# Abstract
Spinal barbworms (name not final) are a psychic sea slug-esc antag which focuses on a gameplay loop of taking control of hosts, using the hosts to help consume other players, then discarding said host and proceeding to a new one. While in a host, you do not have direct control of the host by default, instead you control them by telling them what to do following mindhack rules. By having indirect control it both makes antagonism active for both the victim and the host, and it raises opportunities for both sides to roleplay (both in what is ordered, and how that order is acted out). The barbworm also has various abiilities, both passive and active, and both default and unlockable, which enchance worm and host. These aim to help make the hosts actions more active. Since this antagonist is focused heavily on talking, it is intended to be roleplay only.

# Goals
1. Make it fun to both be a host and the worm, neither side should feel bored or miserable.
2. It should be undesirable to be a host long term, being a host should reduce your longevity and the drawbacks over time, this is mostly to discourage people baiting worms to do antag stuff.
3. Heavily encouraging inhabiting multiple people, both to reduce potental meta aspects, and to increase variety in gameplay.
4. The barbworm should be both incredibly slippery, and very vulnerable. Due to the worm being able to infect new hosts fairly easily, it should be equally easy to identify and remove the worm from the host.

# Non-Goals
1. Overly complex rules, this antagonist relies heavily on people acting in good faith. While stuff like the mindhack effect acting briefly after death could be fun, it would only add complications to following the rules thus negatively effecting both administration and the playerbase.
2. The barbworm being too murdery, obviously you want to add some spice to the round but still, this thing probably shouldn't heavily incentivize a station wipe. This will probably be achieved by keeping the upgrades relatively light and obtainable.
3. The worm being cute, roleplay players wouldn't even need to be infected to serve the worms evil schemes.
4. Bad faith actors being able to heavily ruin a round, it should be pretty easy to leave one, get to a safe space, and ahelp if someone is not following the rules.

# Content
Barbworms while not in a host will have a 3-5 minute long status effect started (10ish minutes when spawned to give some more time time). This will tick down, when it reaches zero the barbworm dies. This is to add urgency to getting into a host, lore wise this is due to the worm needing a host for higher level thinking. While in worm form you can enter disposal pipes to get around the station. Upon entering a host the effect will tick back up, causing the status effect to eventually disappear when returning to its initial time. While in a host neural points (name also not final) will tick up over time, these are analagous to vampire's blood or changeling's DNA. Brain damage in the host will also tick up over time. Both brain damage and point generation will ramp up over time, this both increases the rewards and drawbacks of staying in a host for greater amounts of time. Eventually the brain damage will become too much and it'll be all but required to leave (probably ~15-20 minutes without mannitol, 20-25ish with, in this timeframe generating 10ish without, 15ish with). Leaving a host by default will stun them for ~30 seconds.

While in host form, you can immediately be removed from the host through any type of severe shocking (baton/taser hits, defibs, probably no multitool special attack). Upon forceful removal from the host you will be stunned for 1-3 seconds, . As a worm, you are physically weak (35ish hp), but faster then a normal human and hard to hit with projectiles. You are also unable to pickup any objects on account of you being a worm, and can only passively regenerate health while on a host. In worm form, any person can be consumed through a consume ability, through a 15 second action bar cancellable upon either worm or victim movement, netting 10ish points. You can also mount anyone alive to make them a host with a 10 second action bar. Oh also any message you type to your host will show up over their head as well as in the sidebar. These points are used for the abilities below. The host individually has an ability to talk to the worm psychically as well.

## Abilities
### Universal (available in both host and worm form)
#### Active
> Name: Upgrade
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 0
Description: Accesses the upgrade menu to purchase upgrades

> Name: Psychic Stun
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 2 minutes?
Description: After a 5 second action bar (where the person is frozen) they are stunned for ~25 seconds, they can't speak during any of this. This action bar is cancelled upon movement or damage while in worm form, but not while in host form. Cooldown is halved while in worm form, it can be used while stunned.

> Name: Optical Attack
Cost to use: 5
Cost to purchase: 10
Cooldown: 5 minutes?
Description: Uses psychically directed beams to do a light glare style attack on everyone in visual range (and probably within 6 or so tiles as well), stunning those without any flash protection for 15 seconds.

> Name: Neural Hardening
Cost to use: 4
Cost to purchase: 6
Cooldown: 3 minutes?
Description: Immunity from stuns and infinite stamina regeneration for 5 seconds,also prevents shocks from removing you from your body for the same duration. Useful for avoiding stuns/checks.

> Name: Psionic Crush
Cost to use: 4
Cost to purchase: 8
Cooldown: 3 minutes?
Description: Just the wraiths command ability, mostly to help the worm provide support in combat.

#### Passive

> Name: Stamina Enchancement
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 5
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Something something increases lactic acid breakdown, gives you ~+10 stam regen in both worm and host form.

### Worm (only available in worm form)
#### Active

> Name: Consume
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 4 minutes?
Description: Consumes the nervous system of any alive or non-rotting person generating 10 neural points. Subject needs to not have a mask for this to work, action takes 20 seconds to complete making it tricky to perform on non-dead subjects.

> Name: Mount
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 1 minute?
Description: Mounts on the back of any alive person, takes 10 seconds to do so. This does not work on changeling and arcfiends (lore reasons), alongside mindhacked people and people without a client for over a minute (contingency to prevent people from logging out to avoid being wormed).

#### Passive
> Name: Camoflauge
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 10
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Just gives you chameleon + cloak of darkness

> Name: Enchanced Vision
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 5
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Basically the vampire vision upgrade, works while in the host but only the worm has the extended view.
### Host (only applicable in host form)
#### Active
> Name: Inject Meth
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 3 minutes?
Description: Injects the user with like 15u of meth.

> Name: Exit
Cost to use: 0
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 0
Description: Exits the host bringing you to worm form. Still applies the default few second stun.

> Name: Take Control
Cost to use: 0/5
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: 1/5 minutes
Description: Opens a menu (maybe one of the circular ones speechPro uses) that allows you to either take control of their mouth, or their entire body. Taking control of their mouth opens a speechbox, the host is unable to speak while this is active and anything you say the host will say. Taking control of their body lets you control your host actively for 30 seconds.

> Name: Adrenal Overcharge
Cost to use: 4
Cost to purchase: 8
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Description: Gives the host juggernaut.

#### Passive
> Name: Jump
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: Default
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Upon leaving a host, forcefully or otherwise, you jump a few tiles away from the host. This helps you survive any attack.

> Name: Host Madness
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 15
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Upon leaving a host, instead of the 30 second stun they are now given a dosage of instantly acting Rajaijah lasting roughly 30 seconds, the worm is not targeted by this rage.

> Name: Regeneration Overclocking
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 10
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Passively injects the host with omnizine.

> Name: Host Compatibility
Cost to use: N/A
Cost to purchase: 10
Cooldown: N/A
Description: Slows down both brain damage and neural point ramp up by ~%50, useful for people who want to take things more slow.

## Alternatives
Both barbworm and neural points I'm not entirely set on, neural points is kind of clunky, suggestions very welcome here. Also shocking only being "severe" ones is arbitrary, making it to where any shock would do it would both increase the potiental of crew to fight back, and make it more clear where the threshold lies. This will probably make it too easy to make the worm vulnerable though. I'm also not deadset on this antagonist being roleplay only, I think it'd likely work nicely on that but I could easily be wrong about that.

## Potiental Changes
If it's found that shocking removal is too easy or hard to remove the threshold can be changed, with it potientally requiring multiple or lower magnitude shocks. If people worm farming to become antags is too much of a problem, long term drawbacks could be added (though I doubt this would help too much if that's the case tbh). Worms being too murdery/less murdery is fixable by changing the in host and consumption generation/duration. I saw it suggested that worms could name themselves, I don't think this would fit thematically with what I want (aka weird alien animals whose only meaning/sentience is defined by parasitism) but this could enchance roleplay.

Currently mind protection has no effect on the worms. This is mostly because secoffs have an easy time removing worms, therefore being in a position that is surrounded by secoffs is risky. An idea floated that I liked was mind protection implants will boot out worms after a few minutes unless removed.