In recent centuries, however, something seems to have been corrupted in the regeneration process, and Urien's latest incarnations have each borne a vestigial part of the one before. So it is that Urien is now a horrific sight, his compound spines sprouting from his back in baroque profusion and his leering face tied onto his skull with cords of leathery flesh. Rakarth boasts many sets of limbs; some stripped, silvered and re-strung as fully functional appendages, some atrophied and disturbing, pushing out of his many-spined sump to beckon weakly at those nearby.
—Warhammer 40,000: Codex - Dark Eldar (5th ed)
Jack Harkness: Watch TV. Chill.
Owen Harper: Jack, I'm dead. I'm permanently chilled. You know, you get to live forever. I get to die forever. It's funny, that.
The first time they ate me wasn't half as jarring as what immediately followed. The black jelly has some mysterious healing effect. Again and again they feed on me, and every time I wake up without any sign of injury. It's not perfect, however. Every time it heals me, more mistakes appear. For one thing, my hair is falling out. There's also a new finger on my right hand, and some teeth growing out of my shoulder. The others are afraid of me; I can't say that I blame them.
The poor fools don't realize that they'll become like me soon.
These men of affluence obsess over immortality and afterlife access. Their coin buys potent rituals: something goes horribly right; something goes wonderfully wrong. A bizarre accident - the spark of life hibernates within their mummified husks. Time passes, first in years, then in decades. Their souls rebuild - spirits ever-living, flesh ever-dead. They open their shrivelled eyes: oh, the shock; oh, the best-laid plans. They stumble from their tombs like emerging cicadas who find they have no wings...
—The Buzzing, The Secret World
