Renegade Rodian
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a rentable unit to allies and customers of the Helix Syndicate.
- Image Credit: Demon Cliparts from Clipart Library
- Links: [Clelon of Pol’Zum] [Dazouri] [Gibbela]
- Unit Name: Screamin’ Demons
- Affiliation: Helix Syndicate / Closed-Market
- Classification: Mercenary Regiment
- Equipment: None
- Deployment: Limited
- Availability: Unique
- [Strength] Jocks by Night - Even the most peaceable Dazouri can turn into a hulking, hardy behemoth capable of slaughtering an entire Imperial task force with ease. When in their “rage state”, a Dazouri is a formidable foe to bring down. The ones who don’t flee in horror and typically eviscerated, chewed in half, or squashed into a pulp. It isn’t pretty.
- [Strength] Triggered - All of the Dazouri in the Screamin’ Demons possess cybernetic implants. Not only do these implants allow them to trigger their rage state on and off with greater ease, but it gives them basic friend-foe-identification when in the thick of battle. This allows other Syndicate forces to fight alongside them without risk of being mauled to death.
- [Strength] Outside Voices - Have you ever heard a Dazouri roar? It’s a psychological thing. Anyone, saved the most grizzled of warriors, would be hard-pressed to do anything in that moment but flee for their miserable lives.
- [Weakness] Nerds by Day - A Dazouri outside of its rage form has the size, strength, and endurance of a small child. Many of the Dazouri recruited by the Syndicate were just a bunch of youngsters, restless sons and daughters of farmers. They lack any technological savvy and firearms training that would make them useful in this state.
- [Weakness] Barbarians - Rage State Dazouri are incapable of using weapons or armor. Even something as mundane as a blastproof vest would be torn off by the Dazouri if it even fit at all. They go in with nothing but thick fur and their surprisingly strong hides for protection. Rage State Dazouri are also incapable of tactical reasoning. They will just charge and kill until there is no more room to charge and no one left to kill.
- [Weakness] Unhinged - Like all cybernetics, the Dazouri’s implants are vulnerable to interference. If these are disabled, they are more likely to revert to their rest state after a single engagement rather than last the whole battle. Further, they’ll stop being able to distinguish friend from foe, attacking both allied forces and other Dazouri.
Nobody in the Pentastar Alignment wanted anything to do with the Dazouri. Sure, they were peaceful enough farmers as long as you left them alone. Give them a raw deal, try to steal their crops, or or just generally make them mad, though… That’s where things get ugly. While they’re small and unassuming on their own, Dazouri have the ability to shapeshift into juggernauts when sufficiently incensed. The rampages a Dazouri in its rage state are the stuff of legends. Entire Stormtrooper companies: killed to the last and their corpses repurposed for scarecrows. Trandoshan slavers: eviscerated, repurposed for fertilizer. Some legal finagling saw an agricultural combine attempt to trick the Dazouri into giving up their land. Unfair deals and all that. The legal stuff worked, but the company did not have a plan for rage state Dazouri rampaging across the land, smashing equipment and droids like they were made from cardboard.
You’d have to be crazy to want to work anywhere near Gibbela. The Helix Syndicate took this as a sign that competition in the area would therefore be very limited. They set up a cannery and started buying produce en masse from the natives. This made quite a few Dazouri filthy stinking rich and, understandably, endeared more than a few of them to the Syndicate. Here were people willing to look past their bloodthirsty, violent history of dealing with outsiders and treat them as equals. They were wrong, of course. The Helix Syndicate was not looking past their more primal tendencies. In fact, that was what brought them to the world in the first place.
All it took was circulating some rumors. About all the action and adventure one could find by enlisting in the Syndicate’s armed forces. The thrill of combat and all that. The money, the glory, the women. Dazouri women in this case, or maybe other humanoid women if that was what they were into. The Syndicate wasn’t here to judge. Just to employ. Most Dazouri prefer the life of a peaceful farmer, though, so turnout was a little less than what you would expect. What the Syndicate ended up with was a couple dozen Dazouri youths ready and willing to go ballistic for cash.
They were collected and put into their own unit, affectionately called the Screamin’ Demons, and placed under command of the illustrious Clelon of Pol’Zum. Deploying the Screamin’ Demons for the first time was something of a learning experience, as once they were finished tearing apart some Waylon Syndicate thugs, they turned on the Syndicate Enforcers that had accompanied them. Fortunately their involvement in causing those casualties was covered up and blamed on Waylon. A think tank was assembled, who suggested some modest brain implants in their recruited Dazouri would help.
It did.
It’s important to note that the implants of the Dazouri do not serve as remote control by the Syndicate. They simply provide the Dazouri themselves with a slightly increased capacity to reason during their rage state. Should these be disabled somehow while the Dazouri is raging, the results could be less than pleasant for all parties involved.
