Epithymia, United Provinces of Termagant, Cebrai 26, 1890 . In the matriarchal and Raygun Gothic realm of the United Provinces of Termagant, status is worn beneath the flesh. A new government-issued catalog—curated from the Carapax Journal of Advanced Biomedical Engineering—details the latest suite of biological augmentations, aesthetic surgeries, and ceremonial prosthetics mandated for Termaganti officials. Each device serves both function and doctrine: to perfect the female form into a living emblem of faith, technology, and control.
The Bioware Protocols mandate the transformation: to perfect the female form into a living emblem of faith, technology, and control (Credit: Kenomitian)
For the women who govern Termagant, body modification is not a luxury but a legal expectation. Since the reign of the Graphielim, the triune rulers of the Provinces, official service has required compliance with the Bioware Protocols—regulations governing how the elite must alter their bodies to reflect piety and productivity.
The catalog’s release coincides with an overhaul in the Ministry of Public Aesthetics, which now classifies each modification by theological sanction and political grade. A golden dermis, a mechanical lung, a whispering head-dress—all are signs of allegiance to the intertwined cults of technology and magic that sustain the Termaganti state.
The Internal Architecture of Power
The foundation of official transformation lies in bioware—living systems cultivated within the body to enhance endurance, cognition, or metaphysical output. These differ from the crude cyberware of the offworld colonies; Termaganti bioware consumes food, repairs itself, and breathes faith.
The Yig-Optimized Symbiont Set remains a standard among civil servants and soldiers. Its re-engineered lungs host symbiotic organisms capable of filtering pollutants and replenishing vitality during the long hours of bureaucratic labor. The procedure, though costly, marks devotion to Yig, the God of Life, and signifies the bearer’s willingness to endure pain in pursuit of progress.
The Yig-Optimized Symbiont Set: Re-engineered lungs house symbiotic life, replenishing vitality to civil servants during long bureaucratic labors (Credit: Kenomitian)
Even more prestigious is the Ch’i-Battery Array, an organic mana reservoir that converts metabolic energy into magical charge. Reserved for Partzufim—the state’s highest magocrats—it symbolizes both pious industry and technical supremacy. Its operation requires a complete redesign of the digestive tract, allowing the official to feed directly on divine current.
Together, these augmentations transform administrators into bio-energetic dynamos, their stamina and spellcraft proof of divine favor.
While endurance marks devotion, beauty declares dominance. The Hedonai Enhancements, sanctioned by the Amazonian Sisterhood of Shub-Niggurath, merge sexuality with authority. The Augmented Hermophromorph Kit—a favorite of the social elite—allows dual-gender morphogenesis, generating complex pheromonal auras that can compel admiration or submission. To outsiders, such modifications might appear decadent. To the Termaganti eye, they are acts of governance. Desire is statecraft; the ability to inspire awe is a political instrument. The Sisterhood’s scripture describes beauty as a weaponized virtue, a means to enforce the matriarchal will through grace and glamour alike.
Desire is statecraft. The Hedonai Enhancements merge sexuality with authority, generating auras that compel both admiration and submission (Credit: Kenomitian)
“Every surface is sacred,” writes High Magister Velshara of the Ministry. “Our flesh is the medium by which the State communicates perfection.”
The Golden Mask of Office
Beyond the body’s internal systems lies its façade—the engineered face that interfaces with the public. Through pheno-gengineering and plastosurgery, high-ranking citizens become an elite subspecies designed for ceremonial and administrative excellence.
The Plasmic Golden Skin Graft remains the ultimate symbol of ascension. It replaces epidermis with a gold-hued, porous membrane capable of respiration and data exchange. Those who undergo the transformation emerge nearly unrecognizable: radiant, faceless, and immune to disease. The process is notorious for its agony and its aftermath—immunological collapse followed by spiritual rebirth. A lesser but still revered variant, the Argus Silvery Form, coats the skin in reflective nanobiotic alloys, sculpting the bearer into a living statue. Officials who adopt this guise project impartiality, their expressionless features emblematic of bureaucratic neutrality.
In both cases, beauty is no longer subjective. It is legislated, measured in layers of engineered tissue and the hue of reflected light.
The ultimate symbol of ascension: The Plasmic Golden Skin Graft replaces epidermis with a porous, gold-hued membrane—radiant, faceless, and immortalized (Credit: Kenomitian)
Sensation and Discipline
The faith of Xexanoth, Titan of Sensation, guides another branch of modification: the Xanathic Alterations. These replace ordinary nerves with hyper-responsive clusters that translate pain into ecstasy and focus into trance. Practitioners describe the sensation as “hearing the body think.” Though once dismissed as hedonistic excess, the practice has become central to the training of intelligence officers and spiritual envoys. By mastering their sensory loops, Xanathic adherents claim to access precognitive visions and enhanced empathic control. The Ministry quietly funds such procedures, noting their success in diplomatic negotiation and magical containment.
Xanathic Alterations translate pain into ecstasy and focus into trance. Practitioners claim to access precognitive visions by “hearing the body think.” (Credit: Kenomitian)
Masks, Head-Dressings, and Display Systems
Appearance completes the transformation. Every official, from provincial envoy to Partzufim governor, is required to wear ceremonial head-dressings and masks—devices that double as communicative networks and defensive wards.
Foremost among them is the Ercap Data Veil, an intricate mesh of bio-filaments resembling golden spider silk. Linked directly to the wearer’s Noosphere, it permits simultaneous access to thousands of timelines, providing instantaneous updates on political and magical events. The veil pulses with faint electric light, a visible sign of the wearer’s divine bandwidth.
Complementing the veil, the Fenestra Perception Mask integrates sensory tendrils that feed live magical data into the optic and auditory nerves. Officials equipped with it can perceive invisible entities, trace mana currents, and identify lies through micro-vibrations in the air. In Termagant’s high councils, such perception is both armor and etiquette.
Finally, the Cxaxite Stage Mask, derived from the Cult of the Cave, blends necromantic engineering with state theater. Crafted from organic machinery, each mask expresses a mood—sorrow, wrath, serenity—believed to influence the user’s magical tone. Within the legal system, where necromancy is permitted under strict inheritance codes, these masks function as both focus and face, uniting the living and the dead in administrative duty.
The Ercap Data Veil links the wearer to the Noosphere, permitting simultaneous access to thousands of timelines—a visible sign of divine bandwidth (Credit: Kenomitian)
The Synthesis of Magic and Technology
What unites all these modifications is the Termaganti conviction that science and sorcery are continuous substances. Laboratories double as temples; surgeons serve as priest-technicians. The state’s technomancers refer to their creations as biocircuitry, a living logic that channels both current and incantation. This synthesis reaches its pinnacle in the Noospheric Network, a distributed consciousness formed by linking modified officials through their head-dressings. Information flows telepathically between ministries, encrypted by ritual chants. Decisions are made collectively, instantaneously, and without debate—a technocratic chorus guided by divine signal.
The system’s proponents hail it as the triumph of enlightened order. Critics, though rare and short-lived, warn that it erases individuality beneath layers of biological bureaucracy.
Consequences and Continuity
Since the publication of the new catalog, clinics across Epithymia report a surge in elective transformations. Waitlists for certified pheno-engineers stretch months ahead, while black-market bioware from unlicensed cults floods the underground bazaars. Rumors persist of counterfeit symbionts that whisper to their hosts or rewrite their DNA to mimic forbidden castes.
Yet the Ministry remains unmoved. In official statements, it reiterates that bodily perfection is the foundation of civic virtue. “Every Termaganti woman is an instrument of the State,” declared the Graphielim in their latest address. “Her design must reflect the divine geometry of power.”
For the outer colonies watching from afar, Termagant’s golden officials stand as both marvel and warning—a society where the line between being and artifact has dissolved into biotechnical splendor.
The Body as Empire
The Golden Skin of Power is more than a fashion report; it is a revelation of ideology. By binding flesh to faith and circuitry, the United Provinces of Termagant have literalized their philosophy: that governance is anatomy, and obedience is encoded in muscle fiber.
Each augmented official becomes a node in the living machine of state—a radiant, self-repairing embodiment of authority.
