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Queborrin

Queborrin CR 5

An undulating wormlike thing burrows out of the carrion heap before you. Eyes like rows of green gemstones fixed you with their gaze while tiny legs like barbed hairs all along its length flex their fibrous tips for an instant. Wreathed in viscera, its sphincterous mouth opens to reveal a circular row of teeth as it slithers forward.

XP 1,600
NE Tiny aberration
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +11

DEFENSE HP 65

EAC 17; KAC 18
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +10; DR 5/magic; SR 16

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft.
Melee bite +12 (1d4+3 P)
Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Offensive Abilities infest (DC 15)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 5th)

1/daydominate person (DC 18), modify memory (DC 18)
3/daydeep slumber (DC 16), suggestion (DC 16)

STATISTICS

Str –2, Dex +5, Con +3, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +2
Skills Culture +16, Mysticism +16, Stealth +16, Sense Motive +11
Languages Queborrin
Other Abilities enhance host

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Enhance Host (Su)

A creature infested with a queborrin gains the queborrin’s spell resistance, except that it does not apply to any spells cast by the queborrin.

Infest (Ex)

As a full round action when it is in the space of a larger humanoid, the queborrin can make a bite attack. If the bite deals damage, the humanoid must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or become infested by the queborrin. An infesting queborrin has no special control over its host, other than that provided by its spelllike abilities and can be noticed with a thorough medical examination (including a DC 20 Medicine check). The infestation can be removed with remove affliction or similar magic, which kills the queborrin. Removing the creature through an hour-long surgery is possible with a successful DC 25 Medicine check, but failure kills both the queborrin and the host.

ECOLOGY

Environment any
Organization solitary, community (up to several hundred infected hosts), or planet (up to entire planet’s population)

Distant kin of the much-feared and more common intellect devourer, the queborrin are an alien parasitic race that thrives on finding a powerful host to dwell within and enjoy. The queborrin are voyeurs; seeking to enjoy positions of power to enable other queborrin to thrive.

A queborrin resembles a revolting long green worm with distended legs, it has cluster eyes and is covered in fine hairs that, when attached to the host’s spine, grow and infuse within the skeleton of the host to prevent removal. Its mouth is designed for swift burrowing and has a circular row of razor teeth. Queborrin speak their own language; a revolting series of screeches and high-pitched whistles that can be pitched so high that they pass the hearing of most humanoids. In this way, queborrin are able to communicate with each other even in the most dangerous of circumstances and do so secretly.

Queborrin usually enter a host by dominating them and then erasing the memory of its ever entering them. In this way, queborrin can slyly enter a populace raising very few suspicions; and those who do spot such intruders are quickly dealt with by dominated infested hosts. In this way, queborrin can quickly take over entire communities, and have taken over entire worlds in this way—spreading like a vast wave of parasitic misery across an entire population and creating a place of order and safety for the queborrin to infest other worlds.

Queborrin grant a boon of spell resistance to their hosts; something they carefully veil using suggestion spells if ever the need arises—most hosts put the lack of spells affecting them down to simple destiny—an assumption the queborrin planted there in the first place.

Ecology

Queborrin are created when a mature queborrin inhabits the body of a pregnant host; its racial reproduction an horrific byproduct of this event— an event often sought out by lone queborrin in an attempt to create more of its kind. The infant queborrin created by this event invariably form in one of two ways—entirely dependent upon the manner of the present hosts surroundings. If the hosted queborrin feels it is unsafe for a mass birth (q.v.) the queborrin created is a single creature always birthed within the infant, who begins life dependent upon and inextricably linked with the infant queborrin. After a period of one year the infant quenborrin is able to leave its infant host if it wishes, but most develop a long (often lifelong) relationship with their host body; guiding its destiny in a way often at odds with its natural birth. The intelligent queborrin has high hopes for the infant, and seeks to spread its own kind by using the creature’s abilities—whatever they might be.

If the adult queborrin thinks it is safe to do so, a mass birth occurs. This revolting event involves the infant queborrin feeding upon the host infant— killing it and devouring it utterly. After a given period of time—usually half the gestation period of the host creature—the infant queborrin emerge.

At this time the infants are very vulnerable, and the adult queborrin invariably remains within its pregnant host to ensure their brood are properly cared for until adulthood—something that usually takes a year.

Habitat & Society

The queborrin are accomplished bodysnatchers; their aim is always to assimilate as many hosts as they can to ensure not only survival, but safety. As has been eluded to above, the queborrin are able to instigate mass takeovers, and because of their intelligence can usually arrange a most believably cover for these activities. Where a host group of some size has been established, queborrin will often use pregnant creatures to host further queborrin and ensure a mass birth. These births are enveloped in layers of secrecy so that even if the outer layer is uncovered and the queborrin discovered, there are always more layers to protect the main host and young. Often with a particularly old or powerful group, external senior or powerful individuals are sought out and infested to ensure that any danger is dealt with by those in authority.

This is not to say queborrin are sociable creatures; many live entire lives operating alone; spying or studying or out of mere curiosity—some even become so engendered in their host’s society that they forget that host and queborrin are separate creatures. Some of these creatures have been known to fall into inconsolable grief when a particularly beloved or long-lived host dies. These creatures are rare, but common enough to have a name amongst queborrin, who call them samestrange; in disgust at their love of a particular host.

If a normal queborrin encounters such a creature it seeks to destroy the aberration.

Therein lies the queborrins one major belief— that they are racially pure; a belief so ingrained and all-consuming that it often bleeds outwards into the host creature or beyond into it society if enough are present. Queborrin use hosts to further the queborrin race, and while they are inquisitive and cruel, they are far more than that, and this makes them very dangerous.

Variants

Hive-Minded Some queborrin are able—through a quirk as yet understood even by the race themselves—to communicate across vast distances; even between planes of existence. These hive-minded queborrin have a shared link with several others that enables those creatures to speak and listen and see everything that goes on between the hive group. The hive-minded queborrin are often feared by their own kind, who hunt them out as aberrations within aberrations. This forces some groups of hive-minded to operate covertly and form even more paranoid groups than standard queborrin.

Metal-Clad Some queborrin have developed—or rather created—metal skins to work from, preferring to shed mortal flesh to enable a form of immortality. These creatures view other queborrin who dwell in flesh as unclean; racially inferior creatures that are above all other foes who must be sought out and slain. The metal skins they develop are only limited by the present technology of the places they inhabit—places they generally soon overpower and destroy.

Metal-clad queborrin have developed complex alchemical methods of reproduction, sometimes on an industrial scale. These queborrin are greatly feared by standard queborrin who reciprocate their race hatred. They operate on a strict hierarchical scale to ensure racial purity drives the queborrin— not personal greed or desire. The leaders of the metal-clad dwell within vast complex machines, and all metal-clad queborrin ensure they have weaponry—knowing their own flesh is weak.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Alien Bestiary (Starfinder) © 2018, Legendary Games; Lead Designer: Jason Nelson. Authors: Anthony Adam, Kate Baker, John Bennet, Eytan Bernstein, Robert Brookes, Russ Brown, Duan Byrd, Jeff Dahl, Robyn Fields, Joel Flank, Matt Goodall, Robert J. Grady, Jim Groves, Steven T. Helt, Thurston Hillman, Tim Hitchcock, Nick Hite, Daniel Hunt, Mike Kimmel Marshall, Isabelle Lee, Jeff Lee, Lyz Liddell, Jason Nelson, Richard Pett, Tom Phillips, Alistair J. Rigg, Alex Riggs, Wendall Roy, Mike Shel, Neil Spicer, Todd Stewart, Russ Taylor, Rachel Ventura, Mike Welham, George Loki Williams, Scott Young.