The Flatworm

"A parasite, fallen from its nest. Helpless and soft, with little capacity to survive on your own, you must rely on the ability of others to climb your way back home."

A member of a parasitic subspecies of slugcat, hailing from the facility grounds of Unit of Radioactive Decay. Slow, squishy, and helpless on its own, it relies on its parasitism of lizards to survive, using its bright coloration to draw the eye of the train lizards who infest their facility grounds and taking up residence in their intestines. It must still watch out for dangerous other predators, however - it is heavily reliant on its primary host's method of feeding, and cannot survive a centipede's electrocution or a vulture's beak.

Though its lineage no longer has legs of its own, the pseudo-vestigial hooks that evolved from its legs allow it to lodge itself into the digestive organs of its host. Here, it lays still, controlling the lizard's actions through chemical secretions. Any meal that the host eats, the slugcat will share - though it will always eat first, and it needs much less to feed itself for a cycle compared to its host.

When properly housed, The Flatworm has little to fear for itself - even if an attack kills its host, The Flatworm itself will survive, crawling out of its deceased host's body to seek out a new lizard. Losing a host, however, is enough of a hindrance that The Flatworm must still take measures to ensure its host's survival. Though The Flatworm cannot fully control its host, it can strongly alter its behaviors - it cannot directly command it to bite, but it can force it to become more aggressive, or imbue a strong compulsion to move in a particular direction.

Mechanically, The Flatworm takes control of lizards with tank controls, a la a significantly more fussy version of Safari Mode. You are still controlling a lizard, and though you can't make it bite on its own, you can make it go after whatever you wish. Hosts will continue to go in the last direction you pressed for several seconds after releasing the arrow key, if manually controlled, or in whatever direction their AI takes them, normally. Although you can sleep in normal shelters, monster dens will become additional shelters for you - you can manually set your host's responses to stimuli while resting, controlling how it will see things.

You can, for example, decide that your blue lizard host no longer fears red lizards, driving it into the jaws of a better host for yourself - or you can decide that your green lizard host will hunt red lizards as food, securing you great supplies for the cycles ahead. Your host has a separate food pip bar to you, that fills significantly more slowly. If you fail to fill it for too many cycles in a row, then your host will die - potentially leaving you in a very nasty situation.

You can also force hosts to display behaviours they might otherwise not show, which can interface with other creatures in interesting ways - making your red lizard host lead a pack like a yellow will be exceptionally time-consuming, and you'll have to gather your followers yourself, but it can be done.