It's lore time! This is not the full roster, I am going to be doing it in chunks based on the two main different themes. Also, I am only covering the base monster set that will appear in the first episode.
MONSTROLOGY, Part 1: KAL-SHULEK
KAL-SHULEK are not an individual species or entity, but rather a broad name for a collective of related species and the world they occupy. It's possible they were once a coherent, single species, but such information has been lost to time in their many thousands of years of history.
They are a collective of twisted artistry - the core of their identity is a belief in conflict, conquest, subjugation, violence, and bloodshed as the highest forms of art and beauty. The perfect invasion is considered a great work to stand the test of time, commemorated in grand murals and epic poems. Any who dissent are cast out, killed, or simply fed into the great fleshforges that help manufacture their armies of constructs.
Kal-Shulek's technology is a conjunction of the mechanical, the biological, and the arcane. Nearly all individuals have some artificial components grafted upon them, and some of their most common weapons are the aformentioned constructs - walking bioweapons built of scavenged flesh and blood and bone, held together with mechanisms and compressed into whatever form is considered useful.
Let's begin with those constructs, as they form the bulk of their forces in terms of numbers...
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The
CONTROLLED are the most basic sort of construct - if they can even be called that. They are individuals of almost any species that's been claimed by a control unit, effectively "manufactured" at the moment of attachment, and taking only a matter of minutes to reconfigure its new host to what form the unit judges optimal. Most of the time, this means simply making no changes, and using the body as it exists.
The Controlled can leverage snippets of prior knowledge of their hosts - enough to fire a gun or activate a grenade (throwing the grenade eludes them, however)
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The
SKELECLOPS is a construct composed of the leftovers and tailings from the manufacture of its peers - the fleshcrafting equivalent of extremely low-grade sausage. It's compressed into a roughly humanoid form, given an eyeball, joint reinforcements, a control unit, and a spiked club, and dumped on the battlefield almost as soon as it's created.
Being composed of inferior materials, the Skeleclops' body is only loosely held together. Upon taking too much damage, the reinforcements and controller simply give out, and the creature explodes in a burst of blood and bile and giblets.
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Large, slow, and disgusting, forged in the fleshstock molds of Kal-Shulek, the
BUTCHER is the mainstay heavy unit of their ground forces. It has four arms with huge jagged knives on their ends, no discernable head, and a variety of disfigured faces all over its body.
At close ranges it will of course attempt to slash at its enemies, but at long ranges it will sling its four knives. This is extremely messy in general, because the knives it throws were attached to its body, and after throwing them four new ones burst out of its stumps with a spray of blood.
It is considered by the fleshcrafters who manufacture it to be an almost perfect soldier, never complaining or tiring, never stopping its pursuit of the enemy. It is also 100% recyclable if its remains can be recovered before putrefaction sets in (and even then, you could always use the rotten bits for a skeleclops)
{ed note: The appearance is pending some updates; the butcher was the first sprite I made and the art style of the enemies has sort of charged out from under them}
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Kal-Shulek are also not averse to using war animals...
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"Mlerp"
The
WARTOAD is an extremely prolific native creature among the home territory of Kal-Shulek. Wild variants find an abundance of food as they root through garbage and spoils, gorging themselves on supplies of raw fleshstock and souljuice used in the manufacture of constructs.
In addition, they reproduce fully asexually, simply vomiting out an egg at unpredictable intervals. The egg is then buried in the ground, then hatches into a grub before eventually sprouting legs and emerging onto the surface. Because of this potential for exponential growth (and the previously mentioned excess of nutrition), a single individual can saturate an area in a matter of weeks to the point the only population controls are infighting and cannibalism.
Both of these factors have turned them into a considerable pest for Kal-Shulek, and has led to vast numbers of them being "conscripted" as war animals to both control their numbers and make them do something useful. Their ovi-expectorator has been hijacked and modified to produce a highly corrosive plasma-bile that floats with electrostatic forces and is weakly attracted to targets.
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The
KILLHAWK is another native Kal-shulek species, captured and raised as a war animal. Their highly aggressive and territorial behaviour is leveraged by treating them almost like loud angry land mines. They naturally prefer to cling to the ceiling when resting and do so for long periods, until disturbed, and as such clusters of them can be put in choke points, surprising intruders with a sudden onslaught of beaks and claws. And screams.
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Beyond the fodder enemies are the primary trained infantry of Kal-Shulek. They exist in several tiers, but all come from the same stock - cloned and incubated and raised by broodwatchers, augmented for their intended role as soon as their bodies can survive it.
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The
INFANTRY are the backbone of Kal-Shulek's (trained) armed forces, and perhaps the closest thing remaining to what the original founder species might have once looked like. They are covered in leathery, slightly damp skin, a fair bit taller than the average human, and are equipped with a standard issue blaster cannon. Much of their face has been replaced with upgraded components including multiple sets of optics and life support gear.
They move quickly and erratically and should be watched closely to avoid catching a barrage in the face. Confronting even one of them in close quarters with no room to dodge their shots is extremely discouraged.
They also are equipped with grenades that they will occasionally throw at their targets. One should watch their posture and listen for their warning call to avoid the incoming grenade - or knock it out of their hand.
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An offshoot of the base infantry, the
SNIPER is something of an outlier among the ranks. Although socialization is minimal among the forces (and incomprehensible to outsiders), the snipers are still generally avoided. Something about them makes the others uneasy. Maybe it's the feeding probiscus jutting out of their face, the high-magnification optics, the massive blaster cannon, or the skintight wetworks suit with unexplained carry handles.
This suits the snipers just fine, though - they prefer their solitude, waiting for a target in silence until their weapon begins to charge. A bright flare and loud buildup swells briefly before the shot comes, sending a high-damage projectile downrange at great speed. It never hurts to keep an eye on high ledges in case one of them is keeping an eye on you, too.
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[IMAGE NOT FOUND]
Ranking the highest of the common ground troops, the
KNIGHT is, as might be expected, the most dangerous. Standing notably taller than the base infantry and much more augmented and deformed, it isn't as fast, but makes up for that by being equipped with a grafted set of propeller cowlings that allow flight over the battlefield. From altitude, it rains down shots from dual blaster pistols in rapid succession before eventually descending.
These extensive modifications make them somewhat more volatile than the usual grunt - if their flight system is active at the time of death, the whole power supply is likely to go critical, causing them to explode spectacularly like a juicy firework.
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The
PRIEST handles the begrudgingly accepted task of healing and revival among Kal-Shulek's ranks. Tall, one-armed and slender with a slow, shuffling (and unbalanced) gait, it avoids conflict (a shameful proposition) and cannot attack anything and, indeed, the moment it spots a threat, it cloaks itself and runs away. When a threat is not around, though, it seeks out dead and dying allies and blasts them with an energizing beam of plasmified souljuice, forcing them back to life, if not back to health. Revived creatures aren't as durable as the first time, although they are just as capable of causing damage.
{ed note: really need a complete redo of the sprite, it's another very old one, as evidenced by the fact it's way smaller than the others! Although the idea of making them into skittering little anklebiters is kind of funny.}
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The
OVERSEER is-- [text obscured by extensive blood splatters]
Whoof, that took longer than I thought it would to write. Good thing I decided to split it up.
the original meaning of OKS was "Opus Kal-Shulek" in the sense that the invasion is supposed to be an opus, a great work, for Kal-Shulek. But I just feel kinda dumb putting "opus" in the name of one of my projects, I guess. And besides that, it just doesn't click for me. But it makes a passable 3 letter codename, at least.