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Description

Infested ‘Vertebrator’ Rifle
“Birthed in the death-wombs of the long-dead Celian Continuity of Eris, this Infested weapon deals Corrosive and spreads any status effect afflicting an enemy to those within a small radius.”
—Codex
Special Traits:
Pandemic Rounds: Shooting an enemy afflicted with a status effect has a chance to spread that status effect to another enemy within a 3.6m radius.

Lore
Testing, testing…. This is doctor Loos Kanageyan, anthropologist and archeotechnologist, and I’d just like to put it on the record that I asked: “what the hell did you just put on my desk?!”
Except, well, that’s not my desk - I’m taking notes on a dataslate outside an Infestation containment unit in the Chirurge-Class Dreadnought.
Back in the Academy on Io, they had a replica of something like this. It’s a relic of the Celian Continuity, “birthed from their death-wombs” or so I heard.
Since Tenno love guns like most people love their mother, I’ll explain how it functions. Sort of. All the science behind this was lost a long time ago.
This was one of their weapons. I don’t…. I don’t know how it works. We killed everyone who did. All I know is that if you shoot someone with this, any effect they’re hit with will transfer to an enemy nearby. And somehow, this energy weapon deals biological damage.
It shoots six-round bursts. But, if you hold the trigger down, like this… it’s divided. First three rounds punch through enemies, second three-round burst fires when you take your finger off. Not unlike a Tigris or Balaenis or Zylok. Except holding the trigger down? It charges those three shots for maximum damage, making them explode on impact. I don’t pretend I know how this works.
Last time anyone saw these fire was back during the First Corpus Expansion, in those early days when the Thaw Cultures filled a vast gulf between Grineer and Corpus Space. Back then, Grineer were… sort of a boogeyman for those out on the new frontier. Believe it or not, back then, the stories were of inhumanly beautiful, broad, tall hairless creatures that would abduct and disassemble your children. But that’s not important now.
See, Pluto is a piss-poor planet. The only reason it’s such a fixture is that it’s the seat of Granum’s power, and it’s got auto-factories and machines nobody knows how to make anymore. We… they needed to grow. It was the most comfortable we’d been since before the Collapse. But there was one obstacle: the Celian Continuity.
What my ancestors did? That was colonialism, pure and simple. But the Celian Continuity, they were bastards through and through. Here’s some perspective. After the Orokin fell, the scattered peoples of the Origin System found many different tech bases. The Oeizu dusted off their old knowledge of atomics, the Dziewanans use a combination of nanomachines and printing that predates the Orokin, the Cursed Moon had the best grasp of Orokin metamaterials and Void science and managed to create things from nothing, and the Celians…
They used pure, raw, Infestation. They saw the Infestation as a way to become the New Orokin, and strategically bred strains to augment their strength, give them a kind of telepathy, augment themselves for specialized roles, and from that came a belief that we were all barely sapient tumors that walked. Course, when you consider what they looked like, this was probably projection. The historian M’kimuro said they’d “force their communion on people as they disassembled their own skulls into a nest of screaming mouths and tentacles, forcing this grotesque appendage into every orifice of the fearful unfortunate’s face in a grotesque parody of a kiss…”
(Eeeugh)
So we killed them all. We sterilized the moon, scouring any trace of them from it. We thought it worked, but, well, you know how that song and dance goes.

AND TARJA LEM JUST GAVE YOU ONE, YASSIN?!
Yassin: HEY! IT WAS PAYMENT FOR SERVICES RENDERED!
Kanageyan: “WHAT SERVICE?!
Yassin: “I murdered an asteroid!”
Kanageyan: “...you murdered the entire population of an asteroid?”
Yassin: “...no.”
Kanageyan: “I’m just not gonna touch on that.”

I really do hope, though, that seeing something this unspeakably dangerous isn’t a sign of worse things to come. Infestation cults… they’ve always been something of a nuisance. My buddies back in archeotech studies, the Tenno might’ve come and abducted them, we’d tell horror stories about the kinds of nightmares that Infestation cultists create. The Cult of Arlo?
...Hate to say it, but I saw it coming. Infestation cults do this every time they rear their ugly heads, promising miracles that can put you back on the level of the Orokin. Maybe even higher. Why do you think Doctor Tengus’ decrepit, tumorous spier van plesier tugs against his smock whenever he thinks of the Infestation? Why do you think Black Seed thinks they can make bioweaponry work? Simple. The Infestation breathed spores into them and used them as an antenna to broadcast them a simple idea: they could become gods.
And so, they’ll come up with strains or breed-models of Infestation that find some new way to turn everything around you into a potential time bomb. There was an Infestation cult back on Europa, once. The Solaris miners found some beating heart or tumor under the ice, and…
...I was examining the ruins of New Zagreb there, once. I saw… I saw a Solaris miner in a parka get bisected at the stomach by a plasma shotgun, watched their legs pick themselves up, and run towards us. Its spine… no, its spines had regrown, and it was swinging bony protrusions that had become flails and axes towards us. Like a buzzsaw with legs. And then his midsection picks itself up. The head-grate swings open, sinew and gristle between the slats, and starts opening and closing like a mouth, and I swear to the Void I can see it becoming teeth. And the head, there’s veins connecting it to something behind the mouth, it’s like the head has become just another appendage. It shoots out, both heads screaming something that sounded almost but not quite like language.
A tentacle shot out from its back, it hooked itself to a wall, and started shooting at us with a mining laser. It was just…. Mouths and tentacles. And a laser. A laser that I’m pretty sure had grown out of its arm.
So, anyway. You see Infestation? Burn it. Then rip out its roots and burn it again. Rinse and repeat till you feel safe.

Stats
Trigger: Duplex-Burst-charge
Burst Count: 3(6)
Fire Rate:
Magazine: 66
On Impact:
Damage: 40
8 Slash
16 Corrosive
6 Puncture
10 Impact
Critical Chance: 16%
Critical Multiplier: 2.4x
Status Chance: 42%
Punch-Through: 0.8m
Status Radius: 3.6m
Charged:
Charge Time: 0.4s
On Impact:
Damage:: 40
8 Slash
16 Corrosive
6 Puncture
10 Impact
Critical Chance: 16%
Critical Multiplier: 2.6x
Status Chance: 48%
Radial:
Damage: 29
18 Electric
11 Puncture
Critical Chance: 28%
Critical Multiplier: 2.6x
Status Chance: 48%
Blast Radius: 3.6m
Artist Notes:
I was going to post a LORE UPDATE on my thread, but then I was all like ‘screw it, why not, it’s been like a month.’

There were a few main ideas here: creating something with the Proliferation effect from Outriders, (which spreads status to nearby enemies) creating a weapon that was essentially the Marker as a firearm, adding some unique lore, and creating a weapon with a frighteningly bizarre trigger. I mean… Duplex-burst-charge? What?!
And one more thing. This weapon was spawned solely because I was trying for a piss-take of the way 40k writes lore of stuff like the Xenos deathlock used by blackshields. Which is officially described as “There existed many terrifyingly powerful xenos technology weapons encountered during the Great Crusade, which, through incredibly effective, had been declared prohibited by Mechanicum and Emperor alike for their detrimental effects on the body and mind of a human wielder. The desperation of certain Blackshield forces, however, had overcome such concerns. Those weapons sought out by certain groups of Blackshields were prized for the trauma they inflicted upon the foe -- enemies not torn apart by their horrifying effect were assailed by a storm of soul-wrenching alien horror. Such weapons had been encountered in a range of classes, such as the Extinction Carbines of the Khrave or the psycho-mobius claw-guns of the Kala Sistrum being the most commonly sought-after amongst Blackshield forces.”
If you’re wondering what literally any of that means… good question. So the phrase “Spawned in the death-wombs of the Celian Continuity” arose.

Description

Infested ‘Vertebrator’ Rifle
“Birthed in the death-wombs of the long-dead Celian Continuity of Eris, this Infested weapon deals Corrosive and spreads any status effect afflicting an enemy to those within a small radius.”
—Codex
Special Traits:
Pandemic Rounds: Shooting an enemy afflicted with a status effect has a chance to spread that status effect to another enemy within a 3.6m radius.

Lore
Testing, testing…. This is doctor Loos Kanageyan, anthropologist and archeotechnologist, and I’d just like to put it on the record that I asked: “what the hell did you just put on my desk?!”
Except, well, that’s not my desk - I’m taking notes on a dataslate outside an Infestation containment unit in the Chirurge-Class Dreadnought.
Back in the Academy on Io, they had a replica of something like this. It’s a relic of the Celian Continuity, “birthed from their death-wombs” or so I heard.
Since Tenno love guns like most people love their mother, I’ll explain how it functions. Sort of. All the science behind this was lost a long time ago.
This was one of their weapons. I don’t…. I don’t know how it works. We killed everyone who did. All I know is that if you shoot someone with this, any effect they’re hit with will transfer to an enemy nearby. And somehow, this energy weapon deals biological damage.
It shoots six-round bursts. But, if you hold the trigger down, like this… it’s divided. First three rounds punch through enemies, second three-round burst fires when you take your finger off. Not unlike a Tigris or Balaenis or Zylok. Except holding the trigger down? It charges those three shots for maximum damage, making them explode on impact. I don’t pretend I know how this works.
Last time anyone saw these fire was back during the First Corpus Expansion, in those early days when the Thaw Cultures filled a vast gulf between Grineer and Corpus Space. Back then, Grineer were… sort of a boogeyman for those out on the new frontier. Believe it or not, back then, the stories were of inhumanly beautiful, broad, tall hairless creatures that would abduct and disassemble your children. But that’s not important now.
See, Pluto is a piss-poor planet. The only reason it’s such a fixture is that it’s the seat of Granum’s power, and it’s got auto-factories and machines nobody knows how to make anymore. We… they needed to grow. It was the most comfortable we’d been since before the Collapse. But there was one obstacle: the Celian Continuity.
What my ancestors did? That was colonialism, pure and simple. But the Celian Continuity, they were bastards through and through. Here’s some perspective. After the Orokin fell, the scattered peoples of the Origin System found many different tech bases. The Oeizu dusted off their old knowledge of atomics, the Dziewanans use a combination of nanomachines and printing that predates the Orokin, the Cursed Moon had the best grasp of Orokin metamaterials and Void science and managed to create things from nothing, and the Celians…
They used pure, raw, Infestation. They saw the Infestation as a way to become the New Orokin, and strategically bred strains to augment their strength, give them a kind of telepathy, augment themselves for specialized roles, and from that came a belief that we were all barely sapient tumors that walked. Course, when you consider what they looked like, this was probably projection. The historian M’kimuro said they’d “force their communion on people as they disassembled their own skulls into a nest of screaming mouths and tentacles, forcing this grotesque appendage into every orifice of the fearful unfortunate’s face in a grotesque parody of a kiss…”
(Eeeugh)
So we killed them all. We sterilized the moon, scouring any trace of them from it. We thought it worked, but, well, you know how that song and dance goes.

AND TARJA LEM JUST GAVE YOU ONE, YASSIN?!
Yassin: HEY! IT WAS PAYMENT FOR SERVICES RENDERED!
Kanageyan: “WHAT SERVICE?!
Yassin: “I murdered an asteroid!”
Kanageyan: “...you murdered the entire population of an asteroid?”
Yassin: “...no.”
Kanageyan: “I’m just not gonna touch on that.”

I really do hope, though, that seeing something this unspeakably dangerous isn’t a sign of worse things to come. Infestation cults… they’ve always been something of a nuisance. My buddies back in archeotech studies, the Tenno might’ve come and abducted them, we’d tell horror stories about the kinds of nightmares that Infestation cultists create. The Cult of Arlo?
...Hate to say it, but I saw it coming. Infestation cults do this every time they rear their ugly heads, promising miracles that can put you back on the level of the Orokin. Maybe even higher. Why do you think Doctor Tengus’ decrepit, tumorous spier van plesier tugs against his smock whenever he thinks of the Infestation? Why do you think Black Seed thinks they can make bioweaponry work? Simple. The Infestation breathed spores into them and used them as an antenna to broadcast them a simple idea: they could become gods.
And so, they’ll come up with strains or breed-models of Infestation that find some new way to turn everything around you into a potential time bomb. There was an Infestation cult back on Europa, once. The Solaris miners found some beating heart or tumor under the ice, and…
...I was examining the ruins of New Zagreb there, once. I saw… I saw a Solaris miner in a parka get bisected at the stomach by a plasma shotgun, watched their legs pick themselves up, and run towards us. Its spine… no, its spines had regrown, and it was swinging bony protrusions that had become flails and axes towards us. Like a buzzsaw with legs. And then his midsection picks itself up. The head-grate swings open, sinew and gristle between the slats, and starts opening and closing like a mouth, and I swear to the Void I can see it becoming teeth. And the head, there’s veins connecting it to something behind the mouth, it’s like the head has become just another appendage. It shoots out, both heads screaming something that sounded almost but not quite like language.
A tentacle shot out from its back, it hooked itself to a wall, and started shooting at us with a mining laser. It was just…. Mouths and tentacles. And a laser. A laser that I’m pretty sure had grown out of its arm.
So, anyway. You see Infestation? Burn it. Then rip out its roots and burn it again. Rinse and repeat till you feel safe.

Stats
Trigger: Duplex-Burst-charge
Burst Count: 3(6)
Fire Rate:
Magazine: 66
On Impact:
Damage: 40
8 Slash
16 Corrosive
6 Puncture
10 Impact
Critical Chance: 16%
Critical Multiplier: 2.4x
Status Chance: 42%
Punch-Through: 0.8m
Status Radius: 3.6m
Charged:
Charge Time: 0.4s
On Impact:
Damage:: 40
8 Slash
16 Corrosive
6 Puncture
10 Impact
Critical Chance: 16%
Critical Multiplier: 2.6x
Status Chance: 48%
Radial:
Damage: 29
18 Electric
11 Puncture
Critical Chance: 28%
Critical Multiplier: 2.6x
Status Chance: 48%
Blast Radius: 3.6m
Artist Notes:
I was going to post a LORE UPDATE on my thread, but then I was all like ‘screw it, why not, it’s been like a month.’

There were a few main ideas here: creating something with the Proliferation effect from Outriders, (which spreads status to nearby enemies) creating a weapon that was essentially the Marker as a firearm, adding some unique lore, and creating a weapon with a frighteningly bizarre trigger. I mean… Duplex-burst-charge? What?!
And one more thing. This weapon was spawned solely because I was trying for a piss-take of the way 40k writes lore of stuff like the Xenos deathlock used by blackshields. Which is officially described as “There existed many terrifyingly powerful xenos technology weapons encountered during the Great Crusade, which, through incredibly effective, had been declared prohibited by Mechanicum and Emperor alike for their detrimental effects on the body and mind of a human wielder. The desperation of certain Blackshield forces, however, had overcome such concerns. Those weapons sought out by certain groups of Blackshields were prized for the trauma they inflicted upon the foe -- enemies not torn apart by their horrifying effect were assailed by a storm of soul-wrenching alien horror. Such weapons had been encountered in a range of classes, such as the Extinction Carbines of the Khrave or the psycho-mobius claw-guns of the Kala Sistrum being the most commonly sought-after amongst Blackshield forces.”
If you’re wondering what literally any of that means… good question. So the phrase “Spawned in the death-wombs of the Celian Continuity” arose.