and now wished to end the universe with their plan thus far involving The Overmind, the Zerg, and the Hybrids. The PBRG thanked the help, but disagreed that the Dark God was involved with the Pisura27 Sickness as it was known it was a mutated YNF bioweapon which had begun forming a single unifying intelligence due to said mutation whose perpratator remained unknown, though said mutation was clearly too natural to have been caused by corruption from the Dark God.

The PBRG observed that the 'collective intelligence' seen in the Infected had begun radially spreading outwards from Pisura one-by-one, prompting the CSIS to propose a pre-emptive nuclear bombardment of Pisura and the ships accumulating around it, but the PBRG was unsure of how large their fleet had become. The CSIS sent scouts to Blarra Prime as well to see how it had been developing, not seeing a 'ship swarm' like Pisura (who was surrounded by tens of thousands of ships which only left to "trade" fluid-filled glass jars to other infected worlds) despite the planet being arguably even more covered in infected, prompting the CSIS to propose a raid of Pisura to prevent the formation of the collective intelligence, though the PBRG noted it was too late for this as it had already extended quite far. The CSIS was only emboldened by this, suggesting that the 'trade' going on was how the intelligence was spreading itself as Pisura was far too isolated from the rest of Blarg territory to be the hert of a trade network, suggesting that Pisura and the other planets affected by the intelligence must be destroyed to prevent Humanity from coming under threat, which the PBRG began to agree as it realised that as the place where the sickness began and where the infected's collective intelligence had emerged suggested that something on the planet was causing it to spread. Many ships began to assemble on the Blarg border such as those aligned with the CSIS, The Accord, the Protoss, and even the SDS. Around this time, the first infection of a PBRG employee had occurred as one of the scientists working on the project had been an infected disguised as a completely normal Human with only their 'interior' being full of the infective fluid. Around this time, the Intergalactic Science and Research Institute began assisting with cure research, offering a prize to those who achieved it.

The CSIS, Protoss, and others launched their raid against Pisura, bombarding its surface into slag while the Protoss mothership drilled down towards the planets core with its fracking beam, prompting the Blarg fleet surrounding the planet to scatter in random directions in significant enough numbers as to not be stopped. The infected climbed onto the outer hull of the mothership as it drilled deeper to destabilize the planet and began attempting to breach inside, prompting the Protoss to do their best to keep them at bay by firing their weapons and expelling energy from the ship into artificial vortexes created by the ship. As the ship drilled deeper and deeper into the planet's core and was assailed by more and more infected of many species, the mothership's core began to implode and destroy the ship as it descended. Once the ship breached Pisura's core, it ejected its own imploding core into Pisura's one before breaking apart and crashing into Pisura's core itself, causing a devastating explosion which cracked the planet in half, rendering it completely uninhabitable and wiping out most infected on the planet (of which the few survivors were unable to escape, and were being blown up by CSIS ships). The CSIS proposed another mission to do the same to Blarra Prime, but the PBRG argued that the intelligence was likely aware of what had occurred and the Protoss were regardless unable to sacrifice a similar ship for a second time.