Slaver wasps
Creator	the Other
Purpose	Make Revenants
First Appearance	breaking through on Castle Wulfenbach ✣

Slaver wasps are biomechanical mind-control devices created by the Other, as confirmed by Lady Vrin, who also notes ✣ that they're called "Shk-mah" in the language of the Geisterdamen. They come sealed in (or are produced by) large devices known as hive engines, and someone who has been infected by a wasp is called a revenant. These revenants, as well as the wasps themselves, are programmed to recognize and obey the Other's voice.

Sparks and Jägermonsters are apparently immune to the effects. Usually. ✣

Though there are no known instances of a revenant ever being cured, "The classic 'revenant' created by the wasps - the shambling monster - is only an unfortunate statistical extreme. ✣ " The majority of those infected by the wasps remain outwardly normal, just controllable - and possibly even unaware of their condition.

Tactics Edit

Once a hive engine is activated, a number of "warrior" wasps swarm out to secure a perimeter while the "queen", which is part of the engine, generates the smaller wasps that carry out the actual infection. Anyone caught within this perimeter is herded toward the engine and immobilized.

When the swarm is complete, it is released in one burst to seek out all potential hosts.

Vulnerabilities Edit

In terms of physical constitution, it seems the human-sized warriors are roughly comparable to an armored human warrior, while the infection wasps are roughly comparable to the insect after which they are named, and are vulnerable to proportionate physical insults, despite the numinous fear they may inspire. (As opposed to ghouls that appear in other stories such as vampires, golems, carbosilicate amorphs, etc.) Along the same lines, although termed an "infection", there is no suggestion that the infection can be communicated directly from a revenant or that the wasps reproduce other than within a hive engine. Furthermore, at least one sort of general-purpose poison gas used on Castle Wulfenbach was shown to deactivate the wasps, contrary to what might be expected for a purely mechanical device.

Being mindless servants of the Other, the wasps will evidently obey her command voice (or sufficiently similar voice) regardless of the actual source.

Slaver wasps evidently emit a characteristic odor that can be detected by wasp weasels, which are constructs designed to hunt wasps, drawing on the natural characteristics of weasels, which frequently hunt by scent and are occasionally insectivorous. Likewise, by all accounts, Jägermonsters have a taste for "bogs" which extends to slaver wasps.