Festerruman Sachiel
The Warmaster
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a revolting creature for the Sith Order
- Image Credit: Mike Franchina
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: The Pact of Apophis
- Name: The Pestilent Ones
- Designation: Semi-sentient
- Origins: The Pact of Apophis
- Average Lifespan: 6-months to 1 year
- Estimated Population: Inter-Planetary
- Description:
When the Warmaster attempted to improve the biological endurance of his troops through Sith Alchemy, he did not get what he wished. Instead, he was gifted by the horrific Sithspawn known as the Pestilent Ones. These creatures resemble mutated, oversized flies, their barely human bodies dripping with putrid ichor. Their six-legged frames brim with bloated growths, festering sores, and parasitic boils, constantly oozing diseased filth. They emit a stench of rot so potent it makes the air itself a weapon.
Many of them have their vestigial limbs replaced with new cancerous growths that can serve as weapons. One such weapon is the Larval Spitter, taking the form of a bone tube erupting from their flesh. It fires clusters of wriggling, parasitic larvae with sharpened boneheads capable of penetrating all but the heaviest infantry armor. These larvae burrow into the flesh of their victims, eating through muscle and bone until reaching the warm and wet stomach of their host, where they will lay eggs in the still-living host. Should these hosts find themselves unable to be put out of their misery, they will soon witness the miracle of parenthood as thousands of Pestilent Young erupt from their flesh to consume them alive.
Other Pestilent Ones will be gifted instead with their limbs swelling to massive bloated fists. These grotesque appendages are capable of delivering crushing blows that can even damage vehicles. On impact, they release bursts of highly acidic virulent slime and festering pus that can eat through heavy armor and flesh.
- Breathes: All Types. This creature does not seem to require air to survive.
- Average Height of Adults: N/A
- Average Length of Adults: 3 meters
- Skin color: Pale White or Putrid Yellow
- Hair color: Disgustingly hairless. All is laid bare.
- Distinctions: Every single Pestilent One is unique in appearance and mutation though they all tend to take on the same general shape.
- Races: N/A
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
- Disgustingly Resilient: Pestilent Ones are known to endure enormous amounts of damage and yet continue to wreck their carnage. Entire fatty limbs and chunks could be blown from their bloated bodies, but it wouldn't slow them down from their singular mission to destroy their enemy. Heavy weaponry and concentrated fire are required to bring down these creatures
- Miasma: if there is a group of Pestilent Ones have gathered in enough critical mass a miasma will begin to surround them for dozens of meters. This miasma becomes filled with whirling clouds of flies so thick that it obscures them from the enemy's sight and can even foul sensor suites, making it harder than usual to directly hit them. Enemy troops wearing even the strongest respirators will find themselves forced to tear it off to retch from the terrible smell this miasma creates, leaving them vulnerable to far more dangerous airborne pathogens.
- Plague-spreader: Those who escape a Pestilent One assault do not escape unharmed. For, unless they have the protective gear of the Beast Masters or a sacred seal of protection from the Warmaster Himself, they will find themselves infected by nearly every sickness known to the Galaxy from the ravages of flesh-rotting bacteria to pus-leaking diseases. Those who have been in the proximity of the Pestilent One must quickly go through the strongest decontamination protocols to avoid spreading plagues within their own lines.
- Slow: Their obese forms cause Pestilent Ones to languish and drag themselves across a battlefield. It is even a wonder how their tiny wings allow their bloated bodies to remain airborne since according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a Pestilent One should be able to fly. Many an Pact advance has been slowed to a crawl due to the sluggishness of these creatures. So they are forced to be deployed as batter rams to force a breakthrough rather than exploit it and if unsupported an quickly be surrounded.
- Difficult to control: Only the Beast Masters of the 28th Ravager Legion can hope to maintain any semblance of domination over these creatures. If during battle their Beast Master is slain and their chains broken, Pestilent Ones will attack any creature nearby to them until they or everything around them is dead. It doesn't matter if its friend or foe.
Pestilent Ones that have escaped on allied worlds must be hunted down immediately or else they will rapidly breed an entirely feral population that if allowed to reach a critical mass, could become a pest that will never be exterminated.
- Diet: Pestilent Ones mostly consume anything organic, though they have a preference for consuming rotting flesh which they can lay young in.
- Communication: Despite decades of study it is not quite known how they communicate. Chittering noises created by their mandibles and buzzing noises seem to indicate some sort of ability to transmit basic information but this could all be coincidence.
- Technology level: None.
- Religion/Beliefs: Surely even in this mutated state, what little remains of Pact Soldiers amalgamated into this mass still worship the Goddess Apophis and her prophet, the Warmaster Sachiel.
- General behavior: Pestilent Ones display no sentience. All aspects of their behaviour are based on filth and sloth. They incessantly buzz and gather around stagnant pools of heavily polluted water and the waste of living creatures. They reproduce through the bodies of those they have slain meaning that they must constantly be feed corpses to maintain their populations. There is no higher thought in the putrid minds of these creatures above mere existence.
Pestilent Ones were created in the fleshwarping pits of the Pact of Apophis entirely by accident. When the Warmaster and prophet Sachiel first delved into the forbidden arts of Sithspawn he had hoped to improve the strength and endurance of his men to win the civil war for his home planet Pandemonium. Instead what he received were the disgusting creatures known as the Pestilent Ones that were horrific amalgamations of dozens of soldiers combined into a single fleshmeld. The Warmaster was forced to expend hundreds of thousands of soldiers to stop his failed experiments from spreading across the planet.
The few Pestilent Ones that survived were brought back under control. The few surviving soldiers that had tamed these creatures would become the core on which the 28th Ravager Legion was formed around. Now under controlled breeding programs and with careful watchers, Pestilent Ones were thrown into campaigns of attrition. Their presence brought plague and sickness to the foe wherever they went while all but the heaviest weaponry could even hope to slow them down.
Though learned painful, this incident had taught a valuable lesson to the Warmaster. It would serve as the stepping stone towards greater and more horrific Sithspawn creations which would become known as the Fleshwarped.
