The Contingency - Background

[Valiens Nantaris]

(Sections in Italics are those which are not to be shared.)

The Contingency

Backstory:
During the last years of the Old Galactic Republic the silicon based lifeforms known as Shards were discovered on the distant world of Orax. These innocuous crystalline lifeforms were immobile, living in caves for all their long lives, communing telepathically. Those who discovered them found that they could be mounted in special droids and thus be able to leave their homeworld and explore. Shards even had the ability to use the Force, but they were not fully accepted by the Jedi Order, even though some did become Iron Knights.

The fall of the Old Republic brought the Galactic Empire to power. Emperor Palpatine distrusted any Force Users he could not control so many Shards were destroyed and they were banned from being uplifted into droid bodies.

One Shard, an Iron Knight named Ophila, barely escaped termination by the Emperor’s Inquisitors and escaped with four other shards a few years after the end of the Clone Wars. Their ship though was damaged, and when they jumped to hyperspace they were instead sent wildly off course, ending up in dead space just outside the galaxy proper.
Shards can live for centuries though, and eventually reached the nearest object in space; Companion Aurek, also known as the Rishi Maze.

And so the droids vanished into the unknown. They were not seen again in the reign of the Galactic Empire, or any which followed them for over 850 years. If any remembered them they were assumed to have been lost in one way or another and not recovered.

Their ship was dying as they reached the Rishi Maze, and so they chose one of the nearest stars and headed there. The star was exhibiting unusual activity, but it was their only chance, and something seemed to call to them. What they found was something incredible; a white dwarf surrounded by the remains of an ancient Dyson Sphere. Surrounding it was a ring which was fed by the power of the massive structure.

The ring which surrounded the sphere was an ancient ring world, now abandoned. However, due to the lack of atmosphere and the continual power of the sphere, it was still operational. It did not take much to start the machines processing and forging once more. Soon, using the advanced technology, Ophila and his companions had repaired their ship and could have departed. However, they decided to stay, make use of what they found and later return.

In Ophila’s silicon mind the memories of the Imperial purge of his comrades and the other Shards burned bright, and it came to him that if he returned to the galaxy then they would be walking into a trap. And so, the Shards stayed, using mining droids from the city they began to mine and excavate the planets and asteroids in the system. It escaped none of them that someone had once lived here a long time before, but they had…vanished. There was no trace of them or what had caused their destruction, it was as though they had just disappeared one day and never returned.

Shards, by their nature, are hard to control by the Force. Their minds work so differently to carbon based life that the Force needs to manifest in different ways for them to be dominated. However, they were not above hearing whispers. Whispers telling them that they must claim their revenge, they must build to one day return. Never did they imagine that the whispers came from what was inside the Dyson Sphere…not until it was too late anyway.

The lost system, catalogued from afar as SX-192, was rich in minerals and ores and the unlimited energy of the white dwarf trapped in the sphere enabled them to power machines and furnaces. Soon the Shards had made droids to help them, and those made more droids, and so on until the city lived once more with machines teeming the streets. Ever the sight of the galaxy loomed above them, focussing their power.

In isolation, unaffected by the Gulag Plague or the 400 years darkness the machines toiled on. They would have their revenge one day, but they were patient. They had all the power they needed, all the resources, and soon enough they started to mine neighbouring systems and build ships to carry them there. It was as though every design or creation they needed just came to them when they needed it.

Ophila, over time, sought a new body, casting aside the old Iron Knight frame. His crystal darkened as with his thoughts and that of his four companions likewise took the designs of the ancient owners of the Ringworld and made them anew. Ophila took the name Onyx and likewise his companions took the names of other gems; Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond. They took the name The Contingency, for their plan of destruction was the only option left to them to obtain justice for their lost kin.
Time passed, but with no organics the time was merely a passing interest rather than a need. It is unsure how long the Shards would have waited, were it not for an accident which delivered them the news they needed.

A smuggler and part-time pirate named Lorna Kish, seeking a new route from Rishi to the main galaxy, stumbled upon one of the robotic mining operations. Before she or her crew could escape the automated droid defences activated, trapping her ship with an interdictor field and then capturing her ship in a tractor beam.
From the smuggler they extracted the information about the galaxy. Much had happened, but the galaxy was currently divided and weak. It was time to strike, and though their plans were not fully ripe Onyx started by sending some expeditions to learn more about the galaxy, understand the threats presented and prepare for the great campaign.

No one could of expected that Ophila would return, not as a Jedi Knight, but as the leader of legions seeking the total overthrow of the galaxy and the destruction of organic life.

 

[Rusty]

Character idea rough sketches, only without the actual sketching.

ONYX: Leader of the Contingency. Physical body is massive and imposing. What was once a form suited for the fiercest battles has become a mechanical monstrosity with no regard for organic notions of aesthetics, practicality, or even bilateral symmetry. His expansion began slowly, at first. He'd add a module here or a component there, but as his madness grew, so too did his obsession with becoming one with the ring and attaining perfect control over the immense power it represented. It's said that the original battle form exists deep within the bloated thing that Onyx has become, but if it is, no one stands a chance of finding it. Onyx's current form is tethered firmly in place, but it sports a plethora of arms, mechanical tentacles, and other implements to interact with the physical world.

So deep into the madness that he can no longer communicate with mortal speech, Onyx speaks only in a tongue so ancient and vile, organic minds are driven closer to insanity just by hearing it. If he must communicate with organics, he plants his will directly into their minds, and woe unto anyone who cannot take the strain. After centuries attuning himself to the ring and adapting its power for his own use, he's practically become a living Force nexus, a seeping wound in the fabric of life that weeps corruption and despair. Not even his greatest generals are comfortable in his presence any longer, and truth be told, he's no longer interested in the mundane world around him. His only goal is to free his true master, the one trapped inside the prison, and his order to conquer the galaxy in the name of the Contingency is just another step in his plan.

SAPPHIRE: The envoy of the Contingency. Uses a heavily modified HRD as a chassis, one that blurs the line between human and organic to the point that it's no longer clear which is which. The effect is stunning, but to look too closely is to risk going insane. The closer you look, the more you realize that her body simply isn't possible, that it defies logic in ways that the organic brain simply wasn't meant to cope with.

Sapphire is charming and affable, with a quick wit and brilliant smile that can make one almost forget that she's not an organic. She's a shameless flirt, and is quite good at it too. You bring your boyfriend or girlfriend in her presence at your own risk. Underneath all the charm and quips, however, is the sense that something isn't quite right, a tinge of inherent ​wrongness​. Though she means well, is genuinely sympathetic to the plight of the organics and seems quite sane, her mercy is to be feared above the wrath of any of the others, up to and including Onyx. It's better to chew on a blaster bolt than accept heartfelt pity from Sapphire.

RUBY: Knight Commander of the Iron Knights. If one were to design the perfect droid for fencing, with all the grace and finesse of the galaxy's best swordsman and all the strength of its most powerful fighters melded together in perfect harmony, you'd get something remarkably like Ruby. His body would make mastercraftsmen the galaxy over weep with joy at the very thought that something so perfect could simply exist.

In many ways, Ruby is the epitome of the classical Knight. He is courageous, loyal, honorable, and absolutely deadly on the battlefield. He is also breathtakingly arrogant. Though he will reluctantly acknowledge organic knights as worthy of honorable conduct, he absolutely despises most organics, and won't spare them a passing thought until one gives him a reason to kill it. In many ways, his attitude mirrors the treatment of droids at the hand of the organic bourgeois, and he has absolutely no problem killing them in job lots if they act up enough to attract his attention.

EMERALD: The general of the Contingency. At a glance, Emerald is often confused for a new, experimental form of bipedal combat walker. Though not quite as big as Onyx's original form, Emerald is huge, and he knows how to put his bulk to good use. Nearly every inch of him is covered in some killing utensil, and he is viciously proficient with every single one of them. They even have names.

Out of all of Orax's chosen, Emerald is perhaps the most boring. He doesn't have much in the way of personality. His interests include, in no particular order, guns, knives, guns that shoot knives, and knives that are secretly guns. Though his battlefield record shows him to be a being of intelligence and courage, one might get the impression from speaking with him off the battlefield that he was a bumbling, cowardly fool. He stutters and stammers, speaks softly, and simply will not respond to insults or threats. Put him in harm's way, however, and he becomes the very picture of the generals of old, leading his troops from the front with a gun in his hand and a war cry in his vocabulator.

DIAMOND: The fleet admiral of the Contingency. Diamond wears the body of a plain, uninteresting protocol droid. The only distinguishing feature of her chassis is the paint job: a deep, almost painfully intense white that defies proper description. It's not a color to be seen, it's an experience to be endured. However, that's her only defining trait, physically speaking.

Out of all of Onyx's generals, Diamond is perhaps the strangest of them all. She is quite sane, with no hint of madness about her. Her Force presence is calm and soothing, like a cool blue lake on a hot summer day. She's also charming and erudite, with a quick wit and a silver tongue that almost qualifies as a weapon all on its own. Even in the heat of battle, Diamond is a pool of serenity in a sea of chaos, and her calm is infectious.

 

[Vilim Ramic]

AMETHYST: The Sage of the Iron Knights, although some would call her the Witch of the Iron Knights. Eschewing the more heavily armored vessels of her fellow Iron Knights, Amethyst chose a form that was sleek and flexible, and distinctly feminine. What it lacks in strength and durability is more than made up for with its agility and chosen materials to help her focus her powers better.

While she is one of the direct underlings to the Lord Commander, Amethyst does not subscribe to his arrogance or extreme code of honor, nor does she share his intense dislike for organics. If anything, she views organics as a new plaything and doesn't care if what she considers "play" would mean their deaths or complete loss of sanity. In that way, Amethyst can be a cruelly sadistic individual, fascinated by pushing other beings to their breaking point and past it. She will drag out her "play" with them as long as she can, and once she's determined her toy is completely broken, she will discard them and select another. In this way, she can be quite childlike as she hates having anything she was playing with taken from her, frequently throwing a tantrum of anger if this occurs.

She also has a child's curiosity, and that is the thing that led her into her current state of madness. She absorbed as much knowledge of the Force as she could, light, dark, it didn't matter to her. She wanted to know it all, but it wasn't enough to quell the whispers in her mind, pushing her in search of something even more. She approached Lord Onyx, where many of the Shards that served in the Contingency would shy away, begging for more knowledge of the Force. Onyx, in a rare moment of attention on the mundane world, gifted her with some scraps of knowledge he gleaned from the beings trapped beyond the ring. Even this faint touch with the utter madness of Onyx, while granting her access to just plain wrong abilities, warped her into her current mindset and it is likely that as the mission to conquer the galaxy begins, her mind will only unravel more... the whispers ever present.

 

[Alexandrite]

ALEXANDRITE: A new addition to the gemstones, Alexandrite takes the form of an ancient Sith war droid with some personal modifications of his own design. Unlike the other gems who are mainly masters of combat and tactical stratagem, Alexandrite walks a path involving science and engineering which has developed a curious, ingenious, and industrious attitude in the shard.

Do not be fooled though: Alexandrite is the most dangerous researcher you will ever meet. Not only is he trained in hand-to-hand and marksmanship, the shard is not afraid to use terrifyingly inventive methods of murder including volatile acids, molecule-shredding weapons, and quake-producing explosives.