In Response To: Re: Visualizing the Halo Universe: Round 5 (Quirel)
: Artificial components are woven throughout the Forerunner's body, but the
: most notable is the Nexus, the disk set into the stomach. In addition to
: allowing a deeper connection to the combat skin, it distributes air, food,
: medication, and surgical microchines into the body, and is where the waste
: is extracted. Yup. Three hundred thousand years of self-directed
: evolution, and the Forerunner still aren't above the bear necessities.
: control is handled
: via direct neural interface.
: In addition to the limbs, the digestive tract has been completely overhauled.
: The stomach is replaced with a smaller, more efficient organ which can
: digest actual food if necessary. That's a rare occurrence, because the
: combat skin recycles the body waste and returns the nutrients. The
: intestinal tracts are smaller and include redundancies in case of injury.
: The lungs are redesigned from the ground up. They are no longer bellows
: driven by a diaphragm, but move air through biological lobe pumps. Air
: circulates continuously through them and back out through the Nexus.
: Specialized tissue inside the lungs scrubs impurities from the air. Dust,
: toxins, and biological matter are all collected and excreted from the
: body.
: The esophagus and windpipe are replaced with more connective tissue, ceramic
: bone, and a larger spinal cord. Safe to say, if a Forerunner Warrior
: Servant is decapitated, enough energy was applied to destroy the body
: anyway. In the meantime, the Forerunner retains enough freedom of movement
: to turn his head sixty degrees to either side.
: The head is really an aesthetic conceit. There's nothing stopping the
: Forerunner from relocating the brain and the sensory organs into the
: torso, where it would be better protected. Indeed, the body is studded
: with sensory microstructures, and a concentration of neural tissue exists
: in the space between the lungs. However, the head (and particularly, the
: face) is almost unanimously retained. Forerunner appreciate the ability to
: look into the mirror and see themselves as more than a lump of tissue,
: even if they won't see a mirror for decades.
: Therefore, sculpted faces are common, even if the nose, ears, and mouth are
: vestigial. The guy above? Well, he was a Minimalist in the first place. It
: has absolutely nothing to do with my nonexistent drawing skills.
: Shallow pits across the face serve the same function as the nose, although
: the sensory data they provide is more akin to 'chemical analysis' than
: 'smell'. The jaw has been absorbed into the head while the mouth and nasal
: cavity have been re-purposed as extra room for the brain. Size does
: matter, especially when your job is inevitably going to involve directing
: hundreds of Sentinels.
: Inspirations: Protoss Dragoons are a big one. The general idea of shedding
: limbs to be more combat effective is derived from musings on Protoss
: technology. Seeing as how Dragoons are piloted by warriors who are only
: mostly dead, I assumed that they have decent prosthesis technology for the
: Zealots who only lost a hand or a leg. Which then raised the question of
: whether these prosthetic limbs are, in fact, better than the original.
Still too much baggage. Lungs, gut, kidneys, and liver could be combined into one organ so that you end up with just three major organs: - brain - thinking, perception - action
- heart - pump
- metabolism - recycle wastes - CO2 -> O2
Use electricity to power metabolism.
Have blood flow through stacked laminar structures somewhat like fish gills. Picture multiple layers of epithelial sheets with blood flowing between them. Establish a voltage gradient across each epithelial layer. The cells in each layer use this to: - convert CO2 -> O2
- combine CO2 and H2O to make sugars
- convert nitrogenous wastes to ??? something useful
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