Jorgall
The Jorgall were a race of aliens that occupied Imperial space in the Tasak Beta and Fallon systems at the time of the Great Crusade.[1a]
Contents
Overview
They traveled between planets in enormous cylindrical spacecraft several kilometres long. These are of similar design to the ancient human spacecraft used prior to their mastery of the forces of gravity, known as ohnyl colonies. Jorgall ships are filled with a heavily chlorinated atmosphere. These generation ships have a bulbous collection of drive clusters at one end and a thinning stubby prow at the other.[1a]
During the Great Crusade, the ships were encountered in orbit of Tasak Beta and Fallon were only half the size of one encountered travelling through deep space. Smaller teardrop-shaped ships accompany the larger generation ships as a defensive fleet.[1a]
During the Battle of Iota Horologii, the Death Guard legion lead by their primarch Mortarion assaulted a jorgall cylinder world in deep space. Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro's company fought aboard one of their cylinder ships, aided by a cadre of the Sisters of Silence to kill the jorgalls' psychic children in the hatcheries.[1a][1b]
Biology
The Jorgall were radially symmetrical with three arms and legs, scaly and horned skin, and an egg-shaped head with fleshy notches for mouths and noses atop an extensible neck.[1b] The Jorgall breath a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen with heavy concentrations of chlorinate. Their nervous system was centralized in the torso and their circulatory systems pumped foul-smelling, dark crimson blood.[1a] A mature adult stood 4.5 metres tall. All Jorgalli encountered had an extensive variety of cybernetic augmentations including wheels for feet, claws for hands, teleoptic cameras in place of eyes, subdermal armour, or implanted needler weapons. Some Jorgall aerial defensive groups had two of their arms replaced with mechanical wings with razor sharp feathers and feet replaced with equally sharp talons. The jorgalli children possess psychic abilities, which may be lost once they reach adulthood.[1b]
Juvenile jorgall hatch from egg-like sacs that hang from fibrous trees, which themselves are surrounded by pools of yolk. This spilled yolk making up the pool is recycled through the tree-like structure for other hanging egg sacs. A jorgall hatchery is filled with dense forests of these egg-trees with intermittent oxide sands.[1b]
Within the jorgalli creches there were massive guardians, huge muscular jorgall nearly ten times the size of their standard kin. These giants were made larger still with additional cybernetic enhancements. These guardians tended the egg-tree groves, and were essentially piloted by a smaller psychic conjoined twin housed within an ovoid container in the centre of the larger brute's central body.[1b]
