I don't know if this is character, setting, or plot, but anyway, my Aliens vs, Bodysnatchers story that I'm working on has a hole: the Bodysnatcher life cycle. It may not be explained in detail in the text, but I need to know all about it to write things well. Here's the way things work. People are having their bodies taken over by an alien... intelligence is too strong a word, because snatchers (called Occupants) are dumb. They weren't really evolved to deal with intelligent beings, but they ended up here by (to be announced later). The Occupants are electrical in nature. It's about as scientific as Star Trek, so bear with me. If the host is injured, sick, or otherwise unsuitable, they've got the ability to jump to another nearby host. Tentatively, I'm putting this ability as limited to about 5 meters or so. The occupied organism suffers from progressive brain damage as the Occupancy goes on. This electrical jumping ability is the center point of the plot, so it's got to stay. Generally they would infect herd animals and cause the infected individuals to stick with the herd while gorging themselves. At such time as the host is well and truly fattened, it returns to the Hive, where the Queen lays eggs in it, which hatch and feed their way out of the living organism like those parasitic wasps, and emerge as intelligent praying mantis beasties that grow to the size of a small car and serve as workers, warriors, and all the other things that an insectoid hive needs. What I'm stuck on is how the victims get Occupied in the first place. So far the only idea I've had is the Queen growing out sort of antennae that stick out through the soil and "transmit" Occupants to passing victims, but that wouldn't really work on Earth, the CDC would find the sources too quickly and the story would be over. I'm not big on the idea of "face-huggers", although I suppose it's possible that there could be something like that. Any ideas?
If the queen is insectoid in nature could the first hosts be insects too? Mosquitos, fleas? They're infected (using the queen's energy) with infant occupants as they pass within range of where the queen's holed up and transmit only through a bite at first. Gaining the ability to 'body hop' as they mature?
Read something close to this once, what they did is have the queen nest in an a part of the world that's cut off from the rest. By the time word got out that there even was an infection, the entire country was boned. You're in Japan, ever heard of HunterXHunter? Its one of the main story arcs.
I know the name, but nothing about it. Not into manga at all, and I only watch the occasional anime series, but I'll see if I can take a look for that one.
