Vile Savants

“To our eyes, human existence is filled with hopes, desires, nobility and weakness. To see mankind through their eyes is to see the corn waiting for the reaper’s scythe.”
—Inquisitor Herrod, A Discourse on the Enemy Beyond
The Vile Savants are a warp-spawned disease made
flesh, sent to wrack worlds with suffering and drag
them into festering ruin. There are no followers to
their cause, no fanatics, and no deluded fools worshipping
a false god, only the restless dead claimed by their plagues
marching to the will of the daemon.
Legend among the worshipers of the Ruinous Powers
has it that they were born of an unholy union of contagions
unleashed centuries ago in a forgotten war. It said that in the
distant past a great hospital ship was sent to tend the outbreaks
of sickness and plague occurring as a result of the constant
wars around the Eye of Terror. However, as well as alms and
healers, it secretly carried another deadly cargo, an arsenal of
dreadful weapons---biological agents, necrotic poisons, and
alien fevers collected from a hundred worlds.
Legend has it that this great ark of salvation, whose name
has been lost to myth, suffered a breach in its Geller Field
while traversing the warp close to the Eye. In the moments
that followed, the powers of the warp shattered the protective
stasis of the deathly vault and sank into the viral samples
aboard, filling them with unholy life and consciousness.
The horrors that were unleashed quickly overwhelmed most
onboard and sent a thousand screaming souls into oblivion.
The medicae personnel trapped aboard faced a far darker fate
indeed, as a daemon virus possessed them and made them its
own flesh. With this, the Vile Savants were born, embodiments
of unfeeling, indiscriminate death unleashed by the warp to
wage a silent, implacable war against all life.
The Savants themselves are hideous to behold, reeking and
defiled bio-containment suits filled with bubbling rot that
stumble on, boneless and implacable, silent as death itself.
These foul entities are possessed of the skills and knowledge
of their long dead occupants coupled with a malign warp-intelligence
and the occult might of the daemons of rot and
pestilence. They are consumed by hatred for all that live and
breathe and have the most horrific means of enacting their
war of annihilation. The contagion that animates them is their
dark harbinger, spilling out through the warp and infecting a
single individual whose despair and morbidity attracts it from
worlds away. From there, it spreads as plague, the infection
runnning rampant and preparing the way for the Vile Savants
to emerge, wreaking their vengeance and showering mankind
with the gifts bestowed on them by the Lord of Decay.
Seventy years ago, the famous Inquisitor Herrod and his ship disappeared without trace while pursuing the Vile Savants deep into the Halo Stars.
==Daemon Plague==
The Vile Savants are daemonic entities who require no
scheming mortal agents. They do not plot or foster nests of
cultists, nor do they answer a sorcerer’s summons when called
(unless it suits their purpose). While other cults may spread
like a disease, the Vile Savants are literally a warp-spawned
contagion. They spread and multiply through the flesh of
reality just as mortal viruses spread from organ to organ,
choking its host with sickness until it fails and collapses.
The Vile Savants have a single and consuming desire: spread
their contagion and kill until nothing is left alive. These
horrors cannot be bargained with, reasoned with, placated,
or diverted from this task.
The Ordo Malleus believes that this most unholy contagion
is the design and will of the Ruinous Power called the Lord
of Decay, known to some as Nurgle, Father of Plagues and
Bringer of Despair. As warp entities, they serve to embody
several types of daemonic contagions that are categorized by
the Ordo Malleus as the Fydae Strain (named after the area
of the Calixis Sector where they were first encountered). The
Savants themselves are little more than murderous vessels,
avatars of these hell-sent plagues. Each stage of a Fydae
outbreak cycle escalates the amount of death and horror
until it has reached such a weight of destruction that the
barriers between real space and the warp can be breached,
the dead walk, and the Vile Savants come to claim their
master’s prize.
== When the Dead Do Not Rest ==
Outbreaks of various strains of zombie plague or incidents
where the dead have been known to rise as a result of a
warp-spawned rift, fell-technology, or necromantic witchery
have been known to the Imperium for millennia but are
thankfully comparably rare. In recent decades, however, the
sectors and worlds of the Segmentum Obscurus have seen a
marked upturn in such incidents linked to disease cults and
the ancient enemy.
The involvement of the entities known as Vile Savants
in the outbreak of these awful plagues is likewise a new
development and a dangerous one. They bring a malign
intelligence to these events, making them far harder to combat
or contain. The Holy Ordos Segmentum Tabernacle believes
that the Vile Savants are responsible for various outbreaks
of plague and the massacre of settlements, ships, and cities
across the Segmentum Obscurus occurring in the Calixis,
Mandragora, Medusan, and Ixaniad Sectors. Of particular
concern to the Conclave Calixis is that in the last 50 years
there have been five confirmed contacts with what has been
named the Fydae Strain (after the Sutter’s Rock outbreak) in
the Calixis Sector.
==Carrionates and Warp Zombies ==
Although far from the most common of the Holy Ordos’s foes,
the walking dead have long been known as a blasphemous
foe of the Inquisition. Animated at the behest of fell sorcery
or creations of the darkest of the psyker’s arts, such creatures
can make for powerful and loyal servants. Forbidden science
can also bring a twitching carcass to a semblance of hungry
life. To represent such unnatural abominations, use the Plague
Zombie shown here, but remove the references to the Fydae
Strain infection and modify them to suit your needs. For
example, ravenous daemon-bound corpses with a taste for
human flesh might have the Berserk Charge talent and +10
Strength and Agility but will be subject to Warp Instability.
Alternatively, shambling creatures created from a baleful
chemical spill or forbidden bio-weapon might have the Toxic
quality to their attacks and lack the Unhallowed special rule,
but have a fear of bright light or fire and continue to rot until
they finally collapse.
== The Fydae Strain Zombie Plague ==
Exposure and Chance of Infection:
• Skin or tissue contact with the body of the infected:
5%.
• Skin or tissue contact with infected blood or internal
body tissue from the infected: 30%.
• Bite or wound from infected individual (any Damage):
50%.
• Ingestion of heavily contaminated material (i.e., water
where plague dead have lain): 50%.
• Deep wounding by an infected individual (i.e., a Critical
Wound from a bite or mauling): 75%.
Incubation Time: Varies between 10 minutes and five
days (the GM decides).
Base Toughness Test Modifier to Resist: Hard (–10).
Effects: If the victim succumbs to any degree of failure,
he is racked by an intense fever and green marks blossom
on his flesh, which quickly withers and sloughs away. The
victim also begins to vomit foul blood. These symptoms last
for approximately an hour during which the victim suffers a
–30 penalty to all Tests. After an hour, the victim is gripped
by violent spasms and dies in agony, but may later return as
a Plague Zombie.
During this time, medicine cannot save the victim but
exorcism might (see the Purge the Unclean Talent, in The
Inquisitor’s Handbook), though this will likely leave
the victim in a precarious state suffering –1d10 permanent
Strength and Toughness Damage.
Immunities: Owing to its daemonic nature as a thing
of despair and occult corruption, individuals with the
Pure Faith or Rite of Pure Thought Talents, the From
Beyond, Machine (3+) (unless they contain considerable
living matter), or Daemonic Traits, or those with a Dark
Pact cannot be infected by the Fydae Strain. Likewise,
the Unshakable Faith Talent provides a +20 bonus to
resist infection.
Subject Zero: The first person infected by Fydae Strain
only suffers intense fever for approximately an hour. After
this time, they are a contagious carrier of the disease but will
suffer no other effects from it. They are also immune to the
effects of all other diseases and toxins.
== The Pathology of Corruption ==
Like any disease, the contagion of the Vile Savants follows
a particular pathology and path of infection as illustrated in
the following section.
The First Stage: The Occult Infection of Subject Zero
The cascade of events that culminate in the arrival of the Vile
Savants begins with the infection of a single person. How this
first infection occurs is not known for certain, as the ways of
the Chaos Gods are fickle, but the Ordo Malleus believes it
may be some deep and dark lesion within a person’s spirit
calls out to the contagion and it responds to that call. If true,
it would be a dark and macabre despair of such singular depth
and malice that it resonates in the warp and calls the disease
like a moth to a flame. While the exact means of infection are
confined to theory, the Inquisition has had several confirmed
cases from which to establish how the contagion progresses
once it has infected its first victim.
At first, the only sign is a period of intense fever and
terrible nightmarish visions that passes in a matter of hours
and leaves the host apparently in perfect health. As healthy
as the person seems, his soul is now lost and he has become a
fever that walks and a vessel for unholy disaster in the shape
of the Fydae Strain. Utterly infectious and yet outwardly
healthy, he ignorantly goes about his life, not knowing that
the contagion inside him is tainting all he comes in contact
with.
Thus, the carrier spreads the contagion with a thoroughness
that could never be achieved by obviously sick individuals. It
is with this subtlety that the Grandfather of Fever shows his
genius and his beneficence. This first subject will never be
touched by any disease or sickness ever again, but will infect
and doom all he meets and so is destined to stand at the
center of a storm of pestilence and see all he cares for dissolve
and decay. In the terminology of the Ordo Malleus and the
Ordo Sepulturum, this blighted individual and most damned
of souls is named “Subject Zero.”
The Second Stage: The Colonization and Spread of Contagion
Once Subject Zero has unwittingly begun to spread the
contagion, as time progresses, so will the spread of the plague
at an ever-accelerating rate. Unlike mundane diseases, the
contagion spread by Subject Zero can take weeks or hours to
claim its first lives, dependent on its fickle daemonic nature. It
is as if the disease itself is patient and willing to wait to spread
to as much of the populace of a locale as possible before it
begins the next fatal stage of its cycle. However, if tempted
by a particularly choice group of victims (such as medicae
personnel) or the threat of discovery, it will suddenly erupt
with full force. Its hunger to kill may drive it to full outbreak
sooner rather than later as the daemon will not be denied its
feast.
Once the disease begins to manifest fully, it presents as a
wild and vicious mixture of symptoms ranging from bloody
flux, vomiting, and murderous fever, blooming strange green
marks on the skin and the rapid necrotizing of flesh, all finally
resulting in a spasm-wracked death usually within hours of
the disease’s first symptoms manifesting. Once the first lives
have been claimed, matters accelerate and worsen rapidly.
Hundreds, even thousands may die within hours causing mass
panic and civil disorder and straining any authority’s ability
to cope to the breaking point.
The Third Stage: The Walking Dead
In this stage, the disease does not simply attack the bodies
of the infected but moves to overwhelm the few threads that
keep humanity together in the plague’s aftermath or may
contest its decaying dominion. Rising from their graves,
the plague dead walk in search of the living, the daemonic
plague driving their corpses like the many cells of a single
vile organism.
The walking dead fall on the living, hunting them down
implacably, and each person they kill rises to join them in
turn. As the walking dead multiply, wild terror and anarchy is
the natural consequence unless the Inquisition, the Imperial
military, or some other powerful force can step in. Short of
total cleansing with fire and faith, there is now little that can
be done to avert the next stage of the cycle, save contain it
with brute force and merciless purpose.
The Fourth Stage: Cometh the Vile Savants
Once the dead have risen in great numbers, the hour of their
masters’ arrival has come. At the center of the outbreak, in
a silent, dark place bathed in death and despair, reality falls
apart to the buzzing of flies. The Vile Savants step through
into reality, and in their wake come the daemons of the Lord
of Decay.
The number of Vile Savants that appear is dependent on the
extent of the contagion’s spread. If a great city is consumed
by the contagion and the walking dead numbers are legion,
dozens of Vile Savants may come, while the death throes of
a small settlement may bring a single savant to perform its
final rites. As manifestations of the contagion itself, the Vile
Savants can command the throng of walking dead, wield
diseased powers of the warp, and consume life like a hungry
cloud of locusts. With a deliberate will at the center, the
walking dead begin to destroy any remaining resistance and
a disaster becomes a war.
The Fifth Stage: Disintegration and Proliferation
The final stage of the contagion’s cycle occurs only if the
Vile Savants are victorious and have brought their targets
to ruin. With death and decay holding limitless dominion,
the walking dead begin to collapse, their flesh putrefies,
and the air is filled by the buzzing of bloated corpse flies.
In this perfect garden of decay, the Vile Savants move about,
harvesting the outpouring of death and decay and sampling
the changing contagions born by the outbreak. Not all are
killed, however, as a few people are allowed to survive and
the Vile Savants do not seek them out—for the Lord of Decay
needs life and flesh upon which to work his wondrous diseases
and requires witnesses to bear testament to his all-consuming
power. Finally, the Vile Savants step back through the hell
that made them and wait until the next outbreak, wherever
and whenever it may be.
== Inquisitorial Threat Briefing ==
The Vile Savants and the Fydae Strain contagion are a threat
not simply because of the destruction that they cause, but
because the Inquisition fears it is geared to some greater
dark design. It is the considered opinion of the Conclave
Calixis that is it only the gift of the Emperor’s providence
and thanks to the valiant actions of his servants that there has
not already been far greater loss of life at their hands in the
sector. All of the Holy Ordos must be ever watchful for the reappearance
of this threat and take whatever action is needed
to confound and destroy them wherever and whenever they
are encountered. It is also the duty, particularly of the Ordo
Malleus, to further pursue these terrible creatures and learn
of their nature and limitations so that they may be more
effectively countered in the future, as the threat posed by the
Vile Savants is not only severe but perhaps eternal. They are
truly the disease that walks, always searching for a time and
place to surface and whose only goal is suffering and death.