Vermiurge - Locusts of the Abyss
Aug 9, 2018 1:43:16 GMT -6
Post by Amanojyaku on Aug 9, 2018 1:43:16 GMT -6
The superstitious, the entomophobic, the survivors of plague... those who have reason to fear the march of Nurgle's forces can be told by their flinching in the night, when they hear the drone of insect wings or the tapping of beetle horns. In their mind's eye they picture the swarm of flies descending over pestilent corpses, the train of beetles and roaches underfoot, and hidden in the mists of insects and decay, the insect-patterned armor of the cultists who brought about the worst plagues known to the Wheel.
Vermiurges are the seeds of these poor berks' night terrors. Bipedal isopods the size of Orks, they are an ancient race, almost as old as Nurgle himself, dwelling in desolate death worlds and underhive layers nobody else wants any part of. The presence of a Vermiurge inflames cults in Nurgle's name, driving the barmies to heights they wouldn't consider otherwise. If, of course, they actually know where to find one.
Physical Characteristics
Average Height: 2.3-2.7m
Average Weight: 100-150kg
Languages: Trade, choice of one other
Common Personality Traits: Loyal, deceptive, amoral, diligent, loves bugs
Common Physical Traits: Lanky, glossy exoskeleton, multiple eyes, stinger tail, crawling with lice and fleas
Example Names: Apollyon, Vorox, Shelob, Serket, Khepri
Racial Statistics
Characteristics Bonus: +1 to Wisdom or Fellowship
Skill Bonus: +1 to Animal Ken and Medicae
Power: Beware My Stinger Tail: The Vermiurge's tail is long, strong, and tipped with a nasty spear. You have a natural Tail Sting attack that uses the following profile: 1k2 R; Melee; Brawling, Reach, Toxic.
Size: 5
Racial Feats
Armor of Spiders [Vermiurge]
The Vermiurge calls to the lowest denominator, a mobile, sapient hive for insects of all kinds. These insects repay the favor by swarming over their host's body, protecting their living hive with their lives. Reduce the damage you take from any one source by your Level. This feat can reduce up to 5 times your Level in damage per scene, but no more than your Level from any one attack.
Crown of Locusts [Paragon, Vermiurge]
Your natural weapons and attacks using living, insectoid weapons gain the Sanctified (Nurgle) special quality. In addition, you can spend 1 Action Point when attacking to add the Annoying, Blinding, or Disorienting special quality to that attack.
Halo of Flies [Vermiurge]
Vermiurges are collectors of exotic insects, and flies of all kinds are a perennial favorite. You've amassed a collection large enough to grant concealment against attacks outside Point-Blank Range, but if you're caught in the effect of a Blast or Flame weapon, the flies all die, and you lose this concealment for the rest of the scene.
Secondary Limbs [Vermiurge]
You have an additional pair of developed limbs that enable you to either take a Ready action as a free action once per round or reload your weapons in half the listed time, chosen when this feat is taken.
Lord of Vermin [Vermiurge]
If the stinging beetles, flies, and vermin of the Wheel have a god, it is you. Nonsapient insects, rats, and other vermin will not willingly attack you unless you attack them first; anyone else is fair game. Additionally, you have proficiency with Bug weapons, and gain a breeding pair of Thud Bugs or Razor Bugs.
Vermin Wings [Vermiurge]
For some, the low drone of insect wings is the very thing of nightmares. For you, it's daily life. Gain the Flyer trait with a rating equal to your normal Speed. You take a -2k1 penalty to Stealth tests while flying, assuming that nobody who'd be looking for you is deaf.
Physical Qualities
Vermiurges resemble bipedal scorpions, but have more in common with isopods. A Vermiurge has two pairs of of primary limbs - strong manipulators and sturdy legs - as well as three pairs of vestigial limbs - two around the waist, and one more at the base of its tail. In some of them, a pair of these limbs is less than vestigial, while others have functional wings adorning their backs. A Vermiurge's exoskeleton is slightly rough and usually a dark shade with a glossy or metallic finish to it, and a close examination reveals plenty of pores that enable insects to hide within it.
Most Vermiurges have broad, somewhat flattened heads with sharp mandibles. They have multiple small eyes, usually on the order of six or eight, but these are clustered together, making their operation functionally no different from the two-eyed mammals. Vermiurges have no trouble speaking most tongues, despite their arachnid mouth structure. This feat is claimed by some to be a blessing, making them better capable of spreading Nurgle's message.
Vermiurges are nearly impossible to tell apart by those who don't train themselves with lesser insects. They lay truly massive clutches of eggs for a sapient species, easily numbering in the thousands, though only one or two of the spawn from a given clutch will survive to reach adulthood at around 5 years. A Vermiurge is biologically immortal, capable of living indefinitely barring violence or the acquisition of a particularly intractable parasite.
Playing a Vermiurge
From the standpoint of those races who developed from and as social animals, Vermiurges are a race of loners, freaks who disregard intelligent conversation in favor of being crazy bug people. The truth is... well, like Papa Nurgle, Vermiurges tend to love everyone. It's just that their definition of "everyone" extends to animals as well as people... including the smallest, most numerous animals on the Wheel. Is it any wonder they seem cold and impersonal to their fellow sapients?
Vermiurges are patient and secretive, wise but rarely candid. A Vermiurge rarely has reason to reveal all he knows, and often has less to volunteer skill in a given field. Most are content to allow others to believe the big scorpion-man is just a stupid brute, without ever letting on exactly how deep a scorpion's grudges run. Conversely, those same Vermiurges - when they find someone worth the greater share of compassion - will never fail to help a friend when they are able.
Perhaps the most unsettling trait of the Vermiurge mindset, however, is just how terrifyingly thorough one can be. If a task is worth doing, it is worth doing to completion, and that is likely where certain tales of daemonic locusts being harbingers of the apocalypse came from. Vermiurge colonies claiming entire, desolate "death worlds" likely descend from larger hives who caused that desolation in response to some slight or another, and left the remains to their descendants and the vermin.
Vermiurge Heroes
X
X
X
Vermiurges are the seeds of these poor berks' night terrors. Bipedal isopods the size of Orks, they are an ancient race, almost as old as Nurgle himself, dwelling in desolate death worlds and underhive layers nobody else wants any part of. The presence of a Vermiurge inflames cults in Nurgle's name, driving the barmies to heights they wouldn't consider otherwise. If, of course, they actually know where to find one.
Physical Characteristics
Average Height: 2.3-2.7m
Average Weight: 100-150kg
Languages: Trade, choice of one other
Common Personality Traits: Loyal, deceptive, amoral, diligent, loves bugs
Common Physical Traits: Lanky, glossy exoskeleton, multiple eyes, stinger tail, crawling with lice and fleas
Example Names: Apollyon, Vorox, Shelob, Serket, Khepri
Racial Statistics
Characteristics Bonus: +1 to Wisdom or Fellowship
Skill Bonus: +1 to Animal Ken and Medicae
Power: Beware My Stinger Tail: The Vermiurge's tail is long, strong, and tipped with a nasty spear. You have a natural Tail Sting attack that uses the following profile: 1k2 R; Melee; Brawling, Reach, Toxic.
Size: 5
Racial Feats
Armor of Spiders [Vermiurge]
The Vermiurge calls to the lowest denominator, a mobile, sapient hive for insects of all kinds. These insects repay the favor by swarming over their host's body, protecting their living hive with their lives. Reduce the damage you take from any one source by your Level. This feat can reduce up to 5 times your Level in damage per scene, but no more than your Level from any one attack.
Crown of Locusts [Paragon, Vermiurge]
Your natural weapons and attacks using living, insectoid weapons gain the Sanctified (Nurgle) special quality. In addition, you can spend 1 Action Point when attacking to add the Annoying, Blinding, or Disorienting special quality to that attack.
Halo of Flies [Vermiurge]
Vermiurges are collectors of exotic insects, and flies of all kinds are a perennial favorite. You've amassed a collection large enough to grant concealment against attacks outside Point-Blank Range, but if you're caught in the effect of a Blast or Flame weapon, the flies all die, and you lose this concealment for the rest of the scene.
Secondary Limbs [Vermiurge]
You have an additional pair of developed limbs that enable you to either take a Ready action as a free action once per round or reload your weapons in half the listed time, chosen when this feat is taken.
Lord of Vermin [Vermiurge]
If the stinging beetles, flies, and vermin of the Wheel have a god, it is you. Nonsapient insects, rats, and other vermin will not willingly attack you unless you attack them first; anyone else is fair game. Additionally, you have proficiency with Bug weapons, and gain a breeding pair of Thud Bugs or Razor Bugs.
Vermin Wings [Vermiurge]
For some, the low drone of insect wings is the very thing of nightmares. For you, it's daily life. Gain the Flyer trait with a rating equal to your normal Speed. You take a -2k1 penalty to Stealth tests while flying, assuming that nobody who'd be looking for you is deaf.
Physical Qualities
Vermiurges resemble bipedal scorpions, but have more in common with isopods. A Vermiurge has two pairs of of primary limbs - strong manipulators and sturdy legs - as well as three pairs of vestigial limbs - two around the waist, and one more at the base of its tail. In some of them, a pair of these limbs is less than vestigial, while others have functional wings adorning their backs. A Vermiurge's exoskeleton is slightly rough and usually a dark shade with a glossy or metallic finish to it, and a close examination reveals plenty of pores that enable insects to hide within it.
Most Vermiurges have broad, somewhat flattened heads with sharp mandibles. They have multiple small eyes, usually on the order of six or eight, but these are clustered together, making their operation functionally no different from the two-eyed mammals. Vermiurges have no trouble speaking most tongues, despite their arachnid mouth structure. This feat is claimed by some to be a blessing, making them better capable of spreading Nurgle's message.
Vermiurges are nearly impossible to tell apart by those who don't train themselves with lesser insects. They lay truly massive clutches of eggs for a sapient species, easily numbering in the thousands, though only one or two of the spawn from a given clutch will survive to reach adulthood at around 5 years. A Vermiurge is biologically immortal, capable of living indefinitely barring violence or the acquisition of a particularly intractable parasite.
Playing a Vermiurge
From the standpoint of those races who developed from and as social animals, Vermiurges are a race of loners, freaks who disregard intelligent conversation in favor of being crazy bug people. The truth is... well, like Papa Nurgle, Vermiurges tend to love everyone. It's just that their definition of "everyone" extends to animals as well as people... including the smallest, most numerous animals on the Wheel. Is it any wonder they seem cold and impersonal to their fellow sapients?
Vermiurges are patient and secretive, wise but rarely candid. A Vermiurge rarely has reason to reveal all he knows, and often has less to volunteer skill in a given field. Most are content to allow others to believe the big scorpion-man is just a stupid brute, without ever letting on exactly how deep a scorpion's grudges run. Conversely, those same Vermiurges - when they find someone worth the greater share of compassion - will never fail to help a friend when they are able.
Perhaps the most unsettling trait of the Vermiurge mindset, however, is just how terrifyingly thorough one can be. If a task is worth doing, it is worth doing to completion, and that is likely where certain tales of daemonic locusts being harbingers of the apocalypse came from. Vermiurge colonies claiming entire, desolate "death worlds" likely descend from larger hives who caused that desolation in response to some slight or another, and left the remains to their descendants and the vermin.
Vermiurge Heroes
X
X
X