Species Name: Horlock

Type: Humanoid

Physical Traits: Red pigmentation. All Horlocks possess a common psychic bond, known as the Synapse. This bond enables the Horlock swarms to think, perceive, and act as a single great super-organism, providing nearly seamless co-ordination and control within a Horlock invasion force so numerous and extensive as to be completely uncontrollable otherwise.

Height: 7 ft

Weight: 195 lbs

Mobility: Legs

Sensory Organs: Visual

Communication: Vocal

Reproduction: Sexual

INT: 3D6, WIS: 3D6, STR: 4D6, DEX: 3D6, CON: 4D6, CHA: 3D6, MR: 3D6, HPs: CON +D20

Orbit/Climate: 1 AU. Very stable, circular orbit, very stable surface temperature.

Atmosphere: Exotic and corrosive plethora of toxic trace metals and gases.

Oceans: 25%

Gravity: 112%

Feeding Habits: Carnivore

Lifespan: 90 years

Technology: 10, capable of shifting their entire planet through hyperspace.

Culture: Malevolent. Truly malicious race with no redeeming qualities at all. The Horlock race is ultimately dedicated solely to its own survival, propagation and evolutionary advancement. The Horlocks travel across the universe in their great fleets of biomechanical ships, systematically consuming all other biomatter to enable its own rapid evolution and reproduction. All Horlock organisms are synaptic (psychically-reactive), and each Horlock creature within a fleet shares and contributes to a communal hive mind, which allows the trillions of beings comprising the Horlock fleets to communicate and organise instantaneously on a staggering scale. The mentality of the Horlock approach to warfare can be described with the phrase "quantity has a quality all its own". The signature of the Horlock species is that they overwhelm their foes with sheer numbers, reproducing massive numbers of highly virulent organisms in record time from the biochemical soup that they derive from the biospheres of the worlds that they consume. Horlocks have evolved sophisticated methods for facilitating genetic transfer across species boundaries. As a result, a significant goal of any Horlock invasion is acquisition of useful new biological traits from other lifeforms. These are used by the hive mind to enhance the Horlocks' effectiveness in consuming new worlds to gain more of the necessary organic raw materials for further reproduction. All Horlocks are reproduced by a single, highly intelligent female bioform known as a Loc-Queen. A fleet's Loc-Queen is the most important Horlocks within the fleet, for if they are injured or killed the Horlocks cannot reproduce their numbers from the captured bio-mass. As a result, Loc-Queens can be found only at the heart of the largest and most-well defended Horlock ships.

The majority of Horlock organisms have no distinct minds as a human would understand it, having been created to perform a single task to the exclusion of all else. Unless the implacable will of the hive mind instructs them to do otherwise, these organisms simply fulfill the functions for which they were created, acting on nothing more than instinct. Larger, more complicated, Horlock beasts have been grown to make limited decisions appropriate to current stimuli and situations, but even these actions are subordinate to the goals of the hive mind. The hive mind’s influence is strongest in the vicinity of creatures such as Horlock Warriors and the feared Queens. These beings are able to communicate with their kin, not through language, but by a synaptic form of telepathy through which they relay and channel the will of the hive mind. Under the command of such creatures, the Horlocks operate in perfect unison, slaved to the psychic imperatives of a single communal intelligence. However, should the synapse creatures be slain, the link between individual creatures and the hive mind will be severed - many of the lesser organisms will revert to their baser, animalistic behaviours. For this reason, the Horlock swarms do not have only a single commander, but many, to ensure the hive mind’s synaptic control is maintained across the entire Horlock race.

Every weapon and projectile used by the hive fleets is a living organism, grown from the reconstituted biomatter of previous invasions. The Horlocks have no form of mechanical technology and, instead, harness an advanced form of biotechnology to create organic equivalents of the tools, weaponry and ammunition used by other races. These creatures live in a highly symbiotic fashion, fusing into each other’s flesh so that it is often impossible to say where one Horlock creature ends, and another begins. In this way, Horlock warrior-beasts wield living weapons that are literally extensions of their own bodies, each one a killing machine, perfectly adapted to slaughter its victims.
The bio-construct nature of the Horlocks makes them a terrible foe to face, for their armies contain a creature specialised for every conceivable facet of warfare, which can be altered and re-grown to suit a battle’s needs in a short span of time. Thus can a hive fleet adapt to generate a force capable of overwhelming any opposition, unleashing a vast throng of ferocious alien monsters that can fly, run, burrow and stalk through the defences of any foe.

Government: Military Dictatorship, the Horlock are part of the Celestial Alliance

Population: 4.6 billion

Home System:

Number of Stars: 1, Huz'deyr

Star Type: B

Planetoid Belts: 2

Inner Planets: 0

Middle Planets: 4