No Longer Human-Warhives Faction Pack
It's been months. I have worked myself to the bone, and an absurd amount of caffeine now runs through my veins. All so I can welcome you fine people to the first major installment of No Longer Human:
No Longer Human: Warhives.
This mod is a testament to how far my ambition surpasses my common sense, and a testament to what I am willing to put myself through to make my funny little creatures more immersive and fleshed out. The Warhives are a new and terrifying faction inspired mainly by the gameplay of horde shooters-their raids turn your neat little cannibalism simulator into a fight against all odds while legions of bug-creatures burn your city down with a mixture of incendiary rounds and good old "accuracy by volume". Against the insectile onslaught, you must play defensively-sending out strike teams will get them eaten alive, and hiding behind a killbox will just make the damned bugs melt your turrets into slag.
Did Insectors not scratch the "alien space locust" itch? Do you have far too many hours in Destiny 2? Did Mom tell you that you already have Rimsenal at home? And most importantly, [b]do you love democracy?[/b]
Then this is just the mod for you.
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"It is true we were maggots once...but through Their hunger we were reforged. Reshaped by Their divinity-and made to feel the same gnawing. Now...yes, now...we are millions strong: and we will devour the stars."
-Otnaks, Ver'htox
The Oksarzj, as they call themselves, are equal parts hideous and...exceptional. No other human-derived biont can come close to their sheer number, and they rival even species like the Lobsryk in atypicality. Oksarzj sexual dimorphism is more extreme than many Earthen bird and insect species-the females are twice the size of their counterpart sex, and possess many other biological features that both the males and...most other human subspecies lack, such as corrosive bile and bright, fleshy head-frills. The cheek-frills, however, are present in all members of the species.
The entire race also has a particularly worrying quality-regeneration. The Oksarzj are, in a sense, the proverbial cockroaches that survived the apocalypse. Given enough time, any Oksarzj-male or female-can regrow organs and limbs, and minor wounds will close up in mere minutes.
Vivisections have revealed that the creatures have a barely-functioning, malformed respiratory system. This would explain the need for gas masks on many helmets of Oksarzj make-their warriors need a constant supply of oxygen in order to not knock themselves out in the heat of combat. Rigorous testing on captured raiding parties with incendiary weapons of various manufacture, including weapons of Oksarzj make, have also shown that Oksarzj are much more weak to fire than other human subspecies. Finding bodies for the tests was a particularly challenging task-many prisoners taken from their Houses (or "Warhives" in commoner slang for such governments) have clawed their own throats out upon capture-perhaps to preserve their honor, akin to similar practices in ancient Earthen societies?
Their Houses seem to work under a caste system. These societies value strength and craftsmanship above all else, and since women are the race's stronger sex, every recorded House has been led under the absolute rule of a House Matron. Their material culture is rather interesting for a society that claims to value artifice-even their fortresses appear as piles of scrap doused in cheap red paint to the naked eye, and it's truly a wonder why more among their number haven't died from their weapons accidentally combusting.
There is no such thing as a military tactician in their societies-Oksarzj "tactics" are normally some variation of "throw everything we have at our target" followed with "loot everything that isn't nailed down, and most things that are". A House's main source of income is through unrelenting raids upon everything its armies can take out without more than 80% dying in the process.
As for the race's religious beliefs, well...our team has got out a few short mumbles from captive priests about a "corpse-god" and eating everything, including us "defilers". We know their belief system has a name: "Htoxteli"-an undoubtedly horrid and alien word. Interrogations will continue until we have more than ramblings to work with.
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Sorry this description is rather short for such a large project (a project that I'm not really...done with, but we'll get to that in a bit) but Steam can't really handle a giant breakdown of every weapon and armor piece in the mod, and most of the lore about the Oksarzj and their warrior-houses I'm keeping secret for you to find.
The design of the Oksarzj xenotype was mainly inspired by the other "famous pirate alien" I alluded to back when I released Lobsryk. I took the worst, most feral and brutal parts of the Eliksni and slapped on some frills, then dressed them up in some classic "space orc" scavenged armor and gave them weapons of a similar fashion. You can sort of tell when looking at their equipment that most of what they make is made with war-loot from destroyed settlements. You got some medieval-y stuff, some stuff that looks high-tech, and some post-apocalypse inspired stuff (i.e, completely made of scrap).
Another big inspiration was, believe it or not, Norse mythology. Some tellings of the Norse creation myth say the dwarves came from maggots that crawled into Ymir's corpse after he died-so I naturally took a fantasy dwarf and mutilated it beyond recognition. I imagined what the resulting dwarf would look like when the maggots become adults....and then I made the Oksarzj. The material culture sort of came from the race design-I asked myself what an insect creature would make. As "dwarves", they'd need to make [b]something.[/b] They'd need to take great pride in it as well, and the Eliksni were scavengers: so scavenged post-apocalypse weapons. Every weapon and piece of armor that the Oksarzj make have to first start as scrap metal looted from other settlements, and then have to be meticulously crafted by their artificer caste-everything the creatures produce signifies their glory, in a sense-from their victories in battle to their innovation and work ethic. At least, that's how the Oksarzj see it....
EDIT: Warhives is finally finished. With the release of this latest patch adding numerous balancing changes as well as a true miniboss rank, the Phaeryth, celebrated Oksarzj warriors that channel the spirit of behemoths such as the Glyphid Dreadnought and Bile Titan, I am proud to announce that this mod is fully complete with everything I wanted to add to it. Thank you all for supporting the Warhives beta and powering through those broken raids back in April...thankfully, the Oksarzj have a little less armor and numbers now, and females are much more common to prevent the game from spawning over 20 krizok'ix. The new Clavata fireball launcher from the last patch also serves to help with particularly bloated bug raids (which should be much more of a rarity now, but you never know with this game).
As for future plans, I'm definitely not done making monster armies: and this next concept that I frankly can't wait to start development on will be very similar to the Warhives but also very, very different. They're a very overwhelming threat, but their power doesn't come from endless numbers. It instead comes from resources-these guys are a industrial powerhouse, a war machine hellbent on profit that enslaves everything that doesn't want to trade with them. The strength of their legions comes from not numbers, but blood, oil, and iron.
Gvoahrdrehex u'var agraht. Glory to the wayward son.
