In the dark halls of a workshop; an elven mage looks upon his work. Garbed in blue-green workrobes and surrounded by various vats of florescent blue liquid and benches of various artifacts and tools. In the vat in front of him is a purple vat of ooze, not fully alive; missing one last component for it to awaken. Until then, it will lie dormant, in a never waking slumber. But it was done; Project Kraj, the greatest project and life's work of the Guildmaster of the Simic Combine was finally finished.
Mormir Vig turned away from his work, his masterpiece. Kraj was alive; but not awake, for that he needed cerebral fluid from a dragon. And not just any dragon, no it needed to be from a species renown for it's intellect. Of which there are few and far between. Still, it was only a matter of time, and Mormir was a patient man.
However, there came to be another issue of sorts that has now arisen; Project Kraj only ended up costing half of what was projected to be the total monetary cost to actually finish, and even taking into account the maximum cost of the cerebral fluid, he now had piles upon piles of gold that remained unused. He couldn't simply put it back into the Gulid coffers, that would alert the Orzhov Syndicate and they'd probably extort and tax it all away in response. He couldn't pour it into further additions to Kraj; there was nothing left to add to improve Kraj without deviating from it's initial function and capabilities.
He walked through his workshop and to the entrance of his library; perhaps there was something within that could inspire him? A...flight of fancy he could pursue until Kraj was fully born. Something to take the tedium of waiting off of his mind.
As he read though various tomes and documents; he finally found something that piqued his interests. A part of a report from a laboratory from a different plane that he had bought from a passing planeswalker. Looking at the report, he found it was on reviving a lost species known as slivers.
Using the species name as reference; he looked through every shred of written word he had on this species and it's capabilities, and was amazed. Hyper-adaptability, perfect hivemind, fast evolution; it was practically what the Simic Combine, what he, was striving for.
But what nature can create; science and magic can refine and improve. He can already envision what possibilities await when applying cytoplasm to the species. How he can improve and enhance the already fast and potent capabilities of evolution and adaptation the creatures had.
Schematics and equations were already flowing in his minds; but without a sample, it was only dreams and thoughts. Fortunately, this was Ravnica; a mecca of sorts for planeswalkers due to the innate barrier around the plane preventing anything from escaping in or out of the plane unless you know how. That combined with the guilds and rest of the vast cityscape makes it a 'safe house' for planeswalkers as well as a bazaar of sorts; if they need something, chances are
one of the guilds has it.
It took a lot of time and money; but you eventually manage to get a walker to go to Urborg and the remnants of the Riptide Laboritories, as well as contain several live specimens for research. Now you had the fossilized remains of the last Sliver Queen, several samples of fossilized slivers from both Urborg and Riptide along with what few remaining notes they had on reviving slivers, and some live specimens to study the function of living slivers. You even managed to snag a 'Hivestone'; and artifact used to control the Sliver Hivemind.
Mormir Vig immediately went to work, studying and dissecting the live samples and studying the fossils; seeing what can be improved upon. Unlike other specimens and the myriad flaws they have, there little that needs correction in sliver biology; just tweak some genomes here to increase the range of the hivemind, modify some gene sequencing there to up adaptation speed and evolution rate, and that's all that's needed to do for the base template.
Now for the
fun part: introducing Cytoplasm to the species, but instead of simply grafting it onto any living slivers; he instead choose an alternative method brought on by a flash of inspiration. He's going to splice the cytoplasm into the
genetic code of the very specimen you're creating. This will allow it and future generations of it's kind to create cytoplasm on their own, metabolizing the substance from what they eat gradually over time. This also improves the potency of the hive's trait sharing exponentially by how much cytoplasm the specimens have within their body.
Finally; after months of experimentation, dissection, and study...it is done. A fluorescent blue, royal purple, and gold egg is in front of you; the magically modified and enhanced egg that will hatch into the new Sliver Queen. Mormir Vig sets it into a incubator until it's almost ready to hatch, then puts it into a sanctioned biome specifically for the specimen; filled with various other Simic creations.
Now...it is time to see the fruits of his labor...
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....
....*crack*....
...*crack**crack*...
*CRACK*
You see light, after braking through the darkness. You...you move about for the first time in your life, uncertain what to do. Eventually, after eating the egg which you came from for food; newly awakened instincts kick in, and just in time too. Because you can feel something approaching...
[X] Hide, while you feel what is approaching isn't as strong as you; you cannot be certain
[X] Hunt, yes your egg served as food; but it isn't enough to sate your hunger
[X] Run, you won't hunt; not yet
[X] Write-in