CIA File: Temporal Mauraders

Past Threats

Entry: The Wirrin

Planet of Origin: The Gamma Epsilon system in the Andromeda Galaxy. Description: Adult Wirrin are large, wasplike insectoid beings, possessing powerful mandibles and deadly pair of pincer-like ovipositors at the terminus of their abdomens. Wirrin queens can be up to 8-feet in length. The larvae are stout and wormlike, with mottled, green flesh. Special Abilities/Skills: The Wirrin possess a highly ordered hive-mind, and their larvae not only absorb other life forms for sustenence, but also absorb and utilize the intelligence and knowledge of the absorbed. Sapient beings abbsorbed by the Wirrin don't truly die, but instead become a part of the unified hive-mind, adding to the knowledge, experience, and intelligence of the whole. Wirrin possess a unique breathing apparatus that allows them to recycle waste-gasses into useful oxygen. That, coupled with their ability to withstand severe temperature extremes allow the Wirrin to survive indefinately within the vaccuum of deep space. Weaponry: The Wirrin use their pincers, mandibles, and powerful legs in combat. They possess incredible strength, and their exoskeletons are resistant to most types of sidearms. Weaknesses: Wirrin are extremely dangerous, and are highly resistant to small-arms of most types. The only real vulnerability the Wirrin seem to possess is their sensitivity to high-voltage electrical shock.

Summary: The story of the Wirrin isn't a tale of a malevolent species bent on destruction or conquest, but rather a sad tale of natural selection and near-genocide. The Wirrin once lived in the Andromeda Gamma Epsilon System, and lived in relative peace, using cattle-like mammals to reproduce (Wirrin reproduce by laying their eggs in living hosts. Their larvae can also absorb others into their collective by touch). The Wirrin possessed a highly-developed collective hive-mind, with each Wirrin acting almost as a single-cell in a large multi-cellular organisim. Unfortunately, the peace of Wirrin life was forever shattered when the Human Empire expanded to Andromeda. Finding the Wirrin breeding colonies in Gamma Epsilon, the humans attacked, nearly wiping out the entire Wirrin race. Vowing revenge, at least one Wirrin Queen managed to escape the genocide, and eventually found its way back to the Sol system in Mutter's Spiral, where it came upon the Space Ark, Terra Nova, where a select group of humans slumbered in suspended animation. There, she was fatally injured by the station's interior defenses, but she still managed to lay her eggs inside one of the sleeping colonists, Dune. Dune was absorbed into the Wirrin collective-mind, making the insectoid creatures technilogically advanced in one fell swoop. Later still, the commander of the Ark, Noah, was absorbed as well. The Wirrin swarm was slowed in its attempts to absorb all of the humans by the intervention of the 4th Doctor. However, the ultimate defeat of the swarm was caused by Noah himself, who fought off the Wirrin instincts and took the swarm into space aboard the Ark's space-capsule, where the vessel soon self-destructed. While the Wirrin seem to be extinct, it is possible that other Queens have escaped to parts unknown, waiting for an opportunity to re-establish themselves as a race. It is unfortunate that the human colonists opted to attack and kill the Wirrin as opposed to approaching them in peace, and thereby gaining a potential ally at best, or a segregated co-existence at worst, since the Wirrin had no designs on conquest. This serves as a cautionary tale of the most tragic type of first-contact.

Threat Level: Low