Projémon: The Scope Creep

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The Scope Creep (Reperet scopo) is a parasite that causes Projects to collapse under their own weight

Evolution and Taxonomy

The Scope Creep shares a common ancestor with the Shifting Goalposts (Reperet finis-cursore); both of these creatures have a hallucinogen that targets the Project's perceptions. Where the Shifting Goalposts confuses the sense of direction (resulting in arriving at its perceived goal but not its actual goal), the Scope Creep overloads the Project's end product instincts.

Biology and Defence

An uninfected Project's drive to build an ‘end product' is usually curtailed to produce the most attractive result while managing not to completely exhaust the Project's available resources. When infected with Scope Creep, the Project is driven to create an end product beyond its means. These additions are seen as absolutely necessary even if they have no direct impact on its original goal. Having proven deadly to its ancestors, the Projects of today have a star-fish like defence - breaking off infected parts to grow into Projects of their own thanks to a clear barrier that separates the in-Scope from the out-of-Scope.

Imported comments

1. [pellicle, 2013-09-12 21:43:45] beautiful work :-)

2. [pellicle, 2013-09-12 21:53:34]I think its also important to mention two additional factors:

   1. as with any good parasite it is important to not kill the host too rapidly, or the parasite may die with the host. It is critical to leave a limping and infected host around long enough to transfer the parasite to other potential hosts.
   2. and directly relating to 1 is that the vectors for infection need to be identified and some method of screening to stop transfer between healthy projects and infected projects needs to be created. A common species involved as the vector is "Rattus Administratium".(which is a sub species of "Rattus norvegicus"). So it becomes clear that isolation from the project is important.

   It is important not to under estimate the potential intellect of Rattus Administratium as these creatures are highly cunning if nothing else.

3. [Professor von Explaino, 2013-09-17 06:16:37] Excellent points, Prof Pellicle. It is a very rare Projémon that kills a project outright within the first few days of infection. Perhaps once the creature explanations are complete I should work on Inoculation Documentation to collate the methods of protecting projects in the initial stages?

   I had thought one of the most common vectors was the Rattus Illegitimi, at least that's a common description from fellow project breeders.