Bred Shock Trooper

These are tall, muscular, beautiful amazons with green hair and a love of tattoos, body paint and ornate off-duty clothing. Their bodies are virtually identical, so each is known mainly by her personal shakti and goes by its totem animal, such as Manta or Phoenix.

Engineered by the void artisans as bodyguards, shock troops and shakti mechanics, they are masters of their chosen weapon and equally deadly barehanded. At half hit points a trooper turns berserk: morale 20 and +2 to attack and damage until no enemy stands.

Each may call and direct as many as three helots, golem-like copies of creatures that keep the originals' attacks but not their special or spell-like powers (AC 2, movement per creature type, HD per creature type +2, immune to sleep and charm). The artisans field helots and troopers together as organized units, and helots also crew esthetics.

How the partnership began is lost. The favored story says a raiding party landed on the artisans' homeworld meaning to conquer, expecting soft dilettantes and not knowing how far those artists go in search of experience. Seeing the shakti devices, the raiders chose alliance instead, and soon proved gifted at fixing shaktis, a chore the artisans find too dull and repetitive to do themselves.

Delighted, the artisans made the whole race into a work of art, remaking them to a single standard of height, weight and build. Today the troopers are the artisans' elite and manage the daily running of the esthetics, paid in room, board, travel, personal shaktis and, for favorites, unique gifts from their commanders.

Their society is a strict military ladder: whenever two or more meet, one is in charge, and none seeks to rise above her station. They reproduce by parthenogenesis, and the young are raised together in a creche.

They now rely on the esthetics for food, and their raiding is controlled: they lay waste to worlds only when their masters order it.