Ardereignusa Homoluminus
 

These photographs are dedicated to the late Special Agents
C.J. McNeal,  A. "Zoidman" Welty, and Dr. K. Herman, PhD,
who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.
 
 

          
Close-up frontal views during an attack
 
 
 
 

                       
Side view of above      Image from mid-attack     Moments before explosion
 
 
 
 
 

      
Resurrection of an Imp                  Another resurrection
 
 
 

Running

    Ardereignusa Homoluminus is the only identified member of the Vitaadducerea family of organisms, which is the classification for order Portal of creatures that use an attack mechanism employing one pulse-like explosion during each attack, and is observed to bring other Portal life forms that suffered a violent death back to life and apparrent full health. The common name for Ardereignusa Homoluminus is Arch Vile.

Ardereignusa Homoluminus exibits well documented behavior and abilities that are not understood by the scientific community. The two things that characterize Ardereignusa Homoluminus are its attack method, and its resurrection of other Portal creatures that have perished.

During its attack, it stops moving in whatever location it happens to be and begins a series of choreographed-looking movements, during which energy begins to eminate from and around it. Similar energy begins to form around the intended target of the attack, but not to the same intensity as the energy that is focusing around Homoluminus. The portion of this energy that is within the visible light range is yellowish colored, and the movements of the creature plus this light emination results in a fabulous visual display. The energy becomes more localized as the movements continue, and is focused into an area in front of Homoluminus, literally between its hands, and the smooth movement continues as Homoluminus brings it close to its body, bending over and hugging it close as the energy continues to focus. Then after a split second of the energy level stabilizing, Homoluminus appears to look at its target, and in the next instant the target experiences the attack. The attack is a massive impact of energy that includes heat, various spectra of radiation, and a shockwave that not only physically throws the victim up into the air and in a direction away from Homoluminus but causes internal damage to the victim. Organisms positioned within two meters of the victim can also take damage, although it is a fraction as much as the target does. The attack does not occur if, when Homoluminus looks up for the intended victim, the victim has moved out of Homoluminus' visual range.

There are a few hypotheses regarding how this energy attack works, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this report. Reports on the various hypotheses will be released by their respective scientists.

The ability of Homoluminus to resurrect violently-killed Portal organisms has no explanation by the scientific community. It appears that no matter how severe the physical damage to the Portal-organism corpse is, Homoluminus can cause it to become live and healthy within a matter of seconds. Homoluminus approaches the targeted corpse and stands in close proxemity to it, assumes an erect position with its head back and hands forward, begins to eminate energy in a number of spectral frequencies, and then after a few seconds of this, the corpse it is targeting is lifted into it's normal standing position. As the corpse is lifted, its body becomes fully whole and undamaged, and the formerly-dead organism comes to life once it is standing. The lifting of the corpse has been observed to visually resemble how the organism died, just in reverse. The actual resurrection takes less than a second, it is Homoluminus' building up of energy beforehand that takes a few seconds.

Homoluminus was encountered more frequently by the expedition team than they were during the Portal Invasion. There were a total of seventeen seperate Homoluminus encounters during the expedition. In each case, Homoluminus was in the company of a variety of other Portal organisms, and only in three cases were two Homoluminus present in close proxemity of one another. Observation of Homoluminus without the subject(s) quickly becoming aware of the team's presence proved impossible, therefore, very little observation of Homoluminus' natural (non-aggressive) behavior could be documented by the team.

More than half of the Science Team in the expedition believe that Homoluminus both understands and speaks at least two human languages. They report that it laughs at times, makes remarks in plain English on occasion, and when it dies it says "That's all right!". Those who believe it speaks include one Hungarian-born scientist who insists he heard it say a Hungarian language insult,"Anyád", after he hit one with a shotgun blast.

Despite relatively frequent encounters with Homoluminus during the expedition, virtually no new scientific data was  gathered relative to Homoluminus, the exception being the language suspicion outlined above. Homoluminus was too watchful and had too dangerous an attack for it to be observed for a prolonged period of time.