Crab RaidersReport
English：Crab Raiders · Factions
Scorchlander bandits of the south-eastern Pits who venerate crabs to the point of rebuilding themselves as crabs; they hold a "Crab Tournament" to decide whether to let you in.
In the south-eastern corner of Kenshi, where acid rain eats the rock and almost no nation wants to plant a flag, there lives a group of Scorchlanders who treat crabs as gods. They give their crabs names, hold tournaments for their crabs, and forge their armour into the shape of a crab — and then use that gear to beat United Cities patrols back.
The Crab Raiders are easy to write off as a joke faction. But in a world where slavery and religious purges are the norm, they are one of the few groups to have built a stable society and a non-violent route to membership.
Territory and standing
The Crab heartland is The Pits East, with the capital Crab Town in the north-east of that zone and two smaller villages further north[V1 0:00:48] — namely the Crab villages at Greenbeach and Stobe's Garden[V2 0:01:16]. Patrols range across Greenbeach, Stobe's Garden, the Crags, The Pits and The Pits East[V1 0:00:14]. Faction members are uniformly Scorchlanders[V2 0:01:16].
They are one of the three great "Pits gangs", the other two being the Reavers and the Skeleton Bandits (led by the Elder). The game classes all three together, and what they share is a hatred of the United Cities; among themselves it is perpetual border brawling[V2 0:01:49].
But the three differ enormously in internal structure: only the Crabs have actually grown territory, a leadership, a culture and a shared identity, while the other two remain armed bands[V2 0:01:49]. Measured by the standards of "bandits", one capital plus two villages is a fairly complete institution.
The Crabs stand the firmest in that melee for a very direct reason: thick armour, high combat stats, and pet crabs that fight.
The Crab Queen
The Crab Queen rules from the Crab Queen's palace in Crab Town, and the United Cities have a 40,000-cat bounty on her[V1 0:01:24][V3 0:20:36] — oddly, though, there is no wanted poster for her. The sum puts her level with the great criminal leaders, and yet the Empire chose not to advertise it[V2 0:03:27]. Of the three Pits gang leaders, she alone is tacitly treated as a threat without being publicly posted.
Her attitude is also entirely unlike the other gang bosses':
We Crabs are enlightened people. Prove yourself. We have enemies in the Pits. Prove your loyalty to the crabs, and they will repay you.
The Reavers will drag you off as a slave soldier and the Skeleton Bandits will brainwash you into a robot, while the Crab Queen offers you a choice — of the three Pits gangs, only the Crabs actually let you choose[V2 0:04:03]. Say in dialogue that you like crabs and you are in (+75 relations); say crabs are stupid, or admit you have eaten one, and that door shuts on the spot. But shut is not dead: even after a refusal you can win eligibility back through the Crab Tournament[V2 0:04:03].
Crab Armour: an unreasonable piece of equipment
The key to understanding the Crab Raiders is their signature armour. The in-game description does not mince words:
A strangely shaped set of heavy armour which grants the wearer the resilience and mobility of a large rock. The Crab Raiders designed this armour with the goal of making themselves more crab-like, with little regard for anything else.
Crab Armour has the highest cut resistance and harpoon resistance of any body armour in the game, and comes with 50% acid and fire protection besides. The price is 21.5 kg of weight and a severe drag on Dexterity, Combat Speed and Stealth.
In other words this is not equipment optimised for tactical need but a religious artefact whose function is incidental. The full set is the Crab Helmet, Crab Armour, Crab Trousers and Crab Shoes, and the blueprints can only be bought after allying.
The crabs themselves
In Crab society crabs are not livestock but members. They have names, ranks and champions: Titus, Barnabus, Mr Gigantus, and the ultimate trump card, the Crabinator.
The faction hierarchy therefore holds two species at once. On the human side there are Crab Raiders, Crab patrons, the Crab smiths who forge the armour, plus barmen, civilians and other ordinary townsfolk[V2 0:05:09][V1 0:00:48]; while those named crabs are title-holding champions, ranked no lower than the people[V2 0:05:09].
The Crab Shops in Crab Town and the Crab villages are open to neutral players — they will not attack a stranger on sight, and will even sell a crab to a passing traveller[V1 0:00:48][V3 0:20:36]. An adult crab runs about 14,000 Cats[V2 0:03:27]. The seller throws in a full set of husbandry rules: their staple is fish, they also eat algae, feed five times a day, never after sunset lest they get indigestion, one ninety-minute soap bath a month, sing to them before bed and stroke their hind legs, and above all do not overwork them — crabs are sensitive creatures and too much stress makes them depressed[V2 0:07:20].
That dialogue carries the developers' humour, but it is also something rare in the whole game: a cross-species ethic of care. In a world with no shortage of enslavement, exploitation and live flaying, the Crabs neither eat nor enslave crabs but fight alongside them. One commentator treats this as the Crabs' real core value: in a world where enslavement, brainwashing and religious persecution are normal, they neither enslave nor eat their totem animal but fight as equals with another species; what they want is freedom, refusal of authority, and their own road — and on that reading, absurdity may be the most lucid available response to this world[V2 0:16:15].
The Crab Tournament
The Crab Tournament is the Crabs' most sacred rite and their only formal vetting process for outsiders[V2 0:09:02]. When the player builds an outpost near Crab territory while relations with them are below 50, the outpost is judged an "enemy colony", and once a patrol spots you they will come and launch the Crab Tournament, demanding it be settled crab against crab[V2 0:09:02][V1 0:01:24]:
What is this!? An invasion! An enemy colony comes to challenge us, crab against crab! Then let it be so! We shall test each other's crab-training! It is the CRAB — TOURNAMENT!
The format is four rounds, each anchored by a named crab, with the scale escalating:
| Round | Line-up | Anchor crab |
|---|---|---|
| Qualifier | 8–12 raiders + 10 crabs | Titus |
| Quarter-final | 12–15 raiders + 10 crabs | Barnabus |
| Semi-final | 14–21 raiders + 15 crabs | Mr Gigantus |
| Final | 20–25 raiders + 15 crabs | The Crabinator |
The losing side enters a "resit round" and starts again — this tournament cannot actually be lost, only looped indefinitely. More absurd and more charming still: you do not need to own a crab at all. Throughout the contest the Crabs will keep referring to your non-existent entrant as the "mystery crab" — the ritual matters more than the facts[V2 0:09:02].
Win the final and you are crowned Crab champion, +200 relations for an outright alliance, and under their protection from then on[V1 0:01:24][V3 0:20:36]. It is also the only route to alliance that does not offend the other Pits gangs — allying with the Crab Queen directly costs 75 relations each with the Skeleton Bandits, the Skin Bandits and the Reavers.
A separate event is the Crabbed Ones: if a player outpost falls within 7,000 metres of Crab turf while you are not yet allied, they will send troops, on the grounds that you have "upset the balance of the crab lands, and this makes my crabs very unhappy".
Where they came from
The game is almost completely silent on Crab origins, leaving exactly one clue: Crab buildings can spawn Holy Nation memorabilia, such as small emperor statues. Some infer from this that what they actually believe is a variant of the Okran faith — and whether that clue counts as evidence at all is precisely where the two origin accounts below part ways[V2 0:10:08].
That clue has produced two competing accounts:
- The Holy Nation exile account — the Crabs descend from exiles of the Holy Nation (or the earlier Okranite order) who split off after developing a heretical, crab-centred reading of the faith[V2 0:11:46]. This version explains three things at once: why the race is uniform, why Holy Nation items turn up, and why they settled in the south-eastern corner, the furthest point from Okran's Valley; incidentally it also explains why Scorchlanders are almost never seen inside the Holy Nation — they were not purged, they left. Its weakness is that Crab dialogue never mentions Okran or Narko, and their religious vocabulary is one hundred per cent crab[V2 0:11:46].
- The ancient survivor account — the Crabs' ancestors were people who survived on the south-east coast during the collapse of the First Empire and the nuclear winter of the Age of Chaos by imitating the tolerances of the local crustaceans[V2 0:14:35]. This version redefines Crab Armour as survival gear designed for an ice age and a nuclear winter: it looks clumsy and useless in modern Kenshi because it was never designed for modern Kenshi[V2 0:14:35]. Once the climate recovered its function lapsed, leaving only the symbol of faith; and crabs, as a species that has come through several mass extinctions, were exactly the right thing to imitate. This account attributes the Holy Nation memorabilia to random item spawning.
Worth mentioning is that Crab turf borders Stobe's Garden, named for Stobe, the Behemoth who protected the last of humanity when the First Empire fell. If the ancient survivor account holds, the Crabs are the branch who lived through it inside his refuge and then picked a different shell for a totem.
What they mean for the player
Crab Town is a rare passable settlement in the south-east: anyone can enter as long as they are not allied with the Skeleton Bandits or the Skin Bandits. There is a bar and a crab smithy in town, it is the last place to sell goods before the Ashlands, and the unique character Lumi can be recruited there.
Once allied you can hire Crab squads as bodyguards, and doing so will not affect your relations with the United Cities — despite the two being enemies.
As for building a base on their turf: the Crabs are the most frequent raiders in the south-east, and if you build in a remote corner like the Howler Maze, simply surviving the walk to the build site takes a starting character who can handle crabs[V4 0:07:26].
An adventurer, eh? I'm guessing you're headed down into the Ashlands. Never seen anyone go to the Ashlands and walk back out. It's a one-way road, and what's down there isn't worth your life… I wouldn't go without a crab, at any rate.
See also
Video citations
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | Cults - Crab Raiders, Skel Bandits, Skin Bandits, Preacher CultCivilizationEx
- The Origins of the Crab RaidersHeroInHisHead
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- Kenshi Base Building - Lagoon CitadelHeroInHisHead