Bookworm
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To enhance an older Sithspawn creation of the Lady of Secrets
- Image Credit: https://www.deviantart.com/kunkka/art/giant-centipede-gyromancer-205341415
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links:
- Blighter
- Milodon
- Brain Worm (Base for parasitic offspring)
- Swamp Gas
- MUUR V-25
- Name: Despoiler
- Designation: Non-sentient
- Origins: Valrar
- Average Lifespan: 25 Galactic Standard Years
- Estimated Population: Planetary
- Description: While only mildly larger than the original specimens, a vast change has occurred between the Blighter and Despoiler strains. The Despoilers are much more in line their Milodon ancestors, appearing like corrupted giant millipedes with large mandibles that can scuttle quickly across surfaces and battlefields to spread their chaos inducing attacks.
- Breathes: Type I
- Average Height of Adults: 2.5 meters
- Average Length of Adults: 3 meters
- Skin color: The chitin that covers their bodies is a darker gray almost black, while its pulsing underbelly is a blood red color.
- Hair color: No hair
- Distinctions: The most distinctive physical traits of the Despoilers are its many claws, its glowing thorax that contains its parasitic offspring, and the small vents that cover its back that can exude its other extremely potent weapons.
- Races: No other races
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
- Like the original Blighters, Despoilers exude a slight corrosive substance and utilize their powerful claws to quickly move across surfaces and terrain, using the corrosive substance they exude to eat away at obstacles between them and heat signatures coming from lifeforms. Their muscles have been augmented through Sith alchemy to give them a faster crawling speed.
- The eyes of Despoilers act much in the same as the sensory organs of the original Blighter, allowing them to see in the infrared spectrum and detect movement and vibrations.
- Replacing the older mutagenic virus of the Blighter is a new strain of the MUUR virus developed by Darth Arcanix for use by the Sith Empire's intelligence operatives. The new virus, dubbed MUUR V-27, is less potent and immediate than the original V-25, but has many of the same mutative effects (see MUUR V-25 for mutation effects on some species). The V-27 is an airborne strain, and when inhaled by a victim, it slowly begins to mutate their bodies, with full viral saturation and mutation taking between five to six hours. Once transformed, the victim remains alive for three hours before their DNA unravels and they become a pile of infective organic goo. The Despoiler can exude this virus within a twenty-meter radius around it.
- For PC infection, permission is required.
- Much like the Blighter, Despoilers also carry a parasite that allows them to control individuals infected by it. The new parasite can infect an individual either through an open wound or through ingestion, whereupon they will take root in the nearest nerve cluster and spread its thin tendrils. Full infection and control can take hours, if not days, but is undetectable except for random spasms and pains. Once fully infected, the host becomes a simple and mindless husk of its former self, now under the complete control of the Despoiler through a symbiotic telepathy, and by extension, its Sith Masters. The Despoiler, once the victim is fully infected but is starting to expire, can then choose to initiate a hormonal surge in the parasite that causes the body and the creature to go dormant and has the parasite slowly absorb the nutrients and biomatter of its host, slowly evolving into a new Despoiler.
- For PC infection, permission is required.
- A new addition for the Despoiler is an organ within its body that creates an organic version of Swamp Gas that it can emit in a powerful gas cloud attack from its vents in a twenty-meter radius.
- While its flesh and chitin have been somewhat improved so at least a thrown rock won't kill it, a normal blaster or slugthrower can still quite easily pierce through its protective chitin and kill the creature.
- Despoilers, like Blighters, are not designed to be frontline combat Sithspawn. If used in such a manner, it is likely they will expire within moments of battle beginning, or quite possibly they could infect their own allies.
- Exposure to the cold, while it not outright kill them immediately like Blighters, will cause them to become extremely lethargic even by their standards, and the parasites within them will perish. They also would not have the strength to contract their muscles to expel their viral agent or the gas attack. Prolonged exposure or a sudden burst of extreme colds, like from a carbonite or CryoBan weapon, will still easily kill them.
- Direct applications of the Light side will immediately kill them, Force Healing can cure infection from either its mutagen or its offspring.
- Both the mutagenic virus and its gas attack are nondiscriminatory, being able to infect both ally and enemy alike.
- Diet: Omnivore (They prefer to eat corroded and rotted materials, fungus, molds, and small creatures that burrow in the ground. However, they have been known to devour the host of their parasites once they expire.)
- Communication: Gurgles and growls towards members of their own kind, and they can understand commands given through the dark side or spoken in the Sith language.
- Technology level: No technology level
- Religion/Beliefs: No religion or belief system
- General behavior:
- Like their original Blighter forms, Despoilers in their natural habitat are docile and lazy creatures. They are perfectly content to eat the foliage of the jungle or as they burrow through the dirt the various creatures and fungus and molds it encounters. Occasionally, they will send out some of their parasitic offspring out to snatch up smaller creatures in the jungles and bring back to its preferred territory so it can slowly die and be consumed by the Despoiler or be used as nest by the parasite to grow and evolve into a full Despoiler. Despoilers are also cowards and will do everything in their power to avoid the more powerful Sithspawn on the monster world of Valrar.
- When under the command of a Sith Beastmaster, Despoilers are insidious creatures that are designed to sow chaos and panic behind the frontlines of a battle. Their natural cowardly tendencies become sneaky as they will locate vulnerable population areas for targeting with their parasites, or to be made awash in either its mutagenic virus or poison gas attacks. Despoilers will mostly stay out of sight, preferring to attack their Master's enemies by finding spots such as air filtration or ventilation hubs and forming a temporary nest there to spread their pathogens through an entire building quickly.
Continuing to improve on her older Sithspawn creations, Darth Arcanix and her followers began experimenting on some of the Blighter subjects that lived in the jungles of Valrar. The creatures had a plethora of weaknesses, and Arcanix was now dissatisfied with both the mutagen they could exude, and the parasites born from modified brain worms they created. The poor Blighters were once again subjected to renewed tampering through Sith alchemy and genetic engineering to create a new strain, one that would meet with Arcanix's high standards.
The new strain, dubbed Despoilers by the alchemists, were now more in line with the Milodon specimens that went into the original creatures with a more millipede look. Their new form also gave them a much faster movement speed, even if they had lost the ability to burrow underground, allowing them to potentially strike targets more quickly under the control of a Sith Beastmaster.
More insidiously, Arcanix and her scientists introduced a new strain of their MUUR mutagen for the Despoilers to exude, and while not as potent or immediate as the far more virulent V-25, the V-27 strain could infect subjects through inhalation. The parasites of the creature were also changed, becoming the way the species reproduced, and they were able to birth more than one at a time. Arcanix also opted for a more symbiotic link, rather than telepathy, for how the creature could control its offspring while in their parasite form and any potential hosts. As a final addition, an organ was created in the creatures' body connected to its chimney growths that would allow it to erupt in a gas cloud of Swamp Gas.
A few more alchemical treatments were able to eliminate their allergy to ixetal cilona at least.
Last edited:
