"Heaven take it away! Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches..."
Under the Pyramids
by H.P. Lovecraft and Harry Houdini
Jarpha (Grunt)
No. Enc.: 3d4 (6d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 60' (20')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 4+1
Attacks: 1 (weapon)
Damage: 1d6+1 or by weapon
Save: F5
Morale: 4 (Improves by +1 per each pay upgrade)
The Jarpha have spread outwards across myriad worlds and realms. Mercenaries without a world of their own, the Jarpha have a fearsome reputation based on the glories and atrocities of a distant age that their leaders attempt to milk for all its worth. They serve many masters for payment, but only one cause stirs their hearts and gets them to stop complaining or grumbling for a brief moment and that is their devotion to someday claiming a place of their own and settling down to quiet, rustic villages to raise crops, bear real children (not vat-clones), and to pursue various quaint hobbies...none of which any of them have the slightest idea of how to do. No one really knows if it's all some sort of vestigial imprinting left in their systems from their progenitors or something else...
The Jarpha first appeared in Riskail and most recently have been pursuing Zeelia. There are a few knocking about beneath Wermspittle ever since their unit got separated and wandered through a Weak Point. They have been sighted in other settings and campaigns as well...
Cool image! Are these guys reptilian, amphibian, or what? And what's that on the end of their tail. Is that a mace-bone thing like on the tail of an ankylosaur? It looks like a fetus head/egg - kind of creeping me out!
ReplyDeleteIt's an old image, but I still like it. Glad you approve. The Jarpha are pseudo-mammalian/marsupial-like, but with a lot of ammendations to their genome purchased and implemented over the centuries by their High Command. They seem to lack all but the most rudimentary amphibian characteristics, and tend to reject reptillian/saurian traits due to an immune response sub-system dating back to their early days and all the intense wars they waged against various reptilian-types. The bulbous thingy on the end of the Jarpha's tail is a breeding-node encased in an armored sleeve used as a mace, so you were pretty on the money with your guess...
DeleteIt's a great picture, for sure.
ReplyDeleteIt's what I could salvage without having to go back and re-scan the original since the really detailed colorized version I did was lost in the hard-drive failure...and I just can't work up the enthusiasm to do it all over again. I'm on to new stuff.
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