Scavvies
Scavvies are a catch-all term for those dispossessed members of humanity that inhabit the hives’ abandoned factories and hab levels, [1a] as well as the hive shanties[1b] and the toxic hive sumps of the planet Necromunda,[16b] and the lowest reaches of other planets.[16a] They are also known as scawies[17a] and scabbies due to the sores and scabs many of them have.[2b]
Contents
Overview
Scavvies are made up by fugitives, outcasts, refugees, members of dispossessed clans and scum shunned even by the Undercity Gangs. They carve out gang territories in the Shanties, among the old derelict factories and heavily polluted parts of the undercity.[2b]
Wherever they are found, scavvies are driven from levels occupied by normal humans.[2b] They infest the dead layers of abandoned factories and hab levels, where they scavenging for anything they can use or trade, and the hive shanties,[1a] with many shanty-dwellers being hereditary scavvies.[2b]
Scavvies are Savage fighters but poor shots[3b] and use crude improvised weapons, supplemented by captured and traded items[2a]
They scrape a living from scavenging materials and trading them with clans who can make a profit from recycling. Trading what they find – machines, scrap, raw materials, even spook caches – in return for food and weapons, and rare scavenged materials can sometime be exchanged for quite sophisticated equipment. Trading with scavvies is a ritualistic and frequently risky business. Scavenging, looting and all forms of furtive theft are highly respected talents, and the scavvies are fiercely protective of good scavenging grounds.[2b] The small amount of wild spook that is traded in the undercity and the shanties are found and traded by scavvies who stumble on eroded deposits during their delving. Imperial agents trying to track the spook to its source usually end up following the scavvy spook and thereby miss the main source[1b]
Appearance & Nature
The harsh and polluted environment in which Scavvies exist has twisted them into pathetic degenerates that have few moral qualms when faced with matters of their own survival. They live on a diet that more "normal" humans might find distasteful; including includes the verminous creatures of the undercity and the shanties, and sometimes they even resort to cannibalism in order to stay alive.[2b][4a]
A typical Scavvy appears how one would expect any human who lives in extreme poverty to appear. They have a very poor complexion of almost yellow skin, due to the build-up of pollutants, the lack of sunlight, and disease. They also often have wasted and/or deformed limbs, probably due to poor healthcare or birth defects.[4a] Many have sores and scabs on the skin due to delving among dangerous pollutants, this have earned them the alternative name Scabbies.[2b] Human bones are often used for decoration or as primitive armour.[2b]
Despite these outward defects, are the majority of scavvies are of baseline human stock, although mutants do appear among them as they do among other human populations.[4a] but like mutant are they often persecuted as subhuman beasts.[2b]
Organisation
Like all other groups on Necromunda do the scavvies organise themselves into gangs.[1a][2b] Due to the nature of their environment, Scavvies must group together in order to survive. Yet due to the isolation and their anti-social behaviours, these groups invariably consist of several families that are severely inbred, no doubt increasing their rate of degeneration.[4a]
Yet loyalty to their family is not a common trait held by scavvies, and thus the group is held together through a combination of brute force and underhandedness by the strongest male of the pack. Even then, the largest groups do not often last for long and its members will desert unless threatened or bribed to stay.[4a]
That said, there have been occurrences of particularly successful "Beggar Kings" who have united several Scavvy packs into a single tribe, which no doubt will have dispersed once again upon their deaths.[4a]
Scavvies cannot organise themselves well enough to occupy or operate any territory that they might inhabit, which may or may not be a result of their lack of education. Thus any location that they move their base camp to will quickly accumulate garbage and filth, becoming highly contaminated due to their disgusting way of life.[4a]
Yet despite this lack of managerial organisation, they are cunning enough to plan raids and ambushes. Even the more successful leaders among them begin make-shift racketeering or "tax" operations through intimidation of the more well-to-do hive dwellers.[4a]
Also, most of the Scavvy leaders have the foresight to bring support with them whenever they go into battle and will round up even less fortunate hive dwellers and goad them into battle as fodder.[Needs Citation]
Followers
Scavvy Dogs
Wild animals inhabit the underhives, and just like humanity have not been untouched by their environment. Scavvy Dogs are like the Scavvies themselves in that they are twisted and degenerated from their natural state and also much like Scavvies they are ruthless survivors.[4a]
Packs of these dogs prowl the underhives in search of weak prey and can be a terror to unarmed communities though they can also provide the vital function of consuming the dead in an environment with no interest in funereal rites.[Needs Citation]
Occasionally a Scavvy leader will "befriend" a pack of these wild dogs and bring them into battle. Although this level of domestication is of the lowest sort and its loyalty is entirely up to the dog remaining fed.[4a]
Plague Zombies
Even Necromunda has not been untouched by the Zombie Plague although it is uncertain whether anyone realises that this is the touch of Chaos or not. Although the plague has long since passed it has not been purged entirely. Small handfuls of directionless zombies can still be found in the lowest reaches, feeding on animals or dead things.[4b]
Scavvies have learned to utilise these unthinking creatures by rounding them up and pushing them towards their enemies. This is a potent tactic as although the zombies are not the strongest of adversaries, they have no fear or sensation of pain and may yet pass on their plague to their unfortunate victims and bolster their numbers.[4b]
Ghouls
Ghouls are those who have fed on human flesh whether by necessity or malice and have been so tainted by the act that it has damaged their minds.[5]
Ghouls may not originally have been Scavvies and may have come from further up the social ladder, but due to seclusion and insanity they invariably find their way to the bottom of the hive and share the same spaces as the Scavvies.[5]
Particularly clever Scavvy groups can entice the ghouls into battle although they can be particularly unreliable when combat begins and they find themselves surrounded by blood and fresh meat.[5]
Scalies
Scalies are abhumans called so do to their thick reptilian-like skin which acts like a form of armour. They are particularly massive, immensely strong and have the unique ability to regenerate from almost any debilitating injury and will re-grow lost limbs if given enough time.[4b]
Why Scalies sometimes align themselves with Scavvies is a mystery, although a Scavvy leader knows it can only be good for him if he can entice the Scaly to remain longer.[4b]
Other planets
The word Scavvy is not unique to Necromunda, and is a common term in Underhive communities for those at the lowest level of society who survive by scavenging whatever they can from the detritus of those living above.[6] Other Hive Worlds known to have Scavvies include Ablutraphur,[7] Armageddon (particularly in Hive Acheron),[8] and Ironfound.[9][10]
They are also found on non-Hive Worlds, such as living in the maintenance undercrofts of the Shrine World Enoch,[11] the mines of Industrial World Garm,[12] and are known of in Medusa Freeport.[13]
Known scavvy gangs
- Black Rag – notorious for their savagery and zealous protection of their territory.[3a]
- Dead-Marsh Defilers[14]
Known scavvies
Quotes
- "Donna's full lip curled unconsciously. Scawies – the very dregs of humanity. No, scratch that; scawies were so devolved and twisted that they didn't even qualify as human any more. Their sallow flesh and ugly appearance showed all too clearly despite the filfh-encrusted rags swathed around them. The ones she could see were armed with a crude assortment of flintlocks, hooks and rusty axes. Now that she was looking in the right area, Donna could see at least a dozen of them crawling like grey lice towards one of the settlement's gates."[17a]
- "Checking carefully around the other gates and parts of the stockade, Donna spotted at least a dozen more scawy bodies alone or in clusters. For scawies that showed almost unthinkable determination, or else they were present in disturbingly large numbers. Scavvies ambushed, raided holesteads, set toll-blocks or, if they felt especially brave and numerous, camped outside a settlement and demanded a 'tax' of anything going in and out until they were driven off or left of their own accord. There was a standing bounty on scawies, although it was so paltry only the most hard luck cases went out looking for them. If scawies had got it into their heads to start rushing a well-armed settlement like Dust Falls, something was seriously awry."[17a]
See also
Sources
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- 1: White Dwarf 131 (UK) - Confrontation
- 2: White Dwarf 131 (UK) - Necromunda: Gangs
- 3: White Dwarf 132 (UK)
- 4: Necromunda: Outlanders Rulebook:
- 5: Necromunda Resources - Scavvies - Jake Thornton, Specialist Games
- 6: The Greater Good (Novel), Footnote 177
- 7: Atlas Infernal (Novel), Act II Canto II
- 8: Armageddon Saint (Novel), Chapter Six
- 9: Choose Your Enemies (Novel), Chapter Sixteen
- 10: Hidden Depths (Short Story)
- 11: Wrath & Glory: Forsaken System Player's Guide, pgs. 22 & 66
- 12: Grey Hunter (Novel), Chapter Twenty-One
- 13: Farseer (Novel), Chapter One
- 14: White Dwarf 302 (UK), pg. 93
- 15: Inferno! 21 - Mama's Boys (Short Story)
- 16: Fanatic Magazine Issue 9
- 17: Survival Instinct (Novel)
- 17a: Chapter 3 – Dust Falls.
Uncited
 |
- White Dwarf 198 (UK)
- pg. 61-64 - Scavvies by Andy Chambers
- pg. 62 - ‘Eavy Metal: Scavvies
