Embedded Files
Creation Year: 1915
CSMA: Hb.P9.I7.Ss3.Dp2.T2.V9 • M7.Ci2c3.Li10.Ap7t6r9
Content Warnings: body horror, parasites, bugs, references to adult topics
Exuvians are those infected by the Metarus blight, a parasitic infection transmitted through small arthropod-like organisms called Metavites. Exuvians can shapeshift along a spectrum from human-like to arthropod-like characteristics, undergo regular molting cycles, and possess enhanced physical abilities. They communicate through a sophisticated pheromone system and form communities called swarms.
This blight was created around 1915, during the Age of Secrecy. Blight encountered Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, published that year, and was struck by the tragedy of Gregor Samsa's transformation and subsequent rejection by his family. Moved by the story, Blight thought: "What if Gregor hadn't transformed alone? What if his whole family could have changed together?" Despite the pressure of Secrecy, Blight could not resist—they created and released the Metarus blight and helped the first ones transformed find belonging and community in the first swarms.
Genesis and Lifecycle
Genesis and Lifecycle
The Metarus blight spreads through Metavites—small arthropod-like drones produced by Exuvians during their egg cycles. Metavites are biological automatons with no consciousness, operating purely on instinctive "programming" to find hosts and integrate into their nervous systems.
Transmission methods include but are not limited to:
Direct implantation: Eggs laid directly within a host, having a high success rate but only a single infection.
Environmental spread: Eggs laid in the environment where they may contact potential hosts, having a low success rate but wider range.
Internal incubation: Exuvians can allow eggs to hatch within their own body and carry Metavites for 1-2 months, releasing them at will.
Once a Metavite finds a host, it burrows into their body and connects to the nervous system, where it begins releasing substances that gradually alter the host's mind and body. After a certain point, the Metavite becomes so deeply integrated that removing it through mundane means would kill the host.
Outside a host, Metavites can survive for 1-2 days after hatching before dying like ordinary insects. Once attached to a host, Metavites release pheromones that allow Exuvians to identify infected individuals and track their transformation progress. This detection is difficult in the first week but becomes increasingly clear as the infection progresses.
Incubation Period
Incubation Period
The transformation from initial infection to first molt takes approximately one year, though this varies somewhat between individuals. During this time, the infected person experiences gradual changes:
Months 1-3: Increased appetite, developing taste for calcium-rich and fortifying foods. The host develops minor improvements in visual acuity, particularly motion detection, along with other subtle changes that can be easily dismissed or rationalized.
Months 4-6: The host's skin texture starts to change, becoming unusually smooth and free of blemishes. They begin to develop nodes on their head that are typically covered by hair; antennae are developing underneath the skin. Their appetite increases further, ever so slowly.
Months 7-9: Soft exoskeleton forms beneath their smooth skin. Though the surface of their skin is still soft, it is more resistant to pressure and resilient to damage. They become able to sense the pheromone signals of other Exuvians, though they may not be able to understand them well. At this stage, many start feeling a compulsion to find other Exuvians, something within them demanding to find someone (an Exuvian) or somewhere (a swarm) that would keep them safe. Their hunger is lowest at this point, traded instead for the seeking instinct.
Months 10-12: Their exoskeleton becomes apparent under their skin, with segmentations visible at thinner parts of the skin, like at the wrists. They have intense hunger that, if not satisfied, could lead them to eat all manners of strange things, including cloth and dirt (which does, in fact, contribute). Their skin becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually they experience a strong compulsion to seek a safe place; once they feel safe, they curl up and their skin hardens into a cocoon. After 3 days to a week, they will molt and become a proper Exuvian.
The first exuviation marks the completion of the transformation. The infected individual sheds their old skin, leaving behind a desiccated shell.
Molting
Molting
Exuvians undergo exuviation approximately every 1-2 years throughout their immortal lifespan. Each molt allows for healing and renewal, with their new shell healed of all injuries and slightly larger than their previous. Before molting, they tend to eat more; they also release pheromones that trigger protective instincts in other Exuvians.
For at least an hour after molting, the new Exuvian is extremely physically and emotionally vulnerable. They are physically exhausted, their exoskeleton is soft, and they are unable to shapeshift from their natural Exuvian appearance for approximately an hour after the molt.
This vulnerable state is often a bonding moment for those who share it with trusted others. The molted shell may be left behind, or be eaten for nutrition if the Exuvian was malnourished. Many Exuvians eat their previous molt to avoid the intense hunger that would follow after a molt otherwise, but there are some who leave them—or even collect them, forming an odd collection of their exuviae that captures their growth throughout the years.
An Exuvian's natural height (when not actively shapeshifting) gradually increases with each molt. A six-foot individual might reach eight feet after a century, though growth slows over time. The eldest Exuvians (from the 1915-1920s) can be notably tall when not consciously maintaining a smaller form.
Exuvians can also trigger a rapid exuviation to heal major injuries or regenerate lost limbs. This process requires enormous energy reserves and is only done in safe locations due to how vulnerable it leaves them, however.
Egg Cycles
Egg Cycles
Once per year, at a time roughly opposite to their regular molting cycle, Exuvians develop eggs containing Metavites within their body. This cycle has several stages:
Development (lasting 1 month): Eggs form internally, and the Exuvian experiences increased appetite to support egg production. Other Exuvians can detect the cycle through pheromones and may instinctively offer food and support.
Active Cycle: The Exuvian experiences a strong compulsion to release eggs in ways that maximize infection chances. The cycle lasts until eggs are released or forcibly expelled a day to a week.
If an Exuvian does not wish to infect others, eggs can be forcibly expelled before development completes, breaking them down into non-infectious material. However, this may trigger multiple cycles per year and is emotionally taxing due to instincts against "losing eggs." Alternatively, eggs can be placed in other Exuvians, where the hatched Metavites are harmlessly absorbed, satisfying the cycle without spreading infection.
In united society, infection can only occur with consent from citizens. Exuvians typically work with authorized programs for consensual blighting or infect individuals not part of united society.
Exuvians cannot reproduce through the means of their original species.
Characteristics
Characteristics
Exuvians exist on a spectrum between their original species and arthropod-like forms, with their "natural" state reflecting their level of acceptance of their transformation. Those who embrace their arthropod nature have less human-like natural states, while those who still identify with their human (or other original species) identity or appearance will have a natural state that appears more human.
In their natural Exuvian state, they must have:
antennae
exoskeleton plates that cover around 20-100% of their body; commonly, hands, legs and feet, neck, and jaw area.
a "tail" that can resemble an insect's abdomen, a lobster tail, a tucked crab tail, etc.
Optional characteristics include:
unnatural eye colors, shapes, and characteristics
additional features of arthropods: compound eyes, mandibles, extra limbs, wings, tail, etc.
body structure that is drastically different from their original species (e.g. a human Exuvian becoming a spider-taur or having a praying mantis body shape).
Each Exuvian's specific arthropod characteristics can draw from any arthropod type:
Insects: beetles, butterflies, dragonflies, mantises, etc.
Arachnids: spiders, scorpions, etc.
Crustaceans: crabs, lobsters, shrimp, etc.
Myriapods: centipedes, millipedes, etc.
Characteristics can be mixed, and individuals are encouraged to draw inspiration from real-life arthropods for unique abilities and appearances. However, they do not have to be restricted to any one arthropod, and can be nonspecific and/or fantastical.
All Exuvians also have natural shapeshifting abilities. They can mimic their original appearance or go somewhere in between or take on more arthropod characteristics and alter their anatomical shape. They can shapeshift any arthropod characteristics, but cannot become a different kind of creature, such as a mammal or bird.
The effort of shapeshifting increases with greater difference from their natural Exuvian state.
Abilities
Abilities
Exuviation/Molting: Regular molting cycle every 1-2 years, plus emergency molting for rapid healing.
Shapeshifting: Ability to shift between human-like and arthropod-like forms along a spectrum. Effort required increases with distance from natural state.
Regeneration: Accelerated healing of injuries. Emergency molting can regenerate lost limbs and repair severe damage at the cost of tremendous energy and vulnerability.
Ageless Immortality: Do not age after reaching maturity, and cannot die of old age. Can be killed through severe physical trauma.
Enhanced Senses: Improved motion detection, antennae-based environmental sensing, and other sense enhancements depending on arthropod characteristics.
Augmented Strength and Agility: Significantly increased physical capabilities beyond human norms.
Respiratory Adaptation: Exuvians can naturally switch between tracheal breathing (for air) and gills (for water), allowing them to inhabit diverse environments. This switching can be automatic based on environment or consciously controlled.
Wall-Climbing: Surface adhesion, allowing them to climb walls and ceilings like many arthropods.
Pheromone Communication: Chemical communication system allowing Exuvians to recognize other Exuvians and infected individuals, broadcast emotional states (fear, joy, contentment, distress), send directional signals ("come here," "stay away," "safe," "dangerous"), detect molting and egg cycles in others before the individual is aware, and more. When others' pheromones trigger their instincts, it is more of a suggestion than an absolute compulsion.
Arthropod-Specific Abilities: Depending on chosen arthropod characteristics. Exuvians can shapeshift any arthropod characteristics, even if they are not present in their base form. Examples include:
Flight (wings)
Venom (fangs, stingers)
Silk production (spider characteristics)
Powerful jumping (grasshopper/flea/springtail characteristics)
Bioluminescence (firefly characteristics)
A document with more complex abilities that have been developed can be seen here.
Behaviors
Behaviors
Exuvians typically organize into communities called swarms, though solitary living is also common. It is typical, but not required, for Exuvians with similar characteristics to join swarms together. Flying Exuvians often form aerial swarms, aquatic ones might establish underwater villages, etc. However, mixed swarms also exist.
Settled Swarms are swarms in permanent or semi-permanent locations. Those that existed during Secrecy were often made into Sanctuaries, which may or may not have been dissolved during Reunion. Examples include underwater settlements (crustacean swarms), underground networks (burrowing insect swarms), treetop villages (flying insect swarms), and surface communities integrated with united society.
Nomadic Swarms are constantly traveling, following resources, seasons, instinct, or other interests that may be practical or emotional. For instance, there may be an aerial swarm including those with characteristics of butterflies, dragonflies, and bees.
Solitary Exuvians live independently or in small family units. They often visit swarms during vulnerable periods (molting, egg cycles), and many integrate more readily into broader united society.
Despite wide variation between swarms, most share certain core values: they mutually support each other, especially during vulnerable moments, and they embrace honesty and integrity, which is further enabled by pheromone communication. They are also generally very welcoming to new Exuvians.
Different swarms often vary notably in other ways. They may have different attitudes towards infection, towards Blight, towards humans and united society, and more.
History
History
The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis
In 1915, during the Age of Secrecy, Blight encountered a newly published novella that would deeply affect them: Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. The story of Gregor Samsa—a man who woke one morning transformed into an insect, only to be rejected and eventually destroyed by his own family's fear and disgust—struck Blight as a profound tragedy. Here was transformation met not with understanding or adaptation, but with isolation and abandonment.
Blight thought: What if Gregor hadn't transformed alone? What if his whole family could have changed together?
Despite the pressures of Secrecy and the watchful eyes of the Orderly, Blight could not resist the urge to create. They crafted the Metarus blight with care—a transformation that would be gradual enough for acceptance, communal enough to prevent isolation, and arthropod in nature as a direct answer to Kafka's tragedy. Where Gregor Samsa had suffered alone, the Exuvians would find each other. Where his family had rejected him, new families—swarms—would form around shared transformation.
Blight released the first Metavites into the world, and the infection began.
The First Swarms (1915-1930s)
The First Swarms (1915-1930s)
The earliest infected individuals experienced their year-long transformations in isolation, not knowing what was happening to them. Some thought they were dying of a strange illness. Others noticed the subtle improvements—sharper senses, increased strength—and welcomed the improvements. A few, driven by instinct as they approached their first molt, found their way to Blight, who welcomed them and explained what they were becoming.
But most found each other.
As the infection spread and more people underwent transformation, the pheromone communication system proved crucial. Exuvians could sense others of their kind, and more importantly, they could detect those in the late stages of infection—those approaching their first vulnerable molt. Driven by protective instincts they didn't fully understand, newly transformed Exuvians sought out the infected and offered safety, companionship, and guidance.
The first swarms formed organically in the early 1920s. Exuvians with similar characteristics—the fliers, the burrowers, the aquatic—naturally gravitated toward each other, finding kinship in shared abilities and experiences. Some settled in remote locations that would later become Sanctuaries. Others remained nomadic, following instinct and season. Blight visited these early communities, pleased to see the harmony that had formed, the families created through shared transformation rather than blood.
Spread (1920s-1990s)
Spread (1920s-1990s)
As Exuvian communities grew, a tension emerged within the species. The egg cycles that drove Exuvians to spread the Metarus blight created different responses in different individuals.
The "spreaders" were one school of thought; they followed their instincts fully. During their cycles, they would release Metavites widely—laying eggs in environments where people gathered, in homes, in public spaces. For them, this was natural, even beautiful. They were offering the gift of transformation, the chance to join the family. Some were deliberate in their spreading, targeting those who seemed isolated or in pain. Some transformed others by choice, bringing in willing new Exuvians. Others simply followed the compulsion, releasing their eggs wherever the cycle drove them.
But the long incubation period meant that many spreaders never knew who they'd infected. A person might carry Metavites for months before another Exuvian detected them through pheromones, and by then, the one who infected them might be long gone.
Another school of thought, which some referred to as the "claimants," took a different approach. When they detected infected individuals through pheromone signals, they tracked them down. In the early years, this was often met with fear. A stranger approaches, claiming you're infected with something, that you're going to transform into an arthropod creature in a matter of months. Some people believed. Most didn't, at least not until the changes became undeniable.
The claimants faced a moral dilemma: what to do when an infected individual refused help, fled, or tried to seek mundane medical intervention that would inevitably fail and potentially expose magic to the mundane world?
The worst incidents occurred when infected individuals were in months 10-12 of incubation, visibly changing and likely to trigger Secrecy violations. Swarms, particularly those of the claimant school of thought, developed protocols—some begrudgingly, some zealously—for "retrieving" infected individuals before they could expose magic to mundane society.
These retrievals were rarely violent, but they were often forceful. An Exuvian swarm would locate the infected person, explain what was happening, and if the person refused to come willingly, they would be brought anyway. The infected individual faced risk of death if mundane doctors tried to remove the integrated Metavite, not to mention the risk of breaching Secrecy, which would bring down more severe constraints on their kind.
For the infected, sometimes, it was abduction.
They were taken from their lives, from their families, and brought to strange communities of insect-people who insisted this was for their own good. Some fought. Some pleaded. Some went silent with shock. But within days to weeks, they would molt for the first time, and Endogeny would take hold. They could no longer reject Blight or other Exuvians. Many found themselves accepting, even appreciating, the intervention—the swarm had saved them, had given them community and purpose.
But the loss of choice haunted many first-generation Exuvians. Even those who came to love their new existence, who thrived in their swarms, sometimes felt a lingering resentment about the method, if not the outcome.
Not all swarms participated in these practices. Some refused entirely, arguing it violated the very principles of family and acceptance that Exuvians were supposed to embody. This led to another school of thought, one of "preclusion." These swarms focused instead on prevention—trying to find spreaders and convince them to be more careful, to plant eggs only in willing hosts or other Exuvians. But prevention was difficult when instinct was involved, and when the urge to spread was so deeply tied to the egg cycle.
The tension between spreaders, claimants, and preclusionists created lasting divisions within Exuvian culture. Despite Endogeny preventing irrational prejudice, many swarms had disagreements of the regular sort. Some swarms wouldn't speak to each other for decades. Others found middle ground, developing careful protocols about consent, tracking, and intervention.
A New Age (1990s-Present)
A New Age (1990s-Present)
As the Age of Secrecy drew to a close and the approach of Reunion became more concrete, Exuvian communities began reevaluating their practices. The three schools of thought among Exuvians began seeking compromise; spreaders realized that they could bring consequences upon their whole species, claimants wanted others to join the 'family' by choice, and preclusionists had developed practical methods of prevention.
The largest swarms formed agreements with each other that included established formal consent processes, only infecting those who understood and accepted what would happen. Others focused on educating infected individuals early in the incubation period, giving them months to prepare rather than days. A few swarms even developed partnerships with other magical communities, creating informed consent programs where people could choose to become Exuvian.
When Reunion arrived in 2016, these practices became law. Within united society, infection could only occur with explicit consent from citizens. Exuvians worked with the supergovernment to establish authorized blighting programs, complete with educational materials, support systems, and community integration resources.
The integration of Exuvians into united society has been gradual but largely successful. Like other blighted species, initial attitudes towards them were often wary, though with regulations that prevented non-consensual spread and some public figures revealing themselves as blighted, they gradually became a welcomed part of united society, with some citizens deliberately seeking out the transformation from them.
Modern Exuvian swarms play various roles in welcoming new Exuvians and integrating with united society. Some swarms focus on helping newly transformed Exuvians adapt to their new existence. Some swarms are content living their separate lives. Nomadic "recruiter" swarms continue the tradition of spreading, though now largely through consensual means. Some travel through areas outside united society's reach, offering transformation to those who want it. Within united society, they often work with authorized programs, helping educate people about what becoming Exuvian entails. Many Exuvians have also fully embraced life in united society's cities, working and participating in society just like anyone else.
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