Keepin Corellia Weird
Name: The Dreadguard MK III
Designation: Sentient (Bio-Engineered/Vong-Shaped)
Homeworld: None (If any, Concord Dawn, since their creator is from there)
Language: Galactic Basic, Mando'a, Hand-signals/talk (All other language is wiped from memory)
Average height of adults: 1.75-2.5 Meters Depending on Base Height of Subject
Skin color: Can be any at first. The longer the subject lives, the more dependent on their armor they will become, and thus their skin will loose pigmentation over time.
Hair color: Varies
Breathes: I & II (with specific setbacks and limitations without filtration and such)
Strengths:
- Force-Dead: Because some of their creation utilizes Vong-Shaping, the Dreadguard are utterly Force-Dead. This would follow the same rules as any Vong-Shaped creature standard, in that Telekinesis would not directly impact them, but air could be pushed around them, and Force Lightning not only affects them, but because of their various enhancements, is actually more painful to them than it would be to others, and can routinely cause seizures, loss of muscle control, and worse symptomatic reactions. In terms of using the Force against them, treat them as regular Vong and you will be just fine.
- Muscular Enhancement Injections: Protein complex is injected intramuscularly to increase tissue density and decrease lactase recovery time, resulting in increased strength (Roughly three times typical human strength without further enhancement, and thrice the endurance/'work time' of a typical human while under exertion). This is also managed by a implant of a Human Growth Hormone boost in the thyroid gland which stimulates skeletal and muscle tissue growth, causing an overall increase in stature, with a side effect of reducing the sexual drive of the subject to almost non-existence. Some subjects may have experienced odd tumors, symptoms of gigantism, and ossified growths similar to a Zabraks' horns, but at random throughout the body
- Occipital Capillary Reversal: Submergence and boosted blood vessel flow beneath the rods and cones of the subject's retina. Produces a marked visual perception increase. Does not produce any exceptional spectrums of sight, excepting that the subjects experience near 'no-light' vision, able to see in near total darkness, and are noted to have an enhanced spectrum of color sight, experiencing richer hues and shades beyond the normal human ability, but in no way granting anything special. Certain subjects will experience retinal detachment during this procedure, thus resulting in total blindness. Others can become sensitive to light, and almost all subjects experience a sensitivity to extreme concentrations of ultraviolet light without buffers to filter it to an acceptable level.
- Superconducting Fibrification of Neural Dendrites: Alteration of bioeletrical nerve transduction to shielded electronic transduction. 300% increase in subject reflexes. Anecdotal evidence of marked increase in intelligence, memory, and creativity exists. Subjects experience marked increase and susceptibility in psychosis, PTSD, emotional instability and risky behavior, with heavy decrease in survival instinct and self-risk management. As well, subjects are prone to develop mobility deficits such as Parkinson's, Fletcher's Syndrome, Huntington Disease, and other such maladies. This enhancement along with the muscle alteration can enable a subject to run anywhere from 55 km/h to 60 km/h, with speeds in excess being a possibility, but apt to result in serious strain and damage to ligaments, tendons, and musculature, resulting in temporary to permanent debility if attempted. A general accepted reaction time for a subject is fifty miliseconds or less, depending on adrenal flow and individual subject reaction to augmentation, with the maximum possible/recorded being around twenty miliseconds. This reaction time is fast enough the subject is able to almost match a Jedi's reflexes, but is still considered inferior to them in that department due to the lack of preternatural precognition the Force grants a Jedi.
- Durasteel Ossification Graft: Advanced material grafting of durasteel onto skeletal structures to make bones virtually unbreakable. Recommended coverage not to exceed 5% total bone mass because of significant white blood cell necrosis. Marked increase in subjects weight due to this process, with any bones actually broken or otherwise injured taking five to ten times longer to heal, and major bones like a femur or jaw requiring surgical procedures to fully fix if they should somehow be broken or damaged. This graft also causes a markedly compromised immune response, resulting in a susceptibility to plagues, diseases, and infections outside of an organically sealed environment.
- Bio-Neural Interface Nodes: Developed based in part on various cybernetic enhancements available to the open market, subjects of the Dreadguard program are grafted with a set of hardpoints, manifesting as socket plugs pockmarked across their body, at major muscle groups, major nerve junctures, and the base of the skull. These nodes allow a direct neural interface with specially designed armor for them, thus helping to seal them from the outside environment and render them viable soldiers. As well, any armor they should be linked to thusly (which would have to be custom designed for this process) would be able to be controlled by thought alone, allowing much quicker reload and battle-command decisions to be made. The node at the base of the skull also comes with the limitation that, although to a much muted degree, should they be linked to a set of armor via these nodes, they will feel heat, cold, pain and injury done unto their armor as if it were connected to their nerves themselves.
- Dead Inside: Most people see a cute puppy and go mushy and gooey on the inside. The Dreadguard are highly unlikely to feel most normal emotions, as a result of their procedural training and hypno-indoctrination to a certain set of moral codes chosen by their Creator. Thus, relationships for them are problematic at best, and disastrous as a norm. They are often typically lone-wolves, seeking out usually only the company of others of their own kind for any length of time. With intense effort and time spent, this weakness can be overcome, to an extent, but the consequence being a decrease in combat efficiency as emotions and extraneous morals cause hesitation and doubt about the cold and pragmatic nature a dedicated super soldier needs to operate in such hellish arenas as they are designed to be deployed to.
- Unstable: Due to the baseline procedures used to modify their brain and nervous system to interact with the interface nodes and other augmentations, almost every Dreadguard subject suffers from crippling psychological issues. These range from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to full fledged psychosis and sociopathy. Where a normal person might experience minor agitation, a Dreadguard subject would fly into a rage without warning, killing and destroying everything it could until rendered unconscious (which with their enhancements and training, is a hefty feat). Many subjects are prone to suicidal tendencies and most only live a maximum of five years post augmentation before complete insanity sets in.
- Accelerated Aging: Due to increased metabolic rates required to support the various enhanced functions of the Dreadguard subjects, said subjects age at roughly two times the average span. If created from birth as a clone (ideal process) the subject can expect to live no more than sixty years maximum before the accelerated aging renders them largely support staff incapable of active battle duty, due to physical degradation or mental instability. Thus, it is recommended that Dreadguard be kept in some form of stasis except when actively deployed for battle to help limit this side-effect.
- Weakened Immune System: Due to extreme alteration and induction processes wrought upon the body and mind of the Dreadguard, they are susceptible to disease, plague, and sickness. What might be a minor flu strain for typical organics could quite easily be a drawn-out ordeal to a Dreadguard subject. Thus, it is recommended each subject be given an environmentally sealed and contained armor to limit their exposure to the outside elements and it's contagions. As a further impact, while a typical human can get over a typical infection with a regimen of simple oral antibiotics, due to their decreased immune response, a Dreadguard may wind up hospitalized on an intravenous drip of antibiotics to be able to recover from even a minor infection. A subject of this program caught outside a sealed suit for any sustained duration will sicken, and ultimately lead to death. This deficit also, ironically for frontline soldiers, leads to them having absolutely no tolerance for alcohol or other such intoxicating substances.
- Ultraviolet Light Response: Ultraviolet light and rays, especially concentrations of them, are painful to the unshielded eyes and flesh of a Dreadguard subject. Repeated unshielded exposure to the eyes of a Dreadguard can cause retinal burning and scarring over time (similar to looking at a welding torch without a visor, but taking place over hours or days). This can also, in less time, cause color blindness and various other vision defects such as near or far-sightedness and such. The unexposed flesh of a Dreadguard subjected to repeated ultraviolet light exposure will experience burning, starting off as a sunburn and progressing to full tissue thickness burns if left long enough.
- Force Lightning Susceptibility: Due to their increase neural response time and sensitivity, Dreadguard subjects are exceptionally prone to pain and debility from any direct exposure to Force Lightning or such energy transfers. Not only is the pain response to such an event increased several times from such as is normal, but the Dreadguard would be prone to seizures, convulsions, and if energy induction is maintained for long enough, permanent speech and motor deficits. This fact can be mitigated by external armors and factors.
- Extremes: Due to the physical augmentation received, recipients of the Dreadguard process often experience exponential growth from their base frame or potential. If a subject would have been, or at time of augmentation was six and a half feet tall, they may well wind up eight feet tall, or taller even. Almost all Dreadguard are possessed of extremely broad facial features and stature, excepting those of extremely slight frames before the augmentation process, resulting in almost none of them being considered attractive or even fully human, as the process of augmentation results in an exaggeration of all physical attributes. If an adult specimen put through the process was already considered extremely fast or agile, the resulting Dreadguard subject would be even more so, the same with physical strength or endurance. This also carries over into the arenas of the mind, making someone exceptionally smart even more brilliant, and a volatile or angry person even more so. A person who merely had a knack for machines prior to the procedures may afterwards become a savant in the arena of engineering or machining, and so on and so forth.
- All About That Bass: Noted amongst the subjects of this program is a deep, gravely quality to their voice, which is not quite known whence the effect originates, or why, but exists all the same, a marker of their departure from the true roots and nature of humanity yet again. Especially in female subjects, this quality is likely the cause of their predilection to a silent and taciturn nature.
- Ageless: While they may experience aging physically in terms of deterioration and degradation, externally at least it is an extreme mark of life for a Dreadguard subject to display any signs of aging, barring physical weakness. A Dreadguard with crows feet is a veteran of a hundred wars, and one with worry lines is a warrior of such experience one should hesitate to even approach them, both due to likely prowess and the fact the effects of the program that made them the soldiers they are is likely to have rendered them a completely unstable time-bomb.
- Blank Slate: As part of the process, if a candidate for the Dreadguard program is selected from a grown adult, they will be totally and utterly purged of memories of their former life. Artifacts and relics may remain, fragments of memories, a turn of phrase that carries over, certain personality traits and certainly select physical attributes, but wholesale memories and lives are purged without mercy or second thought, and replaced with layer upon layer of hypnotic-indoctrination that instills protocol and procedure as required or requested. While this process is quite extensive, it can be undone, though it is not recommended.
- Humanity At Its Finest: Each subject of the Dreadguard program is human. No Epicanthix-Vahla- near-human insanity. Plain old human stock is the only genetic stock acceptable to the process, and use of anything else, no matter how minor the deviation from base humanity, results in the immediate, excruciating, and rather gruesome death of the subject by cellular degradation (the subject dissolves into a pile of goop, basically)
Races: N/A – Each Dreadguard subject may receive, post modification, specific specialized armor or further cybernetic enhancement to tailor them to their specific role in the battlefield arena, but that is not involved or determined, nor a part of the base program used to create these soldiers. And, as an individual process, each Dreadguard will experience moderately different capacities as a result of the process, but this in no way results in races or sub-species, given each Dreadguard in an individual biological specimen.
Estimated Population: EXTREMELY RARE. While the exact numbers of this programs specimens are unknown, only a scant hundred are currently known to have been created successfully from the MK 3 program and lived longer than a year or two out of hundreds upon hundreds of attempts. Each Dreadguard is the pinnacle of biological manipulation and genetic engineering, and stands upon a mountain of his fallen brethren who did not manage to make the gauntlet intact.
Diet: Anything. Everything. Due to enhancements a Dreadguard must, just at 'resting' rate consume close to ten thousand calories a day. Active wartime deployment can see this nutritional intake need double, or even triple. Lack on intake results in a decline of combat efficiency and general ability, up unto a self-induced coma that can last for a few days to attempt to keep the subject alive.
Communication: Oral Speech, Various sign languages if taught. Nothing special.
Culture: Though in general they do not have any specific/unique culture at this time, most Dreadguard, if given independence and autonomy, would likely gravitate to warrior societies like the Mandalorians, or similar sub-groups of a culture, due to their training and indoctrination.
Technology level: Galactic Standard. Given they are individually commissioned and altered subjects, their level of technology is up to their Commanders. Intellectually they can handle as much tech or more than most veteran soldiers of the galaxy.
General behavior: Erratic. Dangerous. The Dreadguard subjects have no defined and exact set of behavioral protocols, being instead shaped to individual needs of battle. At their core, they are loyal and dutiful soldiers, at least at the beginning of their creation. Otherwise, they exist rather like any other individual human would, a product of their nature and their environment.
History: The Dreadguard MK III originally began as a by-product of Ijaat studying the varying effects of the adriel ooglith biot wrought into him by the Shapers of Selvaris as commanded by Reverance. At first, he was attempting to understand said modifications so he could replicate them in others. Eventually, it became a quest to understand the very process and procedure that the biot had changed within his physiology, and even further along the lines, he and his Artificial Intelligence unit Geoffery began to muse and wonder over the recreation of said modifications, but to a further degree, creating a living weapon that could strike at the very heart of the monsters who made Ijaat into what he was.
The first step was to begin trials, which resulted in purchase of cloning spheres and a cube from Spaarti to begin the small scale experiment in earnest. Early specimens were mere stepping stones, humans with such minor enhancement as to not even qualify as a foot note or stub to the project really, but their purpose was key all the same. Their existence allowed Ijaat to prove the viable theories and disprove the less grounded ones, resulting in a strict set out protocols and operational standards that would set the goals and progression of the projects future.
Rather than create monsters they could not control, Ijaat and his team first developed the theory, then implanted electronic simulations, and then finally tested much reduced enhancements on 'disposable' flash clones grown in the Spaarti spheres, 99% of which died during training or were such unbalanced warriors of unfortunate proportion they could not really function in normal society or war, and thus were kept in cryo stasis to be examined, and further were the first specimens to be subjected to the genetic modifications to instill loyalty, which was later discarded in favor of the more flexible process of hypnotic-indoctrination.
These misfits, much like the NULL ARCs of the Grand Army of the Republic, were trained in hyper-focused areas of warfare, and kept on as training officers to the final subjects of the Dreadguard project, functioning to train the subjects in key areas of their combat duties where their limited enhancements excelled and propelled them beyond even their pupils. These 'Guardian' class Dreadguard subjects were such that, while one may be extremely fast or strong, or smart, they were unfortunately limited. The fast ones were often no stronger, or less strong, or less intelligent even, than your average human, and as such existed solely to train the true successes of the program in the base utilization and employment of the specific enhancement they as Guardians embodied.
Several hitches came in the later stages of the program, even though the initial stages went relatively smoothly. Replicating the control over technology in such a whole-sale fashion as Ijaat has from his biot resulted in grotesquely warped subjects that require constant external life support to exist, but oddly enough were used as a think-tank for the furthering of the project. Though broken physically, their minds were of such brilliance that, for the limited time they existed, they provided invaluable insight into the project and it's flaws, though often these beings lived only for mere weeks, if that, and as such, less than a handful existed in totality before the exact replication of Ijaat's technomantic abilities was abandoned in favor of a severely limited bio-neural interface designed to function with specifically and custom created armor tailor made to each Dreadguard subject.
When the first 'perfected' Dreadguard was created, it was said Ijaat almost scrapped the whole project and threatened to fly his beloved ship into the heart of a nearby blackhole or sun, as he suddenly realized the consequences of his zeal. In his quest to understand himself, he had strayed perhaps into territory beyond morally grey and into reprehension. Geoff, even as an AI had reservations, citing the accomplishment as the 'greatest failure of his existence' in that, while the individual processes and procedures had unlocked several things of note, combining them all into one cohesive package and training the result as a soldier of war was likely the greatest act of hubris and violence that he had seen.
The first iteration of Dreadguards existed solely on the Outer Rim, engaging in guerilla warfare against fringe Dark Side groups to test their efficiency against their intended targets. The reports that filtered in were staggering. Simply put, whole squads of these individuals could easily turn the tides of a planet wide conflict... A handful of men could save thousands of lives. But the repercussions upon the subjects were such that not a single one managed to last beyond their first deployment, most committing suicide by self or in mad charges in battle, their reasons varying from horror at their deeds, to inability to adjust to their dual nature- at once the pinnacle of human potential, and yet elevated so far beyond the regular ceiling of human ability they were a class apart, reviled and outcast.
In response, the guidelines governing the program were changed. Care was taken to lengthen the training process from quick flash-training as a totality, to a base of flash-trained combat skills, further enhanced by individual and intense specialization training by Guardian Class Dreadguards. This change in structure was such that survival rates, while still ghastly when looked at morally, objectively skyrocketed from the single percentiles, to most Dreadguard able to live for 3-4 deployments, and reports of some subjects living into the double digits of deployments and beyond. Such reports of long-lived Dreadguard were rare, and largely discarded as warlord bravado, but they persisted such that some believed them anyway.
Due to the procedures and training of such a specimen, the cost of a Dreadguard is beyond high in both terms of money, and other more moral means. A single soldier put through this program could buy you a platoon or more of standard Clone soldiers from any provider of such troops. Yet their impact on the field of battle is of a magnitude that those who could afford it would gladly pay the price. Eventually, at the behest of several of the 'Old Guard' of Dreadguard, like Rook and Kix, the production of them as mercenary super-soldiers was halted, and they were given autonomy, and allowed to integrate with their predecessors to whatever end they wished, with overseer of the program being Ijaat, and overall command of the newly dubbed 'Mark III' being given to Rook.
Their capabilities are, as are any humans, limited only by their imagination, or as some would say 'fate'. But they exist as a whisper on the battlefield, most of the Galaxy at large not even knowing of their existence, much less who creates them. Most of their feats are ascribed to war-time fire stories and soldiers prone to exaggerating, but here and there in the hottest fires of war they stride, created by a man consumed by forces he himself did not understand, yet once unleashed, he could not bring himself to destroy that which he felt was the only 'children' he would ever truly have.
Notable Player-Characters:
- [member="Rook"] - High Lord of the Legions
- [member="Ijaat Akun"] - Forge-Lord
- [member="Ylvaris Desman"] - Tribune
- [member="Kix Tal'Verda"] - Honored Veteran
- [member=Canal] - Honored Veteran
- [member=Kiyron] - Initiate
Intent: To create a Non-Force User race in highly select numbers for limited writers to play on Chaos that will, as they develop and adjust to their 'enhancements' allow for a progression of abilities and prowess vaguely similar to the development of a Force User character, without space-magic thrown in. Special care was taken to instill 'flavor' into the sub so that the character would have extreme developmental hurdles to overcome in their existence in order to function and work with any long term effect or ability. This species is never intended to be more than a handful or two in existence, totally(if that), and isn't going to start out functioning at peak level and ability. The intent with them is to shake up any battlefield they step onto. Not to win every war without question.
Development Threads:
- Focus on the Visions (GA Dominion of Fondor) - Dreadguard participate in retaking of a FLEETCOM station from Pirates. Further testing of the new Mark III iterations abilities. (Complete)
- Imprisoned (Follow-up to Yag'dhul Dom) - Knowledge and tech acquired from Architect fleet on creation of the older iterations of Dreadguard, thus helping lay foundations for the newer generation. (Ongoing)
- In Case of Emergency(GA Dominion of Thyferra) - Dreadguard take down a slavers ring and meet-up with the, un-beknownst to them, the first fully battle ready Mark III. (Complete)
- Gods of Iron(GA Dominion of Yag'dhul) - Older Dreadguard respond to a call for aid from the planet of Yag'dhul and to the threat of one of the most bitter foes - the Architects. It is here Ijaat realizes the potential of the Dreadguard, but the need for them to be more than they are at current. (Complete)
- One Hundred Young Gods - Dreadguard claim Mustafar, peacefully, for the Galactic Alliance and set up a base of operations wherein they perfect the process of the MK III Dreadguard creation and begin recruitment. (Ongoing)
*NOTE: 'Guardian' class Dreadguards will never exist as PCs, and if they are submitted as NPCs they will be utterly barred from any sort of PVP/PVE as their abilities in their specialization are apt to be far overpowered for this board and setting
