"Got a report about a creepster here, Rames. Tooke snapped the headshot, thought it was a feral at first. It proved him wrong when it got up and rushed in his direction. Then, according to Tooke, it just “melted into the thin air”. I’d presume Tooke engaged in a substance abuse before his shift again if Kurt weren't there to confirm it...."
Requirements:
All Four Official Story DLCs and Gun Runners' Arsenal
JIP LN NVSE Plugin
xNVSE itself Github.com
Some Taste in Moving Pictures .
"...And so I asked the glowing teeth in the darkness "What possess you?" and heard the answer from a melody of cricket-like hisses "CHANGE. Throw ten of us into the water, and one of us will come out no longer needing the air. Leave us in your toxicity, and soon we'll spit it in your faces. Try to burn us, and you'll see fire walk with us. Only the flames of the glaring sky are untamable. Only the light brings stagnation. Hence you can have your Above. For as long as your Above, stays away from our Below."
One question, one body part its price. I value my flesh more than my research, so on one question I've decided to stop for that moment. Before I knew it, one of them grabbed my hand and twisted my pointer off. I tried to suppress the scream. They don't like our screams, I was told. They find them offending because we "lack the music." The teeth faded into the cave's depths. Then I heard invisible laughters, as something breathed into my ear "What possess You?"..."
Stridors.
Creepsters.
Tribe From Below.
Bleaky Mutt called them " invisible killers", falsely applying his mother's term for radiation to his hillside encounter because of their chancey manner to hide in plain sight.
"Stridor" is a distorted by 'profligates' Legion word for these underground dwellers in whose core territories encounters with them are somewhat more common, if no less mysterious and unsettling. It means creaking, whistling or grating. It means something your life most likely will only hear, and only death will see.
This here is the creature I've created for War Horde, a mod in-development(hell) that shares the storyverse with my Spook, Too Weird Too Rare and other mods.
As a creature mod it adds them into two locations in the Mojave, three in Zion and three in the Divide. Each of those world spaces have their own Stridors that look differently and behave differently. Mojave ones love their cloak and claws. Divide's Diverged Ones use guns against you and don't hide in the shadows. Zion's Lost Ones have both those who cloak and those who don't, and also those who use melee and throwable weapons. If you want to check Mojave ones, Nellis Tunnel has the most amount of them. For others, no spoilers but you can see the vids if you Really need to know.
All Stridors are a hard kill. Even if one falls you better make sure it loses a couple of limbs as well, preferbly the head one, or it might rise on your throat while you've turned your 'victorious' back to them.
As a modders resource, it's a custom creature I've shaped from vanilla meshes and textures, and made even more diverse thanks to c.i.b's nif skeletons/claws and Quetzlsacatanango's/ DcCharge's textures I customized for myself (Seriously, giant shukran to these guys for their resources, without them this creature would be four-five variants the most, now it's close to 9). So if you use this, don't forget to credit them too.
Besides the creatures themselves, I also included several scripts to choose from, textures I didn't use but you might find fitting for your mods, custom sound files made out of different birds (Trust me, it fits like a knife into a bloodied butter) , and their nif folder is quite verstile for you to be able to create in the geck anything from just a feral ghoul in new clothes to a complicated new enemy, or a friend.
Obviously, you're free to use them for whatever and however ( Unless on Nexus ) for your FREE mods with credits and soul given, including in Fallout 3 since they share the same assets; though I'd make a little request. If you use them, I'd really appreciate if you also use in some capacity their name and bits of lore specified here (I've made it quite versatile and open to most interpretations on purpose). They were supposed to be an exclusive for War Horde, but now that they aren't (Already part of the Spook too) it'd be awesome if there'll be some sort of a consistency with it in the places afar. Again, this is not a demand, just a request. In the end it's a modder's resource and if you see them as Martians from the Moon lead by the Dark One and tripping over their nexuses, then that's what they are and you have all my blessings.
Lore:
"In Mojave and NCR turf, they are almost unknown. However, they are far from being confined to Arizona and alike. You can swindle mentions of them in quite a few places, under different names and superstitions. Some believe them to be something ancient that was disturbed by echoes of the Great War. Others fairly certain they are an offspring of it, mutations, perhaps even a very strange and rare strain of 'feralism' in ghoulified humans (Or birds. Or insects. Or a product of... both? Maybe they are... a pencil?). Some deem them quite intelligent, others would say their brain capacity doesn't go further than that of a little child. Lustful morons from settlements close to their alleged domains would claim they laid with them, even if most fables that touch such a subject describe belowers as hermaphrodites that would only grow apropriate organs for shivering mating seasons a human would not survive (And lose those by the end of it like a snake a one too extra skinflake).
They say they are nothing more but mindless monsters, yet there are plenty of stories about Stridors capable of operating human machinery, weaponry including guns, crafting things of their own, and... deep in depths, there are whole cities of underdark, built by them... At least that's what the barkeep told you while filling your cup. Would you doubt such a reliable source as that?
But there's one thing all 'invisible killers' share, in every tale. They don't necessarily like you. In those rare cases where Stridors will engage in some kind of contact with humans, they would usually demand a high price in return. If you meet a stridor on a crossroad and ask him where's left or right, be ready he might demand your whole hand for the answer. Literally.
Tribe From Below are perfectly capable of imitating human speech (Which, when coming out of their mouths, resembles a dual song of a cricket and an angered snake), however, their own language and ways of communicating, vastly different from your common wastelander. Let's just say that you hear a strange screeching frog-on-a-mosquito quacking in the shadows, or owlish echoes from the pores in the ground around you, chances are you being naughty and eavesdropping on someone's private conversation.
They worships Mazoga, the mother of an All-Being in the religion they share with War Horde (It is also can be presumed that it's War Horde, the only human tribe in a 'continuously friendly relations' with Belowers, who brought this homebrewed cult to them, not reverse), which sincerely certain the world was created by a devilish demiurge and hence the natural state of everything is evil, while good is unnatural if not downright heretical and destructive. Interestingly enough, 'what is evil' is not a defined subject amongst them, and even rumoured to bring inner conflicts that splat out splinter factions. But in the end, if Stridor himself is nothing but a rumor, then those are rumors about rumors.
Besides having natural cloaking abilities similar to nightstalkers and a scary level of durability, the alphas of their gene-caste society are also extremely adoptable, like if they force evolution on a whim. Wherever they go, in a generation they'll feel at home, except if it involves the sun and day life. But even that is not always your ultimate hiding place, since creatures that vaguely resemble Stridor alphas inhabit Zion, and stroll in a day thinly often.
At the same time, because their evolutionary stew is always boiling and always one second away from pouring over the soup bucket's walls, they are extremely prone to genetical diseases and deformaties, so much in fact that almost every Stridor 'suffers' from one or another (those that are born normal are the 'weird'). Most usual and visually obvious peculiarity of this sort are sets of underdeveloped, extra fingers on each hand.
Are Stridors a threat for You, the abover? Well "is the ground you walk upon is your enemy", here's the question you should ask yourself.
But if you come uninvited, lacking any tokens and passage rites, then expect their cold welcome."
Well I guess that's it for now, have fun and also, lemme just tell'ya
