AMCO
I'm Sorry Dave
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Agile shock infantry for the Sith Empire and personal use.
- Image Credit: agnidevi [X] & [X]
- Canon: N/A
- Links: Sithspawn, Cyborg.
- Name: Ta'Arana, aka Iron Angels
- Designation: Sentient (Barely)
- Homeworld: Dromund Kaas
- Language: Sith
- Average Lifespan: 12 Standard Year [Theoretically forever when retired from active duty, i.e., when a specimen is placed in stasis and used for procreation only.]
- Estimated Population: Scattered
- Description: A cruel mockery of the kind and graceful Diathim, the Ta'Arana, or Iron Angels in the tongue of the Sith, are psychotic fiends motivated by only two things: Their lust for bloodshed and their loyalty to their vile Sith masters. While appearing to be a droid of some kind, the horrible truth is that the Ta'Arana are vicious Sithspawn encased in high-tech armour, Sithspawn engineered to integrate with their armour to such an extent that they are entirely unable to survive outside their duraplast shells. These vile creatures are rarely seen except on the battlefield, where they will typically be found tearing into enemy ranks with massive vibroaxes or engaging in other forms of brutal melee combat.
- Breathes: N/A
- Average height of adults: 2.4 metres
- Average length of adults: N/A
- Skin color: Grey (Duraplast Exosuit) and Red (The Creature Within)
- Hair color: N/A
- Distinctions: Asexual horrors encased in cold duraplast shells, the Ta'Arana reproduce through fission, often while kept in stasis to keep prized "sources" from expiring due to their short lifespans. Immensely strong and equally terrifying, the Ta'Arana are often mistaken for mere droids by unknowing non-force users, at least until they let loose horrid war cries and charge gleefully into battle, though any force users would be able to recognise the taint of their vile forms with ease.
- Races: While not "races" in the traditional sense, Ta'Arana are generally divided into four categories:
Prime Progenitors: Numbering only twenty, at least in regards to Vandiir's Dromund Kaas-born batch, the Prime Progenitors are the original source of the species and the specimens that were first trained in Mandalorian-style combat by [member="Koda Fett"]. - Reproductive Progenitors: Spawned from the Prime Progenitors, these unfortunate beings are kept in stasis for their entire lives in order to best preserve the "purity" of the originals. They are the primary source of new Warriors.
- Sources: Select veteran Warriors whose experience has been deemed worth preserving, the Sources are retired from active duty and kept in the same stasis as the Progenitors. While not as numerous as those produced by the Reproductive Progenitors, the Ta'Arana born from the Sources are highly specialised, if less adaptable than "blanks". Their offspring are frequently used for suicide attacks since they are more capable from the get-go but less likely to adapt.
- Warriors: The bulk of the Ta'Arana species, the Warriors are born of the variants listed above and are the only variants to ever leave the hidden facilities in which their kind reproduce.
[*]Strengths:
- Genetic Memory: Interestingly enough, newborn Ta'Arana inherit the memories of their progenitor, allowing their experience to be preserved, assuming they live long enough and are found worthy. To add to this, all the Ta'Arana Progenitors were instructed in Mandalorian-style combat, making even "blank" specimens formidable warriors.
- Titans of War: Impressively strong, something only enhanced by the exosuit that encases them from birth till death, the Ta'Arana are a fearsome foe on the battlefield, which is further enhanced by the surprising agility and impressive reflexes arising from the fusion of cybernetic enhancements and the vilest of Alchemy. Perhaps most impressive of all is their wings, which use a combination of incredibly strong muscle tissue and cybernetic enhancements to allow them to achieve a semblance of true flight, despite their great weight, at least for short periods.
- Mechanical Integration: The duraplast exosuits that give them life and mobility are also their greatest boon, as they are extremely durable, enhance their already formidable strength, and are loaded with a number of deadly weapons. Typical examples include wrist-mounted flamethrowers, wrist rocket launchers, and other Mandalorian inspired gadgetry, though the specifics tend to vary greatly, at least among those spawned from Sources as opposed to Progenitors.
[*]Weaknesses:
- Legacy Lost: While immensely useful, the Ta'Aranas' genetic memory is still limited. Chief among these issues is a lack of creativity: The more stages of "memory inheritance" a specimen has been through, the less it is able to adapt to new situations, in turn limiting the amount of new experience it can pass on. For this reason, the number of "generations" is usually kept low, with a substantial portion of all Ta'Arana being spawned from the Progenitors.
- Warborn, Warsworn: While exceptionally well suited for war and combat in general, the Ta'Arana are unsuited for just about anything else, perhaps with the exception of lifting heavy objects.
- Mechanical Integration: While shielded from most Ion and EMP, the internal circuitry can still be affected by especially powerful and localised variants. If affected in such a way, the Ta'Arana would still be able to move, just very slowly. It would effectively turn a mighty foe into a mere nuisance, not to mention that they would be unable to survive more than ~15 minutes without the life support systems in the suit.
- Born of the Dark: While their duraplast exosuits means that small doses of Force Light has no skin to burn, per se, anything stronger than that will still harm them, with particularly strong doses being able to instantly kill them.
- Not the Sharpest Knives: While skilled at combat and capable of making decent tactical decisions, Ta'Arana are... not very bright. In particular, long-term planning and abstract thinking is especially difficult for them. Combined with the fact that they are effectively born brainwashed, this has resulted in a general lack of mental defences, especially against more subtle kinds of mentalism.
- Battle Frenzy: While unshakingly loyal to their Sith overlords, Ta'Arana have a tendency to get lost in the rush of battle, which, among other things, frequently results in them losing sight of the plan to pursue enemies, especially wounded ones. There is even the occasional incident of frenzied Ta'Arana attacking allies, though this rarely happens while being led by Sith, due to their hereditary obedience.
- Breathed our Air: Not only are the Ta'Arana reliant on external machinery to sustain them, they are also aggressively allergic to anything but small doses of oxygen; for this reason, a suit-breach will typically cause wooziness, followed by hallucinations and eventually death. If forced to inhale it, such as by a breach leading to their windpipe or lungs, all current tests have ended with the specimens expiring within no more than a minute.
CULTURE
- Diet: Subsist on a diet of high-energy nutrient paste, injected intravenously from suit-integrated storage cylinders.
- Communication: All specimens can understand and speak Sith, to a limited degree. Some know a bit of basic. Very few are literate, though most can understand warning signs, at least simple ones.
- Technology level: Virtually nonexistent, with their gear being maintained by support personnel.
- Religion/Beliefs: As memories are passed on to every new body, so are loyalties. All Ta'Arana, at least those originating from the Progenitors born in one of Vandiir's hidden labs on Dromund Kaas, are loyal to the core. This loyalty has its origins in a hereditary belief in the Sith as godlike beings, with Adrian Vandiir and the other Sith involved in their creation holding a special place in their primitive pantheon. So ingrained is this belief that even direct evidence to the contrary will be dismissed outright, a result achieved through both this indoctrination and a general lack of critical thinking.
- General behavior: With all Ta'Arana born in Sith laboratories and bred solely to fight, they rarely form emotional bonds with others of their kind. In truth, the creatures are very likely unable to survive on their own, with everything from the exosuits that encase them to the food they eat provided to them by their Sith overlords. Those rare Ta'Arana that overcome their biological programming and start to form bonds of such kinds are generally considered defective and subsequently guided to the nearest disintegration booth for immediate termination, sometimes after being examined to prevent such "mistakes" in the future.
Having learned from his failures while working on the project that would become the Amalgafiend, Adrian Vandiir decided to set himself a more reasonable goal for his next project. Instead of aiming too high and having the project crash and burn, he decided to start off with a concept, an idea, and then build his newest abomination from there.
In the case of the Ta'Arana, this idea was inspired by Spaarti.
Having long admired the sheer convenience of being able to create a soldier ready to fight from "birth", he set out to create an alchemical version of the "flash memory" process. Instead of externally sourcing the memories, he came up with the idea of having every new specimen inherit the memories and thus experience of its progenitor; with any luck, this would lead to exponential improvement with each passing generation, until every single specimen was the most elite of elites.
Of course, things are rarely as straightforward as they appear on the drawing table.
The Sithspawn themselves were born from a mixture of a staggering array of alien species, all fused together by competent bioengineers in order to create a genetic stew of sorts, well-suited for alchemical alterations. While a lengthy process, there were no critical errors in this phase, though the specimens proved to be noticeably less resilient that had initially been hoped for. To compensate for this, it was decided that the best course of action was to turn them into cyborgs, which was done through limited internal cybernetics and a fully-integrated exosuit. While Adrian was all but oblivious to the intricacies of Mechu-Deru, he nonetheless had considerable corporate resources at his back, allowing him to secretly commissioned a slew of cybernetics, armour, and armaments for his most recent creation.
The genetic memory, however, proved to be much more of a challenge.
While initial tests were highly promising, specimens were invariably driven mad, their memories fracturing, most of them unable to differentiate between past and present. Despite numerous attempts to fix this, the problem would not be solved, until, that is, in sheer desperation attempts were made at removing one "parent" from the equation. Somehow, this resolved the problem, with the leading theory being that the unbroken line between original source and offspring nullified whatever elusive problem had been plaguing the initial test subjects. Of course, field testing would later reveal that possessing too many "generations of memory" brought with it issues of its own, though at that point it would be too late to resolve the issue without undue expenditure.
Now in possession of a final template, a full twenty progenitors were created, which were subsequently trained in the art of combat by none other than the famed bounty hunter [member="Koda Fett"], who was paid handsomely for his services. Fully trained, the progenitors were placed in permanent stasis and transferred to hidden labs and black sites across the galaxy, from which their offspring would slowly trickle forth, offspring that would subsequently be placed in stasis and used to produce offspring of their own.
Immediately after emerging from their birthing pods, Adrian's new legions would be fitted with top-of-the-line duraplast armour, ready within less than a day to be deployed to the furnace of war. Despite their strength, despite their equipment, most would perish. Most would die on the field. That was their purpose, their lot in life. Those few that survived, those few that emerged a veteran of a dozen wars, a hundred battles, would one day come to produce offspring of their own. It was survival of the fittest, and their chosen environment was the theatre of war.
