Summary: A clan of cannibalistic freaks hides out in the wilderness, preying on any who come by, but mainly on one another.
Discovery: Before rolling for a random encounter in this hex, roll a d10. On a 1-5, roll again for a normal random encounter. On a 6-10, the characters are attacked by a raiding party of cannibal mutants consisting of 1d5-2 mutant brutes (to a minimum of zero), 1d5 mutant stalkers, and 2d10 mutant wretches. If there are at least five mutant wretches, one has a heavy stubber. If at least ten, another one has a heavy flamer. If the mutants have lost at least half of their total number, any remaining stalkers will flee, wretches will try to grab any critically wounded characters and flee with them, and brutes will stay behind for one round before realizing they are now all alone and flee.
Exploration: Characters who make a Hard(-20) Survival check in this hex can track the mutants back to their lair. There is a +20 bonus to this check if the mutants have attacked the characters and thus left tracks nearby, and another +10 if they subsequently fled, leaving more tracks. A character who makes a Survival check to find food or shelter may stumble across the mutants’ lair by chance if they roll high enough. If any of the mutants are captured, it is a Challenging(+0) Interrogation check to get the location of their lair out of him.
Confrontation: The mutants’ lair is a small collection of tents built around a large cooking site in the center, with only a single structure haphazardly assembled from spare wood at one end of the camp. The camp contains 2d5-2 mutant brutes (to a minimum of one), 2d5 mutant stalkers, and 5d10 mutant wretches. The fifth mutant wretch, and every ten thereafter (i.e. fifteen, twenty-five) has a heavy stubber. The tenth, and every ten thereafter (i.e. twenty, thirty) has a heavy flamer. If a raiding party has already been encountered, then the rolls made to determine the size of that raiding party do count towards the total, thus, the amount of mutants in the camp is only 1d5 mutant brutes, 1d5 mutant stalkers, and 3d10 mutant wretches, plus any survivors from the raiding party who made it back to camp alive.
A pit has been dug on the outskirts of the camp, and wooden bars hammered into place over it. This is where captives are kept, usually for only about a day, before they’re cooked and consumed. It is always guarded by a mutant brute or, if there are no mutant brutes available, by two mutant wretches. Destroying the wooden bars is easy with almost any weapon or tools, as it has only AP 4 and will fall apart with just 3 points of damage. No check is required if some kind of cutting tool is brought along, however a Challenging(+0) Stealth check is required to do so without alerting the rest of the camp (the guard(s) will also have to be dealt with quietly, as there’s no way to carve through the bars atop the pit without their noticing).
The clan queen lies in the wooden structure at the heart of the camp. She steadily disgorges newborn mutants, consuming most of them. Once or twice a day her hunger is slaked long enough for one of the mutants to crawl to safety, and within hours they will have become fullgrown mutant freaks to join the clan. The clan usually feeds on these, and has already hit the saturation point where clan members are eaten about as often as new ones reach maturity (usually, but not always, because the ones who just reached maturity are on the menu), so will not grow to larger numbers unless their numbers are reduced. If numbers are reduced, the clan gets back one fallen member every two days until it has reached its original size, at which point existing clan members are once again eating new clan members as fast as they can mature.
Rewards: The clan has no specific leader, but anyone who manages a Hard(-20) Charm check can convince the clan to hear out a single request. Characters may be able to bypass the need for this Charm check with an Intimidate check or similar (the exact difficulty of which will vary depending on just how many guns the character has pointed at the clan and how many clan members are already dead). Once the clan is listening to the character, it is only a Challenging(+0) Charm check to convince them to join the character in a raid or other attack on any place within one hex that might plausibly have food or weapons the mutants can loot. The character can get a +30 bonus to this check if they can provide enough food or weapons up front, but only for the mutants who specifically receive these gifts (which may lead to some, but not all, mutants joining a raid).
It is a Very Hard(-30) check to convince the mutants to go further than one hex from their home, including convincing them to pack up completely and move somewhere else to serve as permanent lackeys to garrison a town (at which point the mutants can also be called upon to serve as cannon fodder at the whim of whoever controls that town). This check may also benefit from the +30 bonus for gifts. The mutants can only subsist on human flesh (including mutants not just of those born from the clan queen, but also things like pelagers, ogryns, etc.), and one human meal is required per month per mutant unless the queen is packed up with them. She is insane and cannot speak or understand any language, so must be forcibly moved from the hex if the clan is to be relocated, but if critically wounded, she will not resist further attacks and will continue to produce offspring while she heals. If the queen is brought along, this not only allows any clan member in the same hex as the queen to sustain themselves up to their starting numbers without having to feed on the local population, it also allows them to replenish any losses at a rate of one new mutant every two days, until they reach their original population.
If the mutants are allowed to feed on the locals, their clan will increase by one every day. Each month, the local population will go down by a number equal to the current population of the clan (except the queen, who continues to feed on her young). If this ever results in the consumption of more than five percent of a population center (regardless of how many months that takes), that population center will begin to implode as people flee and vigilante mobs may form to try and check the numbers of the mutants, or better yet exterminate them altogether.
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