Nero's Boot/Deep Folk Of The West
In the Bordermarches of the Western Wyld, strange things lair under the waves, and the Deep Folk of the West are merely the most mundane of them. Near the Coral Archipelago lairs the Celesk Reef, a coral reef infused with the energies of a Bordermarch Wyld-zone. Many are the strange and sessile creatures that dwell there, living in splendid immobile isolation. Many of these Sessile Folk have the power of sentience, but all are stuck in the Celesk Reef, unable to influence the outside world...all but the Deep Folk.
A type of insidious Sessile Folk, Deep Folk are both a disease and a species of Wyld-mutant. Sometimes sailors sailing near the Celesk Reef go missing...and sometimes they're spotted as they dive overboard, transformed into heinous Wyld-mutants. Only mortals are vulnerable to the Deep Folk Plague, as Exalts, Fair Folk, and other magical creatures have enough inner Essence to fight off the infection.
Deep Folk come ultimately from a type of tiny Celesk Reef crustascean known to savants as the kryllzn zn, or "tunnel crab." Dwelling in tiny tunnel-like crafts made of coral, tunnel crabs float near the Reef, waiting for ships to come nearby. Once a ship comes near, the tunnel crabs abandon their miniscule tunnel-like coral boats and board the human vessel. They then seek out sleeping mortals to infect with Deep Folk Plague. Once every tunnel crab has bitten one human, they dive back into the waters, and take up residence in their coral crafts again.
Mortal humans bitten by a tunnel crab must make a Stamina + Resistance roll, at a difficulty of 6 to fight off the virus that now courses through their veins. Should this roll fail, then over a period of one half-hour the sailor transforms into a hideous mutant, known as a Deep Folk breeder. In this form, the sailor is nothing more than a semi-sentient stalk of sea-weed that harbors millions of Deep Folk eggs. The newly-born mutant feels an overwhelming need to go overboard and spawn. They will fight viciously to get to the water, heedless of their own lives. They are incapable of speech, and are truly only clever animals.
Once in the water, a Deep Folk breeder will die, consuming itself in an orgy of self-cannibalism. In doing so, however, the breeder spreads its seed all across the region, creating millions of Deep Folk in the process. It takes ten years for larval Deep Folk to reach maturity. During this time, the larval Deep Folk lays thousands of eggs, which hatch as tunnel crabs. Once it reaches ten years of age, the Deep Folk attains sentience, and becomes a sessile philospher of the watery depths.
Despite the parasitism that births them, Deep Folk are a highly pacifistic people with a love of learning and study. Spirits from the local Water Court count the Deep Folk as allies, and a vodonik king named Eam the Bold has declared the Deep Folk honorary members of his court.
Comments
Nero, you really should put all this stuff on subpages. Especially things like your Demons. Your Zipacna took a Lexicon link, which we need for that project. You can make Subpages just by putting a / in front of the page when writing the link to it. A helpful hint to keep our Wiki clean and organized. You may also wish to include backlinks to your userpage. -- (I think this is Telgar? Correct me if I'm wrong. -- AVR)
Telgar is right that you should sort things like this onto subpages, Nero. These should go under Creatures or possibly on your UserPage. (I'm a big fan of UserPage-based organization -- it unites things by author and style, which I prefer -- but YMMV.)
As for the actual creatures, I like the origins but am a bit disappointed at the lack of meat about the Deep Folk. If they're philosophers, what do they do? Are they just sentient coral? What are some possible encounters that a PC group might have with them? Furthermore, are the tunnel crabs sentient? (They sound vaguely like it, but I can't be sure.) I really want to know more about these things! -- AntiVehicleRocket
No, the tunnel crabs are not sentient. They're crabs that happen to transform human beings into egg-laying monsters. :-) Nero's Boot
