Horg

Horgs are strange sentient lifeforms perfectly adapted for life in the asteroid belt of the Grinder. At a distance, they look like winged humanoids, standing about 7' tall. Their long, membranous wings, with a maximum span of about 12', replace their arms; each is tipped with a single, scimitar-like claw more than a foot long and scalpel-sharp. Their torsos are longer than a human's, while their muscular legs, tipped with three-taloned feet, are shorter.

On closer inspection, they have obviously evolved along lines very different from humanoids. They have seven eyes, arranged in a ring around their heads. These eyes are a pus-like yellow-white with no discernible pupils. Because of the arrangement of the eyes, it is impossible to sneak up on a horg's blind side. Although the rest of the body is bilaterally symmet_ rical, the bulbous head is asymmetrical, with no obvious analogues of ears or nostrils. The creature has a circular, tooth-filled mouth th at opens like the iris of a camera, positioned on the top of its head. Its back is flexible enough that it can lash forward with its upper body and bite a creature standing in front of it or behind it.

They are unrelieved black in color, with a dry, dusty texture: They have no hair or scales, just dry, flexible skin. Vital areas of their bodies - their chests, backs and groins - are protected by built-up layers of skin, almost like rock-hard calluses. They have no evident or overt genitalia.

Horgs can walk clumsily on their hind legs. They are much more comfortable in the air, or flying through the vacuum of wildspace. When they fly, they beat their wings like a bat-even in space, where there is no air for their wings to act upon. They are highly maneuverable. The positioning of their mouth indicates that they evolved to feed on the wing, when their mouth will be pointing forward. Presumably there is some organ in the horg body that allows them to "fly" in a vacuum. For reasons discussed later, this organ has never been investigated.

Horgs have no spoken language. In fact, they seem to have no sound-producing organs at all. The only sound they ever make is the dry rustling of their wing membranes when they fly.

Combat: Horgs are born warriors. Even a newborn horg can shred any but the best human fighter. They attack by biting and by clawing with the long, curved talons on their wingtips. Although the claws on their feet look threatening, they never seem to use them in combat. The creatures secrete a highly corrosive, poisonous liquid from their teeth and from pores at the tips of their wing talons. Any creature wounded by either teeth or claw suffers the toxic effects of this liquid. Each round after the successful hit, the victim suffers 2d10 hit points of damage (save vs. poison for half-damage). This damage continues for 10 rounds, or until the victim dies. Note that this damage is cumulative from attack to attack.

What makes the creatures even more lethal is their ability to phase in and out of the Prime Material Plane like phase spiders. They can phase in, attack, and phase out, all in a single round. This gives them a -3 modifier on initiative roll. If the horgs win the initiate roll by more than 4 points, they attack and phase out before their opponents get a chance to strike back. Also, horgs frequently phase in behind their opponents so they get the + 4 modifier for attacking from behind. On the Ethereal Plane, horgs get only a -1 modifier on initiative and can be attacked every round, regardless of the initiative result. Although horgs can flee to the Ethereal Plane when outmatched, they rarely do so.

Horgs seem to have an innate understanding of small-unit tactics. Even though they never seem to communicate with one another, they always coordinate their actions perfectly. They never seem to attack a group too powerful for them to overcome. If they misjudge the situation, however, and thereby suffer some unpredictable setback or see their foes reinforced, they rarely retreat from combat. It is almost as if conceding the combat to their foes is unacceptable in their eyes-even more unacceptable than death from combat.

When a horg is killed, its body immediately phases out and vanishes from the Prime Material Plane. (This is why so little in known about horg physiology-no corpse has ever been available for study.) Normally, when a horg phases out it can be pursued by someone with access to the Elemental Plane. On the creature's death, however, it phases to another plane-not the Elemental Plane. Nobody has been able to determine what plane this is. (This final phase-out has led some sages to suspect that horgs are not native to the Prime Material Plane or the Elemental Plane, and that, on death, their bodies return to their plane of origin.)

No horg has ever been captured. Normal attempts at confinement do not work because the creatures can phase out and escape on the Elemental Plane. If a horg is somehow successfully confined, however, it invariably commits suicide by apparently just by willing itself to die-and its body phases out and vanishes.

Horgs are totally resistant to mind-altering magics of all kinds. They are highly resistant to cold-based and electricity-based spells, receiving a +3 bonus to their saving throws against these attacks. Even though there is some suspicion they are extra-planar creatures, they are unaffected by (un)holy words and other banishing magics.

Habitat/Society: Effectively nothing is known about the society or habitat of horgs. They have never been observed except when they choose to attack a ship or asteroid settlement. Nobody knows where they live between such attacks. Perhaps they dwell on the Elemental Plane or some other, or within one of the asteroids of The Grinder, but these are just guesses.

Horgs do not seem to be sexually differentiated. This could mean several things. Perhaps the race has no sexual differentiation (raising questions about just what their reproductive cycle is like); or perhaps the differences between sexes, whether two or more, is simply not obvious to the casual observer; or perhaps only one sex participates in their attacks. No immature horg has ever been spotted.

No horg has ever been seen to use a tool or weapon. This could be by choice, or because the creatures, although evidently intelligent, have no tendency to create or use tools.

The preceding paragraphs describe what is not known about horgs. What is known is all too little. They are highly aggressive, attacking without provocation or warning. Attempts to correlate the frequency of attacks with a particular region of space, or perhaps with proximity to a particular asteroid, have all failed. No spacefaring race has escaped the predations of the horgs. While all races hate and fear them, the neogi hate them the most-probably because the horgs are even more evil and rapacious than they are!

Ecology: Nobody knows what the horgs eat, or even if they eat at all. When they kill foes in combat, they do not eat the bodies nor carry the corpses off with them. If they have any natural enemies that prey upon them, these predators have never been detected. With the current level of knowledge, it appears that horgs lie outside the normal food chain and ecology of Greyspace.