Has there ever been any canonical or fan-made background for kroot physiology that goes beyond basic height, weight etc?

I'm putting together a kroot mercenary force and can't seem to find much background, so any help would be well-appreciated.

In particular, I'm tempted to make some casualties, so info on blood and musculature colour would be great.

As an aside, does anyone know if Imperial Armour III has much background on kroot?

Posted By Oaka on 07/20/2006 11:31 AM
The Xenology book has a two-page spread of a Kroot on the dissection table, with autopsy details and notes, it sounds like that is exactly what you are looking for. It's got some obvious flaws in it, like the Kroot in Xenology having three digits on each hand when the models clearly have four. Other than that, the Xenos article on Kroot in the White Dwarf (can't remember the number) fills in things like digestion and reproduction. Main things to note if you are doing casualty bases:

Kroot have hollow bones like birds.

Kroot 'lungs' look like internal gills, with a frill-like texture.

There is neural tissue attached to the Kroot stomach, which relays information to the brain.

Kroot excrete wastes through their skin, and reproduce by exchanging genetic information through the skin as well, so no external genitalia (as much as I know you like using greenstuff)

- Oaka

Thanks to both of you for your prompt replies. I've had a dig through that old WD and Xenology (which is going to come in particularly handy for casualties!).

Born Again: Apparantly, Kroot give birth by vomiting the krootling up. Brings a whole new meaning to morning sickness!

Essentially, I'm trying to work out what the 'basic' kroot looks like. Point like colour, weight, number of digits etc are all fairly 'loose' and prone to adaptation. However, something's got to remain consistent for the resultant mutant to remain a kroot.

Do you think that this explains the kroots' aversion to tyranid flesh? It's something that would 'overpower' the basic kroot genome?

On a completely unrelated note, Oaka ? you post over at the Shaper Council, don't you? I really like the converted ridden knarloc you made. You oughtta post it up over here.

Well, the Kroot race is probably the most difficult race to place limits on in terms of physical identification, due to its unique evolutionary nature.  The best part about that is that all you really need to do is keep the models hairless, toothless, and with some quills and you can pretty much call it Kroot.  The Kroot homeworld of Pech is supposed to be littered with all kinds of species that are all, at their biological foundations, Kroot.  The humanoid Kroot just happened to be the most well-suited.

@ Born Again:  I'll have to reread Xenology, but the Xenos article makes specific mention that Kroot mate by the male placing his palms on the female's back and passing genetic information through the skin, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is completely different in Xenology.

@ Cpl Saint:  Yeah, I make posts on Shaper Council and Kompletely Kroot.  I usually put my models up here, too, when I finish them, but Dakka is just more popular and the topics are quickly relegated to later pages.  They hint at the Tyranid flesh having terrible effects on the Kroot, but no more than a hint.  I would think that a race that has been bioengineered to be killers (Tyranids) would be too much to absorb for the Kroot, which are used to searching through a genome and picking specific advantageous traits.

- Oaka

They hint at the Tyranid flesh having terrible effects on the Kroot, but no more than a hint.  I would think that a race that has been bioengineered to be killers (Tyranids) would be too much to absorb for the Kroot, which are used to searching through a genome and picking specific advantageous traits.

Hmm... that's an interesting point, and brings up the suggestion that there are limits to what kroot can safely ingest and absorb ? perhaps there is a limit to complexity, or the extremely dense tyranid DNA could work in a similar manner to a drugs overdose.

Skirting close to just plucking things out of the air, perhaps this is the cultural reason that kroot carnivore kindreds have 'forbidden' certain krootforms.

As far as I'm aware, the idea of forbidden krootforms is based on a single mention in the original tau codex. It's a nice mention, and would be nice to hint at the reasons these things are forbidden.