'Ello Poppet.
Verminkin
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To showcase Lucy’s evolution as a Monster Maker/Sithspawn Creator under the tutelage of her grandmother.
- Image Credit: ChatGPT
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Tintinna, Ranat, Skaven
- Name: Vermidrax
- Colloquially Known As: "Ratsith," "Verminkin," or less formally, “Lucette’s Little Mistakes” (used only by those with a death wish).
- Designation: Semi-Sentient
- Origins: Amaltanna (Deep subterranean vaults beneath the obsidian crust)
- The Underdark of Amaltanna
- Average Lifespan: 12–25 standard years (longer for alchemically-enhanced subcasts or armored Ironbound)
- Estimated Population: Planetary
- Description: The Vermidrax are a sprawling, alchemically-forged species of ratlike Sithspawn engineered by Lucette Fortan-Raaf in her grandmother's alchemical labs on Amaltanna. Varying in size from knee-high skitterers to bipedal monstrosities capable of speech, the Vermidrax occupy a complex social and casted warren-society beneath the surface. Crafted with a blend of corrupted rodent DNA, alchemical reagents, and Force-bonded dark matter, they serve a variety of roles, from saboteurs and scavengers to plaguebearers and armored eternal knights.
While individual Vermidrax may lack full sentience, their hive-driven cunning, religious fervor for their creator, and adaptive biology make them alarmingly competent. Often underestimated, the species thrives in warzones, ancient ruins, and contaminated zones, operating with a mix of tribal coordination and alchemical instinct. Their collective devotion to Lucette is so deep it borders on religious, with her alchemical signature coded into their very biology.
Though reviled and feared by outsiders, the Vermidrax see themselves as custodians, defenders, and stewards of a rising empire that only they understand, one built not by power alone, but by rot, resilience, and remembrance.
- Breathes: Type I (Standard atmosphere)
- Average Height of Adults:
- Common Castes (e.g., Poxgnaws, Skitterfolk): 0.9 to 1.3 meters
- Elite Castes (e.g., Ironbound, Vermidrax Titans): 1.8 to 2.5 meters (heavily armored or alchemically enhanced)
- Average Length of Adults: Including tails: 1.2 to 2.8 meters
- N/A for castes that have minimal tail appendages (e.g., Ironbound, Fumepriests)
- Skin color: Ranges from pale gray and mottled green to necrotic black or sickly taupe, often marked by patches of chitin, scarring, or chemical burns from unstable alchemical growth spurts.
- Hair color: Coarse and wiry on backs, heads, and tails
- Eye color: Red, yellow, orange — always glowing in the dark
- Distinctions:
- Gnawed fangs, clawed fingers, hunchbacked posture
- Some have alchemical armor fused into flesh
- Smarter ones have patchwork robes, bones, or warpaints
- Many emit a faint alchemical odor: ozone, mildew, and spice
- Races: The Vermidrax are not divided by subspecies, but rather by caste, alchemically and ritually altered roles determined during or shortly after birth. Each caste fulfills a specific role in their society, designed for purpose rather than individuality. [Note: This is not an exhaustive list.]
- Rotmouths: Carrion-voiced heralds of death, these bloated and rotting wretches produce an airborne neurotoxin in their throats that breaks down organic matter and morale alike. Their breath leaves blackened trails. Often the first to charge into battle, or to explode.
- Poxgnaws: Rabidly reproducing foot soldiers, fast and erratic. Covered in weeping lesions and blistered hides, they act as infectious shock troops who gnaw through armor, sanity, and sometimes each other.
- Fumepriests: Shrouded in toxic haze, Fumepriests wield alchemical flamethrowers and Force-born pyromancy. Their twisted chants often ignite both fire and fear. Each speaks in half-sung riddles, always in pairs.
- Ironbound: Once-dead elite warriors revived through Sith alchemy and encased in crude sithsteel armor. Their bodies no longer rot — they simply endure. They act as both heavy enforcers and spiritual icons of eternal loyalty.
- Vermidrax Titans: Gigantic, engine-backed berserkers. Rare and sacred, these living siege beasts are housed in armor bonded with Sith runes. Each Titan speaks only in screams.
- Scav-Teks: Tinkerers, saboteurs, and scavengers. These hunched engineers cobble together explosive traps, repurposed tech, and horrific inventions from fallen droids and weapons. Frequently cybernetic.
- Blightfangs: Frontline berserkers bred to survive in the most toxic environments. Immune to known bioweapons and Sith plagues, Blightfangs are often loosed without armor or orders — just a direction and a kill quota.
- Witch-Skree: Chittering, minor Force-users who operate in trios or quartets. They chant to fuel battlefield rituals, their war-magic built on collective rage. Their claws and voices sharpen the minds of nearby Vermidrax.
- Bonewhispers: Priestly caste draped in black bone talismans. They speak only in sequences of numbers, prophecy, or riddles. Often mistaken for mad, they command strange respect — even from Titans.
- Smoke-Clads: Alchemically enhanced grenadiers who wear toxin-rebreathers and carry satchels of incendiary and corruption bombs. They trail green smoke wherever they go, disappearing into it just as easily.
- Skittershields: Mainline soldiers armed with curved vibroblades, chitinous shields, and deep loyalty. Often used to press charges in tunnels or swarm trenches. They chant in unison and die as one.
- Burrowriders: Mounted on blind, armor-plated wormbeasts bred for silence and sudden strikes. They erupt from below ground or ruined walls to cleave into enemy flanks. Often operate independently.
- Runechurners: Alchemists fused with living cannons. Runechurners are twisted into bio-weapons, each spitting globules of acidic fire, plasmic bile, or caustic metal shards from their chest or maw.
- Twitchfangs: The smallest and fastest of the Verminkin, they're jittery, kleptomaniacal speed-runners bred for reflex and theft. Twitchfangs are often seen only as a blur and a blur too late, having already filched a commlink, thermal detonator, or prized heirloom.
- Force Sensitivity: Low. Most Vermidrax are not Force Sensitive, but specialized castes like Witch-Skree, Fumepriests and Ironbound may exhibit latent or minor sensitivity due to alchemical manipulation. True training or mastery is rare and typically limited to bonded or semi-autonomous units under Sith direction.
- Alchemical Resilience: Most Vermidrax are infused with Sith alchemy, giving them resistance to heat, cold, and minor lightsaber glancing blows, particularly their Vermidrax-Plate, armor grown from the bones of their honored dead.
- Caste Synergy: Each caste fills a battlefield role with near instinctual coordination. Twitchfangs harass and sabotage; Scav-Teks dismantle tech; Blightfangs charge; Bonewhispers chant protections or hexes.
- Hyper-Adaptive Biology: Their rapid metabolism and chaotic mutations mean they adapt quickly to hostile environments, and their immune systems can endure toxins, radiation, and corruption that would kill most organics.
- Swarm Efficiency: Overwhelm in numbers; efficient tunnelers and saboteurs.
- Hard to Kill: Low-value targets, but they don’t stop unless burned, dismembered, or Force-blasted.
- Anarchic Instinct: The Vermidrax are erratic by nature. Without a powerful leader, they quickly devolve into infighting, worship of malfunctioning tech, or “civil wars” over shiny objects.
- Light Sensitivity: Due to their subterranean origins, Vermidrax are highly sensitive to bright light, flashbangs, or radiant Force techniques, often causing panic or disarray.
- Cultural Obsession with Relics: Their compulsion to steal or hoard valuable objects, especially weapons, can jeopardize missions, attract attention, or disrupt coordination. A Twitchfang chasing a dropped datapad is a liability and a spectacle.
- Cowardice Creep: If a few die visibly, the whole swarm might panic, most especially without a powerful leader.
- Short Memory: Must be re-trained constantly, except the Bonewhispers, Ironbound, and the Titans.
- Diet: Omnivore: Meat, mold, metals, spores, general rot and decay.
- Favorites: ship wiring, garbage stew, protein rations
- Poisonous to them: Bacta, certain Jedi healing herbs, spice-based narcotics
- Communication: Language: Clicks, screeches, broken Basic (“Yess, many eye-see-know, yesss.”)
- Hive-speech among castes; low-level telepathic pinging to nearby units.
- Bonewhispers have full Basic capability.
- Technology level: Scavenger Tech + Alchemical Improvisation, they’re not inventors — they steal and jam tech into things until it works (or explodes). They’ve been known to make:
- Plasma pipe bombs
- Servo-clawed staves
- Glowing syringes of green ichor
- Religion/Beliefs: The Gnawing One: A fictional deity made up by the Witch-Skree caste, believed to live at the center of all things, chewing away at reality.
- “We gnaw in its image! Yes-yes!”
- General behavior:
- Nocturnal. Swarm-hive behavior.
- Construct burrows, dig pits, steal tech, chew cables.
- Reverent toward Lucy — refer to her as “She Who Chose Teeth” or “Bright-Flesh Creator.”
- Fear Jedi. Hate Jedi. But love stealing their lightsabers.
- Attempt to trade “gifts” (dead lizards, scrap, melted datapads) for attention or favor.
- WARNING: Several Vermidrax are obsessed with lightsabers. They will try to chew or steal one if left unattended. This is not a joke. Lucy has tried everything. But none are more notorious than the Twitchfangs.
- Lore: The Vermidrax, though primitive in appearance, maintain a surprisingly complex caste-based society bound by instinct, ritual, and reverence for entropy. Though their civilization lacks formal government, it runs on a web of whispered hierarchies, tooth-marked tokens of loyalty, and frenzied oral histories. Culture is passed through chant, combat, and scavenged relics believed to carry ancestral memory.
Most Vermidrax societies revolve around vast warrens built into the decayed underbellies of cities or craggy ruin worlds. These lairs are lit by guttering green lanterns, fogged with fumes, and adorned in patchwork tech, bone trophies, and glowing alchemical glyphs. Within these spaces, caste determines duty: Twitchfangs swarm vents and tunnels seeking artifacts; Blightfangs patrol or assault in crazed packs; Bonewhispers preach to gnawing congregations. Even sacred rites of passage—like the Trial of Fangs—are laced with cruel ingenuity, where success is survival.
The Vermidrax view Force sensitivity as volatile but sacred. Witch-Skree serve as conduits of rage and chaos, often forming frenzy-chanting circles in battle or dragging strange idols into the fray. They honor Sithspawn like themselves as divine manifestations of fury and decay, with Lucy Raaf known (whether she likes it or not) as the “Mother Who Gave Teeth.”
Where Tibbs was cute, cuddly, and singular, the Vermidrax were her attempt at a functioning ecosystem of engineered chaos. Lucette had always read with fascination about Skakoan tunnels, ancient plague engines, and vermin lore tucked into the darker corners of her grandmother’s archives. She cross-referenced those myths with Zygerrian rodent packs and the bone-burrower clans found in the catacombs of Halm. Then, after several trials (and several panicked containment measures), she engineered the Vermidrax: force-alchemized pestilence-born creatures designed to swarm, sabotage, and survive nearly anywhere.
Each caste had a function. Some build. Some fight. Some chant. All obey.
And she made them talk. Not fluently, but with skittering gossip, fragmented chants, and war-squeaks. Why? Because Lucy thought it was funny.
The Vermidrax, colloquially dubbed "Ratsith" or “Verminkin,” are a recent creation in the long and sinister legacy of Sith alchemy. Engineered in the secretive alchemical catacombs of Amaltanna, a shadowed world under the dominion of Lady Taeli Raaf, the Vermidrax were never meant for galactic eyes. Conceived as both a biological experiment and a philosophical statement on entropy and adaptation, the first brood was created under the distant, curious eye of Lucette Fortan-Raaf, Taeli’s granddaughter and an aspiring Sithspawn creator in her own right.
The Vermidrax did not emerge in a single experiment but rather through years of iterative mutation and ritual. Splicing the DNA of Tintinnas, Ranats, Corellian sewer vermin, Amaltannan cave predators, and Force-sensitive species harvested from the Unknown Regions, the initial results were feral, unstable, and prone to violent infighting. Yet, with persistence—and an alarming amount of trial and error—the project matured. With the aid of Dark Side alchemical bonding techniques, Lucette succeeded in creating a stable gene-thread, binding them to the Force and cultivating loyalty through mystic imprinting and selective culling.
The creation of castes came next, driven by the Vermidrax's own emergent behaviors. Traits like obsession, cowardice, brilliance, or bloodlust began to cluster naturally—giving rise to the Twitchfangs, Blightfangs, Bonewhispers, and others. Lucy observed and catalogued this with enthusiasm, often referring to it as a “social alchemical bloom.”
Despite their grotesque appearance and anarchic demeanor, the Vermidrax possess a rudimentary oral history—likely implanted by accident through residual Force imprints during their creation. They speak in chittering riddles of the "Mother of Teeth" (a reference to Lucy), "The Black Tower" (presumably Taeli's lab), and "the Coming Tunnels"—a prophecy of burrowing out from their homeworld to bring glorious rot to the stars.
Thus far, the Vermidrax remain bound to Amaltanna, their numbers growing in forgotten warrens, their rituals evolving in the darkness, and their crude weapons forged from the bones of their dead.
They are, for now, a secret. But every tunnel expands eventually.
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