the new colossus
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To submit an opposition group for ORC as well as add a fun sci fi space zombie trope to Chaos.
- Image Credit: Firefly
- Canon: The Scourge
- Links: /
- Organization Name: The Scourge
- Classification: Pirate Clan/Religious Cult
- Affiliation: None
- Organization Symbol: None
- Description: A splinter faction of White Maw pirates that pushed too far out into the black, whatever the original crew of Scourge encountered in the depths of the Kathol Rift transformed them irreversibly for the worse. They are now driven by a primal, savage form of aggression that forces them to torture, mutilate and consume any organic life sentient or otherwise that they come across.
The Scourge have never been known to communicate, the only sounds they are capable of making are wordless screams, primal gibbering and frantic sobbing. Although they seem to prefer melee combat, they are still capable of using firearms and operating technology such as starships with a surprising degree of proficiency for a group so apparently intellectually stunted.
GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
- Headquarters: Kathol Rift
- Domain: The Scourge have reputedly terrorized the Kathol Outback for more than a thousand years. They recede back into the Rift for centuries at a time in apparent hibernation cycles, and have not been seen last since some time during the Four Hundred Year Darkness. As a result, the Scourge are commonly thought of as no more than a myth, for all that survives of past encounters are oral histories that many dispute as tall tales.
- Notable Assets: If the Scourge have some kind of central headquarters or meeting grounds it is unknown to the rest of the galaxy. They are notorious salvagers and as long as a ship isn't destroyed by their brutality it will be added to their ranks. Scourge ships are heavily modified civilian and patrol craft marred with crude etchings of incomprehensible madness.
- Hierarchy: There are no discernible social structures to the Scourge apart from a primitive instinct for community borne out of strength in numbers. Curiously despite evidence of intelligent ritual worship and system repairs in all other respects they are no different than rabid animals.
- Membership: While most of the Scourge are either the same White Maw pirates lost in the Rift or their descendants recent evidence suggests that prolonged exposure to the Scourge's atrocities can have an indoctrinating effect. New recruits are culled from the strongest of their victims.
- Climate: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Only the strongest survive and even they are but thralls to the secrets of the Rift that have broken the men and women they used to be. Not much opportunity for career advancement.
- Reputation: The Scourge are reviled by all sentient life throughout the galaxy. Jedi or Sith, rebel or imperial, rich or poor. They make no distinction. If you encounter them your only options are to run, fight, or die horribly.
- Curios: They are recognized by the way they mar their own flesh. Scarred and burned faces, self-amputated limbs, skin wrapped in barbed wire. Sickening tattoos of indecipherable script and hateful symbols cover their bodies. Pallid forms gaunt from radiation exposure leaves most Scourge looking a ghoulish sight. Most of all it is their eyes, haunted wild orbs brimming with unfathomable rage.
- Rules: Attempts to communicate with the Scourge or learn their written language have all proved futile, but a few educated assumptions can be made about their worship based on their behavior as well as evidence collected from the few Scourge ships which have been successfully neutralized.
- Goals: If they have specific goals they may very well be unknowable. The Scourge destroy everything they come across only harvesting technology or flesh if it holds some value to their immediate needs. Their territorial behavior indicates a connection to the Rift but anything beyond that is merely speculation. Even the reasoning for their periods of hibernation are a mystery to us.
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HISTORICAL INFORMATION
"Scourge ain't men. Or they forgot how to be. Come to just nothin'. They got out to the edge of the galaxy, to that place of nothin', and that's what they became."
A thousand years ago the White Maw were still terrors of the outer reaches. From Hutt Space to Hoth to even the backwater Kathol sector their reach seemingly knew no bounds. Splinter sects began to form as the pirates inevitably fell to infighting over time. The Marauders, the Hailstorm Brotherhood, and most ruthless of them all; the Scourge. Waging a brutal campaign of terror and subjugation across the stars there was a time when the Scourge were uncontested kings of Outback space. Eventually the local security forces banded together and drove their would be overlords into the Rift where their leaders hoped they would find safe harbor.Instead, they found only madness.
Whatever happened to the original gang of pirates, whatever awful secrets they beheld in witch space shattered their minds and reduced them to little more than beasts wearing the skin of intelligent creatures. This foul transformation has appeared to selectively preserve just enough higher functions to allow them to operate modern technology and conduct their grotesque rituals.
When they come, they come in an unrelenting tide.
The Scourge slumber for centuries at a time. Some external force or shared impulse draws them back into the Rift so that their dark cycle can begin anew. Hundreds of years pass between these great awakenings. Often just long enough a time for their legend to pass into uncertain myth. Then they rise once more, butchering entire worlds and eradicating star systems of intelligent life.
