Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

=== Hrud ===

==== Hrud ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">  '''''Those Who Linger:'''''

The Hrud are quintessential Xenos Independens. On the one hand, they hate the Necrons, fear Chaos, and are just as threatened by tyranids (particularly genestealers) as everyone else. Just about the only enemies of the Imperium the Hrud tolerate are the Orks and that is because Hrud juunlaks find it just as easy to live on the outskirts of Ork camps as they do Imperial cities. On the other hand, the Hrud clearly have their own agenda, can’t seem to organize themselves well enough to negotiate for inclusion into the Imperium, and are nearly impossible to get to swear by Imperial laws and boundaries. In spite of, or perhaps because, the Hrud have one of the best long-term memories of any species in the galaxy, [[Kender|they have the attention span and respect for boundaries of a house cat]]. A common saying in the Imperium goes: “You can get a Hrud to do just about anything. Once.”

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The biology of the Hrud is strange, even by the standards of the Imperium. Rather than being supported by their limbs, Hrud bodies are attached to a fixed point in the fabric of space-time, from which the Hrud's body and legs hang from like clothes on a hanger. The Hrud don't so much walk as pull or pull their stationary point in space-time along using their arms. Hrud have a hydrostatic musculature and can compress their bodies to a width of less than 30 cm, allowing them to fit through virtually any hole larger than a human thigh. Combined with their limited ability to fold the fabric of space-time, this allows them to worm their way through openings and passages which you wouldn’t normally expect a creature of their size to fit, even fitting through closed doorways if they aren’t properly sealed.
 
Hrud are all natural psykers, however the form that their psychic powers take is somewhat different from the rather straightforward usage seen in humans and Eldar. Hrud are capable of masking their presence from other species through the use of a psychic perception filter and a strange ability to bend light and space-time, to the point that a Hrud was once reported to have been able to hide from observers in plain sight while in a white-walled, well-lit room. However the amount of effort it takes for a Hrud to hide from the perception of others is heavily dependent on the environment (i.e., a dark place is much easier to hide in than a bright one) and on the species the Hrud is trying to fool. For humans and tau, it is easily possible to fool them into thinking a passing Hrud is just a trick of the shadows. By contrast, Eldar and tarellians, whose brains are organized a little differently, take more effort to fool, especially Eldar who also have psychic senses at their disposal.
 
The Hrud are also capable of emitting a combination of a miasma of airborne toxins and an entropic field, which they call the ssaak. It is thought that the ssaak was always present to some degree in the Hrud as a natural defense mechanism and the entropic field was part of the modifications made to the species by the Old Ones. The ssaak is always present to some degree, but becomes extremely prominent if the Hrud in question is stressed out or threatened. Unfortunately, being a nocturnal species with a species-wide case of agoraphobia, the Hrud are almost always stressed out to some degree. Long-term exposure to the ssaak is not advised, as it can cause nausea, sedation, physiological dependence, and premature aging. On the rare occasions in which the Hrud do manage consistently interact with other species on a long-term basis, they often build encounter suits to contain the ssaak to keep other people from getting sick.
 
Hrud are capable of combining their ssaak fields, which at their most extreme extent can form a temporal warp-rift singularity which can devastate their foes. More than once an invading force has attacked a settlement, only to be driven back by the enraged Hrud galvanized from below the city. This phenomenon can either be beneficial or harmful to the Imperium. On the one hand you have cases like Dulcinea, where during the 12th Black Crusade the population of Hive Strigis was massacred by Chaos warbands, only to rouse the ire of the Hrud population living in the city’s underhive who dropped a singularity on their heads. At the same time you have cases like Haakoneth, the former homeworld of the Star Phantoms, which in 103.M40 came under attack the fleet of an Ork Freeboota Klan. The Star Phantoms destroyed the attacking Ork fleet, but unfortunately this provoked the Hrud colony that had been living in the bowels of the Freeboota ships, who immediately embarked on a Peh-ha to find a new home. The resulting Hrud migration dragged a singularity with it to the surface of Haakoneth, which between the Hrud and the Orks forced the Star Phantoms and the population of Haanoneth to retreat and abandon the planet.
 
The Imperium first encountered the Hrud in M30, during the later years of the Great Crusade. At this time, humanity and Eldar were on good terms with one another, but this was only shortly after the Raid and the levels of trust between the two groups wasn’t as well established as it would be in later years. The Hrud were, at the time of the Imperium's discovery of them, confined to a single world. It is thought that they had been confined to their homeworld by the Old Eldar Empire, who had apparently been willing to reduce the Hrud from an interstellar power but weren’t prepared to actually exterminate them due to their shared history (or possibly indirect intervention from the Eldar gods). After the Fall of the Eldar, the Hrud remained on their world, either because they were afraid of retaliation from the Eldar, no longer had the knowledge to produce spacecraft, or possibly because they were afraid doing so would violate the last commandment and warning of their god. And so the Hrud remained quarantined. Until the Iron Warriors found them.
 
In 734.M30, the Iron Warriors had just finished unified what would become the future Hive World of Stratopolae. The planet’s infrastructure was sound, but if it was to thrive it needed a devoted bread basket. Long range telescopes showed a habitable planet within a few lightyears of the planet, which would have made an ideal Agri-World. Shortly before the Iron Warriors, including a young Barabas Dantioch, were ready to leave the system, they were contacted by the Eldar. The Eldar implored the Iron Warriors not to go to that system, telling them that it was home to a dangerous xenos lifeform that their ancestors had quarantined millennia ago. The Iron Warriors blew them off, believing it was merely a lie spun by the Eldar to conceal the fact that there was something of value on the planet and the Eldar thought the Iron Warriors were gullible enough to believe it.
 
The Iron Warriors exited the Warp in a system with one notable world in its habitable zone. The world itself was mostly earth-like, and seemed to be uninhabited though showed clear signs of former occupation. The Iron Warriors were pleased about this, the expedition had been more than worth it as this world was ideal for an Agri-World. They didn’t know why the Eldar were so interested in the system but the knife-ears could go space themselves if they thought they could give orders to humanity.
 
The Iron Hands landed their craft near what was the only visible artificial structure from orbit, a skyscraper-like building that looked like one of Perturabo’s creations crossed with a very grungy bee hive. They sat outside their craft for several days waiting for someone, anyone, to make contact with them before they decided to make the first move. One of the crew thought they saw something over on a nearby mountain range but later chalked it up to a mirage. Leaving their ship behind, the Iron Warriors marched down empty roads into a ghost city. Entering the city, they realized what they thought were heavily degraded structures were actually buildings of xenos design. Still, the city seemed empty, and if the planet was uninhabited they could still set up an Agri-World there. The only potential sign of life were occasional signs of movement in their peripheral vision but as their armor’s sensors kept reading inconsistent extra-spectrum signatures they put it down to a mild glitch caused by the strange environment. For nearly two days the Iron Warriors wandered around the city getting increasingly agitated by the phantom sightings before they actually saw anyone.
 
In what looked like a market square the Imperial Emissary and his Iron Warrior guards finally found someone to talk to. A hunched figure in tattered hooded robes holding a stick with a bit of cloth on it that might have been a standard flanked by four similarly attired individuals. No part of the creatures were visible. At this point the Iron Warriors realized there was a problem. They had thought the world was uninhabited, but it was now clear that it was very inhabited by a xenos species. Standard procedure for interacting with an unknown xenos species during the Great Crusade was to observe and them attempt to make contact from as close to the system’s Mandeville Point as possible. If the species was friendly, politely extend the bare minimum of courtesy and leave as soon as possible. If the species was territorial or too primitive to make contact, leave it alone. If the species tried to follow the fleet back and attack, destroy them. The point of such contact was to survey potential threats to humanity, ideally from lightyears away. And yet here the Iron Warriors were meters from a xenos lifeform.
 
To their credit, the Imperial Emissary and the Iron Warriors tried to make the best of the situation. After initial difficulties in establishing communication (the lead figure able to speak something that vaguely resembled Eldar High Speech), the Emissary and the lead figure, who introduced itself as a Hrud, exchanged pleasantries and initiated introductions. It already being late in the day the Emissary asked if they could continue this conversation tomorrow and in a knee-jerk reflex asked if the figures wanted to meet aboard their ship. After a moment of thought, the lead figure agreed, and the Imperial party returned to the ship to report their findings. The next day the Imperial Emissary and the Iron Warriors came down to the square they found it was empty. The Iron Warriors wandered around the empty city several times, looking for the mysterious figures. It's not until the fifth trip that they realize that they are no longer seeing movement in the corners of their eyes. The world felt strangely empty now.
 
At this time the Eldar, having seen their initial attempt to warn the Iron Warriors rebuffed, decided to send a message directly to the throne. The Steward took these concerns seriously and sent a message to Perturabo, but Perturabo, who at the time was too busy overseeing the construction of fortress hives to micromanage every expeditionary fleet of his legion, sent half-hearted warning letters to the expeditionary force who took the concerns under advisement.
The Iron Warriors decided to leave the planet, between the warning, the strange visions, and the encounter in the marketplace, the planet was getting too weird for their liking. On the voyage back to the forgeworld some of the crew in the lower decks start to see flickering in the edge of their vision, but decided it was most likely a bit of dust in the air filters again and didn’t report it.  Then the phenomenon  starts appearing on Stratopolae when they get back. Then it is retroactively noted on several outgoing cargo hauler coming out of Stratopolae over the next several months. The investigation afterwards confirms what many suspected. Somehow the entire Hrud civilization managed to fold themselves up and hop onto the Iron warriors ship. Now the Hrud are abroad in the Imperium. The Eldar, having increasingly made noise all this time, now refused to comment, believing the results of the ill-fated expedition spoke for themselves.
 
The Iron Warriors, being military engineers, felt they could easily rectify the situation, but trying to contain the Hrud was like trying to make a river flow uphill and after a valiant campaign they found they just simply couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. In addition, between the general chaos caused by large-scale Hrud migrations and the cornered Hrud lashed out in self-defense, many Iron Warriors were killed or crippled. Barabas Dantioch in particular was prematurely aged to the point he was recalled from active service and put on garrison duty out of concerns for his health despite being only 200 years old. While on garrison duty, Dantioch gained an interest in Eldar culture and history, having recalled their warning before the expedition, showing a particular interest in the architecture of the Webway.
 
Surprisingly, the expected retaliation from the Hrud never came. Once the campaign by the Iron Warriors the Hrud seemed content to retreat into the shadows. The Imperium has tried to negotiate with the Hrud in the same way it has with numerous other Xenos races, particularly in the hopes of bringing some order to the Hrud’s seemingly random pattern of migrations. It hasn’t really worked out. Although they live in a tribal society organized into clans, Hrud clans tend to have a hard time interacting and negotiating with Imperial diplomats, both due to the ssaak and their poor concept of time. Instead, they tend to live on the fringes of society in their juunlaks. The Hrud never officially joined the Imperium and are technically trespassers. But they aren't too troublesome or obtrusive and so they never became classified as Xenos Horridus. They steal things and leech power from Imperial systems, but usually no more than they need and only if they cannot obtain it on their own. The Hrud generally just kind of hide in the corners of places and occasionally steal sandwiches and make strange things out of scrap. Yes the Hrud have gotten to some of the Craftworlds. No the Eldar are not happy about it.
 
Hrud relationships with Imperial citizens are mixed. Imperial citizens sometimes trade with the Hrud or hire them, but most Hrud tend to be too unreliable to hire for consistent jobs. On the one hand, Hrud have been known to go out of their way to protect non-Hrud from the Umbra, a bizarre race of shadowy Warp creatures that are often, but not always, found in association with Hrud. However, on the other hand, in absolute worst case scenarios the have been known to kidnap Imperial citizens and turn them into zanhaads, slave-pets addicted to their bodily chemicals. When this happens something has to be done, kidnapping Imperial citizens crosses a line and the Hrud have to be dealt with, no matter how loathsome it is. This distaste is not simply out of moral quandaries. Fighting against Hrud is a nightmare, as cleaning out a juunlak involves going down in to the deep, dark underhives where the Hrud are in their element. The ssaak is everywhere and with all the shadows a Hrud can be within a few feet of you and you wouldn’t know it until they ambush you.
 
Although the Hrud typically prefer to buy, borrow, or steal weapons, they are more than capable of making their own. Despite their primitive appearance, Hrud actually have quite a bit of knowledge of advanced technology and are capable of making or reverse-engineering weapons out of scrap. The most commonly seen Hrud-made firearms are the Hrud fusils, which are not quite rifles yet not quite shotguns (the weapon has a narrower spread than a rifle, but do have a spread and the barrel is not grooved) that are typically held like gauntlets and fire Warp-laced plasma which use the Warp to bypass armor and other solid objects. The ability of a Hrud fusil to pass through solid objects is not unlimited, but these weapons are more than capable of passing through several inches of shielding and in some cases are able to shoot through cover to hit someone on the other side. However, one downside to Hrud fusils compared to lasweapons and stubbers is that it takes a significant amount of time (anywhere from half a second to a few seconds) for the weapon to recharge after each volley.
 
Another sticking point between the Hrud and the Imperium involves genestealers. As denizens of the underhives, the Hrud are threatened by genestealer infestation as much as anyone, and are more acutely aware of what goes on in the underhive than possibly any other group. The Hrud often know who the genestealers are before the Imperium does. More than once an otherwise peaceful Hrud juulak has seemingly gone on an unprovoked rampage and massacred specific families down to the last individual, only for it to be discovered after Imperial retaliation that the Hrud had been wiping out a genestealer cult that no one had realized existed.

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==== Qah ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Lord of Shadows:'''''

Unlike the Eldar and many other species uplifted by the Old Ones, the Hrud are monotheists (possibly because they didn’t have the population or psychic power to create multiple gods), worshipping a shadow deity called Qah. The Hrud respected the Eldar Gods, referring to them as Slah-haii ([[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Society_and_Culture#The_Etymological_Legacy_of_the_Old_Ones|most mighty/ancient, a term they also used to refer to the Old Ones in the past]]), but the Eldar gods were not Hrud, Qah was. In addition to shadows, Qah is also seen as a god of Hrud values, including community, morality, and conscience. Although it might not be immediately obvious why a shadow deity would be seen as a paragon of moral values, it makes perfect sense to the nocturnal or crepuscular Hrud. Shadows are reflections of the self. Everyone has a shadow, and your shadow sees everything that you do. In Hrud religion, your shadow is where your conscience comes from, and all consciences have a connection back to Qah.
 
Grand Empress Isha, for her part, is very interested in the reports of the Hrud still worshipping Qah. She remembers Qah, who fought alongside the Eldar gods just like the mortal hrud fought alongside the Eldar in the War in Heaven. Qah got along okay with the Eldar gods, but being a god of Hrud values and therefore community and Isha being a goddess of nature and friend to all living things, the two of them got along considerably better than Qah did with the other members of the Eldar pantheon. Isha secretly hopes that Qah is still out there somewhere, if only to have someone else around to talk to who remembered the War in Heaven and the days before the Fall, even if it wasn’t an Eldar. Isha would be devastated to know what really happened.

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Shortly before the Old Eldar Empire gave birth to Slaanesh, Qah realized what was going on and realized that Slaanesh being born would mean devastation for not only the Hrud, but also for the Eldar and every race in the Milky Way galaxy. Having realized the gravity of the situation, he gathered the Hrud and told them what they needed to do to survive. In those days the Hrud built real cities and were unafraid of going out in the daylight, though at their heart they were always a nocturnal and opportunistic species. Qah told them they had to focus on those natural tendencies. They had to become so hidden, so beneath notice, that no one would ever bother or hurt them. His last command was a single word. He told the Hrud to hide. To survive. To linger. Having given his people the best guidance he could, he steeled himself and joined the battle against an alien god on behalf of the deities he had fought alongside so long ago.
 
Qah didn't make it. He got smashed into a billion pieces during the Fall the same way that Khaine did. Isha never saw this, as she was too busy being dragged away by Nurgle at the time to notice. Most of Qah’s fragments became the Umbra, the living shadows that like to cluster around Warp engines and Webway gates. Being but shreds of the shadow god, they are of limited intelligence, comparable to an animal, and will lash out at anything not-Hrud. Nevertheless, when destroyed they still scream “Linger”, begging any Hrud within earshot to remember the last words their god had told them to keep them safe.
 
It sucks to be Qah. He did everything in his power to save his people from the Age of Strife, but at what cost? He selflessly threw himself into battle on behalf of his old comrades from the days of the War in Heaven, only to be shattered into a million pieces. Even when his last few fragments are destroyed, he uses his last breath to remind the Hrud to remember what he said to keep them safe. One of the only remaining survivors of the War in Heaven is hoping that one day he will return, only for the tragedy being that Qah died a long long time ago and she never found out. He tried and tried to be selfless, only for tragedy to ensue. Being Qah is suffering.
 
Whereas many of Qah’s fragments were scattered across the galaxy, his main body ended back up on the Hrud homeworld. The Hrud refer to their homeworld as Hrud, much as they call themselves Hrud and speak a language called Hrud. There are no ethnic or cultural divisions between Hrud. Despite this, the former Hrud homeworld is typically referred to as Hrudworld for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Today there are no Hrud on Hrudworld. If it weren’t for psychic powers, no one would ever know why. To mundanes Hrudworld looks perfectly normal, although even with the Hrud gone people get the feeling there's something distinctly "wrong" about the place. Like they shouldn't be there. Psykers (including the Hrud) look around Hrudworld and notice there’s a half-decayed corpse straddled over the nearest mountain range.
 
The body appears on the horizon, or at least at a distance. Strewn over a mountain range, lying in a canyon, floating face down in the ocean, half buried in the ice of the north. It's likely not a "real" body as a corpse miles thick would probably distort the ground beneath it considerably to say nothing of what a new mountain might do to local climate. It always too distant to be touched, like a mirage on the horizon. Most classify the phenomenon as really consistent shared hallucination by the People of Qah and the psychically inclined. The corpse looks like a giant Hrud, more or less, albeit one seemingly sculpted of shadow. There are anatomical differences. Two sets of insectile wings not dissimilar to a very large beetle and two pairs of antenna upon its brow, one behind the other. It is thought that these features denote nobility to the Hrud in the same way that bird wings or a lion’s mane sometimes are used as artistic additions in human art. This shared hallucination does not occur on any other world of the Imperium even ones with a large Hrud population. Hrudworld doesn't frighten the Hrud, it saddens them. Their god is dead and his corpse, or something very like it, is always there to remind them. Of the few Hrud elders and lore-masters that would volunteer information on the phenomenon when asked they would give no hard information beyond that it brings them great sorrow.
 
The Hrud will rise again should the Imperium survive The Day of Reckoning. Isha will take the pieces of Qah and plant them in her garden when she takes back her throne. Perhaps Qah will spring from the ground, a fresh flower after a very long winter. Maybe his ghost will finally be laid to rest and his postmortem suffering will be over. Either way the Hrud will be able to move on.

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