Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a type of monster to be occasionally encountered on Thyferra after the Sith base delta zeroed the planet.
- Image Credit: https://parallelevision.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/monster.jpg
- Source: Time Zombies from Doctor Who (Television Series)
- Canon: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Thyferra/Legends
- Links: starwarsrp.net/topic/120432-the-burning-of-thyferra-tse-invasion-of-ga-held-thyferra-hex/
- Name: Thyferran Hellion
- Designation: Semi-Sentient
- Homeworld: Thyferra
- Language: N/A
- Average Lifespan: Indeterminate
- Estimated Population: Rare
- Description: A Thyferran Hellion is a horrific thing to behold - it has the basic form of a humanoid, but its flesh is scorched ash-grey from the heat of the orbital bombardment of Thyferra. features melted into a congealed cocktail of ash. Cracks often shine through its body, especially around the eyes - the cracks are signs of an underlying heat within the creature, often forming irregular marks around its body as though it was perpetually burning underneath its skin, like a cracks shining through the hardened lava of a volcano, revealing the molten magma beneath.
- Breathes: N/A
- Average height of adults: 1.8m
- Average length of adults: N/A
- Skin color: Ashen grey, charred black, or scorched white, often with red, orange, or yellow 'cracks' in the 'skin'
- Hair color: Hairless
- Distinctions: There are no distinctions between genders.
- Races: N/A
- Strengths:
Astral Form: The Thyferran Hellion is ultimately a body animated by an insane spiritual life force - even if struck down, the mad soul can form another body out of ash and continue to pursue its target.
Immunity: Being an animated construct crafted out of ash and ruin, the Thyferran Hellion cannot be destroyed by fire, plasma, or energy, as it will only absorb their heat and power to strengthen its own.
- Weaknesses:
Ashen Form: Thyferran Hellions are ultimately comprised of ash, and thus can be relatively easily destroyed, at least for a bit, with something as simple as a Force Push. It will take them several minutes to reform, during which they cannot attack. As well, they are vulnerable to cold weapons, which can for a time immobilize them and prevent them from attacking.
It's a Trap: The spirit animating the Thyferran Hellion can be trapped or otherwise sealed within an object through one of a number of methods of soul-binding, thus preventing it from reforming a body out of the terrain.
Plane Bound: Thyferran Hellions can only be formed from Thyferran ash. If a bound spirit animating a Hellion is taken off-world, it cannot animate a body from other materials than Thyferran ash, thus effectively restricting them to Thyferra.
CULTURE
- Diet: None
- Communication: A series of horrifying growls, moans, and unnatural screams.
- Technology level: The Thyferran Hellion has no concept of technology.
- Religion/Beliefs: N/A
- General behavior: Thyferran Hellions roam around the ash-filled landscape of Thyferra, often alone, but sometimes in groups of two or three, attacking anything they come across. A group larger than three is exceedingly rare. They will initially shamble slowly before speeding up in an almost Rakghoul-like sprint towards their target, bursts of flame coming from their hands. They will attempt to either burn the target from a range of fifteen to twenty meters with the flames from their hands, or will grab their target, melting through their armor and incinerating their flesh.
The following examination comes from the records of Vanessa Vantai, Sith Lord, during her construction of Defiance Consolidated Multipurpose Manufacturing's cinder block and energy crystal manufacturing plant.
Thyferra was once so lush, so beautiful of a world - yet now such beauty is lost. The landscape that had once contained a fruitful and thriving civilization had been reduced to hills and valleys filled with ash. The ash of plants. The ash of animals. The ash of sentient beings. All had been reduced to charred particulate, the few survivors of the orbital bombardment forced to venture out into a hostile wasteland where seemingly nothing could survive.
Then the attacks began. Workers started to describe strange creatures - human-like, but grey, with molten blood seeping from them. They would phase into and out of the ash, grabbing hapless workers and incinerating them into dust. It was so bad that the workers went on strike for a period of time. My first encounter with one of these creatures was, admittedly, quite terrifying. The feral monstrosity rushed towards me and was not stopped by anything, whether slugthrower, blaster, or lightsaber. Only a grenade dispelled its form - a few minutes later it reformed itself from another pile of ash and rushed towards me again.
The Force was a valuable tool in engaging the creature. With but a simple push I could scatter its body to the wind. To put the creature down, though, required the work of Gorger - it was not even finished, yet the soul-sapping sword was the only means of ensuring the creature, the hellish, hellish creature, did not get back up.
I was not here when the Sith originally bombarded Thyferra, but I can make a number of educated hypotheses based upon past instances of similar creatures. Based on their ability to form a body, their connection to the world, and their pyrokinetic abilities, I believe them to be animated by the Force-Sensitives of this world, their spirits driven into a state where they could not unite with the Force, a change that they as untrained users of the Force could not comprehend - thus driving them mad. Whatever semblance of intelligence they do have - and given the complexity of some of their ambushes on my workers, they do have some intelligence - is likely forged out of a desire to protect their homeworld from any invaders, though they seem to be unable to view anyone but themselves as invaders. I cannot explain their humanoid form given the likelihood that many of the spirits were once Vratix - perhaps they are attempting to mimic the current population of human colonists on this world.
Given average percentages of the Force-sensitivity of a world's population, it is likely that there may be hundreds of these insane spirits floating around the world. I cannot explain how they generate the flames and the incinerating heat they do - perhaps their spirits were somehow infused with fiery power when the turbolasers rained down upon this world - but their ability to appear wherever there is a large quantity of ash concerns me greatly. We can't start making Thyferran cinderblocks with the world's ash as clinker until we find a means of dealing with them. I recommend bringing a large number of Sith to this world and binding these spirits to something so they cannot continue to form bodies.
ADDENDUM:
Sonic pulse generators and repulsor fields have proven effective in persistently disrupting the ash around the factory enough that any wandering Hellions are kept at bay. Apparently anything that disrupts the spirits' ability to hold their body together can keep them from actively reforming. We've installed shufflers inside the factory to keep the ash jostling, as well as repulsor fields and sonic pulse generators to disrupt the ash outside and keep the creatures from coming nearby. The settlements aren't as fortunate, but there's nothing I can do for them. This is a haunted world now, and as much as I wish there was something that could be done - it's nothing that can be handled. Not by me.
