Drawlloween 24

Today's prompt is Homonculus.....

These are Homunculi, on the left is a Muliercula, The one on the right a Defectum, and the middle one a Cortical Homunculus.....

Homunculi  are creatures seen as blasphemous to the church. Crafted through the  scientific manipulation of the arcane arts and a ritual to create  living, breathing life. Though this practice began long ago, with the  Elder Things using similar advanced alchemy to create humankind in the  first place, and was advanced by serpentfolk, and rediscovered by  Lemurians, Atlantians, and then humans as history continued on,  eventually becoming a truly powerful and terrifying art that was banned  and nearly hunted into obscurity by the crusades. Though it was brought  back to the public several times through various alchemical academies,  and most recently when J.C. Everly Atkinson would found the Everly  Academy among the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1880, and pushed  by the academy of magic and the arcane arts on Urth. Though Alchemy  encompasses many scientific applications to the arcane art of  transmutation, the Homunculi, and it's more powerful cousin the Chimera,  are seen as it's greatest accomplishment, and worst sin.

Through  various chemicals and aparati, along with human sperm, afflicted with  putrefaction within the womb of a beast, kept alive and fresh through  the alchemical sciences or use of humour manipulation for 40 days, the  form will begin to take shape and become something new, something much  like a man but transparent, without a body. It is then fed with the  Arcanum of human blood, and nourished for up to forty weeks, kept whtin  the artificial womb, and grown into a child like creature.

When  simply nourished naturally, one creates a typical Homunculus. Known as a  Puerulus if male or a Muliercula if female, Hermaphroditus if both, and  a Neuter if neither, but all generally called a Homunculus. Homunculus  of this type are small, pale child like creatures that take a vague  appearance similar to that of a human. They have slightly altered  features, and look somewhat alien in many situations, with eyes too far  apart or too large, too many teeth, oversized ears, hands, feet, or  lips, and sometimes possessing a small tail. Some tails are more  pronounced, and many alchemists manipulate the genes ever so slightly to  grant it a stinger to protect itself as it is so small and often times  frail and weak.

Homunculi  feed on human blood during their first few years of life, though this  can occasionally be supplemented through a mixture of semen and milk, or  any combination of the three. Many Homunculi will ween themselves off  of such things and be able to eat human foods, but some are unable to do  so.

Homunculi  learn quickly, and are adept at following tasks, as they are considered  a servitor race, as most are born to be studied or to work as slave  labor for alchemists. Some are simply scientists, and though they are  still without a choice as to where or for whom they work, some are  treated fairly as lab assistants. Others live better lives as they are  treated as children and raised as such. Homunculi have the ability to  learn like children, and very childlike appearances, though they reach  maturity in only a few months after they emerge from the womb. Their  minds never fully develop as well as a human's but they can understand  complex thoughts and can even become adept in creating their own  alchemical formulae over time if allowed to study and work freely.  Homunculi rarely grow larger than the size of a baby or a small child,  with some reaching 3 or 4 feet tall, however through genetic and dietary  manipulation and other alchemical processes, these homunculi have grown  to be the full size of a grown man before and have developed alien yet  keen intellectual minds. This practice is forbidden, even deep within  many alchemy circles as these entities begin to take on strange and  dangerous personality traits. Some can grow into relatively normal  children, or even young teens or adults and be kept in a sort of  "Servitor" state, with a few even being mostly indistinguishable from a  real human. Some alchemists have even had relationships with homunculi  after they had mentally matured, though this is mostly frowned upon in  alchemist society, especially seeing as homunculi are born sterile,  though on occasion some will evolve to be able to procreate....

Homunculi  usually only live for 8-10 years if treated well, however genetic  manipulation in the heyday of atlantean homunculi creation allowed for  some to become immortal. The deeper that the alchemists went into  manipulating their base makeup, through introducing various humours,  substances, and chemicals, could cause the Homunculus to display more or  less traits associated with shoggoths, which is where the tail like  tentacle came from, tipped with a razor barb. Some are even more like  shoggoth, and possess tentacles, a malleable body, or the ability to  grow new organs.

If  the process fails, and the Homunculus is born deformed, often because  of a mishap in the process, a leak in the womb, or bad sperm, the  homunculus usually dies, however sometimes it can be born as a Defectum.  Defectum are like the previous type of Homunculus, however they tend to  be in constant pain, with a malformed fetus look about them and limbs  that have sometimes grown to adulthood while the rest of them barely  grew into anything recognizable. These homunculiare quite often times  unable to learn like the others, and are mostly animal like, and more  often than not put out of their misery. However some alchemists keep  them alive and use them as guards to certain areas, or use them for  study. On occasion they can be formed on their own throug discarding  various alchemical waste or equipment used to create a homunculus, and  there have been colonies of them found in sewers after alchemists had  destroyed or hid evidence of their creations by throwing it in such  places. These Homunculus are closely related to Shoggoths, simply much  smaller, and less malleable. However in studies of the Defectum, the  Cortical Homunculus was eventually created as a way to salvage a  Defectum if one possesses enough resources.

Cortical  Homunculi were created as a study of the human body and anatomy as a  single creature, and were used as test subjects to learn how the brain  works and how the various humours affect it, and lead to the human  discovery of more humours than the 4 that were accepted at the time.  Cortical Homunculi are enormous fleshy mounds that possess all of a  human's organs and necessary parts to allow them to survive, however the  size of said organs or parts is determined by it's importance to  certain parts of the brain. This can be broken down into a Motor  Homunculus and a sensory Homunculus.

A  Motor Homunculus represents a map of brain areas dedicated to motor  processing for different anatomical divisions of the body, located in  the Precentral gyrus and pertains to signals coming from the premotor  area of the frontal lobes, while a sensory homunculus represents a map  of brain areas dedicated to sensory processing for different anatomical  divisions of the body, with the primary sensory cortex located in the  postcentral gyrus, which handles signals coming from the thalamus.  Though Defectum and Cortical Homunculi were studied and it greatly  advanced knowledge of the human brain and physical body, much of this  information was lost several times through human history until it was  released to the public by various organizations sometime in the early  1900's as various scientific studies without the mentions of alchemy or  true living homunculi. Due to their large size, Cortical Homunculi were  often used as heavy lifters and guards after studies on them were  complete.

On  occasion similar degenerative effects would strike homunculus, and  cause them to become violent. This was especially the case for Cortical  Homunculi, whom had extreme amounts of acromegaly introduced to their  system, which cause them to be closer to Nephilim than the others....

On  Earth, Homunculi are still among us, however usually hidden or secreted  away as Alchemy is a hidden knowledge these days, however some still  exist out in the world, and the various governments of the world have  used some information to create homunculi for the purpose of creating  super soldiers, or simply learning more on how they work. On Urth,  Homunculi are still used widely throughout the world and can be bought  and sold in magical locations. Some places treat them as pets, others as  slaves and servant. The magic school teaches courses on creating and  curating homunculi and chimeras with unique abilities, though the class  is highly regulated and often times shut down due to it's practices. In  the Alchemy district within Knara city, homunculi and golems make up  over 85% of the entire workforce.....

In the second image....

If one introduces various chemicals or other types of creature's  sperm or blood to a homunculus' diet, it can start to become something  else.

On the left we have a Venator  Homunculus. Venator are created by allowing the homunculus to consume  the shed skin of lizards and snakes, as well as various forms of reptile  blood along with human milk or semen. These experiments were done by  serpentfolk using early man as test subjects in attempts to weed the  humanity out of them and make a greater servitor race. This didn't work,  however it did create humans with the feral and violent nature of  carnivorous reptiles. The experiments were rediscovered by humans many  years later in attempting to find a missing link between man and beast.  Venators are used as hunters, often times running after and capturing  mice or rats that attempt to ruin experiments with various organic  materials that need to be left out. However they will also hunt animals  like raccoons, opossums, skunks, dogs, or cats that attempt to get into  left out garbage, or squirrels and gophers that cause problems around  the house. They are trained like attack or guard dogs and used to  protect information as well. They can be trained and taught complex  tasks, and some have been used as assassins, by sending them to sneak  into locations and assassinate people. Venators are bought and sold on  Urth as superior to guard dogs, and their technology allows for there to  bee venators much larger and more dangerous than this, with some even  being used in Chimera projects to be more akin to a Tyrannosaurus than  this human lizard hybrid.

In  the back is a Leo Homunculus. Leo Homunculus are a type of Chimera  created when attempting to recreate the horrid manticore found in Kumari  Kandam which were the result of human and lion procreation. By  introducing lion semen to a homunculus, along with lion blood and milk  intermittently combined with that of humans, they were able to create  large lion like men, These homunculi grew much larger than normal, and  like the Venator they took on more of the animal traits than human ones.  Many were badly deformed, though the ones that did fully form were very  deadly and used as weapons or ways to train soldiers in battle, and  even sold to powerful men around the world. They did not possess the  full abilities of the Manticore however as they were just lion men, and  as such through the evolution of homunculus creation and chimera  transmutation, by introducing proper amounts of eagle, porcupine,  scorpion, and monkey DNA, they were able to replicate much of what the  manticore could do. Though they are much weaker than manticore, they are  easier to control, and take less resources to create.

Homunculus  Leo are still very capable at following tasks, though they are more  prone to fits of anger and violence, and their bloodlust overtakes them  on occasion. They are often used as soldiers or weapons on the  battlefield as well, and like venators they are even sent as assassins  on occasion, or used by some powerful alchemists as body guards.

Finally  we have the Flask Pygmy. Also known as a Pumilio Homunculus, these were  the first humanoid creatures created in a flask without an organic womb  to keep them alive. Born through purely chemical processes combined  with the various needed ingredients to create a homunculus and left to  distill in a large flask. These Homunculus are then fed the Prima  Materia, a very difficult to create substance and one of the first  required to create the Philosopher's stone, the Yliaster, or the Rebus.  In this case it is fed to a homunculus along with parts from human  brains to allow the creature to develop mentally more than physically.  The result is a pitch black creature of strange shape and stature born  within the flask. It observes first, and quickly learns things, picking  up on languages and sciences near instantaneously. They are then used as  lab assistants, and a sort of super computer in a ways as they keep  track of information for the alchemist, and the alchemists can ask it  questions and it seems to be able to read and register all of the  processes ongoing in an experiment. They possess heightened psychic  ability, and can even read minds and emotions. Some develop the ability  to manipulate the world with telekinesis or other forms of kinesis, and  because of this the flask is often times lined with mercury to disrupt  it's attacks should it attempt to do so. This derives from many of them  wishing to break free of their confines and escape into the world, and  their vast intellect and cunning nature allowing them to trick the  alchemists into thinking they are friendly until they make their escape.  They can do psychic readings of things around them that they can see,  and often times their flask is attached to other various tubes and  devices through the room or facility so the homunculus may move about  and better observe things, as it seems to be able to squeeze it's body  through areas as small as 1 inch wide. These Homunculi seem to  occasionally have prophetic dreams, or learn of secrets of the universe  that would drive mortals insane, and use these universe secrets to  manipulate those around them. Overall Pumilio homunculi are incredibly  dangerous, if not the most dangerous type of homunculus due to these  psychic abilities, and they are forbidden among most locations that  practice alchemy....

In the few situations in which they have  escaped, they usually died  beyond the confines of their flask, though  in rare situations, labs with one kept there have been found with the  creature missing, everyone in the lab murdered, and the creature never  seen again despite various signs of madness and psychic attacks in  nearby neighborhoods.