Wild Scourge

The **Wild Scourge** is a cult of violent, nature worshiping eco-terrorists which bring the aims of helping the environment, founded through the machinations of a powerful Abomination who exposed humans to the pain of the earth to drive them mad and into religious fervor.

## History

Culled from the most extreme eco-terrorists, animal rights activists and conservationists that can be found in the corporate-dominated Federation of Ocelot Burners. The Wild Scourge refuse to let nature suffer without a fight. They have experienced these things because of the cult’s founder and leader, a cunning abomination named Atax, whose intelligence is only matched by his corruptive power. Atax gathered disparate extremist elements from among various conservationist causes under his banner, promising to show them the truth for which they had fought so hard. He delivered on his promises, calling forth Spectral Ps disguised as nature-spirits. The spirits showed the impressionable activists that which they wanted to believe, kindling an unquenchable religious zeal. Allowing them to feel nature’s pain, fueled by the Warp itself, growing fanaticism into a full bloom of zealotry.

Atax then began to lead his growing cult against those responsible for the earth’s agony. He targeted logging, mining and slaughterhouse operations, even Goodfellows' Consortium and its subsidiaries. They took down facility after facility with their mystical power and gunfire, even a few of the Consortium's facilities fell before these attacks.

Yet, this only benefits Atax, he perverts the noble cause into a tool of terror and destruction. Everything the Wild Scourge think about themselves is a lie. The origin of their powers is not part of a grand tradition of nature-worship, but the twisted influence of the Warp. Convinced they’re fighting for the greatest of causes, that only they can prevent the destruction of the entire world, and that a great power watches over them, the fanatics lash out with ruthless devotion. Aided unknowingly by Spectral Ps and under the guise of spirit guides for key missions. Some, the ones who survive mission after mission by ether sheer luck or rabid ferocity, become abominations themselves. Their newfound powers allow them to inflict even more damage in their raids, but most are subtle in their mutations. The taint they carry corrupt others around them and leaves them vulnerable in turn to possession by Spectral Ps.

Their self-discipline has crafted a particularly focused belief system from their disparate mysticism, even if the true source of their apocalyptic visions is not the voice of a suffering world as they may believe, but the corruption rooted deep in their very bodies and psyches. They enslave and abuse the wildlife, corrupt plant-life and sacrifice their own kind without thinking. Every time they shed their blood in the ritual harvest fields, they are seeding new growth of their own taint, and their new recruits share and spread their curse. Ultimately the embryonic evil they are unwittingly nurturing will burst into its full and horrible growth. Where there once was a member of the Wild Scourge there will be something awful in the shape of a man, and then the true harvest shall begin anew, while Atax watches as the cycle of corruption maintains itself without any more need for a push.

## Tenets, Goals and Beliefs

Earth is alive, but is suffering. Every day, it withers more, poisoned by the deluge of pollution that we unleash upon it. We are killing our home. The death throes shake the world, as ice caps melt; fire boils up from the ground, tidal waves and earthquakes accompany the pain-wracked convulsions. If we don’t do something soon, the earth will die and take us all with it. This is what the zealots of the Wild Scourge believe.

While the Wild Scourge see the damage done to the natural world just as clearly as anyone, they also see the true cause. Human avarice and corporation greed are the cause. Their very existence is a blight on all natural life, and the earth is tearing itself apart in convulsions against their continued presence. Every shifting of the earth or corruption of fauna and flora, every flood or drought, is the life-force of creation rebelling against the blight of man.

The Wild Scourge see themselves as vengeful instruments of the natural order. They are sworn to remove this cancer, redress the balance, and restore the natural order to heal the world from its physical and psychic wounds, no matter the cost. They are ruthless fighters who see their lives and those of any individual living thing as secondary to the need for nature to be healed. The fauna and flora are their tools and weapons. Sacrifices must be made, and even the strongest may be asked to fall on the field of battle before the end. They speak of spirits who guide them and realms of nature's beauty unspoiled by humanity. These spirits guide them on their holy missions to strike back against the enemies of nature.

New converts to the Wild Scourge face a trial by fire and water. Here they find their true spirit in exposure to a fraction of the pain that nature suffered as the land was torn sundered and pillaged of its natural resources. If the person flinches, they are judged too weak then they are fed to the waiting beasts in a reversal of the usual sacrifice. Those who can stand the pain of the trial are taken to the ritual fields where new recruits feed the crops with their own blood: symbolic of the sacrifice they are prepared to make to nature.