2014/03/13 - [DMFA #1468] The Fun Keeps Going

[ChaosMageX]

Another possibility--brain in a jar mounted on top of 3-4 segments of her tail.  She could store her brain inside her body most of the time (either her chest or her hips look large enough), then remove it and part of her tail for mobile safekeeping when her body's liable to be damaged.

Yeah, that is a possibility, although the 100 feet range would basically limit her body's mobility to within an area of a small office building at the largest.  However, if she prepared this building in advance with the ability to seal Kria inside, and stored her brain case inside a safe somewhere in the building prior to the battle, this could work to her advantage.  However, this safe would have to be quite strong and secure in case any stray magic blasts that miss her body in combat end up striking it instead.

You missed the "mobile" part.  It could be behind a couch in the room right now, and follow after her body if there was a chase...

Tea? I thought it was kook-aid.

Yeah, in theory she could make her brain case mobile by attaching it to a detached segment of her tail, but again that would also make it a lot more vulnerable.  Even if the brain case is made out of some super strong, magically reinforced material, that doesn't change the challenge of coordinating its movements, especially when her body is in a combat situation.  If the brain case has its own set of senses, Mehlata would have to deal with the overload from two different sensory sources, one of which is entrenched in fighting.  If it doesn't have its own senses, she'd still have to worry about blindly navigating it safely away from the fray her body is in, which is just as challenging, if not more so.

In the end, I was just suggesting what I think would be a more sensible solution, which is to hide her brain case away in a secure location, even if that meant limiting how far away her body could travel from it, because she wouldn't have to divide her concentration between her body and her brain case, especially during combat, where any kind of distraction can be a liability.

There's no reason she couldn't do both, however.  If the rest of her body gets torched, the portion of her tail that's with her brain case could still grant her some mobility away from wherever it's stored, but this would ultimately be futile unless Undead really can have spare body parts or entirely new replacement bodies.

EDIT: After all, 100 feet might seem limiting, but in a single floor building that would give her about 10000π ≈ 31415.92653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307 square feet to work with.
Sorry, I just had to add this after realizing what day it is.

[Tuyu]

Even if the brain case is made out of some super strong, magically reinforced material, that doesn't change the challenge of coordinating its movements, especially when her body is in a combat situation.  If the brain case has its own set of senses, Mehlata would have to deal with the overload from two different sensory sources, one of which is entrenched in fighting.

She had snakes for hair. Probably not as much a problem for her as for another type of creature.

[ChaosMageX]

Even if the brain case is made out of some super strong, magically reinforced material, that doesn't change the challenge of coordinating its movements, especially when her body is in a combat situation.  If the brain case has its own set of senses, Mehlata would have to deal with the overload from two different sensory sources, one of which is entrenched in fighting.

She had snakes for hair. Probably not as much a problem for her as for another type of creature.

That is actually a rather interesting point.  Until now I had considered the hair snakes in Mythos with them to have their own semi-independent minds, their behavior influenced by subconscious cues from the main mind, but otherwise acting on their own, sort of like Cubi wing tentacle heads.

However, if Mehlata has the ability to take complete control of any of her hair snakes and gain access to their senses, not only would she be used to handling excess sensory input and properly dividing her concentration between them, but she'd also essentially have spare heads.

Since two of her hair snake heads appeared to be missing from the beginning, at least one of them could be hidden in her chest cavity, which she's now using to get sensory data and speak.  If her brain case isn't also inside her chest, the other missing snake head could be with it and could be used to guide it safely out of range of the battle but still keep it within the Undead modularity range.  Very clever indeed.