Baleer

Authored by David Bennett

Character Biography

Takers are very rare intelligent energy beings that inhabit and take over bodies, living or dead. Without a physical body a Taker can’t interact with the physical world in any meaningful way.
If the body is a corpse, the decay process is suspended and any damage to the body won’t heal.
If the body is living, the Taker displaces the consciousness if still present, the body can heal at a slower rate, but the transformation takes days.
As the Taker is merely a pilot in a body, it is not unusual for the Taker to engage in seemingly careless behaviors that may damage the body or perform tasks or feats that surpass the biological limitations of the current body’s structure.

Baleer’s entry into the Star Fleet was merely an accident of circumstance. He had been in search of a body as the last one had expired. It had been centuries since he had a physical form. Coming upon a crashed ship on a back water planet, he found a dying body in acceptable condition and inhabited it. Hours later, a rescue ship arrived and took him as the sole survivor but couldn’t explain how he had survived.
Other puzzles presented themselves in short order. All scans indicated the body was dead and yet it moved and looked inquisitive. It took hours for Baleer to reconstruct neural pathways enough to access memories and gain the language and some basic knowledge.
Baleer began explaining what he was and what was going to happen much to the disbelief of the crew of the rescue ship but, over time, as the transformation progressed, Baleer’s story was proven.

Having learned from the corpse how many of the Federations people would feel about his need to take a body, Baleer let them remain ignorant, believing he could only take corpses. His curiosity of these new races spurred him to attempt to work with and learn about the new flesh. Through diplomatic talks to a first contact team and the assurances that his species was even more rare than an Organian intervention, and some bending of the rules regarding bodies donated to science and medical research, Baleer began a long history of learning and interacting with the new flesh.

Baleer always has, in his quarters, a stasis bay containing at least three corpses. Baleer wanted clone bodies but the medical and scientific communities sited ethical concerns which has had Baleer inhabiting corpses of the Federation for the last century.

Sometimes, when a Taker takes a body, the body will shift to the physical form that reflects the Taker’s individual nature. The transformation can be induced with direct exposure to a stellar level magnetic field burst.
If the body is a corpse the transformation takes about a month.
If the body is living the transformation takes days.
Once the transformation is complete Baleer is a giant of a being. He has the head of a Hyena with burning red eyes, that literally glow, and a lolling blood red tongue setting off the contrast of his ivory teeth. His skin is ebony black and his musculature is grotesquely heavy, his fingernails and toenails are ivory talons, and even in clothing he is obscenely “male”. He can move equally well and comfortably in both bipedal and quadrupedal stances. It is still a mystery where the extra mass comes from to restructure the taken body into Baleer’s “natural” form.

By their very nature, Takers are transdimensional. Thus they are each unique and there are no alternate versions of them regardless of their origin dimension/reality.

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