Mogurids

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## Mogurid

No images of this species have yet been recorded

## Overview

Though no one knows where they originate from, the Mogurid species and their symbiotes were discovered by the Tau empire, and their potential as a weapon was immediately apparent. Planting Mogurid eggs in a nearby Imperial supply world, the natural lifecycle of the Mogurids allowed those eggs to attach themselves to the outside of Imperial logistics vessels, spreading from world to world through the very logistical network that keeps the Imperium alive. Since they reproduce after 12 years on a world, but do not grow hostile until 20 years have passed, by the time a planetary governor realizes they have a problem, they have already passed it on to other worlds.

The Mogurids, the male of the species, are 2.75 meter tall quadrupeds with strength to rival a space marine. Their ecosystem is complimented by the female Mogura, and the symbiote bird-like Tsibi. They live in tunnel colonies, and present a severe threat when fully grown, though a highly localized one. Only the smallest of colonies and Imperial bases are likely to be overrun by a Mogurid attack, but they can still be a pain, hindering the efficiency of the supply world, typically requiring a full battle company of Adeptus Astartes to remove completely.

## Biology

Technically speaking, the term Mogurid only covers the male, land based form most often encountered by Imperial combat expeditions. However, the entire species covers three separate forms, a female, designated Mogura, and a flying symbiote called Tsibi which may or may not be a separate species, depending on which xenobiologist one follows in their definitions. The species overall is a social one, living in large scale communities and having a large amount of internal cooperation. When the population is still developing they are actually quite peaceful, and it is not uncommon for small teams of unarmed xenobiologists to be allowed free access deep into the tunnel network unmolested, so long as they make no hostile moves. That said, they react strongly to attack, and once colony development is complete they become substantially more hostile, likely as a result of the chaos taint which seems to have affected all but the original handfuls of colonies.

No member of this species complex is intelligent by galactic standards, and behave mostly like animals. However within their tunnel colonies they appear to have enough familiarity and instinct to perform guerilla tactics of remarkable cunning and ferociousness. Tunnel colonies stormed by even overwhelming forces are made to pay dearly even when ultimate Imperial victory is inevitable.

### Mogura

The simplest and first to mature of the species is the female form Mogura. Fully grown within a month of first hatching, these are four legged, black furred creatures reaching a bit over half a meter. Not naturally aggressive, they can scratch with their forelegs and bite with their jaws when threatened, but can be subdued by an unaugmented human in good physical condition. For the most part, the Mogura dig, for it is they who dig out the tunnel complexes, and create the excess dirt that make the colony mounds rise as high as a small building. They grub in the dirt for roots, surface plants, and insects, but by themselves are unable to forage enough food to meet their caloric requirements without outside assistance. The meat of a Mogura is edible when cooked, and has a wholesome taste, though can be a bit tough unless boiled or slow cooked.

It usually takes Mogura about five years to fully dig the tunnel colony, after which point they tend to be seen working much less hard, napping more often, caring for young, and only occasionally adding to or maintaining the tunnels.

### Mogurid

The Mogurid is the form most commonly encountered by the Imperium, for the male form of the species is devoted almost exclusively to defense of the colony. A fully grown Mogurid is 2.75 meters tall at the shoulder, though standing on hind legs it can reach over four meters. The closest Terran equivalent is the bear, though not even the extinct black bears of the homeworld stood so high, nor was their fur so deep black that it seemed to absorb light a few centimeters around it like a dark halo. The fur of the Mogurid is unusually hard, nearly like having a coat of steel needles laying flat on their body. The legs and head are covered with ten centimeter chitinous scales, made of a much shinier black than the light absorbing fur.

The Mogurid is physically immature for ten years, though gains limited sexual maturity at two years old, right as the eggs which formed the colony stop birthing new Mogurids. These young Mogurids must be kept hidden within the tunnel network, and are fed quite little, for they must fight over what the Tsibi bring. Once they reach full maturity, the massive Mogurids, who despite their size have the flexibility to fit into nearly all the tunnels of the colony, leave and go out to the surface for the first time in their lives. They were omnivorous while immature, but for the last few months they have been obligate carnivores, and it is lack of food that has brought them out to go on their first hunt. There is no Imperial world on which there is no prey, for if no animals live in the wilderness, the young colony can begin cannibalizing its females, or attack isolated human settlements.

A Mogura on the hunt outweighs all but its largest possible prey, but is usually loathe to rely on sheer bulk to make a kill. It prefers instead to use its silent black fur to hide it in the darkness of night or enclosed areas. If pressed, it will attack in broad daylight, but if anything, that is typically more terrifying, for it will be as one of a herd of ten foot Mogurids shaking the earth beneath their feet as they charge your position. In melee, a Mogurid is a good match for even the new breed of Primaris Astartes, and can plow through whole companies of Guardsmen should they be allowed to get close enough. They are at a decided disadvantage at range, but their natural habitat of tunnels and nighttime are often able to negate that weakness.

### Tsibi

Critical to the Mogurid lifecycle are the Tsibi. Physiologically, they share nothing at all with their furred symbiotes, but have built a stable ecosystem in conjunction with the Mogurids, and at some point in evolutionary history entwined even their reproductive systems with the larger species. Resembling dirty white birds, bipedal and feathered, the lifecycle of the Tsibi has altered so much since entering the Mogurid ecosystem that it is hard to imagine them even existing as a fully independent species.

The very first thing to emerge from a colony egg is a number of small Tsibi birds, which are capable of independently feeding themselves within hours. They can't fly, and won't even flap their wings until sexual maturity at age 12. Hopping around, with enlarged heads and soft, downy feathers, the Tsibi seem harmless, almost comical, the opposite of the terrifying Mogurids. On many Imperial worlds, common laborers and guardsmen, not knowing the doom that this wandering bird represents, have captured individuals found scavenging far from the nest and kept as adorable and popular pets.

For the first few years of the colony, the young Tsibi forage so extensively it seems to stunt their growth, for not only must they find food for themselves, but also to supplement the diets of the Mogura and Mogurids, otherwise they wouldn't have the energy to dig and protect the colony before the Mogurids reach full maturity. Fortunately, the Tsibi have exceptionally tolerant digestive systems, able to eat nearly anything, and seem to have a pretty good sense of which of those things are good for the Mogura to eat. These feedings are the price the Tsibi pay for protection in the colony, for the otherwise defenseless bird would surely be eaten to extinction. So strong is the protective instinct that starving Mogurids will hunt their own females to extinction before attacking the Tsibi.

### Reproduction

Perhaps the strangest aspect of Mogurid biology is their complex reproductive system, with all three members reaching sexual maturity at different ages. The simplest part begins when the males reach age two and the female reaches age two. The male can impregnate the female in a way similar to the fashion of Terran mammals, and after a four month pregnancy she will birth a litter of between three and five, of whom about ten percent will be male Mogurids and the rest will be female Mogura.

The more interesting case, however, occurs when the Tsibi reach sexual maturity at age 12, about the same time they learn to fly. Having been freed of the need to constantly forage for the colony by the hunting Mogurids, the Tsibi birds begin to spend an inordinate amount of time gathering around the largest and most dominant males of the colony. The birds, who themselves contain both male and female reproductive parts, will begin to mate with each other indiscriminately. At a certain point, though no trigger has yet been identified by xenologists, the dominant males will grab pregnant Tsibi and force a special fluid into their mouths, at which point they will fly away from the colony, never to return. Whatever alchemy is involved here must work extremely quickly, for eggs dropped only hours after this event have proven to be viable in laboratory testing.

These eggs though, these are the most peculiar part of the whole process. About the size of a mold spore, only barely visible to the unaided human eye, the egg should by most biological standards be far too small to birth a single species, and yet a whole colony can for two years continuously emerge from a single egg. It is estimated that in good conditions, a single egg will produce four to six hundred Tsibi, eighty to one hundred forty Mogura, and about thirty Mogurids in two years. This means that what is typically called the egg is in fact nothing of the sort, and functions as a miniature biological factory of remarkable complexity and subtlety. Imperial xenologists are of the opinion it must have been genecrafted, though where, when and by whom remains a mystery, for even most advanced xenos races are not known to regularly produce things of this nature.

### Tunnel Colonies

The Mogurid species and their symbiote all live within tunnel colonies, dug out by the females on whatever spot the egg landed. This colony provides shelter for the immature forms, defense from attack, and the process of digging out provides an amount of dirt than the immature forms are able to eat for sustenance. At full maturity, these tunnels can cover a surface area of three hundred meters, creating a mound seventy meters tall, and descending into the planet up to five hundred meters deep, when local conditions allow for digging that deeply.

The tunnel colony undergoes twenty year cycles, at which point, among the standard Mogurids, reproduction will cease almost completely, internal fighting and cannibalism will take over among the colony, and they will eat themselves down to a much lower population, with then half of that lower population departing to find and protect an egg somewhere else on the planet and help oversee the growth of a new tunnel colony. Among later strains, the end of the twenty year cycle is must more catastrophic, but this is ascribed to the chaos taint that the seeds have acquired, and is dealt with in the relevant section below.

At the peak of a twenty year cycle, typical populations are three to four hundred mature, combat ready Mogurids, one thousand Mogura, and one thousand Tsibi, as well as many not quite battle ready Mogurids who can still pose a threat to direct assault. It is during their migratory period that they present the greatest hazard to Imperial assets, being frequently attracted to the noise produced by Imperial settlements.

## History

No one knows where the Mogurids first evolved. The first intelligent race to encounter them were the Kroot, on one of their warsphere expeditions that venture far beyond Tau controlled space, and they consider it a fine joke to conceal the true origins of this race. Presenting some eggs to their Tau allies, the Ethereal caste immediately saw the potential value in exploiting its lifecycle. Some Gue'vesa thinking they were on a simple diplomatic mission were directed to infiltrate the Imperial Supply world of Pangunang Tala. The eggs were released and floated naturally on the wind until landing in the open wilderness of the world. On such a minor supply stopover, there were no consistent patrols as it was believed the world contained nothing but indigenous plant life. At five years, with the maturity of the Mogura, no one noticed a mound of tunnels growing ever larger and deeper. At ten years, no one noticed the mature Mogurids guarding and patrolling the nearby area. At twelve years, the first flying Tsibi were noticed, but ignored as a meaninless curiosity. Of course, by then it was too late, and eggs and been airdropped at the spaceport.

No Imperial Supply world is fully isolated, they couldn't exist if they were not part of a larger system of ships moving ceaselessly from place to place, and though each run is a short hop, when these first departing ships landed on the next handful of suppply worlds, most of them had intact eggs on their hulls, which naturally released in the atmosphere, floating on the wind until landing in the planetary wilderness. Not every egg took, some environments and atmospheres were more hostile than others, but in this first generation a good dozen planets acquired an infestation before the world of Pangunang Tala even realized they had a problem. In forty eight years, four spheres of infestation spread along the Imperial Logistic chain, and minor planetary governors were just beginning to realize that their planets had a problem.

Then Cadia was destroyed. Far out on the Galactic East, this had little direct effect to those who were not in the pathway of the Great Rift, which the infested Supply worlds mostly avoided. However, it set in motion a chain of events that not even the Tau who initially planned this scheme could have foreseen. The fall of Cadia began the Indomitus Crusade, which required an immediate re-deployment of supply assets along with military ones, and numerous haulers from mature, infested worlds were redirected to Terra itself. While there was no opportunity to infect the throne world, eggs spread from those initial dozen ships to hundreds of haulers milling around in preparation for the great crusade.

Throughout the galaxy, worlds of all sorts were exposed to Mogurid eggs, and far too often over the next century, the colonies went unnoticed until it was too late to prevent further transmission, making them one more hassle impinging the supply lines of the already overextended Imperium, and one more mission for the already exhausted chapters of the Space Marines. A calm, peaceful Imperium could almost certainly have traced the problem back to its source, map out the full spread, and exterminate the new xenos threat, but since the beginning of the new crusade the idea of spending that much effort for a threat that has no more than a marginal effect on the overall logistics is simply out of the question. The few xenobiologists with their eye on the growing threat are sending increasingly urgent memos to the Administratum, for the projections are dire should the threat be allowed to continue without any controls at all.

## Chaos Taint

Since the emergence of the great rift, it seems that eggs, which typically travel attached to the outside hull of Imperial voidcraft, have been affected by their close proximity to the warp, despite being within the Geller fields. As is typical with the manifestations of the warp, results of this can vary quite a bit, from barely any taint to a heavy taint detectable even by non-sensitive humans. In some tunnel colonies, the malign influence of the warp manifests as a disease, weakening all three species, sometimes to the point of death. Though these colonies are more easily exterminated without Astartes support, caution must be exercised lest the infection spread to the Guardsmen assigned to clear out the tunnels.

In cases of more severe warp poisoning, the effects are often hard to spot to an untrained eye, and manifest mostly at the twenty year colony maturity event. Warp tainted tunnel colonies do not engage in self harm in the same way, nor do they typically found additional colonies on the same planet, aside from the Tsibi eggs that are dropped. Instead they will begin attacking nearby settlements. If they are still unstopped after a few weeks of rampaging, the scavenging Tsibi will have brought enough body parts back from their victims to form a chaos summoning circle. When a great Mogurid battle begins anywhere on the world once the circle is complete, it has a chance to be activated and summon forth lesser daemons of the warp, Daemonettes, Bloodletters, Horrors, and Nurglings which can join in wherever the fighting is hardest. Typically, by this point the Mogurids are frenzied, often capable of continuing to fight even with severe internal wounds.

## Notable Infestations

### Shrine of St. Tsurushi Lorenzo Ruiz

Upon an unnamed Imperial planet in the distant fringes of Panay subsector in the far galactic East, there existed a small shrine to a man named Lorenzo Ruiz, later designated St. Tsurushi for his martyrdom and miracle. There is very little of note on this world, but a small shrine monastery was established in commemoration of the saint and for veneration of the Emperor. A small supply ship which had gotten caught in a warpstorm arrived after thirty years of isolation, brining not just much needed supplies to the religious community which had found itself on the wrong side of the Great Rift, but also a Mogurid egg, which drifted undetected fifty kilometers before landing and birthing a new colony. Though the isolation made this world a reproductive dead end for the Mogurids, after twenty years their warp taint revealed itself and drove the Mogurids into a killing frenzy, attacking the isolated monastery and slaughtering all the civilians. On an island separated from the main continent, a small order of militant Sisters of Battle made their home and pursued vengeance for the destroyed shrine, tracking the Mogurids back to their tunnel colony and doing battle with holy bolter and purgative flame. Three hundred battle sisters against three hundred enraged Mogurids battled for two weeks within those tunnels. Every last Mogurid and Mogura was put to the flame, but barely a dozen sisters survived to see the end of it. And of those sisters, some would be driven mad while destroying the chaos symbols found deep at the heart of the tunnel colony. The full story of these sisters, and the later involvement of the Earthscorchers chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, is recorded in the data archives for the Shrine of St. Tsurushi.