Day 482

For

"One half of the strange biological chain found on forested Skaldin II, the "Reactor Bug" is a huge herbivorous insect being that drags around a stable Microfusion Vortex on it's back. The vortex is sustained by the Reactor Bug's steady diet of TK-494, which Skaldin is extremely rich in. The Reactor Bug itself is extremely simple, with a cattle-like intellect and little understanding of the sheer immense power it carts around with it everywhere.

The creatures that do understand the potential of the reactor bug are the pure energy entities, the Skalds. The Skalds have a strange parasitic relationship with Reactor Bugs - when two Skalds wish to reproduce, they dive together into the vortex of a Reactor Bug and are consumed by it. This makes the Reactor Bug extremely ill until, next year, it's vortex explodes dramatically, releasing several dozen new Skalds into the atmosphere.

As the Skalds became a spacefaring race, they began tapping the reactor bugs for use as power sources. In warfare, they arm and armour reactor bugs and send them into conflict - the creatures are terrifying because their weapons have unlimited power supplies, and they are capable of burning their vortexes an unstable red that releases vast amounts of lethal radiation."