[OOC] The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

MISSION SELECTION: CHAPTER 1

Option A: Forgotten In Space

A deep-space scrap-station known as the Sargasso, forged from a combination of colonized asteroids, driffting biomechanical colonies, shattered starships, and other deep space junk, has been detected in an area of space once under Black City Conglomerate control. Previously an Unidentified Solar Object, surveillance footage matches it to various sightings across typically fringe Black City Conglomerate regions. It specifically remains a buffer zone area primarily ignored by the great powers, determined to be strategically inconvenient but has remained a spot of unidentified vessel sightings frequently believed to be of pirates, mercenaries, and nomadic voidhanger fleets. The station itself appears to have enormous components comprising its bulk dating back to the Helios Subjugation and ethereological analysis suggests it has been drifting into and outisde of the Oneiric Chasm.

Records obtained from Zanovia's archives by agents within the transitional government have determined the presence of research vessels dating to a pre-Intransigence era embedded within its body that are believed to be later additions. Realspace-affecting distortion waves, previously minor in scope and power, have begun to amplify around the station which is believed to have been entirely abandoned save for void-dwelling and vacuum-hardened organisms. The two teams of the Envenomed will insert into the structure. Yours is tasked with finding the research vessels. The other will be extracting information from what is believed to have been makeshift command centres deep within its bulk.

This mission will feature a heavy emphasis on moving through areas with and without any gravity or life support and be primarily close quarters with certain sections going outside of the Sargasso itself. This is the most horror oriented mission here with a prominence of unusual ethereal phenomena and strange though not inherently hostile organisms inhabiting its corrupted bowels. Yet there are more dangerous threats that lurk within not of entirely supernatural origin and the deeper you venture inwards, the more they will be but signs of worse things laying in wait.

Option B: Inquisition Symphony

With the regional allies of the New Prosperity (now Zanovia) government removed from the picture in the Helios Expanse, the League-associated planet of Irixkruor has been further isolated from any assistance and the revolutionary umbrella movement has just finished crushing the last of corpo-expansionist resistance. A problem has been brewing even during the conflict however; gealtirocht commander Fialscion Sluaghdain has been under scrutiny due to questionable actions taken earlier in various national liberation movement that have established his Irixian Resurgence Front as the spearhead of the movement. Lenience shown towards private enterprise, under the guise of future nationalization, and aggressively absorbing smaller militias with little in the way of rigour when inspecting their ideological character have drawn concerns within hardline Intransigent allies planetside. 

As the dust settles over the ruins of the last League-aligned city to fall, the Envenomed team will be part of a peacekeeper detachment sent to directly confront Fialscion in a city under the control of multiple indpendent revolutionary armies. It is suspected they are manipulating the alliance into a series of movements meant to channel their power back into liberalist-parliamentarian reformist movements based on intel from ex-members of the IRF, with their allies in private industry bankrolling the effort. There is a high likelihood they will need to be captured and any hints of potential collusion be recorded for the purposes of counterintelligence operations. Whether or not the other militias will assist or hinder you may be the deciding factor.

This mission roughly is split into two parts; one is interacting with the various Intransigence-aligned rebels in the area while keeping an eye on the movements of the IRF. You may need to sabotage their vehicles, mislead them into ambush sites with faulty information, pretend to be cozy with their rank and file, and set up various traps for them among others, possibly even manipulate them into taking risky actions. The second part unsurprisingly will be focused on both brutal combat within a bombed out city but also attempting to capture Fialscion if he attempts to escape. 

The other militias in the city may be sympathetic to your cause, they may see you as traitors, and they might also simply remain neutral. It is possible to recruit some of them; though which ones will be determined by closely watching the various militant forces and how they are reacting to the current victory Resurgence has granted them. It is advised to generally play your cards carefully; you will be overwhelmingly outnumbered by not just hostiles but by default neutral forces who even if they dislike Fialscion, may not come to your aid. The team you are sent with must also be protected if possible but you will be sent in with a support team of your choosing handling sniping and long distance artillery to help even the odds.

Option C: Worm Hunt

As the death of Sazan Kal-Hayalat on Zanovia sends shockwave through the sector's Yrrkradian intelligence, encroaching Black City Conglomerate forces use the opportunity to intensify operations on the floating cities of the Ultan nation-sector of the contested world of Arumatari. Heavily armed militiamen backed with offworld equipment and augmentations square off against fanaticist militias as the diplomatic battle rages on between Conglomerate and Yrrkradian nation-sectors. It is in this proxy war that the Envenomed team is sent in alone to hunt down an indivdiual who is believed to have worked with the escaped information broker back on Zanovia.

There are suspicions that the Unified Celestial League have teams laying in wait to either trail those they believe know the target's location or attempting to cause carnage to spook the VIP out of their hiding place. The team will be forced to deal with not only two aggressively belligerent forces high on a mixture of nationalism and religious fervor but what is likely well prepared elite special forces teams. Teams that likely will consider them a high priority target. Extract and exfiltrate while being mindful of civilians in the area.

This will be the most intense of all the missions, with three different hostile factions and zero allies. Add to that the fact that you will be fighting on top of buildings built on top of a swamp that in many cases are partially sunken into the murk or are built in such a way to be submerged. You will need to watch for civilians on occasion and just as pressingly, prominent drone units including airborne and amphibious ones that patrol various areas. Some areas will be dense and heavily wooded akin to mangroves with dangerous exposed stretches carefully watched by enemy gun positions. Do note that your enemies can be tricked into fighting one another and these conflicts can often create openings for you.

D20 Roll Acquisitions

Royeni-Type Counter-Kinetic "Living Metal" Heavy Plating

A recent mainline addition typically for vrexul infantry squads, this royeni or "flourish" type armor plating is a pseudobiologcal sort of plating typically woven into or over the armor of the massive arthropod warriors of frontline intransigence units. Most unusual for this sort of reactive armor is that it comes with specialized networking-capable veins and sensors that when combined with the computational and defensive-analytic systems of vrexul let it prepare for the impact of rounds before they hit, assuming they are not hyper-accelerated (ie. high output rail guns). 

The actual armor itself mimics certain older version of bioarmor capable of fragmenting and reforming on neural command but in this case it can deliver specialized chemo-reactive counter-bursts to go off even before a round hits, causing its trajectory to slant or force to diminish upon impact. It is technically not as thick or dense as the plating used by the League or Yrrkradian forces but it can be "regenerated" with the right nutrient/energy feed and even modified to function as a sort of multi-directional shotgun burst. It is not particularly effective against most energy weaponry.

Podgraz Mechanobiological Seeker Swarm

A munition type that initally the UCL was unable to determine whether or not it was a ghost story, the rounds sarcastically known as the "greeting" were made from the combined finesse of various founding Intransigence factions. Homing rounds were nothing new but downsizing them for use in smaller caliber weaponry was quite the callenge. Podgraz rounds were in development for the last five years and represent the first truly functional implementation of high lethality sidearm munitions. What they lack in the raw stopping power associated with the rounds typically fired from bio-electro-thermal-chemical rifles of many Intransigence rifles, they have an undeniable advantage in finesse while being far lighter, allowing a soldier to carry quite a few of them. They are typically reserved for infiltrators and ambush units hijacking enemy vessels but they have been known to find their way elsewhere throughout the elite of the revolutionary movement.

Podgraz rounds were based on vrexul bio-swarms typically fired to suppress and slow dowm targets, but they are comprised of components derived from the specialized tiny spy drones fist engineered by the nomadic techno-heathens of the gealtirocht. The advanced control mechanisms within are an artificial recreation of high-sensitivity fungoid inter-spore-cluster communication systems first used by tarrhaidim insurgents operating for long periods in occupied Yrrkradian and Black City territory. The end result are rounds that can deliberately fluctuate their speed, curve around corners, and be guided via HUD-link to target specific areas of a target, though this typically requires various neural implants for high efficiency and rapid flight plan readjustment mid-flight. The newest variant even has a small explosive charge, utilizing a destabilizing internal process to burst forwards in a small cone-like blast after the round has aggressively ripped and bit into the target, deepening wounds and if aimed well threatening even to celaderaka assault troopers from the Dominion.

Cliasadh Solidified Light Manipulation Device

Gealtirocht tribesfolk mastered hardening light completley independent of other species and among the Intransigence, such devices often find themselves in civilian roles such as engineering or geological surveys. Yet more than a few carried these into battle and while not necessarily standardized, competence is often prized far more than showmanship and the so called "burning cradles" are a common sight on both militia skirmishers and frontline units alike. While typically used for generating tools for everyday use, they are quite frequently used to turn those tools into weapons.

Manipulating energy into luminiescent quasi-matter, these earned their name due to the ability to transform a simple wrist blade into a high heat arm-sword capable of slicing into the armor of scielto infantry-mecha, overloading their shields and melting their complex internal workings alike. The manifested weapons (up to 25 feet in length) can be set to an overdrive mode where they are essentially lit on fire which greatly improves their cutting capability but will cause the weapon to enter an emergency shutdown mode after prolonged usage. Even without this it can be used to form wrist shields, cutting tools, grasping prongs, and various other mundane tools yet all of these can be strengthened with increased power output, with some versions capable of absorbing ethereal power or connecting to external power sources. The tool itself is easy to modify and can rapidly turn into a runaway project eating time, resources, and quite a few batteries, power modulators, uploaded data modules and so on.

Wrathful Breath Nano-Infused Stimulant Vial

The primarily tarrhaidim chemists of the primarily separatists states that comprise a large portion of ex-Yrrkradian and now Intransigent core territory have long been purveyors of various chemical supplements. While the majority of them saw primarily recreational use or were for mundane physical enhancement on the job, quite a few make their hands typically into the inventory of fungoid troopers destined for the frontline. The specific biologies of the various forms of tarrhaidim make these drugs freakishly effective, sometimes allowing for various bodily transformations, but they are difficult to adapt to usage outside of their own. Difficult is not synonymous for impossible and even in the days of the Outer Sphere Liberation Front, there had been examples of the species boundary being chemically crossed. 

The "wrathful breath" combines chemoreactive substances meant to lessen the impact of bodily trauma to a near numbing degree with bonded nanobots that synchronize with various cellular systems to massively increase cellular production while stitching and tying together damaged parts of the body. While it is not recommended for various species it is only cleared for those with sufficient augmentations, with the raw influx of nutrients and microorganisms contained therein guided by nanobots causing immense strain on the body. Yet it has been known to seal holes made by armour piercing bullets and even assist in the regeneration of partially destroyed organs. The regenerative effects extend as to creating a sort of crusty scabby covering over open wounds, far tougher than typical scar tissue and when working in tandem with other augmentations can go so far as to possibly regenerate entire limbs.

Seraphic Predator Worm Host

Rivalled only by the vrexul, the tarrhaidim have long welcomed a variety of plantoid, fungoid, and annelid creatures to host within their bodies morphing themselves into ecosystems of warped consciousness and self-sustaining rot. Among some sects once considered heretical in now Intransigent territories, the laxing of religious laws combined with theological reforms has allowed for the resurgence of a practice considered grotesque and transgressive by those outside of its boundaries. Worm-like organisms in some cases not even of the physical realm often are allowed to infest one's body or inhabit the ethereal signature they leave in the Oneiric Chasm, becoming extension of themselves whether in the interest of the spiritual or the everyday mundane. Unsurprisingly they are increasingly used in a military context.

This particular species of "seraph-annelid" resembles something akin to a large bobbit worm, capable of extending up to 35 feet in spite of its semi-armored body divided with sections of muscle. It ends in a series of six hook-like mandibles that can be pointed forwards, allowing for its use as a vicious spear that if charged up fully, can be fired like a harpoon to impale targets. Powerful enough to support the weight of a fully armored tarrhaidim soldier and capable of regenerating itself from nutrients in its users body, it can be used to grasp objects from afar or even hold a bladed weapon to be turned into a long-distance flailing blade. Even moreso, it is capable of detaching from the body though the ability to command it is difficult without certain communication implants or "bonding" with the entity.
[OOC] The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

LustForDecay Biomechanical Terror Perversion
