The Vex’lir Swarms
NATIONAL INFORMATION:
-Population: Numbers often fluctuate, but usually remain within the range of 96-97 million (not counting underworld beasts and assorted monstrosities).
-Faction: Red Pantheon (unaffiliated).
-Capital: Hive Vextasrir, also known as the Chasm of Ineffable Odds.
-Government Type: Hive Mind.
-Government Description:
The term “government” is perhaps not altogether suitable for describing the internal structure and functioning of the Vex’lir Swarms. In truth, it is more similar to the natural forms of organisation found in the colonies of certain invertebrates, or, in its heavily magically supplemented form, to the workings of a single, vast living organism. The entirety of the Riglir population is bound to the will of its divine master, the fallen Celestial Servant - and now Red God - Vex’xalar by the means of an enchantment which conjoins their minds with its own. This spell allows the Lurker to issue commands to any number of its subjects at any given moment, and physically constrains them to obey such orders, as though they were nothing more than extensions of itself.
Despite the omnipresence of the curse, a comparatively small number of Riglir is, for various reasons relating to their hatching, afforded a greater degree of freedom in choosing how to carry out the divine injunctions. These creatures take up the position of intermediaries between the god and the masses of its thralls, acting as commanders and overseers (Hive Superiors) or priests and shamans (Hive Prophets). Often, these lieutenants will slightly modify the commands relayed to them in order to better adapt its execution to the current circumstances.
-Head of State: Vex’xalar the Lurker Below.
-Currency: None. The nature of the Swarms is such that internal and external commerce alike are nonexistent, and currency thus unnecessary.
-Language(s): Though the use of speech in the warrens is rare, vestigial remains of the former Riglir languages are still employed for ritual purposes. In the rare occasions members of the Swarms will communicate with the surface world, they have shown themselves capable of using the predominant Elven languages, debased and simplified to varying degrees.
Short History
Until about ten thousand years ago, most of the Riglir race had lived near the surface in a feral state, benefiting from its symbiosis with titanic creatures known as Leviathans, so vast and powerful that they preyed even dragons. Scavenging in the wake of these beings, they were able to subsist without forming societies more complex than rudimentary packs or broods, despite being potentially capable of doing so. However, when the Leviathans disappeared for reasons now forgotten, the Riglir found themselves deprived of their greatest strength and unable to survive in the upper subterranean levels they had until then inhabited. They thus withdrew into the depths where some of their number had already made their home, and began to settle its relatively more hospitable darkness.
However, the underworld itself was not without its dangers. Lethal monstrosities stalked its tunnels, and its caverns teemed with treacherous pitfalls and strange life which had never seen the light of day. Worse yet, many thousands of years before its deeps had been inhabited by the cryptic Old Ones. Though that race had died out so long ago that even the ruins of its cities had become virtually indistinguishable from unusual rocky formations, its ancient and powerful enchantments lingered still, spawning countless horrors and anomalies in dim wells beneath the earth. To face these threats, even on equal ground, the Riglir had to grow more organised. And, possibly to the surprise of anyone cursorily acquainted with them, they did, strengthening their communities and turning to the worship of gods for the protection they found themselves lacking. One of them eventually ascended to a divine state itself, becoming the first in a line of Watchers Below who guided the Riglir on the way to civilisation.
However, when Justinian arose and moved against the Old Pantheon, the last of the Watchers was slain. Its celestial servant, Vex’xalar, sought to escape by manifesting in the material plane; however, the hasty and poorly prepared ritual went awry, leaving the Red God crippled in body and spirit. Drawing upon dark forces of cosmic imperfection and decay, the maddened Vex’xalar cast a spell to bring nearly all Riglir under its thrall, absorbing them into an unnatural Hive Mind and cursing all future generations to be born in its hold. Only a scant few escaped the spell’s effects, fleeing south.
Vex’xalar remained hidden with its swarms while the War raged; once it was over, they emerged again, more ferocious than ever, to assail all that were to be found in the vicinity in an incessant series of incursions which continues to the present day. Of particular violence have been their struggles with the influence of the Lord of the Turquoise Scheme, whose Overlays reach deep below and into the very seat of Vex’xalar. Such was the Lurker’s wrath at the intrusion that, two centuries ago, it lashed out with tremendous power, creating the immense Chasm of Ineffable Odds which runs through the center of Materia. In this unfathomable abyss the battle rages still, as more and more horrors clamber out of it to blight the world above.
UNIQUE ATTRIBUTE INFORMATION:
A Screamer summons a swarm of voracious insects with a spell.
• One Mind: The entire population of the Swarms is telepathically linked with its master and among itself, enabling them to function more as a super-organism than a nation proper. All acquired knowledge is instantly shared between the millions of Riglir bodies, and, through the action of Hive Superiors and Prophets, their masses can act with an impossible degree of coordination. The Hive Mind eliminates the need for conventional social structures, since the activity of every single creature can be regulated individually to be as efficient in carrying out its tasks as possible. However, such advantages come at a price: not only is the individuality and initiative of most of their bodies suppressed, but the Swarms are heavily reliant on its intermediary leaders to function properly. Eliminating them disrupts lesser thralls, causing them to act haphazardly at the best of their own limited skill. Additionally, all of the Vex’lir Riglir are infected with the Lurker’s madness.
• Myriad Bodies: Ever since their early days, the Riglir have been infamous for their frighteningly rapid rate of reproduction and adaptability. These traits ensure that the species will thrive in virtually any survivable environment, multiplying until they quite literally flood their dens and burrows. Even when faced with heavy losses, they are capable of swiftly replenishing their numbers. This natural prolificness is only increased by the liberal application of mutation-inducing magic, which swells their ranks further in less than describable ways. Thus, despite lacking any sort of technology and infrastructure, the population of the Swarms is colossal and incredibly varied by the standards of all but the vastest nations, and can quickly recover from anything short of complete annihilation.
• Horror in the Flesh: Vex’xalar the Lurker Below, last of the Riglir gods and inheritor of the Watchers, crawls upon the earth once more. Though unable to regain its full power after being weakened by an imperfect manifestation and vulnerable to being fully destroyed, the Red God is a redoubtable foe, inhabiting a gargantuan physical form and wielding earth-rending magical might.
• Unholy Arcana: The Vex’lir spellcasters possess distinctive magical abilities granted by their divine patron and certain ancient Masterless Artefacts. Those include transforming bodies in often gruesome and hideous, but undeniably effective ways, channeling the sinister powers of the Hive Mind to assail the psyche of enemies or manifest otherworldly thaumaturgical effects, and a heightened proficiency at animating skeletons and other bone constructs. However, most of them are fraught with risks for the caster and its allies as well. Transmutation spells are fueled by Vex’xalar’s unstable Theurgia, and thus often backfire in spectacularly ghastly manners, and the influence of the Hive Mind is dangerously unpredictable and often uncontrollable.
• Heart of Madness: Being as of one mind with their god, all Riglir are under the influx of its delusions and savage nature. As Vex’xalar believes to be all inhabitants of the surface and their gods to be servants of the inimical Turquoise Lord, the Swarms are invariably hostile to anyone and anything else, and attempts to communicate with them are doomed to end in failure.
• Ichor and Chitin: While physically resilient and versatile and reasonably skilful in the use of magic, the Riglir have never been gifted with the ability for technological innovation, and the advent of the Hive Mind has wiped away the few advancements they had achieved in the course of millennia. As a result, the Swarms possess no technology to speak of, and can neither devise any nor use what they capture or scavenge. Their workers and combatants are therefore unequipped and unarmed, and rely exclusively on their (often modified) bodies.
• Underdwellers: Rare is the Riglir who rises to the surface for any purpose other than an incursion into enemy territory. The species, in its many variations, is adapted for subterranean life, and the Swarms dwell in a great maze of caverns, vaults and tunnels spanning much of the center of Materia and reaching southwards into Ouroborasian lands, and do not control any territory on the surface. Entrenched belowground, their lairs are difficult to invade for conventional forces, who would be at risk of becoming an easy target for traps and ambushes. Furthermore, the Riglir are thus able to move beneath the holdings of other nations, emerging in the most improbable of places in spite of any defenses on the surface.
• Pit of Nightmares: Though their subterranean nature grants the Swarms some advantages, not even they are immune to the many perils of the underworld. The dim recesses of the earth hide bottomless abysses, strange and dangerous creatures unlike any ever seen on the surface and other lethal portents. Worse yet, ancient lingering spells have, over the ages, permeated entire underground regions, spawning horrifying magical anomalies and twisting wildlife into unnatural and monstrous forms - something which has only been exacerbated by the surges of Vex’xalar’s dire and erratic powers.
• Legacy of the Old Ones: Long ago, perhaps even in the oblivion-shrouded first ages, the caverns that now serve as Riglir hives were inhabited by a race of beings who, their name lost to time, are known today only as the Old Ones. They built imposing cities, temples and ziggurats in enormous vaults, and were adept in many mystical arts. It is likely they disappeared before even the first Riglir walked Materia, but they left enduring traces of their passing. Their cities, though ruined and decayed beyond recognition, are being rediscovered; within them, ancient Artefacts of great power have been found, and vestiges of old enchantments hover below the ground, their might not fully spent even to this day.
• Dark Knowledge: There might be clarity in divine madness. Though Vex’xalar, and by extension the Hive Mind, is severely disconnected from the reality of material and celestial planes alike, its peculiar state seems to grant it a strange insight into the flawed nature of the cosmos itself. It has already shown itself capable of apparently calling forth the energies of universal fraying and degeneration to bolster itself at the expense of the very world’s stability, and who knows what other dread skills it might hold in store?
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION:
Hive Ulkar, one of the hundreds of Riglir nests in Materia.
Major Locations of Interest:
• Kralhk: The largest and oldest of the hive clusters, Kralhk houses the most important locations in the Swarms' subterranean domain, among which the seat of Vex'xalar and the sacred city of the Forgotten. The under-land here is barren, grim and desolate, with only some particularly resilient insectoid species surviving in the rocky soil. In the north lie the forsaken vaults of the Old Ones, where wander strange energies and presences; further south, the vast sunken graveyards of the Leviathans slumber in their deathly stillness.
- Hive Vextasrir, or the Chasm of Ineffable Odds: The greatest Riglir hive in all Materia, Vextasrir spans the entire center of the continent across, having grown around Vex'xalar's form to span the immense gulf opened by the god's wrath. Its bottom and western wall crawl with the invertebrates' constant activity; surfaces of Turquoise Overlay cover the eastern wall, alternately encroaching upon and losing ground to infinite numbers of assailants. At the lowermost point in the chasm, so deep that even the sunlight does not reach it from the mouth above, the titanic body of the Lurker Below stands, embedded by half in the soil, ceaselessly lashing against the spectral intruders into its lair.
- The Desolate Vaults: The sinister magnificence of the cities of the Old Ones can now largely only be guessed at. Corroded by ages of abandon, their walls and pillars have crumbled and rotten away, growing indistinguishable from the rocky formations around which have crawled into the narrow, winding streets and circular squares. Yet not all is quiet in the Vaults - the powers of the ancient race have not faded entirely, and surreal entities born of rampant magic stalk the silent corridors.
- Hive Velash: Situated on the site of a ruined temple, Hive Velash is where the fearsome Screamers are hatched from a select stock of Riglir and left to grow, fending for themselves from their first days amid the many dangers of the Old Ones' land. Those who survive the trial of Velash, which is in truth less of a hive than an arena and proving ground, are certain to be some of the strongest and most resourceful among the Swarms' elite.
- The Primordial Well: A curious and unsettling anomaly even in the otherworldly atmosphere of the Vaults, the Primordial Well is a place where, through the efforts of either the Old Ones or the Riglir themselves, the last layer of Materia's soil has been breached, opening a gaping hole into the inchoate darkness beyond. Despite the zones surrounding the Well being plagued by particularly terrible abnormalities and unimaginable horrors, the Hive Prophets and Abyssal Brood maintain a strong presence here, and have built strange structures around and within the cavity leading to the limit of the finite world.
- The Boneyards: Where once the mighty Leviathans shook the earth with their steps, now only their great skeletons, interred by time and scavengers, remain in enormous earthen tombs to mark their passing. So large and numerous are these bones that, at first sight, one could well mistake them for a white city built underground by finer artisans than the Riglir, with jagged spines and rigid limbs rising up like towers and ribcages standing up like the walls of a fortress. The Pale Brood dwells in this hell of tangled decrepitude, which never leaves the thaumaturges hungry for materials for their constructs.
• Zattdrok: Adding to eastern Aberys's already troubled nature, Zattdrok was once the first step in the Riglir's southward expansion, and remains to this day the second largest Hive Cluster. In what might be at once the source and reflection of the fertile farmlands on the surface, the earth here is particularly well-suited for life even in the abyssal deeps; as a result, not only are the local hives exceptionally large and populous, but the swarms dwelling there have encountered all sorts of strange beings living in complex and apparently very ancient ecosystems.
- Hive Ulkar: The central settlement in Zattdrok, Ulkar boasts abundant fungus farms and herds of ghoul moles, allowing it to supply a large portion of the cluster with its resources alone. However, it is rich not only in food, but in troops as well, with local Riglir being especially numerous and well-fed. As such, it is the staging ground of most raids upon the lands above.
- The Dim Marshes: A particularly damp spot at the confluence of several underground streams which has over the centuries developed into nothing short of a stretch of darkling swampland. Under an air heavy with humidity and warm with the slow decay of forests of algae, lichens and fungi there dwell creatures never seen elsewhere who adapted to thrive in this improbable and treacherous environment, the most notable of them being the powerful but lethargic bog goliaths.
- The Chambers of Life: Stranger yet than the Marshes, the Chambers of Life are a web of caverns in which, contrarily to what one might expect having observed the laws and processes of natural life, there seems to exist an entire world of beings as alien as they are diverse. Here, the boundary between plant and animal is even less visible than in the Swamps: the Primal beings that inhabit these chambers, both growing in them as trees and moving through them as beasts, are as much of a riddle in their nature as in their survival so deep within the earth.
• Xelkash: Sinking the claws of its many tunnels deep into the south of the continent, Xelkash might be seen as representing Vex'xalar forcefully - and altogether involuntarily - staking its claim as being part of the Red Pantheon, without, for that matter, entertaining anything but savage hostility against the loose alliance of the southern gods. The under-lands here are inhospitable, but not desolate as those of Kralhk; rather, they are more directly harsh and treacherous, full of pitfalls and overhanging damp soil, and few but the hardy ironhide worms dare make their home here.
- Hive Raahkal: The central hive of Xelkash, and the origin of most incursions into East Ouroborasian territory. Raahkal in particular is home to many Azure Brood Screamers, often engaged in experiments to see to what extent they can employ Turquoise magics against supposed direct servants of the Lord, which include anything from witches to peasants to homunculi.
- The Warrens of a Thousand Maws: Within the south's variably rocky and damp soil, some species of great worms and maggots have found an ideal habitat, digging a complex of chambers and tunnels through which their bloated bodies may move freely. On occasion, the local Riglir collapse and divert some of these passageways, forcing the worms to travel towards specially selected locations - often villages or encampments on the surface.
• Sehtekr: The easternmost Cluster, Sehtekr was severed from Kralhk by the expansion of the Stray Palace Overlay in Tramontan, and now remains connected to it only through a small number of tunnels. Due to its isolated nature and unfavourable position, Sehtekr is presently engaged in struggles against the Turquoise Domain and Justinian forces in the west, as well as attempting to adapt to the desert terrain in the south. The region is altogether quite dry, but some recesses contain small subterranean rivers and lakes.
- Hive Starak: Major hive in Sehtekr, from where the Arch-Superior directs works of entrenchment, encroachment and gradual reestablishment of a direct link with the western Clusters. Due to Sehtekr's overall less centralised nature, it is not as large as Ulkar or even Raahkal, but it benefits from direct connections with lesser hives nea and distant alike.
- The Wraith Pits: Though the soil here is nowhere as fertile as in Zattdrok, the local subterranean water deposits have abetted the growth of some dark-dwelling life-forms near and within them. Many small lakes are thus surrounded by circles of undergrowth, through which there move the uncommon beasts which lend the Pits their name: the otherworldly gelatinous wraiths, which resemble the Primals in not being clearly categorisable, but otherwise are as unlike them as anything else in the known world.
RACIAL INFORMATION:
-Majority race: Riglir. While once this name designated a single species of semi-sapient, gregarious invertebrate creatures, millennia of natural and magical evolution have made it so that it is now more of a blanket term covering several subspecies with a common ancestor. The modern Riglir vary greatly in shape, size and environmental preferences; nonetheless, they all share some basic biological traits. Riglir physiology is somewhat similar to that of crustaceans, having a hard, chitinous exoskeleton and diverse (but generally even, unless chaotic magic is involved) numbers of segmented limbs. As a rule, they possess sharp and robust claws, fit for digging through soil and rock and often supplemented by corrosive secretions. Being subterranean creatures, they generally have poor eyesight, and mainly rely on scent, hearing and vibration detection to perceive their surroundings.
Riglir are known to be short-lived, with the average life expectancy among them being between twenty and thirty years. To compensate for this, they are highly prolific, breeding twice a year in normal conditions. Under Vex’xalar, reproduction has become an almost industrialised business, with millions of bodies being regularly herded into special hives every cycle. The hold of the Hive Mind on them is then briefly relaxed, leaving the thralls under the sway of natural instincts and mating pheromones (which cause the usually androgynous Riglir to temporarily develop sexual characteristics). Each impregnated individual lays several eggs after gestation, which, if they are not lost or eaten by predators, hatch within a few weeks.
Unlike their free counterparts in the south, Vex’lir Riglir are born with the curse of the Hive Mind ingrained in their bodies, which places them under the Lurker Below’s dominion unless it is magically removed.
Being the only currently living species in the Swarms that is more than sentient, the Riglir are dominant within them, with other creatures under the Hive Mind’s control being considered as analogous to cattle or beasts of burden at best.
Minority races:
- Leviathans (extinct): The species of giant animals that once roamed central Materia. It is said that they might have been the natural predators of dragons, and their size certainly seems to support this theory, as even an average-sized Leviathan would have dwarfed the mighty creatures. Having died out due to unknown causes ten thousand years ago, their bones remain exceedingly well-preserved, many of them still untouched by decay.
- Old Ones (extinct): The first intelligent race to inhabit the underworld, and likewise the first to vanish. The Old Ones' civilisation reached its apex during the first few Cycles of creation, then gradually declined and disappeared, its works falling into ruin. Nevertheless, their semblance remains known to this day thanks to its depiction in the mighty idol of the Lost.
- Tunnel Skulkers: Large predatory insectoids most common in Hive Cluster Kralhk, where they eke out a living for themselves amid the harsh and unforgiving walls of grey rock by preying on smaller animals such as worms and rodents, and occasionally even minor aberrations. Skulkers have been historically tamed by the Riglir, and were among the first beasts to be controlled through the Hive Mind.
- Onyx Spiders: Enormous, highly intelligent cave-dwelling arachnids, spinning tremendously resistant silken webs. Though so developed as to be entirely sentient and even capable of using tools, onyx spiders are asocial and strongly driven by instinct, a combination making them fearsome predators and impervious to taming attempts. Interestingly, the spiders have devised an inventive method of overcoming mounted humanoid foes by dragging their steed from under them as they charge.
Related to the similar, surface-dwelling Agate Spiders.
- Ironhide Worms: A species of large worms native to the southern burrows, with adult specimen measuring up to twelve or fifteen feet. Ironhide worms possess several vestigial limbs with which they propel themselves through narrow tunnels, frequently reaching high speeds, and proverbially hard shells, which earned them their name.
- Bog Goliaths: A bizarre species dwelling in the Dim Marshes, bog goliaths appear, by all tokens, to be a sort of fungus which somehow achieved the ability to move and act as a sentient creature. Though large and physically very strong, the goliaths are lumbering and apathetic, only reacting violently when harmed.
- Ghoul Moles: Subterranean, burrowing mammals that earned their macabre name by occasionally being found eating fresh corpses, being omnivorous but not predatory. They will sometimes emerge in fairly large numbers to feed on battlefields. Since they are fast and easy to fatten, ghoul moles are farmed in Zattdrok hives as livestock.
- Gelatinous Wraiths: Human-sized, many-limbed creatures found near subterranean lakes in Hive Cluster Sehtekr, their strange shape makes gelatinous wraiths are an enigma as regards their life and functioning. Though normally herbivorous, they have been known to capture other animals with a paralysing poison and consume them by digesting them externally.
- Primals: Even more mysterious than the wraiths are the beings inhabiting the Chambers of Life. More than anything - and indeed if anything - they resemble unnatural fusions of plant and beast, growing in many twisted shapes. Uncomfortably enough, they call to mind the idea of an early, unfinished creation, abandoned due to a flawed design and sealed away so that none may see it.
- Aberrations: The most outlandish of all subterranean entities, aberrations are created by the uncontrollable magical energies pulsing through the Desolate Vaults or erratically unleashed by Vex'xalar, and as such are thoroughly unnatural. No two of them are alike, but all are made similar by the distinct appearance of not belonging in this world, if any at all.
RELIGIOUS INFORMATION:
A depiction of the Lurker, decorated with ritual symbols.
-State Religion: Red Pantheonism.
-Patron Deity: Vex’xalar the Lurker Below.
-Religion Demographics: Given that the Swarms are shackled to the mental dominion of their god, no deviation from its religion is physically possible among them.
-Major Holy Relics/Artefacts in Possession:
• Eikon of the Lost (Masterless): An idol so ancient as to seem to belong to another world altogether, the Eikon of the Lost is believed to date back to the early days of the Old Ones themselves. This imposing statue, despite its incalculable age and the apparent fragility of some of its materials, is surreally well-preserved, bearing not the slightest dent or scratch to show, and remains even now unnaturally resistant to damage. It depicts a member of the vanished race bowing in supplication before a large opalescent gem, held aloft by cunningly fashioned supports of translucent crystal and presumed to represent one of the first deities, or perhaps even the Demiurge itself. As powerful as it is old, the Eikon is overflowing with divine essence. So thoroughly imbued is it that it emanates unearthly distortions of the cosmos’s laws, creating magical anomalies or portentous strength with its mere presence. The Artefact played a crucial part in Vex’xalar’s blasphemous ritual, and continues to sustain the curse of the Hive. The Eikon currently rests in the Vault of the Forgotten, guarded by the Abyssal Broodmaster.
• The Withered Visage (Masterless): A second relic hearkening back to primeval times, though distinctly more recent than the Eikon of the Lost. The Withered Visage is a headdress fashioned from the mummified exo-skull of an Old One, plaqued with silver and studded with precious stones. Those who don it are granted unparallelled osteokinetic powers, becoming capable of assembling bones of any size and shape into redoubtably strong, robust and fast constructs, and maintaining control over hordes of fleshless horrors at once. Furthermore, when worn by a powerful Screamer, part of the essence stored in it can be absorbed by the Hive Mind, enabling other Vex’lir casters to access a limited form of its potential. The Withered Visage is currently carried by Athksarak, the Pale Broodmaster.
-Holy Sites under Control:
• Vault of the Forgotten: Of all the ruined cities of the Old Ones, invisible in their corrosion to any but the trained senses of the Riglir, the one lying in the great cavern known as the Vault of the Forgotten is the largest in its identifiable remains, and the one most haunted by the magical influences of bygone ages. Strange mists coil among the cyclopean heaps of rubble that once were palaces, shrines and pillars, and eerie sounds drift in the maze of the few barely surviving streets. Such is its size and so potent its influences that it might be that it once had been the Holy City of gods now beyond memory. The Vault has become the lair of the Abyssal Brood and numerous Hive Prophets, who ceaselessly work to gradually restore at least a fraction of the city following half-guessed, half-divined designs. The purpose of these efforts remains unclear.
-Notable Magical Institutions:
• Hive Velash Broods: Since performing the necessary ritual to cast a spell requires a degree of concentration greater than the Hive Mind can devote to a single body and, more importantly, a focus upon the sacrifice’s recipient which, due to its monolithic nature, it is physically incapable of (as it would involve the paradox of Vex’xalar sacrificing to and demanding Theurgia from itself), the only possible magic wielders among the Swarms besides the god itself are those Riglir who maintain a degree of partial autonomy in their thoughts and actions. Since, all things considered, the Riglir are anything but wasteful, this potential is exploited to the fullest, with all Hive Prophets and, to a lesser degree, Superiors being capable of spellcasting. However, they are by far not the most fearsome magic users under the Lurker. In a hive obtained from a temple-city of the Old Ones, it has bred a strain of Riglir specialised in performing incantations and directing the obtained Theurgia with utmost skill and efficiency. These creatures, known as Screamers, can exert a far greater control on Vex’xalar’s unstable energies than their normal counterparts, and are divided into four Broods by the branches of magic they are most adept in:
- The Earthen Brood, most numerous and commonly seen of all, specialises in the Red God’s own transmuting magic. Its members’ carapaces are of dark brown and grey colours, and their bodies are notoriously deformed.
- The Abyssal Brood focuses on harnessing the strange powers of the Hive Mind and its magical sources. Its carapaces are black with irregular purple markings.
- The Pale Brood, using the Withered Visage worn by its leader, channel the power of moving and animating the bones of corpses old and new. Its carapaces are of a faded, skeletal white.
- The Azure Brood, the smallest of the four, has as its purpose to experiment with the magics of the Turquoise Lord and learn to turn them against their supposed masters. Its carapaces are of an unnaturally bright azure colour, as in mockery or clumsy imitation of the Turquoise.
-Religious Interpretations/Culture: Limited though its manifestations, and indeed effective substance and utility, might be within the all-controlling Hive Mind, Vex’xalar maintains a semblance of religious rite and canon beyond the strictly necessary utilitarian minimum - perhaps simply out of habit, or for some other less fathomable purpose. Its Prophets do not serve simply as spellcasters and minor taskmasters: following some sort of apparently irregular cycle, lesser thralls gather around them in special chambers or hive sections, and are made to bow and recite ritual chants under the clerics’ lead. These ceremonies, more similar to a puppet show than worship, are typically performed in veneration of Vex’xalar, who is represented with variations of the rather primitive religious symbols used by the Riglir during the time of the Watchers; however, some different versions can now and again be observed, where to the Lurker Below there are added other objects of veneration. Among those, there appear strange signs and images never used before, possibly, albeit strangely, depicting the dead Watchers themselves.
The frequency, magnitude and specific of these rites do not seem to follow any persistent scheme, varying depending on available space, celebrants and victims. Some, held in great vaults with hundreds or thousands of participants, are complex functions, involving otherworldly intricacies in disposition and chant modulation, large idols or murals of alien symbols and elaborate mutilation and slaying of the offerings, whereas others, performed in the corners of lesser hives, may involve only a few dozen supplicants, a crude eidolon and rapid, brutal executions. If something has not changed since Vex’xalar came to power, it is the savagery of the Riglir race.
MILITARY INFORMATION:
Total Military Size: Uncertain, due to the Swarms comprising no regular army structures or organisations. The average number of Riglir and underworld auxiliaries ready for or engaged in combat at any given moment can be estimated at slightly less than a million.
Listed Heroes: - To do - Vex’xalar, Skalerak, Voice, Broodmasters, Dweller, Hunter, Archprophet
Military Doctrine: While the inhabitants of the surface may have dimly remembered the Riglir of old as bestial creatures, blindly rushing against their opponents in droves, the Hive Mind has since transformed them from a disorganised horde into an unnaturally cohesive, cunning and relentless force. Their favoured approach to engaging battle remains a massed charge of innumerable bodies, overwhelming any opposition through brute strength and sheer force of numbers; however, this basic strategy is now improved and supplemented with a variety of additions which shift and change to adapt to every challenge the Swarms encounter.
Hive Superiors understand the concept of “tactical advantage”, and are generally capable of calculating how many casualties acquiring a given edge over the enemy is worth. Due to the nature of the Vex’lir, Riglir commanders have not the slightest hesitation in sacrificing thousands of thralls should the battle plan demand it, and those latter, fully aware of their purpose, can be relied upon to carry out their tasks just as indicated. Every being, no matter its form, abilities and role, will be certain to employ its potential to the fullest. Much less than a chaotic tide of horrors, the Swarms are as precise and calculating as a mantis luring in and seizing its prey without a single unnecessary movement.
Being accustomed to fighting in narrow and winding underground tunnels, the Riglir are fond of ambushes, pincers and surrounding tactics, pinning their foes in place before bearing down on them with the full strength of their numerical superiority. When forced to meet the enemy in broad, open fields, they will nonetheless attempt to use the terrain to their advantage, crawling behind hills and rocks, skulking in bogs and thickets and even burrowing underground to ensure that their prey has no way remaining to retreat. Wherever it turns, it meets claws and mandibles, spines and poison, humming wings and viscous webbing. There is no escape, and the Riglir do not take prisoners.
Military Units:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
[Voice, Archprophet, South-east commander, Azure Broodmaster]
EXTRA INFORMATION:
[to fill]
Full History: (Your nation’s history following the major eras/cycles. Remember to align it with the settings history, as it is hard for nations to live in an isolated bubble here)
List of Historical Grievances: (Who are your historical enemies at the start of the RP)
Relations: (What are the established relations at the start of the RP; this can either be simple as “Hostile, Cold, Neutral, Warm, Friendly” or a detailed explanation of each relationship per nation)
Cultural Notes: (Anything cultural of note or unique about the nation that isn’t mentioned under religious interpretations/culture)
