WLS-0021 Cardio-Mycelial Drone — Wasteland Bestiary

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WLS-0021 · CANON RECORD

Cardio-Mycelial Drone

Bio-Mechanical — Parasite

“A heart that flies on stolen wings.”

3threat

6vitality

2armor

7speed

8cunning

COMMON A Pre-Fall military project with the brilliant goal of making surveillance drones more 'resilient' by mashing up insect muscles with a vertebrate heart. They accidentally added a dash of fungal biocontrol agent, because of course they did. The result is less 'stealthy observer' and more 'flying heart attack'.

Special Ability

◈ Cardiac Sustenance

That freakish hybrid muscle system lets it fly for days on end with the grim determination of a heartbeat, sipping energy so efficiently it makes your own pathetic metabolism look like a fuel leak.

HabitatIt prefers the dark, damp cracks in collapsed buildings or old trees, ideally situated with a clear view of the few remaining pockets of human squalor, because what's the point of watching if there's no one to horrify?

DietIt's a parasite with a very specific palate: the blood and nerve-goo of large orthopterans. It doesn't just eat them; it turns them into a temporary vessel and then a disposable launch platform. A truly sustainable model.

BehaviorIts entire life cycle is an exercise in rude hospitality. It hunts a host, infects it with mind-controlling spores, forces the poor thing to climb to a high point for a better view, and then violently evicts it to use its empty corpse as a stepping stone into the sky.

Field Notes

It all begins with a spore, a tiny speck of hubris-infused fungus that finds a nice, juicy grasshopper. The spore gets cozy, and then the real horror show starts: it slowly dismantles the host from the inside, replacing its simple bug guts with a labyrinth of fungal mycelium and grotesque bio-mechanical clockwork. The insect's flight muscles are rewired with a grotesquely efficient vertebrate cardiac system, turning its frantic buzzing into the ominous, metronomic thrum of a living engine.

Maturity is a messy divorce. The drone tears its way out of the host's thorax, leaving a hollowed-out chitin shell as a macabre launchpad. Its wings beat with that unnerving, perfect rhythm, a flight so silent and sustained it feels less like movement and more like a glitch in reality. The fungal threads aren't just structure; they're the puppet strings, a wetware network controlling this stolen, repurposed machine.

A perfect surveillance tool, if you don't mind your recon coming with a side of existential dread.

Reality Scraps · Source Material

The creature is fiction. These are the real, verifiable facts it was synthesized from, with the exact public records used.

research · REALITY SCRAP

Comparison of the Regulation of Contraction in Insect Flight Muscle and Vertebrate Cardiac Muscle — Peer-reviewed work (2017) “Comparison of the Regulation of Contraction in Insect Flight Muscle and Vertebrate Cardiac Muscle”. published in Biophysical Journal

Source: OpenAlex (record WW2584891666) original record ↗

biology · REALITY SCRAP

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (Tul. & C.Tul.) Petch — Recorded common names for Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (Tul. & C.Tul.) Petch in GBIF include: Nấm sát thủ, Кордицепс однобокий, 偏側蛇蟲草菌.

Source: GBIF Vernacular Names original record ↗