Randomizers:
Approach: 1, 8, 7 [Options: Relentless, Focused, Mastermind, Specialized, Adaptive]
Archetype: 8, 3, 3 [Options: Bruiser, Formidable, Inhibitor, Domain, Fragile]
Upgrade: 2, 11, 10 [Options: Hardier Minions, Brainwashing Zone, Calming Aura]
Mastery: 3, 2, 8 [Options: Conquest, Behind the Curtain, Profitability]
Terracide
Real Name: Jekander Trall, First Appearance: Celestial Travels #971, January 2020
Approach: Specialized, Archetype: Domain
Upgrade: Hardier Minions, Mastery: Conquest
Status Dice: Based on environment minions, lieutenants, and/or challenges. 3+: d10. 1-2: d8. None: d6. Health: 50+5H (Upgraded 55+5H)
Qualities: Imposing d12, Deep Space Lore d8, Damyrian Xenobiologist d8
Powers: Animal Control d10, Awareness d8
Abilities:
- Distract for the Pack [A]: Hinder one target using Imposing and use your Max die. Attack that target using your Mid die.
- Swarming Tactics [A]: Attack using Xenobiologist against one target with your Max die, another with your Mid die, and a third with your Min die.
- Awaken Nature’s Wrath [A]: Activate one of the environment’s twists in its current zone or one zone closer to red.
- Frenzied Rampage [A]: Roll any number of environment minion dice. Attack every target in the scene (other than yourself) with those dice. Remove those minions.
- Aura of Terror [R]: Defend against an Attack where you’re the only target by rolling your single Imposing die. One other nearby target takes an amount of damage equal to the damage reduced.
- Worldsinger (I): Ignore damage from environment sources during the environment’s turn.
- (U) Worldbreaker (I): When you activate the environment to create minions or lieutenants, step the die size of those minions up (to a maximum of d12.)
- (U) Master Conquerer (I): As long as you are in command of your own forces, automatically succeed at an Overcome involving seizing an area or capturing civilians.
Common Scene Elements:
- A City Overrun: An urban environment struggling with a massive invasion of hostile creatures from across the galaxy.
- Beast-tamers. D8 lieutenants. When Beast-tamers Boost animal minions, they may make the bonus persistent and exclusive.
- Monstrous Beasts. D10 lieutenants that act as environment targets. Monstrous Beasts get +2 to their damage saves.
While some Celestial Travels stories were smaller-scale, there was also room in the newly-revamped comic for the planetary threats and interstellar conquerers that the original Travellers had so often fought. While a few minor warlords were established in the opening issues post-timeskip, a new major threat was established in Celestial Travels #971 with the arrival of Terracide.
Jekander Trall was a Damyrian xenobiologist who had been heavily involved in their planet’s efforts to save endangered species from the threat of the World-Maggots three decades earlier. The alien scientist, however, saw a more profitable use for the technology, liberating and upgrading it to give them wide-scale control over animal biologies. With this weapon, they could turn a planet’s ecology against itself, overwhelming defensive fortifications and laying waste to industrial areas until the local government surrendered to them to ‘solve’ the problem.
Trall claimed to represent a sustainable future, with populations carefully managed and sentient and non-sentient life existing in harmony. Like most ecofascists, however, they had constructed a system in which all of the sacrifices were made by someone else, allowing them and their elite ‘beast-tamers’ to live lives of luxury at the expense of the worlds they deemed as lesser. Every species was assigned a position on the hierachy based on Trall’s own beliefs of its ‘fitness’, and the ‘lesser’ ones were oppressed and forced into harsh labor conditions for the benefits of the ‘greater’, with their populations managed as though they were beasts themselves.
Trall first came to the attention of the Travellers after Traveller Team Sixty-Eight was killed trying to protect a small planet from a mysterious outbreak of animal violence, with Trall bringing the colony under the umbrella of the Greenstar Federation for their ‘protection’. Traveller Team One responded to investigate, quickly realizing what Trall was doing, and led a covert action that disabled their control generators and allowed the Galactic Union to send troops to fortify the world against a new assault. It quickly became clear, however, that Greenstar was too entrenched for the Union to risk all-out war; they feared that doing so would lead to Terracide wiping out entire planets of civilians rather than cede them to the Union. The Celestial Travellers pledged to hold back Greenstar’s advance, and to find a way to overthrow Trall, but they knew that it would be a long battle ahead…
Behind the Scenes
Getting a good evil empire going to face off against the good one, and honestly ecofascism seemed like something that would be a solid topic for both the Venture universe and for the real world in 2019. It’s been a generation since the World-Maggots were defeated, which means that there are now settled refugee populations all over the galaxy, and fascists are not fans of that. Terracide thus acts as a full flip of our other resident Damyrian, Shockeye. Instead of being a good-hearted person who uses new technology to look for the best in others, they’ve developed a technology to hold planets hostage and command an empire.
Worldbreaker is a Domain-adjusted version of Hardier Minions, which also affects lieutenants but doesn’t affect any villainous minions being brought to the party. It also creates a nasty synergy with Frenzied Rampage, increasing the die size of a group of minions and then using them as a weapon to really wreck the area. Terracide alternates between pumping up the environment, and using their Animal Control and Imposing to attack enemies directly with whatever beasts they have on hand.