Approved Species Riftmaw Pack Hunters

[Darth Prazutis]

• Intent: To create a Sithspawn aquatic pack-predator species used by the Kainate to patrol the Tof Exclusionary Zone, hunt escapees and infiltrators, and reinforce the horror of its newly enslaved oceans.
• Image Credit:
  • Click - ChatGPT by Me
  • Headers - Teresa Zambrano | Darth Pellax
• Canon: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Links: N/A

• Name: Riftmaw Pack-Hunters
• Designation:
  
  • Semi-Sentient
• Origins:
  • Tof Exclusionary Zone - Abyssal Kainate Lab Facilities overseen by Darth Prazutis
  • Secondary breeding and holding sites on Dromund Kaas and select Kainate-controlled worlds
• Average Lifespan:
  
  • 35-50 Galactic Standard Years
• Estimated Population: Scattered - Restricted to the Tof Exclusionary Zone, Dromund Kaas, and select Kainate worlds.
• Description: Riftmaw Pack-Hunters are medium-sized, Sithspawn marine predators designed to turn the waters of the Tof Exclusionary Zone into a living minefield. Sleek, muscular, and eel-shark in profile, they possess cavernous, maws lined with jagged alchemical teeth and sensory pits that glow with a dull, sickly light. Their hides are dark and patterned for abyssal camouflage, broken by bioluminescent stress-lines that flare when they lock onto prey. They hunt in coordinated packs, using a combination of enhanced sonar shrieks, heartbeat-tracking organs, and fear-sensitive sensory nodes to locate, harry, and tear down any living thing that dares the forbidden seas.

• Breathes: Type I (Atmosphere via gilled respiration in water; can draw limited oxygen from air when partially exposed but cannot survive fully out of water for extended periods.)
• Average Height of Adults: 1.8 - 2.4 meters (At shoulder/upper dorsal ridge)
• Average Length of Adults: 6-9 meters (Snout to tail)
• Skin Color: Charcoal black, abyssal blue, oil-slick green, with streaks or mottling of deep crimson or violet along flanks and underbelly.
• Hair Color: N/A
• Distinctions:
  • Predatory Build: Long, torpedo-like body with dense musculature, designed for rapid acceleration and tight turns in water. Fins are scythe-shaped and reinforced with cartilaginous spines, allowing sudden directional shifts and short, brutal bursts of speed.
  • Riftmaw Jaw Structure: Their namesake "rift maw" consists of a multi-hinged jaw that can dislocate and yaw open far wider than a natural predator's, revealing a second inner ring of jagged alchemical teeth. The jaw can clamp down with enough force to shear through durasteel hull plating of light aquatic craft or powered armor joints.
  • Sensory Pits & Fear-Nodes: Along the jawline, cranial ridge, and flanks are clusters of specialized electroreceptive and bio-alchemical organs. These allow the Riftmaw to:
    
    • Sense heartbeats, blood flow, and muscle-tension signatures through water over impressive distances.
    • Detect emotional agitation - especially fear and panic - as subtle changes in biochemistry and micro-movements in prey.
  • Sonic Resonance Chamber: Behind the chest cavity lies a modified resonance organ connected to specialized swim-bladders. This allows the Riftmaw to:
    
    • Emit powerful sonar shrieks for navigation and long-range detection.
    • Focus those shrieks into painful localized sonic pulses that can disorient, rupture eardrums, or destabilize the structure of small craft and underwater installations.
  • Bioluminescent Scar-Lines: Thin, runic-looking lines along their sides and underbelly can glow with a dim, sickly light when the creature is actively hunting or agitated. These are not decorative; they're alchemical conduits that help stabilize their internal dark-side alterations. In total darkness, this creates a ghost-like, stuttering afterimage effect around a moving pack.
• Races: None (No recognized sub-races; minor variation in color, plate density, and length between individual bloodlines).
• Force Sensitivity: All - They cannot be sensed, manipulated, compelled, or deceived through the Force. Their minds are empty wells that absorb nothing, project nothing, and simply persist.

• Abyssal Trackers: Riftmaws are exceptionally capable at tracking living prey in water. Through a combination of electroreception, biochemical sensing, and dark-side attunement to emotional agitation, they can follow heartbeats and blood chemistry over significant ranges. Home in on targets experiencing strong fear, panic, or stress, even in murky or sensor-jammed conditions. This makes them ideal hunters for escapees, infiltrators, saboteurs, and any living being attempting to hide in the exclusionary waters.
• Sonic Hunters: Their resonance organs allow them to use sound as weapon and tool. Wide sonar sweeps to map complex submerged environments, tunnels, reefs, or wreckage fields. Focused sonic pulses that can disorient or stun humanoids, drive prey out of hiding, or shake apart fragile structures and hull plating on small submersibles and sensor buoys. In enclosed underwater environments, a pack's overlapping shrieks can create lethal resonance zones.
• Dark Howl: Riftmaws are gifted with the ability to unleash a destructive dark howl, similar to a Force Scream. This unleashes a devastating roar deeply rooted in the dark side of the force, capable of great destruction.

• Bound to the Water: Riftmaws are highly specialized aquatic predators. Outside of water they move only in short, clumsy thrashes. Rapidly begin to dehydrate, suffocate, and overheat. They are terrifying along coasts, piers, and flooded structures, but useless on extended dry-land fronts. Any significant drawdown of water, drainage of harbors, or combat far inland renders them irrelevant.
• Limited Against Calm or Non-Living Targets: Their tracking prowess relies heavily on biological signatures, emotional agitation. Targets that are droids or non-organic constructs, shielded by Force Nullification effects, or highly disciplined force users can reduce their effectiveness, and slip through their sensory net.
• Vulnerable to Sonic Countermeasures: While they wield sonic power, they are also susceptible to high-intensity sonic jammers, disruptive frequency arrays, or specialized resonance-baffling designs. These can cause disorientation, pain, or even hemorrhaging in their sensitive resonance organs, driving them off or killing weaker individuals.
• Force Light: Like most Sithspawn, intense applications of Force Light can burn their alchemical tissues, causing severe pain, mutation collapse, or death.

• Diet: Carnivore. Riftmaws will consume almost any meat source. They show a preference for prey that is moving and panicked, responding more aggressively to struggling targets than passive ones.
• Communication:
  • Sonic pulses at various frequencies.
  • Grunts, growls, and sub-harmonic rumbles.
  • Subtle body-language (fin flares, jaw positioning, bioluminescent patterning).
• Technology Level: None.
• Religion/Beliefs: None. They possess no true religion. At most, the oldest alphas show behavior that borders on ritualized dominance displays around dark-side nexuses or sites of mass slaughter, circling and vocalizing with unusual intensity.
• General Behavior:
  • Riftmaws behave like intelligently weaponized predators:
    
    • Pack Dynamics:
      They hunt in packs ranging from 4–12 individuals. Each pack typically has:
      
      • One dominant alpha, larger and more scarred,
      • Several subordinates that fall into flanking and harrying roles.
        Packs coordinate their movements expertly, using flanking tactics, driving prey into ambush corridors, and exploiting terrain.
    • Imprinting & Obedience: Newly created Riftmaws undergo imprinting in containment trenches and flooded crucibles, learning to associate:
      
      • Kainate signals, tags, and certain sigils with "pack" / "not prey"
      • Designated exclusionary transponders as "off-limits."
        This conditioning is strong but not perfect; if starved, enraged, or if their handlers are slain, they may become indiscriminate.
    • Hunting Patterns:
      
      • Shadowed waters, trench edges, ship graveyards, reef clusters, and the undersides of platforms.
      • Ambush tactics: lying still in wreckage or under hulls until prey enters range, then overwhelming with speed and numbers.
        They will harry groups repeatedly, using sonic pulses to induce panic and drive victims into deeper kill-zones.
    • Intelligence:
      
      • Capable of recognizing individual handlers, remembering regular patrol routes, adapting to simple countermeasures (like learning to attack cables instead of lights, or going for propellers instead of hulls first).
      • Not capable of abstract planning or independent long-term strategy without Sith guidance.

The Riftmaw Pack-Hunters were born from a simple need: Make the seas of uninhabitable to those who do not kneel.

After the Kainate's invasion of Tof and the subsequent annihilation and enslavement of the Tof Kingdom, the world's oceans became both a resource to be harvested and a frontier to be controlled. The Blackwake Leviathans were created to serve as apex siege beasts, breaking fleets and fortresses. But Darth Prazutis required more than titanic shock weapons. He needed a persistent, omnipresent terror in the water, something that could sniff out slaves fleeing by sea, infiltrators riding the currents, or saboteurs daring the new Exclusionary Zone. To this end, captured titanic ocean predators native to Tof were brought in chains to Kainate laboratories. There, under the direction of Darth Prazutis and specialized alchemists, their genetics were flensed, rewritten, and re-forged:

• Predator stock with strong hunting instincts and pack tendencies were selected.
• Electroreceptive organs, akin to those in sharks or certain abyssal creatures, were hypertrophied and fused with alchemical nodules attuned to emotional states, particularly fear.
• Resonance organs were implanted and grown, tuned to emit and endure extreme sonic pressure without destroying their host.
• Teeth and jaw structures were reinforced with alchemized bone and shard-fused enamel, ensuring they could tear into light hull plate, armor seams, and heavy exosuits.

The early prototypes were unstable. Several test packs turned on their handlers or tore themselves apart under the strain of their own sonic emissions. Some went mad in the presence of strong dark-side nexuses, attacking anything that moved, including one another, creating nightmarish feeding frenzies in flooded pens. Over multiple generations of controlled breeding, culling, and ritual strengthening, the modern Riftmaw emerged:

• Capable of hunting in coordinated packs without collapsing into mindless frenzy.
• Reliable enough to be directed by Kainate signals and handlers.
• Terrifying enough that the ocean itself became a prison wall.

Once deemed viable, Riftmaws were seeded in strategic patterns across the Tof Exclusionary Zone:

• Near former Tof harbors now turned into Kainate extraction ports.
• Around undersea ore, gas, and bio-harvesting rigs, ensuring workers and resources remained under strict control.
• In trenches and channels that formed likely escape routes for slaves, prisoners, or infiltrators.

In time, stories began to spread among the enslaved populations and off-world smugglers alike. Tales of eyes in the dark, of something that screamed through the water before the sea turned red. Divers spoke of feeling watched even in total silence, of hearts pounding in their own ears moments before something tore a comrade away into the depths. Small craft that attempted to run the Exclusionary Zone without Kainate authorization often simply vanished, leaving only twisted hull fragments and sonar ghost-signatures behind.

For the Kainate, the Riftmaws are a tool. A living sensor net, a deterrent, a quiet executioner. For those who live under the new order of Tof, they have become something closer to myth. The water remembers when you are afraid, and when it remembers, the Riftmaws come.

 

[Lyssara Thrynn]

Hi Darth Prazutis

Approved