Monster Monday: Basilisk Pattern

A Basilisk Pattern is a viral, memetic, monster that will stop at nothing to consume all of society, the world, and all planes of existence.

A Basilisk Pattern is spread through anything that is sentient and has the ability to interpret visual data. When first observed the Pattern transmits data subconsciously to the brain of the observer that begins to "reprogram" their habits and thoughts. These initial changes are quite positive: improving healthy habits of eating well, sleeping regularly, and practicing good fitness. The Basilisk Pattern does want another one of its mindslave to be healthy enough to spread the Pattern as far and wide as possible. 

At the same time this occurs, the observer will begin to subtly spread the Pattern to relatives and close friends. The observer also needs to observe the Pattern at least once a day to keep up the changes to their thought patterns. Going without seeing the Basilisk Pattern for a day allows the observer some sense of their old self and a sense of the wrongness of their new actions, but the next day they are likely to look for other infected to try and seek the Pattern. If the cycle can be broken for a week, the observer will be cured of the new thought cycles, until they accidentally stumble upon the Pattern again. 

As the Basilisk Pattern spreads to whole towns, the fervor and routines focusing on the Pattern begin to manifest in the form of a religion. Organized worship of the Pattern allows for easier spread through rituals, services, and proselytizing. These exhibit themselves in different ways according to the nature of the Pattern itself.

At some point, when reaching another, larger, critical mass of infected, the Basilisk Pattern will begin to manifest as physical beings that have been brought into existence by the worship and repeated recreation of the symbol of the Pattern. 

The Pattern is but a catalyst, a symbolic representation, of what the Basilisk Pattern represents. At this point competing ideologies of entire blind societies oppose the nations worshiping the Pattern. While the Pattern was gaining power those who were blind, or became blind, noticed the stark changes that were occurring in their relatives and friends and society in general. They sought to oppose it when they could.

Basilisk Patterns supposedly can take on many different manifestations in what they look like. For obvious reasons I will not be recreating or displaying them here.