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Basics

Common Name: Living Virus
Other Names: Viruses
Lifespan: N/A
Sapient?: Yes
Adult Age: N/A
Rarity: Very Rare

General Info

Living viruses are basically an urban myth to most people, they're such a rare occurance that the idea of them existing is usually a laughable concept to the average person. But they are real, and 90% of the time, they're a problem. When most of them are computer viruses suddenly given sapience, they still tend to follow suit with the destructive tendencies that they were originally coded for. The other 10% of the time are a small few out of an already rare occurance, where instead of a virus, a normal program is given a sapience, or a virus chooses to break free of their original purpose.

Besides the few exceptions, viruses tend to cause lots of issues wherever they end up, able to break technology on a wide scale very quickly. Only a few people have ever actually caught them, and none of them have ever had their experiences believed. Large-scale issues that living viruses have cause have typically been blamed on companies or glitches in a system, despite being unable to pinpont what the cause of the issue even was.

Most viruses are stuck within technology, only able to travel through electric currents. They can leave computers and enter any electronic, but ultimately are limited to staying inside electronics. A few however, can manage to leave their technological confinement, and once out, they can take any form they'd like. Most will still opt to hang out around in electronics most of the time, but there are a couple who try to simple enter normal life out of curiosity.

Notes

  • Species Examples: Helix
  • Viruses always have a marking/logo attached to them, this logo will appear on any technology they enter, or if they can take physical form, it will be on their body somewhere. This marking cannot be hidden or moved. If someone knows what they're looking for, it'd be easy to figure out where a virus is hanging out. But alas, most people don't believe they're real

Basics

Origin Planet

N/A

Avg. Height

N/A

Avg. Weight

N/A

Hybridization?

Viruses cannot reproduce in any form, not even asexually. They can only be created by magical incidents caused by the parallel interacting with the normal world.

Reproduction

Gestation Period

N/A

Number of Kids

N/A

Life Stages

N/A

Other

Viruses don't age, so their 'age' is simply however they feel. Some are obviously more childlike, but most are just "born" adults, especially thanks to usually getting instant information from all over the internet just from being inside the computers.

Appearance

Senses

Whatever they want to have

Blood Color

N/A

Sexual Dimorphism

N/A

Details

Viruses can appear however they want, when stuck in technology they can depict themselves how they'd like on the screen, or not show themselves at all. In physical forms, they are essentially a 4th type of shapeshifter. If the program/virus they originate from has a mascot of some sort, they'll usually start off looking like that, but they can change is as they wish. All viruses have a mark that identifies them that cannot be hidden or moved. For example, Helix has a marking of a dna helix that will appear on her physical forms or any technology she enters.

Diet

Basic Diet

N/A

Details

Viruses do not need to eat, or consume anything. But they do still tends to suck up electricity every now and then just for the fun of it.

Language

Viruses can speak nearly all languages. Most will have one that they prefer, but they all carry the information for nearly any given language within them.

Religion

N/A

Holidays

N/A

Social Norms

Viruses are so rare and so distant from most of eachother that they don't really have any actual connecting culture between them. But for most of them, it can be expected that they enjoy messing with and breaking things for fun, after all most of them were formed out of code intended to break or manipulate people and their technology, and this trait carries over when they become alive. Some will look past their code and decide to become their own people, and some were simply innocent non-malicious programs to begin with. But overall it can be expected for most viruses to be either rude or extremely mischievious.

Class/Politics

Since living viruses aren't considered a real thing, they're not considered at all within wider society. If they were more widespread though, they would likely get a similar treatment to other shapeshifters, that being an extreme lack of trust toward them.

Gender Roles

N/A

Beauty Standards

N/A

Relationships

Viruses mostly do not get close enough to eachother or other people to really consider relationships, but it's not impossible. There are plenty of people who would find the idea interesting, and some viruses try to act as normal people, so sometimes it will occur. If two viruses were to get in a relationship, it would probably end in a lot of broken tech.

Clothing

Given that most are stuck inside of technology, physical clothes are not an option usually. Most will simply choose from the vast variety of images and art on the internet if they decide they want to express themself on the screen.

Art/Food

Though they have no need to eat at all, viruses do have some sense of art. It's inevitable when locked inside the vast expanse of electronics, especially the internet. Though their ideas of art are often as destructive as the rest of their tendencies, or very flashy. There was once an incident on Earth of a virus blacking out certain pixels on screens in cities in an attempt to draw, which was assumed to just be some vandal. Many screens had to get replaced as this incident left most of the blacked out pixels as permanently dead pixels.

Drugs

As far as anyone knows, there's no equivalent to drugs for viruses at all. How do you drug electricity and programming code? But who knows, maybe one of them will find a way.

History/Influence

Viruses have been responsible for a couple wide scale tech issues, blackouts, malfunctioning machines, strange content suddenly being played on all screens within a given area, important official documents being wiped suddenly. These incidents are sometimes harmless in the end, sometimes they're simply expensive but easy to fix, and other times they've caused major issues. Despite this, they stay unacknowledged, thanks to the lack of knowledge about the parallel and how absurd their very concept of being sounds to the average person. Issues caused by them are usually attributed to anything else, sometimes leading to some people wrongfully getting in trouble or even arrested.

Other Notes

While most viruses are stuck inside electronics, they can sometimes force their way into having physical form by simply entering the electronics of robots. Some simply end up in shut down or non-sapient robots, but others have actively possessed robots that are intelligent enough to have sapience, effectively shoving their conciousness to the side and puppetting them around.