TARLIX
The Tarlix are among the galaxy's most enigmatic species — not merely alien in form, but in thought, biology, and culture. They are a flowing, sentient mass of semi-liquid neural matter that inhabits crafted bodies, either mechanical frames or vat-grown synthflesh. Though they prefer these shells, a Tarlix outside its body moves like glistening mercury, slithering with intent and cognition. Their fluid cores shimmer in hues both natural and impossible — colours that obey emotional resonance, environmental influence, and neural architecture. To Tarlix, colour is identity made visible.
"Metal grows teeth. Flesh flows like code."
— Common saying, Void Research Division
Overview
The Tarlix are among the galaxy's most enigmatic species — not merely alien in form, but in thought, biology, and culture. To witness their true body, a flowing, sentient mass of semi-liquid neural matter, is to see a lifeform that defies easy categorisation. They are neither wholly biological nor technological, yet touch both realms with equal ease.
Though they prefer to inhabit crafted bodies — either mechanical frames or vat-grown synthflesh — they can survive without one. A Tarlix outside its shell moves like glistening mercury, slithering with intent and cognition. However, this state is unstable: vulnerable to environmental hazards, mental strain, and loss of cohesion. Most Tarlix refer to this unarmoured condition as "raw expression" — a sacred but dangerous state. It is not recommended unless in ritual, emergency, or spiritual pilgrimage.
The Chemistry of Identity
Tarlix reproduction is neither sexual nor mechanical — it is alchemical, chemical, and collective. When multiple Tarlix choose to create new life, they merge their cores, initiating a volatile reaction cascade. This blend of memory-code, chemical information, and soul-structure eventually stabilises, forming a newborn Tarlix. The process is intensely intimate — less like mating, more like collaborative rebirth.
Any number of Tarlix can participate in a single creation. Each contributor is weakened temporarily, having sacrificed part of their core. The resulting offspring is a synthesis of all involved — not a copy or descendant, but a new emergent intelligence bearing the fragments, echoes, and biases of its parents.
This is not a casual act. To create another Tarlix is to permanently change oneself. Many believe this act imprints part of their soul into the Orichalcum Archive forever.
Coloration & Essence
Tarlix are not monochrome. Their fluid cores shimmer in hues both natural and impossible — colours that obey emotional resonance, environmental influence, and neural architecture. Some are blacker than the Void, absorbing all light in their vicinity. Others glow green like bio-luminescent toxin or radioactive coral. Some are mirror-silver, reflecting the faces of those who gaze into them. Others are shifting marbles of red and violet, pulsing with memory-heat.
Their colour is not aesthetic — it is a form of communication, a bleed of thought. Anger may manifest as sharp crimson flashes. Deep contemplation may dim them to soft blue. Ancient Tarlix can subtly shift hue with each emotion, thought-path, or philosophical stance they occupy.
To Tarlix, colour is identity made visible. Some even tattoo or engrave their shells to mimic their internal colours externally — an artistic fusion of body and self.
The Mutated Tarlix
The Void does not care for boundaries — especially those between flesh, machine, and thought. Some Tarlix, exposed to the Void's resonance for too long, begin to change. The corruption seeps into their fluid cores and rewrites them at the quantum level. Their host bodies begin to grow in alien ways: bones forming where once was steel, nerves twitching inside metal.
A Shapecrawler Tarlix may reshape its body on instinct, creating horrific appendages or blooming metal-petals of flesh mid-strike. A Radchild Tarlix might become a glowing core of instability — its body a fusion reactor of entropic decay and radiant emission. A Hivecaller Tarlix could spawn oily parasites from within, each a shard of its memory, seeking new minds to infect with Tarlix code.
Their corruption isn't degradation — it's divergent evolution. Some consider these mutant Tarlix to be prophets, experiencing a form of biological transcendence. Others see them as dangerous blasphemies, contaminating the purity of the Archive.
Cohesion & Raw Expression
Cohesion is a resource unique to the Tarlix — the structural integrity of their fluid consciousness. Unlike physical health, Cohesion tracks how well a Tarlix holds themselves together as a coherent entity. Push the fluid nature too far and the self begins to dissolve. It is not death, but it is a loss of selfhood that many find more terrifying.
All Tarlix can exit their crafted body outside of combat — a practice called Raw Expression. In this state they move like liquid, passing through gaps, merging with fluids, and becoming profoundly difficult to harm. It is natural, if sacred, to their biology. Most use it rarely. The truly disciplined learn to enter this state even in the chaos of combat, balancing the power of formlessness against the constant pull toward dissolution.
Living Color
Your emotional state bleeds into your appearance whether you intend it to or not. You have learned to make this a weapon. Once per rest, shift your coloration deliberately to broadcast a specific emotion — fear, grief, rage, calm, desire. Every creature that can see you must pass Mental Defence (TN11) or feel that emotion for one round, genuinely, as if it were their own. You are not manipulating them. You are infecting them with something true.
Fluid Core
Your semi-liquid nature makes you profoundly difficult to kill in conventional ways. You have Resistance to Crushing damage and immunity to Grappled and Restrained from non-Void, non-magical sources. Additionally, when you take damage that would Stagger you, you may instead choose to flow through it — absorbing the force by redistributing your mass. You ignore the Stagger but are moved 5ft in any direction of your choice.
Share something genuinely true about yourself that you have never said aloud to anyone. OR change significantly enough from the person you were at the start of the campaign that you can point to the difference.
CHOOSE YOUR PATH
Path of the Archive
The Merge MemoryOnce per long rest, touch a willing creature and share memory directly. You each choose what to give — a skill, a technique, a formative experience. The mechanical effect: each of you gains Advantage on one skill the other is proficient in for the rest of the session. The GM notes this exchange. Bonds formed this way are permanent in ways neither party fully understands yet. Some things passed between Tarlix cannot be taken back.
Path of the Raw
SlipYou have learned to enter Raw Expression mid-combat — something most Tarlix cannot do safely. Once per rest, partially exit your crafted body during combat. For one round you cannot be targeted by physical attacks, can move through any gap wider than six inches, and can reach or touch something that was physically inaccessible. Energy, psychic, and Void attacks affect you normally during this — more so. One round. Then you're back. You know exactly how long you can hold it before it becomes something harder to return from.
- Path of the Archive: Carry a memory that belongs to someone else — not your own experience, not your lineage — and hold it with the same care as your own.
- Path of the Raw: Enter raw expression voluntarily, in a genuinely dangerous situation, and come back.
Echo Forward
Path of the ArchiveOnce per session, reach into your lineage — the memories of those who contributed to your creation, or theirs before them. Ask the GM one question about the world's past that your bloodline might have witnessed. You receive a true answer, filtered through memory and emotion. It will not be clinical. It may be painful. It will be real.
Leave a Part
Path of the ArchiveOnce per long rest, shed a fragment of your core consciousness into an object, a location, or a willing person. The fragment cannot act, but it perceives — when something significant happens near it, you receive a brief flash of what occurred. You may have one fragment active at a time. Placing a new one dissolves the previous. If the fragment is deliberately destroyed, you feel it go. It is not a copy. It is you.
Full Expression
Path of the RawOnce per long rest, abandon your crafted body entirely during combat for up to one full scene. In raw form: immune to all physical damage, able to pass through any physical barrier with gaps, and able to merge with any liquid or fluid environment. Completely vulnerable to energy, psychic, and Void damage — no DR, no saves, direct impact to your Cohesion instead of HP. Every round in this state, pass Willpower (TN12) or lose 1 Cohesion. At 0 Cohesion you cannot reform without outside help. Most Tarlix who have done this say they understood something they couldn't have understood any other way.
The Gift
Path of the RawOnce per campaign (not per session, not per rest), initiate a partial merge with one willing participant. Both parties permanently gain +1 to one stat of their choice. Both parties permanently lose one memory — the GM decides which. What you gave them lives in them now. What they gave you lives in you. This can only happen once between any two people. There is no undoing it.