Forest of Cannibals, Forest of Worms

The Barony and its King and Queen-ships have been built over many centuries on a vast promontory of fertile land cleared for farming. This whole territory was once dense forest, and this same forest still presses in on all sides of the cultivated land. For a long time it was called the Forest of Cannibals; now it is called the Forest of Worms.

Worms are humans, or something like humans. They are tall and strong, usually between 6 to 7 feet, and their skulls, fingers, toes, and limbs are subtly elongated. Their eyes are just slightly larger than the Baronial norm. Nonetheless, they look human, and as such were once called cannibals when they ate people.

Worms have no language, and nothing that the Baronials would recognise as a culture. They have strong group cohesion, and are capable of massing into hunting, raiding, and foraging groups under the obscure direction of their leaders. They go naked, and do not use tools more complex than the occasional stone picked up from the ground to use as a weapon. When docile, they stand very still, or roll their bodies up and cluster together into groups in depressions in the earth or under fallen logs. When active, they search for carrion, or, when hunger drives them, prey. They move slowly, carefully, methodically, and then don't seem to feel pain or fear. A group of Worms will strip their environment of what can be eaten, and then move on to the next area. 

Their faces are without expression, and they remain silent when hunting, fighting, eating, and rutting. When they attack border settlements, they come in vast numbers, walking slowly, or crawling forwards on all fours, with their faces in the dirt. They can appear during the day or the night, and do not plan these attacks. They will advance slowly, in full view of the settlement or camp, and then break into a sprint all at once, as though on some prearranged signal. When contact is made they will beat you to death with their bare hands, and eat you. They are impossible to intimidate, but will break off an attack en masse once a certain number have been killed. 

Their communications appear to be psychic or phenomenal, since the groups are clearly capable of swarm cohesion. 

Some worms carve things into their flesh, using their nails, or sticks, or rocks. This is observed in roughly one in five, and no Worm will ever do this more than once. They are called Wormsigns, and they are all of the same type - a kind of endlessly over-elaborated and worked over series of symbols or letters. Marks crowd marks, crisscross on top of one another, flower outwards and splinter back inwards, endlessly obscure themselves. No one knows what they mean, or why some of them do this.

Entities nearly universally hate Worms, and respond to their presence with fear, disgust, and actively murderous rage. Academics experimenting on live specimens report that whole sections of the sense- and soul-making machinery in the Worm-brain have been annihilated or repressed so violently and completely that the void spaces have begun to warp what remains. It is not known if the process is cultural, magical, medical, or otherwise. What is known is that there are uncounted millions of Worms living in the forest, that they often kill and consume one another en masse in vicious and unseen conflicts at scales unimaginable to the petty Kings and Queens.

Worms

Stats as commoners with +1 to their STR mod, and +1 HP. They attack with their hands, or with an improvised bludgeoning rock. 

Worms communicate using pheromones, and all Worms in a group will have the same instruction at all times, usually something like 'kill everything that isn't another Worm.' When a specific number of them have been killed, this will swap to 'Disengage and move back to the nest,' and they will leave. These mass commands are only possible when a warrior is alive (see below) - if the warrior is killed then the Worms will be locked into whatever the last pheromonal command was. Without pheromonal commands (say if you were to isolate a live Worm after a battle and take it elsewhere), a Worm will be docile, stupid, and averse to conflict. 

Warrior

4HD commoners, with the same modifiers as above. Visibly larger than other Worms, with more pronounced physical aberation from the human form. Their sweat, blood, urine, and saliva are all pheromonal carriers, and can be detected by all other Worms within 200ft. They are capable of a strange kind of almost-independent thought, and will always seek to make their way back to their nest if separated from other Worms. They don't become docile when alone. 

I addition, role on the following table:

1. Mouth. Either a Lamprey Mouth (crits deal 3d6, +1 crit range on grappled targets) or Dividing Mandibles (d8 bite attack). 
2. Eyes. Either No Eyes (immune to psychic damage, cannot see, excellent hearing and tremor sense fine tuned enough to engage in combat unhindered) or Compound Eyes (can never be surprised, +1 to initiative rolls). 
3. Limbs. Either Strangely Jointed (+1 to hit and +1 damage from the increased capacity for muscular whiplash), or Spined (d6 spine attack, which counts as dual-wielded). 
4. Throat. Either Awful Buzzing (1 fear damage per turn to all enemies), or Paralytics (spit in melee once per round, on a hit enemy must save CON or become paralysed for the rest of the combat). 
5. Presence. Either Awe (entities flee the fight immediately) or Madness (entities lose one max HP per turn that they engage). 
6. Cannibal Motes. Accompanied by d6 motes, as per the Elf-Friend rules. These motes can only be used to attack, and always deal d2 damage. They are horrible, knotted, writhing things, and make a high pitched whine as they move. If they kill something you will see the corpse jerking around as they eat it from within. 

Wormsign.