The “Mancers” Of The Brotherhood By Pat Willis#224534

Within the Brotherhood clan family there is a special class of pilot referred to as a Mancer. This is short for Pyromancer and Cryomancer or those who can control the very forces of nature within their fire and ice mechas. Both types of pilots have exceptional control over their mecha and its abilities to either burn or freeze up a target.

Pilots of either class often learn and take up a secondary specialization in the other. Ultimately making a pilot who is in total control of their fire/ice weapons, as well as governing which weapon effects will apply on which shot that is fired.

The Pyromancers are arguably the most feared of the two classes. Their progression up the fire chain of mechas is a long and expensive one. Commonly starting with the Cindron mecha, to the Inferno, to the dreaded Gigus, going to the fearsome Ignis, and culminating thus far in mastery of the Yallan mecha. Other mechas may have a bit of extra damage here and there to flame based weapons or even have splash or burn attached to them. However the above listed mechas are pure specialization in the fire weapons, and chosen by their pilots for that very reason.

The Cryomancers may not be as feared as their hot headed brethren, but they are every bit as dangerous. Again like the Pyromancers the Cryomancer focuses specifically on mechas outfitted by build stats to cope with the freezing technology and ordinance that accompanies it. They commonly start with the Nifthel mecha, then move to the Warg, then the Freon, followed by the Sever, on to the mighty Frigis, leading to Jottun, and finally coming to a head with the Boreas mecha.

Each pilot totally masters the mechas in their class until they can perform astounding feats of damage and show total control over the weapon effects utilized by them. The Pyromancers tools of trade are Burn, and Splash. The Cryomancers utilize Freeze, and Slow. Both combinations are devastating if used properly, and can reduce an enemy formation to either cinders, or frozen ice sculptures in moments.

Brotherhood Mancer pilots of note.

KiloToneRecoil and his Ignis Mecha.

Pat Willis and his Frigis mecha.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

Retirement (Brotherhood Lore) By Pat Willis#224534

The Brotherhood assembled in the grand meeting area of Garhan station. All branches of the clan families were present, each decked out in his or her best pilot suits. Each proudly displaying their various medals of accomplishments, or wearing their various shoulder sashes displaying rank over their tekmonk robes.

The tone was hushed, various groups intermingled, but the conversations were very subdued. Every now and again you may hear an exclamation from this or that party, but it is quickly cut off and the somber tone returns.

Conversation dies down and we all take our seats in front of the main dais. Eventually the area lights dim and our commander, the Mother Superior of the entire Brotherhood, Deborah Roaché-Hudak stands before us on the dais. Her words were soft, her tone sincere, and her demeanor was almost sad.

She announced her retirement from the Brotherhood. She had enough endless conflict, warring factions, and never ending strife. She was simply tired and only wanted peace. She was going to retire somewhere off in the neutral territories. Maybe start a Snavrum hunting company, maybe become a farmer. She had achieved heights most pilots only dream of, and few reach. She was always on hand when needed to settle a inter clan dispute, or just drink with us regular grunts in the mess.

To say she will be missed is an understatement as the whole Brotherhood is in mourning this day. We all moved as one, every single one of us on our feet and our hands snapped to salute. She smiled faintly and returned our gesture. Then with no other words she simply turned and boarded her transport.

We will miss our Mother superior of metal slaughter dearly. She was a mentor and friend to many of us, and an inspiration as a leader. If you agreed with her or not that mattered not at all, you had to admire how she never backed down. That is how we’ll always remember her.

*Note- Deb has retired from C. W. as she no longer has time for them or the prep work that goes into them. Joel Parras/ KiloToneRecoil will be heading up the clan families with internal Brotherhood help.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

On The Menu by David McCallum #701548

You scoff at the potato and bacon, the sour cream and chives.


Yet you sit there munching your bacon sandwich, happy to hear tales of the secret Order of the Potato and their exploits...


You realise not that yours is a racial memory, either of pilots who have gone long since or from the very mechs with which you interface.


There was a time when we fought for our very existence, our mechs too light to deal with that with which we fought. Their systems were to advanced and they lurked and ambushed us with abandon.


Yet as humans, we thought outside the square, employing cunning and guile where we lacked metal. We turned the tide.


It was not a warrior who saved us but member of the camp entourage. A cook, some say a chef.


Hearing that the enemy hid in ambush, he suggested the potato to flush them out. It needed to be fired at low velocity else it disintegrate, but it will be faster than wildlife yet slower than gunfire. The odd speed should confusion motion sensors and elicit an automated response from a hidden mech.



It was suggested that rocks could be used, as they were more plentiful. But the chef tapped his nose and told them to stick with the potato for when jammed in a barrel there would be no windage.


And it worked as he had said. A well placed potato would activate an enemy mech that was hull down, and it would be mobbed by lighter human mechs.


But the victory was short lived, and in short order the enemy began to ignore potatoes.


When he heard of this, the chef nodded and said he had expected this. Most likely they had adjusted their threat recognition systems, and tied infra red with motion detection.  Potatoes must be stored at a cool temperature. If both motion and heat did not register at the same time, the threat was not valid.


A potato could not be heated thus, for while baked or boiled would give the heat signature needed, once fired it would simply be mashed...


And thus he gave us bacon, and the enemy could not help but respond and so they died in droves.


Forced them back we did, however they were not finished. Their gates ended in inhospitable places. On desert worlds they regrouped, places so hot that the heat of bacon was a norm.


So it was cold that was needed now. The chef passed forth sour cream, both cold to touch and yet fluid, so it would adhere and outline the hard lines of a mech so that it stood out against the smooth and ever changing dunes.


They made their final stand on lifeless rocks and cold dead moons. We know them now as the Yomi Reefs, but as a battle ground it froze potatoes to their barrels, leached the heat from bacon. Even sour cream was useless, for without an atmosphere the rocks were already cold and the light was stark and shadowed, while rocks were jagged and linear without the wearing of water and wind to smooth it.


The chef only nodded, for he knew the enemy had made its final mistake. Food was life, and in a lifeless place, no food could grow. And so he chopped chives and told them to fire these upon the enemy to mark them.


They did not understand, for what use where green stalks? He smiled, for there was no green in the Yomi Reefs, where light does not reach and air does not exist. If it has green and moves it is the enemy, and you will hit it.


We use these tactics still against newer enemies; Bismarck, Drocha, Drake, Xerxes.


We match our heavies to their heavies and flush out their lights so ours may face them.


We send forth those that most would think mad, those who run in Ant and Anzu, armed with only Potato and Bacon, with Sour Cream and Chive. Those who test the waters and flush out the vast enemy forces so our battle lines may respond as appropriate.


Those who on some level can remember the way and the weapons that chef gave us.


Is that all that was on the menu you ask?


Never underestimate the power of the food... there are always new recipes for success.

Submited by David McCallum #701548

What Is The God Mecha, Brotherhood Lore By Pat Willis#224534

The Brotherhood believes it is their sacred duty to find only the best possible pilots in the galaxy. In finding these pilots and bringing them into the clan the Brotherhood strengthens themselves, and brings one more pilot into the fold who may possibly harness the power of the God Mecha.

What you need to understand is that the God Mecha is two beings in one. Some kind of vastly intelligent biological life form, and a mecha unlike anything we have ever seen before. The two are in perfect symbiosis, forming some kind of Supreme Being out of this union. The Brotherhood seeks to bring about that perfect state by finding, training, and practicing their ancient and archaic ways with the best pilots they find.

In doing so they hope to groom the future pilots who may achieve such a perfect union with their mechas to replicate this Supreme Being. This is their mission statement, and the reason they exist. To that end they are both a fighting Clan, and a recognized religious organization. The latter provides them with vast immunity throughout the factions.

To them it is a holy and just mission, all who oppose them in this are weak minded, and considered to be part of the ash the new galaxy will be built on. Some say this is more of a doomsday cult given military grade weapons. The Brotherhood thinks of itself as an organization believing in creation, as their key belief is that when the God Mecha comes, it will purge the universe of unbelievers through weapons that we can only now start to realize. Those who fall in the purge will be the ground work from which a new galaxy is laid.

No one knows exactly what the God Mecha will look like though there are many speculations that it is either waiting in the wings to be unveiled or has yet to be found. One camp thinks it is humanity who will build this machine, the other thinks it will be a Forerunner or older design we have yet to uncover. Both sides agree though that once it is found and the right pilot found for it, then the galaxy will tremble, the sentient mechas (Beast mechas of the Gigus, Nakshi, and Skriag race, as well as the Jadoon, Yallan, and Novum) will be brought into a mighty army, to march forth and begin the purge that the God Mecha will end.












Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

The Brotherhood Moves In To Garhan Station Official Clan Lore By Pat Willis#224534

There is a station deep within Shogunate space, bordering the frontier markers into wild space that is a relic of the Forerunner wars.  It is an orbital defense platform that has been reactivated and redesigned to be a mecha manufacturing plant by the artificial construct housing forerunner consciousness Kellek, and the Niodemancer Johnathan Judas. To get there you have to go through a specific set of gate co-ordinates, in a very specific sequence. That sequence acts like tumblers on a lock and when the final tumbler is in place you reach Garhan station. This is possible due to the station being on the “spine” of the gate network.

The gates act as wormholes like multiple spider webs overlaid on one another across the galaxy. These wormholes intersect at various points shooting off into other wormholes which lead to the various gates we know, and use for transport throughout the galaxy. This station sits on the wormhole spinal column of that network. Due to this unique positioning, it houses within it a gate room. This room has roughly 50 gates in it which can tune themselves to pretty much go anywhere the pilot wishes across the galaxy by tapping into this massive network.

The sheer size of the station is impressive in and of itself.  A little over two miles long, and about the same again as thick, the station houses hundreds of massive labs for mecha research and development, and thousands of internal as well as external weapon systems to protect itself from any threat. Going down the center of the massive structure is a large central elevator system which can go just about anywhere in the station. Housed within are also crew quarters for a couple thousand, multiple mess halls, armories, and recreational facilities. All in all it is a perfect defensible position and gives you access to the entirety of the known galaxy to boot.

Now this station is inhabited by the Brotherhood. In an effort to secure more traction with the Shogunate, and expand influence further through the galaxy, Kellek, and Judas agreed to allow the Brotherhood to base all of their clans within the clan family under one roof. They allow the Brotherhood to live and work from there, in exchange for help manufacturing and designing new weapon, equipment, and mecha ideas. The Brotherhood conducts its and the Shogunate business as needed using the gate room, and in their off time the Brothers and Sisters can relax knowing that there isn’t much that can attack the station much less find it.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

The History Of The Forerunners Leaked Data From A Classified Source

Forerunners colonized the galaxy over 100,000 years ago with huge FTL starships. Though these ships were fast, they did not travel instantaneously, and the galaxy is vast and not without its interstellar dangers. So wherever the Forerunners colonized, they brought Gate technology, and niodes keyed to Gates on other worlds, so they could move safely and instantaneously between worlds. They turned the rare planets of the galaxy with biology compatible with their own into colonized gardens. Earth was just one such world among many.

Forerunner civilization lasted thousands of years. It would be wrong to call the Forerunner worlds an empire, because they eschewed central governance. Forerunner history was an endless series of shifting alliances, in part because of Forerunners’ temperamental egocentrism, in part because of the same imperatives of the geography of Gates which make Mecha Galaxy fragmented today.

After several thousand years of relative order, improvements in niode technology caused niodes to replace more and more other Forerunner tech. But this presented a problem because of limited supplies of niobium. Resource wars began to consume more and more Forerunner attention.

Eventually, a Forerunner scientist developed a gene-targeted Forerunner-killing virus which could infect humans without harming them. Forerunners began tailoring viruses which would kill off only the members of a rival clan. But the virus mutated, and the Forerunners lost control over it. Within a decade, every major Forerunner enclave was wiped out, and after another century had passed Forerunners everywhere were dead.

Unable to maintain Forerunner technology, humans succumbed to a paleolithic state. By the time they had built their own technological civilizations the Forerunners were long since forgotten ….

Forerunner biology and civilization
Forerunners were more different from humans than humans were from neanderthals, though not as different from humans as we differ from chimpanzees. Forerunners were categorically more intelligent than humans; a Forerunner only as smart as the smartest human would have been regarded as severely brain damaged, much as a human with the intelligence of a chimpanzee is. This intelligence was not only greater than ours, it was fundamentally alien in character. They could easily master human languages but their own language is dense, complex, and nearly incomprehensible. This has limited archaeologists’ ability to understand what records the Forerunners left behind.

Humans were an integral part of Forerunner society, outnumbering the Forerunners but utterly enslaved by them. To the Forerunners, humans were not people, just a kind of very capable draft animal used for a range of purposes. Between the availability of human servants and their own vast intelligence, the Forerunners never developed what we would call computers or robotics. Forerunner psychology is impossible for humans to truly understand, but the best approximation would be to call it “nonviolently psychopathic”. Forerunners had neither care nor animosity toward one another. To a Forerunner, the solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma is obvious: the two prisoners will coöperate because it is the optimal strategy in the long run. They were fiercely independent, but built vast anarchic networks of shared trust.

But this also meant that when Forerunners did come into irreconcilable conflict, the fighting was fast and ruthless. And this was eventually their undoing.

Human knowledge of the Forerunners
Human archaeologists know a fair bit about the Forerunners. They have translated some of the data that has survived, encoded in ancient neuroptics. They have looked at Forerunner histories and found images of their striking, uncannily inhuman faces. They have learned to use some of the technologies the Forerunners have left behind.

Mechs are possible because of recovered Forerunner technologies which humans have learned to control — niodes, neuroptics, and the brain inductor used to connect pilot to machine. Humans are a distinct species from Forerunners but just similar enough that our neural structure occasionally happens to match a Forerunner’s brain in the necessary ways to allow a person to interface with a matrix of niodes. This is why some humans can pilot mechs, but the ability is rare. It was the discovery of Forerunner artifacts on Earth that created the Mecha Galaxy era, when humans realized that the niodes and Gates archaeologists had found could be used together to reach faraway planets.

But humans have not been able to truly master Forerunner technologies. Niodes are a limited resource because the technique for making them from niobium has been lost, and in fact may be beyond the human brain’s capacity to understand, so all niodes are recovered Forerunner artifacts. Humans don’t know what ended the Forerunner civilization, but the clues they have say it was ended by war. They are right … sort of.

What were the Forerunners?
In the world of MechaGalaxy, everyone knows that the anthropologists of the 20th Century were completely wrong about the origins of humanity. Humans did not evolve on Earth. But the truth is close, in some ways, to the thinking of those primitive early scientists. Imagine if the story they told had been right, but things had gone differently in one respect: homo neanderthalensis didn’t die out, but instead survived to live together with homo sapiens when civilization emerged.

Might the neanderthals have been enslaved by the more intelligent humans? Perhaps. We do know that was what happened on the Forerunner homeworld … only homo sapiens didn’t enslave homo neanderthalensis, homo sapiens were enslaved by another, more intelligent hominid species — homo prodromos — the Forerunners. The Forerunners colonized a territory of countless planets which they linked using Gates, until their own internal conflicts destroyed them.

The Brotherhood, Beliefs By Pat Willis#224534

They are a clan that calls the Shogunate  systems home, whose members no matter the race or creed all share one common belief, The God Mecha will come.  What exactly is this God Mecha? It is supposedly a machine of great, and terrible power that is supposed to arrive in the next couple centuries. One that only the best of the best can pilot, and have the honor of being able to control. To find the best of the best is the Brotherhoods job.


They comb the galaxy, other clans, outer territory settlements, and even other Factions to find those who they think may have the capability to ascend to such piloting heights. Any one in their way is a target to be eliminated, as they stand in the way of the Brotherhoods mission. If they find a promising recruit, they take him or her in and reveal to them the ways of the Brotherhood. Some say these are technological secrets on par with the Forerunners advances, others say they reach back through the ages and use black sorcery, and yet others still claim it is a mixture of  both combined to make a frighting third option.


Once the individual is in and has certain secrets revealed to them, as well as accepted by them, they are placed under the strictest of discipline serving in the Shogunate guard. There they are endlessly trained to fight in and through all kinds of conditions. Be they external or internal. They become one with their machines during these times, and it is there in the middle world between man and machine, the God Mecha is made known to them. Not much is known about this process but it is assumed that the stress induced state combined with prolonged mechanical integration produces a sort of “Cyber astral realm”.


It is in this transcended state they see the God Mecha, and promise him or herself to the Brotherhoods cause. From that moment on they are simply referred to as Brother or Sister by other Brotherhood members, and considered one of the clan. Rarely is one seen out in public without their trademarked cyber monk’s robes, or a heavily modified and outfitted mecha. They seek out other pilots like themselves who may be deemed worthy, and they all share the hope of having the glory of piloting the God Mecha.

 Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

Otto von Bismarck By Damien Valentine#885659

In the two centuries before the First Digital Dark Age, human history was essentially the story of European nation-states competing among themselves to dominate Old Earth. Among these nation-states were over two dozen "German" kingdoms, with a common origin in the medieval Holy Roman Empire and whose people spoke a common language. Because of their small size, no single German kingdom could challenge the supremacy of other kingdoms -- like Austria, Britain, and France -- on the world stage.

Otto von Bismarck was born to an aristocratic German family in 1815. By 1862, he became right-hand man to the most powerful of the German kings, Wilhelm of Prussia. In this same year, he delivered the infamous "Blood and Iron Speech", which marked the start of his campaign to create a single German state with Wilhelm at its head. Following rapid military victories over Austria and France -- during which Bismarck himself was promoted to major-general -- the other German states were convinced it was better to side with Wilhelm than against him. In 1871, all the German kingdoms were at last united as a single "German Empire"...or "Reich"...with Wilhelm crowned as its "Kaiser", Wilhelm I.

Naturally, the Kaiser relied heavily on Bismarck, promoting him directly to the rank of Prince, and appointing him Imperial Chancellor: both positions were answerable only to the Kaiser. In effect, Bismarck was the "power behind the throne", controlling both domestic and foreign policy without any checks or balances. Fortunately for the German people, Bismarck was a genius, masterminding a complex and shifting network of alliances which kept Europe at peace for the next 40 years. This allowed the Reich's soldiers to found colonies on other continents (especially Africa); while conditions in these colonies were literally gruesome, resources from the colonies greatly benefited the Reich. This, combined with Bismarck's relentless focus on industrial development, made the German Empire one of the world's superpowers almost instantly.

In 1890, Bismarck was forced to retire by the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II. Wilhelm wanted an even more aggressive foreign policy, in order to glorify himself and his Reich: the eventual result was World War I. Bismarck himself did not live to see Wilhelm's punishment, dying in 1898 not long after composing his memoirs.

---

German armies had been some of the most professional on Old Earth -- and some of the most ruthless -- long before the German Empire was established. Drochah gladly recruited hundreds of the Reich's officers into his "League of Ages", including General Erich von Falkenhayn, possibly Paul Fleck and Oskar von Hutier, and of course Otto von Bismarck. The German division was considerably more familiar with the tenets of modern warfare than most of the League (for instance, the division led by Xerxes), and when the final battle on Tyndahl began, they knew at once it would be a disaster. They retreated in good order, led by Bismarck: indeed, Bismarck's status as "the father of Germany" kept him in power, and his followers united, much longer than was the case for most League survivors.

By now, Bismarck had learned of the failure of succeeding German states to duplicate his accomplishments and revive the Reich. He also learned the galaxy was disunited, ripe for conquest by a powerful leader. Given his character and circumstances, his declaration of a "Final Reich" was not only logical, but probably inevitable. Bismarck had also learned something else: that in the Fourth Millennium, a man's mind and body could be replicated perfectly within a matter of days.

Posing as a mercenary Clan, Bismarck's followers approached the acknowledged master of cloning technology, Drake Novum. The terms of their deal remain unclear, but the result was that Bismarck's army grew to over 1,000,000. Further expansion was made possible through Bismarck's purchase of several thousand androids, and with plundered or second-hand Mecha acquired in mercenary campaigns. When battle was finally joined in the spring of 3300 (that is, March 2015), Otto von Bismarck was in command of the largest Mecha army since before the Galactic Wars.

Submitted by Damien Valentine#885659

Historical Data By Damien Valentine#885659

From: Squadron Commander "Pulsar"
To: Nova Actual
Subject: The Lem Rackmount
Date: September 18, 3290

General --

Per your request, I am attaching this letter as an addendum to the formal report on our expedition to Lem.  The report mentions a single intact rackmount, found in the ruins of Lem's primary military academy.  Obviously, the passage of two or three centuries has not been kind to it; Harcourt says we might never be able to recover some of the data.  As of this moment, here is what we have.

- Item 1: A pre-recorded training lecture for cadets going into the officer corps.  Things must have been getting pretty bad if they were cramming kids into mechs before they had even finished their classes.  A partial transcript follows.

"At ease, cadets.  Be seated.  Welcome to 'Fundamentals of Operational Strategy'.  I'd like to start out by dispelling a particularly foolish rumor -- this is not a TACTICS class.  You will not be comparing a Proto Beam's rate-of-fire to that of an S2A launcher; we will not be discussing formations and maneuvers; arguments about the relative superiority of night-fighting versus daytime actions are completely irrelevant here.  None of that is STRATEGY.

For the past 700 years, the essence of strategy has been the ability to take and hold Gateways.  As you can see on the syllabus, most of this course will be concerned with that aspect of strategy.  Your future courses will cover logistics, campaign morale, effective coalitions, the proper use of orbital bombardment, and military intelligence.

That last subject, however, touches on my first lesson.  It's a lesson that I myself -- and hundreds of other officers -- learned at great cost in the First Galactic War.  Before you start drawing up plans to attack or defend a Gateway, you MUST scout out what's on the other side.  I won't belabor the point with horror stories about what happens when you don't.  That's what your Military History instructor is for.  But you will not, repeat NOT, graduate this course without an understanding of the need for basic reconnaissance.

In theory, of course, skirmish-weight Mecha are ideal for this job, such as our own Gemini-class.  They are armed, and they already possess a niode matrix.  However, since there is a high likelihood of encountering a well-entrenched enemy on the other side, you must regard your recon force as expendable.  I recommend deploying an unmanned probe.  Obviously this means you will have to use some of your niode stockpile to assemble a shipping pallet, and you probably won't get those niodes back.  But you have to think of it as an investment rather than a sacrifice.  Resist the urge to...

[DATA CORRUPTION ERROR]

...besides skirmishing.  I have already referred to their potential as reconnaissance vehicles.  They are also ideal for defending Gateways and urban terrain.  As you have no doubt realized by now, skirmish Mecha are not only smaller than assault Mecha, but less expensive and more numerous as well.  It is therefore easier to build a large squadron, which can apply an overwhelming volume of firepower to a single target -- that is, an enemy which has just appeared in your Gateway.  They also tend to be faster and more maneuverable than assault Mecha, again because of their lighter mass, which allows them to easily navigate city streets, or move quickly between the Gateways in a Gateway cluster.

As you know, assault-weight Mecha are the opposite of skirmish Mecha in every way.  Heavy, sluggish, expensive.  But they can carry multiple weapon systems, so their versatility can make up for their faults in certain situations.  More importantly, they are better armored, an advantage you can supplement by installing torso plating or a shielding device.  This makes them ideal for attacking an enemy Gateway.  Your point-man takes the brunt of enemy fire in an assault Mecha, buying time for the rest of your squadron to arrive.  If you somehow find yourself with a surplus of niodes and assault Mecha --

[Laughter from the audience.]

-- Thank you, cadets, now AT EASE.  Outstanding.  To continue.  In that unlikely situation, you may consider using the 1-kiloton Mark 54 Atomic Demolition Munition.  A.K.A., the handheld nuke.  Only the very heaviest assault Mecha, in the 35 to 55 ton range, are capable of installing this device -- and each one must be permanently connected to five dedicated niodes, or else...

[DATA CORRUPTION ERROR]

...Obviously, only pilots with considerable experience in last-second ejections are suitable.  Current combat doctrine dictates that only the squadron's point-man should carry a handheld nuke...

[DATA CORRUPTION ERROR]

...the only way a Gateway cluster can be irradiated.  For example, the military bases surrounding it are frequently powered by fusion reactors, and small fission reactors of pebble-bed design are relatively common among large assault Mecha, including our own Taurus-class.  If they should be destroyed, whether accidentally or deliberately, several thousand square meters will be covered in nuclear waste.  Mecha can shrug this off, but the infantry platoons and civilian work crews who will follow them cannot.  In tomorrow's lesson, we will review squadron-level procedures for requesting a decontamination team.

ATTENTION!  Dismissed!"

- Item 2: A file labeled "Combat Vehicle Recognition Guide".  Most of the illustrations are lost, along with all of the text, but Harcourt was able to recover five pictures.

- Item 2a: Artist's rendering of a planetary surface, with bare black soil in the foreground; mountains and a city skyline in the background.  The sky is overcast, with peculiar red clouds; stars and a large moon are visible through the clouds.  A light mech, painted in red, takes up the left- and center-foreground.  Like the mechs in Items 2b through 2e, it does not correspond to any known mech design.  Its legs and feet are unarmored, exposing the internal mechanisms.  A rotary missile launcher is mounted on each shoulder, and some kind of energy weapon is mounted on the left arm, almost certainly a variant of what we now call the "Proto Beam".  The right arm has a three-fingered hand.  In front of the mech, and on the right side of the picture, a lightly armored infantryman is cradling some kind of projectile weapon, possibly a shotgun or sniper rifle.  There is a unit insignia on his right shoulder pad, a red shield with a diagonal yellow bar.

- Item 2b: Digital photograph of a rainy street.  Both the pavement and the buildings are of pre-Digital Age design.  A light vehicle with four wheels takes up the center-foreground, identifiable as a modern Bantam-class utility vehicle.  Behind it are two light mechs, equipped with what looks like a dual cockpit and the intakes for jet engines.  (Harcourt believes these are an early form of jump-jet, like the improvised versions we use today; Plunkett claims they are simply turbine IC engines.)  All three vehicles are painted blue.  In my opinion, the mechs depicted here are the "Gemini-class" mentioned in Item 1.

- Item 2c: Digital photograph of an underpass, which opens out onto a sunny but ruined street.  The buildings are constructed in a style reminiscent of the First Digital Dark Age, and all the signposts are in English.  Three infantrymen, in full powered armor, are taking shelter within the underpass.  They are wielding what appear to be projectile-firing assault rifles, of a type popular in the First Digital Dark Age.  A light mech, of the same type as shown in Item 2b, is firing on them with chin-mounted cannons.  The mech could be painted in the same shade of blue as the mechs in Item 2b, but the local sun is extremely bright (an "F-type main-sequence subgiant", according to Plunkett) and contrast washes out most of the background colors.

- Item 2d: Digital photograph of a large mech -- probably equivalent to a modern medium or heavy mech -- standing on concrete and viewed from above.  It is equipped with a single Gatling-style weapon on each arm, presumably the precursor to our "Dual Gatlings", and missile racks are visible on either side of the cockpit.  The word "ZIDSON" or "ZIOSON" is partially visible above the cockpit, along with the words "Assault Mecha".

Item 2e: Another digital photograph of the mech shown in Item 2d, this time in three-quarters profile.  The mech's unusual arm structure is clearly visible here, more like a mobile construction crane than a proper mech.

Item 3: A map of Lem's capital city, from when the planet was inhabited.  It must have been made before the Battle of Lem, since what it calls the "Outer Commercial District" is now entirely filled with ruined pillboxes and bunkers, and no ballistic missile installations are shown near the spaceport.

Item 4: A text file labeled "Cyberiad".  Half the text is missing -- including the author's name and the date of publication -- but it appears to be a work of fiction from Old Earth, which would obviously place it somewhere in the First Digital Dark Age.  Why a military-issue rackmount would devote even one kilobyte of space to an ancient fairy-tale is beyond me.  Maybe the Lemnites viewed it as some kind of holy scripture.

Plunkett claims he knows a few Illyrian research colonies that might pay a high price for the data on this rackmount, once Harcourt is finished with it.  I strongly recommend seeking those colonies out.  Nova's Irregulars are unlikely to turn any kind of profit from the rusted ferronite and smashed-up Proto Beams we salvaged from Lem.

Pulsar out.









Submitted by Damien Valentine (313m3n7a1, Kongregate player) #885659

Ideology Of Two Transmogrification Cults

Amongst the Antihumans, it can be noted that Kellek, the Norunners, and their doctrine of conquer all in front of you, has left a rather indelible lasting impression on their culture.

Having already had conquered and subjugated pretty much everything in their entire known universe for thousands perhaps even millions of years and integrated it all into one vast empire, this left the factions somewhat at a loss for where to go next from that.

The moderates amongst them, they realized that the only place left to conquer was inside oneself, and through the brutal tools of cybernetic grafting and personal gene modding they went about trying to carve themselves new forms as a means to go about self-improvement with the same ruthless efficiency as their ancestors had when "settling" the negaverse.

The reactionaries, believing themselves to already be perfect and perhaps indeed the closest still living link to their divine NoRunners as well as Kellek himself, through twisted reasoning, found this approach as adopted by the moderates (of limiting the conquering to improving upon yourself instead of ones neighbors) to be downright disgusting.  If nothing outside remained to be conquered, which was impossible, then one simply has to start over, and reconquer. Somehow.  The (large) opening of a gateway between our two dimensions has served as a force to awaken this long dead theologic conflict... as a massive mutated crusade between moderate and extremist shakes the core of Antihuman society.

Where the rat people fit in with this is far more mysterious. They are enacting a very ancient protocol, in essence unknowingly behaving as living software resources, making the system environment for a primordial program that was established to try and solve their dimension's environmental problem from long ago.
What lies at the core of these three set ups though... and why it is that the rat people seem to be much less affected by the pollution than their mutant Antihuman neighbors, are things that remain to be figured out.

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

A General Awakens

I had just finished purchasing and test running my Nakshi from a bulk buy with Star Factories. Seems it came from the same deceased pilot that Wocky did, some pilot named Jabber. He got in over his head and got himself killed by the Niodemancer Johnathan Judas. As a result all his mechs went up for sale given he was no longer around to pay the storage fees to the Cogwerk Port facilities. Least they knew how to make some credits and niodes as they just auctioned off anything left behind by a pilot who could no longer pay, or got themselves deceased. The mech in question was named Impact and was a fine specimen of a Nakshi. He had all his gear fully outfitted, and from the little bit of time I spent in his cockpit he was very intelligent, with a vast knowledge of Forerunner lore. Granted I had to let my Jadoon, Apocalyptor know this particular beast mech was off limits, and any "friendly fire" accidents would be frowned upon. Still and all I was happy with my purchase, as such a fine living machine was a rare and a valuable combat asset. I paid to have him shipped back to The Brotherhoods hanger, feeling pretty good about my new purchase then headed home.

Turns out he was shipped before I left the ports and was already in the hanger bay when I got back.

"I recognize this one Pilot, he is a tough combatant. I have served with him before."  Wocky informed me as I went about doing basic maintenance and upkeep on this new purchase. She had an air of pride in her voice like she approved of what I had just done by attaining him.

"Well Wocky ole girl what can I say? The price was right, we needed the firepower and his teleporting ability sure as hell will come in handy in combat."

She went silent and went back to her self diagnostics with no further comment to be had. I finished up my maintenance checks and headed off to the assembly room. I was just in time as the new clan war was announced and sign ups began. I registered with my clan as available, then happily went to my bunk for the night. A few days went by and not much was happening in The Brotherhood Of The Black Watch, basic drills were preformed, mech maintenance went on, and evaluations of combat readiness and weaknesses were given out. All in all I hadn't given much thought to my new mecha since I bought it as I was pretty wrapped up in the usual day to day activities of the clan. That's when it happened, the techies from the hanger bay paged me.

"Pilot Willis report to hanger area 7, repeat Pilot Willis report to hanger area 7."

"Just great now what is going on?" I thought to myself, as I made my way to the hanger bays. Last time they paged me like that it was to give me a write up for weapons discharge in the confines of the hanger when Wocky went and blew up her old Dilophos body upon transference of her battle A.I. to her new Regis body. That was a hefty fine on top of a hell of a mess to clean up. Took me the better part of a month to get that all squared away.

I had just stepped out of the maintenance lift leading down to the hanger when I was met by a very nervous looking tech, who immediately started filling me in on why I was down here.

"Pilot Willis, we didn't do anything honest!", were the first words out of his mouth. He then went on to inform me. "We hooked up your Nakshi to run diagnostics on him, make sure everything was in working order. We let it run over night no big deal, we do that on all new acquisitions in then hanger. Everything was fine for a couple of days and then we came in this morning to find...well we found this!"
.
We had been walking while he went off rapid fire about the situation at hand, finally we stood in front of the bay that housed my new mecha. Only it wasn't a mecha in the bay. Instead we were looking at a metallic cocoon of some sort. Bio-mechanical in nature, all pulsating lights and ferronite weave. I just stood there slack jawed staring at the thing.

"From the readings we are getting your Nakshi is in there." The tech helpfully chimed in seeing the look on my face. He then looked at me very seriously, leaned in close, and half whispered, "Maybe it's turning into a General Nakshi!"

I had no idea what in the stars he was on about so barely containing myself I yelled in his face, "What the hell is a General Nakshi!?"

He looked at me as if I was simply ignorant and took a deep breath to compose himself before launching into an explanation. "The story goes like this, even mecha have their legends especially when they are living, breathing, thinking beings. There are stories amongst the eldest of Skraigs and Gigus that speak of powerful, dangerous ancient Nakshi they simply refer to as Generals. These mythical creatures were stronger, smarter, packed more firepower and had the collective abilities of their brethren. They had the fierce love of fighting like the Gigus, they could tap into the psychic network of the Skraig, and possessed the capabilities of self-transportation the likes of which has never been seen before, at least not without destabilizing the system they are in at the time.

They were able to operate alone or with a pilot, either way mattered not to these ancient beasts.  They commanded thousands of troops and watched entire systems burn. It is said that some of them were forged in the death of countless worlds, but none can prove it today.  They are rumors, ghost stories even, that the beast mecha tell each other during down time from missions. They had identifying marks of course such as multiple Harmonic Disruptor s beyond the standard two we see them equipped with today. They also had the Skraig primary weapon of the Ursa Strike embedded in their central core, and were built with customization in mind being proficient with any weapon they cared to install on themselves. In short they were the ultimate beast machine.

No one knows where they may be hiding if in fact any exist today, speculation points towards the Forerunners taking these living engines of destruction with them when they departed from this galaxy. Questioning of the Nakshi we know today reveals nothing, likewise with Skraig, and Gigus. They exist as a story for now within the circles of the living machines we pilot today.  We take heed however for any living mechas tales of a bogeyman should be taken most seriously especially for the races of man who may one day accidentally stumble across these ancient and powerful creatures. But you brought home a Nakshi, and now there is a cocoon around it and we can tell by all the readings we have done on it that there is something going on in there!" He was near breathless as he finished his story.

I had no idea how to reply or even what to say to such a wild legend, turns out my response if I had one would be cut short anyways. The Ferronite cocoon started to crack, strange fluids seeped out from the newly made crevices.  Eventually there was a huge shudder and the cocoon gave way entirely. My Nakshi stood there in all his glory, looking around and settling his gaze upon me. Without further pause he leaned forward and swallowed me up.

As any know integration with a beast machine is a disorienting process at best. New perspectives to get used to, new senses to adapt, and an ever present rumbling voice in ones head. As I integrated with my mech it was all of the above times about a thousand, I thought I was going to simply come unhinged when a deep voice cut across my consciousness.

 "Be at peace Pilot, my transformation is at an end. I had absorbed enough ambient planetary emissions, and cosmic energies to begin my becoming. I am now stable and on line. I heard all your tech had told you while I was mutating and he was correct. I have ascended and become a General. As far as I know the first this galaxy has seen in thousands of cycles. Know you are in no danger, and that I am ready for action."

I hardly knew how to reply, so instead I brought up its weapon load out to see just what I was dealing with. The Nakshi had grown new slug throwers that was apparent by the odd protrusions over his shoulder couplings. All in all it had grown and mutated with three Ursa Strikes in its chest cavity all linked together and set to fire as one large cannon, it had developed on each arm two Harmonic Disruptors leading back to a singular over sized variant of the same slaved into the main arm cannons to provide additional power and fire suppression. It had also grown two perfect Vadhar cannons, an Exacto shot, three Big Berthas, along with two Death's Rage Cannons, and a Fiasco cannon. It also somehow was able to grow two perfect Rupture Shot flame weapons.The Nakshi had developed extra heat syncs to deal with the excess heat generated by all these slug throwers, as well as new ports for cosmic energy collection to make its teleports instantaneous rather than having to wait and build up to pull its disappearing act.

It had access to the Skraig psychic network which I briefly listened in on before logging out of that function as all those voices in my head at one time was threatening to overload my conscious mind. All I could do is sit there in wonder and growing excitement as the deep rumbling voice addressed me again.

"So Pilot where would you like to go first, and what shall we blow up?"

I cracked a smile, and set my new General, Impact the Nakshi on a course to the testing grounds. I wanted to see exactly what this puppy could do now!

Submitted By Pat Willis#224534

Jabberwocky Gets A New Life

As our regular readers know I have in my possession the now infamous Jabberwocky, a Dilophops mech that has seen much occur within our Galaxy. She once served in the AFF with her pilot Jabber, she bested Shogunate forces and survived a Sever piloting bounty hunter, she later was taken as her original pilot was killed by the Niodemancer Johnathan Judas and renamed as The Heretic. Judas thought he also rewrote her programming, and destroyed her A.I., turns out she just hid deep within the mechs sub routines.

After her defeat by Illyrian forces while she was under the command of Judas she came onto the open market, this is when I obtained her. I rediscovered the A.I. hiding deep within the mech and brought her fully back online. Since that time she has served me well and seen many more battles. The A.I. gets smarter after each encounter, cataloging the enemy mechs build weaknesses, as well as pilot errors and computing the next move within a probability matrix. This leads to an uncanny ability of the mech to predict the enemy movements and take proper countermeasures to ensure her victory. Overall it is an exceptional A.I. and has served me well as my personal mech for some time now.

But as with all mechs she is starting to show her battle scars, the servos move a little slower, the targeting system has a fraction of a second lag time in it, the weapons cycle just a bit slower these days, all signs of a long and honorable career as a machine of battle. The reality of the situation was simply that I needed to replace the body, given she was an A.I. I could download her onto the Brotherhoods mainframe for safe keeping until an acceptable replacement could be found.

I didn't have to wait long as soon I found one of the ancient Regis mechs in Yomi Reefs. As has been noted in the past these mechs are superior to the now mass produced models made by Star Factories. Thankfully it did not take long to transport this husk of a mech back to  Brotherhood  space and get it in working order. Amazing the things you can do when you have a whole clan family worth of resources at your disposal. It took awhile but we got the ancient machine back online, fully armed and brought up to the maximum level of piloting that I could safely handle for the time being.

Now came the fun part hooking the body up with the brain I had waiting for it. I spent hours upon hours mapping and remapping neural pathways, nerve to niode reflex times, and general interface calibration responses. I hooked the Brotherhood mainframe into the Regis body and monitored the transference from the pilot seat of the Forerunner war machine. That's when things got interesting, it turns out this Regis wasn't just a husk it had its own A.I. installed.

It wasn't happy about being awoken, much less at the prospect of being deleted and replaced. It had basic drone combat module intelligence capabilities installed on it, unfortunately this did little against a evolving A.I. capable of learning and predicting the enemies next move. The mech itself shuddered, weapons cycled to fire, then back to safe mode, the whole thing lit up from head to tail in a massive silent explosion of light, then all went silent and the mech was still.

Just as I was about to disengage from the neural network the mech came alive violently. It spun about and stalked down the length of the hanger until it stood in front of the Dilophos frame. I tried like mad to shut it down but nothing would respond. The Twin Grazer laser cannons came online, powering up lightning fast with me having no hope in hell of shutting them down. There was a splash of light accompanied by a crack much like a peal of thunder, and the Dilophos frame simply blew apart.

I was just about to have a full blown panic attack  in what I thought was a rogue mech until the internal comm systems came on and a familiar voice said, " Battle A.I. Wocky online, enemy A.I. deleted, this is my body now. Mecha designation rewritten as Jabberwocky, ready for combat when you are Pilot."

Once I got my heart rate under control I started laughing long and loud. " Jabberwocky is dead, long live Jabberwocky.", was all I could say between bursts of laughter.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

News From Artemis Molly

There may have been a small accident at Mecha Galaxy's main weapons facility...
The good news is that only a few smithies were injured and are well on their way to making a full recovery. The unfortunate news is that the specs for the old Lazerizer have been lost.

But the OTHER good news is that our smithies were quickly able to churn out a new Lazerizer that is essentially identical in all ways, although it looks pretty different...

So if you see a "new" Lazerizer in your hanger or in the shop, don't worry. It's not that you've drank too many Hatoraides (we don't judge). It's the new and improved, very much the same as before Lazerizer that you know and love. We hope that you will welcome it into your hanger with all the same loving care you gave the old Lazerizer. Happy hunting, everyone.









 From Artemis Molly put in the Galaxy Gathering by Pat Willis#224534

Some Individuals Of Note In The Negaverse

Zeteg: Zeteg is a technoshaman whose group of border patrolling antihumans is responsible for maintaining and overseeing a team of zombified beast mecha which serve as the guardians to one of the sectors of "no man's land" wilds.  These wilds are home to nearly unimaginable terrors that are savagely mutated beyond all recognition even by antihuman standards; outcasts from antihuman society might find themselves banished to the wilds where they'd have to fend for themselves dwelling amongst ruins and cavernous areas within space islands.  In particular his group is concerned about keeping a horde of anabolically enhanced ratling scavenger raiders who like to ravage the antihuman cities in check.  They form a defensive buffer.

Gom:  Gom is a warrior and Zeteg's lackey/second in command.  He and Zeteg maintain and oversee a vanguard space station that circumscribes the primary Niode gate between their home world and the wilds.
They are a bit dismayed to learn that Myco and Drake have totaled their zombified beast mecha guardians but once the two repair them he is glad to show off to the explorers some of the "wonders" of his people's society at their capital city.

Toto:  She is a ratling storyteller who befriends Patrick and Apocalyptor, deciding to be their guide to the Negaverse, reasoning that accompanying them will allow her to have many new stories to be able to tell her nomadic tribe.  One of the first places she takes them to is the large parallel underground city of the Ratpeople Confederation that lies within ancient sewer system complexes beneath the surface of the antihuman capital.

Yithson:  One of the Antihuman elders, he is a very aged singularitarian and serves as the curator and caretaker to the Unnatural History Museum located in the Antihuman capital city.  Due to his age, most of the organic parts of his body (with exception of his lower jaw) have been largely replaced with cybernetics.  Try not to stare at his visible brain encased in an acrylic glass shell while talking to him... his electronic eyes are capable of swiveling along his head to be able to see in multiple directions!  Gom takes Drake and Myco to see Yithson on Zeteg's behest.  His specialties lie in anthropology and archaeology where his many prosthetic limbs aid him in examining recovered artifacts.  Yithson explains to our travelers the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the antihumans and ratpeople and is an expert on the balance of power between transmogrication cults dominating the antihuman cultural landscape. He is wary of the proverbial can of worms that reactivation of a gate between the Negaverse and our dimension has created.

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

Dark Niobium

During the war for Niobium amongst the feuding Forerunner Houses the scientist Kellek of the House Meijillaann travelled through time and ultimately another universe itself, one of dark twisted beings of his own kind. It housed horrors not thought of in our universe and beings so drastically removed from anything we know of that they were thought the things of nightmare and dark fantasy. One constant remained though and that was the use of Mecha. To run a Mech no matter the form or function you need niobium, this place of horrors called the Negaverse had its own version of the rare and precious material. However much like everything else there it was corrupted and contained properties unknown to this universe.

The refining process was intricate to the point of almost being a true alchemical process, involving it being bathed in the radiation of cold stars, bombarded with energy from dark matter converters, and even blood sacrifices of transformed organic beings infused into the material itself. Normal niobium as we know it is spherical in shape and roughly the size of a large baseball, Dark Niobium is hexagonal in shape, usually no bigger than a softball, often of a rust color (due to the infusion of blood into the mixture) and without proper shielding is very toxic to most forms of organic life should they be exposed to it. The substance has a cold almost frozen feeling to it if one should be bold enough to handle it without special care, yet when read by temperature gauges, and examined by thermal imaging contains an immense amount of heat. Like its counterpart here in our universe it can hold an immense amount of energy and distribute it however best seen fit by its creators.

One of the surprising side effects of utilizing Dark Niobium is reanimation of mechanical constructs even after they have been by all intents and purposes destroyed. If that machine or mecha has been using that substance long enough it gets infused throughout with the energies of the battery. The more Dark Niobium that is used in a mecha the quicker it gets infused with these energies until it ultimately warps the machine itself and the pilot. This warping allows for such a machine to pull itself back together and ultimately repair itself. The process often occurs with the original machine repairing itself with the parts of others that littler the battle fields, leading to some truly horrific mechanical end results. The pilots do not fare much better and have also been known to replace lost limbs and organs with still viable parts of other pilots on the battle field after combat.

Some of this rare and valuable material has been found in this universe leading many scientists to believe that inhabitants of the Negaverse have found their way to this one in the past, and remain on high alert to keep an eye out for any future incursions or even the return of Kelleks followers if not the mad Forerunner himself. Although many do not see how he could have lasted so long it is feared his twisted ideals and teachings have survived. If he has utilized or been exposed to this material it is a possibility, however how much of the original being is left and what is by this point a mad abomination is the reason for much speculation.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

People And Places Of Mecha Galaxy Sigiss-6

Sigiss-6 is on the fringes of Shogunate space surrounded by smaller moon sized planets unimaginably named Sigiss 1 through 5. Sigiss-6 is about the size of Mars from the Milky Way galaxy and the planet sits on a rotational wobble. This leads to a “night time” equal to roughly a week in Earth time and a “day time” of about three and a half days Earth time. The wobble is due to the other moon sized planets in the Sigiss system constantly pulling at the larger planet from all directions with their gravitational fields. Which gives Sigiss-6 a rather jerky stop and go wobble thus elongating the nights exponentially and allowing for much longer day periods.

The constant push/pull of the other planets also plays havoc with the larger planets weather systems, making large storms across its surface the rule as opposed to the exception. There are three main continents on the planet, Strassis, Cartanal, and Rakine. Strassis is the main colonized living area on the planet which serves as an import/export shipping hub roughly the size of old Earths North and South America combined. Cartanal which is about the size of old Earths Europe contains the planets vast rainforest, teeming with a wide variety of insect and reptilian life most of which is still largely undiscovered. Lasty, Rakine is a vast desert area roughly the size of old Earths African continent and holds the majority of the planets Ferrite and crystal mining operations.

The rest of the planet is covered in a vast ocean dotted with smaller “islands” scattered about here and there. As the planet is battered almost daily by storms most of these islands come and go being swallowed up by rising and falling ocean elevations.

 It isn’t a very hospitable planet overall and only the hardiest of people choose to live and work in its ports. Otherwise the Shogunate uses certain portions of the mining area as a prison camp for their most offensive law breakers. The planet itself made it into the Galactic history books when early in its exploration colonists were set upon by pirate invaders. This is when and where the Frigis mech was born. Since that time the Frigis in particular has been the main staple of the planets port security and firmly secured its place in Galactic history as well as helping to put Sigiss-6 Firmly on the Galactic stage.

Submitted by Pat Willis#224534

Primary Inhabitants Of The Negaverse (A History)

First off, one must understand the cosmology of the dominant civilizations in a place to begin properly understanding that place. The Negaverse was shaped by one key event of our own prehistory. It was "discovered" by accident during the last in the series of Kellek's many attempts to return to his own time in defiance of his banishment by Roah and the other Forerunners.  Rushed gate construction meant that many of Kellek's revenge gates possess Niode matrices that have idiosyncrasies.  This was desired for anachronous warping but is derided by Drochah oh-Thyehgr as a quite sloppy method of time travel much less elegant than his own temporal manipulations.  That commentary aside, what would be Kellek's final resting place was a parallel universe nearby ours. You see, he didn't succeed, chronologically speaking. The time period Kellek jumped to was still chronologically locked at our prehistory and the Negaverse's Norunners at this point were still at the very early stages of guiding the evolution of their servitor races.  The more primitive Nobearer civilization was heavily influenced by Kellek and impressed by the slapped together technologies he possessed which though not as advanced as those of Roah and the others back in our own time window were still a good deal more sophisticated than what the Norunners had access to prior to his arrival.

The Norunners began worshiping Kellek as a god, and the screwed up values they developed were in line with those of the mad warlord.  These are: 1.) Domination of one's environment is good. This allows you to maximally exploit the life forms and natural resources to your fullest capacity. 2.) Disregard for the consequences of one's actions is fine as long as it gets you what you want.  Forcibly alter the atmosphere of a planet or irrevocably change the natural course of evolution for a population of lower/lesser life forms? As long as you can still use it to your advantage, not a problem! 3.) Development of cabals allows you to outnumber your enemies right in front of their noses.

Unbeknownst to the Norunners this was a strategy Kellek implemented to keep them divided, allowing him to quickly and permanently establish himself at the top of their hierarchy... by eliminating any but those who were unified in their support of him.  Though not the exact revenge he had wanted, taking things out on the Negaverse did allow Kellek to achieve a form of it.  He wound up crafting an entire dimension's Forerunners into his own servitor race!

Anyway, after he died the Norunners (whom he had also deemed to be a lesser species than himself and done a series of experiments on) wanted to maintain their status quo and felt the best way to do this was through emulating Kellek.  They adapted his brutal methods to their subjugation of the Negaverse.

Cybernetic grafting, horrific induced mutations, surgical alterations and other extreme techniques which they saw their terrifying god-king and pharaoh use to terrific effect in his armies on his soldiers and on themselves inspired the Nobearers to go out and craft their own servitor races in a similar fashion, while continuing to modify themselves.  They felt these transmogrifications were "self-improvement" and this distinct paradigm shift after Kellek (that the transformations are not simply a tool but in and of themselves a desired state) carried on all the way down into many of the Norunners own creations.  You'll find it as a recurring central motif in the major religions of Antihuman society to this day.

I say many of their creations because there are a few notable exceptions.

One opposition Norunner, though still about as horrible as the rest realized that strict adherence to Kellek's laws would not be sustainable to Norunner civilization as he observed Antihuman societies start developing.  So he created the Ratmen as a race of cleaner uppers to deal with the pollution and other problems generated by the wasteful Antihumans.  He instilled them with a somewhat modified set of Nobearer values, so the Ratmen would view recycling as the highest form of resource exploitation and scavenging the ideal way to dominate ones' environment.  I say equally as horrible because he shared the cruelty of his other Norunners. Before he could finish breeding them for obedience some escaped into the wild.  The Ratmen are loath to transmogrification and the more holistic culture of their civilization allows them to dwell within and underneath that of the Antihumans.  These two groups, the Antihumans and Ratmen exist adjacent to each other if not in complete symbiosis then at least commensally for the most part, although occasional conflicts between the two are not unheard of.

Antihumans, to psychologically cope with their nasty way of life took to their cults of transformation with upper echelons of clergy in these often articulating the typical commonly held erroneous delusion that they are the direct descendents of Norunners (instead of simply their discarded playthings) in their teachings.  Transmogrification societies dedicated to this dark "self-improvement" dot the Antihuman cultural landscape.  However, among the more urbane and erudite of these, it is generally acknowledged that the Norunners were both great and terrible, tremendously selfish powerful beings, who lacking scruples, would oft swoop down on worlds, bringing a host of pestilence, famine and mutations.

These religions tend to take two forms:
Moderates: Unlike their original Norunner creators, these Antihumans believe it should be one's choice what "improvements" to receive. Take charge of your own destiny by directing your own literal transformation (to what extent you can!).  Transmogrification is to be done for reasons that are the personal, as a means of surviving to extend one's life in spite of ailing health or sterility, make doing certain tasks easier, etc.  This self-improvement is celebrated in contemporary Antihuman society. Praise Kellek!

Hardliners: There are rumors of fanatic sects attempting to gather what technology and dark secrets they can to resurrect or revive the preserved remains of their demonic Norunner "gods", as a general backlash to the more moderate form of transformation occultism gaining popularity... something they regard as infectious blasphemy committed by heretics.  Who are we to act outside the interests of our betters who came before us?  We must keep things as they were.  To return things to how they "should be". In order to keep carrying out the Norunner legacy (and by extension Kellek's revenge). it must be in the way which they had intended!

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

Norunners

There was a Forerunner named Kellek who was an enemy of Roah.  He got exiled deep in the Earth's past and spent those days trying to construct gates to get back and exact revenge against his rivals who were back in the present he was from.  Some of the Niode Gates he made using those primitive materials and what he could salvage from his wreck were not exactly right so in his trial and error a few of Kellek's gates took him across space but on alternate timelines instead of a linear manner.

One such universe was what is referred to by some people as the Negaverse.  It is a foul and twisted dark dimension that is a mirror of our universe.  The Forerunners there are a rather evil and warped version of the Forerunners from our universe and well, some way or other they ended up worshiping Kellek as a God.  Horrific mutations and ceremonies of transmogrification became fixtures of religion and of cultures in this poor unfortunate dimension. It evolved separately in parallel from our own home universe but the two exhibit certain striking similarities between them.  For example, these NoRunners possessed Kaiju mecha too but instead of beast mecha they are classified as Eldritch mecha... Trundling legged tanks with missile platforms, swift tentacled bizarre ice mecha and freakish armored crustaceanoid laser based mecha that have claws.

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

The Bat-people Of Vupa 6

Pteropo sapiens, or "smart fruit bats" make up a semi-intelligent race of beings on Vupa 6.  They should not be confused with their similar appearing yet very much different neighboring species of "terrible vampires" the Desmodo horribilis You'd think as terrible and psycho actively well, active a place to live as Vupa 6 with all its gases, spores, etc. that can induce hallucinogenic and other pharmacological effects would be inhospitable but that could not be further from the truth.  P. Sapiens and D. horribilis evolved in a convergent way but with a parallel process to that of hominids on other worlds just from a bat like ancestor rather than a primate one.

To get back to the zoologically and anthropologically relevant information though, it is important to successfully distinguish between P. Sapiens and D. Horribilis so that you know which one of the two it is that will invite you to a party and which would like to suck your blood.

Basically, P. Sapiens are a primitive and overall alcoholic but agrarian culture that is for the most part content to live just in the Vupa system.  At least some of what we hear in our ears to be those horrible shrieks at night and in some of the caves are really just how these bat-people communicate, using a form of echolocation.

They were in the process of negotiating a tense treaty with their carnivorous neighbor species over which tribes of each was allowed access to which caves and who would live in each region when the activities of Herod and Mad Mulligan disrupted it all.

The societies of each are tribal and have a rudimentary economy based on a bartering system.  While aware of other species and that some civilizations have technological capability for space travel, the bat-people tend to prefer staying put on Vupa.  They aren't interested in other parts of the galaxy.  They don't mind trading with those other civilizations though and the main export are their many liquors.  It is typically quite difficult for humans to understand either species' spoken language but generally trade can be conducted through drawing pictures and with physical gestures.  Trade with P. Sapiens is safe but doing business with D. horribilis (the more barbaric of the two) is ill-advised.

Disclaimer:  Vupan whiskey is quite strong for humans to drink when it is undiluted.  Bat-people possess an altogether different physiology to their metabolism than human beings so their bodies are a good deal more tolerant to alcohol than ours.

Submitted by Mycobacter#712744

Islands In Space

While gates are nearly indestructible, the worlds they are on aren't necessarily so. Some gates lead to obliterated planets, the gate and the rock around it the only remains. Some worlds were the results of cataclysmic natural forces, evidenced by the large asteroid field around the gate. But, others are far more unnatural.

The solitude of the unnatural gate and its small island, alone in the sea of stars overlooking a sun, evokes an eerie beauty and has baffled thinkers and explorers since the first one's discovery. Most islands are solitary, with nothing left to explore or explain what happened. Some still have the frozen husks and skeletons of life around the foot of the gate, suggesting whatever befell the world was quick.

Though the gates to each of these islands is far flung, astrogational analysis has placed them all relatively close to each other. Only a couple reside in nearly-intact star systems which have ruins of alien civilizations. Most of these cultures are still indecipherable, but a couple crude drawings from one of the more primitive extinct cultures shows something large devouring the nearby moon; a moon that appears to have been idolized as the home of the gods.

Whatever it was, the gods attacked it and drove it away by casting colorful ribbons and newborn stars at it.

Who these gods might have been is up for debate. The most popular theory is that the precursors were waging a war with some unknown civilization. Some super weapon was unleashed, destroying precursor outposts.

Without further evidence, all theories are highly speculative. Questions still remain about how the islands were formed. Are these the remains of worlds consumed by some super weapon? If there was a super weapon used in some intergalactic war, is it, like the precursors, still out there to be found?

Submitted by Ben Parker#712090