the various parts inside of iterators are purposed organisms that take the roles or like our own cells, so like the inspectors/hydras/axons are similar to our white blood cells, the dark blue wavy things are like nerves that receive signals from the neuron flies. So when a scug is moving through their systems and occasionally crashing into things and eating neuron flies in the normally sterile environment it’s like when a pathogen gets into the blood stream. For pebbles, in the parts that have been rotted, he has no sense of them, so it’s kinda like losing a limb or an organ in a sense. An iterator’s body is that whole building!!!!!! I just think that’s so cool!!
some spoilers and it's kinda long, so page break inbound
soooo this is just something I'm thinking about. I kinda wonder if the purposed beings/iterator-made slugcats look almost like normal slugcats, but... something about them just looks off.
Hear me out, this isn't just about Spearmaster.
I mean- making a living, functional, sentient being must be extremely difficult, since Suns took like 7 attempts just to make Spearmaster, and Sigs rushed the process and gave Hunter rot (from the chats, I'm pretty sure it was by mistake.) As well as this, adding on things must be difficult too, since you need to be careful with how any kind of mutation affects the being's functions, like how Spears has no mouth so they can't become feral, but they compensate by having porcupine-like needles they can use as a pseudo esophagus, as well as being sharp enough to penetrate and use as a weapon.
You get the idea, it's difficult to make a creature from scratch. I'd like to imagine that unless they try to go as accurate as possible, the iterators could take some liberties to change them slightly, like if there is a certain part of the being that doesn't serve any evolutionary purpose, that the creator doesn't see a need for, or that the creator wants to change/improve for whatever reason. That might be better or at least different for the resulting creature to live with, but removing/changing the trait(s) would most likely make them look really weird.
so uhh...
tl;dr purposed organisms would look strange if their creator didn't care about accuracy and took liberties to change/improve the resulting beings. That's probably not a theory everyone might agree with (open to discussion), but that's how I'm drawing purposed organisms now.
I like to imagine that a lot of purposed organisms tend to be made from like. Genetic templates of whatever species they might be based on. So my idea is like Spearmaster would have been based off a Slugcat who had a mutation where they stored a lot more nutrients in their tail, so Suns was able to mess with that template for the empty space in the chest cavity for the pearl and being able to distribute nutrients throughout the body with the tail needles etc. I like to think Rivulet and Hunter were made from the same template of just a normal Slugcat also.
