Species Name: Brood

Type: Insectoid 

Physical Traits: Long tail divided at end into two stingers, winged flight, razor sharp teeth. Despite their resemblance to insects, the Brood have endoskeletons as well as exoskeletons. Also unlike insects, they have fanged jaws instead of mandibles. Their skulls are triangular and flat, with a birthmark (such as the battle axe which is most common in broodlings but are different for each Brood) between their large eyes. Their two front legs are actually long tentacles they can use to manipulate objects. Due to their natural body armour and teeth, the Brood are very dangerous in combat. In addition, they have stingers that can deliver either paralyzing or killing poison.

Height: 8 ft

Weight: 160 lbs

Mobility: 6 legs and 2 wings

Sensory Organs: Visual

Communication: Vocal

Reproduction: The parasitic Brood have the ability to impregnate a host (of any lifeform) with an egg, making them somewhat similar to Aliens from the Fox franchise. Each host can only support one egg. When the embryo is grown, the host becomes a Brood, and is effectively dead. They use a hive mind to pass memory to their hosts, which also passes an individual's knowledge, given to a broodling, to the hive and back to the queen, meaning newborn brood know what any member of a race knows. Until the embryo gains the host's body the embryo can only gain temporary control of the host, often without the host noticing as the host is unaware when it loses control. If the host possesses any genetic powers, the resultant Brood will inherit them. The persona of the host once the Brood is "born" appears to be extinguished, but in some cases the host's will may be strong enough to survive and coexist with the Brood's. Brood also have the ability to morph into their host's original form and a hybrid form with characteristics of both the host and the Brood body.

INT: 3D6, WIS: 3D6, STR: 3D6, DEX: 4D6, CON: 4D6, CHA: 2D6, MR: 6D6, HPs: CON +D10

Orbit/Climate: 1 AU. Very stable, elliptical (oval) orbit, warmer twice every local year. Note; Broodworld was destroyed by the Xmen.

Atmosphere: Standard and corrosive Oxygen/Nitrogen with abundant toxic trace metals and gases.

Oceans: 15%

Gravity: 116%

Feeding Habits: Carnivore

Lifespan: 60 years

Technology: 9

Culture: Malevolent, truly malicious race with no redeeming qualities at all. The Brood are sadistic creatures that enjoy the suffering they intentionally cause others, especially the terror their infection causes their hosts. The Brood are a race of insectoid, parasitic, extraterrestrial beings that have a hive mentality and mindlessly follow a queen. The Brood is governed by a supreme matriarchy, at the top of which sits the Brood Empress. The Brood reproduces asexually and therefore has no clear divisions of gender. Although the Brood lives by a caste system, some of the roles have proven to be flexible. The Empress is the top tier of the Brood caste system and exercises almost total control over her progeny, including determining which Brood become Queen and which remain Warrior-Prime. There is only one Brood Empress at a time, and she is massive. She shares several physical characteristics with her offspring. She has large yellow eyes, a scaly brown hide, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. However, she possesses several physical traits that distinguish her from all other Brood. While Warriors-Prime have forked skulls, the Brood Empress has two scarlet horns protruding from the top of her head, with an armour plate at their base. She also has eight whiskers, seemingly unique to her physiology. Jagged spikes protrude from every part of her body. In addition to being larger than her offspring, she also has a large ovipositor through which she lays eggs. Her relative size and degree of mobility are unknown. However, she possesses vast telepathic powers, through which she shares a mind-link with the entire Brood hive, although she cannot completely control the actions of her subordinates. When individual Brood rebel, she cannot telepathically force them to assimilate. In these scenarios, she has the renegade offspring destroyed with the help of her assassins/personal guard, the Firstborn.

Firstborn - Considered themselves as the "pure" Brood, they are the most trusted agents of the Empress, existing solely to attack and destroy. The Empress births them herself and dispatches them to quell rebellious Brood Queens and other conflicts that require only fighters. Because they are not born of hosts, they do not possess the Warrior-Prime ability of concealing their appearance by shifting into their host-forms. For this reason, they are used not to subvert and infect, but merely to destroy. The transportation they use to travel to other planets dissolves upon reaching its destination, but this poses no problem, as the Firstborn are ordered to execute themselves upon completing their missions. The Firstborn are larger than common Brood Warriors-Prime, and green instead of brown. They have six limbs: two sets of arms and one set of legs. They have a spear-tipped, prehensile tail, but unlike their Warrior-Prime sisters, they have no tentacles. They also have durable, spiked armor plating on their shoulders, fingertips, tails, elbows, forearms, knees, and, most prominently, on the crowns of their heads. They are extremely durable, disproportionately agile, and immensely strong. Unlike the Warriors-Prime, they do not have wings. However, through some other means, possibly technological, the Firstborn have the ability to teleport. Their teleportation abilities are likely restricted to relatively short distances, as the Firstborn travel over interstellar distances using other methods.

Brood Queens - Also known as Great Mothers, Mother-Queens and Brood Imperiatrix, the Queens fulfill the mental command of the Empress, a unique alien who houses the hive mind. Queens can communicate with their spawn by telepathy, even across interstellar distances. They look like the Broodlings but slightly larger. Their heads and thoraxes are relatively the same size, and they have the same amount of limbs as their offspring, but their abdomens are much larger, presumably because they require the capacity to carry eggs. The Queen’s tail does not function as an ovipositor, but a venom-filled stinger. The Queens are much rarer and are capable of implanting eggs, of both the Warrior-Prime and Queen variety, into hosts for the Brood Hive. The Brood Queens lead individual Brood colonies, which usually encompass entire planets, they also control which of their offspring become Warriors-Prime, and which become new Queens. For example, the Great Mother from Sleazeworld implanted the Shi’ar warrior Fang with a Warrior-Prime embryo, but implanted the rest of the X-Men with Queen embryos, a discrepancy that suggests a certain amount of control on the Queen’s end.

Broodlings - As the bottom level of the Brood caste system, the Broodlings were nicknamed "sleazoids" by Kitty Pryde but also known as Warriors-Prime and Drones, they are the most common of the Brood. They do all the labor and most of the fighting, and are organized into several different roles, among them Weaponeer, Clan-Master, Hunt-Master, Huntsmen, Tech Handlers, and Scholars. They resemble large insects and can vary in size. They generally retain the size of their hosts. Their hides are brown and covered in armored scales. Their bodies consist of three sections: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. The forked crowns of their heads extend backward, well over the length of the thorax. Each Brood has a unique black figure on its forehead, almost like a birthmark or a fingerprint. They have large, yellow eyes on both sides of their heads, large mouths, and one row of spiky teeth on the top and bottom of the jaw. Each Brood has six limbs; two tentacles that function as forearms and two rear sets of jointed limbs. Their tentacles are dexterous enough to fire weapons and pilot ships. The Brood Warriors-Prime also have wings, and fly as a primary means of travel. Their abdomens taper into a two-pronged, functional stinger. Brown, nearly the size of a human, and have transparent wings. Broodlings have flexible abdomens that they need to coil most of the time. They have an image on their forehead crest, though no meaning is known from symbol to symbol. The most common method of creating a Brood is through infection of a host, and this is how all Warriors-Prime are birthed. The Brood lays its eggs at the back of the necks of its victims since everything the eggs need to gestate, including all 31 nerve segments and access to the carotid and vertebral arteries, rests at the top of the spinal column. After a Queen implants her eggs into a host, the egg splices itself to the host’s nervous system and rewrites its DNA into that of Brood. Upon the egg’s hatching, the host undergoes transformation into a Brood Warrior-Prime. The Warrior-Prime retains the genetic memory of its host, enabling it to access the host’s personality, access any of the abilities contained in the host’s genetic code, and even revert to its host body when it needs to conceal itself. It can also use a transitional form between the Brood and the host, giving it access to the best abilities from each form.

Note: Surprisingly, the ability of an individual Brood to lay eggs does not necessarily make it a Queen. Several Warriors-Prime have been known to implant eggs in other hosts. This fluidity in the Brood caste system suggests the hierarchy is not as rigid as it initially appears.

Government: Monarchy

Population: 6.1 billion

Home System:

Number of Stars: 1, Broodstar