Shadowkith

The Grape Man group. The Blue Man group's degenerate cousins. Wanted for a slaughter, too.

The Californian Raisins Shadowkith are a race of purple subhuman mutant cannibals from planet Grace within the Koronus Expanse in Warhammer 40,000 and a pretty good argument on why Paradise Planets needs to be purged from existence.

Overview

Descendants of exiled Imperial nobles, Crime Lords, and the slaves of both, their existence is due to the effects of both a Warp Storm stopping the Rogue Trader who founded Grace from resupplying the world with food, and the storm's affects on the bodies and psyches of the trapped locals as food supplies dwindled.

These degenerate Californian Raisin-looking losers are what happens when you spend all your time jerking off to indulgences without consulting any sustainability goals for your entire population, despite knowing how isolated your world is from the rest of the wider Imperium. The Rogue Trader who found this world was called Aspyce Chordaset, who is possibly a god damn conwoman given that she set up opulent palaces protected by void shields and made sure that the world was amply supplied with food and luxuries, then invited a myriad of wealthy individuals from across the Calixis Sector to live there, full well knowing the planet's isolation and sheer unsustainability will mean chaos if things go hairy. And hairy things got.

When the aforementioned Warp Storms hit, the world of Grace was fucked. Given these idiots did not plan worth for shit, the planet only had food enough to last a few years. And given that no one really knew what Grace was given how Chorda made this world's location a secret, no resupply ships came to the rescue. The result was society going into Mad Max levels of clusterfucks as folks raided each other's palaces for food and once that ran out, resorted to cannibalism. The only food product that was actively farmed was the support the growth of a watery fungus, which by itself would have supported the population. But since the population was made up of posh dumbfucks who would rather die than to eat space mushrooms, we ended up with this fiasco. We weren't joking when we meant that these guys were a bunch of losers.

Eventually, degeneracy and devolution took place with remarkable speed - a phenomenon that continues to baffle xenobiologists. Grace's fungus has never conclusively been found to contain any mutagenic properties but their cannibalism alone cannot be the sole reason for what the Shadowkith have become.

Physiology and Biology

They are called the Californian Raisins for a reason. Shadowkith are still humanoid, but possess particularly pale purple skin (Why they're purple, Emprah-knows why. Might be related to the Warp Storms). Most are emaciated, with leathery flesh covering lean muscle and sinew. Though their bodies and heads resemble those of humans, they have altered to the point that they are recognizably no longer human.

What passes for Shadowkith society revolves around the need to eat. They hunt in packs, and devour anything that they come across, like vermin. They will not fight a foe that they don't have the numbers to defeat however, and will flee if they can't overcome an opponent, however, they will not leave good meat behind, and will attempt to recover any corpses that they can.

The Shadowkith now lure in unsuspecting ships with distress calls to devour their crew. Now, given how large Imperial Ships are and given how well-armed the ships' denizens typically are, it will only be a matter of time before they fuck around with the wrong crew and found out. They're physically stable enough to probably technically count as Abhumans rather than mutants, but the fact they feed on mainline humans probably means the Administratum isn't gonna be sanctioning them.