G'Rnathan (grr-NATH-an) Battle Fiends (GBFs) are biological constructs of an advanced technological race known as "The Creators".
They are all uniform in appearance and abilities. Although a few of them have been known to employ biological enhancements (detailed below).
PHYSIOLOGY
The base creatures are greenish Yellow and stand 9 feet tall. They have 10" horns on their oblong heads. GBFs weigh 450 lbs. They have 2 arms, and 2 legs jointed in the standard humanoid manner. They have approximately the same range of joint movement as most humanoids as well.
Their "skin" is a chitinous material of great durability that has spines over the entire surface. These spines are generally less than 1" (3cm) long except around the joints where they can extend to as much as 6" (20cm). The chitin has pores which exude a thick yellow slime (see below) which coats the surface.
Their eyes are compound and afford them a nearly 270 degree arc of vision. Their eyes appear to have a deep red glow in the darkness. They can see well into the infrared spectum giving them an excellent night vision.
GBFs do not have a single aural sensor. Their "ears" are actually the spines on the surface of their armor. Each spine vibrates with varying intensity depending on the frequency of the ambient sounds. This vibration is then translated into distinct sounds and directions and distances. This means that GBFs have excellent hearing.
GBFs also have an advanced olfactory sense. They can discern scents as faint as 10 parts per million (PPM) (humans generally can detect odors of 100 PPM and dogs 5 PPM).
GBFs have a "battle reflex" that reacts automatically to emminant danger. It combines all of their senses into a 'risk factor' and then casues them to react by leaping or moving quickly out of harm's way (generally) or to minimise injury. This instictive response makes it hard to surprise GBFs.
GBFs have an exoskeleton that can withstand impacts of several thousand foot pounds of impact per square inch (fps) (bullelts deal between 2,000 and 5,000 fps). Higher impacts thend to casue the armor to distort shape, crack or punch clean holes depending on the size of the point of impact. However it rarely loses complete structural integrity and even a badly damaged GBF can continue to move.
Their internal structure is massively redundant to allow them to continue to function despite normally incapacitating injury. This is further reinforced with the yellow slime which is actually a nano-solution that acts as sealant for breaches to the armor, repair facilities (allowing a BFS to regrow parts to damaged to function) and a neurotransmitting medium.
GBFs can run up to 30 MPH indefinately if needed they can run faster but it does casue some minor damage to their joint systems from wear (about an hour at up to 60 MPH). They can leap up to 20 feet from a standstill. They can jump vertically 10 feet and with assistance even higher.
The natural weaponry of the GBF consists of claws, horns, and spines at the joints. These aren't particularly sharp but the strength of the GBF makes them usually lethal.
GBFs are capable of lifting 1 ton (about the weight of a mid-sized car) in a dead lift.
GBFs are denser than water and do not float. If submerged for extended periods of time the slime will begin extracting any oxygen needed from surrounding fluids. If suspended in a fluid that has no oxygen, the slime will begin chemically altering the subtance into oxygen. If it is not possible to do that chemically (such as with inert gasses) then the slime will begin extracting oxygen (and thus destroying) non-essential parts of the GBF anatomy.
GBFs do not need to sleep or eat solid food (in fact they do not have a digestive system nor an orafice to put in food. They extract sustenance by eating the biologial energy of living things. Higher-order creatures have much more energy, and therefore can provide enough sustenance to live on for weeks or years.
GBF do not need to eat humans. They could eat tuna for example. but the life force of a tuna would barely last an hour. A dolphin, gorilla, or chimpansee might last a day. Most demon types do not provide the proper energy, and might even weaken the GBF's energy reserves. Demons are avoided. One normal human will provide enough energy for a month (on average). A particularly creative, intelligent, wise, pious, magical, or special human might provide as much as a year. Humans are simply more efficient. A GBF can transfer energy from another GBF but this is generally only in emergencies.
A GBF can store centuries of energy from humans by eating lots of them at a time (like in a war). Healing, extended exercise, and operating enhanced equipment uses energy which must be replaced more frequently. GBFs can be starved, and the slime in their body will begin destroying and extracing energy from non-essential parts of their anatomy if not kept properly energised from external sources.
ENHANCEMENTS
GBFs employ a number of biological "enhancements" that can be grafted onto their chitin armor and which are controlled through the neurotransmitting slime. It would be rare to see an entire squadron of GBFs so equipped, generally a small number of "specialty" units might have these items.
Flight Packs - These are sets of 4 membranous wings that beat rapidly and allow the GBFs to fly. On the ground these wings compact and fold under a light chitin cover. (like a beetle)
Extra Limbs - Units designated for extended melee are often fitted with an extra set of arms just below their primary set to give them multiple attacks.
Heavy Armor - Blocks of heavy chitin are grafted onto the GBF to make it virtually invulnerable to physical injury. This slows the GBFs down (although they can still maintain the 30 MPH speed, they can't exceed it. And jumping is right out).
Chemical Projectors (CP)- These are arm-mounted weapons that shoot a mucus like glob of goo that has highly corrosive properties. It can eat through an inch of steel in seconds.
Thumpers (Scouts) - These are external tendon's grafted between thigh and calf...and between upper arm and forearm. Thus equipped a GBF can double its move, jump, and reaction time from "battle reflexes". The sacrifice is strength. Thumpers are barely stronger than a normal human (becasue of lost leverage from internal structures).
Howlers - This is a diaphram mounted in the armpits. It vibrates at a specific frequency that can disrupt inner ears, and in some case neural activity. GBFs are immune to the effect. While generating these sounds, a GBF cannot be engaged in any activity with his arms. If an effective result from these devices is found early on in a conflict they are often made general issue.
Telepathic Reflectors - This device functions for all intents and purposes as a mental "radio". It looks like a small shell-like device that is attached to the back of the GBFs head.
TACTICS
GBFs do not use vehicles, heavy weaponry (like mortars, rockets, or lasers) becasue GBFs use numbers. GBFs are deployed in squadrons of 1000 units. These units are often broken down as follows:
-
UNIT TYPE #
GBF (standard) 500
GBF FLYING.........50
GBF HOWLERS.....10
GBF CP.............100
GBF SCOUTS.......10
GBF RADIO..........10
GBF HEAVY........200
GBF XLIMBS.......120
GBFs do not have commanders or a heirarchical structure of command. They recieve orders from OVERSEERS (see next article) and will continue to attempt to fulfull those orders using every means neccessary.
GBFs aren't particularly creative, but aren't stupid either. Unsuccessful methods are rarely tried twice. GBFs have no sense of time and so will often follow one attempt after the other in rapid succession.
GBFs prefer to operate with stealth rather than direct conflict. They often will throw a huge force in a frontal assault as a distraction while using flanking maneuvers with heavy and Xlimb troops to get behind the lines.
GBFs do not surrender, parlay or lose morale unless it will complete the mission. They might accept surrender of an enemy but only if it allows them to complete their assigned mission. If that mission is to destroy all the enemy units, then they will accept the surrender then slaughter the prisoners. The objective is always the goal. They never lose sight of that and have no other ambition besides that.
WEAKNESSES
Despite being virtually impossible to kill and having superior speed, reflexes and healing, GBFs are not invulnerable. They have a few basic weaknesses.
1) They are biological. They are carbon based. Acid, chemical corrosives and toxins do affect them. The slime can combat most poisons and diseases, but it is still biological in nature. It can be affected by neurosuppresants for example (which would affect its ability to operate extended troops or would slow healing)
2) They burn. Fire is deadly to GBFs. While they aren't particularly flamable fire destroys the protective slime and causes damage to internal organs (even redundant ones). And worst of all, an exoskeleton holds heat. So once heated a GBF does not dissapate heat easily and so may literally boil in his shell.
3) They do just their job...nothing more. If a GBF is ordered to take a hill. And no-one opposes him he will walk to the top of a hill and stand there until someone comes and gets him.
NEXT article OVERSEERS
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G'Rnathan Overseers
Like the GBF, Overseers are biological constructs. on both the G'Rnathan home dimension and during invasions, they function as communication and command (C&C) centers.
Overseers appear as huge black oblong shapes. Like gigantic ticks they float above the surface at altitudes of up to 1500 feet. They rarely land, preferring to watch from their vantage in the sky. Overseers can move at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour if needed.
Overseers vary in size depending on the number of units they control. A typical overseer in charge of a squadron (1000 GBF units) will be 40 feet wide and 50 feet long.
The outer shell of an overseer is similar in toughness to a standard GBF. They have no limbs to speak of but they are designed with a number of offensive, defensive, and detection organs.
C&C (Command & Control)
An overseer can telepathically link all of the units under its command. This makes GBFs a formidable hive mind all capable of coordinating complex maneuvers and tactics. Additionally the Overseer can take control of any of the units and force them to act, although generally it allows its units to act under their own will.
Field Generators.
The Overseers have a special gland that generates intense electrical fields. These field interfere with guidence mechanisms, radio communications and satilite comunications for several miles around their position. The efect is similar to an EMP pulse. Shielded equipment may be able to funtion within the field effect. Being Biological in nature G'Rnathans are not affected.
Slime
Overseers generate copious amounts of slime which it uses both for neurotransmiters and repair of itself as well as being able to regurgitate spouts of it onto GBF units that are in distress.
Telepathic projection
The telepathy organs of the overseers are highly developed and they can broadcast telepathic signals that can overload and cause discomfort and real injury to telepathically sensitive creatures.
Light Organs
Overseers have light-emitting organs that operate at a wavelength that is partially visible to humans as a pale violet light. To GBFs however it appears as a blinding spotlight and helps them identify enemy units in hiding or in low-visibility situations.
Overseers do not come in many different varieties but they do come in various sizes. The largest of them can be as large as hundreds of feet across.
TACTICS
While they are often the targets of long-range attacks the combined efect of the field emitters and their armor makes them extremely tough to destroy. Even a crippled Overseer has hundreds of GBF units it can emply to defend itself.
Overseers are much like mobile battle computers, their mind can analyze thousands of factors and make split second decisions based on the input it recieves from the GBF units in its command.
G'Rnathan Creators
Very little is known about the Creators. Even the G'Rnathans have build a mythology about them but of the current generation, perhaps only a few Overseers know the truth.
There are only a small number of Creators left. Geological ages ago the Creators were an agressive species that mastered biological construction and were soon breeding and engineering biological devices that would revolutionize their world.
The basic design of the GBF/Overseer battle units were perfected a million years ago. For eons they sold these units to other races as slave soldiers. At least one race of demonic creatures used GBFs to invade the Earth dimension nearly 40,000 years ago.
In the process of engineering the GBFs they discovered means of engineering themselves. They eliminated the need for sex, food, sleep, and many of the frailties of mortality. They could die, but not easily (thanks to Slime).
But with all they gained, they lost something. Something living inside them disappeared when they took control of their own evolution. They no longer produced their own life forces, and were (like the GBF) forced to replenish themselves from the life forces of others.
The first of the Creators to realize this was Ghortab. Ghortab called this life-force a soul. He opposed the idea of an entire race who sucked souls from other races and whose sole purpose was to create devices that killed and stole souls.
Ghortab was ejected from the protection of the Creators and into the midst of the very devices he opposed. Certain that they would soon drain his life essence and destroy him utterly the Creators spared no further thought to Ghortab.
But Ghortab began to realize that these creations had minds and that they could think (albeit not very creatively). He appealed to their reason and soon many of the GBF (and a few Overseers) were attending to him and learning from him.
They built a shrine to him and engraved his teaching on tablets of stone where his wisdom would continue forever.
By the time the Creators realized what had happened, they had to fight a massive civil war of GBF vs GBF and eventually destroyed all the remaing non-engineered life on their world. Ghortab saddened at the final loss of reason fed his followers with his remaining life energies. And the remaining Creators sealed his shrine and made it inaccessible.
Their dead husk of a world became a massive factor to produce GBFs and Overseers for the sole purppose of feeding life energies back to the creators. The Shrine of Ghortab became something that was spoken of in revered whispers. Even th most ruthless of Overseers would never think of damaging the Shrine.
The creators were unable to create more of their race, so they concentrated on preserving its few remaining members. They ceased to improve the GBF basic models and the factories were completely automated and produced quadrillions of GBFs over the centuries. But occasionally random ...variances...began to appear.
The variances, called "Deviants" usually included creative thinkers (GBFs who would sing, or create works of art. Poets and writers); independant thinkers (GBFs who would resist the commands of the Overseers, Overseers that would rebel against the orders of their masters); Mutants (GBFs with digestive systems or sexual organs); and emotives (GBFs with true emotions).
Ghortab had taught that the GBFs and Overseers constituted a race, not a device. That soon evolution would make them independant of the creators and able to stand by themselves as a race alone. They had not achieved their destiny but that the ascension would signal the final demise of all of the Creators.
Of course, the Creators have taken excessive steps to destroy these Deviants. But for some reason some of them are able to enter the Shrine of Ghortab. This sanctuary is a place they are immune to any attack. Despite all their efforts, none of the GBFs or Overseers will willingly attack the Shrine. Those that are forced often fall prey to mysterious malfunctions.
Victor was a Deviant emotive. He suffered from doubt and fear. While escaping from Overseers and GBfs seeking his destruction he somehow entered the Shrine of Ghortab. There he took one of the stones engraved with Ghortab's teachings.
Without knowing how, he managed to escape through an unused Transport Ring--The interdimensional portals the GBFs and Overseers used to used to travel to worlds they were feeding on.
This ring led to Earth.
The G'Rnathan Homeworld.
Becasue of the war that destroyed all life on their world, all that is left is a lot of broken basalt and dust that blows in fierce winds across the surface. The waste by-products of the Slime lis manifested as a corrosive liquid that rains down on the surace (again GBFs and Overseers are immune).
The G'Rnathan sun produces very little violet hazed light. Night and day are barely discernable. The average temperature is around 50 farenheit everywhere, all the time.
The Shrine of Ghortab is an enormous structure made of shimmering white crystal. It has no doors or windows. Deviants cluster near the front of the building hoping to find sanctuary within, occasionally Overseers come by and drop modified Slime on these wretches and dissove them.
The Factories are glossy black half-tunnels that crawl over the surface like intestines. These intestine-like structures accept raw materials in one end (damaged or destroyed GBFs, any biological material from any of a number of worlds) and it is processed over its miles long length and GBFs march out the other end completely formed and aware.
Lately however, the factories have tended to work sporatically as there are increasingly short supplies of material to put in the other end.
The Creators live in undercround caverns with virtually inaccessible entrances. These warrens are so vast that the few remaining Creators use telepathic devices to communicate and almost never see each other face to face.
G'Rnathan Battle Fiends
Thats all I got folks. And looking at it I am surprised that I had THAT much. Wow. If you have ever talked with me about Victor's fate I think you can see some of where the story is going to go...
Its all yours now.
Enjoy
G'Rnathan Battle Fiends
NOTE:
This is the G'Rnathan battle plan not the future. While I am revealing this detail to the players remember that nobody but the G'Rnathans know these details. The humans might be able to discern parts of it, but they may never know the true plan in its entirety
The other side of this is the plan as detailed below ends with the subjugation of the human race and the conversion of Earth into a feeding pool for the the GBF/Overseer race and ultimately the Creators. It is up to you as players to determine where this plan will be interrupted and ultimately thwarted.
I am not going to tell you how to do it (although I will happilly discuss strategies and plot ideas about it) its up to you to write this ending. There will be a turning point in the G'Rnathan deployment (noted below) but I won't detail that either...that is MY ending to write.
The Invasion:
Day -10
A portal opens to G'Rnatha. This portal is a new one and its openeing has been planned. It will open deep in the Mojave Desert and an initial force of 100 GBFs will exit the portal and immediately head out in different directions.
Each of these GBFs is carrying a stone similar to the Stone of Ghortab that Victor has carried. These stones can be used as keys to open the ancient portals all over the world.
There are 21 portals left that can still be opened. They are distributed as follows:
North America.....4 (including the new one opened at the start of the invasion)
South America.....2
Australia.............1
Africa.................4
Asia...................5
Europe...............4
Antarctica.............1
The GBFs will make their way by any means neccesary to these sites and will use these stone keys to open the portals. It does not take any sort of preperation or ritual, the stone needs to be shattered inside the transport ring. Once that occurs a waiting squadron (1000 GBFs) and an overseer will immediately enter Earth.
Day 0:
Invasion day. [NOTE: I plan for Victor to leave Earth on this day. It might take me a few days give or take but close to this date]
20,000 GBFs and 20 Overseers and at least one mega-overseer (capable of controlling 10,000 GBFs if needed) will have arrived on Earth. These units will attempt to eliminate power plants, fuel processing plants, food sources, manufacturing plants. The goal is to destroy the infrastructure of the technological society.
The GBFs are prepared to confront the Earth defenses by destroying their ability to supply troops. Foods will be poisoned by slime, medical units will be attacked with predjudice. Fuel and ammo dumps will be destroyed.
The individual troops don't bother them much, the standard weaponry is not very effective against them. Tanks can be bothersome as well as flame throwers. But these sorts of weapons aren't really standard issue.
Day +10, +20, +30
Every 10 days the portals will erupt forth with 20,000 additional troops.
Day +40:[NOTE Victor will be disrupting the flow of troops into Earth here and some erratic behavior on the part of the G'Rnathans is to be expected. Many of them will begin to rebel and work counter to the invasion]
The GBFs begin the process of raping Earth. Humans and animals will begin to be hearded towards the portals by the thousands and forced through to G'Rnatha. There, GBF and overseer units will heard them towards the factory tunnels. Thes tunnels will process them by draining thier life energies and converting their raw organic matter into more GBFs and Overseers.
Day +100:
All but a few pockets of resistance should be quelled. Massive ranches of humans are built and they are constantly marched into the portals. The first of the creators comes to Earth to begin to seek places to build new Transport Rings. A factory is begun to process the life-force of Humans and to reduce their organic matter into a more easily transported form (probably something resembling Spam in a can).
Day +250
Its over. Humanity is dead and the Creators begin to process the last of the animal and plant matter and transport it back to G'rnatha.
Day +500:
The G'Rnathan Creators introduce a slime-based organism that begins to extract lifeforce from microbic life and any lingering forces that the planet itself might have. The slime holds the energy in vast pools of yellowish goo that act like liquid that "evaporates" and then rains back running into the seas and rivers and lakes.
Day +30 YEARS
The Grnathans send squadrons to collect the energy-laden slime in huge vats and transport it back to G'Rnatha where its energy feads the Creators for many centuries.
Day +1000 years.
Nothing left. A rocky dead dirty dustball has the transport rings closed and the world os forgotten. Its name is erased from the books from other dimensions and planets. Nothing there worth worrying about.