Cotixes (FIGHTER, Mage, Thief series)
The cotixes are a species of humanoid xenos and are one of the member races of the Idra'Sakar Empire. They look somewhat like a mix between a man, a bovine, and either a toothed bird or a feathered lizard. Cotixes are around as tall as Adeptus Astartes, sport an impressive amount of muscles, and lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young.
Unusual appearance and taxonomy aside, cotixes aren't inherently very physiologically interesting, but they do somewhat stand out from most Avernite species. The reason why is that, rather than surviving the wildlife and contributing to society by means of some special psychic ability, adults of the species get by only through the application of pure athleticism. They have no psychic powers to call on and rate as Pi on the Assignment. The secret behind their survival is the psychic power that they had as children: a simple (in concept), passive biomantic boost to body growth throughout their early life. This boost leaves them far more physically powerful as adults than they would otherwise be, to the tune of slightly surpassing Space Marines in these (and only these) areas. It also grants them accelerated healing for as long as they're still growing, allowing them to heal from wounds fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, that specific manifestation of psychic ability isn't purely advantageous, even beyond the fact that adult cotixes have no ability to call upon the Warp. A cotix's biomantic growth boost can sometimes outpace healing, so unless a wound heals quickly enough, long-lasting or even permanent malformations can develop and cripple the cotix. Their accelerated healing lets cotixes reach adulthood without these malformations, but Avernus' nature means that it isn't always sufficient. This aspect of the cotix is most dangerous during the species' equivalent of puberty. At that time, if a cotix suffers a particularly grievous injury and it fails to heal in time (a near-certainty with wounds of that severity) the near guarantee that the cotix will develop a malformation isn't the worst of it; there's a small chance it may develop into outright
mutation as a result of such a large amount of Warp energy flowing in such disharmony. Between the crippling and the possibility of damnation, it's common to mercy-kill cotixes unlucky enough to suffer those kinds of wounds.
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Cotixes were absorbed into the Idra'Sakar Empire relatively early in the species transition into a civilisation, at the time only being in the early stages of agricultural development without any true cities to their name. As a result, while they do maintain their own distinct culture to this day, their cultural development has been greatly influenced by the far more populous and influential sakarians. Clear similarities between language, armament, and mode of dress can be seen between the two when compared to the differences between sakarians and other peoples in the Empire.
Cotix warriors traditionally go to war clad in heavy armour, and on the battlefield they primarily act as heavy infantry, bodyguards, and champions, their supreme physiques making them ideal for those roles. Some of their number wield large war bows instead, their strength allowing them to deal with their high draw weight with ease, and they too are heavily armoured. In addition to the full-time warriors, there are two groups of irregulars that are often called up when the clarion horn is sounded. The first of these groups are the best of the cotix farmers, whose expertise in managing plantlife makes them ideal for purging the tree, the weed, and the shrubbery. They go to war in their work gear with a little additional armour. The second group of irregulars is...
much stranger.
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No one truly knows their origins. Some say it was started by a man who lost his entire family to blink spiders and went mad, then took a severe head injury and went a very disturbing sort of sane. Others believe the group was founded when a woman received unholy visions by daemons of Khorne and Slaanesh simultaneously, which cancelled each other out corruption-wise but ended up inspiring her anyway. Another theory of its beginning goes that a band of ruin raiders stumbled on the forgotten remains of a dead god of fitness and received divine visions of physical and spiritual perfection. Whatever the case, few can say that they have seen anything more baffling yet weirdly respectable (with emphasis on 'weirdly') than the philosophy cult known as the
Exemplars of Holistic Quintessence.
The Exemplars of Holistic Quintessence are characterised by their complete dedication to the pursuit of physical perfection in both form and function. They train their bodies to their very limits, achieving levels of physical fitness matched by nearly no one in the entirety of the Idra'Sakar Empire. The Exemplars take great pride in this, and they are taught much of grace, pose, and efficiency in movement so that everything they do with their bodies is done with aesthetic sublimity. Most audacious of all is their mode of dress, or rather their lack thereof; Exemplars wear only a bare minimum amount of clothing, exposing their flesh and bountiful muscles for all the world to see. On a Warp-touched death world where such things as blink spiders exist, rarely is this anything other than sheerest insanity, but the Exemplars are very sane.
To the Exemplars, life is the epitome of existence, the ultimate fusion of base matter and luminous soul. To reach the epitome of one's life, then, is to maximise the value of one's existence in the universe. To do that, one must raise up both their mental and physical states to their pinnacles, and that is what the Exemplars do, training both their minds and their bodies to their very limits. Blink spiders are the greatest fear of many, and so to make one's self so exposed to them not only improves the body by building reflexes, it improves the mind by conquering that most primordial of fears. Just as the body may be trained by straining it with weights, they train the mind by straining it with danger, intoxicants, and magical effects. They don't neglect their intellects either; many are surprised at just how much mathematics is involved in their body movement lessons.
No Slaaneshi cult are they, however. The pride and vanity they express in their exquisite forms is quite genuine, but it's grounded deeply by a strong sense of duty. Life does not exist in a vacuum - it comes from the earth, it lives amongst and with life, and to the earth it shall return. As such, maximising the worth of one's life while ignoring its place in the world is akin to lifting a bucket while standing in it. You must give to the world in equal measure to what you take from it, and so to do something like sacrifice another thinking being's life to preserve your own is to do nothing but devalue yourself and the world around you. The path of Slaanesh, the path of selfishness, excess, and endless consumption, is the greatest conceivable perversion of their way of life. It's not unlike the modern Ecclesiarchy's stance on the Abomination.
Exemplars of Holistic Quintessence are some of the most elite warriors in the Empire. Not only are their minds and bodies some of the strongest in their weight class, the sheer amount of training and experience they go through to live the way they do puts them amongst the most skilled fighters in the land. They would fight to great effect in both the Pink Skies and Blood Skies Incursions. They would draw the ire of the Slaaneshi for, ironically, being seen as perversions of all that those daemons stood for, and would instil confusion in the Khornates who would be utterly unsure about what to think of them.
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