LustForDecay

Into Perdition's Jaws

The forest was alight with the flash of rifle fire and roaring flames emerging from the shattered carcass of the transport vessel. As the team became aware of the regroup point and the unseen ally calling for their presence, the encroaching enemy threat only furthered in its aggression. Spread out as they were, their advantage in numbers was accompanied with one in terms of pure volume of fire. The heavy-duty rifles filled the air with deadly bolts, pinging off of Paris’ shield like ringing bells but the impact was rattling and vicious. His armour might be tough but these rounds would treat it far more harshly than his shield.

Worse, the unztadtlige was nearing and as it did so, its heavy machine gun fire sharpened. A few trees next to Linus and Corsica exploded, a few of the thinner ones toppling as streams of bright purple bolts ripped right through them with raw kinetic force. Another of its turrets, emerging like some egg-like sac out of which three blocky barrels poked out, fired an angry blast at Paris, uncaring for the durability of his colossal shield. Fuzzy communication signals blared between itself and the soldiers, pushing them to trail the hulking human – with the leg servos of the tarrhaidim, that wouldn’t be a problem.

That was until mid-sprint, a horrific burst of flame and force erupted in the group that had splintered off to give chase. Limbs were torn out of sockets, worm-tendril parasites ripping out of bodies to try and escape the horrific heat, and whole soldiers tossed off of their feet and smashing through foliage, bramble, and their own allies. Paris’ solar tablet sent a whole squad into disarray as burning fungoid biomatter and hungry flames now began to consume the squadron, forcing the unztadtlige back to avoid its own coral-like biomass being touched by the raging inferno.

The bipedal bioconstruct had caught up with frightening speed, its multiple sensor eyes glaring death at Corsica and Linus but they had just managed to avoid its gauss rounds slicing them clean open. A storm of celaderaka shotgun shells repaid it in kind, clashing against a glowing dome-like field around its body. The energy shield brightened with each 12-gauge blast and the machine staggered, digging in its heels and wildly firing at the two. Crackling and sparking, it advanced again swivelling its guns towards the tree it had seen them run towards but missing a pair of grenades landing near its feet.

An explosion erupted and its energy shield shattered, a backwash of static enveloping demon and flame-monger alike, causing the robot to stagger. That was all the window needed for both to escape to the park but not before Corsica took a few choice potshots at its now vulnerable body. The human-sized machine jerked from the impact, barely affected at first. Yet what seemed at first like normal DMR rounds now erupted into flames, hungrily eating away at synesthetic biomatter around its legs and arms, forcing it to begin exuding its bio-regulatory fluids in a desperate attempt to quell the raging flames!

In the carnage, Linus had knocked over one of the larger scattering nearing footsoldiers moving to assist the bioconstruct, barely avoiding the burning bramble as it toppled, giving a momentary lull in the ruthless symphony of their rifle fire. It rolled towards them, crashing over a few smaller trees but caught against a few of its larger, not-yet-felled counterparts. The soldiers used this sudden stop to advance but wouldn’t even notice Corsica planting a particular explosive within the tree’s body, some of them even going so far to vault over it. As if enraged, the bioconstruct bent its legs and with some struggle, leapt onto the tree, crunching bark under its hefty frame as its shaky, partially bobbing guns struggled to track the retreating Sect operatives.

It didn’t get a chance to cut them off or apart this time. Another raging blast tore open the tree and the bipedal machine was caught right at the epicentre. Its legs were torn open, flash seared by the heat, arms ripping off their sockets then half disintegrating as they fell, while its crab-like head crumpled from the force. The machine fell in five different pieces, one of legs smashing into a human trooper and trapping him underneath its burning bulk, causing him to scream as his light armour fed the melting metal flames. Others had been tossed by the blast, their burning carcasses rolling over the ground to try and put out the flames or slain from the visceral blast force, bits of metal shrapnel from the wrecked bioconstruct ripping right through fungal flesh and human skin like knives through meat.

The battle was far from fully decided. A few of these heavier duty rifle rounds and the kinetic energy bolts from the coral warmachine passed mere inches from the still cloaked Silver and Vin’s armoured forms as they headed towards the park. A larger target had drawn the attention of the ambushers’ attention – the hefty vrexul warriors. Zsresrinn wasn’t spared any expense just as Paris wasn’t; a group of the battle riffle armed troops swung their aim towards her, sending a flurry of rounds barely after the eyestalked bioconstruct scored a hit on her side.

The waist machine strafed out to the side, readying its heavy-duty machine gun for another flurry of mag-accelerated death but the arthropod’s weapon was faster. Three cracks of high explosive armour piercing rounds slammed into its body, tearing out chunks of reinforced metal and synth-bone and ripping out its gut region. The unztadtlige managed to fire a burst her way before another trio slammed into its body. Dense and layered as its armour was, at this range the hellhammer had piercing power equivalent to certain light vehicle weaponry. One of the anemone like polyp stumps was ripped open, wiring and veins torn from the piercing force before sensitive bioelectronics were consumed in a blossom of flames. Two of its camera-ports were flattened by a single round rapidly ripping a trench across its upper body before slamming into a trooper using it as cover, splattering his skull into a misty pulp-spraying mess before detonating into the dirt behind him. The third round didn’t dig into anywhere near as vital but the impact and explosive force stunned the gestalt-minded brute – a well needed respite.

In the ephemeral moment between the reloading and firing of deadly weaponry, a strange and foul conjuration of arthropod biomatter and a strange almost glass-like, reflective smoke shimmered around Zsresrinn. Soldiers attempting to fire on her cursed and turned away momentarily, targeting devices momentarily overloaded by the wild, jarring patterns and sending shots wide and far. Before they could properly calibrate their targeting devices, another swarm had taken its place – a thick fog of foul buzzing insectoids, dominated by a singular eye like some parody of a common housefly, filling the air with a living smog of visually impenetrable fog.

Yet not physically. The fog shimmered and scattered at points as the hulking, powerful shape of the bony white gun-platform machine, still standing after three armour piercing rounds, stormed through and chased after the Sect team. Bursts of heavy duty magnetically accelerated rounds flew forth like solid streams of blue and white, going straight through thick trunks like nothing. This time however, it wasn’t targeting a specific member of the team but anyone unfortunate enough to be in front of it. At this point, all the survivors were outside of the interference range from the crash but a crackle was sounding over their com systems – foreign interference of some sort.

Jerry would be able to pick up the particulars of the signal. So would Vin.

MULTIPLE TARGET LOCK ATTEMPTS FROM HOSTILE SOURCE.
RANGEFINDING AND TRAVEL PATH PREDICTION DETECTED.

Their onboard electronics weren’t being hacked – the entire squad was now being targeted!

Off in the distance, a pulsing hum that rumbled almost like a massive buzzsaw purring could be heard. If they looked back and through the cloud, they could see a number of ports opening on the back of the unztadtlige as it prepared its powerful artillery weaponry again.

“FASTER! Faster dammit, we need you to get inside jammer's safe range! We’re picking up energy buildup, multiple hidden targeting lasers from the gun-platform’s eyestalks! The unztadtlige is preparing its plasma mortars and trying to target your travel path!”
The same voice from earlier screamed over their coms as any HUDs the possessed would light up with a navigational marker – the park, near but not near enough especially with a seemingly vengeful bioconstruct bearing on them, its onboard targeting devices scanning and slowly locking onto the team. They may have fended off the footsoldiers, even destroyed the other bioconstruct, but the unzadtlige could easily match the whole squad in pure destructive power. The hellhammer’s rounds had done horrific damage but with its unusual, partially cybernetic body it did not feel the same pain (if it did at all) that others might. Nor were its most important internal systems damaged. Yet as a sapient life form, it certainly felt a murderous need to end them for good.

Up ahead however were signs of what the unseen voice had mentioned – a few trails that converged upon a road and the burnt-out husks of trucks and other civilian vehicles turned over or crashed against one another. Travelling down the road, they would be able to see trees of a different sort – the treeline itself was purposefully cropped away from the road, leaving a gulf of shrubs between the cement and the forest along with cratered blast marks and a few cadavers scattered across it.

Down the wreck-littered road, past the flattened black iron bars of a once towering gate, and into a park of once rolling now partially blast-gouged hills and withered decorative vegetation, a few vehicles could be seen. Large and blocky armoured personnel carriers of some sort with a few soldiers of some sort positioned alongside the uneven topography.

“We have visual contact. Just get a few more meters in, then we can up the jammer’s interference and blind them… wait, shit, get rid of that bioconstruct! It hasn’t seen us yet, nail it before it alerts them all!”

APC Reference

Infantry Reference

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Into Perdition's Jaws

Barely a minute had passed since the crash and already its deadly cargo was up in arms and in action. As most of the party headed towards the wood, the raiding party neared. Black silhouettes in the foliage and spaces between the trees began to clear and multiple shapes bipedal in form began to emerge. Humans most likely by the layered plated armour, interspersed with larger tarrhaidim by the bolted or half-melded plating complimented with limb servos attached by a similar manner. The particulars of their armour were difficult to make out but it at the very least seemed basic, lower level clearance material, potentially military surplus form wars prior. The rifles in their arms were long, tubular, equipped with simple scopes and sights – a few using laser targetters to sweep the wreckage and for their frantic quarry, the red beams invisible to the naked eye.

They were equipped for engagement at a distance and as multiple party members broke from the wreckage, they fell into the sights of these lengthy weapons. The air crackled and hissed as chemo-electric discharge shattered the ambience of burning metal and cackling electricity, just as the enormous globules of blue-white plasma slammed into the ground. Waves of destructive heat and ghastly flames scorched over the crash site, causing nearby bark and foliage to combust before their ashes were blown away by violent shockwaves of force, radiating outwards and into those scattering towards the woods.

Paris, hunkering down into the wreckage, would be beset by the full brunt of the infernal heat and concussive force. The malfunctioning void-tech that powered the crashed transport fared no better as tortured metal was devoured by the hellish blossoms, bursting into nauseating clouds of ethereal luminescence, swamping the area in an unearthly glow. What was once the wreckage of the plane collapsed or shattered, sending deadly bits of burning metal fragments flying outwards. One could even hear a few distant windows smashed open from the flying bits of metal. Paris’ armour would be pushed to the limits as forces both physical and immaterial crashed upon it.

It was bright enough that a few of the encroaching hostiles were forced to duck behind tree and stone but more than a few simply crouched and watched, weapons raised as they took aim. Against the hungry glare of the mortar blast, the forms of the Sect team had been silhouetted in a sharp black against the pinkish bluish blob of flame. In the ensuing carnage of the blast, they had not seen Legius leap up into a tree nor its disappearance into the brush.

They too were unaware of Silver and Vin Valvoi: even as residual ether clung to their bodies; their eyes were focused elsewhere. Before Legius had leapt down, the bio-colony would have seen another distant shape – rock like, craggy, hovering off of the ground on a quartet of outwards-spreading cones. They were anti-gravitational emitters, attached to a body that was at first malformed to its sight but almost tank-like in build, bearing strange polyp-like growths plated with heavy armour, some of which smoked and blurred with immense heat.

It was an unztadtlige; a living weapons platform made from a gestalt consciousness of cybernetically interlinked coral-like organisms. Given that it was faintly within visual range, it was either not using its heaviest ordinance… or it planned to do direct fire support. It was far, far behind the team firing upon the scattering Sect team, ripping off massive chunks of trees with their heavy duty spike rounds as they fired at will at any Sect member in sight, but it was starting to hover closer and closer. Multiple panels across its body could be seen swivelling and spinning, gas coughing up as it released excess heat and began to unravel a smaller array of medium to heavy calibre weapons. It had annihilated the craft – now it was going to help finish off the rest of the team once it got close enough.

Another series of strange shapes would begin to appear between the infantry team and their hefty cragged companion. Their bodies had been roughly camo painted to match the environment but they could not be more mismatched visually. One had a semi-flattened body like that of a crab hosting a variety of complex sensory equipment, propped up on a series of tubes connected to a pair of powerful synthetic biomatter legs. Emerging from behind its body were a pair of mag-guns with multiple magazines loaded into them.

Accompanying it was a far stranger, misshapen bioconstruct. It was like half the skeletal body of some great extinct dinosaur, layered in a plaster-like cartilaginous looking armour. All of this resulted in but a waist, a pair of long digitigrade legs, and almost limb-flaps emerging from the sides of its hips. Yet on top of this bizarre oddity sat a far larger magnetic accelerator gun – a machine gun compared to the twin rifles of its companion. Two long stocks with orange tips, like the eyes of some large snail, emerged from its waist-body, scanning for its plentiful targets.

Hostile Bioautomata

The waist-machine switched towards the enormous vrexul warrior, firing a deadly spray of smoke-trailing accelerated rounds, ripping through multiple trees and smoking up the ground before it with woodchipped dust as it intended to rip the bioweapon apart. Meanwhile, its relatively less malformed compatriot swerved outwards on a parallel travel path to Corsica and Linus, firing disciplined bursts of hyper-accelerated rounds in front of them with one rifle, aiming to get them to stumble and pause. Its other arm would then let loose with a longer spray, attempting to slice them in half with its armour piercing fury.

Beyond the crash site however, the forest was a busy place. Above in the skies, the drone construct Jerry had been able to not only visually make out the rest of the sect team but mark them down on Silver’s HUD. The drone’s scans also marked out the locations of the rest of the hostile intercepting force but that wasn’t all. There were more hostiles: motion sensors would detect aggressive movement behind the partially crumbled walls of Kerovnia but nothing was breaking from cover yet. There were already other squadrons moving about – one of which seemed to be on the same travel path as Corsica and Linus as if their current troubles were not enough. Another was moving towards the wreck-site from the east at a slower pace and energy readings seemed to suggest it was carrying heavier ordnance.

Yet there seemed to be a particular slice of the woods just north of Corsica and Linus’ current travel path that would lead into a nearby, partially ruined park that itself lead into a residential area, that didn’t seem particularly occupied. The problem was getting there. There was a very sharp numbers advantage for their yet unidentified assailants and their approaching reinforcements. It was possible that the destroyed craft might be interfering with their communications as well – hence why another wave hadn’t emerged from the crushed city walls.

Their coms were buzzing wildly again – the voice that had yelled at them earlier was trying to re-establish communications. Yet now their voice was further mangled.

“-IN THE TRANSPORT WRECKAGE, IS HE-…- AT THE PARK-…-HAVE VISUAL CONTACT WITH THE RECLAI-…-MULTIPLE HOSTILES-…-REGROUP AT-…-JAMMER DEVICE PREP-…-“

Whatever he was trying to say, it was clear that a hammer had been brought forth to crush the scalpel that was the Sect team.

Into Perdition's Jaws: Lore

Corporations of the UCL

Content by Auz

Business throughout the largest alliance in the galaxy is nothing if not cut throat. Broken down into two distinct areas, there’s the major industry titans of the Core Worlds and the wild west, fast and loose style of the Frontier systems.

When war broke out throughout the galaxy it was a godsend for the Mega Corporations of the Core Worlds. A blank check handed down by the government drove each major industrial giant into overdrive. Boardrooms came to resemble military headquarters as CEOs met with their directors to discuss how to obtain their own golden ticket by any means necessary.

Of course it was still the Core Worlds, the centre of the greatest Empire in the galaxy and so there had to be decorum, a sense of style and grace to how they conducted their underhanded tactics. Assassins, saboteurs, hackers and rampant online viruses were all deployed to ensure their backroom shady practice found success. Everything from ensuring hostile takeovers of smaller companies went smoothly, to stealing blueprints of emergency technologies before they could be patented to making sure any competition that couldn’t be bought was crushed through intimidation or by sheer weight of bureaucracy. Blood was spilled in but in a cold, calculating and precise manner.

For the Frontier, any bountiful solar system was divvied up regardless of who or what lived there by the Core Worlds Mega-Corps. Planets were signed and sold in the blink of an eye with large swaths of populations becoming either instantly moved into poverty or wiped out entirely, while a rich minority profited. These systems were the lucky ones as others with less resources were simply cast aside and forgotten about. Forced to survive on their own, millions perished as entire economies were forced to restructure from the ground up to be able to solely provide for themselves.

However, there were a few on the Frontier that thought outside the box. Some governments on sponsored their own business elite to act as independent bodies, carefully traversing the no man's land of galactic nation borders picking up whatever contracts could be found. They were fed scraps and looked down upon by each of the larger nations Core Worlds but managed to scrape out a living.

Things continued on like this for a time until the massive gears of war began to grind to a halt as the four major factions fought to a bitter stalemate. The blank checks handed out by the UCL began to dry up, just as once bountiful systems were squeezed for their last bit of juice. The growth of the Core World Mega-Corporations slowed as profit margins decreased. Their acts of aggression and hostilities grew few in number but the businesses themselves were still too big to fail and remained powerful giants.

As for the Frontier, through the blood soaked gold rush emerged three Mega-Corporations with each being forged in a fire of their own, leaving them strong enough to stand up to the might of the Core Worlds. Their business was open and dirty, there was no tactic beneath them and they were willing to wage open war in the street to maintain grips on their power. So a stalemate of its own came about within the business world of the UCL.

Nowadays things in the Core Worlds are back to how it was before the war, shifting their focus to their immediate systems and facing off against the other industry majors. Their memories, short, forgetting the destruction they had wrought along the Frontier.

Happy enough with this small victory, those who lived in the all but forgotten regions of the galaxy look to their own, new, Mega Corporations to begin to build a new future. But their victory may be short lived as the wild west attitude of said companies has formed an almost powder keg situation. Corner cutting, desperate business decisions and open malpractice of the new three major players has left a fragile path forward at best. Dicey, is the future for the people of the Frontier.

Major Sectors and Corporations of the Core Worlds:

Tech:

NG Ltd:
Owned by the eccentric and famous trillionaire Nolan Grimes, this corporation focuses on the manufacture of physical products and hardware. While it does have it’s own software section, it’s not as strong or dominant as it’s competitor. It’s top earning portfolios lay within the robotics and cybernetic divisions.

Voroly:
This corporation is all about software and online dominance with their highest earning sector being consumer attention, algorithmic data gathering and advertising.

Mining:

Roniry:
This company mostly keeps to itself choosing to focus solely on the rare elements and mineral mining. The cost of extracting such materials is astronomical, leaving an unbelievably high barrier to entry, ensuring Roniry is easily able to dominate it’s chosen industry.

Tigmon Mining:
This company focuses on commonly found elements and minerals found throughout the UCL. They mine planets (both populated and unpopulated), asteroids, gas clouds, floating ice balls etc. basically if something of value can be extracted, this company will plant a flag in it.

Jexmon:
Focuses in the same areas, commonly found elements and minerals. Despite there only being two mega corporations competing for this section of industry, their bitter and long rivalry has kept things highly competitive. As a result the government has ensured neither receives an upper hand in the continual battle for dominance, it’s one less headache for the UCL.

Finance:

UCLB:
Not long after the actual formation of the UCL all major finance companies and banks joined into a single huge conglomerate after the decision to create one major currency for the entire League. The power of this bank is said to almost rival the government themselves and is, as such, kept on a very tight and heavily regulated leash. Luckily for the government and the other major industries, they are prone to heavy infighting as many different and radical ideologies try to govern each other from within. Their goal always being an attempt to dominate and create an autocracy.

Fuel and Transportation:

Energek:
A company that’s primary focus is on providing fuel and energy for planets and stationary ships. It does some minor work in relation to the Abzu but prefers renewable energy, mainly looking at fusion and harnessing the power of suns. They’re primary product are Dyson Swarms, enabling governments to power entire systems.

Heavy Freighters: Are the largest logistics company in the UCL. One arm of business focuses on the design, creation and of utility vehicles (land, sea, air, space), another runs logistics from business to business (continents, planets, systems) but their largest returns come from their military division. If you’ve ever flown in any sort of military vehicle in the UCL chances are it was made by Heavy Freighters or a subsidiary.
Radiante: A Mega-Corp focused on transportation for commercial use, offering transportation for individuals from land to water to air to space. They’re highest earning sector is luxury, best known for serving the rich, famous and powerful.

Consumer Goods:

The most peaceful industry, this section is dominated by two Mega Corporations that work in symbiosis, Syntaty builds the factories and creates the products, ProdExpress handles the marketing and the back and forth between smaller businesses and consumers.

Mega Corporations of the Frontier Worlds

Athlean Mining Corp:
A mining giant that uses citizenry as miners, rather than it’s robotic counterparts in the Core. Excessive poverty along the frontier left no shortage of manpower for the company to capitalise on. Though due to technological inferiority and cost cutting, the job itself is not only extraordinarily dangerous but hell on the psyche. As a result heavy drug abuse is common as well as organ swapping (and organ harvesting). This has created hardcore smuggling rings and even given way to a very lucrative black market.

Deadcrush Shipping:
Officially this company is nothing but a simple logistics operator which started by ferrying goods from one border to another and back to Frontier worlds who could not afford to do so on their own. Unofficially? They’re the smugglers that capitalise on the black market and turn a further profit from piracy.

One of their favourite money making schemes was to cross the border of an opposing faction and find a planet with a surplus of trade. They then buy the goods at a cheap price point and turn a profit by selling those goods to local pirate colonies. From there the pirates would grow strong and harass the planet resulting in the government placing a bounty on them. Deadcrush would then swoop in, pick up the bounty contract, return back to the pirates under the guise of another trade detail and instead take them by surprise and wipe them out. Making profit on top of profit for themselves. This, however, works well in wartime with everyone distracted but during peacetime these short sighted dealings and malpractice have begun to catch up to them.

The Ebenkanesor Foundation:
The third and final Frontier Mega-Corp began as a cheap (and illegal) arms operation. Unable to afford the high tech weaponry of the Core but still having the need to defend themselves, they crafted rudimentarily designed weapons from ancient times. Guns that used hammer and trigger mechanisms along with gunpowder to fire bits of lead, similar to the weaponry of the 21st century of Earth. Crude but effective, they saw some success but it wasn’t until after a large trade deal that they made the move into banking. Strange but effective the company took off, still dealing in weapons but seeing massive improvement in arms quality, range of weapon products and all things finance.

It wasn’t long before rumours began to circulate that they acquired and are using highly illegal A.I. technology to run their operations. This, if true and exposed to the public, would see a UCL level intervention brought down upon them. It’s just as likely that they are now slaves to the A.I. which would be in the position to hold them to ransom. But they’re just rumours, right?

Into Perdition's Jaws

Overture BGM: Deathrow - Events in Concealment

The Sprawls - rainforest region on the outskirts of city of Kerovnia, Caracosa.

In the flash of a pulse-blast, the extraction mission had gone south. To the nine agent crew of the stealth transport vessel, specifically modified to evade the targeting and tracking systems of any known hegemon, that shouldn't have been possible. The Gnosis Eater Sect had a reputation for dropping into the most dangerous of warzones. Ether-scanning, electro-interference vision, biosignature reading - their dropships had a reputation for being as ghostly as their fighters.

None of that mattered as cockpit was blown open and with it, the pilot's entire upper torso. All they had for warning was a few seconds of turbulence, a targeting bleep, and just as the cockpit door opened, they saw an angry conical flash headed their way. There was no time for the pilot to scream before the energy-ablative glass shattered, sending a storm of slicing fragments into the troop carrier bay and reducing the human pilot to half a stomach and a pair of legs attached to a charred stump.

You didn't just "nab" a Sect stealth transport like that. Not on an op like this. Not unless you had help.

The rest of the cockpit hadn't fared any better. Where once stood a cutting edge series of semi-biological and ether-receptive mechanisms capable of synchronizing with nearly any species now sparked and sputtered from the overload of deadly currents the energy blast had sent. A ghostly fog-like light hovered over the various switches, screens, and panels but it did not obscure one particular feature. A holograph emitted by the still intact projector display hovered just in front of the pilot's remains, a red floating rectangular outline encasing in plain english:

VEHICULAR CONTROLS UNRESPONSIVE. BRACE FOR IMPACT.

Air rushed into the rattling vessel, descending faster and faster far past its initial landing spot in one of Kerovnia's parking lots and into the depths of the woods. The first few trees crashed and snapped their tops against the hull but the powerful wooden forms soon grew thicker and more resistant, ripping through wings and vital components as sparks and flames began to erupt through the descending wreck.

And wreck it did, crashing through the layered foliage, streaming black smoke as it slammed into dirt and bumped over stones, rocking the entirety of the reinforced hull, slamming down with a grating groan of tortured metal before a final agonized end to its perilous, dead-end journey. It had been hard to tell what else had happened during the harrowing descent but over half of its mass had been torn off as it fell, leaving a withered husk partially crushed between a series of now heavily dented rocks and toppled trees.

A dull silence befell the woods, punctuated by a few instances of sparking electronics and weakened metal cracking off like melting icicles. Another sound soon fellowed.

A sharp crack off in the distance and the sound of wildlife scattering to the air and through the undergrowth. Another, a third, fourth, fifth, a whole volley, pinging off of burning metal and tearing into stone, adding gravelly dust to the fuming smoke emerging from the wreckage. Distant calls and cries could be heard now growing in volume as black outlines could be seen distantly through the woods, closing in on the wreckage. Too far to get a clear view through the ether-electrical interference emerging from the crashed vessel but the long shapes within their arms left few questions.

Off in the distance, a few clicks over to the southwest, Kerovnia could be seen with its paritally decapitated tower-structures and the the roofs of its larger buildings visible over the thick foliage. That was where they were initially headed. That was also where the largest concentrations of the hostiles seemed to be heading from. Around them, the thick foliage was far from friendly to invader or defender; it was perfect for getting lost in. The same however, applied to the enemy.

Electrical interference was playing with the coms, practically silencing the team, but a distant signal was pinging on their coms. A voice was trying to break through the heavy static and interference emitted from the smoking wreckage.

"GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!" It called out, the particulars of its voice reduced to a grating buzz as their unknown contact blared over the sound of distant potshots and blizzard background ambience. "THEY KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO LAND HERE, THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN. WE NEED TO LINK UP SOMEWHERE SECURE, CANNOT SEND LOCATION DATA DUE TO INTERF-"

Before it could continue, a series of loud whistles could be heard through the air but they did not radiate from around them but above.

Mortar fire; energy-based given how it was further blurring the coms. Based on the volume, likely landing near and soon.

Into Perdition's Jaws

The RP is going to start tomorrow. If anyone else wants to join in, now is a really good time as there is only a single character slot left as previously stated (after one of our own had to leave due to other obligations).

Into Perdition's Jaws

There is a single open character slot left for anyone who wants to join.

Into Perdition's Jaws

I would be keen to play if this is still open

@Jumbus

Sadly we're full at 10 players now. However if there are openings I will try to let you know.

Into Perdition's Jaws

The species loadout guide has been completed while the character sheet section on ethereology has been slightly edited to be more narratively friendly than just focusing on two particular spells they possess.

Into Perdition's Jaws

Got room for one more?

@TheMerlin

That we do. A 10 player character squad sounds nice.

Into Perdition's Jaws: Lore

Species Loadout Guide

Into Perdition's Jaws features a wide variety of playable species and each one can almost be a faction unto themselves in terms of the unique options available to them. This post in particular is meant to both flesh out the kind of technology members of these species being to the field as well as to help players get a better idea of not just how to create characters but also how these species will be depicted by the many NPC's you will encounter.

Humanity

Humanity is usually closest to the classic ideas of space marines in popular science fiction, military or otherwise. They tend to typically wear partially powered armour to larger full on exoskeletal suits and with the proliferation of augmentation technology, even backwater colonial militias can usually afford to use a number of usually cybernetic but recently fairly regulated biological augmentation tech to help close the gap between humanity and the often far more powerful alien species. The specifics of how they are armed, augmented, trained, and otherwise made combat ready can vary wildly given how often humans appear throughout all five factions. They are most well established in the Unified Celestial Leauge where their fully encasing armour, striking blue visors, and large electro-propellant rifles have made them an image both respected and feared across the stars.

Elsewhere however they tend to prioritize lighter semipowered armour, something the League is doing to cut down on costs and open up new strategic avenues. Usually the weaker protection is compensated by upgrades such as specialize hidden ports that synchronize with one's own augmentations, partially biological construction allowing for additional weaponry and unique ugprades, and even void-evoking enchantments that can both protect from and enhance ethereal powers. Humans usually fight in tightly coordianted squads with very specific roles, sacrificing individual versatility for unified group readiness against a wide range of scenarios.

Humans typically are not as heavily augmented as other aliens, keeping the majorityof their enhancements under the skin. They are more likely to use armour that has heavy additional features such as weaprony, scanners, and hardpoints but those aligned with the Carnazir and the ZSRP are considerably less adverse to extensively enhancing their bodies. Typically human armed forces in League space will go for just a few specific upgrades to bodily capabilities while the Pact will be more extensive. It is to the extent that some pact militaries have humans who can generate bone-like armour around their bodies as well as having additional organs capable of storing excess ether, putting these post-humans on a level not far from certain alien species.

The Carnazir is considerably less regulated about this beyond a few of its absorbed military forces and while this means many of its augmentations are performed under less than ideal to outright dangerous conditions, it has resulted in augmented humans at once more ghoulish and freakishly powerful than their baseline counterpats elsewhere. Human ethereality is not as well studied as it is for other races but they seem to prefer a wide range of spells typically focused on a mixture of offence and defence that may not excel in one particular area but do allow them to rapidly respond to threats quite quickly, relying moreso usually on weaponry, tactics, and armour as opposed to supernatural might.

Tarrhaidim

The tarrhaidim are not far from humans in some ways in terms of choice in weapons, tactics, and gear which results in them often working well together. Where they differ are in a number of specifics. The tarrhaidim are usually associated with being less high tech and mores used to fighting as guerillas, something that is consistent with their history of civil wars and asymmetrical combat against one another and larger hegemonic forces. Their weapons however tend to have ruggedness and high calibre power in the place of high tech construction, typically adopting the Carnazir model of versatile as well as easily void-touched weapons. They are known to bolt their armour into their own bodies, often associated with lighter synthetic armour but a number of groups are not adverse to specialized mutagenic armous partially grown from their own bodies or specialized battlesuits that use their own internal worm-ridden biologies to power themselves.

Although they are not extraordinarily fast or strong, many of them use exoskeletal frames around their arms and legs to boost their speed and strength, making them a force that can move quite quickly while lugging around heavier weapons without too much trouble though not often to the extent of proffessional power armoured forces in terms of physical capability. They have a reputation for their skill in explosive traps, crew served weapons, long range skirmishing, and combat in rural areas.

As fungoid masses, the tarrhaidim are usuallly host to a variety of creatures which perform various functions within their bodies. Militarily, this means that they have so many differing internal components that it's sometimes hard to tell what is an augmentation and what is some sort of vegetation or creature that lives within as a regulatory component. This does not stop them from loading up often heavily on augmentations of all sorts though what they are able to afford tends to depend on market or logistical conditions. It is to the extent a number of them will appear as either wired-up semi-metallic cyborgs, living lanterns emitting a surreal aura, or shadowy and overgrown monstrosities.

They focus primarily on survival typically; enhancing their healing, functional organ redunancies (occaisionally with actual organs or organisms), power conservation and rapid-photosynthesis tech, but it is not uncommon to see more rough bodily modificaitons such as reactive plating, targeting beams, and even a few weapon systems burrowed into their bodies. Their etherealism is linked heavily to their faith and tends to come in the form of strange worm-creatures summoned form within the Abzu as well as strange frothy mossy growths, typically focusing on ravaging the enemy with these disruptive annelid predators or creating deceptively powerful barriers as well as partially blurring realspace with strange fluids injected right beneath its surface.

Vrexul

As the second largest of the listed species, the vrexul are the second largest with only the unztadtlige able of outmatching them. As befitting of their powerful bodies, they are typically outfitted in such a way they resemble smaller mecha in terms of the raw degree of firepower at their disposal. For example, the most well known vrexul weapon is an "assault rifle" known as the hellhammer which has its origins as an autocannon originally mounted on the automatons used to guard their larvae during their exodus. As a rifle, it is no less fearsome, firing armour piercing high explosive shells with a semi-biological electro-thermal chemical mechanisms, feared throughout UCL space for its destructive power. Their armour is layered over and partially integrated into their own carapaces, interlinking with complex networks of augmentations, offering impressive protection and enhanced phsyical capabilities. They are known to employ directional energy shielding, highly durable and capable of being fired through. While it does only protect from a single direction, they combine this with either ruthless covering fire advacnes or entrenching themselves into tough spots, getting under their enemies skin' with their further increased survivability.

They often carry a number of additional weapons encoded into their bodies or their armour, typically intended for shorter ranges or specialized purposes such as light artillery and anti-vehicular engagement. In spite of their arthropod nature, the vrexul do not often deploy in enormous numbers themselves, often commanding large groups of half synthetic half biological automatons that fulfill various other roles in combat, tying up enemies and helping to provide additional harassment and pinning fire while larger and more heavily armed vrexul viciously attack the toughest enemies or entrench themselves to weather enemy onslaughts. They have lately been moving towards lighter armoured units to increase the amount of proper soldiers they can have on the field similar to the League.

With the most advanced agumentation capabilities so far, the vrexul carry an impressive amount that go beyond merely just enhancing their baseline physicality. Integrated multifuncational tool-limbs, various drone-organisms they can control nesting in their bodies, qillatu absorbing ether-shock glands - they are living armouries not just in terms of weaponry but their complex additions to their towering forms. These vary wildly from vrexul to vrexul, typically based on their personal preferences, but outside of the Pact, they are known to work more "conventional" technologies into their carapaces giving them a bit of a slightly mix-and-match appearance. The most common augmentations are extra arms or legs, frequently used to assist with movement, close quarters combat, and handling multiple weapons (sometimes said limbs will morph into said wepaons).

Recently, many have taken to specialized sub-brains that help them with keeping track of multiple objects, locations, and entities. Etherealists are not very common amongst them though that number is steadily growing. Those that they do have are protected and tend to have a near legendary status amongst friend or foe, rupturing the air with foul otherworldly miasma to overwhelm defensive positions, shrouding their allies in fields of transparent void-shells from gunfire, or causing wild flailing arthropod limbs drenched in unearthly light to emerge from thin air, tearing and flailing away at shocked foes. Those who possess not only said void-borne abilities and have been infested the the evzredigor are an even higher magnitude of power, respected as perhaps the most elite of the Pact's soldiers.

Praolznevatz

As relatives of the Vrexul, the praolnevatz do not kit themselves out too differently from their gnarlier cousins. They are not as physically powerful and their carapaces do not have the same protective capabilities. In spite of being even more alien, they are compatible with many of the same upgrades and gear but they differ in that they tend to work far more with ethereal-oriented loadouts and direct energy weapons. As they are all naturally etherealists, they focus less on the controlled mutagenics of their brethren and instead on their unearthly powers. The vrexul have sledgehammer power and stalwart ruggedness while the praolznevatz choose obfuscating movement and overwhelming eldritch energy.

This has lead to some interesting technology building off of their own homegrown creations synthesized with those of the rest of the pact. The most common of these are direct-energy weapons that can tap into their users own ethereal reserves, allowing them to condition and reshape the nature and effects of their gunfire. They also use a number of shield generators that also can network with their supernatural biologies, something that even extends to the cyborg minions that accompany them into battle though they do not deploy them in as large of numbers as their more corporeal companions might. In battle, they are typically deployed to tie up, confuse, and stop enemy advances in their tracks with their numerous supernatural abilities capable of throwing even the most brute forced of onslaughts into chaotic disarray.

Praolznevatz augmentations are as varied as those of the vrexul but typically focus almost entirely on their void-inclined biology, making them more of nests of ghosts rather than nests of insects in how this appears. This usually comes in the form of various ethereal augmentations; "spells" not cast but embedded into their transparent, occasionally luminous bodies that make them appear as living snapshots of the abzu's monstrous depths. Arcane text in their borderline incomprehensible language, arranged in forms that make the characters look like living, twitching limbs can be seen if you look close enough but those are not the only things imbuing them with power.

A number of void-dwelling creatures have been domesticated or geneticallly modified to nest in their bodies and can often be seen moving about within, serving as additional organisms, repairing major damages, or increasing the potency of their unearthly skills. In combat, this occult mastery manifests in powerful projectile bombardments capable of putting even heavy armour under alert while the praolznevatz dash forward with chilling speed, disrupting electronic and ethereal scanning with the ripple-waves they send. Their shots ravage enemies with hungry, carnivorous power devouring armour and flesh as they unleash large concentrations of this deadly intensity within fairly short time frames, falling back and leaving enemies shattered in their wake.

Celaderaka

Demonic in appearance and with a reputation for militancy, the celaderaka whether by the most barbaric or noble examples of their kind are always prepared to fight regardless of how high or low tech their equipment is. Celaderakan armour is tough and form fitting, in many cases mistaken for their already rocky almost shell-like flesh when in reality it is partially built into it in a way similar to the vrexul. Much of their weaponry wihle well crafted is fairly simple at heart, simply being power slug-flinging guns or high output direct energy options, well adapted for combat in mountainous regions with long range and good controllability. They excel in particular with far more close combat options than most, having very well developed melee weapons built into their suits or even attached to their feet and legs whether they are blades, claw sheaths, or specialized force-projectors that send shockwaves into whatever they smash.

They are known to even use grappling hooks modified to be whips, ending with cruel curving blades capable of being used to swing about or slice enemies from a distance. They are known for their excellent shotgun designs, melding tight spread clusters with ripping flechette payloads sometimes capable of phasing through shielding whether purely energy or even ethereal. This has lead to a reputation of them being excellent at assaults and boarding action, both true, but they are no slouches in fighting over tough terrain over longer ranges either.

Their augmentations primarily focus on durability and aggression, from adrenal stimulant glands and regenerative nanomachine nests to ether absorption modules and sensors designed to detect enemy melee motions up close and alert the brain immediately. They do not tend to augment themselves as heavily though there has been a trend lately of going full cyborg, popular among mercenaries and army veterans though the process is both expensive and demanding along with not being properly standardized or regulated. Most of them choose to usually link their armour to their bodies then load them up with joint-based servos to increase speed and striking power.

They have a good deal of etherealists who either focus on helping to move around their allies with short range teleportation or straight up launching or boosting their movement capabilities. They are not slouches around direct combat, sending beams of ripping unearthly lightning and voidborne blasts, fairly blunt in these fields but often using these powers to cover for their comrades, emphasizing inelegant blunt force power just as their more physical methods would. The most well known of their ethereal skills is gathering enough ether at a certain location then violently detonating it; a very simple skill but one that has forced enemy armour to clumsily move out of position and into the path of anti tank missiles or entrenched bunkers to turn into blast-ridden mortuaries.

Scielto

Heavenly beings at once fascinating and unsettling, the scielto boasted the most advanced technology for years and while they may have more contesting them for that slot, it's not hard to imagine why they may have the lead. Scielto armour is as artistic as it is functional, elaborately draping them in almost sculpture esque plated layers that can reshift and alter shape partially to better protect and fit. Specialized ether-generators on board resonate with their own natural stores of otherworldly power, making even baseline soldiers far more deadly. Shield generators can be infused with their own ether-currents and even weaponized to launch powerful shockwaves, turning the defensive into the offensive in the flick of a thought. Just as importantly is the ability of their armour to work with their ether-neural uplink implants and to assist in communicating with the large groups of automaons the scielto command into battle.

They are similar to the vrexul in this sense though they are far more loathe to spill their own blue blood, preferring armies of machines that serve as conduits for their ether currents, empowered by their mere presence like armies of disciples renewed by godly blessings. Yet one should not expect them to be found wanting for individual combative power. Outside of their ethereality, the scielto pack a variety of cutting edge armaments, capable of firing ether-propelled luminescent spikes, bombs containing exploding into scaled down void-storms, and flocks of target-homing energy bolts. Combined with the ability to fly in ether-heavy environments and to hover in lower concentrations, they are fearsome to face even to hardened warriors.

The scielto are skeptical of most augmentations with a few key exceptions, disliking biological ones mostly on cultural and religious grounds. After all, is not their usage something that makes one have more in common with lesser species and their weak, foul bodies as opposed to divine perfection of the Sky-Chosen? Granted, the influence of humanity and changing social standards have gradually diminished the stigma but the scielto typically choose those which amplify their own power, emphasizing vast stores of energy and the ability to manipulate their ether when cast as if by a divine hand.

They are especially fond of those that assist them in "stacking" augmenting auras on top of one another, melding or overlapping otherwise conflicting streams of energy as well as specialized "tracer" augs that allow them to better sense target positions by their void-signatures, making them excellent for bombarding at further ranges. Each scielto is a painter with the powers of the abzu as their materials but the forms it take are as majestic as they are terrible to behold or receive. They are known for sending powerful directed waves of destructive power across the battlefield, capable of taking down whole squadrons, and sending lashing, twisting, serpentine beams of power to ravage wide swathes. Attempts to retaliate meet multiple defensive barriers manifested from within their casting range, covering the ruthless advance of their robotic forces. Forces that can sometimes turn into living void-bombs or be used to launch ethereal spells from directly, making even minor machines major threats under the right circumstances.

Unztadtlige

As living fortresses of armour, rock, mutated coral, and complex cybernetics, the unztadtlige can carry more and heavier armour and artillery than most vrexul. As their bodies do not resemble often resemble single animals as much as entire partially robotic coral reefs, they are loaded out closer to armoured vehicles. Unztadtlige typically have layered composite armour out of which a number of multi-limbed tendrils, gun turrets, launcher ports, drone launch bays and so on can be seen. They often move using a number of anti-gravitational emitters hidden within their bodies. Alternatively multiple legs, treads, wheels, or even a combination of these will do. Their armoured shells contain a number of self repair mechanisms from nanobot networks to partially cybernetic symbiote creatures within bioengineered to naturally maintain them, even shield generators in some cases when they can afford them.

Weaponry includes normally crew served heavy machine guns, typically AFV mounted autocannons, and even smaller howitzers among others but a number of more fearsome options are also typically visible. Living explosive projectiles that fly or crawl after targets, high output short range beam projectors, and realspace tearing transgressor cannons, capable creating rifts into the abzu, have given them the reputation as the most well armed of all known species. Augmentations are an odd issue; they sometimes do not really need them as their complex bodies have so many differing living components that they are redundant or will often affect a single part of themselves. That hasn't stopped relatively younger ones from trying out all kinds, typically using them to enhance the performance of their living internal maintenance organisms, combat bio-drones, and coral-like turrets. They seem to struggle with making ethereal augmentations extensively affect their entire bodies due to their gestalt consciousnesses but do have more success with a number of recently tailor-made biological and cybernetic options.

The unztadtlige do not often deploy in species-specific squads, often working to support the armour and infantry of other races for whom their services are frequently requested. When their molzentrags do enter the battlefield, they typically work with long range mobile bombardment, cleverly harassing infantry and light armour caught in the open while drawing and manoevering true heavy armoured targets into deadly crossfire positions. Their immense power has not gotten to their heads and while some of them can grow to the size of actual tanks, they are known to be more cunning than they are tyrannical on the battlefield. While they are not necessarily the most mobile or quick to respond, their high endurance and ability to outshoot the enemy will make even experienced mech divisions take caution when forced to engage.

Their lower numbers of etherealists means that their powers are usually not as well understood or standardized as they are elsewhere. It is known that many of them use their ethereality less so to enhance their strengths but rather to cover their weaknesses. Many of unztadtlige etherealists tend to use abilities involving short range shockwaves to knock back enemies, momentary visual obscuration via realspace tears, and sudden bursts of disorienting power to diminish enemy accuracy that are nowhere near as lethal as their mounted guns. Truly destructive casting is not unheard of, with some reputed to summon storms from the abzu itself and others supposedly able to call forth creatures from the Abyssic Plane more easily than others though accurate reporting on these is difficult to find given how secretive the unztadtlige are on this field.

Voidhangers

As they are closer to humanity than any other species, the Voidhangers are not often armed and armoured particularly different from them. Oftentimes both species will use many of the same weapons, tactics, and equipment but voidhangers do differ in a number of ways. The most obvious is how much of their armour tends to have stronger life support systems and special sealants, often placing a bigger emphasis on allowing them to recover from fire but also enhancing and boosting their own ethereal abilities. This allows many of them, even if they are not etherealists, to nonetheless generate or absorb ether into fields around themselves and have specialized void-mechanisms in their armour launch, manipulate, store, or even convert the ether into other energy sources. More mutated voidhangers can sometimes have special ports and weapons used to let their additional limbs exit or network with additional organs, granting them a number of additional advantages in combat whether in terms of hunting down, negating, or firing upon their enemies.

They are known primarily as boarding action, urban combat, and close quarters specialists along with infiltrators, snipers, and rangers. Much of their weaponry prizes higher rate of fire or precise accuracy regardless of it being ethereal, energy, or solid rounds. They tend to take a number of "homebrewed" weapons as well, usually capable of spraying otherworldly energy like flamethrowers, electrocuting targets with void-touched power, and guns firing poached abyssic parsites capable of tearing into armour or bleeding open the ether-stores of etherealists. Automatic shotguns, personal defence weapons, anti-materiel (and anti-immaterial) rifles, and carbines are their most iconic weapons. This is to the extent the most popular action movies almost exclusively depict them using only four weapon types with compact PDW's being the most common and stereotypical even with many nomad fleets slowly branching out into larger weapons for their armed forces.

The augmentations of these nomads intersect with humanity's but they prefer ethereal ones more frequently, sometimes for religious, spiritual, or occult reasons but primarily due to the fact that storing a supernatural matrix on your person is less bodily intrusive than cybernetics or additional organs. This isn't to say the latter are out of the question but due to their more particular biologies and often weaker immune systems, they are harder to make work. Regardless, they tend to take augmentations that boost their speed, perception, and reaction time, making them ghostlike and difficult to track on the field. Their ethereal powers only add to their mystique, specializing in stunning or disorienting enemies with flashbang like qillatu-shock spells, momentarily overloading ether thresholds of foes and signature jammers that can make them vanish from scanners or flood them with faulty readings.

Offensive abilities usually come in the form of bursts of void-bolts or even outright explosive globs, typically summoning them within a large radius rather than directly from their bodies so they can attack from unexpected angles. They are particularly well known for using their short "jumps" into the abyssic plane where they can quickly absorb a large amount of ether around them and violently expel it when exiting, blowing apart even unztadtlige armour in some cases making them especially deadly when they flank into cramped areas.

Gealtirocht

Don't be fooled by their tribal nature; the gealtirocht were anything but primitive and if anything, were one of the first races to achieve interplanetary travel. In spite of being allies of the grotesque and brutish looking vrexul, these eelfolk look little alike beyond being nearly as tall. Gealtirocht armour is smooth and often lacking in edges, adding a bit more bulk to their appearance yet having an almost sculptured look in spite of the darker lines and a few choice angular sections. It's deceptively tough and tends to come with advanced movement capabilties, capable of boosting their sprinting speed and jumping heights to absurd levels. With this armour, some gealtirocht can catch up with speeding vehicles and others are capable of jumping high enough to grab onto low flying aircraft given how much it empowers their mighty digitigrade legs. That's not all their armour can do: cyber-ethereal ocular mounts link with their third eyes to give them some of the most advanced dual-system scanning capabilities of any soldier while their anti-grav booster packs, fast-regenerating armour-hugging shields, and hidden energy blades allow for them to be tenacious and always within range to attack.

Gealtirocht weapons are precise over long distances, prizing accuracy and piercing power almost like the the UCL's forces but focused moreso on concentrated lasers and hyper-accelerated rounds (utilizing reactions between chemical and energy sources to cause a round's extreme speed as opposed to gauss or rail systems from the League). It is to the extent that many regiments still do not even use automatic weapons as their primary firearms, preferring semi-automatic choices with a good deal of precise shot placement as well as frequent options to charge up their shots allowing them to pierce thicker armour and even threaten lighter vehicles with just baseline infantry. This isn't to say they are adverse to close quarters weapons or more bluntly destructive choices. Many of them have grown to respec the power of deadly close range hand-held energy weapons that can rapidly spray down targets with plasma globules while shoulder mounted missile pads let them rain sidewinding energy-warhead hell onto multiple targets or concentrate it onto tougher ones. They are also known for employing powerful lances with deadly disruptor blades, capable of ripping apart even fully armoured scielto, doubly so when void-charged.

Inside and outside of the Pact, the gealtirocht are known for being masters of blazing fast attacks. Few are as mobile as they are whether with vehicular support or not. They can be pinning down squads and blowing open the torsos of high value targets one minute before rapidly closing in with overwhelming fire from multiple angles the next. They coordinate with one another quite sharply to achieve multiple firing angles and aren't afraid to fly or simply leap through the air for precise snap-shots, near constantly putting on the pressure on targets from great ranges. This is assisted by a large group of dedicated etherealists, utilizing their powers to drown and flood hostiles with the heathen fury that has become their calling across the stars. Serpentine conjurations of eel-like power surge out of portals cast around them, smashing through hapless targets while those who scatter are blown apart by lances of light carrying concentrated shards of ether particles. If that is enough, they are not averse to summon dreadful otherworldly predators resembling either large horrific amphipods or ghost shrimps brillng with spines and razored claws or no less monstrous combinations of eels and sharks forth to ravage the enemies in a demonic rage.

Augmentations are moderately commonplace amongst them, growing in popularity with their friendship to the vrexul and the praolznevatz. Most of theirs are fairly plain by the standards of other races, preferring upgrades to strength, endurance, durability, and speed which has only made them even stronger. A number focus on finding ways to take their pagan mysticism and speirfhaire organs and unite them with the cutting edge in self-enhancement. This has resulted in a number of cutting edge half pagan half neo-occultist augmentations that allows them to create auras amongst themselves and friendly gealtirocht, improving their ethereal power and performance of their cranially-hidden eyes. They can also even use their speirfhaires to guide certain projectiles if given cybernetic targeting modules, something that also compliments bio-parasites that allow some to take once vestigial bony growths into launchable spikes, that if given certain retractable firearm like railings can slice right through a celaderaka's armour and pin them to a wall or floor. While the practice is frowned upon in some circles, others have been known to take specialized drug synthesizing augmentations that allow them to enter a heightened state of both aggression and concentration, capable of even affecting their ethereal capabilities and speirfhaire usage to be even more potent though there are concerns about its effects on their health.