BROOD OF THE ZEEK SCUTTLERS
Set Nº 78
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From the ashen wastes of Aera, the Zeek Scuttlers creep endlessly, seizing all they can.
Old tomes, precious metals, equipment and supplies: all are hoarded in the lair of their Hive Queen, who rules from atop a growing mound of stolen treasures.
Among the anthropomorphic strains of Zeek, none are more insidious than the Scuttlers: chitinous thieves who, in swarms led by an ambitious Queen, become a true danger. To face the brood is to face the Queen herself… and the Scuttler knights, creatures bred to defend her with their lives.
Zeek Scuttlers
From the ashen wastes of Aera creep the Zeek Scuttlers, grotesque and hunched, their long arms dragging across the ground with grasping claws, their bodies shielded by plated chitin.
Though they walk on two legs, their movements remain crooked and insectile. They are the bane of wizard towers across the Scourgelands, for they delight in consuming scrolls, tomes, and manuscripts, erasing centuries of history and sorcery in a single night. For this reason, Arcanists protect their homes, towers, or underground crypts, sealing every crack through which a Burrower might slip in, or defending their laboratories with traps and golems.
More than food or metal, paper is their greatest obsession, while all else they steal is dragged to the hoards of their Queen. Alone they are pests, but in swarms they become a scourge, curling into armored balls to escape with their loot, or raking flesh with venomous claws.
Rarely, they have been seen wielding stolen weapons, though never with the skill of a true warrior.
Zeek Burrowers
The larval stage of the Scuttler, Burrowers crawl low on six chitinous limbs, their bodies pressed close to the ground. Though nearly as large as their adult kin, they lack cunning or posture, serving instead as diggers and expendable fodder for the hive.
With powerful mandibles they carve through soil and stone, hollowing the tunnels where their Queen will brood. Few adventurers fear a Burrower alone, yet in swarms they can strip a caravan bare before vanishing beneath the ash...
Zarruk - Scuttler Knight
When a Hive Queen faces great peril, she may shape a Knight. From the larval stage their fate is marked, for even as Burrowers they bear the budding horn upon their brow.
Over weeks of metamorphosis they emerge taller and more upright than their kin, their four grasping arms honed for war.
These rare champions wield resin-forged blades and scavenged weapons with uncanny skill, striking with a precision likened to the blademasters of the Ashen Alfar.
They never leave the hive, guarding the throne chamber with unyielding resolve. Zarruk is one such knight, a horned sentinel bred to fight until his carapace is shattered.
His name, meaning “fang” in the tongue of the Ashen Alfar, was given after this exemplar scarred the face of an inquisitor commander in battle, a wound that never tottally healed.
Skarnith - Psionic Scuttler
Rarest of all brood-spawned horrors is the Psionic Scuttler, born only to Queens who gorge themselves for years upon Ashglass, the organic crystals that grow in the deepest veins of Mundus and are believed to be fragments of the world’s crystallized soul.
Where a Knight wields blades, this creature wields psionic energy, its carapace studded with ashglass shards that glow with imprisoned spirits.
A Psionic Scuttler becomes a living conduit, discharging unstable animantic forces into the crystals embedded in its shell. Its gaze alone is said to fracture the will of mortals, while the whispers of the dead echo in its wake.
Once such being was witnessed during a battle between the Ashen Inquisitors and a hive enthralled by an ambitious Slathaai, which sought to conquer Nikeza through a grafted Queen.
In the tongue of the Ashen Alfar, its name was given as Skarnith, meaning deadly magic, for with its psionic dominion it drove dozens of warriors to slaughter each other in a frenzy of madness.
Skirra the Scuttler
Not all mutations of the brood are born to steal treasures. When a hive nests too close to settlements, a direct raid may be too perilous.
In such cases the Queen may twist a female Scuttler egg into something altogether different. Known as Skirras, these aberrations undergo a slow metamorphosis into living lures.
Their form echoes the allure of dryads, succubi, or the huldras of the north, yet remains wholly alien, bound in chitin and fang.
In the shifting haze of the Scourgelands, a Skirra may appear as a maiden in need, a savior to the thirsty, or a woman in peril glimpsed through ash and wind — even using her appendages to mimic a Zeek attack upon herself.
Step by step, the prey is drawn closer, until too late they realize they have walked into the hive. As the Blacktongue proverb warns, guile has ever been sharper than the claw.
Zalysska - the Hoarder Queen
At the heart of every brood reigns the Hive Queen, swollen with power yet never to be mistaken for helpless.
Her lower body swells into a vermiform mass crawling with countless legs, anchoring her within the throne chamber, while her upper form towers like that of a monstrous predator, scythe-arms cleaving through stone and steel alike.
Her grotesque visage, split by enormous mandibles, is the last sight of many who dared trespass her lair.
Unlike the burrowers, scuttlers or knights, a Queen never leaves her mound, but within it she moves with terrifying speed, crushing intruders and defending the treasure-hoards that feed her dominion.
To her, metals and relics are the bones of a growing empire, and her greed for parchment and arcane tomes surpasses even hunger, for from such spoils she draws cunning and strength.
In the records of the Ashen Alfar, there is mention of one such Queen named Zalysska. At first she seemed like any other brood-mother, commanding her Scuttlers from a throne of hoarded wealth.
But as the battle raged, she revealed herself an Infested Queen, implanted by the Slathaai, her skull crowned with writhing bioluminescent tentacles. Entire swarms became extensions of her will, as though a single mind commanded hundreds of bodies.
In that war she raised an army so vast it overwhelmed the Inquisitors of Nikeza, until the Tyrant-God’s himself. He rained down a meteorite of purple energy from the sky, creating a chasm of immense size, wiping out that hive and hundreds of its men in the process.
-Adventure Hooks-
Once you've read the lore of this faction, here are some handy adventure hooks to bring them into your favorite tabletop RPG. These hooks are system agnostic, designed to be adapted to any game, allowing the narrator to use existing monster stats or create new ones as needed. They're meant to give you plenty of room to interpret and expand the story.
1. The Vanishing Sons
In a settlement of the Scourgelands, four young men have vanished without a trace.
The wise woman speaks of whispers in the ash, of a maiden beckoning at dusk. She asks the adventurers to follow the next youth who leaves the safety of the fires, hoping they will uncover what truly stalks the wastes.
Narrator Truth: A Skirra has been shaped by the nearby Hive Queen, luring young men with illusions of beauty and need. Those who follow are led into the hive and cocooned for the brood’s sustenance.
2. The Devoured Archive
A ruined arcanist tower lies half-buried in the ash, its master long dead. But the real tragedy is the loss of his library, consumed by something that left claw marks across the stone walls.
The party is commissioned to explore the arcanist tower to recover any tomes or written records.
Narrator Truth: A swarm of Scuttlers devoured most of the library, and the last few records can be found in the depths of the tower, where the adventurers must face several Scuttlers.
3. The Queen’s Tribute
A caravan fails to return, and its survivors crawl back days later, raving about a lair filled with treasures hoarded like a dragon’s den.
Among the missing cargo were sacred heirlooms of a noble Ashen Alfar house, said to carry the blessings of their ancestors. The family demands the relics be retrieved before they are forever lost to thieves and raiders.
Narrator Truth: The Scuttler Hive Queen claimed the heirlooms, weaving them into her hoard. The Queen sees them not as trophies but as fuel for her psionic growth. Retrieving them means confronting a sprawling hive, battling her Scuttler Knights, and facing the Queen herself.