Opposition
Page 1 of 1
Opposition
by Admin Sun Dec 05, 2021 7:19 am
Collateral:
“Oh yeah, I’m aware of the new terms that Threat Analysis is using to group our enemies. But seriously, Collateral? Collateral!? I mean this is totally disinge-,… disenjanu-, … totally not honest, right? I mean how do you just class the whole of Cannibal Sector 1 as just collateral? I tell you; last week when Shiver Private Bridges was getting his guts chewed out of his body by a Cannibal Termagant he wasn’t crying ‘ooh, help, someone come and get this Collateral off of me.”
Shiver Pvt. 1st Class Cara Killoran , Bridgehead Echo Beach
SLA Industries in it's 900-year history has made practically as many mistakes as it has advances, but such is the price of Progress. Ranging from simple ineptitude to rampant corporate greed to blatant disregard of what the final price of it's success may end up being, these mistakes, small and catastrophic alike have given birth to an array of monsters and madmen that haunt the common man, creating ample BPN's for SLA Operatives and an endless headache to Shivers sworn to keep protecting the behemoth entity that keeps making more of them.
Carrien:
“Carrien continue to blight the sewers and subterranean levels of Downtown and the attributed cause of significant loss of civilian life. Though the city-born members of the species are far less problematic than their sector-bred kin, they still pose a considerable threat based on numbers alone, with their population estimated to be second only to that of rats.”
Threat Analysis Report 113, Subterranean Topics
If you were to judge the Carrien purely by what you saw pumped through your TV sets on GoreZone and Sewer Hunt, you would assume they are simply a fast-breeding, utterly stupid set of convenient targets for glamorous and exotic Operatives to mow down with melee weapons for cash bonuses and high media ratings. If you’ve encountered them before, you know how wrong that perspective is, if you’ve been near the Cannibal Sector wall for any amount of time, you come to resent the opinion; you come to wonder why SLA allows such a perception of such a dangerous creature.
Carrien are much more of a threat than they appear. They appear reckless and stupid in combat, but they are ready to fight to the death, understanding that the death of one may mean the survival of the pack. They work in packs and develop fairly complex and effective pack strategies. They are adept at laying ambushes, are stealthy, strong, smart enough to use clubs and improvised weaponry and come with a natural arsenal of teeth and claws that carry infectious diseases that can kill long after the Carrien itself is dead. They breed fast and keep their numbers high; torturing, raping and killing for reasons other than food. In small groups and unprepared, Carrien are little threat to an Operative team, but a whole pack is enough of a threat to take down even heavily armoured Operatives, especially as encountering the whole pack usually means that you’re deep in their territory. The true nature and threat of the Carrien is kept off screen and hidden, subject to D-Notices that mask their true power and numbers along with the mysterious origins of their existence. There may be far more Carrien than anyone realizes as they are adaptable, fast breeding and perfectly evolved for life in the Cannibal Sectors and the sewers of Downtown.
In appearance, a Carrien is like a bipedal cross between a greyhound and a rat. They are tall and lean, their bodies composed of thin, powerful muscle with the flesh sunken so close to their heads that their faces resemble skulls, yellow beady eyes peering out from under a heavy brow ridge. The ends of each of the Carrien’s limbs are tipped with blackened and filthy claws. The claws are small but allow the Carrien to hook itself onto an opponent and make itself very hard to dislodge. The mouth is filled with razor sharp and hooked teeth that are entirely predatory and are used for stripping slivers of flesh that are then swallowed whole. The teeth are so long and sharp that the Carrien has to hold their face in a perpetual rictus grin for fear of cutting itself.
The argument about Carrien intellect is a long, complicated one. Carrien are more intelligent than the dogs and rats they take after and, like chimps, they possess enough intelligence to use clubs, hockey sticks and baseball bats to attack their victims. They also show the capacity for ‘art’ of some sort in the claw scratchings on their clubs. This is all used as argument that they are intelligent beings, along with their complex social ordering. The counterargument points out that the Carrien intellect is
a very selective and basic one, that Carrien pack behavior and trap-setting is not much more than that which wolves or spiders are capable of and that their ‘art’ is simply claw sharpening. Reports to the contrary aside, Carrien never use guns.
Carrien rarely vocalize, preferring to move silently and communicate on some pack level mostly by body language and dominance rank. A scout may make a high pitched howl to summon the rest of his pack and Carrien that are confident and outnumber their enemy may make a hyena like laughing and sniggering sound as they close in. Other vocalizations are usually those of surprise or anger and are limited to extremely high pitch squeaks and long drawn out hisses. Standard or ‘lesser’ Carrien always defer to Greater Carrien but, away from the larger Greater Carrien they vie with each other constantly to determine their pecking order in the pack, coming together again only when there is prey for them to kill and take back to the den. Lesser Carrien working alone will always kill their prey there on the spot, feed, and drag the remains of the carcass back to the den via a circuitous route. Behavior around Greater Carrien is much different.
The Greater Carrien are monstrous, enormous aberrations of the standard Carrien genome, huge, horned brutes, strong enough to break even Stormer 313's and, it is argued, considerably more intelligent than standard Carrien. Most larger warrens of Carrien are lead by one. Greater Carrien are considered by most biologists and Cannibal Sector specialists to be a stabilized form of mutation from the standard Lesser Carrien and, given the easy flux and change in the Carrien genome, this stabilization is of great interest to them. As a result the bounty on Greater Carrien is three times that on regular Carrien and, if a sample can be returned intact, the bounty is trebled again.
The phenomenon of the Mutant Carrien is a difficult one to account for or to describe. To an extent every Carrien is a Mutant Carrien as their genetic structure is in a constant state of change, trying new states, growing extra fingers, tails, a new configuration of teeth, different skin or eye colors. The so-called Mutant Carrien is, however, a step far beyond that state of minor mutation. Mutant Carrien are horrific in appearance and no two are the same. While they maintain some minor hysiological conformity with regular Carrien, anything else goes. They might have a deformed, gnarled appearance, multiple limbs, larger claws, a slavering detachable jaw, enough strength to flip an APC or other hideous and dangerous mutations. Their twisted and orrupted bodies are alive with pain every moment, their flesh raw and weeping, exposed. Only the Carrien themselves know how to ease the pain of their mutant brothers and sisters and they do so instinctively, tending and crooning to their mutants keeping them fit and ready for when they might be needed.
Loose Mutant Carrien will attack, kill and eat lesser breeds of Carrien though a concerted effort by a group of Greater Carrien can bring them under control and into the sway of a pack. When unleashed Mutant Carrien are terrible and destructive beasts and nothing short of death will stop them. When attacking larger or more powerful targets the Greater Carrien use the mutants as shock troops, unleashing these horrors that belong to the pack to distract and soften up the enemy while they plan something more subtle and effective. In the attacks on the Cannibal Sector wall the mutants are often at the forefront and seem to take great delight in facing down the guns and scaling the wall.
Why Mutant Carrien suffer such complete and debilitating mutation is not known. Even in areas of the sector that are richer in mutagenics and where other creatures and Cannibals suffer a higher degree of mutation, the Carrien mutations seem to remain
in similar proportions as though this mutating factor were built into their genetic makeup. The dissection and analysis of Mutant Carrien remains has either yielded no data or has been confiscated by Head Office leaving everyone in the dark.
Cannibals:
”Looking at a hunting party of Cannibals is like looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror. They’re Human, but they’re not. They are all different shapes and sizes, all deformed in some fashion like an exaggeration of ourselves, and they look back on us with the same eyes we have. It is not unusual for the vain to get absorbed in their own reflection, so is it any surprise that sometimes our reflection comes calling to absorb us?”
Kediche, Human Operative, SCL 6C.2.
”They send their children out to root through the rubbish from the outfall pipes thinking that we won’t shoot them. Some Shivers won’t, and others crack under the strain. Sneaky little bastards, but we got wise to them quickly. That’s what snipers like Jason here are for though. Before he came to work for us he went into a school and shot down half a dozen pre-teens. Loves his work, don’t you Jase?”
Shiver Sergeant John Brock, induction tour for fresh Wall Shivers
The Cannibals are often underestimated and overlooked as a threat when new Operatives think of the dangers of the Cannibal Sectors. As with the Carrien, underestimating the Cannibals is a grave mistake. The Cannibals were in the sector first, and the accumulated knowledge of the clans goes far beyond the survival instincts of the Carrien, the Pigs and even the Manchines. The sectors are named after them. They are numerous and they survive; that is reason enough to be wary of them.Many think of the Cannibals as drooling, heavybrowed inbreds swinging bone clubs ineffectually against power armour. Many are inbred, and bone clubs do feature in their armouries, However, they are still Human, still have thumbs and it does not take a great deal of intelligence to pull a trigger. Cannibals know full well how to use firearms; either antiquated weapons from before The Fall or captured SLA, DarkNight and Thresher equipment. They know how to make their own crude armour, and they are adept at building traps, setting ambushes and finding their way around the Cannibal Sectors without falling to their hazards. Underestimate them, and you end up as a menu item.
All Cannibal Clans are superstitious and fill their lives with ritual and ceremony, from the carrying of charms and fetishes to the preparation of a hearth fire in the centre of the camp to ensure that light is always with them. The hearth fire serves two purposes, the clan take heat and light from it and at the same time, it serves as a warning to anyone close by that the Cannibals are in the area and they should tread softly. It is a very bad omen if the hearth fire goes out, and the Cannibals will seek to vacate the area as soon as possible, a thing which many Sector Rangers use to their advantage when dealing with them. When they do eat Human flesh, they ritualize it, make a sacrament, cutting the heart from the chest and squeezing the blood from it in front of the assembled clan before the feast can begin. Their taboos and rituals are constantly evolving and contain many clues to survival techniques within the Sectors.
Carnivorous Pigs:
”You could say I’ve made a career out of killing Carnivorous Pigs. You’d be wrong, it’s more like it made a career out of me. I’ve fought them everywhere, even found someone in Uptown who’ll pay good credits for a fresh Pig corpse. Don’t ask me why. Hell, I even fought a Pig that had taken a triple dose of Ultraviolence once. Don’t ask me about that one either. Still, I have never, never had as hard a time of it as I did one time out in Sector One. Massive it was - marbled white flesh and tusks as big as my arm. It went down, eventually, but what I didn’t realize was that there was a whole herd of the bastards. Want to see my scars?”
Brion, Human Operative, SCL 8B.4.
These creatures roam the sewers of Lower Downtown and the Cannibal Sectors hunting for food. The actual origins of the pigs are unknown but rumours abound, the most popular being about Al Crawley's Slaughterhouse and how, when biogenetic meat became readily available, his huge slaughterhouse was shut down and the pigs, instead of being killed, were simply let loose in the sewers. Left there for years, the pigs bred, mutated and became the carnivorous monsters that terrorize the subterranean tunnels today.
Manchines:
“You wouldn’t believe what I saw yesterday. There was a Manchine wandering through the market. It scared the shit out of everyone, but Baggie told everyone to keep calm and pretend we couldn’t see it. It looked like it was trying to pass for human, only it was obviously a bloody robot, stinking of decay and rust. It wore flyblown human flesh on its back that writhed with maggots and its metallic creaking was punctuated with the wet sound of white lumps of worms and insect eggs hitting the ground. It was hard not to throw up, but as soon as it arrived, it was gone, disappearing into a sewer as if it had never been here. The only evidence of its passing through was the clumps of rats that covered the pavement, feeding off the wriggling debris it left behind.”
Extract from ‘Downtown, my life as a Barrowboy’, Clyde Barstell
The Manchines of Mort City are the remnants of the Killa Chassis project that was shelved after a catalogue of failures. They were one of SLA Industries’ last attempts to master robotics before throwing their all into the more successful biogenetic experiments. Originating from a six-limbed prototype that was designed as an all-terrain six-legged gun platform for War Worlds, the core artificial brain was patched over and over to try to get it to operate without a controller, resulting in a working batch of prototypes that failed at most of their objectives. The War World tests did result in answers to some of the problems and the basic framework was revived to form the basis of a more deployable form of expendable worker, a humanoid that could work
where it was too dangerous for people. The Manchine came from this branch of the Roach project and was the only successful iteration of the hexapod mobile launcher design.
With the robotic police force that Killa Chassis envisioned, the cost of custom-designed deployment vehicles was always a sticking point, along with flexibility of mounted hardware, and this was solved with the simple design of making them fit a human frame, which opened up transport, body armour options and weaponry. Switching to a bipedal humanoid shape that could pass as human, solved more problems than the difficulties it introduced, with an added bonus of the hexapod brain being able to
accommodate two hidden limbs. The brain power was not enough to control four arms with hands, so the spare hardpoints were fitted with two massive rear-mounted articulated blades, folded into protective panelling below pivots at shoulder level, on their backs.
Unfortunately, further testing proved that the programming was simply too rudimentary for the complexities of an urban deployment, and a radical, new solution was approached. As far as the general public is aware, the Manchine is just a machine, given human flesh to blend in to the surroundings, but utterly mechanical beneath that skin. The true horror of the Manchine lies within its armoured skull: a brain made not of processor chips, but the preserved organic brain of what was once a human being, run through with a filigree of metallic threads and patches of nanotech colonies. What most do not know is that the Manchines were not insane to begin with. The volunteers for the Manchine program were all extensively screened psychologically for any signs of problems with the implantation process. Originally, the Manchines were created with fully human coverings, Hair and nails that grew back, blood for the times when they were injured. The scientists who put together the program understood that self-image is crucial for a creature such as this. The first volunteers for the program were placed inside machines that didn’t have human coverings and quickly became suicidal as they realized that they were no longer even vaguely human, never again able to have simple pleasures like the touch of someone else, or to walk down the street without everything shying away in fear. The final model that saw service on the streets was a marvel of modern science, passing for human to anything without a bio scanner. However, the skin coverings were derived from the stormer program and required massive ingestions of a protein based polymer. Originally, the protein could be consumed orally. A complex grid of specialist sensors regulated where the protein was administered, repairs to the skin covering were quickly made and the illusion of normality was maintained. However, as the costs of the protein and other repairs mounted up, several of those involved in the project were called in to account for the spiraling costs. In a meeting across several departments, it was decided that while a specialist infiltration unit was very useful in certain circumstances, the Operatives could easily fill that role and would be far cheaper to replace on a regular basis.
With the costs of maintaining the program considered too high, the remaining Manchines were shipped to handle the disaster that was the Fall of Salvation Tower to get some final value out of a failed experiment. It was thought that the Manchines would fade away and die without replacement parts or batteries, and would remove themselves as a problem. SLA underestimated its own efficiency and skill in creating survivors and the Manchines not only persisted: they thrived. In the Cannibal Sector they could kill as they were designed to do, there was flesh in abundance and the only things missing were power and replacement parts. The Manchines were designed to survive, to improvise and, while their numbers did dwindle, they managed to scavenge batteries and to construct crude replacement parts from scrap metal or even take apart other Manchines.
The standard Manchine is 6 foot of pitted carbon steel, titanium and molybdenum with two Human arms tipped with metallic claws, and a further two limbs carrying long blades that can be brought up from its back and fought with, giving it something
of the appearance of a mantis. Manchines never speak and always move silently, save for the quiet whirring of their servomotors and the hiss of their eye-lenses as they refocus. The Manchine is often covered in heavy clothing, such as a trenchcoat, and may also try to hide its face with a hat or hood. Underneath the clothing is the true horror, the patchwork of flesh from a hundred different victims all stuck together using crude thread and glues: some even held together by Kickstart and other drugs taken from the corpses of Operatives.
There are persistent rumours of variant models of Manchines, creatures made stronger, faster, more armoured than the basic models, even after the 600 years of bastardization as they have attempted to keep themselves functioning. There is even scuttlebutt among Operatives about intricate ambushes lead by even larger machines leading groups of Manchines, but surely those are just rumours and Ops attempting to cover up their own failed BPN's, as Manchines always operate alone. All but Old Man Digger.
Digger was the original prototype Manchine, built larger and more powerful to impress those in charge of funding. Very little is known of his original construction. Certainly it dates from around the time of the Conflict Wars when SLA were still looking
to create a perfect soldier: something that would be a perfect engine of destruction, something that epitomized SLA in every way, a symbol of their invulnerability. As everyone knows, in the end, the Stormer program proved to be more cost-effective
than the Manchine program, and it was the bioengineered legions that secured the victory for SLA, but the Manchines were not forgotten. The first appearance of Digger out in the open was around a year after The Fall, out towards Salvation Tower. It hadn’t taken long for those still living to degenerate into brutality and cannibalism and the largest number of the survivors had congregated in the tower, its massive construction providing them with some semblance of shelter from the denizens of the sector.
No longer. The Shivers out on the base of what was to become the wall watched in horror as the beast slashed and gored everything before it, ploughing through the Cannibals as easily as a man might scatter a floor of cockroaches. Digger reached the tower and disappeared inside, leaving a field of bodies behind him. For the next few hours, those on the wall watched breathlessly as some of the inhabitants got out of the tower in time; others chose to leave via the windows, choosing to fall to their deaths rather than face the engine of destruction now in their midst. Within half a day, observers on the wall looked out at the top of the tower where Digger stood, looking out over his new Empire.
From all archive footage, Digger is a seven meter tall mass of servos and armour plating with many bladed and arachnid arms splaying out from his great torso. Eyewitness reports indicate that more delicate and dexterous hands can be produced from
the belly of the behemoth, but these are never seen while Digger is in plain view. Those who have seen these smaller limbs say that they are the limbs he uses when he is dissecting those who fall into his domain. The remains of his long dead black and
rotting flesh clings to his armoured carapace and, while Digger himself seems to have moved on from the need to clothe himself in the skin that the other Manchines retain, he still decorates himself with odd pieces of limbs and flesh in a haphazard fashion, as a human might wear a bauble which takes their attention.
Scavs:
”They ducked back down behind cover, but I could see their shadows. They were screwing something to the ends of their rifles, so we sent Mac up ahead in his Shock armour. That stuff can handle anything, right? They popped back out of cover and fired, one after the other in about half a second. I swear, those things they screwed onto their guns just looked like bean cans or some shit, with fins. Anyway, the first one struck Mac’s armour full in the chest, spilling this greenish chemical all over it that blazed up so hot you could hear the chest plate of the armour pinging and creaking. Then the second shell hit the same spot and there was a huge cloud of freezing gas and this horrible shattering noise of breaking ceramic. They busted him open with heat stress and his chest plate went off like a grenade. The ceramic fragments took out Jade as well. Me? I decided discretion was the better part
of valor after that. They had other toys.”
Marcus, Operative, SCL 7A.2
To come into contact with a Scav is to meet the unknown in every way. What are they and from what is their origin? Are they sentient, are they intelligent? Are they male or female, both or neither? What do they want in Mort and why do they want it? It is probably not worth asking such questions and if you meet one, a better question is probably just: fight or flight? The latter is to be recommended. Scavs are resourceful tinkerers and engineers with an innate unconscious understanding of how things work or should be constructed to work, their hulking frames belying their technical skills and tactical ability. Normally only found in Cannibal Sector 1 in small groups, their appearance within the city is as unexpected by SLA Industries as it is dangerous. Up until recently, the prospect of meeting a Scav anywhere but within Cannibal Sector 1 were near to zero but reports of these seven foot tall fully
cloaked and masked individuals within the walls of the city have become more frequent. What they are doing in Downtown is currently up for supposition, but suggestions include a growing business relationship with the skin trade and other resource gathering incursions. It is likely they enter the city via the sewers, much like the Carrien and Carnivorous Pigs, but it is possible they are using limousines and town cars to travel incognito. If true, are they driving themselves around or are alliances with the black market stronger than could ever have been expected?
Scav society is organised around the jobs that need to be fulfilled, individuals are allocated to a role dependent on their strengths and capabilities. They appear to have little in the way of personality or sense of self, although if anyone cared to look more loosely at those Scavs seen in the city compared to those in the sector, it would soon become apparent that the ones in the city
are more personable. Their vocal apparatus is rudimentary, communication sounds like low guttural rasping and splutters accompanied by hand gestures. They appear to be getting their point across as ongoing business relationships with specific skin traders and other individuals from the black market have been progressing for some time.
The average Scav stands between 7 and 8 feet in height, with broad shoulders and dense muscle similar to NukeTendon tissue or Stormer muscles in large slabs over its body. Scavs are extremely heavy; their large, reinforced skeleton bearing the weight of their thick musculature as well as the heavy weapons and clothing that they favour. Scav physiology seems like an abhorrent, imperfect blend of Human and Shaktar traits. The most obvious is their features. Scav teeth are razor sharp and very long, forcing the Scav to hold their mouth open and to take their wheezing breaths through their teeth. These teeth also prevent the Scav from being able to vocalize anything more than grunts or hisses, and they communicate with their hands in a complex blend of sign language, military hand gesture and their own language that incorporates all of the above with some unique symbols, slang and body language. The fangs make it difficult for the Scavs to eat and, despite having a predatory look to them, they are omnivorous and require a balanced diet to remain healthy. While they can strip meat with their teeth and swallow with no problem, everything else must be prepared as soups, stews and broths.
Scavs on Mort use masks to filter the air they breathe and protect then from the response. Deprived of their masks for any period
of time, the Scav initially starts to wheeze, which gradually builds into an asthma-like cough. Serious problems only occur if the Scav suppresses the cough reflex or the atmosphere is particularly dusty. Then, these attacks become more and more violent until the creature can do little more than stand. If prevented from clearing their lungs, the mucus can build up to a dangerous level in 5-6 hours Additional patches of scales occur where the skin is rougher or thicker; places like the knees, elbows and the soles of the feet. Scavs have five fingers and five toes, with each digit ending in a small but powerful claw. Scav eyes are bloodshot and yellow, the pupils somewhere between slits and regular round ones. This gives their stare an almost wolfish aspect from under their masks. Their eyes are optimized for quick nighttime adaptation and have nictating membranes that close from the sides to protect them from dust and particles. Scav hearing, on the other hand, is no better than that of a Human. Scav skin tones are a ruddy, reddish hue, giving them the appearance of a heavy blush or someone who has just run a marathon.
Scavs are inveterate tinkers and are known for customizing their equipment to a massive degree. These modifications are crude and roughshod compared to the weapon houses of New Paris and Orienta, but many are no less effective for that. Every Scav customizes their own weaponry, building it to the perfect weight and balance for them to use, and every Scav weapon is as individual as a fingerprint. Anyone attempting to use a Scav-enhanced weapon is going to have trouble as the modifications are going to be wrong for them. The product of their labour is not the prettiest weaponry in the World of Progress, but it is no less effective.Many Operatives have been caught out by Scav innovations in weaponry, especially in the field of ammunition. Faced by heavily armoured opponents, the Scavs have learned to make modifications to their weapon barrels and ammo to enable them to penetrate even the toughest armour. Scav modifications are ugly and crude looking but, in the rare glimpses that the public has seen of the Scavs during live broadcasts, this heavy-set junkyard chic has captured the imagination, and many on the contract circuit are starting to imitate the Scav look in their own weaponry. Some Contract Killers have been known to pay exorbitant sums
for genuine Scav weaponry, particularly those items which don’t show up in the monthly catalogues.
“Oh yeah, I’m aware of the new terms that Threat Analysis is using to group our enemies. But seriously, Collateral? Collateral!? I mean this is totally disinge-,… disenjanu-, … totally not honest, right? I mean how do you just class the whole of Cannibal Sector 1 as just collateral? I tell you; last week when Shiver Private Bridges was getting his guts chewed out of his body by a Cannibal Termagant he wasn’t crying ‘ooh, help, someone come and get this Collateral off of me.”
Shiver Pvt. 1st Class Cara Killoran , Bridgehead Echo Beach
SLA Industries in it's 900-year history has made practically as many mistakes as it has advances, but such is the price of Progress. Ranging from simple ineptitude to rampant corporate greed to blatant disregard of what the final price of it's success may end up being, these mistakes, small and catastrophic alike have given birth to an array of monsters and madmen that haunt the common man, creating ample BPN's for SLA Operatives and an endless headache to Shivers sworn to keep protecting the behemoth entity that keeps making more of them.
Carrien:
“Carrien continue to blight the sewers and subterranean levels of Downtown and the attributed cause of significant loss of civilian life. Though the city-born members of the species are far less problematic than their sector-bred kin, they still pose a considerable threat based on numbers alone, with their population estimated to be second only to that of rats.”
Threat Analysis Report 113, Subterranean Topics
If you were to judge the Carrien purely by what you saw pumped through your TV sets on GoreZone and Sewer Hunt, you would assume they are simply a fast-breeding, utterly stupid set of convenient targets for glamorous and exotic Operatives to mow down with melee weapons for cash bonuses and high media ratings. If you’ve encountered them before, you know how wrong that perspective is, if you’ve been near the Cannibal Sector wall for any amount of time, you come to resent the opinion; you come to wonder why SLA allows such a perception of such a dangerous creature.
Carrien are much more of a threat than they appear. They appear reckless and stupid in combat, but they are ready to fight to the death, understanding that the death of one may mean the survival of the pack. They work in packs and develop fairly complex and effective pack strategies. They are adept at laying ambushes, are stealthy, strong, smart enough to use clubs and improvised weaponry and come with a natural arsenal of teeth and claws that carry infectious diseases that can kill long after the Carrien itself is dead. They breed fast and keep their numbers high; torturing, raping and killing for reasons other than food. In small groups and unprepared, Carrien are little threat to an Operative team, but a whole pack is enough of a threat to take down even heavily armoured Operatives, especially as encountering the whole pack usually means that you’re deep in their territory. The true nature and threat of the Carrien is kept off screen and hidden, subject to D-Notices that mask their true power and numbers along with the mysterious origins of their existence. There may be far more Carrien than anyone realizes as they are adaptable, fast breeding and perfectly evolved for life in the Cannibal Sectors and the sewers of Downtown.
In appearance, a Carrien is like a bipedal cross between a greyhound and a rat. They are tall and lean, their bodies composed of thin, powerful muscle with the flesh sunken so close to their heads that their faces resemble skulls, yellow beady eyes peering out from under a heavy brow ridge. The ends of each of the Carrien’s limbs are tipped with blackened and filthy claws. The claws are small but allow the Carrien to hook itself onto an opponent and make itself very hard to dislodge. The mouth is filled with razor sharp and hooked teeth that are entirely predatory and are used for stripping slivers of flesh that are then swallowed whole. The teeth are so long and sharp that the Carrien has to hold their face in a perpetual rictus grin for fear of cutting itself.
The argument about Carrien intellect is a long, complicated one. Carrien are more intelligent than the dogs and rats they take after and, like chimps, they possess enough intelligence to use clubs, hockey sticks and baseball bats to attack their victims. They also show the capacity for ‘art’ of some sort in the claw scratchings on their clubs. This is all used as argument that they are intelligent beings, along with their complex social ordering. The counterargument points out that the Carrien intellect is
a very selective and basic one, that Carrien pack behavior and trap-setting is not much more than that which wolves or spiders are capable of and that their ‘art’ is simply claw sharpening. Reports to the contrary aside, Carrien never use guns.
Carrien rarely vocalize, preferring to move silently and communicate on some pack level mostly by body language and dominance rank. A scout may make a high pitched howl to summon the rest of his pack and Carrien that are confident and outnumber their enemy may make a hyena like laughing and sniggering sound as they close in. Other vocalizations are usually those of surprise or anger and are limited to extremely high pitch squeaks and long drawn out hisses. Standard or ‘lesser’ Carrien always defer to Greater Carrien but, away from the larger Greater Carrien they vie with each other constantly to determine their pecking order in the pack, coming together again only when there is prey for them to kill and take back to the den. Lesser Carrien working alone will always kill their prey there on the spot, feed, and drag the remains of the carcass back to the den via a circuitous route. Behavior around Greater Carrien is much different.
The Greater Carrien are monstrous, enormous aberrations of the standard Carrien genome, huge, horned brutes, strong enough to break even Stormer 313's and, it is argued, considerably more intelligent than standard Carrien. Most larger warrens of Carrien are lead by one. Greater Carrien are considered by most biologists and Cannibal Sector specialists to be a stabilized form of mutation from the standard Lesser Carrien and, given the easy flux and change in the Carrien genome, this stabilization is of great interest to them. As a result the bounty on Greater Carrien is three times that on regular Carrien and, if a sample can be returned intact, the bounty is trebled again.
The phenomenon of the Mutant Carrien is a difficult one to account for or to describe. To an extent every Carrien is a Mutant Carrien as their genetic structure is in a constant state of change, trying new states, growing extra fingers, tails, a new configuration of teeth, different skin or eye colors. The so-called Mutant Carrien is, however, a step far beyond that state of minor mutation. Mutant Carrien are horrific in appearance and no two are the same. While they maintain some minor hysiological conformity with regular Carrien, anything else goes. They might have a deformed, gnarled appearance, multiple limbs, larger claws, a slavering detachable jaw, enough strength to flip an APC or other hideous and dangerous mutations. Their twisted and orrupted bodies are alive with pain every moment, their flesh raw and weeping, exposed. Only the Carrien themselves know how to ease the pain of their mutant brothers and sisters and they do so instinctively, tending and crooning to their mutants keeping them fit and ready for when they might be needed.
Loose Mutant Carrien will attack, kill and eat lesser breeds of Carrien though a concerted effort by a group of Greater Carrien can bring them under control and into the sway of a pack. When unleashed Mutant Carrien are terrible and destructive beasts and nothing short of death will stop them. When attacking larger or more powerful targets the Greater Carrien use the mutants as shock troops, unleashing these horrors that belong to the pack to distract and soften up the enemy while they plan something more subtle and effective. In the attacks on the Cannibal Sector wall the mutants are often at the forefront and seem to take great delight in facing down the guns and scaling the wall.
Why Mutant Carrien suffer such complete and debilitating mutation is not known. Even in areas of the sector that are richer in mutagenics and where other creatures and Cannibals suffer a higher degree of mutation, the Carrien mutations seem to remain
in similar proportions as though this mutating factor were built into their genetic makeup. The dissection and analysis of Mutant Carrien remains has either yielded no data or has been confiscated by Head Office leaving everyone in the dark.
Cannibals:
”Looking at a hunting party of Cannibals is like looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror. They’re Human, but they’re not. They are all different shapes and sizes, all deformed in some fashion like an exaggeration of ourselves, and they look back on us with the same eyes we have. It is not unusual for the vain to get absorbed in their own reflection, so is it any surprise that sometimes our reflection comes calling to absorb us?”
Kediche, Human Operative, SCL 6C.2.
”They send their children out to root through the rubbish from the outfall pipes thinking that we won’t shoot them. Some Shivers won’t, and others crack under the strain. Sneaky little bastards, but we got wise to them quickly. That’s what snipers like Jason here are for though. Before he came to work for us he went into a school and shot down half a dozen pre-teens. Loves his work, don’t you Jase?”
Shiver Sergeant John Brock, induction tour for fresh Wall Shivers
The Cannibals are often underestimated and overlooked as a threat when new Operatives think of the dangers of the Cannibal Sectors. As with the Carrien, underestimating the Cannibals is a grave mistake. The Cannibals were in the sector first, and the accumulated knowledge of the clans goes far beyond the survival instincts of the Carrien, the Pigs and even the Manchines. The sectors are named after them. They are numerous and they survive; that is reason enough to be wary of them.Many think of the Cannibals as drooling, heavybrowed inbreds swinging bone clubs ineffectually against power armour. Many are inbred, and bone clubs do feature in their armouries, However, they are still Human, still have thumbs and it does not take a great deal of intelligence to pull a trigger. Cannibals know full well how to use firearms; either antiquated weapons from before The Fall or captured SLA, DarkNight and Thresher equipment. They know how to make their own crude armour, and they are adept at building traps, setting ambushes and finding their way around the Cannibal Sectors without falling to their hazards. Underestimate them, and you end up as a menu item.
All Cannibal Clans are superstitious and fill their lives with ritual and ceremony, from the carrying of charms and fetishes to the preparation of a hearth fire in the centre of the camp to ensure that light is always with them. The hearth fire serves two purposes, the clan take heat and light from it and at the same time, it serves as a warning to anyone close by that the Cannibals are in the area and they should tread softly. It is a very bad omen if the hearth fire goes out, and the Cannibals will seek to vacate the area as soon as possible, a thing which many Sector Rangers use to their advantage when dealing with them. When they do eat Human flesh, they ritualize it, make a sacrament, cutting the heart from the chest and squeezing the blood from it in front of the assembled clan before the feast can begin. Their taboos and rituals are constantly evolving and contain many clues to survival techniques within the Sectors.
Carnivorous Pigs:
”You could say I’ve made a career out of killing Carnivorous Pigs. You’d be wrong, it’s more like it made a career out of me. I’ve fought them everywhere, even found someone in Uptown who’ll pay good credits for a fresh Pig corpse. Don’t ask me why. Hell, I even fought a Pig that had taken a triple dose of Ultraviolence once. Don’t ask me about that one either. Still, I have never, never had as hard a time of it as I did one time out in Sector One. Massive it was - marbled white flesh and tusks as big as my arm. It went down, eventually, but what I didn’t realize was that there was a whole herd of the bastards. Want to see my scars?”
Brion, Human Operative, SCL 8B.4.
These creatures roam the sewers of Lower Downtown and the Cannibal Sectors hunting for food. The actual origins of the pigs are unknown but rumours abound, the most popular being about Al Crawley's Slaughterhouse and how, when biogenetic meat became readily available, his huge slaughterhouse was shut down and the pigs, instead of being killed, were simply let loose in the sewers. Left there for years, the pigs bred, mutated and became the carnivorous monsters that terrorize the subterranean tunnels today.
Manchines:
“You wouldn’t believe what I saw yesterday. There was a Manchine wandering through the market. It scared the shit out of everyone, but Baggie told everyone to keep calm and pretend we couldn’t see it. It looked like it was trying to pass for human, only it was obviously a bloody robot, stinking of decay and rust. It wore flyblown human flesh on its back that writhed with maggots and its metallic creaking was punctuated with the wet sound of white lumps of worms and insect eggs hitting the ground. It was hard not to throw up, but as soon as it arrived, it was gone, disappearing into a sewer as if it had never been here. The only evidence of its passing through was the clumps of rats that covered the pavement, feeding off the wriggling debris it left behind.”
Extract from ‘Downtown, my life as a Barrowboy’, Clyde Barstell
The Manchines of Mort City are the remnants of the Killa Chassis project that was shelved after a catalogue of failures. They were one of SLA Industries’ last attempts to master robotics before throwing their all into the more successful biogenetic experiments. Originating from a six-limbed prototype that was designed as an all-terrain six-legged gun platform for War Worlds, the core artificial brain was patched over and over to try to get it to operate without a controller, resulting in a working batch of prototypes that failed at most of their objectives. The War World tests did result in answers to some of the problems and the basic framework was revived to form the basis of a more deployable form of expendable worker, a humanoid that could work
where it was too dangerous for people. The Manchine came from this branch of the Roach project and was the only successful iteration of the hexapod mobile launcher design.
With the robotic police force that Killa Chassis envisioned, the cost of custom-designed deployment vehicles was always a sticking point, along with flexibility of mounted hardware, and this was solved with the simple design of making them fit a human frame, which opened up transport, body armour options and weaponry. Switching to a bipedal humanoid shape that could pass as human, solved more problems than the difficulties it introduced, with an added bonus of the hexapod brain being able to
accommodate two hidden limbs. The brain power was not enough to control four arms with hands, so the spare hardpoints were fitted with two massive rear-mounted articulated blades, folded into protective panelling below pivots at shoulder level, on their backs.
Unfortunately, further testing proved that the programming was simply too rudimentary for the complexities of an urban deployment, and a radical, new solution was approached. As far as the general public is aware, the Manchine is just a machine, given human flesh to blend in to the surroundings, but utterly mechanical beneath that skin. The true horror of the Manchine lies within its armoured skull: a brain made not of processor chips, but the preserved organic brain of what was once a human being, run through with a filigree of metallic threads and patches of nanotech colonies. What most do not know is that the Manchines were not insane to begin with. The volunteers for the Manchine program were all extensively screened psychologically for any signs of problems with the implantation process. Originally, the Manchines were created with fully human coverings, Hair and nails that grew back, blood for the times when they were injured. The scientists who put together the program understood that self-image is crucial for a creature such as this. The first volunteers for the program were placed inside machines that didn’t have human coverings and quickly became suicidal as they realized that they were no longer even vaguely human, never again able to have simple pleasures like the touch of someone else, or to walk down the street without everything shying away in fear. The final model that saw service on the streets was a marvel of modern science, passing for human to anything without a bio scanner. However, the skin coverings were derived from the stormer program and required massive ingestions of a protein based polymer. Originally, the protein could be consumed orally. A complex grid of specialist sensors regulated where the protein was administered, repairs to the skin covering were quickly made and the illusion of normality was maintained. However, as the costs of the protein and other repairs mounted up, several of those involved in the project were called in to account for the spiraling costs. In a meeting across several departments, it was decided that while a specialist infiltration unit was very useful in certain circumstances, the Operatives could easily fill that role and would be far cheaper to replace on a regular basis.
With the costs of maintaining the program considered too high, the remaining Manchines were shipped to handle the disaster that was the Fall of Salvation Tower to get some final value out of a failed experiment. It was thought that the Manchines would fade away and die without replacement parts or batteries, and would remove themselves as a problem. SLA underestimated its own efficiency and skill in creating survivors and the Manchines not only persisted: they thrived. In the Cannibal Sector they could kill as they were designed to do, there was flesh in abundance and the only things missing were power and replacement parts. The Manchines were designed to survive, to improvise and, while their numbers did dwindle, they managed to scavenge batteries and to construct crude replacement parts from scrap metal or even take apart other Manchines.
The standard Manchine is 6 foot of pitted carbon steel, titanium and molybdenum with two Human arms tipped with metallic claws, and a further two limbs carrying long blades that can be brought up from its back and fought with, giving it something
of the appearance of a mantis. Manchines never speak and always move silently, save for the quiet whirring of their servomotors and the hiss of their eye-lenses as they refocus. The Manchine is often covered in heavy clothing, such as a trenchcoat, and may also try to hide its face with a hat or hood. Underneath the clothing is the true horror, the patchwork of flesh from a hundred different victims all stuck together using crude thread and glues: some even held together by Kickstart and other drugs taken from the corpses of Operatives.
There are persistent rumours of variant models of Manchines, creatures made stronger, faster, more armoured than the basic models, even after the 600 years of bastardization as they have attempted to keep themselves functioning. There is even scuttlebutt among Operatives about intricate ambushes lead by even larger machines leading groups of Manchines, but surely those are just rumours and Ops attempting to cover up their own failed BPN's, as Manchines always operate alone. All but Old Man Digger.
Digger was the original prototype Manchine, built larger and more powerful to impress those in charge of funding. Very little is known of his original construction. Certainly it dates from around the time of the Conflict Wars when SLA were still looking
to create a perfect soldier: something that would be a perfect engine of destruction, something that epitomized SLA in every way, a symbol of their invulnerability. As everyone knows, in the end, the Stormer program proved to be more cost-effective
than the Manchine program, and it was the bioengineered legions that secured the victory for SLA, but the Manchines were not forgotten. The first appearance of Digger out in the open was around a year after The Fall, out towards Salvation Tower. It hadn’t taken long for those still living to degenerate into brutality and cannibalism and the largest number of the survivors had congregated in the tower, its massive construction providing them with some semblance of shelter from the denizens of the sector.
No longer. The Shivers out on the base of what was to become the wall watched in horror as the beast slashed and gored everything before it, ploughing through the Cannibals as easily as a man might scatter a floor of cockroaches. Digger reached the tower and disappeared inside, leaving a field of bodies behind him. For the next few hours, those on the wall watched breathlessly as some of the inhabitants got out of the tower in time; others chose to leave via the windows, choosing to fall to their deaths rather than face the engine of destruction now in their midst. Within half a day, observers on the wall looked out at the top of the tower where Digger stood, looking out over his new Empire.
From all archive footage, Digger is a seven meter tall mass of servos and armour plating with many bladed and arachnid arms splaying out from his great torso. Eyewitness reports indicate that more delicate and dexterous hands can be produced from
the belly of the behemoth, but these are never seen while Digger is in plain view. Those who have seen these smaller limbs say that they are the limbs he uses when he is dissecting those who fall into his domain. The remains of his long dead black and
rotting flesh clings to his armoured carapace and, while Digger himself seems to have moved on from the need to clothe himself in the skin that the other Manchines retain, he still decorates himself with odd pieces of limbs and flesh in a haphazard fashion, as a human might wear a bauble which takes their attention.
Scavs:
”They ducked back down behind cover, but I could see their shadows. They were screwing something to the ends of their rifles, so we sent Mac up ahead in his Shock armour. That stuff can handle anything, right? They popped back out of cover and fired, one after the other in about half a second. I swear, those things they screwed onto their guns just looked like bean cans or some shit, with fins. Anyway, the first one struck Mac’s armour full in the chest, spilling this greenish chemical all over it that blazed up so hot you could hear the chest plate of the armour pinging and creaking. Then the second shell hit the same spot and there was a huge cloud of freezing gas and this horrible shattering noise of breaking ceramic. They busted him open with heat stress and his chest plate went off like a grenade. The ceramic fragments took out Jade as well. Me? I decided discretion was the better part
of valor after that. They had other toys.”
Marcus, Operative, SCL 7A.2
To come into contact with a Scav is to meet the unknown in every way. What are they and from what is their origin? Are they sentient, are they intelligent? Are they male or female, both or neither? What do they want in Mort and why do they want it? It is probably not worth asking such questions and if you meet one, a better question is probably just: fight or flight? The latter is to be recommended. Scavs are resourceful tinkerers and engineers with an innate unconscious understanding of how things work or should be constructed to work, their hulking frames belying their technical skills and tactical ability. Normally only found in Cannibal Sector 1 in small groups, their appearance within the city is as unexpected by SLA Industries as it is dangerous. Up until recently, the prospect of meeting a Scav anywhere but within Cannibal Sector 1 were near to zero but reports of these seven foot tall fully
cloaked and masked individuals within the walls of the city have become more frequent. What they are doing in Downtown is currently up for supposition, but suggestions include a growing business relationship with the skin trade and other resource gathering incursions. It is likely they enter the city via the sewers, much like the Carrien and Carnivorous Pigs, but it is possible they are using limousines and town cars to travel incognito. If true, are they driving themselves around or are alliances with the black market stronger than could ever have been expected?
Scav society is organised around the jobs that need to be fulfilled, individuals are allocated to a role dependent on their strengths and capabilities. They appear to have little in the way of personality or sense of self, although if anyone cared to look more loosely at those Scavs seen in the city compared to those in the sector, it would soon become apparent that the ones in the city
are more personable. Their vocal apparatus is rudimentary, communication sounds like low guttural rasping and splutters accompanied by hand gestures. They appear to be getting their point across as ongoing business relationships with specific skin traders and other individuals from the black market have been progressing for some time.
The average Scav stands between 7 and 8 feet in height, with broad shoulders and dense muscle similar to NukeTendon tissue or Stormer muscles in large slabs over its body. Scavs are extremely heavy; their large, reinforced skeleton bearing the weight of their thick musculature as well as the heavy weapons and clothing that they favour. Scav physiology seems like an abhorrent, imperfect blend of Human and Shaktar traits. The most obvious is their features. Scav teeth are razor sharp and very long, forcing the Scav to hold their mouth open and to take their wheezing breaths through their teeth. These teeth also prevent the Scav from being able to vocalize anything more than grunts or hisses, and they communicate with their hands in a complex blend of sign language, military hand gesture and their own language that incorporates all of the above with some unique symbols, slang and body language. The fangs make it difficult for the Scavs to eat and, despite having a predatory look to them, they are omnivorous and require a balanced diet to remain healthy. While they can strip meat with their teeth and swallow with no problem, everything else must be prepared as soups, stews and broths.
Scavs on Mort use masks to filter the air they breathe and protect then from the response. Deprived of their masks for any period
of time, the Scav initially starts to wheeze, which gradually builds into an asthma-like cough. Serious problems only occur if the Scav suppresses the cough reflex or the atmosphere is particularly dusty. Then, these attacks become more and more violent until the creature can do little more than stand. If prevented from clearing their lungs, the mucus can build up to a dangerous level in 5-6 hours Additional patches of scales occur where the skin is rougher or thicker; places like the knees, elbows and the soles of the feet. Scavs have five fingers and five toes, with each digit ending in a small but powerful claw. Scav eyes are bloodshot and yellow, the pupils somewhere between slits and regular round ones. This gives their stare an almost wolfish aspect from under their masks. Their eyes are optimized for quick nighttime adaptation and have nictating membranes that close from the sides to protect them from dust and particles. Scav hearing, on the other hand, is no better than that of a Human. Scav skin tones are a ruddy, reddish hue, giving them the appearance of a heavy blush or someone who has just run a marathon.
Scavs are inveterate tinkers and are known for customizing their equipment to a massive degree. These modifications are crude and roughshod compared to the weapon houses of New Paris and Orienta, but many are no less effective for that. Every Scav customizes their own weaponry, building it to the perfect weight and balance for them to use, and every Scav weapon is as individual as a fingerprint. Anyone attempting to use a Scav-enhanced weapon is going to have trouble as the modifications are going to be wrong for them. The product of their labour is not the prettiest weaponry in the World of Progress, but it is no less effective.Many Operatives have been caught out by Scav innovations in weaponry, especially in the field of ammunition. Faced by heavily armoured opponents, the Scavs have learned to make modifications to their weapon barrels and ammo to enable them to penetrate even the toughest armour. Scav modifications are ugly and crude looking but, in the rare glimpses that the public has seen of the Scavs during live broadcasts, this heavy-set junkyard chic has captured the imagination, and many on the contract circuit are starting to imitate the Scav look in their own weaponry. Some Contract Killers have been known to pay exorbitant sums
for genuine Scav weaponry, particularly those items which don’t show up in the monthly catalogues.
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 31
Join date : 2021-10-14 -
Madness
by Admin Fri Dec 17, 2021 7:58 am
Madness:
“Look pal, if it’s happened. I’ve seen it, right. I’ve been drivin’ this cab aroun’ Downtown for fifteen years, yep, fifteen years. Lemme tell ya, I seen some evil stuff, I mean real evil, no holds barred horror. See here, this is their home, see, their own little abattoir like. I seen ‘em all, Halloween Jack, jeez he’s scary, man. Abandon, Slasher, The Stain, you name ‘em, I see ‘em. I even see Dolly Mixture, that new freak in town.
“Hey, they maybe crazy, but they ain’t stupid, serious, there’s something strange about them. They always know you’re here, there ain’t no hidin’ it. It’s like, like they can smell your fear or somethin’, I ain’t never got outta this cab ‘round here. Fifteen years a’ here too long, an’ they know it, I ain’t crazy, they’d take me for ol’ times sake it’s been so long. They’re worse than animals man, there ain’t no stoppin’ nor controllin’ ‘em. They’ll outlive your SLA Industries. Y’know, ya can’t... kill insanity. They’ll always be here...”
Santo Jefferson. Downtown Cab Driver, 15 Years
In the darkest regions of Downtown it’s secluded alleyways and backstreets standing nervously on the edge of Cannibal Sectors the rain washes the blood out onto the open streets for reluctant Shiver Units to pick up the first horrific clue to another murder case. When Carriens kill, it is usually for food and survival, they don’t leave much trace of bodies, not like the serial killers whose soul purpose is the pleasure of violence and insanity, recognition and self satisfaction through bloodshed. In this ghastly wake of reality, SLA Industries news channels grimly broadcast reports of articulated butchered bodies at the dawn of each new day. It seems that Mort’s Shiver Units are the messengers of death as they scour the streets in search of massacred bodies from the night before. They bring home the horrors to the eyes and ears of Mort public and so to the operative and employees of SLA Industries.
DownTown is a sinister jungle to the murderers in their multitudes, each one as confused and misguided as the next, led to believe that genocide is the civilian dream by SLA Industries media channels. Believing themselves to live the lives of Contract Killers, the civilian based murders make the bodies pile up in terrifying and abstract manners, skinned, slashed, hammered and torn. Television publicity has created a great many social mutations, mad-men in masks striving for the public’s admiration and love. Once the Shiver have left the bloodstained scene of the crime and continue the endless trail of mutilation the operative investigators and squads come in and take on the gruesome task of tracking down the World of Progress’ deadliest and most incessant psychopaths.
The Manslaughter Fixation:
On a claustrophobic and densely populated Industrial World like Mort, stress grows at a terrifying rate. The tired and restless generation in its desperate need for recognition, breeds insanity, like a unfathomable plague. Insanity is nourished in the World of Progress under the influence of television which depicts the glossy and glamorous image of violence. It stars SLA Industries’
combat operatives at their best, the Contract Killers battle and challenge rival versions in deadly pitch battles in the seedy streets of Downtown.The restless population love it, they can’t live without it. This strange aphrodisiac is one of the most popular
forms of stress and tension relief, albeit confined to a spectator sport rather than being competitive. However, the visual indulgence of massacre causes gross paranoid deficiencies within certain members of the public.
Psychosis has taken its toll on society and created the offspring to psychological disorder -Mort is plagued by serial killers. The symptoms of a serial killer vary widely, most suffer from social and sexual inadequacies, bad childhoods and severe mental disorders in most cases causing the unfortunate individuals to lead shadowy lives of extreme sadism and unspeakable violence. Most of Mort’s serial killers are highly influenced by Contract Killers motivating the civilian serial killers to hide their identities with bizarre and macabre masks and costumes. The murderers often kill in a certain style and leave their victims with a brutal trademark in disturbing admiration of their Contract Killer idols. The results of serial killers’ brutality can range from the mildly unpleasant to the mentally scarring. The most severe and savage examples of victims are the work of real madmen, psychotics with personal motives and purposes rather than the copycat killers in despairing search of attention and acknowledgment. SLA Industries’ Department of Psychology has evaluated eight general categories of urban killers that operate and reside in Downtown.
Contract Killers:
"We don't need to test him. We know he's whacked! Anyone who wants to be a CK has to have something seriously wrong with them. No, really, I mean they have to. Comforting isn't it?"
-Dr. Wolfgang Wierman, SCL 7A, Consulting Physician, Department of Psychology and Psychosis, on Glenn 'Carnage' Berry.
Contract Killers are mad. That's not meant figuratively; it's literal. The first requirement for entering the Contract Circuit is a Psychological Examination and Evaluation Exemption Certificate from the Department of Psychology and Psychosis. Interviews can be arranged by direct application, or from any sponsoring Department within SLA Industries that has close connections with the potential Contract Killer. The good doctors at the Bethlehem Institute supposedly only test company employees, but the circuit is rife with actual serial killers given the opportunity to either be the target of a Hunter Sheet or join the Circuit and get sponsorships doing what they already are fixated to do. There are also chosen few members of the Oppression Forces, mercenaries of rival corporations that are telegenic or famous enough to be of interest for the audiences. The latter two types, in addition to be given their Exemption Certificates are also offered a limited pardon by SLA Industries, so no BPN's or Hunter Sheets will be assigned against them as long as they follow the rules of the Circuit and only take out their grievances against other Contract Killers on camera.
In many cases, the work of the Contract Killer is purely showmanship. He or she acts like a madman in front of the camera in order to get better ratings, but, to a SLA operative, this is common knowledge. The media love to see Contract Killers really taking each other apart and the money falls in with the fame and sponsors. Many Contract Killers are stable and professional, more like combat businessmen than insane mad men. The public, however, believes the act that the Contract Killers present, not realizing that the Contract Killer is paid to kill. Although this is not always the case, there are Contract Killers where the pleasure of bloodshed is a top priority.
Props:
“Show me cash and I’ll show your enemies the wake of death.’’
Downtown Prop Spooky’s standard business line.
‘The Props’ is a term used strictly in Downtown to specify their gangland bodyguards and mercenaries for hire. Props are usually ex-company operatives and freelancers that hire themselves out to warring gangs -at a price. Like Contract Killers, Props wear a unique costume or use a particular weapon that becomes their trademark -something to be remembered for or by. They are feared and respected in Downtown, for their training and experience. Props know Downtown like the back of their hands which makes them particularly lethal, especially where cunning and stealth is required. It is also common to find them armed with company
armour, weapons and equipment as they are veterans of the streets. A large majority of Props keep their mercenary career as a secret identity: Props always wear masks to hide their true identity. All good Props are experienced and must be approached with extreme caution as many have been diagnosed ‘unstable’.
Copycat Killers:
The copycat killers are a common problem in Downtown. These shallow individuals simply mimic the style and activities of feared and renowned serial killers such as Halloween Jack and Bane Root by wearing pumpkin masks or removing victims back¬bones for
secret possessions. Some copycat killers are frighteningly close but the large percentage are sad imitations compared to the genuine psychopaths. Copycat killers have been known to burn the palms of their hands in order to leave no hand prints at the scene of a crime. Out of all six categories, these individuals are the most paranoid and insecure. They receive no recognition from the public and are often assassinated by the real murderers they were trying to impersonate. Whenever a serial killer makes a name for himself on prime time Third Eye News, there are always about five or six copycat killers to follow in his bloody path.
Genocides:
The Genocides usually turn out to be the most savagely consistent of all six categories since they have no prejudice and preference as to who or what they kill, just so long as they can sustain their cruel blood-lust. Genocides always have a set pattern to their killing, they almost always stick to certain territory or a location and guard their realm from other killers with fierce
pride. Genocides are very animalistic and speak little or not at all. They remain silent and deadly, they have no comprehension of reasoning or compromise. Genocides are like lethal automatons with complete disregard for any form of life and their single purpose is murder by whatever means possible.
Obsessives:
Obsessives are probably the most organized and determined of the civilian serial killers. They kill for a reason that is personal to them. One may only kill people of a certain hair colour or name, or something else equally trivial which to the Obsessive is of the
utmost importance and must spend his or her life exterminating anyone called Susan with red hair, for example. This disorder can be caused by traumatic past experiences that the Obsessive has never quite got over. Obsessives are usually disturbed from an early age and the problem germinates slowly as the youth grows up until the individual suffers a tragic circumstance that sends him over the edge. Many Obsessives have collective fixations that are extremely disturbing to the public eye: Many collect trophies from their victims such as hair, eyes or even skin for self-gratificational purposes. Obsessives usually kill to satisfy themselves rather than the eyes and ears of the public. Everything that the Obsessive sees or does is significant to his or her
being and one will always struggle hard to express it in the most unnerving ways.
Cognates:
Cognates are a collection or group of serial killers who feel akin and join as one and begin a massed slaughter in Downtown. Cognates are few in numbers due to the asocial nature of most psychopaths however, there are some who remain insecure and rely on safety in numbers. Individualism still remains even in Cognates, there is no standard garb or uniform, only one’s self expression. Cognates will not accept copycat killers since they regard the mimics as having no pride or self esteem. Copycat killers are killed on sight. Cognates get confused with Downtown gangs whom the cognates take a great joy in hunting and finally killing. To the member of a Cognate, killing is a sport, the thrill of the chase.
Cultists:
The abject poverty, rampant unemployment and the general feel of insecurity spawn hostility towards the status quo, leading the young into gangs and the older into something more... sinister. For some, Mr. Slayer is a god to the World of Progress, and if feel animosity towards the world he has created, then there must be an opposing force to him. Most find the welcoming arms of a Suppression power, one of the Soft Companies and allows themselves to be radicalized into a domestic terrorist. For a select few, something else altogether calls for them, offering camaraderie, safety and above all, vengeance. This is the call of the cults, occultists and prophets that claim to know the Truth, willing to share it with their disciples if they only enact their will.
Some cults are purely destructive, like the body-horror of the Manchine Cult, but others are far more insidious, especially the ones that claim to have recourse with the fabled White Earth. It is only in recent years that SLA Industries has finally accepted the cults as a potential threat after some widely televised scenes of butchery, but information on active cults is near impossible to find, but the threat must be palpable enough for SLA Industries to begin issuing specific BPN's to deal with the rise of cults, Orange.
Ex-War Criminals:
"Welcome home, kid, that's what they tell me, fukkinassholes don't know the Steel Wings are attackin' our children an' rapin' our streets with mad cries an' false promises as if all I want is a feelin' of pride, damn kids ain't got no respect fur anyone or anything, I gotta teach the scum an' shit that I didn't do what I did fur nothin', I'll feed their foul mouths with lead, no one else tells the truth, anyways so here I am doin' my job an' what do I get, resistance, why can't the filth understand the will a' God, huh? I want what's mine an' that's my right as a citizen an' operative of Mort, the right to enforce the will a' God on the scum that feeds off the holy empire, I git so damn mad when all a' worked for has gone to waste an' the enemy has stolen the smiles from our pretty, little children who now got glass in their eyes an' knives in their hearts, they're litterin' the streets, no one's cleanin' away the bad times, does no one else see the fall of our empire and the blasphemy that's takin' place, that's corruptin' our women and our poor babies, they're growin' up sick n' twisted, I gotta cut up an' out the shit and let the society of God flourisj again, I'm gonna shoot down all the crap that's stinkin' out our lives an' washin' up on the doorsteps of the loyal an' the brave, am gonna tear the world down an' free it from the treacherous pestilence..."
Recorded by Ex-Shiver Logan's headset comm as 'Tremor Travis' mangled his body and continued to ramble on for a further two hours before he faded back into Cannibal Sector One.
A few decades ago, SLA Industries were still rewarding the Dante Veterans Rewards of Excellence (RoE), letting them keep their loyal and weather beaten equipment in memory of brave deeds. Then came the first instances of one of the returning and celebrated heroes going rogue and donning their war-hardened armour and weapons and wading into Downtown, mowing down civilian, Shiver and Operative alike with equipment intended for open war, not urban pacification. And the first was followed by a second, and a third, and so forth until the phrase Ex-War Criminal began to circulate Mort, depicting veterans returned from veritable hells where they suffered for their full, decade-long, term, that now slaughter and maim on behalf of a SLA Industries that is alien to all but themselves. They live a lie that they know only as the purest truth and will kill in cold blood to uphold it.
These men and women that have completed their service on places such as Dante and Cross were assumed to return "honourably discharged" after a decade on the chaotic War Worlds, they can finally return to civilization on Mort and retire peacefully. If only that were true. On places like Dante the death, the slaughter and the heavy shelling never ends. The Company Militia fights for SLA Industries all the hours of the day and night, day after day, week after week, year after year. There is no rest for the Militia, no kind words of comfort from loved ones, only the brutal intent of the rivals who are killing his friends around him. He shows no feeling or compassion, for he knows he will never receive it in return.
The only comforts the Company Militia have is the knowledge that he is fighting for his company and feeding his family back home, even though his average life expectancy is 28 hours. All he has is the urge to kill anything he sees and to slowly watch his sanity and values seep away, drained by the never ending conflict. When the veterans finally return home to Mort, the battle does not end. The Ex-War Criminals feel the necessity to continue fighting for the honour of SLA Industries and destroy the rivals that threaten it.
In the ideal world, these characters would be godsend to SLA because of their unfaltering loyalty and superior knowledge of warfare but they are not -they are a hazard to the public. The average Ex-War Criminal's philosophy is tragic and twisted due to the great stress and trauma experienced on War Worlds, and the horror they have witnessed and been party to. To the Ex-War Criminal everybody is the enemy and the subversives must be wiped from the surface of Mort if the World of Progress is to be pure once more.
The War World veterans live a lie, a snarled dream of freedom and progress but their motive is to cut out the dead wood so that the shoots of tomorrow can grow up in righteous and fertile society. Now they're back, they wish to wipe the slate clean by killing everything in their path. On their hit list are Carrien, Machines, DarkNight scum, civilians (blind and mislead proles, beyond saving), Shiver Units (fools who cannot understand their greater purpose), SLA Operatives (traitors working undercover for DarkNight and Thresher), Thresher (cowards in feeble Powersuits), News reporters (subversives spreading lies), the ground (littered with mines), loud noises (infantry shelling), domestic pets (spreading infection and disease), soft toys (bombs in disguise) and basically everything that the Ex-War Criminal sees.
The Ex-War Criminal is easily recognizable in any environment as their armour and equipment is Company Militia issue, ranging from Body Armour upgrades to full assault Power Armours, armed with the standard War World submachine gun, the FEN 'Warmonger'. In most cases typical armament carried by the Ex-War Criminal is far more powerful than that of the SLA Operatives. The armour is tougher, the guns more deadly -they have to be since they are designed to survive the endless wars of Dante and Cross.
Armour styles vary widely, designs differ in age and purpose. Some date from as far back as two centuries. Ex-War Criminals dressed in such ancient suits have either salvaged them from long lost silos or have been awarded them for honour in battle. Hence, Dante veterans are often garbed in dater Battle Suits like the 'Mastiff', the 'Widow Kiss' or worse, the MkIII 'Sinner' suit, the last and undoubtedly the most deadly production made by Killa Chassis before they turned traitor to SLA Industries in 408sd.
Since the rise of the nightmarish Ex-War Criminals, SLA Industries has stopped the RoE in the aim of preventing any more armed Ex-War Criminals becoming part of society of the World of Progress -but somehow the War Criminal population continues to rise, as if an ancient army of fanatics is growing in the depths of the Cannibal Sectors. SLA Industries has good reason to up the price on the Extermination Warrants - the Operatives hunting the maniacs need all the initiative they can get. All Militia going to Dante are kitted out with the best Heavy Armour composites, the most superior FEN-weaponry and in addition to this, every soldier has Nuke Tendon Implants to push them to the limit of their species' capabilities.
“Look pal, if it’s happened. I’ve seen it, right. I’ve been drivin’ this cab aroun’ Downtown for fifteen years, yep, fifteen years. Lemme tell ya, I seen some evil stuff, I mean real evil, no holds barred horror. See here, this is their home, see, their own little abattoir like. I seen ‘em all, Halloween Jack, jeez he’s scary, man. Abandon, Slasher, The Stain, you name ‘em, I see ‘em. I even see Dolly Mixture, that new freak in town.
“Hey, they maybe crazy, but they ain’t stupid, serious, there’s something strange about them. They always know you’re here, there ain’t no hidin’ it. It’s like, like they can smell your fear or somethin’, I ain’t never got outta this cab ‘round here. Fifteen years a’ here too long, an’ they know it, I ain’t crazy, they’d take me for ol’ times sake it’s been so long. They’re worse than animals man, there ain’t no stoppin’ nor controllin’ ‘em. They’ll outlive your SLA Industries. Y’know, ya can’t... kill insanity. They’ll always be here...”
Santo Jefferson. Downtown Cab Driver, 15 Years
In the darkest regions of Downtown it’s secluded alleyways and backstreets standing nervously on the edge of Cannibal Sectors the rain washes the blood out onto the open streets for reluctant Shiver Units to pick up the first horrific clue to another murder case. When Carriens kill, it is usually for food and survival, they don’t leave much trace of bodies, not like the serial killers whose soul purpose is the pleasure of violence and insanity, recognition and self satisfaction through bloodshed. In this ghastly wake of reality, SLA Industries news channels grimly broadcast reports of articulated butchered bodies at the dawn of each new day. It seems that Mort’s Shiver Units are the messengers of death as they scour the streets in search of massacred bodies from the night before. They bring home the horrors to the eyes and ears of Mort public and so to the operative and employees of SLA Industries.
DownTown is a sinister jungle to the murderers in their multitudes, each one as confused and misguided as the next, led to believe that genocide is the civilian dream by SLA Industries media channels. Believing themselves to live the lives of Contract Killers, the civilian based murders make the bodies pile up in terrifying and abstract manners, skinned, slashed, hammered and torn. Television publicity has created a great many social mutations, mad-men in masks striving for the public’s admiration and love. Once the Shiver have left the bloodstained scene of the crime and continue the endless trail of mutilation the operative investigators and squads come in and take on the gruesome task of tracking down the World of Progress’ deadliest and most incessant psychopaths.
The Manslaughter Fixation:
On a claustrophobic and densely populated Industrial World like Mort, stress grows at a terrifying rate. The tired and restless generation in its desperate need for recognition, breeds insanity, like a unfathomable plague. Insanity is nourished in the World of Progress under the influence of television which depicts the glossy and glamorous image of violence. It stars SLA Industries’
combat operatives at their best, the Contract Killers battle and challenge rival versions in deadly pitch battles in the seedy streets of Downtown.The restless population love it, they can’t live without it. This strange aphrodisiac is one of the most popular
forms of stress and tension relief, albeit confined to a spectator sport rather than being competitive. However, the visual indulgence of massacre causes gross paranoid deficiencies within certain members of the public.
Psychosis has taken its toll on society and created the offspring to psychological disorder -Mort is plagued by serial killers. The symptoms of a serial killer vary widely, most suffer from social and sexual inadequacies, bad childhoods and severe mental disorders in most cases causing the unfortunate individuals to lead shadowy lives of extreme sadism and unspeakable violence. Most of Mort’s serial killers are highly influenced by Contract Killers motivating the civilian serial killers to hide their identities with bizarre and macabre masks and costumes. The murderers often kill in a certain style and leave their victims with a brutal trademark in disturbing admiration of their Contract Killer idols. The results of serial killers’ brutality can range from the mildly unpleasant to the mentally scarring. The most severe and savage examples of victims are the work of real madmen, psychotics with personal motives and purposes rather than the copycat killers in despairing search of attention and acknowledgment. SLA Industries’ Department of Psychology has evaluated eight general categories of urban killers that operate and reside in Downtown.
Contract Killers:
"We don't need to test him. We know he's whacked! Anyone who wants to be a CK has to have something seriously wrong with them. No, really, I mean they have to. Comforting isn't it?"
-Dr. Wolfgang Wierman, SCL 7A, Consulting Physician, Department of Psychology and Psychosis, on Glenn 'Carnage' Berry.
Contract Killers are mad. That's not meant figuratively; it's literal. The first requirement for entering the Contract Circuit is a Psychological Examination and Evaluation Exemption Certificate from the Department of Psychology and Psychosis. Interviews can be arranged by direct application, or from any sponsoring Department within SLA Industries that has close connections with the potential Contract Killer. The good doctors at the Bethlehem Institute supposedly only test company employees, but the circuit is rife with actual serial killers given the opportunity to either be the target of a Hunter Sheet or join the Circuit and get sponsorships doing what they already are fixated to do. There are also chosen few members of the Oppression Forces, mercenaries of rival corporations that are telegenic or famous enough to be of interest for the audiences. The latter two types, in addition to be given their Exemption Certificates are also offered a limited pardon by SLA Industries, so no BPN's or Hunter Sheets will be assigned against them as long as they follow the rules of the Circuit and only take out their grievances against other Contract Killers on camera.
In many cases, the work of the Contract Killer is purely showmanship. He or she acts like a madman in front of the camera in order to get better ratings, but, to a SLA operative, this is common knowledge. The media love to see Contract Killers really taking each other apart and the money falls in with the fame and sponsors. Many Contract Killers are stable and professional, more like combat businessmen than insane mad men. The public, however, believes the act that the Contract Killers present, not realizing that the Contract Killer is paid to kill. Although this is not always the case, there are Contract Killers where the pleasure of bloodshed is a top priority.
Props:
“Show me cash and I’ll show your enemies the wake of death.’’
Downtown Prop Spooky’s standard business line.
‘The Props’ is a term used strictly in Downtown to specify their gangland bodyguards and mercenaries for hire. Props are usually ex-company operatives and freelancers that hire themselves out to warring gangs -at a price. Like Contract Killers, Props wear a unique costume or use a particular weapon that becomes their trademark -something to be remembered for or by. They are feared and respected in Downtown, for their training and experience. Props know Downtown like the back of their hands which makes them particularly lethal, especially where cunning and stealth is required. It is also common to find them armed with company
armour, weapons and equipment as they are veterans of the streets. A large majority of Props keep their mercenary career as a secret identity: Props always wear masks to hide their true identity. All good Props are experienced and must be approached with extreme caution as many have been diagnosed ‘unstable’.
Copycat Killers:
The copycat killers are a common problem in Downtown. These shallow individuals simply mimic the style and activities of feared and renowned serial killers such as Halloween Jack and Bane Root by wearing pumpkin masks or removing victims back¬bones for
secret possessions. Some copycat killers are frighteningly close but the large percentage are sad imitations compared to the genuine psychopaths. Copycat killers have been known to burn the palms of their hands in order to leave no hand prints at the scene of a crime. Out of all six categories, these individuals are the most paranoid and insecure. They receive no recognition from the public and are often assassinated by the real murderers they were trying to impersonate. Whenever a serial killer makes a name for himself on prime time Third Eye News, there are always about five or six copycat killers to follow in his bloody path.
Genocides:
The Genocides usually turn out to be the most savagely consistent of all six categories since they have no prejudice and preference as to who or what they kill, just so long as they can sustain their cruel blood-lust. Genocides always have a set pattern to their killing, they almost always stick to certain territory or a location and guard their realm from other killers with fierce
pride. Genocides are very animalistic and speak little or not at all. They remain silent and deadly, they have no comprehension of reasoning or compromise. Genocides are like lethal automatons with complete disregard for any form of life and their single purpose is murder by whatever means possible.
Obsessives:
Obsessives are probably the most organized and determined of the civilian serial killers. They kill for a reason that is personal to them. One may only kill people of a certain hair colour or name, or something else equally trivial which to the Obsessive is of the
utmost importance and must spend his or her life exterminating anyone called Susan with red hair, for example. This disorder can be caused by traumatic past experiences that the Obsessive has never quite got over. Obsessives are usually disturbed from an early age and the problem germinates slowly as the youth grows up until the individual suffers a tragic circumstance that sends him over the edge. Many Obsessives have collective fixations that are extremely disturbing to the public eye: Many collect trophies from their victims such as hair, eyes or even skin for self-gratificational purposes. Obsessives usually kill to satisfy themselves rather than the eyes and ears of the public. Everything that the Obsessive sees or does is significant to his or her
being and one will always struggle hard to express it in the most unnerving ways.
Cognates:
Cognates are a collection or group of serial killers who feel akin and join as one and begin a massed slaughter in Downtown. Cognates are few in numbers due to the asocial nature of most psychopaths however, there are some who remain insecure and rely on safety in numbers. Individualism still remains even in Cognates, there is no standard garb or uniform, only one’s self expression. Cognates will not accept copycat killers since they regard the mimics as having no pride or self esteem. Copycat killers are killed on sight. Cognates get confused with Downtown gangs whom the cognates take a great joy in hunting and finally killing. To the member of a Cognate, killing is a sport, the thrill of the chase.
Cultists:
The abject poverty, rampant unemployment and the general feel of insecurity spawn hostility towards the status quo, leading the young into gangs and the older into something more... sinister. For some, Mr. Slayer is a god to the World of Progress, and if feel animosity towards the world he has created, then there must be an opposing force to him. Most find the welcoming arms of a Suppression power, one of the Soft Companies and allows themselves to be radicalized into a domestic terrorist. For a select few, something else altogether calls for them, offering camaraderie, safety and above all, vengeance. This is the call of the cults, occultists and prophets that claim to know the Truth, willing to share it with their disciples if they only enact their will.
Some cults are purely destructive, like the body-horror of the Manchine Cult, but others are far more insidious, especially the ones that claim to have recourse with the fabled White Earth. It is only in recent years that SLA Industries has finally accepted the cults as a potential threat after some widely televised scenes of butchery, but information on active cults is near impossible to find, but the threat must be palpable enough for SLA Industries to begin issuing specific BPN's to deal with the rise of cults, Orange.
Ex-War Criminals:
"Welcome home, kid, that's what they tell me, fukkinassholes don't know the Steel Wings are attackin' our children an' rapin' our streets with mad cries an' false promises as if all I want is a feelin' of pride, damn kids ain't got no respect fur anyone or anything, I gotta teach the scum an' shit that I didn't do what I did fur nothin', I'll feed their foul mouths with lead, no one else tells the truth, anyways so here I am doin' my job an' what do I get, resistance, why can't the filth understand the will a' God, huh? I want what's mine an' that's my right as a citizen an' operative of Mort, the right to enforce the will a' God on the scum that feeds off the holy empire, I git so damn mad when all a' worked for has gone to waste an' the enemy has stolen the smiles from our pretty, little children who now got glass in their eyes an' knives in their hearts, they're litterin' the streets, no one's cleanin' away the bad times, does no one else see the fall of our empire and the blasphemy that's takin' place, that's corruptin' our women and our poor babies, they're growin' up sick n' twisted, I gotta cut up an' out the shit and let the society of God flourisj again, I'm gonna shoot down all the crap that's stinkin' out our lives an' washin' up on the doorsteps of the loyal an' the brave, am gonna tear the world down an' free it from the treacherous pestilence..."
Recorded by Ex-Shiver Logan's headset comm as 'Tremor Travis' mangled his body and continued to ramble on for a further two hours before he faded back into Cannibal Sector One.
A few decades ago, SLA Industries were still rewarding the Dante Veterans Rewards of Excellence (RoE), letting them keep their loyal and weather beaten equipment in memory of brave deeds. Then came the first instances of one of the returning and celebrated heroes going rogue and donning their war-hardened armour and weapons and wading into Downtown, mowing down civilian, Shiver and Operative alike with equipment intended for open war, not urban pacification. And the first was followed by a second, and a third, and so forth until the phrase Ex-War Criminal began to circulate Mort, depicting veterans returned from veritable hells where they suffered for their full, decade-long, term, that now slaughter and maim on behalf of a SLA Industries that is alien to all but themselves. They live a lie that they know only as the purest truth and will kill in cold blood to uphold it.
These men and women that have completed their service on places such as Dante and Cross were assumed to return "honourably discharged" after a decade on the chaotic War Worlds, they can finally return to civilization on Mort and retire peacefully. If only that were true. On places like Dante the death, the slaughter and the heavy shelling never ends. The Company Militia fights for SLA Industries all the hours of the day and night, day after day, week after week, year after year. There is no rest for the Militia, no kind words of comfort from loved ones, only the brutal intent of the rivals who are killing his friends around him. He shows no feeling or compassion, for he knows he will never receive it in return.
The only comforts the Company Militia have is the knowledge that he is fighting for his company and feeding his family back home, even though his average life expectancy is 28 hours. All he has is the urge to kill anything he sees and to slowly watch his sanity and values seep away, drained by the never ending conflict. When the veterans finally return home to Mort, the battle does not end. The Ex-War Criminals feel the necessity to continue fighting for the honour of SLA Industries and destroy the rivals that threaten it.
In the ideal world, these characters would be godsend to SLA because of their unfaltering loyalty and superior knowledge of warfare but they are not -they are a hazard to the public. The average Ex-War Criminal's philosophy is tragic and twisted due to the great stress and trauma experienced on War Worlds, and the horror they have witnessed and been party to. To the Ex-War Criminal everybody is the enemy and the subversives must be wiped from the surface of Mort if the World of Progress is to be pure once more.
The War World veterans live a lie, a snarled dream of freedom and progress but their motive is to cut out the dead wood so that the shoots of tomorrow can grow up in righteous and fertile society. Now they're back, they wish to wipe the slate clean by killing everything in their path. On their hit list are Carrien, Machines, DarkNight scum, civilians (blind and mislead proles, beyond saving), Shiver Units (fools who cannot understand their greater purpose), SLA Operatives (traitors working undercover for DarkNight and Thresher), Thresher (cowards in feeble Powersuits), News reporters (subversives spreading lies), the ground (littered with mines), loud noises (infantry shelling), domestic pets (spreading infection and disease), soft toys (bombs in disguise) and basically everything that the Ex-War Criminal sees.
The Ex-War Criminal is easily recognizable in any environment as their armour and equipment is Company Militia issue, ranging from Body Armour upgrades to full assault Power Armours, armed with the standard War World submachine gun, the FEN 'Warmonger'. In most cases typical armament carried by the Ex-War Criminal is far more powerful than that of the SLA Operatives. The armour is tougher, the guns more deadly -they have to be since they are designed to survive the endless wars of Dante and Cross.
Armour styles vary widely, designs differ in age and purpose. Some date from as far back as two centuries. Ex-War Criminals dressed in such ancient suits have either salvaged them from long lost silos or have been awarded them for honour in battle. Hence, Dante veterans are often garbed in dater Battle Suits like the 'Mastiff', the 'Widow Kiss' or worse, the MkIII 'Sinner' suit, the last and undoubtedly the most deadly production made by Killa Chassis before they turned traitor to SLA Industries in 408sd.
Since the rise of the nightmarish Ex-War Criminals, SLA Industries has stopped the RoE in the aim of preventing any more armed Ex-War Criminals becoming part of society of the World of Progress -but somehow the War Criminal population continues to rise, as if an ancient army of fanatics is growing in the depths of the Cannibal Sectors. SLA Industries has good reason to up the price on the Extermination Warrants - the Operatives hunting the maniacs need all the initiative they can get. All Militia going to Dante are kitted out with the best Heavy Armour composites, the most superior FEN-weaponry and in addition to this, every soldier has Nuke Tendon Implants to push them to the limit of their species' capabilities.
Last edited by Admin on Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:11 pm; edited 1 time in total
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 31
Join date : 2021-10-14 -
Corporate
by Admin Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:09 am
Corporate:
“Look, it’s pretty simple really: SLA will come down hard on you for creating your poxy little indie brand, okay? Don’t matter what it is: they’ll kill you whether it’s competitor power armour or tinned beans. Right? Never ever try to take the cash from SLA’s pocket. It’s like signing your own Extermination Warrant. Gotta say, these rival Scrummy Cakes are pretty nice though. Pity this here is the last one in existence.”
‘Big Ted’, Human Operative, SCL 7, squad ‘Destroy All Carrien’
The recurrent threat to SLA has always come from those with ambition, drive and recklessness. Those who want to imitate SLA
Industries, whilst also tearing it down. These are the corporate enemies and terrorist organisations. They create competing products and attempt to destabilise SLA’s power structure. These companies invariably rise and fall; destroyed by the company’s loyal and efficient SLA Operatives, but two main forces endured throughout the centuries: DarkNight and Thresher.
Smaller entrepreneurs are referred to as Soft Companies and continually try to undercut SLA with rival sodas, pharmaceuticals, fast food and cheap weaponry. They reap potentially lucrative rewards, but probably at considerable cost.
DarkNight:
“Look, for the last time, where did you get the DarkNight hardware? Come on Billy, if you don’t talk to me, then Mr. High Ranking corporate executive over there with the cellphone will get Dean to come down from Extraction and tear open your mind.”
“Okay. Steve Allen. He runs the ‘Supersnail’ in Downtown. He’s been DarkNight since I was a kid. He got me out of some deep trouble last year. He got me in. All I had to do was bump off some Shivers. No big deal. They’re only Shivers.”
“142, Billy. One hundred and forty-two Shivers!”
“It was fun.”
“You dirty little... I’m going to rip your little heart out and jump down your...”
“Now that’s quite enough, Grimm. Billy has been quite helpful. Go and see if you can get a hold of Mr. Allen. I’ll call Mr. Dean to come down and have a look inside Billy’s brain just to make sure he isn’t hiding anything.”
DarkNight is an organisation of subversives, aiming to overthrow SLA Industries directly. Their reasons are unknown but it is inferred that they are acting on behalf of the people. The problem with this hypothesis is that they actively use terrorism and take both operatives’ and civilians’ lives. The more realistic proposal is that they are lining their pockets at their victims’ expense
with no ulterior motives. One thing is known and that is that their are at the head of almost every organised crime ring on Mort. They have a very organised structure, spreading throughout Mort Central and beyond. They use operatives and employees in the manner of SLA Industries and resemble SLA in many ways, inexplicably so as they are vying to replace them.
“With the glamorous lifestyle of a DarkNight espionage agent you will travel throughout the known universe fighting the evils of the omnipresent SLA wherever you go. From the saliva-jungles of Queue to the scarred resource world of Xiv or the exotic mutated wasteland of Mort, you will never be bored and will live a worthwhile life of adventure and excitement. Join DarkNight, make a difference, free the universe!’
DarkNight Fever, DarkNight re-education and recruitment leaflet.
There are three main types of DarkNight-employees most frequently encountered by the operatives of SLA Industries;
Interceptors, highly skilled infiltrators specializing in infiltration, assassination and sabotage, sometimes even operating in the open in the Contract Killer Circuit or in the pirated propaganda-feeds that DarkNight splices in with normal SLA-broadcasts, brandishing some SLA-operatives decapitated head live, to all homes, but most often their work is only felt when a bomb goes off in a busy intersection or mall or a celebrity gets his head blown off. They are DarkNights terror weapon.
Subversives, operatives trained to groom and turn both civilians and SLA Industries employees to the DarkNight-message and to pawn off DarkNight's illicit goods, weapons and drugs to the flourishing black market. There is little organized crime that takes place on most industrial planets in the World of Progress that doesn't have at least one DarkNight Subversive involved.
Traitors, the final and most dangerous operative employed by DarkNight. They range from a civilian trying to complement their unemployment-payments by running errands for DarkNight to proper turncoat SLA Operatives that have had their disillusions and frustrations radicalized into domestic terrorism. There are even persistent rumours of Sleepers, agents deeply indoctrinated and with a false identity hypnotized over their fanatic true selves that go through Meny and enter into the service of SLA Industries, awaiting the day when they are activated with a keyword.
Even after 750 years of terrorism, subversion and propaganda and even open conflict on a number of War Worlds, DarkNight is still going strong, digging it's roots ever deeper into the crumbling soul of SLA Industries.
Thresher:
“Squad One move up. HESH the MALs.”
“HESH locked and loaded.”
“Squad Two give One cover fire with the Reapers.”
“Opening up now, sir.”
“Move up. Squad One.”
“Got movement, I count 10, maybe 15, suits.”
“Open fire!”
“Johnstone, Phillips, Caranara are down. HESH has
no effect, switch to AP.”
“Form defensive positions, takecover. Squad Three
move up. Squad Four, I want your man with the Decimator to...”
“Squad One to Squad Four, what happened? We just lost control.”
“This is Squad Four, they jumped behind us, god damn it, they can fly! Watch your ass One, they’re coming in from your...”
“Squad Four, Squad Four! Squad Two, move out, we can’t take those guys, call for artillery. We’ll hold them as long as we can, I repeat...”
“This is DB 776 to Artillery Command, we have a no win situation here. Our coordinates are 77456 - 88492, let it rain danger close. Goodbye to whoever’s listening...”
“This is Artillery Command, coordinates locked, firing now. Goodbye DB 776, good luck in the next life...”
“Let it rain danger close” was a call sign used by combat troops on Dante to inform artillery batteries that they wished an artillery strike directly on their position, killing them but also the enemy.
For much of the population of Mort, mention of DarkNight brings forth an image of a bit of a lovable scamp, the rapscallion that thumbs it's nose at the big bad SLA Industries, putting to action what many civilians feel too powerless to do, but bring up Thresher, and watch their face pale at the thought of it's Power Armoured troops bringing the distant warfare of War Worlds to their very doorstep, and for once, that fear is entirely justified.
Thresher is the one and only corporate entity that can challenge the vast superiority of technology, biogenetics and resources of SLA Industries at an even footing on the field of battle. The sole reason why so many of the War Worlds have been embroiled in generations of war, Thresher's foothold on those forsaken places has been nearly impossible to dislodge as even full units of Stormers armed with the very best SLA Industries can offer can barely even hold Thresher's Power Armoured troops at bay.
What was initially thought to be some new military branch of DarkNight, until that assumption was discarded after witnessing the devastation that Thresher forces laid on DarkNight-troopers at Dante, in fact originates from SLA Industries itself, when one of the many exploratory fleets sent out into the newly dubbed World of Progress discovered a cache of vastly superior and advanced Power Armour left behind by one of the recently defeated Conflict Races. That particular group of scientists and mercenaries saw in that secret stockpile their chance to become independent from SLA Industries that had only recently crowned itself as the singular oppression power in the world. In that same cache they also found the locations of a number of other similar military stockpiles and even a few functioning factories that could theoretically manufacture even more of the suits.
And so, the World of Progress had another oppressor power once the newly coined Thresher Incorporated began to capture the caches and key strategic resources to manufacture more of the now retrofitted Power Armours.
The edge that Thresher has over it's rivals solely comes from it's control of these retrofitted, alien Power Armours, much larger, stronger and faster than anything SLA Industries has been able to mass produce and armed with weaponry even the largest Stormers would struggle to lift, let alone use, firing unique depleted uranium ammunition that has been found to disrupt the manipulation of flux and Ebb, much to the horror of Ebons all over the World of Progress. Most of the actions taken by Thresher tends to be limited to taking and holding vital resources on far-flung worlds that often degenerate into War Worlds when SLA Industries responds with equal force, but on occasions, for reasons frequently unclear, Thresher will launch devastating strikes on the more heavily populated worlds, even numerous attacks on Mort itself, each such assault long remembered with the trauma of enormous Power Suits rocketing through every sector of Mort, massive weapons spraying hailstorms of shells and explosives into the crowds and buildings, immediately followed by often equally devastating response from SLA Operatives as they pursue their faster and bigger prey.
“Look, it’s pretty simple really: SLA will come down hard on you for creating your poxy little indie brand, okay? Don’t matter what it is: they’ll kill you whether it’s competitor power armour or tinned beans. Right? Never ever try to take the cash from SLA’s pocket. It’s like signing your own Extermination Warrant. Gotta say, these rival Scrummy Cakes are pretty nice though. Pity this here is the last one in existence.”
‘Big Ted’, Human Operative, SCL 7, squad ‘Destroy All Carrien’
The recurrent threat to SLA has always come from those with ambition, drive and recklessness. Those who want to imitate SLA
Industries, whilst also tearing it down. These are the corporate enemies and terrorist organisations. They create competing products and attempt to destabilise SLA’s power structure. These companies invariably rise and fall; destroyed by the company’s loyal and efficient SLA Operatives, but two main forces endured throughout the centuries: DarkNight and Thresher.
Smaller entrepreneurs are referred to as Soft Companies and continually try to undercut SLA with rival sodas, pharmaceuticals, fast food and cheap weaponry. They reap potentially lucrative rewards, but probably at considerable cost.
DarkNight:
“Look, for the last time, where did you get the DarkNight hardware? Come on Billy, if you don’t talk to me, then Mr. High Ranking corporate executive over there with the cellphone will get Dean to come down from Extraction and tear open your mind.”
“Okay. Steve Allen. He runs the ‘Supersnail’ in Downtown. He’s been DarkNight since I was a kid. He got me out of some deep trouble last year. He got me in. All I had to do was bump off some Shivers. No big deal. They’re only Shivers.”
“142, Billy. One hundred and forty-two Shivers!”
“It was fun.”
“You dirty little... I’m going to rip your little heart out and jump down your...”
“Now that’s quite enough, Grimm. Billy has been quite helpful. Go and see if you can get a hold of Mr. Allen. I’ll call Mr. Dean to come down and have a look inside Billy’s brain just to make sure he isn’t hiding anything.”
DarkNight is an organisation of subversives, aiming to overthrow SLA Industries directly. Their reasons are unknown but it is inferred that they are acting on behalf of the people. The problem with this hypothesis is that they actively use terrorism and take both operatives’ and civilians’ lives. The more realistic proposal is that they are lining their pockets at their victims’ expense
with no ulterior motives. One thing is known and that is that their are at the head of almost every organised crime ring on Mort. They have a very organised structure, spreading throughout Mort Central and beyond. They use operatives and employees in the manner of SLA Industries and resemble SLA in many ways, inexplicably so as they are vying to replace them.
“With the glamorous lifestyle of a DarkNight espionage agent you will travel throughout the known universe fighting the evils of the omnipresent SLA wherever you go. From the saliva-jungles of Queue to the scarred resource world of Xiv or the exotic mutated wasteland of Mort, you will never be bored and will live a worthwhile life of adventure and excitement. Join DarkNight, make a difference, free the universe!’
DarkNight Fever, DarkNight re-education and recruitment leaflet.
There are three main types of DarkNight-employees most frequently encountered by the operatives of SLA Industries;
Interceptors, highly skilled infiltrators specializing in infiltration, assassination and sabotage, sometimes even operating in the open in the Contract Killer Circuit or in the pirated propaganda-feeds that DarkNight splices in with normal SLA-broadcasts, brandishing some SLA-operatives decapitated head live, to all homes, but most often their work is only felt when a bomb goes off in a busy intersection or mall or a celebrity gets his head blown off. They are DarkNights terror weapon.
Subversives, operatives trained to groom and turn both civilians and SLA Industries employees to the DarkNight-message and to pawn off DarkNight's illicit goods, weapons and drugs to the flourishing black market. There is little organized crime that takes place on most industrial planets in the World of Progress that doesn't have at least one DarkNight Subversive involved.
Traitors, the final and most dangerous operative employed by DarkNight. They range from a civilian trying to complement their unemployment-payments by running errands for DarkNight to proper turncoat SLA Operatives that have had their disillusions and frustrations radicalized into domestic terrorism. There are even persistent rumours of Sleepers, agents deeply indoctrinated and with a false identity hypnotized over their fanatic true selves that go through Meny and enter into the service of SLA Industries, awaiting the day when they are activated with a keyword.
Even after 750 years of terrorism, subversion and propaganda and even open conflict on a number of War Worlds, DarkNight is still going strong, digging it's roots ever deeper into the crumbling soul of SLA Industries.
Thresher:
“Squad One move up. HESH the MALs.”
“HESH locked and loaded.”
“Squad Two give One cover fire with the Reapers.”
“Opening up now, sir.”
“Move up. Squad One.”
“Got movement, I count 10, maybe 15, suits.”
“Open fire!”
“Johnstone, Phillips, Caranara are down. HESH has
no effect, switch to AP.”
“Form defensive positions, takecover. Squad Three
move up. Squad Four, I want your man with the Decimator to...”
“Squad One to Squad Four, what happened? We just lost control.”
“This is Squad Four, they jumped behind us, god damn it, they can fly! Watch your ass One, they’re coming in from your...”
“Squad Four, Squad Four! Squad Two, move out, we can’t take those guys, call for artillery. We’ll hold them as long as we can, I repeat...”
“This is DB 776 to Artillery Command, we have a no win situation here. Our coordinates are 77456 - 88492, let it rain danger close. Goodbye to whoever’s listening...”
“This is Artillery Command, coordinates locked, firing now. Goodbye DB 776, good luck in the next life...”
“Let it rain danger close” was a call sign used by combat troops on Dante to inform artillery batteries that they wished an artillery strike directly on their position, killing them but also the enemy.
For much of the population of Mort, mention of DarkNight brings forth an image of a bit of a lovable scamp, the rapscallion that thumbs it's nose at the big bad SLA Industries, putting to action what many civilians feel too powerless to do, but bring up Thresher, and watch their face pale at the thought of it's Power Armoured troops bringing the distant warfare of War Worlds to their very doorstep, and for once, that fear is entirely justified.
Thresher is the one and only corporate entity that can challenge the vast superiority of technology, biogenetics and resources of SLA Industries at an even footing on the field of battle. The sole reason why so many of the War Worlds have been embroiled in generations of war, Thresher's foothold on those forsaken places has been nearly impossible to dislodge as even full units of Stormers armed with the very best SLA Industries can offer can barely even hold Thresher's Power Armoured troops at bay.
What was initially thought to be some new military branch of DarkNight, until that assumption was discarded after witnessing the devastation that Thresher forces laid on DarkNight-troopers at Dante, in fact originates from SLA Industries itself, when one of the many exploratory fleets sent out into the newly dubbed World of Progress discovered a cache of vastly superior and advanced Power Armour left behind by one of the recently defeated Conflict Races. That particular group of scientists and mercenaries saw in that secret stockpile their chance to become independent from SLA Industries that had only recently crowned itself as the singular oppression power in the world. In that same cache they also found the locations of a number of other similar military stockpiles and even a few functioning factories that could theoretically manufacture even more of the suits.
And so, the World of Progress had another oppressor power once the newly coined Thresher Incorporated began to capture the caches and key strategic resources to manufacture more of the now retrofitted Power Armours.
The edge that Thresher has over it's rivals solely comes from it's control of these retrofitted, alien Power Armours, much larger, stronger and faster than anything SLA Industries has been able to mass produce and armed with weaponry even the largest Stormers would struggle to lift, let alone use, firing unique depleted uranium ammunition that has been found to disrupt the manipulation of flux and Ebb, much to the horror of Ebons all over the World of Progress. Most of the actions taken by Thresher tends to be limited to taking and holding vital resources on far-flung worlds that often degenerate into War Worlds when SLA Industries responds with equal force, but on occasions, for reasons frequently unclear, Thresher will launch devastating strikes on the more heavily populated worlds, even numerous attacks on Mort itself, each such assault long remembered with the trauma of enormous Power Suits rocketing through every sector of Mort, massive weapons spraying hailstorms of shells and explosives into the crowds and buildings, immediately followed by often equally devastating response from SLA Operatives as they pursue their faster and bigger prey.
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 31
Join date : 2021-10-14 -
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum|
|
|