So something occurred to me in my last round of Delves with everyone’s drunken, high, legally blind Dwarven ‘friend’, Brann.
He has a nifty little thing called a Bio-Printer, which allows him to, once he’s collected sufficient bio-mass from a sufficiently powerful entity or creature, to make a lesser copy of it.
Goblins, Old God thingies, animals, even fungus-people, all can be copied. Hell, its so unstable it will even sometimes copy Brann, so you have more drunken, high, legally blind Dwarves yelling at you to not stand in the webs because it will summon Nerubians, in surround sound no less.
And it kinda got me thinking … how long does a Bio-Print last for? Are they sentient? I mean, the copies certainly know how to use weapons and attacks and their special abilities, and this is repurposed Titanic tech … if the Bio-Prints leave the area of effect of the ‘control’ mechanism of the Bio-Printer, do they collapse into a shuddering pile of melting flesh? Do they gain free will?
And more horrifyingly enough, do they know they’re a copy?
Wouldn’t that be a horrifying scenario? You wake up, with an awful taste in your mouth, wet, naked, cold and alone, stripped of all your gear and feeling worse than you ever have in your life, yes, even that time in Goldshire with the Mage with a Polymorph spell, the Gnome marching band and the suspicious merchants with fifteen gallons of ‘special blend’ peppermint-flavored lubricant. The last thing you remember is Brann telling you about some object of archaeological importance in some damn cave, getting zapped by one of his stupid Titanic gee-gaws while fighting some hulking Hobgoblin with a mean-on for everything around it, everything hurt like hell, people were screaming, and then it all gets … fuzzy.
So you get yourself on your legs, still feeling so very weak and sick, crawl through the caves and wondering how you ended up so far from the entrance, and crawl out into the blessed sunlight, where some Earthen find you, drag you back to their shelter and get you cleaned up and some clothes so your funbits aren’t hanging out in the crisp Dornogal air, and start the trek back to the capital …
Because you have no equipment. No mounts. Not even your emergency Hearthstone. But as you get some fresh air into your lungs and chat with the Earthen, and get some sympathy mugs of cinderbrew and some fresh fruits and vegetables to tide you over, you feel better. Stronger even. You’re recovering from whatever idiocy left you face down, rucksack up in a cold, wet cave, and the first thing you’re going to do is punch Brann in his stupid, drunken, high, legally blind face.
You finally make it to Dornogal, the shakiness has left your limbs, you feel almost normal again except that your legs and feet hurt like a Tauren has been stomping on them because you haven’t walked this far in literal years, and quietly promise your mounts are getting the good stuff for putting up with this for the past twenty years, you storm into the Explorers League’s current headquarters to deliver some much deserved Dwarf-kicking, and you see Brann and somebody leaning over a table, pouring over maps and a pile of half-melted Titanic mechanisms.
And that somebody? That bastard is wearing your gear without a shred of shame. The bloody Dwarf left you for dead and gave all your equipment to somebody else?
“Brann! You sawn off, sodden, mole-eyed piece of sh …” You roar, intending to call both Brann and his thieving new ‘friend’ out for all they’ve done, the thief stands up, and looks at you with a pale, shocked face.
Your face.
For a brief moment, there’s silence, before all hell breaks loose, and people start grabbing you, both of you, and Brann is bellowing for everyone to remain calm, stay calm, everybody stop freaking out and stay calm.
You are the Bio-Print. The device malfunctioned and exploded with energy, directly copying ‘you’, but unlike a normal Bio-Print, it spent all the Bio-Mass directly on ‘you’, not creating bio-mass versions of weapons and armor. Brann had been knocked out by the enraged Hobgoblin’s last ditch effort to save itself, and the ‘Original’ panicked and hurled the ‘You’ off a ledge, along with the dying Hobgoblin, and carried the unconscious Brann out of the cave, leaving the Bio-Printer behind as it started randomly copying any life-form around it before running out of power.
Brann doesn’t know how long you’ll live for, most of the Bio-Prints only lasted a few hours before swiftly turning into fine dust, and with the device completely destroyed and Dalaran down, there’s no quick way to get to Ulduar to pick up another one and try to stabilize you, as the primary Portal and Gate hub to Northrend was Dalaran itself …
For a few days, you’re the center of a whirlwind of Mages, Titan ‘experts’ and Heroes, the ‘Original’ keeping their distance, but nobody can find any difference between the two of you. You’re ‘identical’, a perfect copy in every way, even down to your memories and skills. But you’re simply just … not real.
You see it in everyone’s faces, in the way they talk, they act, they skirt around the topic of ‘what next’ and ‘your life’, because it was never yours. Your old adventuring buddies and companions come to ogle and gawk, but it is clear they don’t see you, they see the Copy. You’re the freak, the expendable drone, the accident that didn’t have the courtesy to just fade away like the rest. And as the hubbub dies down, as the experts and mages and onlookers trickle away to the next sideshow, the clock ticks down to your inevitable end, you’re on the cliffs behind Dornogal, staring down at the ocean, miles below you, thinking.
From flesh you came, but to dust you will return? A hiccup of the technology of the Gods, a mistake that will soon correct itself? But you can clearly remember so many things from your childhood. You have all the scars and aches from your countless adventures. The Bio-Printer really was a miracle, a cursed one.
And you won’t end up a pile of dust, to be swept up and kept in a jar for some curious Mage to study in a cosy tower somewhere.
It is only when you’ve one foot off the edge of the cliff that you hear Brann, yelling “Champion! Wait! Champion!” over and over, holding your old cloak, the one the original was wearing … and it is leaking dust.
Hours later, Brann explains the whole thing over a quiet meal with yourself, Khadgar, Jaina and a few of the experts that still remain in Dornogal. That the Bio-Print gained free-will when the Bio-Printer broke, and with Brann unconscious, the Hobgoblin enforcer dying, and you, the real you knocked out by the feedback from the Titanic device, it quickly stripped you of your gear and replaced its own bio-mass duplicate gear with the real equipment, rolled the Hobgobln and you over a ledge, and then smashed the Bio-Printer to pieces before dragging Brann’s unconscious form out of the caves.
A perfect copy in every way … except Bio-Prints were designed to have short lifespans, and were never intended to contain the amount of power that your body possessed. The Bio-Print extended its lifespan by draining power from the Titanic Facilities in Dornogal and was researching a way to transfer itself into a newly-formed Earthen vessel to escape its doomed flesh, but over-estimated its own rejuvenation abilities and disintegrated during a confrontation with Brann, Khadgar and the Earthen Guards, proving that it was the copy and you were always the original.
Everyone is, of course, so relieved, and so apologetic, but you can’t shake the memories of their detachment earlier, their lack of concern, their eagerness to study you as though you were a thing, not a person who had fought and bled and nearly died for them a dozen times over.
And for the rest of your life, you’ll be haunted by nightmares of creatures half-formed from dust whispering to give them your life, because nobody will be able to tell the difference anyways.
Brann’s literally walking around with Titanic devices that can create life, and we don’t know what he does with the Bio-Prints after they’re gone. And they are BIO-PRINTS, implying that they are all, in some form or fashion, biological, even the machines and mechs, bio-mass reshaped into visually-identical copies to serve as combat drones for the user.
What does he do with them after we leave the Delves? Are we talking Old Yeller here, does he just whip out the old Dwarven Hand-Cannon and start blasting, or does he leave them in the Delves to seek their own fate, for good or ill? Do Bio-Prints break down over time or are we just literally spawning armies of cloned creatures who have all the memories of their ‘original’ selves and once out of range of the control unit that made them, gain free will and have to grapple with the fact they’re ‘just’ Clones of what are now dead people?
Do they try to take back their lives, even as weak and fragile as their new forms are? Is there a colony of insane, feral mini-Branns running around the dark caverns and abandoned mines of Dornogal now, madly chanting about webs, Nerubians and hats as they brokenly try to build a display of what they think are worthy artefacts, but are instead shiny rocks and trinkets? Is there some Goblin Bio-Print heading back to Undermine, sees the Champion and starts having a panic attack as they remember being compelled to help kill the Original, and then goes to try and see their family, only to realise they’re too small and will likely never be accepted as the ‘real’ person, only a compensation, a living monument to the ‘Original’ whose blood is on their hands?
Blizzard really didn’t think too hard about allowing the Bio-Printer to copy Goblins, Hobgoblins and other Humanoids, did they?
What’s the most messed up thing you’ve found in this expansion? I got a few more, but I think I’ve blabbed on enough for a hot minute.