The Brine-Fangs

Spawned in folly. Baptized in sump. Fed on blood and bile.

No one remembers his real name—just that he called himself a Genesmith. A Goliath who thought his intellect was superior to his bulk. Obsessive. Arrogant. Deranged. He’d grown tired of the standard bloodlines and sought to craft a new breed: stronger, faster, more primal. He looked to the depths of the world sump, where old things swim and worse things sleep, and he drew inspiration from the razor-toothed predators lurking below.

What crawled from his genewombs weren’t Goliaths. Not fully. Massive brutes with slick, rubbery flesh, black eyes, and rows of teeth that never stopped growing. They were born choking on air, gasping for sump-water as if it were their mother’s milk. The other Goliaths saw them as abominations—mutant beasts unfit for House loyalty—and cast them out.

They fled into the sump, building their lair in rusting skiffs and half-sunken habs stitched together with kelp-cables and bones. Down in the mire, they thrived—hunting sump crocs, dragging down rogue submersibles, and learning the rhythms of the toxic tides.

Now they are the Brine-Fangs, half-man, half-monster. They cannot breathe Underhive air for long—only the sludge-laced brine of the sump keeps their blood pumping. So they strike fast: ambushes, boarding actions, brutal sink-and-slaughter raids. The deeper they are from their foul waters, the more their strength wanes. But in the storm-churned dark of the world sump, they are gods.

When the lightning howls and the sump heaves like a dying beast, scavengers whisper warnings on the winds:
“Storm’s up. Brine-Fangs’ll be hunting tonight.”