Re: Unhuman War

[snip]
>cave they find tertiary WM and kill it, losing a goblin and an orc.  Then
they
>continue and find the sleeping primary marauder and a secondary.  After a
>hard-fought battle the war priest manages to immoblize the primary with magic
					      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With third-level spells? IMHO, they more likely used paralytic poison.

I agree with your basic premise--that the WM were found, not
created--however, consider how lucky the orcs would have to be to find the
primary & co. between the time they arrived on the planet and the time when
they multiplied an hundredfold and devastated the planetary ecology,
including each other. It's possible, but unlikely.

Perhaps they were found on a "tubeworld." That is, a world which isn't a
great globular ball but instead a tangled rats-nest of spaghetti-like
strings surrounding a primary. Because WM can't fly, they can't spread
geometrically as they could under standard conditions, and the devastation
is limited to their walking speed. When the orbit alone is 300 million
miles along the edge, that's a lot of walking; and most times, the tubes
will be snarled enough that the actual "length" of the world is far
greater. You could drop a WM on one end, and four hundred years later they
would still be munching their way methodically along the rim.

Hemlock