Snarl

“If you’ve ever heard a cicada scream inside your skull while something invisible gnaws on your arm, congratulations—you’ve met a Snarl. They don’t kill because they’re hungry. They kill because biting is the only thing they know how to do. Very reliable, very stupid, very messy. Wonderful for breaking ice at subspace-trauma support groups.”

— Madame Soki Noles, Casual Notes on the Creatures Most Likely to Eat Your Face

Description

Snarls are among the most frequently encountered Verminous RAIs: feral, vicious, and almost insultingly simple. They appear as ragged tangles of pulsing Redspace energy, vaguely canine only in the most metaphorical sense. Their “bodies” are unstable, flickering knots of crimson lightning with suggestion-shapes of jaws, claws, and tendons that snap into and out of being. When agitated, they vibrate so violently that the air—or subspace medium—shudders with a buzzing drone reminiscent of cicadas. This vibration is their namesake sound, rather than any mammalian growl.

A Snarl’s behavior is instinctive and brutally narrow: bite, shake, rend, repeat. They hunt anything that moves, anything that radiates life, or anything that appears to fear them. Their feeding mechanism is a loop built on pain-fear resonance: a Snarl inflicts pain, the prey feels fear, the Snarl feeds, and the cycle reinforces itself. They do not restrain, plan, or stalk. They charge. They hit. They worry flesh—physical or psychic—until it breaks.

Snarls travel in wild packs within Redspace, erupting into frenzied assaults against travelers, subspace divers, and stranded crews. A swarm of Snarls can shred even well-shielded vessels, not through intelligence but through relentless attrition and the psychic turbulence they create. Packs also cannibalize themselves if deprived of prey, collapsing until only one Snarl remains—a lone, maddened survivor wandering until it finds something new to tear apart.

Higher RAIs hardly value them except as living munitions—they soften hard targets, sow panic, or exhaust defenders. Kthonikers summon them for curses or brute-force assaults, knowing they cannot be relied on for guarding or sustained presence. A Snarl will eventually attack anyone visible, including its summoner.

Prophylactic

Defense against a Snarl depends on denying the loop it relies on. Their feeding requires both pain and fear; removing either weakens them. Calm, fearless individuals radiate nothing for a Snarl to latch onto, confusing the creature. Heavy armor, analgesics, psychic pain-dampeners, and stoic discipline can starve a Snarl even while it bites.

Physical barriers help—dense metals, Redspace-reinforced hulls, and EM-pulse shock fields all disrupt their flickering forms. Some psions learn Null Pain meditations, creating an emotional vacuum that Snarls find unpalatable. The safest strategy is simply to endure or evade long enough for the Snarl’s short realspace half-life to burn out.

Never summon one indoors. Or near anything alive you don’t want shredded.

Utility

Snarls have the following occult or tactical uses:

• Shock Troops — unleashed against targets to sow chaos.
• Pain-Fear Amplifiers — their bite induces emotional turbulence useful for rituals.
• Disruption Beasts — they break focus, discipline, formation, and morale.
• Living Curses — attached temporarily to a target to harry them until burned out.

They are worthless as guardians, scouts, messengers, or tools requiring direction. They lack every cognitive trait that would make them reliable. A Snarl is a biological landmine wearing the skin of a rabid spirit.

Snarl Bite

Regular; Resisted by Dodge

You summon a Snarl and thrust it toward a target. The Snarl darts forward and attempts to “bite,” inflicting a mix of physical and psychic tearing.

Effect: 2d cutting + 1d Stress (Sanity) damage.

Duration: Instant.

Cost: 4

Snarl Pack

Area

You summon a small, unstable pack of Snarls (up to 3). They attack all living beings in the area at random—friend, foe, or caster.

Effect: Each Snarl makes one bite attack per second against random targets.

Duration: 10 seconds.

Base Cost: 5 (cannot be maintained).

Special: Dangerous and indiscriminate.

Snarl Curse

Regular; Resisted by Will

You anchor a Snarl to a target’s subspace shadow. The Snarl cannot manifest fully, but it inflicts intermittent psychic tearing, anxiety spikes, phantom pain, and instinctive dread.

Effect: Target suffers -2 to all self-control rolls; takes 1 Sanity point damage per minute.

Duration: 1 hour.

Cost: 6 to cast; 3 to maintain.

Snarl Worry

Regular

You command a summoned Snarl to cling to a single target, repeatedly biting until it burns out. It deals half damage each second but cannot be redirected.

Effect: 1d cutting + 1d/2 Stress per second.

Duration: 3 seconds maximum (Snarl lifespan).

Cost: 3

Prerequisite: Snarl Curse.