Manbeasts

By Ryan St, Bill Browne, Stephanie Lauren and Charles Ferguson.

Their smiles are a gluttonous dog’s smile as his eats his master’s corpse, lapping at blood until he retches.

Like beasts, passions drive them.

Like men, they sometimes speak.

Manbeasts (srol) were once manifold and disparate - some scratched beneath the surface, some hunted men, some were demons of an ancient time, and some were created whole cloth by the World Cancer. Even today, there is diversity amongst them. All are diseased and blemished, and share a sickening stench of carrion and decay. Rarely seen within the Halcyon itself and deeply feared in The Wastes, they are corrupted and corruptors with an abiding need to destroy and a taste for human carrion.

  • Gibberers (sroc) are the simplest of the manbeasts, but their brutality has its cunning, just as a pack of wolves can be brutal and cunning. They have the shape of howling baboons with the glint of bestial intelligence in their blood-red eyes. Their shrieks chill the hearts of men.
  • The Horned Ones (sroggoc) are warlords and champions among the Gibberers. They tower over the Gibberers they command. They are names so because each is crowned with horns of some kind.
  • Seducers (srilloc) become impregnated by males of other species. They return to the Maw of Darkness (Queen of Hosts?) & give birth to wriggling larvae that then burrow into the titanic body of the Maw. These feed on his/her flesh like maggots, then when "ripe" they fall out as new Manbeasts and scurry away.
  • Flesh Shapers, (sraharek) are the craftsmen, but they craft with flesh rather than tools. They are said to be like holy men to the manbeasts, but nothing in the manbeasts could ever be holy.
  • The Burnished, (sratti) made by Flesh Shapers, are their kings and lords.