The Hormagaunt
What do we know of the "Hormagaunt"? Considering the implications of the possibilities astonishingly little! There are two important sides on the concept of a hormagaunt. First it involves a complicated procedure which extends a persons life and tries to prevent the body from aging up to the point that the hormagaunt achieves immortality. Second they're supposed to be legendary figures living on the planet Thamber. So we have two opposing forces: a documented procedure and a legend.
Needless to argue, but from a biological standpoint the procedure of becoming a hormagaunt is extremely interesting. Although modern medical science has come a long way with curing and even eliminating all kinds of diseases, the aging process is not yet fully understood let alone have we devised a method of stopping it.
The naive reader might say "Lets go to Thamber and find out". It's really not as easy as that. Thamber is for various reasons difficult to access and hormagaunts - when actually living there - do not advert their status publicly as the process of becoming one involves some very questionable proceedings.
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- Biological Extremities, a post graduate paper by Rachael Thymms (biologist at Sea Province University, Avente)