Neogi:
Attribute Dice 12D
DEX 1D/4D
PER 2D/4D+2
KNOW 2D/4D
TECH 1D/3D+2
MECH 2D/4D+1
STR 1D/3D+1
Special Abilities: bite: Neogi have a bite that does STR+1D damage, as well as injecting poison. This poison does damage of 5D, which must be rolled against the victim's stamina. If the victim rolls lower, then his actions and thoughts are slowed, resulting in a -2D penalty to all actions for a period of 1D+2 minutes.
claws: Neogi have claws on the ends of their 8 legs which do STR+1 damage
intimidation: Neogi are very good at intimidation due to their ferocious appearances, as well as their naturally vicious manner, thus they gain +2D to all intimidation attempts.
no hands: Neogi have great difficulty operating devices not specifically designed for them, as well as performing tasks requiring manual dexterity since they have nothing approximating hands. Raise all difficulty levels of such tasks by one level.
Story Factors: slavers: all Neogi are slavers by nature due to their belief that everything and everyone is property. This includes Neogi, and all but the most important Neogi are slaves to other Neogi, although slave Neogi may own slaves of their own.
hated: amongst groups in the unknown regions who are aware of the existence of the Neogi they are universally hated and tend to be killed on sight if possible with no questions asked. Those who know of the Neogi also tend to prefer death to capture.
Typical Neogi: DEX 2D PER 3D KNOW 2D TECH 1D+1 MECH 2D STR 1D+2
Capsule: The Neogi (whose name literally translated means 'small lords' or 'little masters') are a feared and hated race of reavers who operate outside of the known galaxy, but who have recently (within the past 50 years or so) been performing slave raids on the borders of known space. Amongst the spacefaring races of the unknown regions the Neogi have a fearsome reputation as cold, heartless slavers, and this is not far from the truth at all. Operating out of ships that were designed to play on the fears of their opponents (most Neogi ships resemble massive arachnids, and occasionally other insectoid types), the Neogi tend to attack every ship that they encounter, unless they are obviously outclassed. Once a ship has been disabled the Neogi then send slaves to board the disabled vessel, with an eye to capturing more slaves, and slaughtering all who resist. Most victims of a Neogi attack tend to fight to the death if they can (at least if they have had dealings with the Neogi before; many of the slaves captured by the Neogi surrendered because they had never encountered them before and didn't realize what they would be put through).
    Neogi can best be described as a cross between a wolf spider and a moray eel. The Neogi have 8 segmented legs ending in claws, a bulbous spider-like body, a fairly long flexible neck, and an eel-like head with a mouth bristling with fangs. The entire body of a Neogi is covered with soft brown fur, although this is often dyed different colors, and in different patterns. This dying, combined with extensive, and intricate tatoos, displays a Neogi's station in life. All of a Neogi's personal slaves will be tattooed with that Neogi's sigil, which will always be prominent in the tatoos of the owner as well. It should be noted that Neogi have nothing approximating hands, and are forced to carry things in their mouths, or between their front two legs. This means that it is very difficult for Neogi to manipulate equipment that wasn't designed for them.
     When the Neogi capture a slave they set about to break the slave's will through a combination of torture and drugs. The drugs used to make slaves pliant and obedient are actually a type of poison synthesized by the Neogi poison glands. This is different from the poison that the Neogi use in combat to slow their opponents. This 'obedience' poison takes time and repeated doses to take effect. For the first few weeks that a slave is imprisoned by the Neogi the slave will be injected with
the obedience poison roughly every 5 hours in between torture sessions. The first day of this a slave must make a very easy willpower roll to retain free will. This roll must be repeated each day, and each day the difficulty rises by 3 points. After a couple of weeks of this even the most strong willed individual will be broken. Broken slaves follow Neogi orders without question, and are fanatical in combat, but due to their damaged mental state suffer -1D to all skill rolls. Once a slave has been broken obedience poison must only be injected every week. If this stops the slave no longer needs obey Neogi orders (although the slave may do so anyway out of fear), but the slave continues to suffer the -1D penalty. Rescued slaves can recover to the point where they no longer suffer the penalty, and where they can function in society again, but this takes time (often as long as a few months of therapy), and the victim will never fully recover from the experience. The life expectancy of a slave is normally 2-3 years after capture, both because the obedience poisons slowly kill the slave, and because of attrition due to combat, poor living conditions, and a tendency to end up as meat to feed the Neogi and their preferred slaves, the Vodyanki.
     It should be noted that in Neogi culture everyone is either owner or owned. In fact, everyone but the most powerful Neogi is owned by other Neogi. The captain of each Neogi vessel owns all of the Neogi and all of the slaves on board that vessel, but within that restriction each of the individual Neogi on the ship own their own slaves, with even the lowliest Neogi having a personal Vodyanki slave, and the more powerful Neogi slaves having as many as 3 or 4 Vodyanki slaves, and up to 10
slaves of various other species. All slaves not owned by individual Neogi crew are considered the personal property of the captain, while all slaves which are owned by individual crew can indirectly be considered to be owned by the captain anyway.
    Roughly half of all Neogi are force sensitive, while 1 out of every 10 will have minor force abilities. Typically these force using Neogi will have 2-3 of the force skills, at 1D-8D, while some exceptional Neogi may have the skills at levels of up to 12D. Although force skills are so common amongst the Neogi they have trouble developing these skills past a certain level, and the character point cost for a Neogi who wishes to raise a force skill above 4D is 50% greater than normal (round fractions up, so to raise an Alter code from 5D to 5D+1 would cost 8 cps, instead of the normal 5). Neogi with force skills are usually in positions of power, and will usually be the captain/owners of ships, but this is not always the case. Virtually all Neogi force users have been consumed by the dark side, despite tales of Neogi light-siders.
     Neogi are asexual, and have a quite unusual reproductive cycle. When a Neogi reaches a certain age, usually at about his 35th-38th year, his mind begins to deteriorate and his orders become confused. At this point the Neogi's peers will ambush and poison him with special poisons that they only produce for this purpose. The poisons will cause biological changes to take place in the old Neogi, and he will be transformed over a period of 5-7 weeks into a 'Great Old Master.' This Great Old Master is a grotesque parody of a regular Neogi in which the abdomen swells to roughly 8 times its former size, while the legs remain largely the same size, and the head and neck only grow to roughly twice their former size. During this time the Great Old Master loses all of his fur, leading to the impression of a huge mutated maggot. After a period of about 7 months 4D ravenous young Neogi will eat their way out of the abdomen of the Great Old Master and consume his carcass, and each other, in a feeding frenzy. Typically 2D+1 of these young Neogi will survive this frenzy, and they will quickly mature within 2 years. During the time that a Neogi is being transformed into a Great Old Master, and the gestation period the Great Old Master must consume a prodigious amount of flesh. A ship which is currently host to a Great Old Master is even more dangerous than a regular Neogi raider, as it prowls the spacelanes in a constant search for meat to feed to the Great OId Master. Usually the only shipboard slaves which are not fed to the Great Old Master are the Neogi and the Vodyanki. Some of the most powerful Neogi dark side masters have managed to use the dark side of the force to extend their lives and avoid being transformed into Great Old Masters. Usually such Neogi will be on the run from their fellow Neogi, since other Neogi usually wish to transform them into Great Old Masters regardless. These are perhaps the most dangerous Neogi because they are so desperate that they will do anything at all to survive.
     The Neogi evolved on a moon in orbit around a gas giant. This moon had a thin atmosphere, and it was only in the deep craters and crevices that the atmosphere was thick enough for long term habitation. The Neogi thrived in these craters and in tunnels underground. Some time in the distant past when the Neogi had only recently evolved to the point of sentience, they started to use their cunning and their poisons to capture and train a semi-sentient burrowing species. These burrowers were bred for strength and intelligence (although there wasn't much to work with in the intellect department), and eventually the Vodyanki were born. Centuries later the Neogi philosophy of owner and owned had fully developed when a scout corvette from the now-extinct Nomoi species landed and contacted them. The Neogi used their Vodyanki slaves to capture the Nomoi scouts and their ship. Eventually, with the help of the Nomoi slaves, who were better at manipulating objects than either the Neogi or the Vodyanki, and who were from a much more advanced culture, the Neogi developed space travel, and much better technology than the feudal level at which they had been living. The first target of Neogi depredations was the Nomoi homeworld. The Nomoi were enslaved and forced to build many more Neogi ships. The Neogi built a major base on the Nomoi homeworld, and from this base they turned their attention to enslaving other sentients. After a little over a
hundred years of raiding, the Neogi encountered the Warfor. This species had perfected gravitic technology, and all of their drive systems and weapons were based on the manipulation of gravity. This made for devastating, but extremely clumsy weaponry. The Warfor retaliated against the Neogi slave raids by using their gravitic technology to send massive meteor strikes against the Nomoi homeworld, followed up by a slight manipulation of the gravity field of the planet itself. This was enough to send the planet spiraling into the sun in only a few weeks, but by this time virtually all life on the planet had been destroyed by the meteors anyway. A similar attack was made on the Neogi's home moon, and it was soon destroyed. The only Neogi who survived the attacks were those who were in space in their Nomoi-built ships at the time (it is thought that at least 10,000 ships, each carrying 10-12 Neogi were in space at this time). From this the Neogi developed a strong distrust for any celestial body larger than an asteroid or very small moon, and to this day no Neogi colonies or bases will be found on any planets. Unfortunately for the Warfor their gravitic weapons proved incapable of targeting the Neogi ships, and the Neogi succeeded in wiping them out (this is the only known case in history when the Neogi have attacked to kill, without worrying about taking slaves).
    A small Neogi fleet has recently been sighted in neutral territory just outside the Conheav sector. Thus far nobody in this area of space has any idea what these strange ships are, or who crews them, but they will soon find out. The reason why this fleet is so far from the regions frequented by Neogi is that the owner/admiral of the fleet is one of those rare dark side masters who has managed to prolong his life. This Neogi is fleeing from his fellows, taking his most loyal slaves with him, to avoid being transformed into a Great Old Master.