Shadow Hand
- Intent: To create a Sithspawn amphibious shock-infantry species for the Kainate, bred from Tof reef predators and alchemized war-stock to erupt from surf and tide, overrun beachheads and harbors, and serve as recurring horror elements in coastal, naval, and underwater RP scenarios.
- Image Credit:
- Click - ChatGPT by Me
- Headers - Teresa Zambrano | Darth Pellax
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Name: Surfskinner Maraud (Plural Surfskinner Marauds, Commonly "Surfskinners")
- 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:
- 40-60 Galactic Standard Years
- Estimated Population: Scattered - Restricted to the Tof Exclusionary Zone, Dromund Kaas, and select Kainate worlds.
- Description: Surfskinner Marauds are hulking, amphibious Sithspawn shock-troopers engineered from Tof reef-dwelling megafauna, predatory crustaceans, and grafted humanoid war-stock. Each stands somewhere between monstrous infantry and walking siege engine: a hunched, four-to-six-limbed brute layered in black chitin, ossified reef armor, and alchemical plating. They surge out of surf and shallows in frenzied packs, using hooked forelimbs and stone-cracking claws to climb sea walls, drag defenders from parapets, and tear open ship hulls at the waterline.
Where Blackwake Leviathans rule the deep and Riftmaw hunters patrol the water columns, Surfskinners are designed to own beaches, breakwaters, harbors, rig-cities, and any battlefield where water and land meet.
- Breathes: Type I Atmosphere and Water (Dual gill-lung respiration; optimized for humid, coastal, and aquatic environments)
- Average Height of Adults: 3.0 - 4.5 meters at full rear-limb extension (most fight in a hunched, lower profile)
- Average Length of Adults: 4-6 meters when fully extended
- Skin Color:
- Base Hide: Dark slate, deep green, bruise-purple
- Armor / Carapace: Black, rust-red, bone-white reefs and barnacled coral-growths laced with dull crimson alchemical lines.
- Hair Color: N/A
- Distinctions:
- Amphibious War Brutes: Broad, hunched torsos with a hybrid skeletal structure, part humanoid, part crustacean, part predatory saurian. Thick tails or extended lower spinal ridges help them stabilize in surf and while climbing vertical surfaces.
- Layered Reef-Plate Armor: Outer shells form from alchemized reef, chitin, and bone; plates overlap like jagged black scales encrusted with coral. Many carry embedded fragments of shipwrecks, hooks, and shrapnel from previous battles.
- Hooked Climbing Limbs: The primary forelimbs end in massive, hooked talons or multi-digit claws capable of punching into stone, duracrete, and hull plating, letting Surfskinners climb sea walls, pier supports, rig pylons, and even the flanks of grounded ships.
- Crushing Maw: A wide, crocodilian mouth armed with layered teeth designed to crack armor and bone. Some lineages have jagged, serrated inner "reef-blades" that grind when the jaw locks, pulping whatever is caught.
- Secondary Manipulator Limbs: Smaller, more dexterous arms beneath or beside the primary limbs used to wield scavenged weapons, shields, or restraints, drag prey, or stabilize during climbs.
- Gill-Lung Hybrid: Slatted gill structures along the neck and ribs feed into cavernous lungs; Surfskinners can breathe water indefinitely and operate on land for extended periods, though they prefer humid, splash-zone environments.
- Sensory Crest: A ridge of spines, tendrils, and sensory nodules runs from the skull down the neck, tuned to vibration and chemical cues in both air and water. When agitated or hunting, these ridges flare and twitch, giving them a "hackled" silhouette.
- Battle Scars & Ritual Marks: Older Surfskinners accumulate scars, broken and regrown plates, and burned-in alchemical brands. Kainate handlers sometimes carve glyphs into their armor or hang chains, hooks, and trophies from their ridges.
- Races: None (No recognized sub-races; minor variation in color, plate density, and length between individual bloodlines).
- Force Sensitivity: All
- Shock Infantry: Surfskinner Marauds are purpose-built for coastal assault and harbor warfare. They excel at emerging from surf, climbing through breakers and undertow, and hurling themselves onto beaches, piers, sea walls, and rig-cities. Their natural armor and brute strength allow them to shrug off small arms fire while they close to melee range.
- Cliff & Hull Climbers: Their hooked primary limbs and powerful tails let them climb sheer surfaces slick with algae and spray. They can scale sea-facing bastions, cling to the sides of grounded ships or platforms, and even swarm up the hulls of low-flying transports that approach too close to the waterline.
- Brute Melee Power: Up close, Surfskinners are devastating. Their claws and jaws can tear apart armored infantry, crush durasteel doors, and shred light vehicles or gun emplacements. Packs can quickly turn a defensive line into a churned mess of broken barricades and corpses.
- Amphibious Endurance: They can operate underwater, in surf, and on land without significant loss of lethality. They are comfortable wading through waist-deep water, storm drains, flooded tunnels, and sea caves; defenders can't rely on "the sea side" being safer.
- Conditioned Terror Engines: Surfskinners are not "mindless," but their semi-sentience is ruthlessly conditioned. They are imprinted from creation to view Kainate marks and handler signals as "pack alpha," and everything else as prey or obstacle. Their appearance and attack methods, erupting from waves, dragging screaming defenders under, scaling walls in chittering packs, are designed to break morale as much as bodies.
- Environmentally Dependent: Surfskinners are at their best in humid, coastal, or water-adjacent environments. Extended operations in arid climates, deep inland, or on dry terrain sap their stamina, crack their armor plates, and can cause their gill structures to desiccate. A Surfskinner warband forced to fight far from water is still dangerous, but significantly diminished.
- Force Light: Their bodies surge with the dark side of the force. A byproduct of their creation, these brutes have an inherent weakness to Force Light wielded by especially powerful wielders.
- Limited Ranged Capability: Surfskinners can throw debris, javelin-like spears, or use captured weapons clumsily, but they are built for close-quarters slaughter, not ranged firepower. Units that maintain distance and employ heavy, disciplined ranged fire or artillery can bleed them badly before they make contact.
- Low Strategic Intelligence: They possess pack cunning and can execute simple flanking maneuvers or follow beacon signals, but Surfskinners lack higher strategic reasoning. Without a Sith, Augur, Graug war-leader, or Kainate command element directing them, they tend to follow their instincts, pursuing the nearest prey, overcommitting to bloody brawls, and sometimes ignoring key objectives in favor of slaughter.
- Diet: Carnivore.
- Primary food sources: coastal fauna, reef megafauna, ship crews, prisoners, battlefield carrion.
- They will readily consume raw, rotting, or partially burned meat. In emergencies, they can cannibalize fallen Surfskinners or other Sithspawn. Non-organic debris is generally spat out, though small amounts are tolerated.
- Communication:
- Guttural roars, clicks, and grinding hisses transmitted through air and water.
- Body language: Crest flares, tail lash, claw posture, posture shifts.
- They understand simple command-signs, vox-tones, and alchemical "whistles" broadcast by handler devices but cannot speak structured languages.
- Technology Level: None. They do not invent or construct, though they sometimes use crude tools, shields, or scavenged weapons when conditioned or imprinted to do so.
- Religion/Beliefs: None. They do exhibit ritualized behavior imprinted by the Kainate. Crowding beneath certain banners, reacting to specific sigils, and "presenting" kills at designated mustering points.
- General Behavior:
- Pack Structure: Surfskinners travel and fight in warbands. A dominant specimen, often the largest or most heavily plated, acts as pack alpha, reinforced by handler conditioning. Subordinates jostle and posture, but direct kills between Surfskinners are discouraged.
- Hunting Style: They prefer to approach underwater, using the surf and spray to conceal their advance. On signal, they erupt from the waves in a sudden rush, racing up beaches, climbing walls, and smashing into defensive lines. In built-up harbor zones, they flood through culverts, storm drains, docking pits, and collapsed sea-gates in howling waves.
- Interaction with Other Kainate Forces: Surfskinners are usually deployed ahead of or alongside Graug and Immortal Legion amphibious units. Legionnaires clear fire lanes and objective points; Surfskinners crack the initial shell, guns, walls, bunkers. They show instinctive deference to heavily armored Sith and designated handler units, usually avoiding them in their killing frenzy.
- Rest & Territory: Between engagements, Surfskinners prefer submerged lairs: drowned sea caves, flooded bunkers, rig under-structures, or trench-side pens. They often cluster in semi-submerged "heaps", sleeping in tangled piles of armor, chains, and corpses.
When the Kainate took Tof, they did not simply slaughter its people and strip its fortresses. They began the slow, methodical work of rewriting the planet's ecology and war-landscape to serve Sith purposes. Tof's reefs—once the source of food, trade, and superstition—became raw material.
Tof's coastal zones crawled with hardy reef-dwelling megafauna: colossal crustaceans, armored eels, amphibious scavengers that climbed rocks and wrecks during storms. In the years following the conquest, Darth Prazutis ordered these environments to be catalogued, harvested, and repurposed. Reef-harvesting platforms were established, not for food, but for flesh and bone.
Within trench forges and coastal biolabs, Kainate alchemists began grafting reef predators to humanoid war-stock and beast-templates supplied by Graug and Sith bestiaries. Early test subjects either drowned in air, suffocated in water, or tore themselves apart in frenzies of pain. Entire pens had to be purged when unstable broods turned on handlers, Legion guards, and even Blackwake Leviathans in mindless rage.
Refinement came in layers:
- Phase I: Stabilizing the gill-lung system so the hybrids could transition smoothly between sea and shore.
- Phase II: Reinforcing skeletal structures so they could withstand repeated surf impact, climbing stress, and artillery concussion without collapsing.
- Phase III: Conditioning, burning the concepts of "surf", "wall", "prey," and Kainate heraldry into their emergent minds via pain, reward, and ritual.
Once Prazutis and his generals were satisfied, Surfskinmer production was integrated into the broader Tof Exclusion Zone doctrine. Beachheads designated for immediate annihilation or terror operations received Surfskinner "first waves" ahead of Legionnaire landings. Rig-cities and resource platforms along the Blackwake Runs maintained submerged pens where Surfskinners could be loosed against saboteurs, raiders, or would-be liberators.
Over time, the role of Surfskinners expanded. On Dromund Kaas and other Kainate worlds rich in coastal industry, small warbands were kept as organic coastal artillery, deployed against pirate enclaves, insurgent harbor cells, or enemy amphibious landings. Training cadres refined handler methods, teaching specialized Kainate officers and Augurs how to direct Surfskinners without losing control.
Sith and Graug war-leaders came to appreciate Surfskinners not just for their raw power, but for their psychological impact.
Soldiers who survive a Surfskinner assault rarely forget it. The sound of claws on wet stone, the feel of the ground shaking as hulks drag themselves out of the tide, the sight of comrades vanishing backward over a parapet with hooks in their armor, pulled into red-streaked waves.
In Kainate doctrine, Surfskinner Marauds represent a simple, brutal statement:
Even the water hates you now.
The beaches, once lifelines for Tof raiders and proud harbors, have been claimed by something that serves only the Shadow Hand's will. Where the surf breaks white, the Sith can make it run black—and from that blackness, the Marauds come.
