posted 02-04-99 05:52 AM ET        

1. What happens during a mind worm attack?

2. What's the military rank within the U.N. Peacekeeping forces?

posted 02-04-99 06:23 AM ET            

Depends on which chronicle you want to base your short story on. If you choose the AFC:

1). According to the AFC, mindworms inject digestive juices into their victim, after first paralyzing/hypnotyzing them psionically.

The Beleivers have had several attacks, but none were described in detail, except for one involving a lab accident. The Believer xenobiology department is currently investigating the mindworms. Rather recently, one of the Beleivers was attacked; the mindworm didn't have enough venom to klll the Beleiver. Instead, the Native American Believer was sent on a vision quest of some sort, something like the interludes, but before we knew there were interludes, if I recall correctly. He was left with an unusual blue starburst pattern on his skin where the venom was injected.

THe PKs have suffered a massive attack on one of their bases, but the actual attack was not covered. In the clean-up after the attack several AC species of which ou are probably not familiar were discovered to have participated: the fisher species of the AC mistsquid [the mistsquid is something like a jellyfish in the air; it was created since Chiron's high gravity made me think that any type of flying creature other than a blimp-like one would be infeasible -- the fisher variaty of the misties has two longer than normal tentacles which it use as harpoons or fishing spears; they can also use them to inject venom] and the starcrawler [another land-sea reversal, the starcrawler is kinda like a terrestial starfish. They can be anywhere from .05 to .5 meters in diameter. Black, orange and brown species are known to exist -- could be others.] Lastly, Fjorxc created a mindworm attack on a Hive encampment. IIRC, he didn't really describe the attack itself, just its aftermath.

2) In the AFC, the PK military is called the Black Watch. All Earth-"army-like" jobs fall under this. As separate branches under the Black Watch are the navy [The Blue Watch] and the air/space force [The Gold Watch.]

For Black/Gold Watch officers, the tiering goes up from:
sub-lieutenant --> lieutentant --> lieutenant major --> major --> lieutenent colonel --> colonel --> general ranks;
For Blue Watch officers, the tiering goes up from:
sub-lieutenant --> lieutenant --> lieutenent subcommander --> subcommander --> commander --> captain --> admiral ranks.

THe PK chief of the Black WAtch [currently Tyler Anderson] has also been called "commander" in the past, even though he is actually a colonel [Maybe I'll change his title to commandant].