[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia
[Cosmosdex]
Shrapnihil
Matter Movers / Presumptuous
Shrapnihil
No art currently, maybe you can help
- Strength-10
- Intelligence-8
- Charisma-2
- Endurance-6
- Agility-1
- Luck-0
Common Jobs: Architect, Landscaper, Merchant
Likes: Themselves, Their planet, Their powers
Dislikes: Not getting their way, Failure
Attack Method: The shrapnihil had no recorded wars, but seem to have fought battles with various animals by significantly altering the battlefield in harmful ways.
Attributes
Homeplanet: IdyllintLifespan: 200
Size: 7'2 ft tall
Diet: Anything
Social Class: Extinct
Rarity: Extinct
Common Traits
The shrapnihil, using their own life force, could summon, control, and even multiply almost anything. This ability was their downfall, however.
Surviving depictions of shrapnihil have an almost ethereal quality. Despite their blatant narcissism, many imagine that they were an elegant sight to behold.
The shrapnihil thought they were the most advanced species in the universe. They thought that, because of this, there could be nobody even close to their power. And so they never thought to look.
Physical Description
Shrapnihil were insectoid creatures with exoskeletons made of a material similar to limestone. The colors of their exoskeletons ranged from white to pale brown shades. Shrapnihil had two thin arms ending in small crab-like claws, and four long spider-like legs, all of which emerged from their thoraxes. Due to the rocky exoskeleton covering their bodies, their thoraxes and short abdomens looked like boulders.
Shrapnihil had rather square heads, and in every legible illustration and intact statue archeologists could find, wore elegant hats. Due to this, nobody knows for sure what the top of a shrapnihil's head looked like. Shrapnihil had three eyes, one on their foreheads which never seemed to close, and two just below which only opened when channeling their psychic abilities. Their mouths were jagged, with wide and sharp teeth the same color as their exoskeleton.
Personality & Traits
The rise and fall of the shrapnihil centered around one simple psychic ability, albeit one nearly unparalleled in power. Shrapnihil could alter and copy matter in any way imaginable. They could change the shape of a stone, instantly making it into a sculpture, change the atomic structure of a stone, turning it into gold, and could even create an image of the stone in their mind, alter the air in its image, and effectively make a perfect copy of that stone. A single shrapnihil could only alter around a cubic meter of matter per day, but the range and strength of their powers increased exponentially when they worked together.
Since shrapnihil could create whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, their society had limitless resources. If a shrapnihil was hungry, they could turn a small part of the air into bread. If a shrapnihil wanted to rest, they could simply shape a boulder into a house, change its composition into hardwood, and make a bed out of whatever was left. Of course, many of these things were only possible if multiple shrapnihil worked together, but they understood this, and any shrapnihil could simply ask another for help.
The star system of the shrapnihil was barren, with only two planets. One was Idyllint, the lush and perfect homeplanet of the shrapnihil, and the other was an empty rock that the shrapnihil didn't even bother to name. They looked up into space, up towards that dead globe, and thought to themselves "we are alone." Furthermore, their incredible abilities caused them to think they were the most advanced lifeforms possible. Even if there was other life somewhere out there, it could come nowhere close to them, and they did not care about it. Taking this into account, the shrapnihil thought themselves to be gods. Their ancestors had used their powers to create the universe, and Idyllint was all that there was worth seeing in the universe. And so the shrapnihil turned away from the sky, looked towards the ground, and smiled smugly, knowing that they were perfection.
History
However, nothing lasts forever. Through millenia, their gluttonous and prideful society stayed the same. Shrapnihil would change the air around them into matter to feed themselves or have some fun. Slowly, but surely, over hundreds of thousands of years, the shrapnihil chipped away at their atmosphere. Then, just slightly too late, they realized their error. They were running out of air.
In desperation, they looked for any way to keep their way of life the same. They had not known true hardship for their entire existence, and they did not want to have to deal with it for the first time. They began to turn superfluous trinkets and gadgets into air, but it wasn't enough to fix their atmosphere. The shrapnihil looked up into the sky once more, looked at the dead rock floating aimlessly in the void, and were inspired.
The leader of the shrapnihil at the time, Theowere, gave the entire species the plan. They would combine the matter of various floating gases in space with the matter of the lifeless planet and reshape that matter into the form of their own planet. A second Idyllint. A new home away from home, where they could repurpose anything into air, because everything was merely an expendable copy. Surely this would be the perfect solution.
The shrapnihil were undoubtedly intelligent, but they were twice as unwise. They coordinated their efforts, combined the power of every shrapnihil exponentially into an unimaginable force of psychic energy, and brought together all the matter they could find around the lifeless planet. And as they copied the schematics of their own planet in order to correctly reshape the matter-
The resulting explosion could be seen from lightyears away.
In order to understand the demise of the shrapnihil, two facts must be established. The first fact is that the core of Idyllint, unbeknownst to the shrapnihil, was made of an incredibly radioactive metal. The shrapnihil evolved on this planet, of course, and so they had gained a resistance to radiation. This wouldn't help them much.
The second fact is that two particles cannot occupy the same space. If a neutron appeared in the exact same place as another neutron, it would be pushed away.
The shrapnihil, thanks to a minor lapse in focus that snowballed into a species-wide matter-copying error, accidentally used the matter from the dead planet to copy Idyllint onto itself. Combining the radioactive core of the planet with the laws of physics caused a chain reaction of uncontrolled nuclear fission that effectively turned the entire planet into a 25,000 mile-wide atomic bomb.
Although approximately 98% of the population died in the explosion, a few thousand survivors were there to document the aftermath of what would now be known as the Overzealous Overlapping. These shrapnihil used the power that they still had to survive on the chunks and shards of Idyllint, trying desperately to build spaceships and technology that would let them escape to the stars. But it was far too late. The shrapnihil looked up into the void, up where the dead planet once stood before they ruined their paradise, and regretted everything. Then, with a whimper, the shrapnihil were no more.
Trivia
• The top hats that the shrapnihil designed were flung far across their system in the explosion of Idyllint. Those who found them declared them "rather fashionable."
• Theoretically, if they spread beyond their doomed globe, the shrapnihil could end starvation and poverty across the universe. If only they tried.
• The shrapnihil are a lesson to the universe. Never let yourself become overconfident enough to cause your own demise. Nobody will remember you fondly.
Image Gallery
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