Beckon

A Beckon is a Nexus parasite organism that grows out of infested ground and produces other parasite organisms. Beckons are shaped like trees, with a dark trunk, tendrils and a green bulb at the crown, and are colonial organisms whose buried root network works like the mycelium of a fungus. There are four species.

Shared characteristics

Every Beckon grows out of ground that is already infested, and extends the infestation through its root network. The roots carry nutrients and connect it to neighbouring Beckons and to Dispatchers.

Beckons produce parasite organisms from blueprints, and are the only source of Derived and Fabricated organisms. A Beckon connected to a Dispatcher produces and deploys organisms much faster than one alone. Beckons fall outside the origin scheme of parasite taxonomy, and are closest to Fabricated organisms.

Most of a Beckon's organs are in its bulb, which is its most vulnerable part at any size. In the chain of command, a Beckon directs the field organisms around it and answers to more developed Beckons, and through them to a Root Beckon.

Species

• Primitive Beckon, a cold-blooded species, the first recorded on Earth.
• Adapted Beckon, a warm-blooded species with a hollow trunk pressurised with sulfur hexafluoride.
• Root Beckon, a species that directs every organism of its genome.
• Supreme Beckon, a species that has taken over an entire planet. A Beckon on Earth growing toward that state is a proto-Supreme Beckon.

See also

• Beckon anatomy
• Beckon bulb
• Root mat
• Dispatcher
• Parasite taxonomy