Sorry for the double-post -- I finished up my race sheet, so I'm just going to leave it here and go to bed now! I hope you'll at least find it a little interesting!! If there's anything I need to fix or clarify, please let me know! :)
Name singular: Recycler.
Name plural: Recyclers.
Powers/Abilities:
- Waste Processing: The fragile body of a Recycler can process anything and regurgitate it back up as innocent, harmless soil. It doesn't matter how dangerous or unstable it is -- you name it, and the Recycler can neutralize it for you. This is actually how the US government gets rid of all of its nuclear waste, by the way… but that's top secret information.
- (Almost) Universal Translator: This is one of the more peculiar quirks of the Recycler species... their programming allows them to understand around 80% of all known languages. This is presumably due to their origins as a servant race. Apparently their creators wanted them to be able to say "which way to the nuclear waste?" in every language that they could think of.
- Asexual Reproduction: Once in its life (and usually when it's almost dead), a Recycler can lay an egg that will hatch into a new Recycler. It will then die and be consumed by its offspring.
Physical Appearance:
Picture a pallid, dark-haired teenager. Hollow cheeks; unsettlingly blank eyes. Genderless; painfully thin; a humanoid with something almost insect-like about it. There -- now you know exactly what a Recycler looks like. Recyclers reproduce asexually, and as a result, every new Recycler is a variation on the same theme. Do they have individual personalities, thoughts, feelings? Sure, but they all look so uncannily similar that it's hard not to group them all together.
General Description:
Every Recycler, from the moment that it hatches, knows that its purpose is to consume trash. Recyclers are born into the world starving for food, and are driven only by the urge to seek out toxins and garbage in order to process them into more useful byproducts. They are drawn to waste products, and the more hazardous they are, the better -- Recyclers consume everything from nuclear waste to used batteries.
These strange creatures aren't quite organic life forms, but they're not exactly robots, either. The inside of a Recycler consists of a delicate network of complex biomechanical machinery. Trillions of these creatures were created many, many years ago and planted in as many realms as possible by the brilliant scientists of a long dead race, who hoped to make the multiverse a cleaner and healthier place.
The race that those scientists belonged to eventually died out, but the Recyclers didn't. Though their bodies are fragile, their extremely stable method of asexual reproduction has led to their continued persistence as a species. At the end of a Recycler's short lifespan, it lays a single egg in a secluded spot and dies on top of it. After a few days, a new Recycler will hatch. Its first duty? To recycle the corpse of its parent.
The central irony of the Recyclers, however, is that they don't actually need to consume anything to survive. They are born with a finite, non-replenishable supply of energy that they will slowly deplete over the course of their lifespan. It is this energy that they draw upon in order to fuel the complex process of stabilizing waste products. Every time a Recycler consumes a piece of trash, therefore, it shortens its lifespan and brings itself closer to its inevitable death.
Lifespan: The maximum lifespan of a Recycler is ten Earth years, assuming that it consumes nothing and uses all of its energy to sustain itself. However, most Recyclers live for only a few months due to processing large amounts of waste products and toxins.
Cultural description: Recyclers are solitary creatures. Most will go throughout their lives without ever meeting another of their kind. They have no culture whatsoever, and are only able to communicate because it's more efficient to be able to ask questions like "where do you keep your used batteries?". They tend to name themselves (if they name themselves at all) after the decomposers of the planet that they reside on.
Realm: Most realms have a stable population of Recyclers. There are some exceptions, of course, but Earth is not one of them.
Short description: The bottom feeders of the universe. This biomechanical race's sole purpose in life is to consume the trash left behind by other races, recycle it into more useful byproducts within their digestive tracts, and then regurgitate them back up again. They can be found in almost every realm but are rarely seen by anyone, preferring to live out their short existences in the shadows.