Ny'ytap: The Rift War Battlemaster Predator

Name: Ny'ytap
Species: Yautja
Sex: Male
Clan mark: Judone Tree
Role: Former Battlemaster, elite captain
Students: Vai'ke, Cau'dki, Ba'sta
Known for: Commanding the LV-363 blooding
Setting: LV-363
First appearance: Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War (2022)
Status: Dead, a winged newborn later left his cryo corpse
Weapons: Cloak, bio-helmet, jet-black armor

Ny'ytap was a Yautja in Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro's Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War. He had been a Battlemaster, then dropped to elite captain after an acid scar from his own blooding. On LV-363 he commanded two hunting captains and nine unblooded, forbade contact with the humans, and died when a Xenowing took him during the farewell.

Battlemaster

Ny'ytap earned the Battlemaster title by defeating a rival clan that sold Yautja technology. Hunters who took that post chose open war over the path to clan leader, and like a Temple Guard they could not later hold that office. His father and grandfather had been clan leaders, so the promotion closed a line he might otherwise have followed.

An acid scar from his own blooding later dropped him to elite captain. He had waded in as if the armor would hold, and too much acid in one place burned the left side of his face. The elders put him on the training circuit instead of another war post. Former clan leaders treated the LV-363 trip as his last assignment, and he wanted a death in battle more than another tour watching the young.

The LV-363 Command

A mothership dropped the hunt ship at the edge of the system. Ny'ytap landed it in a clearing, cloaked the hull, and moved supplies about half a kilometre toward the nearest rift. Clan order kept the camp off the ship, because a wrecked hull would have made the party bad bloods even if a rescue came later.

Ca'toll and T'U'Sa each took three unblooded. All twelve wore the clan symbol of the Judone Tree, and Ny'ytap's group wore jet black. He pulled the two captains aside after they found an ion trace and a human ship near the seeded eggs. The party was to stay put, keep off the harvest camp, and leave the humans alone even if an adult Xenomorph hit them.

After a Xenowing killed T'U'Sa, Ny'ytap held T'See'Ka down and treated leaving a hunt leader as a breach of honor. He took Ba'sta and Stea'Pua back down the cables at night, under the twin moons, and found T'U'Sa's wrecked body on the floor. They carried him out in formation and walked him back to the ship.

Ny'ytap's Unblooded

His own wards were Vai'ke, son of a clan leader, the bully Cau'dki, and the small, quiet Ba'sta. Vai'ke was almost as large as Ca'toll and expected a clan leader's path. Ny'ytap meant to break that sense of a guaranteed rank. Cau'dki had pushed Ba'sta into corners and tried to hold the others back so he could take the first kill.

On the first scout Ny'ytap cut their camouflage back on purpose, then cloaked and ran a broken trail through the brush. Vai'ke and Cau'dki crashed past him. Ba'sta stopped, listened for the gap in the noise, and faced the right way before Ny'ytap dropped the cloak. A wrist switch on the captain's kit could hide or show the young, and he planned not to use it if they learned to hunt without it.

Death

After the night attack the survivors laid Cau'dki, Hetah, and U'Brea'Sua in a row in front of the ship and held a farewell. Ny'ytap treated the two hunt teams as having moved as one, pulled his bio-helmet off, and raised it to the stars. A Xenowing came out of the trees, hooked his unprotected neck, and carried him toward the rift.

Ny'ytap was heavy enough that the flyer struggled for height. He beat the mid-legs with the loose helmet, opened a cut beside one insect eye, and later took the head off in the air. Both fell, and a tree branch impaled him above the floor. A second Xenowing landed on his chest and finished him while he was still moving.

The Cryo Newborn

Ca'toll put the dead, including Ny'ytap, into cryogenic chambers and set course for the mothership. The second Xenowing had chewed his face and the soft meat below the armor, and leftover Xenomorph matter in that corpse, named Plagiarus praepotens, produced a winged newborn. The creature tucked itself between his arm and torso, went dormant in the cold, and waited for a later thaw on another world. That birth sat closer to a Yautja-host birth than to the riftwing Xenowings on LV-363.

Appearance And Weapons

Ny'ytap was the larger of the two males at the hunt-ship controls, and older by about half than his hunting captains. Acid from his blooding had burned the left side of his face and scarred the left mandibles, and the damage slurred his speech. He wore jet-black armor that could cloak, and the unblooded under him could not cloak by clan order.

Ny'ytap carried the usual hunt kit, including a bio-helmet with a targeting oculator and a combistick. During the farewell he drove that stick into the ground before the Xenowing took him.

Conclusion

Ny'ytap was the former Battlemaster who commanded the LV-363 blooding as elite captain. He kept the party off the humans, brought T'U'Sa's body home, and died in the farewell when a Xenowing took him with his helmet off. Ca'toll carried his corpse toward the mothership, and a winged newborn later slept in that cold tube.