The Cannibal Sectors rate as some of the most hos-tile environments in the World of Progress. Few places are so inherently dangerous, and even fewer have the same number of hostile, poisonous and ugly species as the Cannibal Sectors.
From the tiniest virus or bacteria, to the hulking Mutant Carrien and all things in between, every-thing within the sector is deadly, fighting every moment for its survival against the worst industrial excesses of pollution, against each other and against the Operatives and Shivers that SLA send out into the badlands to curb the worst of the sectors. In this environment, evolution moves quickly, accel-erated by radioactives and mutagenics, the bastard sons of innumerable failed biotechnology experi-ments, botched drug lab knock offs and the sheer pressure imposed by other species all competing for the same resources.
Even hardy species are always in a state of flux here.
Every generation brings new mutations, some stable and successful, others not. This makes cataloguing an impossible task to be undertaken, even though some stable mutations are familiar throughout the sector. Every day brings a new sighting of some variation on a theme, something that biologists get terribly excited about; something deadly and vora-cious in a new way or somehow better adapted to devouring the waste of Mort. Some claimed sight-ings are nigh on cryptozoological, their dimen-sions, abilities or appearance so fantastic that they are dismissed.
”Mort is our home, the home of our family. Mr. Slayer is our father, the absent provider who gives us all that
we might want and works very hard on behalf of us all. Uptown is the favoured son, the inheritor, the responsible heir to the throne who aspires to be like our
father. The suburbs are the middle son, the dilettante, searching for a role and finding none, trading on the reputation of the family but likely to be sneakily getting
into bad habits. Downtown is the youngest son, a squawking brat of a child who knows they will inherit nothing, but wants all the love and attention: me, me, me all the time. The Cannibal Sectors then, are the redheaded stepchild of SLA. Unloved and unwanted, baptised with acid rain and toxic waste, inheritor only of shit and the hand-me-down rust of his siblings, even the milk of the mother’s teat has been through three sets of kidneys before it gets to him. Is it any wonder that
such a son fathers monsters?’
Jackdaw, Necanthrope.
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In addition to accelerated Darwinism and random mutation, there is the Ebb factor. Dark Lament has identified a strong but intermittent presence of tainted Ebb deep within Cannibal Sector One. The source cannot be identified and is not always there, but it is powerful and mobile, appearing at random, and can be sensed by Ebb users in proximity to it.
This presence, along with Ebb waste from Mort City, has been blamed for the occasional strange Ebb-using creatures that have come to exist in the sector. These creatures seem to obey no natural laws, occasionally manifest Ebb abilities and have markings that look identical to Ebb glyphs. These creatures are dangerous but highly valued by Dark Lament. There is a five hundred credit bounty for samples, double that if they are brought back alive, subject to decontamination and containment pro-cedures.
Generic advice to Operatives traveling in the sector is simple. Do not touch anything; do not eat any-thing; do not look too closely at anyany-thing; do not allow yourself to be stung or bitten; do not drink the water; do not do anything you do not have to;
do not do anything outside of your mission spec;
do not go off exploring; do not take any unneces-sary risks.
It is good advice. But it doesn’t cover all the times that the trouble comes looking for you.
c a R R i e n
If you were to judge the Carrien purely by what you saw pumped through your TV sets on Gor-eZone and Sewer Hunt, you would assume they are simply a fast-breeding, utterly stupid set of conven-ient targets for glamorous and exotic Operatives to mow down with melee weapons for cash bonuses and high media ratings. If you’ve encountered them before, you know how wrong that perspec-tive is, if you’ve been near the wall for any amount of time, you come to resent the opinion; you come to wonder why SLA allows such a perception of such a dangerous creature.
Carrien are much more of a threat than they appear.
They appear reckless and stupid in combat, but they are ready to fight to the death, understanding that the death of one may mean the survival of the pack.
They work in packs and develop fairly complex and effective pack strategies. They are adept at laying ambushes, are stealthy, strong, smart enough to use clubs and improvised weaponry and come with a natural arsenal of teeth and claws that carry infec-tious diseases that can kill long after the Carrien itself is dead. They breed fast and keep their num-bers high; torturing, raping and killing for reasons other than food. In small groups and unprepared, Carrien are little threat to an Operative team, but a whole pack is enough of a threat to take down
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even heavily armoured Operatives, especially as encountering the whole pack usually means that you’re deep in their territory.
The true nature and threat of the Carrien is kept off screen and hidden, subject to D-Notices that mask their true power and numbers along with the mysterious origins of their existence.
The Carrien are the most familiar of all the Canni-bal Sector creatures after the CanniCanni-bals. They are also the most prevalent after the Cannibals. There may be far more Carrien than anyone realizes as they are adaptable, fast breeding and perfectly de-signed for life in the Cannibal Sectors.
In appearance, a Carrien is like a bipedal cross between a greyhound and a rat. They are tall and lean, their bodies composed of thin, powerful mus-cle with the flesh sunken so close to their heads that their faces resemble skulls, yellow beady eyes peering out from under a heavy brow ridge. The ends of each of the Carrien’s limbs are tipped with blackened and filthy claws. The claws are small but allow the Carrien to hook itself onto an opponent and make itself very hard to dislodge. The mouth is filled with razor sharp and hooked teeth that are entirely predatory and are used for stripping slivers of flesh that are then swallowed whole. The teeth are so long and sharp that the Carrien has to hold their face in a perpetual rictus grin for fear of cut-ting itself.
The argument about Carrien intellect is a long, complicated one. Carrien are more intelligent than the dogs and rats they take after and, like chimps, they possess enough intelligence to use clubs, hockey sticks and baseball bats to attack their victims. They also show the capacity for ‘art’ of some sort in the claw scratchings on their clubs.
For a time they were even observed to wear and use exo-armour of a basic sort, though where that armour came from is not known. This is all used as argument that they are intelligent beings, along with their complex social ordering. The counter-argument points out that the Carrien intellect is a very selective and basic one, that Carrien pack behavior and trap-setting is not much more than that which wolves or spiders are capable of, that their ‘art’ is simply claw sharpening and that the exo-armour must have been provided by an out-side source. Reports to the contrary aout-side, Carrien never use guns.
Carrien rarely vocalize, preferring to move silently
and communicate on some pack level mostly by body language and dominance rank. A scout may make a high pitched howl to summon the rest of his pack and Carrien that are confident and out-number their enemy may make a hyena like laugh-ing and sniggerlaugh-ing sound as they close in. Other vocalizations are usually those of surprise or anger and are limited to extremely high pitch squeaks and long drawn out hisses.
Standard or ‘lesser’ Carrien always defer to Greater Carrien but, away from the larger Greater Carrien they vie with each other constantly to determine their pecking order in the pack, coming together again only when there is prey for them to kill and take back to the den. Lesser Carrien working alone will always kill their prey there on the spot, feed, and drag the remains of the carcass back to the den via a circuitous route. Behavior around Greater Carrien is much different.
a W o R d a B o u T c a R R i e n a R M o u R
There was a period when almost every Carrien en-countered seemed to be wearing a suit of peculiar looking base exo-armour. Those times have passed.
Over the course of a year, that armour disappeared;
though its disappearance is as mysterious as its presence in the first place. Very few suits of this armour now exist anywhere with the Cannibal Sec-tors. What Carrien wear now are usually layered filthy hides and carapaces of Cannibal Sector crea-tures along with heavy jackets and sports armour liberated from caches of pre-fall merchandise deep in the underground.
G R e a T e R c a R R i e n
The larger, horned Greater Carrien form the leader-ship of the Carrien, the alphas of the pack attended to and obeyed by their Lesser Carrien brethren.
The Greater Carrien constantly vie with each other for leadership of the pack, playing games of dominance and clashing horns to establish who is in charge and who has mating and primary feeding rights.
Some hold that Greater Carrien are more intelli-gent than the Lesser Carrien, but most recognize that they are simply the leaders because of their greater size and strength. Greater Carrien are the ones who rape and torture captives brought to them by Lesser Carrien and they take particular pleasure
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in drinking the blood of their victims, extracting it while they torture over several days, lapping up the blood as though it were ambrosia.
An Operative set upon by a pack of Lesser Car-rien can hope to be killed and eaten. If a Greater Carrien leads the pack, there will be a concerted at-tempt to take them alive. Then the Operative can expect much worse treatment. Their limbs will be broken and then, for as long as they survive, they will be tortured, raped and bled dry; perhaps kept longer for the Carrien breeding purposes.
Greater Carrien are bullies and rule through their physical strength and prowess, so they act in a less cunning and subtle manner than Lesser Carrien.
They are still capable of laying ambushes, making traps and of displaying a level of animal cunning.
Most Greater Carrien will announce their presence with a roar and charge directly into a conflict, while their lesser brothers and sisters harry their prey in a less direct manner.
Greater Carrien are considered by most biologists and Cannibal Sector specialists to be a stabilized form of mutation from the standard Lesser Carrien and, given the easy flux and change in the Carrien genome, this stabilization is of great interest to them. As a result the bounty on Greater Carrien is three times that on regular Carrien and, if a sample can be returned intact, the bounty is trebled again.
M u T a n T c a R R i e n
The phenomenon of the Mutant Carrien is a dif-ficult one to account for or to describe. To an extent every Carrien is a Mutant Carrien as their genetic structure is in a constant state of change, trying new states, growing extra fingers, tails, a new configuration of teeth, different skin or eye colors. The so-called Mutant Carrien is, however, a step far beyond that state of minor mutation.
Mutant Carrien are horrific in appearance and no two are the same. While they maintain some mi-nor physiological conformity with regular Carrien, anything else goes. They might have a deformed, gnarled appearance, multiple limbs, larger claws, a slavering detachable jaw, enough strength to flip an APC or other hideous and dangerous mutations.
Their twisted and corrupted bodies are alive with pain every moment, their flesh raw and weeping, exposed. Only the Carrien themselves know how to ease the pain of their mutant brothers and sisters and they do so instinctively, tending and crooning
to their mutants keeping them fit and ready for when they might be needed.
Loose Mutant Carrien will attack, kill and eat lesser breeds of Carrien though a concerted effort by a group of Greater Carrien can bring them under control and into the sway of a pack. When un-leashed Mutant Carrien are terrible and destructive beasts and nothing short of death will stop them.
When attacking larger or more powerful targets the Greater Carrien use the mutants as shock troops, unleashing these horrors that belong to the pack to distract and soften up the enemy while they plan something more subtle and effective. In the attacks on the Cannibal Sector wall the mutants are often at the forefront and seem to take great delight in facing down the guns and scaling the wall.
Why Mutant Carrien suffer such complete and de-bilitating mutation is not known. Even in areas of the sector that are richer in mutagenics and where other creatures and Cannibals suffer a higher degree of mutation, the Carrien mutations seem to remain in similar proportions as though this mutating fac-tor were built into their genetic makeup. The dis-section and analysis of Mutant Carrien remains has either yielded no data or has been confiscated by Head Office leaving everyone in the dark.
”Others laugh at me because I hunt the little ones in the Cannibal Sector. They tell me I have no hon-our, that I should hunt the Manchine or the war criminal, that I should hunt for Digger and bring back his metal skull as a prize. I call them fools.
Never judge a target by its size; the little ones you don’t see coming, you don’t hear coming, the little ones are hungry, and when you’re hunting some-thing that knows hunger, you should watch for the time when you’re looking less like the hunter and more like the breakfast.”
T’nch, Sector Ranger, SCL 7B.3.
c a R R i e n n e s T s
Carrien nests are found all over the heartland of the Cannibal Sector. They prefer dark, underground nests away from the light, to which they are sen-sitive. Most Carrien packs seem to congregate in old gauss stations and the basements and parking areas of long collapsed buildings. Their nests tend towards larger areas with more space and clean air coming in, areas that carry the sound of their bark-ing and yappbark-ing cries easily and have several exits so that the pack can escape in a hurry.
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Carrien nests are lined with paper, card, hair, rags and anything else soft and insulating that they can find. Individual Carrien find their own sleeping spots within the nest in ‘drays’ of this material.
Carrien also bring back trophies, and it is not un-common for a large and successful pack to have a nest festooned with broken weapons and armoured helmets taken from slain Operatives and Shivers.
Carrien nests stink to high heaven due to the rem-nants of their meals left lying to rot, and also from the fact that they will defecate and urinate wher-ever they are standing. Each nest, therefore, begins to take on a distinctive smell, which is identifiable to the sensitive-nosed Carrien miles from home, allowing them to make their way back there when disoriented or injured.
One area in each nest is set aside for birthing and, with female Carrien always fertile and having up to six ‘pups’ at a time, the population of the nest increases rapidly. This area is only used for birth-ing and no other purpose. Carrien pups are quickly able to fend for themselves and their mothers go back to running with the pack almost immediately.
Another area in the den of the pack serves as the place where the Carrien keep their prisoners and captives. Few Carrien have the intelligence to tie proper knots and so most captives and kept in place
by the simple process of breaking their legs. Cap-tives can look forward to being tortured, slowly bled and, in the case of female captives, repeatedly raped by the Greater Carrien. Even more disturb-ingly the Carrien seed seems able to co-opt other humanoid reproductive systems though the crea-tures birthed are always more Carrien. Mercifully, few captives survive long enough to come to term.
”I know that no rescue attempts had been sanc-tioned sir, but she was one of ours, and her beacon was still active six months after she went missing, which could only mean that they’d taken her alive.
I tracked the beacon to one of the larger carrien bases in quadrant four. She was on the third level down, and, when I found her, she was in labour.
They’d been keeping her alive using her personal kickstart supply. I did the only thing that I could, and if she’d still been sane, she would have thanked me for it.”
Sector Ranger Cameron, returning personal papers and ID tags of Sector Ranger Elise.
Greater Carrien are the leaders of the packs, and vie with each other constantly for leadership of the pack in games of dominance using the stag-like horns.
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Mutant Carrien, fewer in number but greater in strength, are given their own place in the den away from the other Carrien. They are cared for care-fully by their brethren. Fed, watered, mated and soothed by their brothers and sisters in the pack, prepared for the day that they might save the pack.
Mutant Carrien are treated like prizefighters and become fiercely loyal to their pack.
”We were scouting this area around a crumbling old apartment block, you know the sort of thing.
Suddenly the ground gives way, and me an’ Tll’k plummet through to land in a heap of rubble in the middle of what must have been thirty or forty Carrien. This big bastard with huge horns steps forward growling like the wrath of god. Tll’k doesn’t bat an eyelid, puts his hands up to his head in imitation of horns and growls right back. They
Suddenly the ground gives way, and me an’ Tll’k plummet through to land in a heap of rubble in the middle of what must have been thirty or forty Carrien. This big bastard with huge horns steps forward growling like the wrath of god. Tll’k doesn’t bat an eyelid, puts his hands up to his head in imitation of horns and growls right back. They