Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= Minor (non-Human, non-Eldar, non-Tau) Races of the Imperium =

== Watchers in the Dark ==

The overall theme of the Watchers is helplessness and their resilience in the face of that. As a species, one would think the watchers hit the evolutionary jackpot, having access to traits that most other species would kill for: namely complete biological immortality and being essentially immune to Chaos corruption. However, those benefits are counteracted by the fact that you have to spend all those millennia in the frail body of Orko. Being immune to Chaos simply means you get to watch everyone else around you go progressively insane and being all of a meter tall (shorter and weaker than almost every sentient race,  comparable to a child of most species) means you have little to no power to physically resolve the situation. This can be seen in the Watcher’s efforts to clear Caliban. Despite being immune to the Warp corruption that permeated their planet, [[grimdark|they had no way to kill the Calibanite monsters that not even baseline humans could stand against, and so they were fighting a slow battle to avoid extinction until the Dark Angels showed up]] (which is why the Watchers were so grateful to them). Nevertheless, despite their limited ability to change things, [[hobbit|that doesn’t stop the Watchers from doing whatever they can to make things better with their limited power]].

== Tarellian Confederacy ==

Anon's Note: "I started getting some of these ideas when someone in an old thread asked if there were [[lizardmen]] in 40k. Given that in Lizardmen culture is heavily inspired by several Native American cultures, and the Tarellians are essentially their 40k counterparts (the Tarellians are often called Dog Soldiers, for god’s sake), I thought we could build on that angle. Originally, I was thinking that like in Warhammer Fantasy, the Tarellians have some sort of connection to the Old Ones. Either distant descendants who have developed sentience again All Tomorrows style or another species the Old Ones had a hand in like the Eldar or Orks, only native to the Old Ones’ homeworld. The Tarellians know nothing about the accomplishments of their ancestors or their lost technology, much like it was once thought the modern descendants of the Mississippian Mound Builders were not aware that their ancestors had built the mounds they lived around (though in reality the truth is a bit different). Of course, this being 40k, “loss of technology” means being reduced from being a near god-like species to merely a star-faring one. However, because we’ve established the Old Ones are distinctly amphibian and/or semi-aquatic, I don’t think this would work. I think it also ties too many species to the War in Heaven, rather than having new species arise post-War in Heaven."

When the Tarellians spread out from their homeworld, they developed a number of highly divergent cultures on the planets they lived on. Tarellians also range wildly in body size based on planet, Tau-sized to slightly taller than a baseline human. Even during their most unified periods, Tarellian culture and social norms could vary wildly depending on the planet. Hence the Tarellian Confederacy, instead of the Tarellian Republic or the Tarellian Empire. Nevertheless, there are enough cultural similarities between them that the Tarellan cultures see themselves as distinctly Tarellian, much like the different Greek or Mesoamerican city-states saw themselves as a distinct cultural unit.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that there are many different groups of lizardmen out there in the galaxy, of which the Tarellians are but the best known because they developed the most extensive interstellar network. The Imperium, lacking imagination, might refer to the species as a whole as Tarellians even though the term only really applies to the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy.

Tarellians, like almost every other spacefaring species, were hit hard by the birth of Slaanesh and the Age of Strife. What was previously a unified empire devolved into a series of isolated worlds following warp storms preventing easy travel between planets. Many planets that depended on imports of food or tools from other planets outright starved as a result of this isolation. This catastrophe led the Tarellians to develop a survivalist mentality as they rebuilt their civilization. If a world couldn't sustain itself in the event of another Age of Strife, it wasn't worth settling. The same is true politically, hence why the Tarellians developed a confederacy (where each world could survive on its own if needed) as opposed to a more unified government following reunification. That said, the Tarellian definition of unsustainable is much broader than that of humans or Eldar, given the Tarellians' ability to survive in harsh desert environments.

Like some groups of Native Americans (Comanche, Sioux), Tarellians are well known for their mobility in war, able to march hundreds of miles from base camp in order to strike. The difference is that the Native American tribes did this through the use of horses. The Tarellians do this on foot. Tarellians originally evolved in an arid environment where they had to keep pace over shifting sand dunes and the uneven terrains of arroyos in extreme heat. Marching through a relative flat environment in balmy weather is a literal walk in the park for them. The Tarellians don’t really have riding cavalry, though they do domesticate heavier draft animals.

The other thing Tarellians are well known for is tracking ability. Tarellians are some of the best trackers in the Imperium. In contrast to humans, Eldar, Tau, and many of the other races of the Imperium, whose sense of smell is rather lacking, the Tarellian sense of smell is amazing, like some dinosaurs. Their eyesight is also pretty good, being adapted to track movement and capable of seeing in a slightly higher range of colors than humans. Their sense of hearing is about average, though.

Tarellians are sometimes referred to as dog soldiers because between their dinosaur-like snout and the soft frills at the back of their head, they kind of look a bit dog-ish. Tarellian are capable of flaring out like the frills of a frilled lizard and serve as emotional indicators, like facial expressions in humans.

Tarellians are mostly organized into hunter packs of a dozen or so individuals led by a commanding officer. The hunter packs can function autonomously (and are the “unit” of Tarellian infantry), but the commanding officer is part of a pack of about a dozen individuals commanded by a higher-ranking officer, and so on. I was thinking that they mostly used disruptor weapons based on old weather control technology like in the /tg/ homebrewed fluff. This organization is also similar to how Tarellian social hierarchy works. Each officer has a measure of land on their world and civilians to man it. Higher officers have a measure of land and jurisdiction over lower officers and some limited say in what they do with their land. They have no real clear cut distinction between civilian and military.

Anon: I’m not entirely sure why the Tarellians dislike the Imperium so much. In canon I get it because the Imperium virus-bombed their worlds, but here they come off as distinctly anti-authoritarian, even compared to people like the Tau. Maybe I’m reading too much into the already written Tarellian fluff, and there are plenty of Tarellians who are decent people and like individual humans and Eldar but just resent the Imperium trying to order them around as opposed to treating them like a member state. People just think the Tarellians are grumpy because that’s a stereotype. I do like the idea that the Tarellians get along well with the Tau because they respect the Tau’s resistance to joining the Imperium.

Other Anon: Due to their pack-like structure, they don't react well to outsiders having even theoretical dominance over them, hence their dislike of the Imperium.

''“Have you ever seen a Tarellian force move? I mean really, honestly move? The Tarellians are a desert-adapted species, who before they developed sedentary civilization had to be able to move kilometers each day, over poorly solidified sandy substrate, in extreme heat. Anything below 40 degrees Celsius is downright balmy to them.''<br>
''In battle, on your average civilized planet, a sufficiently motivated Tarellian force is capable of travelling over a hundred kilometers a day. On foot. You want to know why the Tarellian Confederacy never seemed to have much in the way of mounted cavalry? This is why. That’s the reason the Imperium lost the first few battles in the Tarellian war. We’d never seen infantry move so fast without air support before. One moment you’re fine and the next that force you thought was tied up on the opposite front is right in your face ripping into your flanks.''<br>
''That brings us to the second point, tracking. The Tarellians are some of the best trackers in the galaxy. Their sense of smell is better than any human, Eldar, or almost any of the other races in the Imperium. Their sight is adapted to follow a running target. The Arbites and the Vanus may be some of the galaxy’s best trackers if your target’s in a Hive World, but if they try to hide in the wilderness there are few better hunter-killers than a Tarellian hunter pack.''<br>
''So for God’s sake, don’t piss off the Tarellians to the point they come after you. Because they’ll chase you to the end of the galaxy.”''<br>
- General Hazan, informing an inexperienced young lieutenant why it’s a good idea to be nice to the Tarellians, circa M38.

'''Tikal'''
The leader of Tikal wears a feathered headdress similar to that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma%27s_headdress supposedly worn by the tlatoani of the Aztecs]. There is an actual reason for this beyond Tikal generally being Mesoamerican and Lizardmen-themed (though Tarellians in general draw more from northern Native American peoples like the Ancestral Puebloans, Commanche, Iroquois, and Cahokian Moundbuilders mixed with survivalists). Tarellians have frills and dewlaps like frilled lizards that indicate emotional state. Aggression and dominance for Tarellians is indicated by having the frill extended out as far as possible. Therefore, wearing a headdress like that is a constant signal of authority and who is in charge in the room.

Something that should be noted is that prior to the Age of Strife the Tarellians were not a confederacy, but a more centralized form of government. They really got screwed over during the Age of Strife as many of their worlds were dependent on imports of food and other goods to survive, and with warp travel being nearly impossible many of their planets starve to death. It didn't help that they already preferred planets whose ability to produce food was already very limited. When they started traveling the stars again after the end of the Age of Strife, they wanted to make sure something like their world starving never happened again, hence their survivalist tendencies and obsession with self sufficiency (and the fact they formed a confederacy where each world is nominally independent). They see the fact that Tau and humans set up outposts and mining operations on worlds that cannot sustain agriculture as highly foolish, as they feel another episode of mass Warp storms is all but inevitable.

==The Demiurg==

Anon: The Demiurg were the first non eldar/non-human xenos to join the Imperium in thanks for charging into an Armageddon War like Poland at Vienna.

We haven't really touched on them beyond that plus nomad traders.

It could be that their dislike of the eldar in general and Chaos Eldar in particular is born from their homeworld now being somewhere inside the Eye of Terror now.

Add to this that demiourgos is an old Greek word for craftsman. Also the Demiurge in Gnostic beliefs is a divine creator. Bentu'sin is the Tau name for the Demiurg and means 'wise-gifted ones'. Bentusi were a race in the Homeworld series, they were nomadic traders that were grafted into their ships. Both Homeworld and the first Dawn of War game were made by Relic Entertainment.

Add all that together and you have a race of nomadic supreme craftsmen that make excellent and wonderful things. They are low in numbers and it's possible that there is as many as only 1 of them per ship that would possibly put their overall population in the thousnads. They are grafted into their ships in body, mind and soul and operate their toys via their minds and interact with other people via robotic avatars.

Their god is/was a divine creator type being that they all try to imitate. I'm not saying it was Vaul but it was Vaul.

It is very possible that they were an ancient 'transeldar' off-shoot of the eldar race from millions of years back where the old pre-uplift genes resurfaced and they sprang up differently. Less psychic for one thing but more emotionally stable. Nobody gets to see them in their ships so it's hard to say for sure.

Their ships are mostly super-bulk cargo haulers with small but highest grade workshops built in and enough firepower to defend them. As their ships are extensions of their own bodies and minds they become highly customized and no two are much alike.

Prince Yriel has a Demiurg First Mate on the Hoec's Grace but nobody can tell for sure if it is one or if it is just something that they made.

Anon: The demiurg are organized into Brotherhoods, with one Bastion-class vessel often home to one Brotherhood. That implies a lot more than just one Demiurg per ship.

Anon: A brotherhood of Demiurg could be one Demiurg bound to their ship and a small number of apprentices/youngsters who aren't old enough to have their own ship-body yet.

The First Mate on Hoec's Grace could have been one that ran away due to the freakish aversion to being physically grafted into a living mountain of machinery.

There was a comment in an interview with some person at GW about what the demiurg look like. They said they are quasi-reptilian looking, with stone-like skin and crystalline growths instead of hair. A lot of fanlore has them as silicon based. So it might be that adding cybernetics to them is a lot easier than for squishy carbonites that have to have some kind of interface.

The difference in opinion between some Demiurg might be that while some see no problems with cybernetics, they see cybering yourself up so much you can't detach from the ship as overkill.

The Mechanicus must have a gigantic collective girlboner for them. 

Yes, girlboner. They're fully aware they wouldn't be the man in that relationship.

To them yes, but the girlboner would also be shameful boner.

In many ways the Demiurg are all that they dream to be. Free and unbound each a law unto themselves but still acting decently, communion and connection to the Machine as deep and intertwined as anything the Mechnaicus could achieve in this age, freed from the limitations of the flesh all but totally but still retaining a natural intellect and not falling to the sin of the Silica Animus and add to that craftsmen almost without peer.

But they are godless and they are heathens. They had a god, some primitive idol of a blacksmiths forge grown with age to gross proportion, but now he is dead and they are alone. There are some similarities with the Vaul deity of the pagan eldar, maybe there is a connection of cultural contamination but what of it? That's just exchanging one type of weakness for another. The Mechanicus have a god, the great and everlasting Omnissiah and they feel his love and his strength within him always (Laughing_Mag'ladroth.holo).

The hate that they look up to the Demiurg and they hate that the Demiurg are what they want to be but have forsaken everything that they are.

As for the Demiurg, they hold no ill will to Mars or it's priests or it's reject priests. Mostly because they don't have to interact with them very much.

==The Enoulians==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''Another War for Nothing:'''''

The Enoulians are a race of amphibian-like humanoids located on the far northwest of the galactic rim in the Halo Stars. Denizens of the bogs and the forests, their standard of living seemed odd by Imperial standards. They dressed in simple robes and tunics, and one could mistake their technology for a much more primitive species if one did not look closely at the quality and make of their implements, much like the Kroot. And although they had advanced enough technology to build spaceships, out in the galactic rim the stars are clustered and otherwise far apart and they had little reason to ever want to go anywhere. At some point the Enoulians were attacked by a mixed Blood Pact-Crone Eldar group doing a remarkably good impression of an Imperial Crusade.

They attack the Enoulian Benevolent Commonwealth and take special care to butcher as many of their people on the outer and mid-range colonies whilst leaving much of the machinery and infrastructure intact or only minimally damaged. They then feign crippling losses and "retreat" in the direction of the Imperial Border.

Enoulians get their shit back together, retake their broken colonies and switch to a hyper-militarized war economy. They had defeated the Imperium once when they were just trying to live, they could sure as shit rectally ravage them if they were geared up for a fight.

They are also contacted by a lesser kabal of Dark Eldar who hadn't been involved with the original shenanigans but thought it was fucking hilarious. They claim to be a group of poor refugee descendant eldar who had broken away from the Imperium some centuries prior to live in peace and freedom and had been mercilessly hounded and persecuted. As a result of their “[[bullshit| persecution]]” they were willing to give the Enoulians massive amounts of highly-advanced weaponry in exchange for sending all the POWs our way.

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Enoulian fleets and armies, freshly augmented by Dark Eldar tech and weapons and thirsty for blood, come screaming out of the Halo Stars into the Imperium. They don't open channels, they don't demand surrender they just start killing as soon as they are in range to do so. Imperial authorities are totally unprepared for this. They knew about the Enoulians in a "those amphibian people out rimward. They're a thing". There hadn't really been any direct contact due to them being slightly out of the Astronomican's range and they hadn't been a bother to anyone.

The Enoulian Benevolent Commonwealth gets the early kills in at slightly less than estimated cost in lives and ships, exterminating entire star systems of Imperial citizens but leaving much of their things intact, repaying in kind what had been done to them. They intended, as they believe the "Imperium" intended, to colonize those mass graves and they would take Imperial worlds as compensation for the miseries heaped upon them unprovoked.

Meanwhile Cronedar and DEldar are giggling like little school girls about the whole thing.

Then the Imperial response arrives. The Enoulians then realize the depths of their strategic miscalculations. Those weren't Imperial war fleets they were sinking, those were border patrols, pirate deterrents, private security assets and convoy guards. And then the doubts start because these ships are only a little like the ones that scoured their worlds and if ships like this had done so they wouldn't still have a Commonwealth.

And they fought and they fought and they fought until the sky bled red and the suns wept and they fought and were driven back and they fought and were slaughtered, their dead buried in mass graves, their bodies drifting in the cold void beyond number, their lines pushed back and further back and further back still to the old homeworld and there they planned to die and sell their lives dear and die hard to buy time for the fleets of civilian ships loaded with the seeds from which to regrow to escape. Their elders who could keep the stories alive, the small hatchlings and eggs that would be the Enoulian Exiled and the wisest and most loving of their people to raise them and there the crushing fist of the Imperium halted from the killing blow and hung there in the inky black before the line of rag tag and half broken ships.


The Imperium had not been mindless in it's destructing and with ever battle, every, victory, every frothing at the mouth survivor they had been piecing together what had happened. Lord General Mauryon, Autarch of Craftworld Biel-tan and veteran of a hundred campaigns demanded that the leader of the Commonwealth meet with him on a small ship he had parked directly between the two fleets that they might discuss this whole sorry business. The Enoulians agreed but possibly the Enoulians were desperate and latching on to any hope no matter how slim for their world's survival or possibly they just saw it as a method of buying a little more time. For whatever reason the High Overseer agreed to the meeting.

Mauryon was no diplomat but as the head of a force outnumbering the opposition ten to one at the least he didn't really have to be.

He pointed out the blatantly obvious fact that had those original skirmishes been a genuine invasion effort the name Enoulian would be a footnote in a history book and he showed the High Overseer the evidence of the deceptions and pointed out the strength of the hammer that was coming down and offered a choice: fight and be defeated, their homeworld made into an imperial frontier world, his soldiers slain, his civilians subjugated, and his children raised to be loyal citizens of the Imperium. The other option was surrender and the Imperium would offer the hand of brotherhood, they would assist in the rebuilding of their worlds, in the reconstruction of their fleets, in the shoring up of the border defenses until such a time as the Enoulian people could again stand strong on their own webbed feet and in twenty years the two of them would meet in this place once more and maybe they would drink fine wine and discuss potential induction as a member state of the Imperium.


Twenty years to the very hour Mauryon of Biel-Tan met the now grey skinned High Overseer of the Commonwealth and brought with him a gift. The bound and gagged leader of the Croneworlders whose malice had brought such misery to the Enoulians and with him some of his surviving courtiers and functionaries. Their deaths, to the credit of the Enoulians, was not a drawn out spectacle but it was a public one.

To this day the Enoulians are some of the most fanatical combatants ever to fight in and alongside the Imperial Army. To them is often the honour of first blood. When they were first deceived they were a peaceful people eternally grateful for their location on the arse end of nowhere but the war has come to their doorstep and they now have fire in place of their lost innocence.

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==Vespid==

Like the Tau, Kroot, and Poctroon, the Vespid are native to the Tau cluster, and were the fourth race to join the Tau Empire. Once effective communication was established the Vespid eagerly converted to the Greater Good, because as a eusocial species the validity of the ideas of the Tau’va seemed self-evident and the idea of designated roles in society meshed well with their philosophies. Given the only other races the Tau had encountered at the time were the Kroot (whose stance on the Tau’va was something like “yeah, sure, whatever”), the Poctroon (who they never were completely sure signed on out of genuine faith or a mix of desperation and gratitude), and a passing AdBio team, this gave the Tau a huge boost confidence  in the viability of the Greater Good on a galactic scale (and really, in retrospect probably made them think that spreading the Tau’va across the galaxy was going to be a lot easier than it really was).

However, the Tau initially had a lot of trouble communicating with the Vespid at first due to their alien methods of communication and immensely complex language. Their brains are crazy looking with a huge portion devoted to sensory perception. Vespid primarily communicate through pheromones. Effective communication wasn’t achieved with the Vespid until the Tau developed communion helms that picked up pheromonal signals and translated them into electronic speech. Even today, Vespid primarily talk to other species through a designated speaker with a communion helm, the vespid talk to the speaker who translates what they are saying to non-vespid and vice versa. However, even then the helm tends to translate inapplicable concepts with the closest possible word. Vespid have three pairs of eyes which are thought to have developed through duplication of an original single pair, each set has become secondarily attuned to a particular peak in the light spectrum, giving them great vision. They also have some sort of pseudo-stridulation ability which they use most famously to stabilize their neutron weaponry. Vespid writing works through each pair of eyes focusing on three lines of text at the same time which interact with each other when interpreted as information/sound analogue, with occasional use of pheromonal ink. Music and poetry also has a coloured component which is further complicated by their much wider spectral range than every other sapient race.

Poetry and song are typically between one hive/nation and another as each nation is best to be thought of as a single entity. 

This is why the Vespid had a lot of trouble recognizing the other species as sentient at first. By the Vespid’s standards, the languages of other species were too simple to be considered evidence of sentience. They looked at other species and thought "oh, they can't be sentient, look at how simple their communication is. Gas-floaters have more complex communication than them." Even the Tau, who can speak to the Vespid much better than any other non-psychic species, seemed like barking dogs by their standards.

It also would be that if the Vespid are interchangeable within their nation then their language would be different at a very fundamental level. For one thing they aren’t interested in discussing feelings. The have them but in any particular set of circumstances and environment every Vespid would feel the exact same. This isn't typical of native lifeforms on their homeworld so they assumed it was a prerequisite for sapience. The Tau confused them a lot as each seemed a nation unto themselves and only allied with their companions.

It is possible to speak with a Vespid, but it’s not a very enjoyable experience. They would defer any hard decision to a higher authority if at all possible and once you have spoken to one you have spoken to all others of their nation in effect. It's not that they don't have a personality it's just that they all have the exact same personality unless something horrifically traumatic has happened.

Funnily enough this makes them consider Chaos worshippers to be insane to the point where they are no longer considered sapient.

As Vespid see themselves as individually interchangeable, their names tend to be nicknames based on their role in society or the few distinguishing features they have. For example a Vespid might be known as "drone-that-tends-the-driftyfish-shoals" that for shorthand ease of use often gets abbreviated or combined with another distinctive trait and then abbreviated. If drone-that-tends-the-driftyfish-shoals had one antenna he could be known as Unbalanced-Fisherman or Lopside-Fish. All Vespid of a nation are by their own admission interchangeable with others of their function. they are quite happy about this so long as the nation prospers.

As a eusocial species, there are a variety of morphologically different vespid for different tasks. The big hulking forms everyone thinks of are the soldiers. There is the breeder and child raising form that are rare and highly valued and seen only by the most trusted of water caste in high pressure suits as they never leave their homeworld. The leadership and diplomat form that administrate and go on state visits. The worker and technician type who form the backbone of society. And so on.

The Vespid don't make sense to the Bio-Druids at some deep and fundamental level. Their biology is all wrong. It looks like they should be just some sort of giant invertebrate plain and simple but they don't work that way once you get the shell off. And they have gotten the shell off, Vespid don't hold much sentimental value for dead bodies compared to most other sapients and sentients.

Their native environment is the sort of atmosphere so dense that it's closer to soup than air and before the Tau visited them they hadn't even bothered going to the surface of their own atmosphere, there is no reason for them to be able to survive at the low pressure of an Earth type of atmosphere. And they can breathe it as well with little difficulty.

There is also no reason for them to be able to perceive light in the human range either as their world is shrouded in what is to humans perpetual darkness. But despite their islands being so deep in the pitch black soup they can see unaided just fine on the surface they had until a few centuries ago never visited.

Add to this that they have both an endo and exoskeleton, a combination that doesn't arise in nature as well as actual lungs and the AdBio are absolutely convinced that the Vespid are someone's creation. The Eldar don't have records of it so it's either not their responsibility or it was someone's pet project and any knowledge of it wasn't spread far and was lost in The Fall. They might be Old One creations but then they would have had to stay hidden and totally stagnant for 65 million years and they weren't stagnating socially or technologically when the Tau found them. Some fringe nutters try to claim that they were made by the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion to explore the insides of gas giants. This is possible and would explain why they can also survive quite happily in Earth-like environments, but although the GaBHD did have the capability they also preferred to use robots for such things.

They don't share anything but a passing genetic familiarity with anything else in their ecosystem, what little of it has been prodded by outsiders, their endoskeleton is some sort of diamond derivative rather than bone which is not shared with any other animal of their homeworld and they are freakishly strong compared to everything else around them despite being almost total pacifists without a sense of competition and with no history of ever having had a natural predator.

Of all this the Vespid at least claim ignorance. Historically they didn't realize it was not meant to be so and so never questioned it. Maybe they are artificial. Maybe they are not. It does not bother them. Very little bothers them.

Vespid are omnivores and eat just about whatever they want. They can eat the flesh of the other creatures floating around in their soup of a planet, and there are a lot of them especially in the places where there is an upwelling of krill and plankton analogues from the lower levels. Their favourite food is the nectar of the giant fucking huge lily pads that float on the layers just above where their islands typically bob around. They just drift around some of the largest almost a mile wide casting great shadows into the briny deeps. At regular intervals they develop great flowers on their undersides where the drifting creatures swarm to get that delicious syrupy goodness and the pads can spread pollen.

The nectar has an effect on the vespid not entirely unlike getting mildly drunk. It makes them happy but slightly stupid and less responsive. It's banned outside of their homeworld as to humans and anything that works similar to humans the vapours that it emits in an Earth-like atmosphere at room temperature are classed as a form of nerve gas. It is speculated that the nectar has other effects on their biology that are needed to maintain a healthy and functional population, some speculate that it triggers the breeding cycle in their queens and their attendants. Others claim that it is only consumed in religious ceremonies, a subject that the vespid have always been remarkably tight lipped about. The vespid are not forthcoming on the subject although the end goal of terraforming similar worlds to their homeworld seems to be the cultivation of more of the lilies rather than environmental needs of their own.

Other than that their diet seems to be varied. They can eat anything from cabbage to red meat, though they prefer anything with a lot of sugar in it.

It paints them with the image of a gentle giant type of creature. They can each and all get into a boxing match with a space marine and have a realistic possibility of winning. They look like the bastard children of a wasp and a gorilla. They carry weapons that can punch through tanks. They are the stuff of nightmares. Then you meet one.

There is no malice in those strange eyes. They step around ants.