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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pbartender" data-source="post: 5082490" data-attributes="member: 7533">Rather than Kroenen or the steampunk Cylon, I was thinking something a little more similar to the way <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicrocoelium_dendriticum" target="_blank">lancet liver flukes</a> take control over ants. But instead imagine a villager in place of the ant, and a mean little clockwork creature in place of the lancet fluke.Say the clockwork parasite is small -- maybe the size of a large bug, like a cockroach.  It crawls up the nose of a living (non-clockwork) victim, roots around it the brain a bit, and then takes control of the body.   After a while, when the body starts getting too far gone to be useful, the clockwork parasite vacates its host, and looks for a new one.To all outward appearances, it would seem an unusual and deadly plague, but with no obvious sign of the clockwork culprit...  First the victims suffer chronic bloody noses, then terrible headaches and bouts of amnesia, finally they lose their appetites and waste away as they seemingly become leprous and die.If there is only one of these parasites around, it becomes that much more mysterious (and gives a vital clue as to the culprit), since eventually someone is bound to notice that only one person at a time contracts the "illness".</blockquote>