Plodex

Origins[]

Eons ago, the Plodex consumed all of their planet's natural resources and developed the world into a sprawling, overpopulated ecumenopolis. Their only hope to survive was through expansion. The Plodex began systematically colonizing other worlds, conquering any indigenous life forms and ultimately reshaping the world to satisfy their needs.^{[citation needed]}

Over the span of centuries, the Plodex took control of countless planets, and their strength and number increased exponentially. Once a world had been harvested for all of its natural resources, the Plodex simply abandoned the planet and moved on to the next.^{[citation needed]}

Downfall[]

As their numbers grew, the Plodex developed great leaps in the science of eugenics and genetic manipulation. They engineered their offspring to adapt to any environment and seeded thousands of worlds with eggs carrying their genetic markers.^{[citation needed]}

With time more and more Plodex warriors returned to their homeworld and brought with them the mores and cultures of a multitude of different species, shattering their sense of unity and their sense of purpose. Chaos ensued and civil war followed soon after, the Plodex destroyed themselves and their homeworld.^[1]

On Earth[]

Some forty-thousand years ago, a Plodex bio-ship entered the Sol system in the Milky Way galaxy. Having discovered the planet Earth, it intended on creating a nest in one of Earth's temperate zones so as to propagate the Plodex race even further.^{[citation needed]}

However, one of the star drives on the colony ship malfunctioned and it crashed into the frozen wastelands of the North Pole. Fitted with the ability to self-replicate its own internal systems, the ship began growing, insinuating itself into the firmament until it was truly one with its environment.^{[citation needed]}

Although damaged, the Plodex bio-ship continued to serve its primary function. It emitted a biological summons across the land, beckoning the world’s various life forms to heed its call. The ship reasoned that whatever succeeded in surviving the journey represented the planet's dominant life form and was thus suited for genetic imprinting. Only one being managed to answer the Plodex beacon. An outcast from his human tribe, he instinctively found himself drawn north towards the partially buried Plodex ship.^{[citation needed]}

Once inside the vessel, the ship's bio-mechanisms captured the outcast and used him as a living guinea pig for its experiments. The ship stripped away his skin and internal organs, slowly re-growing them in order to create a genetically perfect specimen. The harrowing experience ultimately drove the outcast mad, and he spent centuries as a prisoner of the Plodex's experiments. In time, he regained his sanity and took control of the ship renaming himself the Master of the World.^{[citation needed]}

When the Plodex ship first began experimenting on the Master, it likewise continued its goal of planetary conquest. The ship launched ten-thousand eggs across the globe, fertilizing the Earth with its offspring. However, the great Ice Age swept across the planet, destroying nearly all of the eggs. One egg managed to survive and drifted along the bottom of the ocean until it finally came to rest in a bed of silt off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.^{[citation needed]}

Millennia passed until one evening, a sea captain named Thomas Smallwood, having been thrown from the deck of his ship by a terrible storm, discovered a glowing green Plodex egg on the ocean floor. He pulled the egg free and used it as a flotation device to buoy himself back to the surface.^{[citation needed]}

Bringing the egg home with him, he showed it to his wife, Gladys. Gladys handled the egg and the tiny Plodex life form inside genetically imprinted itself upon her. When it finally hatched, it adopted a humanoid shape albeit with various aquatic features. Ignorant of the being's alien origins, the Smallwoods took the infant as one of their own and named her Marrina.^{[citation needed]}

When Marrina was eighteen-years-old, she met James MacDonald Hudson, the leader of Canada's premier superhero team, Alpha Flight. Hudson (unaware of Marrina's true heritage) invited her to join the Canadian defense department's junior program, Beta Flight. She trained with Beta Flight for four months, honing her powers until she was ready to join the ranks of Alpha Flight.^{[citation needed]}

Shortly after her mission with the team, Marrina's Plodex instincts took a hold of her. She viciously lashed out at her teammate Puck, nearly disemboweling him. Horrified by her savage behavior, Marrina dove into the sea and instinctively swam towards the North Pole. She knew that the secret of her past lied within the frozen planes, and before long she found the ancient alien spacecraft.^{[citation needed]}

The Master of the World, commanding the craft, captured Marrina and instructed her on the history of the Plodex. He further revealed that another alien egg had survived the centuries. The second egg took the form of a nightmarish sea creature and began attacking innocent civilians near Lake Ontario. Marrina eventually reunited with her Plodex kin, and the two became mates, though she eventually destroyed him.^{[citation needed]}

Return[]

Alpha Flight eventually discovered a large number of Plodex eggs still intact and that the Plodex Homeworld had repaired itself in the last thousand years, the original members of Alpha Flight decided to bring the eggs to their homeworld to give the Plodex a new opportunity to try again.^[2]

• Genetic Mimicry: Through genetic engineering the Plodex became a formless race of unsequenced genetic matter who're able to metamorphically assimilate and become enhanced by the D.N.A structure of other species. While lacking any humanoid features they are able to adjust their own physiology in order to achieve enough motor-function to enable the construction and usage of incredibly advanced technologies. Using this Genetic Access the race is capable of shapeshifting at a genetic level, possibly on a biomolecular level to chimerically bond any and all assimilated organic material. Spontaneously mutating any number of odd biophysical abilities depending on how and in what way their genetic code is automatically evolved, as was the case with Ms. Smallwood when her own Plodex gene programming became resurgent.

Superior to Earth's with warp driven starships and genetic engineering

• Marrina's Mate
• Marrina
• Mar

• The concept of the Plodex was created by writer/artist John Byrne.