(from a safe distance)

They're not really "raiders" like in Fallout - I have no plans to use the actual term "raider" in my story, though what would eventually become raiders is an indirect result of the raiders in my story. For the purposes of discussion, I'll call them raiders until a more suitable name is decided.

Second, I'd like to draw everybody's attention to this article, which is about the Reavers from the Firefly show (and subsequent Serenity movie). For those of you who haven't had the privilege of seeing Firefly, go watch it! Seriously, it's a masterpiece. Go watch it. It's one of the most well-written, well acted pieces of science fiction television of all time.

Anyway, one of the elements of this show is a group of cannibal pirates called the Reavers who live in a large fleet of ships on the outer rim of the solar system. Reavers are probably the most terrifying version of the "psychopathic, sadistic, cannibal savages" I've seen depicted in any story. We've all seen this type of savage in other stories. Fo:E and Fallout 3 have their raiders. The 100 has its Reapers. Mad Max has the marauder gangs. The FPS game Borderlands has its bandits and psychos. Well, the Reavers make those Mad Max savages look like Aunt Betsy hosting a tea party at the retirement home. This is much closer to the type of adversary that I'm depicting in this story.

I'm going to reference the key passages from the Reaver wiki page to talk about my raiders. Of particular interest, notice in the Origins section the following:

Some victims of Reaver attacks are left alive and forced by Reavers to view the tortures they inflict on others. When this happens, the person's mind can be so damaged by what they were shown that the only way to cope with it is to begin to act as a Reaver does, eventually becoming one themselves.

What we have here is compelling validation for my story's "memory orb torture" mechanism. The goal being a bit different of course. But I find it very interesting that being forced to witness the Reaver activities would permanently damage someone's mind to the point where they lose themselves. How much more would it effect someone if they were forced to view it in first person?

utter and complete madness. Showing no care for life, they are driven by an insane, homicidal and xenophobic aggression that manifests in the cannibalism, rape, and torture that they visit upon any unfortunate enough to come across them.

As a symptom of their insanity, they deliberately gash and cut their own flesh, and a Reaver is often covered in open or partially healed wounds. Barbaric piercings and random bits of metal shoved into their flesh are also common, giving them a ghastly and corpse-like air. They seem no physically stronger or tougher than normal humans- merely inured to pain to the point where they care nothing for their injuries or indeed their own lives, and more willing to push their bodies to the extreme because of their madness.

Slight variation is that my raiders have no sense of pain at all due to the neurological damage from the parasite insect. The effect is the same.

Exactly how sentient individual Reavers are remains an open question. Although they clearly must have some retention of any original knowledge prior to their madness (as evidenced by their command of starships and weapons) Reavers are as without fear as they are without mercy, and they have never been seen to speak or indeed communicate (although that may be because any time they are observed they are on the hunt). The sole sound they make is an insane, wordless scream, which adds to the mystery of how a group of creatures little more than beasts could run a starship to the degree that they do. Indeed, Reaver ships may, although rarely, attack each other.

Definitely where these things deviate from "mindless zombies" other stories portray. They are intelligent enough to use weapons and build nests. While they do not fear, they will initially run and hide upon conversion until they can determine what their environment offers. The first priority is to build a nest. This means capturing and tying up ponies in a location that is likely to hold a certain amount of privacy. The captives are gagged so as to not scream for help. Doing all of this requires a fair amount of volition on the part of the raiders. Also, I'd say that they do talk, as seen in Fo:E. They would most likely use taunting, vulgar language meant to intimidate victims.

If a nest is established and the raiders have an advantage in their environment, they will construct cages rather than tying victims up. They will also no longer gag the captives. There are two groups of captives that raiders keep. One is for food and the other for breeding. The main difference is that nobody attempts to eat the breeding group. Captives would be kept in a main cage and then when the raiders intend to convert someone they will isolate that pony in their own cage during the 24 hour conversion process.

Also, for the purposes of this discussion, "breeding" refers to raping which transfers the parasites to the fur of the victim, and subsequently burrowing into the skin at the base of the neck and converting the pony into a raider via injected neurotoxin. We're not talking about pregnancies here.

It has been observed/implied on at least two occasions that Reavers do not bother with already-dead prey, preferring, if not insisting, that their victims be alive. At one point, three Reavers were about to attack a man, but when Mal shot him, they gave up their effort. At another point, Mal, Zoë, Jayne, and River were on their Mule, being chased by a Reaver hovercraft. When Jayne questions why the Reavers did not destroy the Mule, River muttered to herself, "They want us alive when they eat us." Both these events take place in the film. In the same vein, the Reavers did not bother to attack the 99.9% of Miranda's population that were pacified by the chemical, as these people would have had no reaction.

Some more interesting stuff here. So preferring live victims is carrying over to my raiders for mostly the same reason but also in that breeding only works with the living.

Also, "pacified by the chemical" brings an interesting thought to mind. I'm having the antagonist use a mechanism for pacifying the raiders so he can collect the captives and the memories. That's not what's going on in the show, of course.

Reavers seem to favor close combat, although they are fully capable of using firearms. It is likely that their reduced mental abilities makes firearms a poor choice. Instead, they rush forward, occasionally firing at victims if stymied, and overwhelm their enemies in a deadly charge with crude blades and melee weapons. If nothing else is available, they may be found clawing and biting their prey with bare hands and teeth. Although they occasionally carry conventional firearms, Reavers also seem to use poisoned needles, and very frequently a form of large speargun. The aim of both weapons is probably to ensure that the victim is alive when taken. Utterly fearless, they will charge until they are wiped out - casualties don't seem to matter much to a Reaver band.

Apart from the poison dart idea (which isn't bad but is too complicated), this is also carrying over. The raiders will fire on anyone invading their territory, but when they invade other areas, they will try to capture live victims.

Reavers seem to prefer to subdue their victims. Those unfortunates who are rendered helpless or fall are either raped to death, eaten alive, flayed, or commonly all three, as well as other horrific depravities. After they finally escape into death, the Reavers will sew their skins into their clothing, and may very well either hang up the corpses as a gruesome trophy or strap them to their starcraft. Reaver craft are almost inevitably festooned with at least a few skeletons.

Pretty much exactly this.

On a planetary raid, Reavers target settlements without strong defenses. After raping, murdering and eating the inhabitants, Reavers will burn the settlement to the ground. Most of the time Reavers stick to their hunting territories; however, over the few years directly prior to the pilot episode, the Reavers had begun to expand from their territories. This was likely caused by the depletion of food sources as settlers learned to steer clear.

If my raiders were more well established, this might work. However, I'm depicting them more as a plague than a faction. Rather than raiding and burning to the ground, they will take over an area and turn it into an extension nest, from which they will continue to spread. The Firefly Reavers don't seem to have any means to procreate, so that's a key difference. If left uncontested, my raiders would consume all sapient cultures in the world turning them into a series of raider nests. However, they are not particularly good fighters and in a battle against similar numbers, they will surely lose. Their advantage is in the ability to spread and go undetected for some time. In my story, the zebra shamans had to come up with some sort of magical sorcery that wiped them out, stopping the plague which was on the loose during the minotaur war.

Infection from the raider parasite takes 24 hours to fully convert a victim. There are two levels of immunity. On the level of the parasite itself, it will not bite someone who it sees as having already been infected. On the level of other raiders, they will not aggressively attack someone who is actually a fellow raider. The difference here is that an immunity can be faked so they will not be bitten, but this will not prevent other raiders from attacking.

The dead body of a raider will continue to produce further parasites for a day or two. Parasites generally stay in the fur of the raider awaiting transfer via rape, however some will venture off into the bedding of the raider and can be picked up that way. In the case of this story, an unknowing doctor examining the dead body of a raider is also at risk of infection simply out of ignorance.

Kill it! Kill it with fire! Those things are like nits from hell! Certainly give the story a creepier aspect.

We're not talking about pregnancies here.

Thank god, that could've gotten messy.

Some queries and musings.

They strike me almost as solider ants. Setting up a nest and ranging out from them in destructive arcs until everything is either dead or one of them. But do they have a hierarchy? Or do they collectively decide to act with a "mob" mentality as food/hosts run out?

A pheromone secreted by the "infested" would help them identify each other and prevent them turning on each other and so would give our antagonist a way to "cloak" themselves from the infested and allow them to continue their devious ends unmolested. Opens up some interesting questions as well: would Flitter be able to mimic an "infested"? Also as a changeling is she susceptible to infection?

I wonder, could the parasite exert a degree of control over its hosts aggression levels? During combat or when hunting it cranks them up to feral maximums, but if there is no prey to infect/rape/eat they appear almost docile, well, as docile as a psychotic cannibal pony can be I guess It could be done through the parasite exploiting the reward centre of the brain, flooding them with endorphins to keep them passive, while weaning them off when aggression is required turning them effectively into junkies.

What we have here is compelling validation for my story's "memory orb torture" mechanism

the worry is that Nyx might lose her mind entirely if she's overwhelmed by such a horrific experience. Its going to take more than a hug for her to get over this .

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Those things are like nits from hell!

Pretty much, yeah.

But do they have a hierarchy? Or do they collectively decide to act with a "mob" mentality as food/hosts run out?

Hmm. Well, I guess what that depends on is whether they represent an infection or a viable hive. An infection has no leader or hierarchy, and no purpose other than to spread itself. Being that they keep enough volition to build nests and gather resources, they could have a loose 'gang' structure with one being more of a leader but if the leader is taken out, someone else would step up. I guess you could call that the "alpha raider". Not physically different than the rest. Not like a queen ant/bee/alien or anything like that. Just basically a normal raider who's taken the leadership. The question I have is what use would they have for a leader? Would they have direction/duties assigned? If they had no structure at all but were more like a homogenous collective, then they would have no need for a leader. A collective requires special abilities though. Simply being driven mad by a chemical wouldn't provide that.

A pheromone secreted by the "infested" would help them identify each other and prevent them turning on each other and so would give our antagonist a way to "cloak" themselves from the infested and allow them to continue their devious ends unmolested.

Something not easily replicated though. If it were as simple as making everyone smell the right way, then that would stop a plague in a hurry. The tricky part is that I want to "cure" this at some point in the story by making everyone uninteresting to the parasites, but still be where raiders would attack them. Curing everyone is going to require some sort of magical solution via megaspell, since such a cure would last for generations but have the consequences that anybody could become a raider if the conditions were harsh enough. Hence Fo:E raiders. This isn't a very well developed story aspect yet but that's the general idea.

would Flitter be able to mimic an "infested"? Also as a changeling is she susceptible to infection?

Flitter's disguise is being able to physically transform into different people or species, but that would not include any "afflictions" that they have. So if she copies a sick pony, she would appear like that pony if they were well. Therefore, no she wouldn't successfully mimic a raider because she doesn't have the neurotoxin - and good thing too because it would legitimately turn her into a raider which would be permanent.

As for susceptibility, yes because this is a chemical agent rather than viral or bacterial, any complex lifeform would be affected by it. It is more like a very powerful drug than a disease.

I wonder, could the parasite exert a degree of control over its hosts aggression levels?

I think that would require a degree of conscious intent on the part of the bug as well as some mechanism of knowing when to provide certain chemicals. For the most part, the model I'm going with is that the injected chemical simply does so much damage to the host's brain that they go insane and turn into psychopathic killers. There isn't really any micromanagement of them beyond that point.

the worry is that Nyx might lose her mind entirely if she's overwhelmed by such a horrific experience. Its going to take more than a hug for her to get over this

Yeah the amount of damage to Nyx is going to be based on two factors. First, how much exposure does she have before she is rescued/escapes. Second, how much is the effect mitigated by that artifact that she's got embedded in her armor? That, combined with her own strength of character is meant to be the point where she is tested to her limits and passes. She'll need recovery time, but I'm not sure how that will be depicted yet.

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I think that would require a degree of conscious intent on the part of the bug as well as some mechanism of knowing when to provide certain chemicals

I think initially I was thinking only on a physiological level to keep the host viable for the longest time. Though thinking on it just adds another level of complexity that doesn't need to be there.

Flitter's disguise is being able to physically transform into different people or species, but that would not include any "afflictions" that they have.

I was more referring if she could fool the infected by giving the outward appearance of being afflicted while "acting" etc not to infiltrate per say but more to escape if cornered. But if these things can sense if somepony is infected then that won't work.

As for Nyx, it's going to be tough on her, but this is a trial that forges her character, that and she has good friends she can turn to once its over.

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I'd agree that Flitter would probably be able to mimic the behavior of a raider, though it would seriously disturb her. Also, most of the raiders have a rather... odd assortment of self inflicted cuts and piercings which would be artificial and therefore not something a changeling would replicate.

This does raise interesting questions about just how much a changeling can copy in order to mimic a host. If they can look, sound, and act like someone in an indistinguishable manner, would that also include things like scars, tattoos, or anything similar? Do they have full control over the color and texture of their skin and coats? What level of detail does their magical ability offer them?

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Do they have full control over the color and texture of their skin and coats? What level of detail does their magical ability offer them?

I'd assume their horn either does a magical scan of their intended target or is able to "feel" the target via infra-sound or some other method. Would allow them to gain a textural component to the mimic without having to make physical contact with their intended victim.