The Host

Corpse Crawlers

As the hunt continued across the surface and through the tunnels beneath, the innumerable remains of the fallen and the prey of the hunt festered in the depths of the Scarr.

The voidstorm that had sliced deep into the planet’s surface had come and gone, but in its wake, something had entered the world.

Concealed within the darkness of the depths, the mass of corpses began to shudder and pulsate. Flesh stretched and receded as the remains convulsed, split open, and began to act once more.

Each cell, instead of decaying, took on a new existence. Every severed limb and lifeless corpse became a battleground as these cells fought, absorbed, and grew at an unbelievable pace.

No longer was death an end. It was the beginning of something new.

The Host, an alien and inexplicable affliction that seemed to spring from death itself, had taken a foothold on the unsuspecting planet.

Above the turmoil, all inhabitants began to see its effects. Immune systems now fought against the reanimated cells of their own bodies. Recent burials and battlegrounds began to sprawl with activity, and even wounds that would once have succumbed to infection instead began to twist and fill with these creatures.

Within a single decade, the Confederation enforced daily Host infection checks and cleansing procedures to combat this new threat, which, if left unchecked, could erupt from something as insignificant as dead skin cells upon a soldier’s face.

The corpse fields of the Asylum Cities became factories for Host monstrosities that joined the unending fight. Where once there had been stillness in the wake of a battle, there was now unbridled chaos as these creatures sprang into existence.

Due to their nature—or perhaps their unnature—the Host appear in an almost unlimited variety of shapes and sizes, each shaped by the cells, conflict, and environment from which it emerges.

Host are categorised in many ways, but most commonly by how they move, how large they are, and how “perfect” they have become.

Imperfect Host tend to be messy, ill-formed, grotesque growths with no clear or defined blueprint. Some move with terrifying speed, while others trudge slowly across the landscape.

Their behaviour can be equally unpredictable. At times, Host become almost placid and animal-like as their surroundings are gradually consumed by growths. Given enough time, all traces of what existed before can disappear beneath landscapes composed entirely of Host creatures resembling plants, animals, and other forms of life.

These Host Masses litter Sythopia.

Now and again, however, something changes.

The Host swarm.

Countless creatures begin to move with a single purpose, sweeping across the landscape as one. Together, they can scrape the land clean, killing everything in their path and absorbing the dead into their ever-growing mass.

Where life ends, the Host begins.