10) Human SHARD

by Ryan Costello Jr.

SHARD is the top team of mercenaries in the Universe. We aren’t just mercenaries, we’re the best veterans of a thousand wars. We’re talking centuries of combined military experience. We don’t care about politics. We don’t ask who is right or wrong. We only want to know who to shoot. Forget the big suits and cybernetics, if we can’t pick a piece of equipment up and show it who’s boss, we don’t trust our lives to it. Call us grunts, call us bullet stoppers, if you need highly trained soldiers, just call us: SHARD.

Sunder a blade and every shattered piece is still sharp, still dangerous. Smash a machine and its jagged bits can be wielded as weapons. Disband a military unit and the individuals left behind still want to claim objectives, wipe out opposition, and give their lives for a cause. These wayward men and women are born for war. They live for it, and do not fit into society. Fortunately for them, they fit into SHARD.

Throughout the Universe are soldiers craving war and wars desperate for soldiers. SHARD –Soldiers for Hire: Armed, Ready, and Deadly- finds these soldiers, houses them, continues their training, then rents them out as mercenaries to armies and companies looking for highly trained and specialized soldiers. Even the Hexumvirate, possessed of a private military the envy of small planets, are known to hire SHARD to bolster their forces as pawns or to reinforce extreme lines stretching beyond their reach.

9) Male Luxnaut Outlaw

The Lauxnaut are a prolific alien race who have been a major influence in the Universe for many years. They are an extremely family centric race, who share lifelong bonds with their immediate siblings largely due to their curiously imbalanced ratio of male to female offspring. On average, male Lauxnauts outnumber females 16 to 1, and as a result Lauxnaut culture developed a system for ensuring the continuation of the family's genetic line by developing a fierce protective loyalty of brothers to their sisters. Brothers are so devoted to their sisters that most Lauxnaut males commit to a life of protection and service to their genetic sister. In a society where female offspring are so prized, women are in constant threat of abduction and assassination and the Lauxnaut will go to great lengths to ensure the survival of their family's matriarch since the entire fate of a dynasty hangs in the balance of a single reproductive member.

As a result, eons of evolution have developed Lauxnaut males into some of the most imposing and skilled bodyguards in the known Universe. Lauxnaut brothers develop a strict hierarchy of authority amongst one another, and function with the precision of a crack military unit. From birth Lauxnaut males are taught the craft of bodyguarding, the strategies for securing a structure, and the tactics of counter intelligence. They live in a state of readiness, always prepared to execute one of many contingent plans. They are excellent multitaskers, a trait which has won them renown as star ship pilots. Physically Lauxnaut males are often referred to as "living barricades." The average male stands 8' topping 900 lbs with a thick roughly humanoid frame.

Their body is hairless, and their head is covered by a network of hardened plates which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle forming patterns along their cranium.

7) Human Varigator Prism

The rise of the Varigator soldiers can be traced back to the discovery of an unassuming invertebrate creature discovered on the planet Panklima Beta dubbed the Vertemora Leech.

Roughly two feet in length, less than an inch thick, and coated with thousands of fine hairlike bristles the Vertemora Leech creeps around like a overgrown centipede. It secretes a slick gelatinous substance as it travels across the ground which was found to have potent stimulant and hallucinogenic properties. Indeed the Vertemora Leeches were originally trafficked in illegal narcotics circles for the potent hallucinogenic properties of their secretions. Eventually a few overzealous junkies found that the Vertemora Leech could be coaxed to attaching itself directly to the spinal column of an individual giving them a permanent fix to the high they craved. This resulting express feed of the Leech's chemicals directly into the users blood stream is a supremely euphoric experience. In fact, it is more than that. The Vertemora Leech turned out to have the ability to actually integrate itself into their host's body, creating new organs in the host and radically changing their appearance.

Junkies who left the Vertemora Leeches attached for long enough began to report that they could see the electromagnetic waves that pass through all spectrum of light, and more remarkably they began to manipulate these same waves. The symbiotic relationship formed between the two creatures actually allowed the host to absorb, manipulate, and emit electromagnetic radiation at will. From these hopelessly addicted junkies the first Varigators were born.

The powerful Hexumvirate government were the first to see the possibilities in these Vertemora Leeches for what it truly was, and they exerted their considerable wealth and influence into annexing the planet Panklima Beta into their small yet elite empire. The Hexumvirate Royal Champions setup a extensive scientific research facility on the planet with the goal of creating viable Human-Vertemora Hybrids which could consciously use the powers granted by the leeches.

The project was code named: Varigator.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to think of how to create truly unique and diverse characters when playing in a Sci-Fi setting for the first time. This becomes even harder when the setting is new to the player and they are not yet familiar with its workings and nuances. Not to worry my friend, the pen and paper RPG scene is full of creative folks and to get your creative brain juices flowing let’s take a look at some ways you could take the Geno-Perfect Human Javelin Pilot and create some diverse character concepts.

The Supporter: Not just as a professional athlete but as a Human you owe everything to the Life Corporation. This pharmaceutical group was responsible for your genetic creation and up bringing. Because of that you are an avid supporter and activist for the creation of geno-perfect humans and the necessity of them for the continued advancement of humanity. Dominating the rugged sport of Migrathon has brought you fame and fortune but now the Life Corporation needs you take even greater risks stopping truly evil forces and showing the rest of the universe the power of a geno-perfect human.

The Rebel: You’re a mistake and you know it. You despise the Life Corporation and the fact they grew you in a vat only to raise and use you as a promotional item. After competing and gaining a small measure of success in Migrathon you decide there are better uses for your prized javelin mech suit. Splintering off into hiding you plan and execute hit and run type operations against Life and any other corporation that specialize in the unnatural form of human creation.

The Thrill Seeker: There is no other feeling quite like piloting your javelin mech suite with extreme precision over unsafe terrain through the territory of 17 ton Omega level beasts during mating season! After years of dominating the Migrathon circuit the money, fame and adventure it has all become monotonous. Seeking even greater challenges you retire early and go rogue using your resources and connections to begin a new life of adventures off the grid. A life not bound by any rules or regulations but one of high risk and high reward! Banding up with a group of like minded individuals you set off in search of whatever challenges the universe has in mind for you and your trusty Javelin.

No place to go but up: Not everyone handles fame well. After becoming addicted to “Angel Seeds” you began to stumble down a two year spiral of losing it all. After the horrible Migrathon accident that left your Javelin mech suit in rubble and you nearly dead the Life Corporation pulled all funding and support leaving you alone, broke and scared. Desperate you called in what favors you could to get a new Javelin suit but now you are forced to perform odd jobs to repay your “friends” to make ends meet.

These are just some quick ideas to get you started and hopefully you’ll share how you would run a GPH Javelin Pilot on the CotV forums!

This is the third post in a regular update series which will reveal all 10 playable Iconic Character Templates (or classes) that will be available in Chronicles of the Void. Each one includes a bit of CotV fiction to set the stage for the origins of the class, a Game Play Overview section to get an idea of how each might be played, and finally a short blurb about our Iconic CotV Character which the class is based off of.

Today we explore a couple of CotV's hybrid classes, generalists with broad skill sets who have the ability to fill several different roles on a team. I present you with the Carapen Xenosociator and the Unclassified Clandestine Investigator.

5) Carapen Xenosociator

The Carapen are an alien race recently discovered by humanity on the planet Eucro. The Carapen have taken complete ecological control over Eucro and have emerged as the dominant life form on this oxygen rich class A planet. The human explorers who made first contact found that Carapen organized into colonies. All Carapen colonies construct elaborate hives that resemble fortresses which are composed of vast labyrinths of tunnels and chambers. Carapen colonies can be further broken down into castes that all perform specialized roles. Their societies are organized eusocially around a reproductive caste supported by an array of highly specialized sterile castes that compose a single colony. What the human explorers found most notable about the Carapen however was a vast organically constructed data storage network referred to as The Spool.

The Spool is a massive data storage complex located in a secure chamber deep within each colony's hive. The Spool is composed of a multitude of tightly wound coils of a thin silk-like threads which are excreted from all Carapen. Carapen regularly create a thread of this silky substance which they tie into tiny knots and loops using specialized appendages, and then add their newest thread to the greater Spool. The knots, loops and coils of each thread form a code, a written language, that the Carapen use to report any new information they have learned in their daily activities. Much of these threads are ordinary information about crop yields, hunting success, or intruders dispatched, but all is categorized and stored in the greater Spool for processing. This is where the Librarians step in. The Librarians are a caste of Carapen whose job is to maintain the Spool, which includes repairing broken threads as well as replicating data from the master Spool to other smaller backup Spools located in various secure locations inside the colony's territory. More interestingly however is the Librarian's task of reading and interpreting all the information stored in the Spool. Without a central intelligence or hierarchy of command inside the Carapen colony, all individuals act on caste instinct, and the librarian's instinct is to read and execute the instructions stored in the Spool. If less Soldiers are adding threads to the Spool than usual, then the Librarians interpret a negative feedback loop which prompts them to tend the undeveloped larvae and nurse them under the conditions which make more Soldiers. This process of growing new caste members factors into the other remarkable thing about Carapen which is their extensive genetic engineering power.

The Spool contains all data regarding the creation and subsequent success of all genetic modifications to a colony's caste members. This incredible library of genetic data makes them masters of their own genome and able to perform amazing acts of creation without the use of any tools or laboratories. If Librarians notice a drop in Soldier thread reports, and read threads about a new airborne enemy which uses sharp claws to pry open Carapen segments to destroy their soft innards, they might conclude the need to hatch more soldiers. Furthermore they may add genetic modifications to these new soldiers allowing them to fly and/or possibly create fused thoraxes which have no segments for the enemy can gain purchase on. All of the knowledge on how to create this type of offspring though is not held by any individual, but rather is encoded in the vast array of coiled threads that compose the Spool, open for any Librarian to interpret, experiment with, and catalog the results.