Editing Vetrovnak (section)

=Characteristics=

The average vetrovnak stands roughly 6 to 7 feet tall typically with a lanky figure. Average weight is somewhere in the range of 200 to 240 pounds. Gender has little influence on their heights or weights and the small differences in peak strength between genders in baseline humans are gone in the vetrovnak. All vetrovnak posses pronounced canine teeth, ranging from just slightly larger than baseline humans to obvious fangs. Skins tones among the vetrovnak are universally albino. Most are simply pallid white with the occasional individual with a faint red or blue blush to their skin. Bone white hair is the most common though pale platinum blonde hair occurs semi-frequently. Eye colors are typically red, purple, silver, or blue-gray. Their blood is purple-red in color and becomes progressively bluer as they age from the increasing concentration of nanomachines. Between their albinism and a side effect of their engineering, the vetrovnak find bright lights immensely painful to be exposed to. Direct sunlight actually burns them, though the burned flesh will quickly form a protective layer to prevent further damage. It's still incredibly painful though.

In spite of their lanky stature are stronger than their musculature would indicate and are quite fast to boot. Though inferior to a space marine in terms of strength and inferior to an Eldar in terms of speed they have the decided advantage of being able to recover rapidly from grievous injuries - especially if well fed. The vetrovnak do not need to breathe (unless they wish to speak) nor do their hearts actually beat unless they will it. This allows them to play possum well enough to fool all but the most advanced sensors. The only organ they require is the brain. Most wounds that would spell death for other creatures simply inconvenience the vetrovnak requiring them to spend a moment to wait for the nanites to knit their muscles and bone back together so they may rejoin the fight. Even removing their head from their body won't actually kill them. It certainly inconveniences them as there little they can do as a head but they can regenerate their entire body if given enough blood and time. The only way to kill them for sure is to crush the brain to a pulp.

The nanomachines in their body do more than just grant them incredibly regenerative capabilities and physical augmentation. They also provide a hefty resistance to the effects of sorcery and similar phasmachoronic phenomenon. This has a side effect that gives them a dreadful or unnerving presence to regular humans but they can maintain some degree of control over it. Typically they keep it to a bare minimum so as to not disturb their human wards but in battle or amongst themselves they will relax their control as keeping it under wraps at all times is mentally tiring. When flared this ''black aura'' as its sometimes called affects the mortal mind in strange ways - most would love nothing more than to pretend it doesn't exist and will happily turn the bearer of the aura into a mental blind spot. For most vetrovnak this just means most mortals will willfully ignore them until they get to close but this power can be willfully cultivated. Experienced vetrovnak can use this to render themselves functionally invisible to people so long as they don't actually harm them. Elder vetrovnak can focus the black aura's full intensity on someone to paralyze them completely by making their minds literally shutting everything out to. Of course this is exhausting to pull off. When exposed to a strong phasmachoronic entity vetrovnak will instinctively expand their black aura to its maximum capacity when in close proximity to the entity. 

The vetrovnak are not without their pitfalls. They do require a diet of blood to continue their existence. A pint of blood a day is required to remain comfortably well fed, though to be in top shape they will require 6 times that. Once they fall below an average intake of a pint a day they become mentally sluggish. They can technically exist on a starvation diet of a pint every 6 or 7 days indefinitely but at this point they're mentally checked out for the most part. Starvation, like most things, won't actually kill them. They will just enter into an inert torpid state until they are fed more blood. An important thing to note is that the values listed here are for regular humans within the Protectorate; humans from places with a lower quality of life tend to provide less sustenance, though this could simply be a psychosomatic issue of the vetrovnak. Humans with aprophrenic diseases have a much greater sustenance per unit of blood ratio - a single pint of blood from the average sanctioned psyker would be the same as drinking 6 pints of blood from a regular human. A single pint of eldar blood may be worth up to hundreds of pints of a baseline human. As it relies on the being having a phasmachoronic signature, blanks provide no sustenance to a vetrovnak. Phasmochoronic entities can technically be consumed if they have blood, however their presence must be weaker than the vetrovnak's black aura otherwise its likened to attempting to drink boiling oil: extremely painful. Despite gaining little to no sustenance from it the vetrovnak still do find eating regular food enjoyable; blood sausage, even it isn't made from human blood, is popular snack.

Sleep is not physically required for the vetrovnak but if there is the chance to do so they will. It does help maintain their mental health, something which their society places a great importance on. Of course unlike humans they have a greater deal of control over their body so they can fall asleep instantly if they wish it and awaken after a specified period. Most vetrovnak can go quite sometime without sleeping before their mental judgement starts to decline. They do require another kind of sleep though, one to correct subtle flaws that in their forms that accrue over their years. To fix these errors they must entering into a state akin to hibernation. Every hundred years spent active requires a decade of hibernation to fix. They are unable to enter this state voluntarily until they are about 70 to 80 years of age. The maximum amount of time they can go without hibernating is about 300 years, the closer they get to that limit the more sluggish they become until they give in. The vetrovnak try to keep at least one fifth to one tenth of the population in hibernation at any given time, both because their idle brains are hooked up the Noosphere System to help run it and because it reduces the amount of blood required.

The creators of the vetrovnak have placed into them a number of genetic imperatives. The foremost of which drives them to value and protect human life. Vetrovnak are capable of judging how close an individual is to their programmed definition of baseline humanity by a persons smell and the taste of their blood. Aprophrenics of any variety, most mutants, and those who have been heavily genetically engineered, i.e. the space marines, do not count as human to the vetrovnak's senses. The younger the vetrovnak the more visceral the response is when they witness a human suffering harm or cause it themselves - the young have trouble feeding directly on a human if it appears painful. As they grow up though this response becomes more controlled and internal. Killing a human is never easy for them and almost always requires a good deal of mental gymnastics to rationalize it. The only time it becomes easy is when one human is threatening a group humans - the value of a group of humans always out weighs the value of an single human. The imperative next in strength is their contempt for all things phasmachoronic. While their nanites provide them a good deal of protection already one can never be too sure when dealing with such corruptive forces. This also has a side effect of making them value reason and deliberation a great deal as well as gives them an obvious bias to being emotionally cold.

The vetrovnak are capable of reproduction in spite of their functional immortality. The gestation period is roughly 13 months and the child is born roughly in the same condition as that of a mortal child. During that period the mother will require anywhere from two to five times the amount the usual blood intake. Though vetrovnak mature physically at the same rate of humans their immortality has lead them to not being considered to reach adulthood until their 31st birthday. Typically the point coincides with their blood beginning to shift towards a purple-red hue and have mastered rudimentary control over their black aura.