LifeLines

Scorpiate
It was winter. I think I was in Montana, maybe Wyoming. Cigs, myself, and the rest of the crew were collecting some sort of data for a Papineu cell. We were on the fourth, maybe fifth floor of an office building, when something crashes through the window.

It was a DHQS soldier in full basilisk armor, but he had no hands. Instead were ribcages attached to his wrists, with other snapping heads. It looked like some sort of terrifying blight-Voltron hybrid. Then it raised it's tail.

The tail was a blight covered entanglement of spines and heads, flexing and moving with each swish of the tail.

At first I think "fuck, it's a ganglia" but it's movement wasn't right. It didn't have any limbs.

This thing began jumping from desk to desk. It would lunge at us with it's tail, curling around someone with it's tail. It would tear into them with a dozen heads, then throw them aside getting ready to strike someone else.

It grabbed onto Lexer, and began consuming him. It knew he was immune, and it began attacking him more furiously because of it.

I don't think we actually killed it. I think we mortared the building while it was inside, but I doubt that thing is dead yet.

The scorpiate has taken out one crew that has gone against it, and nearly taken out another when I have used it, so leave it in the big cities for the most part. The scorpiate is a vector with a murder modifier of at least 3, usually up to 6. They like to sneak around, so make sure to add that murder modifier to that stealth check. They don't scream apologies, but self-control checks may be called for due to the shear gruesomeness of them. Always start at Level 2 just for seeing them, and build it up as needed.

Treat scorpiate as if they have the gifted advantage.
Due to the large number of heads, they can resist bullet fire and dodge with ease, no matter how many rounds you spray. You either notice them or you don't. They either kill you, or they don't.

Due to it's extra heads, it has a number of body parts equal to it's murder modifier, and each must be damaged in addition to filling the torso and head to kill it. Remember precision shots and high bonuses are your friends.

A scorpiate knows the result of any infection check made against it, and will attack accordingly. Latency confuses it though, so it will pause it's attack against you and find a different target if you become latent. It kills immunes, leaves the infected, and attacks the uninfected; until all are infected and/or dead if they can't be. If it notices a latent that isn't just changed, it will attack them (again if necessary).

When a scorpiate grapples you, it strikes a dozen times with it's tail. This means that they deal damage to each body part, but they only get to add murder modifier damage to the one body part they roll on red.

For example, you are pinned at the beginning of the round by a scorpiate and roll a B5/R6 to wrestle away and not be hit. Usually you would add your +2 to the Black, but you do not. The scorpiate has a MM of 3, so it turns into B5/R6+3. It attacks for B2/R5+3. It deals B2+3 to your torso and 2 to each other body part.

My suggestion is to introduce it killing another NPC brutally, one that is very well prepared to kick your player's ass.

Will and straight bonuses must be used to take this thing out. Remind players with foresight or awareness checks that spending charges won't help in itself, but special abilities that cost charges will.

Also, no, the one LordSky the taker buried is not dead, just immobile for now.

thanks, that is exactly the kinda thing i was looking for. I know what i was doing and was wanting to look to see what others were looking at.  . i doubt that my group will go so far as to set up or invest in a 'colony' program but that hook alone gives me 20-30 more job ideas in an of itself. perhaps others are going the other way, leaning into the fact that this far down the line those secondary things have finaly just been fully tapped out and are becoming a critical wall for survival?

Also, don't forget restart ups!

Restart ups can be excellent third parties if needed, not to mention the tension of possibly dealing with the DHQS!

Got another species here, I'm not satisfied with it yet, but I'm getting there.

Qae (kay)
Qae is an acronym for "quin animarum exemplum" which translates roughly to "copy without souls". They are less formerly called clones, but that isn't the same thing.

The Qae have no place to call their home world, because they are created in laboratories. They were originally designed to be menial laborers, each one specialized to a particular job. They require very little food, but cannot procreate, making their numbers finite.

During the chaos of the emergence and the recession, the secrets to the creation of the qae were lost. Many a faction see the qae formula as a golden goose; whether to keep the species living on, or to create more laborers.

In many areas the qae were seen as little more than slaves, which tarnished the reputation of larger qae farming operations. This was offset by the profits they generated as a workforce.

They stand at 5' 10" (178 cm) and 150 lb (68 kg) with only the smallest of variations in height and weight.

After the recession, there were less Qae overseers, allowing many to begin developing free will for the first time. With this freedom came religion, materialism, and emotions.

Qae have simple, smooth features which leave little room for differences. They do not have hair, feathers, or scales; and mutations such as albinism or otherwise were rare due to strict mandates for perfection of the product.

Qae Benefit- The Qae gain an additional potential point at the beginning of the game that may designate. They may not begin the game with any potential higher than 3. They also do not expend rations when moving from leg to leg.

Qae Detriment- The qae never add their strength on infection checks, and may not spend will on infection checks, even with the use of a BTU. Due to their basically copied genealogy, they are easier to infect; making the occurance of latents, immunes, and resistance in normal percentages of the species all the more puzzling. The Qae are usually treated as second class citizens, if citizens at all, due to the stigma around cloning. The Qae have one less dependant; due to years as unthinking servants, interpersonal connections come hard to many of the qae.

In my days I have seen a lot of shit I haven't wanted to see.

We've all either seen one or pretended we haven't.

I just wanna put out some of the shit I've seen. It's therapeutic I hear. I also hear that Palbickle's disembodied ghost lives inside Ubiq, so idk.

Empty
So, let's be honest. Who hasn't seen an empty? They just stand there, doing something. Whatever that is. Forever.
I can easily say I've seen a dozen in my lifetime.

Strangest one? I saw a generic frat guy drinking from an empty bottle of tequila. It had the cap on. It was a full bottle. 5 year old tequila, preserved through the horrors of normalcy in the Loss.

I like to think he still has it, unless someone else finally took it from him.


Scarecrow
A little off the road on I-25, I saw this one. We lost a guy to the thing. It's tendrils had made it through cracks in the road, and it shot straight into his leg. He went Vector in less than a minute. We ran as far as we could to get away, after taking out Jhalsey.


Malignant
There is a town in Oklahoma named Jameson. The town itself seems almost barren. I saw one, maybe two C's while I was there. Until we went into the sewers.

The entirety of the sewers were covered in the stuff. Cigs, Lexer, and I were the only ones that made it out uninfected, and Lexer doesn't even count since he turned out to be immune. (I can tell stories about him later)

We went through two and a half square miles of sewer, and it was covered in black shit. Bodies with just the smallest amount of skin left. The occasional half face as you walked.

Stay away from Jameson, Oklahoma.


Mutant
I've seen two mutants in my time. One I had to deal with. The other someone else did.

The one I didn't deal with was a cougar or something. There was a rocky outcrop over some start of Papineu holdout, the thing jumped down the fifty feet to the ground and began killing people in seconds. I had dealt with the group earlier that morning, they had a strict no latent policy that almost got my brother shot. There were Vectors flooding out in minutes. One second clean, the next a cougar was infecting the populace.

We decided to "Drive! Just fucking drive!"

The other one was a snake. A rattlesnake about five or six feet long. The thing acted unlike any snake I met. It had blight sinews forming some sort of hood, and tiny sinews out the bottom would allow it crawl or slither with surprising speed. It has bit off part of it's rattle to make itself silent.

The thing would spring onto people curling around them like an anaconda, while the sinews stabbed into the victim it bit them in multiple spots, leaving deep black holes in the skin.

If you came too close it would spit liquid blight at you, like a viper with venom. Either some Alosine-esque company made ultimate snakes, or it had taught itself the hunting techniques of a dozen snakes. Either way it was nearly infectious by proximity alone.

It took out two squad mates, and I nearly took the shot before I remembered Reno had a BTU in his bag. I don't even remember where this was.

I've not liked snakes ever since.


Insect
Some people may recall my making a post about a four armed vector. That's what this is. I think it was in Nevada, maybe Colorado? It gets blurry at some points.

Anyways. The thing stood at easily 4 feet tall. Little guy. Or at least I think the bottom half was. The top was definitely female. At where the base of the neck connected was just this gory blight stitching that attached a second ribcage.
This thing would skitter around on six limbs, dodging from place to place surprisingly nimble.

But the most terrifying thing was what it did when it did notice you. This tiny fucker threw things at you. What kind of things? Casualties, Vectors, infected organs, whatever it could that was covered in blight. This thing would throw larger stuff at you using all four arms (Like C's and V's) or throw individual things at you with each arm.

It ripped apart a Casualty to throw a liver at me.

Then it threw a Casualty at Cigs.

We killed the thing. But goddamn.

For those of you wondering, this is an original abberant.

Give it a murder modifier usually around 3-7, and give it the ability to remove one Casualty or Vector from a mob or stampede to give it one of two special attacks. It usually appears around at least two mobs of casualties, (2d10) and is "territorial"; meaning it will find an area where it can use it's cover and flanking abilities to it's advantage.

The first allows it to launch the Vector or Casualty 1d10/2 + their murder modifier shambles in any direction. (Remember up and down can be directions too!) They usually make a running throw, so they throw them that far after moving up to their murder modifier.

The second allows them to throw infective viscera around them. They rip a Casualty (usually not a Vector) to pieces, killing it, then throws the internal infective gore. Treat as an explosion centered where it is thrown that only prompts infection checks. It can throw up to four of these from a single Casualty, but may only throw one a round unless it has a murder modifier higher than 5, in which case it can throw two. The viscera thrown is treated as hot or cold according to what it was from.

These things are clever and will use cover and flanking to it's advantage. It's smaller size allows it to use these more effectively. While it will use cover and flanking for self preservation, it will be killed before it gives up attacking. Other than these three abilities treat it as a Vector that has no apologies.

Finally remember it has four arms, which should be taken into consideration if restraining them or in other contextual situations. If a player is planning to do something where it's extra arms come into play, give them an awareness or foresight check to not be an idiot.

+2 Crypto