The friendly Neurovore familiar to so many is only one expression of a much more complex life-form which, over the course of its existence, takes on many forms and roles, most so different to each other that not all realise the fundamental connection between them.
The Soft-Head is a meta-cephalopodic species which eats only fresh brains and other complex nervous tissues. It can either devour these with its beak, or invert and extend its stomach like a trochomorphid limb to cover and envelop these materials.
The Soft-Heads stomach is, in-effect, a second brain, possessing a combination of complex digestive milks and an extendible sheath of nerves and cellular-level micro-manipulators. In combination with the secondary brain that forms a layer of the stomach, the Soft-Head not only digests the meat of the brain, but absorbs its patterns. The creature absorbs the memories of what it eats.
Soft-Head spawn are essentially Squid-Tadpoles which feed on microfauna and any ambient specks of protein. As they develop, they gain the ability to inhabit and parasitise a wide range of bodies; eating the brain, tearing, or cutting off the head, or skull, infiltrating tentacles down the chest to massage the heart back into life and, inverting their stomach to interface directly with the bodies nervus system and, with advanced creatures, simulating the flesh and substance of a hominids head and face with cephalopodic mimicry.
These simulated heads have no bones, apart from a brain-devouring beak, so their heads are soft. The eyes are always a Squids eyes and hair is difficult to fake.
It’s hard for them to talk. Keeping the lungs active while also simulating the complex mouth, palette, tongue, throat and breathing apparatus, along with the language and intonation of the living original, is a complex business, so Soft-Head voices are voices are hesitant, breathy, whispery, sometimes choking or clotted.
Though there are cults of soft-heads that specialise in the hyper-specialised combination of skill and magic required to actually simulate a known person, it’s rare for a Soft-Head to take over a humanoid body with the active intention of replacing or pretending to be that person - that would be an enormous, almost savant level problem, and while the Soft-Heads do possess much genius, in most cases this is spent on practical survival. They take complex bodies so they may leave the water for long periods and gain access to the 'dry world', and to an entirely different, and more complex, range of prey and tactics.
Soft-Head Lives
As a very general guide, roughly one in four of Soft-Head Tadpoles survive each stage of Soft-Head evolution and become Neurovores, meaning most Neurovore pairings need to produce eight or more spawns over their lifetime in order to maintain the species numbers.
This also means that fully-functional 'Civilised' Neurovores are incredibly rare in comparison to even their more-developed Wendigo ascendants, and even more so compared to the more primitive Body-Takers and man-eaters etc
This is why most cultures in the Veins consider the 'Neurovore' and their lesser incidents as, in-effect, different species, even if they have enough knowledge of the Nature to understand that they are one life-form.
1. Tadpoles. Produced in clouds of a thousand or more. With ‘Wild’ Soft-heads, these are allowed to swim free in the Veins, feeding on whatever tiny or insect prey they can find. If they can survive in the wild, the general development cycle goes something like this;
2. Frog-Eater. An insignificant small water-predator.
3. Beast-Eater. Larger and more intelligent, capable of bringing down fish and larger animals if they enter the water, or with very intelligent cases, if they only come near it.
4. Man-Eater. A Soft-Head capable of hunting organised prey with a human level of intelligence. Something equivalent to a Squid-Tiger.
?. Body-Taker. At any point in this sequence the Soft-Head may develop its core skill set of destroying or removing the head from large prey and replacing it, using its tentacles and inverse stomach to simulate it. This is a skill, not pure instinct, and must be learned. Some Soft-Heads develop this ability alone, some see it in in the memories of their prey, others may see the fear of it by observing the culture of their more intelligent prey.
5. Wendigo. A Soft-Head capable of fully commanding the body of a complex hominid and using it to leave the water and predate on land. This is a creature with the living body of the prey-species but the flesh and eyes of the Soft-Head in place of its head. The Soft-Head is usually not yet capable of complex language and flesh-simulation, yet. Many cultures predated upon by a Wendigo-type do not fully connect it to the earlier or later developments of the Soft-Head lifecycle.
6. Neurovore. A full Neurovore is capable of language and complex thought, more akin to a rare and curious civilised being than a beast. In-effect, this is a ‘person’, of sorts.
'Wild' and ‘Domestic’ Soft-Heads
The creatures are culturally divided by the nature of their raising. Some live wild in the for their whole lifespan, others are ‘raised’ in civilised Soft-Head communities, kept in pools and deliberately fed high-quality neuro-stuff.
Genius loci
A ‘wild’ Soft-Head that never migrates from its original volume can develop an almost perfect physical knowledge of their historic hunting grounds and of the behaviours, and psychology, of any and all of their prey species - almost a kind of savage love, as a hunter for their preferred environment, making them likely to become 'Emperor' or 'Game Warden' figures of a particular volume.
They can become, in the minds of some, an almost-protective, many-faced Demon-God - leading to the proliferation of idols, shrines and sacrifices, (much of which are practically irrelevant to the Neurovore, but may be psychologically or spiritually appropriate, since its selfhood is made up of many memories of the inhabitants of these lands and it will, to some extent, absorb their values.
The physical and magical abilities of such a 'Genius Loci' will be amongst the highest of all the typical skills of all the developed creatures of that volume. As skilled in war as its greatest warriors, as subtle as its greatest hunters, as intelligent and wise as its greatest priests and shaman, as imbued with magical power as the greatest local magicians it could consume.
Others will only remain ‘wild’ until they gain enough knowledge and understanding to begin thinking of themselves as something like a 'person', after which they often tries seeking out other Soft-Head communities and integrating with them.
'Domestic' Soft Heads
'Domestic' Soft-Heads are raised within a Soft-Head community. There is little direct parental interest in young, since all parents produce huge clouds, and in many ways the upper echelons of Soft-Head 'society' are totally insane, but a general survival drive leads to a level of care, though with an attitude towards development that would seem absurdly Nietzschean to most mammals.
While Domestic Soft-Heads are much more likely to survive their initial development and growth, and while they grow in complexity quickly, fed on the brains and spines of complex organisms by their society, they are generally considered to be psychologically 'weaker' and more likely to fall prey to late-life personality degradation.
The 'Wild' Soft-Head, while unlikely to survive and develop, if they do succeed, has a very long history of the gradual mastery and consumption of ever more complex organisms at their core, making them psychologically stronger and less likely to fall prey to the generalised Schizophrenia of late-life Soft-Head development. Their adaptation of more complex personalities and memories is more like the popular conception of a ruthless predator 'using' the thoughts and memories of its prey as 'masks' in order to predate more ruthlessly.
There is something of a cultural gap between 'Wild' and 'Domestics', with 'Wilds' Neurovore fewer in number and considered more 'real' and more 'pure' examples of the species, yet also, by some, less adaptable and less capable of fully understanding alternate points of view.
Cosmopolitan Neurovore
A fully developed and socially integrated Neurovre will often have a staggering range of knowledge and experience from a wild variety of different hominid and other groups. Fed on the brains of the strongest, the subtlest and the skilled from youth, such a being would be equivalent to a multi-classed Fighter/Mage/Thief/Artisan/Trader etc.
When considered as skills, there are few things such a Neurovore cannot do, but these skills and memories do not necessarily cohere into a sharper or more coherent self. We might imagine an intelligent but not particularly heroic person with the ability to magically 'use' memories, magic, abilities or talents of wide range of dead people, but not necessarily that impressive on their own, or at their core, being in some sense, a mere shuffler of cards.
Nevertheless, Cosmopolitan Neurovore do tend to be more 'successful' in terms adventurers can understand. Their higher population allows them to develop specialists, like the classic 'Infiltrator' type, trained and specified to use skill and illusory magic to fully replace and simulate the members of other races. Their more complex and wider ranging interactions with the main economies and cultures of the Veins also results in them having many more resources, and simply in having more interactions with the kinds of things Adventurers are interested in.
Economic Position
Most ‘Civilised’ veins-polis will have at least one Neurovore. Though rarely seen directly, their store, or home-front will be that of a Butcher-Confectioner; flowers, wreathes and bouquets of the finest meats arranged like cakes. A butcher in the veins is more like a confectioner - prepared protein being so rare and expensive. They are truly artists of meat, meat flowers, meat crowns and spirals, meat-pies etc. (Since they can only eat brains, and these must be living - Neurovore are one of the few Ethnocultures of the Veins which regularly have spare meat. )
Their public face will be one or more well-fed, extremely satisfied and competent high-level slaves, often with the cross-skull circular scar of Neurovore person-surgery. The Master will only reveal themselves for high status guests or when their hands-on skills are needed.
While nominally butcher/confectiners, Neurovore perform a wide range of distinct services, including; Translating, Appraising, Crafting, Doctoring, Surgery of the Body, Surgery of the Mind
Their Only Currency is Brains
The only currency most Neurovor will accept is that of living, sentient brains, which almost always means the brains of living slaves, (or you could massively overpay in something like Knotsmen debt-threads or Occultum Coins). There can be a sliding scale for the brains of those with unusual abilities, memories and skills.
Skilled Craftsmen, Translators & Appraisers
With an in-depth memory of a huge variety of different cultures, languages, life-paths and skills, Neurovore are known to sometimes be great craftsmen, sometimes willing to produce the art or artefacts of another race for payment when that race itself might not. (Some call them great 'Fakers', good at producing versions of things, but somehow lacking in the execution.)
Along with their skill in craft goes a wide knowledge of languages and cultures which makes them excellent and trusted translators, and a general wisdom and neutrality that sometimes sees them called in as appraisers or judges.
Surgeons Of The Body
Often competent doctors, some Neurovore specialise in Cepahalopod limb replacements; A semi-lobotomised young Soft-Head, specifically bred, is attached to the end of the lost limb and cultured to adopt the behaviours of the original.
They don't have bones and make bad legs by can be good arms or hands – though they take some time to learn to use and you need to keep them hydrated. (They can also develop half-ideas of their own.) They have less structural support or rigidity but more dexterity and options for multi-directional movement, good for some fencers, climbing, thieves and magicians - who can learn voiceless casting by making sigils with their cephalopod-hand.
You can also keep the beak and eyes in for extra awareness, and as a handy tool. The longer the limb is attached the more the user can sense through its eyes and the more sophisticated its utility.
Surgeons Of The Mind
Neurovore Brain-Surgery is much more sophisticated than anything so called in the Bright Lands.
They begin by peeling back the scalp, sawing through the skull, then peeling back the brain-cowl. They then extend their stomachs into the brain-pan, ‘tasting’ the brain, rolling it in their extendable gut, nibbling and altering.
This can alter memory and selfhood in sophisticated ways - full personality surgery, (though it’s always easier to take things out than add them in). They can also sustain complex dream states in imaginary worlds - though these are as much a creation of the subconscious of the target as that of the surgeon.
There is some chance of infection and the skull will need to be fixed back on top and the skin sewn shut, which leaves marks, unless extra cosmetic care is taken to disguise this.
Also very occasionally the Neurovore will just eat the brain, or maybe parts of it - for them it’s like holding food in your mouth, but not chewing or swallowing, while doing complex work. One needs a brain, after all, to recover from Brain Surgery.
Objects and Treasures
Neurovore produce a variety of rare and potent philtres and items, often produced from their own milks, or the secretions of their smaller kin, or made of complex weaves of magic and neurochemistry.
Blank
(The Protagonist Potion). Very expensive and must be ingested orally. Blank removes all identity from the drinker but leaves languages, skills and abilities intact. The more complex skills you want left - the greater chance of remission. Blank cannot be 'healed' or fixed via magic. Is used by various cultures on their most useful and valuable slaves, or on high status targets in court intrigues
Skill Philtres
Also very extremely expensive (almost as much in effort as actually gaining the skill would be). These philtres combine complex patterns of understanding and action taken or distilled from living subjects, the core matrix suspended in a concoction that includes micro-soft-heads.
Reading Books
Written on the finest skin, these works sometimes purport to be ‘ordinary’ books. Woven into their substance are specific mild neurotoxins and milk derivatives, combined with lesser opiates that ooze invisibly from the book when held by warm hands. The text and images within are either direct enchantments or, (more expensive), have such works woven into their text and seeming. These act to create a book which ‘reads’ its reader, and alters them, sometimes in mild but long-term ways, others in more direct ways. The book is usually at least slightly addictive. The longer and more subtle the effect, and the more hidden, the more expensive the book. Sharp and strong effects cost less, but are much more easily noticed by the reader and are more likely to provoke resistance.
Memory Pearls
Strange curls of gold and pearl containing single thoughts, or even alter-memory selves. More expensive depending on how complete a self you want. These are often used by spies or operatives, those involved in complex intrigues, or as sophisticated torture devices.
Neurovore Psychology - A self-of-selves
Psychologically, Soft-Heads are incredibly strange in comparison to most self-aware life, having almost, clusters of personalities, councils of selves, all unified by a coherent predatory instinct and an 'othering' of brain-possessing individual life forms that forms the true structure of Soft-Head society, (such as it is).
Mere baskets of floating identity, minds whose selfhoods flow like mixing scents, as timeless as ghosts, whom they often resemble in behaviour, for the Neurovore feed as much upon memories and sentience itself as upon the meat of the brain, and every Neurovore absorbs almost all of the selfhood of whatever it consumes, making them astoundingly, sometimes terrifyingly, powerful and knowledgeable, and also often insane, deeply utterly mad by human standards.
The greatest threat to a Neurovores survival is its own ever-shifting selfhood and its writhing protean memory
As neurovore grow from tadpoles most of heir initial
meals are of simple beings with simple instincts
and do not present a huge problem to the Neurovores capacity to absorb Selves, but as they grow, they hunger for more complex prey. If they successfully consume them, the neurovore gains the preys knowledge and awareness - making them even more effective at hunting that kind of prey, but this also presents challenges, as more potent and coherent individuals possess powerful senses of selfhood.
Memory and sentience is not a weight-for-weight matter. Identity
orbits around particular experiences, powerful instincts, core philosophies, inherent
beliefs, particular attitudes to the world
and central organising memories. A particularly potent and coherent mind with a deep, strong and capacious worldview, and a powerful drive to live, can partially displace the Neurovores 'core' self.
This is rare, and is, to an extent, a 'self-solving' problem, since the Neurovore is still an obligate cerebrovore and will still be driven to eat brains, and in particular the brains of ever more complex creatures. These complex brains of powerful creatures, in turn, presenting a high likelihood of displacing or fundamentally altering the current Ego.
The Blood Speaks
Ultimately, as the Neurovore would say, ‘the blood speaks’. All these powerful fractured creatures remain Neurovore, even if they don't realise it themselves. They still need to eat brains and they are still enmeshed in a society of creatures who need to eat brains, and who are not beloved by others, and this society is their main power and source of survival.
As well as this, the instincts of the older, more nakedly predatory, personality still swim beneath the surface of whichever superego currently thinks it is 'in charge'- putting its own tinge upon the values and worldview of the main soul.
Each new brain consumed creates a new possibility to shuffle the deck of thoughts, shifting the perceived dominance of the current array of personalities, giving the original 'pure' Neurovore the chance to re-assert control, a newly introduced personality the chance to take the helm, or a variety of other things to happen.
The Men Who Were Thursday
Still there is a level of power and experience where Neurovore society, such as it is, no longer really works as a coherent racial/species group, as of all those who are very strong, many are no longer themselves, or they no longer believe themselves to be themselves, and are 'faking it', using the memories stored by their 'old' more-pure Neurovore selves to 'pretend' to be a 'real' Neurovore while they believe themselves to be the reincarnated personality of a prey-thing.
Tn human terms this would be like an Empire being lead by a group of hyper-talented, very powerful schizophrenics, each of which believes themselves to be some other thing, and is only going along with the group on the surface, while following a quite different set of desires and directives.
This is a kind of 'Man Who Was Thursday' situation as much of Neurovore 'society' half-knows about this already and regards what we would call the schizophrenia problem as more of an element to be managed than a problem to be solved. In fact it’s quite useful in a number of ways.