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Primary witchlight marauder

Witchlight marauders are horrifically destructive creatures created by the orcs in the Spelljammer campaign setting.[1][2][3]

"A mountain of gray, mottled flesh rises before you like some giant slug. The surface ripples slowly, contracting and expanding. The stench of it burns the noses and lungs of all who stand near. It rises to an impossible, horrible height."
- Primary marauder at the heart of Gamaro Base.[4]

Overview[]

Orc shamans created the witchlight marauders as the first Unhuman Wars began to escalate, to “counter ruthless elf aggression”, as one surviving orc scroll reads. In truth, the marauders were shock troops, organic first-strike weapons meant to devastate whole elven planets. Their efficacy as killing machines was only matched by the speed with which they could breed.[1]

When the defeated orc fleets withdrew at the end of the Unhuman War, some found a new home and made a new beginning. Scraps of spells and rituals meant to control the witchlight marauders have survived the passage of time and are now in the possession of the Scro.[2][3]

Description[]

Primary marauders, also known as land marauders, are enormous (200 to 300-feet long)[note 2] slug-like creatures with gray mottled flesh. They have a cavernous central maw, which is supplemented by numerous secondary mouths located along the creature's body.[1][3]

Secondary marauders are 20-foot tall vaguely humanoid creatures with steel teeth, 6 metallic talons per hand, and a long, sweeping spiked tail.[1][2][3]

Tertiary marauders are 4 to 6-feet[note 3] tall humanoid warriors with two metallic sword blades in place of hands.[1][2]

Behavior[]

The slug-like primary marauders are enormous, dwarfing even venerable red dragons. Everything in the witchlight marauder's path - including plants, animals, city walls, mountains – serves as food for the beast's cavernous central maw. Secondary mouths sprout up along the creature's sides to gobble up prey on either side of the beast's path. All food makes its way to the creature's blast-furnace gut, producing poisonous gas – and more witchlight marauders.

As the marauder gorges itself, it periodically ejects secondary marauders. These smaller killers leap forth, rending and killing with their six poisonous metallic talons, steel teeth, and sweeping spiked tail. A secondary can also spit an acid jet up to 30-feet, and can climb nearly any surface with its gripping feet. These monsters can detect the scent of elven blood, roaming the countryside and covering miles in a single night, while destroying anything that gets between them and their prey.[3]

Once the secondaries have gorged themselves on living flesh, they eject even smaller creatures. These tertiaries are berserker warriors with two metallic sword blades in place of hands. They attack anything that lives and thrive on raw flesh. Their great strength and agility make them fearsome foes in combat. Neither of the lesser marauders are particularly intelligent, and have no real concept of strategy or tactics. They are barely smart enough to surmount obstacles in their search for food.[2]

Primary marauders are mainly active during the day, though they have been known to attack at night in food-rich environments. Secondary marauders are nocturnal, hunting at night, and sleeping during the day. All marauders live only to feed, though the secondaries will pass up an easy meal to get at an elf.[3] If there is no other source of food available, secondaries and tertiaries will eat others of their own kind, as well as each other.

Tertiaries are active at any time, and seem to lack any appreciable understanding of night and day. They walk until they are tired, then they will sleep until they are rested. After gorging themselves on a human-sized meal, a tertiary will sleep for 5 hours.[2]

Habitat[]

After a week's “foraging”, a primary marauder burrows deep underground and establishes a lair. Guarded by secondaries, a primary will split like an amoeba into two primary marauders over the next two weeks, This cycle continues until the marauders run out of food, whereupon they turn on and destroy each other.[1][3]

Ecology[]

Witchlight marauders are horribly destructive to an ecosystem. A single primary marauder, left unmolested, can reduce a planet to barren rock and water in a single year (assuming normal growth and the spawning of lesser marauders). The unnatural biology of the marauders is not designed maintain a long life span. An active primary lives for about 20 years, while secondaries only live for 5 years, and tertiaries for a year. Fortunately, there is no way for lesser marauders to create the larger members of their race.[2][3]

Space marauder[]

Primary marauders are transported through space to their targets via still larger creatures, known as space marauders. These enormous (1,000-feet long) reptilian horrors travel through wildspace on sails spun from special organs in their bodies. These sails double as focusing mirrors, enabling them to focus a deadly sunbeam attack on a target. Once they reach a crystal sphere, they phase their way in, searching for small celestial bodies to feed on. Like their smaller kin, space marauders will devour any being, rock, or small moon they can find, creating both primary marauders and explosive projectiles.

A space marauder's crocodile-like head has thousands of yard-long, razor-sharp teeth. Surrounding the eye-encrusted central head are six long, flexible necks ending in eyeless heads with gaping mouths. The scaly, veined necks are attached to a tree-trunk shaped body that ends in a pulsating mass of writhing hawser-like tentacles. At the center of this squirming mass, umbilicals hold up to three primary marauders. As individual primaries reach maturity and are deployed, so do new ones grow in their place.[1]

Remote feeder[]

Space marauders are also able to birth up to 5 remote feeders. These are little more than gigantic (550-foot diameter)[note 1] flying gullets that engulf matter from various planets, digest it, and return to the space marauder to provide it with additional nourishment.[1]

Notable Witchlight marauders[]

  • The Armistice marauder was a primary marauder hidden in a cavern beneath the mountains of Armistice in Winterspace. Whether it had been left in revenge by the Elven Imperial Fleet, or whether the Combined Goblin Fleet had smuggled it onto the planet's surface when they were exiled is unknown, but the marauder was kept dormant until it was eventually awakened by the aperusa Rozloom (at the cost of his own life) in revenge for the death of the elven woman he knew as Raven Stormwalker.[5]
  • The Gamaro marauder was a primary marauder kept in an enormous spherical chamber at the heart of Gamaro Base in Moragspace. The chamber also served as an enormous lifejammer, draining energy from the marauder to provide propulsion for the Base, allowing it to move through wildspace like a spelljammer.[6] The scro war-priest Morkitar[7] subsequently led an expedition to Shadowspace to recover a witchlight key so as to gain complete control of the marauder so that it could be deployed against elven worlds.[8]

History[]

During the first Unhuman Wars, orcish spellcasters developed the witchlight marauders as a counter to the elven spirit warriors. Their overall objective was a scorched-earth strategy that would leave the elven worlds lifeless, barren rocks. Fortunately, the Imperial Fleet found out about the plan before the witchlight marauders could be unleashed, and using their own newly developed weapons, they attacked and destroyed the orcish superweapons.

Though it is commonly believed that the elves eradicated all of these doomsday creatures, there is evidence that a few marauders may have survived. Some old scrolls hint that one of the space marauders escaped the elven onslaught, burning its way through the elven blockade into space. Elven sages refuse to comment on this, dismissing the writings as orcish propaganda.[1] However, orcish legends speak of marauders that have been locked in stasis via time stop fields, while others have been made dormant through the use of various arcane spells and rituals.[3]

Appendix[]

Notes[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 There is some confusion here. According to the MC9 Witchlight Marauder entry, the remote feeders are 25 feet long, yet the text suggests the feeders are 550-feet in diameter. This article assumes remote feeders are 550-feet long.
  2. According to the MC9 Witchlight Marauder entry, the primary marauder is 200-feet long, whereas the text suggests the creature is 500 feet long. This article assumes the former is correct, due to this information being duplicated in subsequent publications.
  3. According to the MC9 Witchlight Marauder entry, the tertiary marauder is 5 to 6-feet tall, whereas the text suggests the creature is 4-feet tall. This article assumes the creature grows in size during its life cycle, since subsequent publications repeat the same variation in size.

External Links[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Newton Ewell, MC9 Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II, 1991, (TSR Inc.), Witchlight Marauders entry
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Bruce Nesmith, SJS1 Goblins' Return, 1991, (TSR Inc.), Witchlight Marauder entry, page 63
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Rick Swan, SJQ1 Heart of the Enemy, 1992, (TSR Inc.), Witchlight Marauder entry, page 94
  4. Bruce Nesmith, SJS1 Goblins' Return, 1991, (TSR Inc.), sidebar, page 46
  5. Elaine Cunningham, The Cloakmaster Cycle, The Radiant Dragon, pages 307-309
  6. Bruce Nesmith, SJS1 Goblins' Return, 1991, (TSR Inc.), Witchlight Chamber, chapter 3: Gamaro Base Description entry, pages 44 and 45
  7. Rick Swan, SJQ1 Heart of the Enemy, 1992, (TSR Inc.), Selected NPCs entry, page 88
  8. Rick Swan, SJQ1 Heart of the Enemy, 1992, (TSR Inc.), Introduction, page 4
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