Acephali (Septagoorean)

Acephali (Septagoorean)
No. Enc.: 1d4 (3d6X10)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (60')
Armor Class: 6 (or better)
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: Up to six (weapon)
Damage: 1d4 or weapon
Save: F2
Morale: 11

Headless six-armed humanoids who prowl the wilderness looking for human flesh to feed upon, the Acephalic tribes of Septagoor are ruthless combatants, religiously-motivated cannibals and head-hunters of the worst sort. Their faces are centered upon their torsos and have an almost porcelain-like appearance, dominated by a pair of large eyes and a gaping, lascivious mouth. Most warriors file their teeth into flesh-ripping spikes. All the tribes of these people practice various forms of self-mutilation and modification, embedding jewels into their flesh rather than merely wearing such things.  The Acephali of Septagoor frequently hunt after the pearly hoards of Nguema. They lust after pearls the way Grunters hunt after fresh meat.

Septagoorean Acephali wield spears and wickedly curved axes and swords for the most part, using only light javelins or darts for missile weapons very infrequently. The warriors of these abhuman tribes prefer to get up close and personal in melee combat and will attempt to subdue small groups using nets, weighted ropes and sheer numbers...unless there is a Xing Tian present. Then the Septagoorean Acephali will attempt to kill everyone. As may have been suspected, these acephali are accomplished ritual dancers, grapplers and wrestlers. They almost never use shields, though a few will make use of Xing Tian masks as enchanted shields, but this is a rare mark of special status, often a spell-caster of some type, or some sort of warlord.

Those who are made captives of the Septagoorean Acephali are most often tortured to death and then eaten in a grotesque feast in their honor. A few are put to work as slaves, and in the case of a particularly ambitious would-be warlord, some are retained as teachers and trainers to help instill discipline, tactics or new ways of fighting upon their armies-to-be. Xing Tian are never taken prisoner, never made slaves. Breaking this taboo would unseat even the most feared and respected warlord.

There are rumors of an entirely too-wise Septagoorean Warlord who recently captured a piratical stronghold and has taken a fancy to setting forth as an airship pirate...

Nguema

Nguema
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral (Evil)
Movement: 90' (120')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3+
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1/MU3
Morale: 12

Special: Every 3 points of damage inflicted by a Nguema also inflicts a cumulative -1 penalty to Morale Checks. Those individuals (such as retainers) who fail their Morale Check (even if it isn't made until after the adventure is completed), must Save or transfer their loyalty to the Nguema, whom they will now consider accepting as their employer and benefactor. Since the Nguema tend to pay very well, this will often result in a serious bout of labor relations turmoil, defection, desertion and outright abandonment. More than one would-be conquistador or plunderer has instead hired-on with the Nguema to serve them as mercenaries...

Slave-Master: ESP, Cause/Remove Fear (on touch), Cure Disease (once/day), advances as fighter 2 levels below current HD, has effective Charisma of 16-18 in regards to Retainers and Retainer Morale.

Spell-Slug: ESP, Cause/Remove Fear (on touch), Cure Disease (once/day), advances as magic-user of level equal to HD, has effective Charisma of 13-18  in regards to Retainers and Retainer Morale.

Tthe Nguema originate within the reeking depths of the jungles and mangrove swamps along the southern coastline of Ambrool, one of the Western-most isles within the Archipelago of Scattered Jewels. Blind, emotionless beings, these invertebrate tyrants slither about guided by incredibly developed senses of hearing and touch.

Smooth and glistening with a thin layer of greasy slime, the Nguema deftly and quickly slip through tight spots and constricted spaces with the greatest of ease. When constructing their own redoubts or refuges, the Nguema make full use of this capability in order to make their innermost sanctums incredibly treacherous and difficult to navigate for any invaders.

Nguema slime hardens into a variety of consistencies and textures based upon the direct manipulation of this substance by the Nguema secreting it. One of the most common things Nguema do with their slime is to form pseudo-pearls that retain some slight healing properties, which they use as currency and trade tokens. The inner-most sections of a Nguema lair are lined with several overlapping varieties of pearl-like material. Certain individuals have been known to dabble at sculpting their slime into elegant pseudo-pearl armor, weapons or works of art that they then used to pay their followers or to trade with foreign merchants.

Nguema breath through their skin, much like frogs, and are able to acquire breathable oxygen when submerged within brackish water or while immersed within river mud equally well. They cannot be drowned, but they can suffocate and both salt and gas-based attacks tend to do double damage to Nguema.

Nguema Fighter/Slave-Masters use ESP to direct their servants, slaves and hirelings to fight on their behalf. Nguema spell-casters reserve their own spells, preferring to only accept the service or servitude of other spell-casters. Neither of the two main Nguema castes use tools or weapons personally, as a matter of principle. This prohibition apparently does not include the swallowing or embedding of enchanted gems or pearls that the Nguema can then use much as other species use magical rings or amulets.

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Lemru

Lemru
No. Enc.: 1 (1d8)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 20'
Swim: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 2 to 8
Attacks: 2
Damage: 2d4 bite, 1d4 claw, or by weapon
Save: F2+
Morale: 10 (unless wounded, then 6)

Voracious aquatic beings known for stripping the catch from fisher-folk's nets and conducting raids upon coastal villages under the cover of seasonal rains and stormy weather, the Lemru are greatly feared by those who have had occasion to run afoul of them.

In the water, a Lemru is exceptionally fast and agile. They make the most of this speed by using a pair of knobbly knuckle-like hand weapons formed from very hard, dense coral. In the claws of a Lemru these weapons can inflict 3d4 damage. They are too awkward for most others to use, and after 3d4 days out of the water they crumble into a rancid-smelling gray powder.

Lemru are blind, in that they do not possess true eyes, but they do have hundreds of pigment-pit eye-spots or ocelli scattered across their abdominal gill-palps, giving them the ability to detect movement in nearly every direction out to a range of 90'. Their gill-palps can extract oxygen from water or air, but are very sensitive to the transition from saltwater to fresh, requiring 3d4 minutes to adjust to one or the other. Lemru tend to avoid brackish water as it gives their gill-palps spasms and they find it hard to breathe as their system flip-flops from being acclimated to saltwater to fresh and back again.

On land, the Lemru are almost comical, slow-moving, and clumsy. They generally only come ashore in the midst of floods or driving rain, and return to the water as soon as possible.

Not every person abducted by these things is necessarily eaten, at least not right away.

Xing Tian

Xing Tian
(Masked Acephalic Abhumans)
No. Enc. 2d4 (6d4)
Alignment: Chaotic (40%), Neutral (50%), Lawful (10%)
Movement: 60' (20')
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 4+1
Attacks: 1 (fist, weapon or gaze)
Damage: 2d4 or weapon or 3d6
Save: F5
Morale: 8*

Hulking yet stocky brutes with their faces located in their torsos, the Xing Tian are heavily muscled and notorious for their ferocity in any battle where they outnumber their opponents significantly.

While they prefer to fight with their fists, the Xing Tian will use weapons, if they can pick them from the bodies of those slain in combat. It is against their beliefs to wield a weapon that has been given to them freely, or to pay for a weapon--they must take such things from those they have defeated in battle. Of course this tends to get reinterpreted by many Xing Tian to excuse looting the dead and many will claim weapons from the periphery of a battle that their unit may have been connected to on the most spurious of pretexts. But since so many of the Xing Tian have been conscripted into the huge armies of the five would-be Emperors, one must make allowances for this sort of slackening in their observance of the old traditions of their people.

Cynical Veterans of a Thousand Wars
Their time in the service of the warring nobles of a hundred or more lesser states and minor principalities has made the average Xing Tian something of a philosopher as well as a soldier. They have never feared death prior to the first campaign they were recruited to serve in, but since that time the Xing Tian have learned to respect death in ways that no one would have predicted previously. If someone is being troublesome and it is expedient to simply kill them in order to get on with things, the Xing Tian will kill them out of hand. Life is cheap to these battle-scarred abhumans. Non-Xing Tian officers are especially likely to have an extraordinarily high attrition rate. That said, it is also not uncommon for a Xing Tian to be placed in command of a group of Blemmyes, mostly because they are some of the only beings who can knock some sort of sense into them. One thing that endears Xing Tian commanders to the Blemmyes is their willingness to allow the savage Blemmyes to take the heads of enemy soldiers as trophies--a practice much reviled and repudiated by many of their allies, a source of great frustration for those generals wishing to use these sorts of troops, and friction among the ranks of armies that include these beings. This is another reason why most of these units are kept separate and are sometimes sent in as terror troops.

A Surfeit of Bone Masks
The Xing Tian still retain one tradition from their days as free-roaming barbarians along the Septagoorean Isles and densely wooded hills of the Malachite Pylons and that is the creation and continual wearing of their infamous Bone Masks. Originally, each Bone Mask was molded from the remains of a dozen enemies slain in combat by the Xing Tian as they came of-age. Nowadays the Bone Masks are inherited from their ancestors or taken from their fallen comrades. So many Xing Tian have fallen in combat that hundreds of Bone Masks have been recovered, repaired and stockpiled by their shamans and sorcerers so that no Xing Tian need ever make their own Bone Mask ever again. In fact, many of the Xing Tian have forgotten how to mold bone or cast even the simplest spells that were once commonplace among their people. Each year there are fewer shamans and sorcerers born to the Xing Tian.

Breaking or destroying the Bone Mask of a Xing Tian disgraces them utterly before all their kin past, present and future and most Xing Tian in such a situation will attempt to redeem themselves by going into a berserk rage and laying waste to anyone and everyone within reach, friend or foe alike, until they are killed in honorable combat. Those few who are somehow incapacitated or otherwise prevented from doing this will do everything in their considerable power to end their lives while engaged in honorable combat with anyone available. Should they have their Bone Mask restored, or replaced, that individual becomes the personal guardian and champion of whomever restored their honor for the rest of their days. There are few things as intensely loyal and unshakable in their convictions and sense of obligation as a Xing Tian that has had its honor preserved or restored in this fashion.

Redoubtable Duellists
Xing Tian have a pronounced predilection for fighting duels and engaging in ritual combats. Even when a Xing Tian may have gained an impressive enchanted battle axe, massive hammer, wicked glaive or another such weapon from their fallen enemies, they prefer to fight one-on-one with just their bare knuckles.

It is important that anyone seeking to hire-on Xing Tian mercenaries make sure that they stipulate in the contract that duels are not allowed, or that they can only be fought after first gaining express permission from the command-staff, otherwise if a Xing Tian champion should be out-witted or lose their duel, they will often-times sit-out the big fight or even switch allegiances to the side that bested them in fair combat.

Acephali (Liboorean)

Acephali (Liboorean Coast Tribes)
No. Enc.: 3d4 (3d6X10)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (60')
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1 (weapon)
Damage: 1d4 or weapon
Save: F1
Morale: 6

Scrawny, dishevelled humanoids lacking any visible head, the Acephali of Liboor carry their faces in their abdomen behind a fold of flesh that allows them to hold their breath for nearly an hour at a time. They rely upon a heightened sense of touch and an uncanny ability to detect movement or things close to them that might be tied to some latent form of clairvoyance or other type of extra-sensory perception.

It is rumored that there is a weird sect of headless seers who wander amongst the coastal jungles of Liboor. Whether or not they can foretell the future is uncertain, as the Acephali of Liboor do not talk of these strange beings to outsiders under any circumstance.