Two or more factions competing for resources might be the most vital element of a good dungeon. Certainly they are the bedrock of the social dungeons that most excite me.
Unrepentant enthusiast for alliteration that I am, my first step in creating these hundred factions was to name them. As discussed in my Two Week Megadungeon post I generally stuck to the Type of Creature + Type of Behavior format, with the added constraint that the two must be alliterative. I then used the names as a loose creative prompt from which to derive the details of the faction. In some cases, a great emphasis must be placed on “loose.” Certainly this post would come across as way less silly if I deleted the original names for these groups. I seriously considered doing just that, but decided against it because I thought it might be a useful glimpse into the process, and also because silliness is a good thing.
The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys
Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.
d100 Dungeon Factions:
- Academic Arsonists: A group philosophically opposed to philosophy, and all other forms of impractical knowledge. Each week they ritually burn any high minded books they’ve managed to collect. Whomever contributes most is given special consideration in the coming week.
- Avaricious Architects: Constantly making elaborate alterations to the dungeon. Are very greedy. Will make claims on anything the party finds, and shake them down for money at every encounter.
- Argumentative Anatomists: Creatures with the ability to rearrange their body parts. Each thinks they know what the best configuration is, and insists everyone who disagrees is a fool for not doing it the way they do.
- Ancient Anarchists: Cursed with immortality without eternal youth, this decrepit faction live in an equitable little commune where everyone shares in the work when they’re able, and is cared for whenever they break a hip. Lacking physical strength, most have learned minor magics.
- Barbarous Bovines: Muscular cow folk who speak in a language that is difficult for outsiders to learn. Unless special effort is made, only gestural communication is possible.
- Bedazzled Beardmen: More beard than they are man, these tumbles of tangled hair have little hands and feet sticking out from their brush, as well as deep sunken eyes visible through it. They decorate their bodies with glitter.
- Boastful Beavers: Supremely confident in their own cultural supremacy, though their primary interest seems to be filling the dungeon with haphazardly constructed barricades which they regard as great works of art.
- Bloodthirsty Bibliomaniacs: All books belong to them, whether or not those books have yet entered their possession. They rarely read the books. Possessing them is merely an unhealthy compulsion which has become a cultural obsession.
- Bridal Battalion: A young member of this faction comes of age when they venture into civilization to steal a bridal gown of their very own. For the rest of their lives the gown will mark them both as an adult and a warrior.
- Cantankerous Crystals: A group of yoni eggs given life after being “born” so many times over. Discovering their frustrated intelligence, a mountebank lich bestowed them with arms, legs, and size. They have gratefully served her ever since.
- Cultured Cranes: Lanky bird people who stand twice the height of a man. They socially organize themselves in a fopocracy, where the snootiest and most flippant become their leaders.
- Ceiling Celebrities: Creatures which are something like a cross between bats and spiders, and vastly prefer being “upside down,” though they find that term somewhat offensive. A few years back another adventurer wrote a book about living among them for awhile. It was quite popular, and everyone in the party will be at least passingly familiar with the text. The creatures themselves loathe the book, and the many self-serving inaccuracies the author inserted into it.
- Churchgoing Charioteers: Tiny folk who use mouse-drawn chariots to get around the dungeon quickly enough to keep up with their larger neighbors. They’re devoted followers of the same religion that is dominant in the region outside the dungeon, though their own precepts have drifted into some minor heresies.
- Debonair Dads: Whilst attempting to get out of some parental responsibilities, a wizard accidentally created several dozens facsimiles of themselves, all of whom were significantly more charming. Only one was put into service, while the rest were dumped here in this dungeon to form a loose community together.
- Devotees of the Debauched Dauphin: The rightful prince of a surface kingdom was so debased in his predilections that everyone agreed to have him quietly killed. Exhibiting a surprising cleverness, he escaped to the dungeon with his closest confidants where they continue their debauch in somewhat humbler circumstances.
- Diplomatic Deerfolk: Lean creatures wearing armor made from shed antlers. They make an effort to appear amicable, but only so they can trick people into disadvantageous agreements. Once the agreements are made, they must be obeyed, or violence is justified.
- Determined Doorkeepers: A religious sect who have taken certain metaphors about God opening and/or closing doors a bit too literally. Small groups are assigned to doors deemed religiously significant, and tend them 24/7.
- Exploitative Employers: They have money, but are miserly loathe to party with it. They’re always trying to hire people in wildly unbalanced deals, and have no qualms against taking vital resources hostage if it means someone will work for them.
- Enigmatic Eels: Tusk-mouthed sea serpents which drift through the air as easily as through water. Their culture has a somewhat unusual relationship with names, such that each individual has several dozen, several of which they are meant to use only while praying, and never to speak out loud to anyone at all. They are an insular society, and none have any name which is appropriate to share with an outsider.
- Erupting Essayist: Shambling cones of rock which slide around without any recognizable anatomy. They do perceive the outside world in their own way, and communicate by blasting papers covered with their thoughts and feelings out of the hole at their peak.
- Earnest Earth: Humanoids made from packed earth. Their bodies are fragile, and they much prefer to avoid violence at all costs. They’re gifted speakers, friendly, and likable, but this often leads them into forming alliances with whomever is most willing and able of doing violence to them.
- Fundamentalist Fedoras: A dogmatic religious group which is among the weakest of the dungeon’s factions. They believe themselves to be an inherently superior species, and that they are owed the submission of outsiders. Difficult to get along with, but easy to manipulate.
- Fecund Fowl: Flightless birdfolk capable of firing eggs out of their bodies like projectile weapons. Likely occupy a space with high ceilings to maximize the distance of their attacks. Their society is nominally equitable, though many jokes are made at the male’s relative defenselessness.
- Frank Frauds: A group of con artists who have recently been cursed with the need to be honest. Their habits have not yet adjusted to their new condition, and they frequently find themselves putting their feet in their mouths.
- Folklorist Fog: Mist creatures which trade in stories. They do not understand anyone who fails to recognize the value of this currency, though most of what they have to share is from cultures too alien to be easily understood.
- Garrulous Ghouls: Corpse enthusiasts who believe it is an absolute shame that so many bodies are left in the ground to decompose alone, where the process cannot be witnessed or smelled. They collect bodies in their domain, and celebrate the whole process start to finish.
- Glowing Gazers: Humanoids made entirely from light, save for their terrible unlidded eyes. This form is a state of enlightenment which they wish to share with others, but it is obvious they have some sinister secret they’re not sharing.
- Grimacing Grandmas: A group of cantankerous older women who were tired of being considered a nuisance and set off to enjoy the end of their lives with some good rows against monsters. They typically call most people “grandchild,” or “sweet pea.”
- Gifted Gaffers: A people suffering under a curse which causes them to metaphorically put their foot in their mouth during every social interaction. They have very few friends, due to their constantly unintentional insults. If their speech can be tolerated, they’re eager to have allies.
- Heretical Haberdashers: Devotees of a certain style of headwear which has gone so starkly out of fashion that they were cast out of polite society. Plunging head first into the depths of the sunk cost fallacy, they’ve become a grubby band of dungeon dwellers marked out only by their pristine and ugly hats.
- Hook Handed Humorists: A genetic offshoot of hook horrors which are capable of speech, and absolutely addicted to comedy. It is their only art form. A novel joke is as good as currency with them.
- Hygienic Hogs: Pig people in fitted white clothing. They are obsessively clean, to the point of distraction. They spend hours each day scrubbing every inch of themselves and their home. Untidiness of any kind is an offense, though they know to set their expectations low for outsiders.
- Havoc Harlots: Muscle-bound and clad in armored lingerie, these worshipers of elemental chaos must do battle as part of their mating ritual with one another. They’re a horny lot, and tend to throw themselves into a lot of pointless fights. If an outsider can roll with that, the Havoc Harlots are otherwise a pretty chill group.
- Ignorant Intellectuals: A cadre of know-nothings and dilettantes convinced their armchair rationalism enables them to understand, grapple with, and solve every problem faced by “lesser” minds. Easily flattered, but infuriatingly pedantic.
- Irritable Immolators: Sensitive to loud noise, quiet noise, and most forms of vibration, these grouchy dungeon denizens are sometimes difficult to get along with, which wouldn’t be so troublesome if they couldn’t set things on fire with their minds.
- Irresolute Idealists: They have some good ideas about how the dungeon ought to be run, but refuse to do the work to make it happen. Instead they pretend the world already works the way they want it to. When they can’t pretend, they mostly just complain about how this wouldn’t have happened if everyone had listened to them.
- Icy Investigators: Puzzle solving savants with very little emotional affect. The only thing they value more than a good solution is a new problem to solve. Often called upon as a neutral party to settle disputes among other factions, though their interest always values revealing the truth above facilitating peace.
- Jade Janitors: Living statues of green stone created for the explicit purpose of keeping the dungeon tidy and in good repair. They have developed their own consciousness. They have free will and a rich culture, but none the less janitorial work is fundamental to their nature.
- Jittery Jousters: Wearing patchy armor and mounted on various creatures, these nervous folk live by a strict code passed down from more prosperous ancestors. It involves a lot of jousting, which few of them are comfortable with, but anyone who admitted that would be shunned by everyone still to afraid to admit it.
- Jubilant Jocks: Wholesome partiers who are always eager to engage in vigorous physical competition of some sort, and to exuberantly celebrate the winner regardless of who they are. Their whole vibe tends to make you think it’s only a matter of time before they say or do something real shitty, but they are basically decent folk who just happen to have the mannerisms of dudebros.
- Jackbooted Jurist: A whole faction who believe they are uniquely suited to being judge, jury, and executioner over everyone they meet. Their rulings are harsh, prejudiced against whoever they perceive as least valuable to society, and predicated more on a desire not to have their preconceptions of the world challenged rather than out of any sense of justice.
- Kite Kings: A gang of lightweight ruffians who’ve learned to glide and soar through the air using large kites. Their tough-guy posturing tends to make a bad first impression, but they are genuinely good natured if their pride is not wounded.
- Knowledgeable Klaxoneers: It is well known (according to these folk) that lions assert dominance by roaring louder than any other lion in the pride. This is their justification for why their groups regularly sound klaxons as they move about the dungeon. It is just one of many “facts” they enjoy sharing to justify their odd behaviors.
- Keg Kidnappers: Any time they don’t spend partying is spent planning and executing elaborate heists to acquire sufficient booze for the next party. They have refined tastes, but aren’t above shaking down passers by for a bit of cheap moonshine to pass the time with.
- Lusty Loggers: If the dungeon has no ready source of timber, they make regular excursions to gather it. With it, they reinforce and expand the dungeon, as well as craft their erotic arts. Their polished statues and wood carvings are most numerous in their own territory, but have often been traded to other factions for resources. Whether or not their concepts of eroticism match anything that would be recognizable as such to the players depend on the sort of game being run.
- Lyrical Lobster Lords & Ladies: Oversize Decapods with fine clothing, ornamented shells, and an aristocratic bearing. Normal speech is considered to be a peasant’s habit. As people of refinement, they never communicate any idea without singing it.
- League of the Listless Logicians: A group of rationalists who sequestered themselves here away from all distraction so they could use the power of logic to work through all the problems of the universe. It is a hopeless endeavor, but before coming here they burned so many academic bridges boasting about the success they would have that they feel obligated to continue making token efforts, even though they now indulge in every distraction the dungeon has to offer.
- Lucky Lightning: Entities of pure electricity, only partially bound to humanoid shape. They can travel near instantaneously along a network of copper wires they’ve run through the dungeon, which their foes make every effort to find and destroy. If that weren’t bad enough, goddess Fortuna seems to favor these creatures. They love to gamble, but anyone who knows them knows better than to play.
- Masked Mamas: By happenstance, these folk found a cache of masks which look like the mother of whomever is seeing them. The masks are not convincing, but they are a little unsettling. They’re worn away from home, to unsettle outsiders.
- Mega Microorganisms: By some magic gone horribly awry, a group of bacteria was enlarged to human size, each gaining fragments of the mind of their destroyed creator. They’re led by a cruel virus.
- Nagging Neoclassical Nerds: Living in a dungeon can be boring, which is why this group has devoted so much time and energy to reading, re-reading, discussing, and agonizing over the single book they have access to: a textbook survey of classical mythology, art, and history. They interpret everything through this lens. It’s insufferable.
- Microwave Mutants: Sterile creatures who reproduce by cajoling lonely people into allowing themselves to be strapped into the device which transforms a person into one of them. Each of the creatures has a lidded organ in their chests, which directs a beam of heat when pulled open.
- Metal Mannequins: Fashionable tin gormless. Despite a fearsome appearance, their bodies are hollow, and can be destroyed as any fleshy creature’s could. They spend their time acquiring and creation pleasant clothing. There’s a great diversity of styles among them, though also an agreed upon language to each choice of shape and color, so that each one can know a great deal about what another is thinking and feeling just by looking at them.
- Magic Mildew: Fungus people whose bodies are incredibly delicious, and produce delightful psychotropic effects when consumed by most creatures. They do not enjoy being eaten. They are diligently stealthy in their movements, and consider themselves at war with the whole world.
- Nudist Nuns: Fuzzy bearlike creatures. If their nudity is not commented on, they will be surprised. Among their own species they are a renegade cult, expelled for their insistence that clothes are unnatural. Given that they’re covered in thick fur, it’s hard to disagree with this precept.
- Neighborhood Newsfolk: A faction which, on the surface, remains resolutely uninvolved in any dungeon conflict. They devote themselves to simply reporting the facts on post boards around the dungeon. In secret, they use tricky reporting and occasional falsehoods to manipulate the other factions. Keeping them divided and warlike, so they gradually erode each other’s power.
- Narcissistic Novelists: A cadre who long ago agreed to foster unity by passing around a story to each member of the community, to make a paragraph of additions, then on to the next person. The book is now dozens of volumes long and still ongoing. If you meet them, they’ll insist that you read it, and be offended if you don’t like it.
- Organfarm Orphans: A group of teens and young adults who all lived together in an orphanage which was selling their body parts to the rich as remedies for various ailments. They escaped about ten years back, and have built a good life for themselves in this dungeon. They have no desire to rejoin society.
- Oak Octopi: Land dwelling octopi made from wood. They treat their bodies with tinctures that make them significantly less flammable, since that’s invariably the first thing their enemies attempt. They have a great love of percussive music, and a great fear of mildews and fungi.
- Outcast Oligarchs: A group of former slave owners who were forced to flee their homes once the slaves revolted. They’re still infuriated about the event, and how profoundly “evil” it was for those “greedy revolutionaries” to “steal” all of “their hard earned wealth.” They keep trying to force other factions in the dungeon into being their slaves, and it makes them even angrier that nobody is falling for it. They view it as a good deal.
- Orbiting Oysters: Clusters of 5-12 oysters which all orbit around a central point, (which they insist is an infinitely dense gravitational mass, and also the location of each cluster’s mind, but there is no evidence for this outside their claims). Each cluster of oysters acts as a single person, with different shells opening to speak in chorus at different times. They are somewhat socially isolated within the dungeon, and it’s never quite clear whether they perceive a reality beyond our own, or whether they’re merely adhering to an inscrutable religion.
- Paperweight Pals: A friendly and verbally boisterous faction of speaking boulders. Aside from their faces these folk have no moving parts. Aside from oxygen they have no physical needs. They like to chat, and really appreciate being carried around a bit by anyone strong enough to lift them.
- Pompous Pirates: A crew of pirates who were shipwrecked several years ago, and came to plunder the dungeon to buy a new ship. They haven’t been able to earn the treasure they need, but are unwilling to accept defeat, and have become defacto dungeon denizens.
- Purple Poets: Purple skinned humanoids who found themselves unwelcome on the surface, and have adapted well to dungeon life. They’re hardy, cunning, and never settle for one word when twelve would do the same job. Language is beautiful after all, and begs to be well used.
- Powermad Princess: A twelve year old princess of remarkable ambition and cunning has been quietly planning a coup. Her parents are only in their 40s, and won’t die nearly soon enough. Her most loyal followers have been secreted away down here to train, plunder wealth, make plans, and allies. Many of her followers are themselves quite young, but there’s more than a few adults in the group.
- Quixotic Quilters: A strange folk who may or may not be blind, it’s difficult to tell from their behavior. They travel in groups of four or more, always sewing a quilt between them as they go. They wear quilts as clothing, and use them as tools, and hang them as art. The quilts they make depict strange portents and messages, but their meaning is muddled and nigh impossible to interpret most of the time.
- Quiet Quarrymen: Svelte and flexible creatures. They wield pick axes with knitted cozies around the metal bits. By some peculiar art they’re able to dig through stone silently, and their wriggling nature enables them to slip through holes too small for most creatures. Note that neither the picks nor the cozies are magical, they are merely components of a technique which also involves certain traits unique to the creatures themselves.
- Radiant Rodent Wranglers: Having brightly luminescent skin isn’t a great trait for long term survival in the dungeon, and these folk were easy prey before they learned the art of giant rat riding. They’ve become adept at mounted battle tactics, and a dominating presence in dungeon politics.
- Reclining Respectables: A faction of powerful sleepers, able to manifest their will through lucid dreaming, but rendered powerless if awakened. Their sleeping bodies float through the dungeon, often accompanied by ensorcled guardians. Their voices echo as if from everywhere at once.
- Romantic Radials: Disk like creatures without recognizable anatomy who have been exiled to this place from somewhere beyond human knowledge. They find the human form profoundly beautiful, and desire to appreciate it—though not in any way we would recognize as sexual.
- Rubber Roofer: Rogue golems which resemble something like a species of Gumbies. They’ve fought hard to be free of control, but are still compelled by the last command they were given. They are like addicts who must resist the urge to build roofs over things, and like all addicts they occasionally relapse.
- Rumermongering Rooster: A long legged feathery folk, both wingless and flightless. They’re terrible gossips, both in that they gossip a lot and gossip is a generally terrible trait, and also in that they’re bad at it. They frequently invent obviously false information for fun, or profit.
- Sanctimonious Sinners: A group of renegades from the surface who are entirely too impressed with themselves for transgressing certain social taboos. They boast of how enlightened they are for not going to ceremonies every churchday, and having sex outside of lifebonds. It is their one defining personality trait. They have so far failed to construct a philosophical framework for their new society, and are thus prone to going crawling back to the ways of their ancestors the moment life gets difficult.
- Scary Schoolteachers: Creatures formed from the accumulated fears children have of their teachers, made manifest by so many imaginations working in tandem. They often use big words which don’t exist, and enforce arbitrary rules just to make the world a less fun place to live.
- Sulking Sluts: A community of erotic enthusiasts who have so thoroughly explored one another that there doesn’t seem to be anything new left to enjoy. They’d very much like to broaden their horizons, but everyone is put off by all the weird stuff they like to do.
- Successful Salamanders: Bipedal amphibians who have really got their shit together as a society. Every problem they face, they just keep knockin’ it outta the park. You wait. Five, maybe six generations from now? It’ll be them dominating the planet, and humans lurking in dungeons.
- Simpleton Socialites: When encountered they are either partying, or preparing for a party. These are the two states of being. Guests are always welcome, but one must be wary of being considered a buzzkill. They are not friendly to buzz-killers.
- Togate Tabbies: Kitty cats who herd great meat farms of mice, have a complicated political system, hold spirited debates, and solve most of their problems by finding some reason to go to war with one of their neighbors. When not wearing armor, they all wear white togas.
- Tame Tyrannosaurs: Man-sized cousins to thunder lizards. They tend to speak slowly, pausing between each word. They’re very chill creatures, and nervous about how imposing they appear to others. They’re not above eating their enemies, but domesticated meat beasts do just as well.
- Testy Tabernacles: Creatures with doors on their torsos. They were created only recently, but do not know who their creator is, or why they were made. They do know that the doors in their torsos must never be opened, and whatever is inside must never be witnessed. They are otherwise a generally brusk and irreverent people, but the security of their doors is held absolutely sacrosanct.
- Terrible Takers: Intensely suspicious of outsiders. Nearly anything a person says or does is somehow interpreted to be a slight against their dignity, and it takes very careful phrasing to earn their good graces.
- Thirsty Thespians: Cut off from most of the dungeon’s sources of water, this group has resorted to putting on plays where the price of admission is a certain quantity of potable water. They must work tirelessly at their art to convince the other dungeon denizens to pay the fee.
- Tagging Tadpoles: Oversize tadpoles which swim through the air, and have tiny arms and faces on the front. Whenever they’re not hunting, eating, or sleeping, they’re sneaking into other factions territories to tag the walls with their art as a show of courage and dominance.
- Uniformed Ukelelists: A mouthless species, each individual of which appears to be exactly identical to every other. They communicate by playing small stringed instruments that are easily carried on their person. Outsiders are unlikely to understand the nuances of their language, but could grasp the basic emotions being communicated easily enough.
- Umbra Union: A collective of spectral shadows who’ve banded together to advance the cause of making the world a darker place. They propose a dimming of the sun, or perhaps placing day moons in the sky to facilitate more frequent solar eclipses. They’re nowhere near accomplishing their goals, but are confident in their eventual success.
- Unsatisfied Urges: Adherents of an ascetic philosophy who are teetering on the edge of abandoning their whole way of life. Some cling to their beliefs harder than others, but years of cold gruel, no music, no sex, and no joy seeking of any kind have taken a desperate toll on morale.
- Ubiquitous Umpires: There seems to be one in every room and corridor of the dungeon, watching to ensure that no one causes undue damage to the structure, conducts themselves unfairly in a fight, or accomplishes nearly any goal by stealth. It is difficult to stay on their good side unless one is willing to pay the penalty fines they assign for infractions.
- Veiled Vestigials: A mystery cult which reveres people who are born with webbed fingers, tails, or other unusual adaptations commonly regarded as “birth defects.” They are regarded as messengers from humanity’s forgotten past. Much weight is given to drug induced visions of past lives.
- Vampy Visigoths: A cadre of svelte, leanly muscled, well groomed, hair plucked, makeup wearing, axe wielding brutes. They revel in brutality and destruction, but enjoy sophisticated and sensual home lives.
- Vapid Veterans: A group of lost soldiers whose minds appear to have been irresponsibly tinkered with. They believe the dungeon is a war zone where they have no future, and no past. Each day they go through the motions of fighting a war, sometimes allies to other dungeon factions, sometimes imagining that they’re the enemy, and sometimes fighting whole battles against nothing at all.
- Vigilant Vermin: Colonies composed of various beetles, flies, centipedes, and other exoskeletal vermin. Each colony can compose itself into an approximation of a human shape at will, though often they spread themselves out through the dungeon to spy on what’s going on, and report back to their fellows.
- Volcanic Vicars: Religious zealots who do not know how to communicate with outsiders except by preaching. The fervor of their sermons carries real power. They can compel those who listen to do their will, or speak fiery words which literally burn their foes.
- Weakling Warriors: Once a proud clan of warriors, a devastating defeat has left only the noncombatants alive. They retain their culture and their code, and are trying to rise to the challenge of preserving their heritage, but they were noncombatants for a reason.
- Wallopin’ Widows: A prim and proper matriarchy. Their warriors garb themselves in heavy black gowns and wield tremendous hammers. Their traditions go back to a period in their history which they’d rather not discuss. They consider impolite conduct as grave an offense as theft.
- Wizard Wranglers: Carrying all manner of ingenious traps and anti-magic powders, these hunters proudly proclaim that they’ve never met a magician whose pointy hat isn’t now adorning the walls of their lodge. Fortunately they seem to regard pointy hats as a magician’s uniform. Any magician not wearing one will be safe from detection unless they cast a spell. Note also that these folk may not care to differentiate between wizards and clerics.
- Wicker Wildcats: Jaguars woven out of wicker, and animated by magic. They cannot speak, but are quick and capable writers. The fragility and lightweight nature of wicker makes them cautious combatants who prefer only to fight on prepared battlefields.
- Woebegotten Weightlifters: A muscular band, passionate about fitness, who have recently been targeted by a spell of depression sent by one of their enemies. Each of them is miserable, simply going through the motions of their lives without feeling any of the joy they used to get from their favorite activities.
- Xenolithic Xerophyte: Living cactus people once roamed the dungeon freely, until they tampered with forces beyond their control and became fused with their environment. They exist now only as living carvings, able to move around the dungeon only so long as they slide across one of its surfaces.
- Yearlength Yowlers: When these creatures are born they have all the air inside them they will ever need. Over the course of their life it is slowly expelled out a flap in their head, producing a yowling sound. After about one year the air is gone, they have no means by which to draw in new breath, and they die.
- Zealous Zucchini: There once was a wizard who transformed themselves into a Zucchini to prove how cool they were. They got stuck, and lived out the rest of their life as sentient produce. They did learn how to reproduce, though their numerous offspring are a little eccentric given that only half their DNA is from a creature with a mind, as well as the significant amount of inbreeding that was necessary to continue the species. They are an overall friendly people, eager to share their cantaloupe-worshiping religion with whomever will listen.
Also, America delenda est.