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The Beast is the antagonist in Barking Dog Studios' Homeworld expansion set, Cataclysm, specifically an intelligent virus-like entity that creates grotesque living ships fashioned from hybridized organic and inorganic material.
Kiith Somtaaw was directly responsible for their appearance. They located a strange artifact near Hiigara and unknowing of the danger, had it opened for analysis. The long-dormant Beast cells onboard began infecting the vessel from the hangar bay of the Kuun-Lan, where the artifact was being studied, forcing the ship's entire lower section to be ejected. As time went on, the Beast managed to grow an entire mothership around their half of the Kuun-Lan.
The Beast's ravenous hunger for living matter terrified even the Bentusi, who named it "The Devourer". At one point, things were so bleak that the threat became galactic in scope with seemingly no way and no hope of stopping it.
The Beast is named after the brutal manner in which it seizes control of ships.
The Beast are similar to the Borg, a race from Star Trek, due to their ability to assimilate ships, but with the exception to organic matter and not electronic systems.
Naggarok
One million Hiigaran years prior, the exploration vessel Naggarok arrived in the Homeworld galaxy from a neighbouring one using a very powerful experimental hyperspace drive, and caught the Beast while in transit. The crew realized almost immediately its destructive potential and critically-damaged the drives and communication systems, trapping the Beast as repairs required external aid.
Their sacrifice was however undermined by their own skill at ship design. The intentional crippling of the ship caused an emergency rescue beacon to automatically launch. That beacon bore a small amount of the Beast, and is the one Kiith Somtaaw found. For the period of its isolation, it has described itself as listening in "to the electromagnetic chatter of your tiny self-worlds", presumably learning a lot during this time.
When finally found by a modern civilization (the Imperial Taiidani), the only observable damage is relatively superficial. The craft's dramatic equipment is not revealed until the end of the game, primarily an incredible subluminal propulsion drive and weapon/maintenance rig. The drive works by enveloping the craft in a low-power hyperspace field, granting it unmatched celerity and impossible maneuverability; starting, stopping and turning without any concern for inertia.
Its second noteworthy installation is a phased matter diassembler in the ship's bow which deconstructs matter and is used mainly as a weapon, breaking down enemy ships to provide material for self-repairs. However while in progress, both the Naggarok and target are immobilized. The Naggarok may only move again once the target is fully "consumed".
The ship's drive is vulnerable to being temporarily disabled from an electromagnetic pulse, with recovery taking only a few seconds. It is during these moments of weakness, along with its aforementioned "feeding" immobility, that would allow the Somtaaw fleet to rain enough firepower on it to destroy it once and for all.
The ship's name is most likely derived from the word Ragnarok, given its phonetic similarity, as well of choice of letters in the name.
Language
The entity's command of English is most probably based on analysis from various sources. While sufficiently competent to state its thoughts, the disjointed nature of its speech is a dead giveaway to its identity. Also, the Beast is unable to maintain a single vocal profile when directing transmissions, alternating frequently between a deep masculine voice and a raspy female one, sounding like a distorted version of the original bridge officers. Subverted vessels retain their original voice profiles but the Beast taint is apparent; words are spoken with a telltale unearthly rasp.
Its method of addressing people and things is composed of short deliberate sentences, with composite words separated. As such, the Beast would render "The missile carries a polymer warhead containing a dense payload of the Beast that discharges upon impact" as "Self carried in polymer war head medium. War head medium keeps self safe from explosion. Medium sticks to enemy parts when missile hits". It should be noted at this point that the Beast appends suffixes to all ships. Single Beast vessels as "-Self", groups as "-Selves", single unsubverted ships as "-Part" and groups as "-Parts". For example, "Command self is pained! Command self must flee from parts!".
The largest collection of Beast entities, the Naggarok vessel, is capable of speaking perfectly , but still with the aforementioned alternating vocal profile.
Infection
A ship only needs to be manned to qualify for infection. Upon making physical contact with a suitable vessel, the Beast overruns the target with its high rate of self-replication and merges the crew and vessel into one, a process usually taking only mere seconds.
Infected ships are easily-identified; hulls bear large patches of organic matter and lighting systems take on an "evil" red glow. Additionally, they can regenerate damage and become slightly slower but tougher.
Direct physical contact
Direct physical contact results in immediate subversion if countermeasures are not in place, with mining tugs and workers particularly at risk since respectively ramming and salvage operations make such contact unavoidable. Unmanned ships such as the Leech are immune to direct infection as they present no organic matter to infect.Infection beam
Most heavy-class Beast ships grow nodes that can occasionally fire impossible-to-avoid particle beams which carry the Beast onto a target, with the weapon's charged nature allowing it to strike ships adjacent to the first target, depending on size. Several fighters can be infected with one shot, as compared to one or two frigates. Only properly-equipped vessels can ride it out, and struck unmanned ships are destroyed since they present no organic matter to infect.Cruise missile
An original design, this spacefaring cruise missile carried a Beast-filled warhead. The warhead's polymer-like construction protects the payload up until impact, at which point deployment begins. Its organic nature incidentally allows it to absorb the charge of a Sentinel wing's forcefield, rendering such defence arrangements useless.It itself bears a corvette-class fusion rocket drive, with flight performance almost comparable with a fighter-class ship. The guidance system can track targets immaculately, with new orders acceptable from a commanding Beast vessel. The entire package weighs in at 490 tons.
Armoring is weak and individual missiles are easily-destroyed, but usual Beast tactics are to attack from multiple vectors and in massed groups, vastly diminishing the chances of interception. The fact that they can be cheaply and rapidly produced in large numbers does not help the situation.
Disposal
Initially, no ships were safe as it was a completely-unknown threat, and remained this way until the development of specific biological hazard sterilization procedures (based on stolen Imperial Taiidani biological warfare research) and the Naar Directive, a purging protocol standard on and applicable only to large ships.
Workers with the Infection Vaccine upgrade can safely engage a Beast vessel for salvaging by forcible contact sterilization, allowing otherwise-abandoned ships to be retaken, refurnished, and returned to active duty or scrapped. The technology for this came from the aforementioned Taiidani research, and is unavailable in Cataclysm's single-player campaign.
The Naar Directive is named after the Somtaaw destroyer Naar-Tel, where it was first used at the battle of Coruc Farr. Rather than lose the ship to the Beast, lost areas were instead immolated with drive plasma and purged into space, mercifully and instantly killing endangered crew and saving the ship at the expense of a few decks. It has since become the de facto response for large allied vessels under Beast infection.
Subsequent improvements to Beast handling technology resulted in all traces of the threat being completely destroyed over time in the years succeeding the events of Cataclysm.
"The Beast (Homeworld)"