"The collective races of the Ónychos, though now artificially modified with the technological advances in the advent of their Pre-Contact sublight space age, have their roots in a freak accident of tri-species symbioisis on a monocontinental tropical death world known as Kaos. Megascale fauna and flora, oxygen-rich atmosphere, and radically accelerated natural selection were the order of the day, under the blinding glare of a mite-too-close red sun and the world's own substantially heavy-element composition. This would be an altogether abysmal environs for the selection toward intelligent tool-using life, even as it had leaped the severe hurdle of complex radiologically-adjusted life, were it not for the first complementary and then co-operative interactions of the Tyrannosónychos and Megalýterosónychos progenitor species.

The former was a Utahraptor-like pack hunter, adapted for killing disproprtionately larger prey through sophisticated group cohesion, quite capable in this respect but eternally hounded by thieving micropredators and scavengers which it was not equipped to pursue or otherwise ward off from its kills, limiting the species' growth and ecosystem footprint. The latter was a Carnotaurus-like species, though with more than vestigial limbs, which operated in a similar role of fast pursuit of much smaller prey items, while having a snubbed jaw incapable of killing bites against equivalent or larger prey items to it. It was not sophisticated enough, meanwhile, to use its lower limbs and prodigous weight to assault prey, or to form any grouping beyond temporary breeding pairs, which did not act in cooperation.

These species were at a glance situated for mere ambivalence, but the crow-like brain of the then relatively advanced Tyranno species was clever enough to intelligently see opportunity in the other, this in large numbers of socially separated subgroups. While not able to efficiently catch any other than the most foolhardy scavengers themselves, the Megalyteros was completely adapted for the capture of far smaller prey in whipcrack-fast bites and dead sprint pursuit. When Tyranno packs would bring down prey, that would attract terrestrial and winged scavengers, which would attract Megalyteros to snap up the offending creatures. This predator brought with it a psychological effect on the scavengers, effectively and instinctually dispersing them after the first few casualties and clumsy tramplings, leaving the Tyranno to their meal in relative peace. Their consumption would inevitably leave significantly more carrion than if the scavengers had also been at it, providing yet further nourishment to the large vermincatchers, which after a fatal weeding out of the bolder and greedier elements was itself disinclined to try and catch the Tyranno themselves.

This selected for intercooperative and overall more intelligent Tyranno and Megalyteros specimens, eventually leading them out from wood and jungle into the open plains of true megafauna, where the Tyranno would flank and distract while the Megalyteros would assault large fauna with talon or a back-breaking leap. This brought them into contact with the third species of the triumvirate, the Mikróterosónychos. Roughly the size of deionychus, Mikróteros was small fry by Kaos standards, a minorly successful but tenuously positioned swarm hunter, not entirely unalike to the microraptor-like scavengers which previously plagued the Tyranno. They got by through herding and panicking larger species with the sheer mass of their numbers, then attacking the breakway with a secondary swarm, a kind of mobile hammer-and-anvil tactic. This was not energy efficient in the least due to their small mass and the high expenditure by the Mikróteros for every kill in calories or casualties spent, and left their position teetering.

Salvation came as the preceding symbiotes, by now having mutually understandable vocalizations, immediately took advantage of the Mikróteros' survival strategy and integrated it into their own, using the anvil of terror swarms to achieve a very high kill density as the new impromptu hammer. This density and the increased size of prey, once again, allowed for significant surplus carrion, now providing the Mikróteros with a secure niche, eventually integrating themselves as a symbiote species proper just as the Megalyteros did before them, progressing from ambivalence to instinctual alliance. The constant pressure for effective socialization and cooperation, the preexistence of ubiquitous tree-climbing digits- used to reach the branch-held island oases of the towering native flora, a feature found on much of the by our standard moderate scale life- and the insatiable and infectious corvid-like curiosity of the foremost species Tyranno inevitably drove them into tool use and abstract manipulation of the world around them. There began the history of the Claw as a truly intelligent collection of species of Tyranno leaders and soldier-citizens, Mikróteros shepherds and Megalyteros heavy laborers and men-at-arms, marked by constant movement centered by moderate scale fortified urban centers, competion, pastoralism, conquest and vassalization, weaponization with regard solely for utility and avoiding the complete destruction of the terribly robust Kaos biosphere, and the drive toward divine right and manifest destiny of these biologically disadvantaged species against an ecosystem that ought to have killed them millions of years ago.

This 'biological disadvantaging,' of course, does not particularly apply outside of Kaos, and places them some of the most naturally formidable species in known space. All three are marked by these universal attributes: theropodal biology, armored scales and varying amounts of feathering, hexapodal vision, primarily carnivorous diet with only slight omnivorism, variable posture from therapodism to mostly upright bipedalism at a height of roughly 12, 20 and 5 & a half feet to Tyrannosónychos, Megalýterosónychos, and Mikróterosónychos respectively, and an extremely strong slanting towards their evolutionarily-determined natural and national caricature. The Tyrannosónychos are calculating, haughty, and dramatically inclined, with their outlook generally assessing everything as a problem to be solved by action from all angles. The Megalýterosónychos are observant, unsubtle, and valorous or at least reckless, with a rough mental switch from easy-going to assessing the issue at hand as simply and ruthlessly as possible, with all the grace of a freight train. The Mikróterosónychos are responsive, high-spirited and duty minded, going with either the flow at hand or that of tradition and tending towards civic walks of life. As terrifying and reprehensibly alien as they are, I cannot help finding them quite fascinating as an essentially purely biological-socially enforced model of the corporate society, needing neither hive mind, extensive propaganda nor nerve stapling, the former obviated for cooperative and compartmentalized intelligence, the latter the actuation of the mass impulse rather than catalyst, and the lattermost obsoleted by the former two. They have accomplished a top-down governed populist societal model entirely devoid of the flab, dissent and corruption that is seen in, say, the Celestian implementation, albeit without its luxuries or neurologic diversity. Needless to say, it makes for a very interesting social research model to live among them."

-A Compressed History of Belligerent Species by Tsubame Kimura, human xenobiologist of PETRA expeditionary base Nidhogg.

The royal and national standard proper of the Claw Empire is that of a stylized three-headed, winged black raptor on green field with blue upper and lower bands. The center head is a Tyrannosónychos, topped by a crown of needle-thin points, and bearing an intense gaze. The right head (relative to the body of the figure) is a leering Megalýterosónychos, a feather-plumed Boeotian helmet resting upon its browhorns by curves in the metal frill, its attendant wing grasping a bundle of spears. The left head is of a relatively serene looking Mikróterosónychos, the wing of which holds a microraptor-like avian in open palm, wheat in mouth. The feet of the hydra stand upon a talon-grasped globe, while the hands hold a scepter.

This banner, being recognizably overcomplicated, is often obviated by a more immediately recognizable black-on-green outlining of a four-digited limb, ambiguous as to being hand or foot, with three upright primary digits and a centered thumb/dewclaw reaching downwards. This variant finds equal use civically and as a battle flag, and also in the form of variously detailed broaches, pendants and badges, usually metal stampings on worn items or incorporated into metal cast shells in the mold for weaponry & armor plates.

Total of seven billion individuals, current ratio of 2-1-5 in Tyranno, Megalýtero and Mikrótero.

(Civilian Numbers/Commercial Numbers/Military Numbers, everything that has full crew quarters and etc., excluding fighters, barges, etc.)

TO BE DETERMINED, working concept 'somewhat small, but undergoing rearmament'

Traditionally a collection of militant and expansionist states, then one-world one-species hegemonist and turned outward to the potential threat of the Fermi Paradox, presently skirting the lines imposed by AGR member state interventionist dominance and the treaties imosed by them in preparation for an upset of the old order and political sphereship over sub-minor non-hominid sapients. Obsessed at once with Darwinism and the more abstract ordering of things in regards to it.

NUCLEAR-BIOLOGICAL-CHEMICAL, SUPERIOR
"Claw arms technology is, as you all know, severely divergent from the galaxy at large. This is not because of any particular quirk of physics they have exploited, or not overmuch, but because their standards of both what is moral and what is utilitarian are completely different. Other species would and do balk at their inventory, the scale and terror of which is unmatched save by that of the Velukan State, and even then their applications of roughly equivalent practical and terror weapons differ. This apparent warpedness by galactic standards is an inconvenient moral hurdle in the application of technology that is, by all means, of legitimate military value past the conservative pig-headedness of the army and unfounded fears of the populace at large. As example, I will lay out but one item of their inventory that makes a mockery of our own progress.

The Claw, being from a radioactive heavy world essentially immune to the typical biosphere-destroying effects of nuclear fallout thanks to the closeness of their sun and the preextant radioactivity of the world itself, had and have no qualms whatsoever about the use of atomic devices beside the practical concerns of further immediate and long-term exploitation of resources using the subdued and eventually-integrated population, or failing this, the threat of retaliation in a similar although not entirely analagous mindset to MAD. This did not stop their to many species' standards exceeding use of fission and fusion-type weapons, against which Claw cities became increasingly fortified, only increasing their use. Neutron weapons were very popular in particular, as while their armor-piercing effects were overstated by states in the primitive atomic era and sometimes still are in popular fiction, their ability to kickstart sub-critical mass fission reactions in the innumerable natural deposits of fissile material underneath the cities of this species' homeworld proved more than useful enough to justify their deployment, causing massive damage in the form of natural earthquake bombs through predetonation and producing masking background radiation that could at once hide atomic reactor-fuelled subterranean operations and bring the threat of such to the mind of enemy strategists regardless of one's actual activities, necessitating a gamble of a response no matter what.

Similarly to most species' histories, they toyed with the idea of further weaponizing atomic reactions in shaped charges and to fuel radiological beam weapons, but unlike all known species save the Rissan of my native Vespucia, were successful in full and effective weaponization, and exceeded the military accomplishments of my own species in devising non-self destructing atomic devices. This is due to their discovery of an exotic element codenamed 'Robertite' on and in the vicinity of their planet and its co-satellites of their blaring red sun. Deep black and somewhat porous in its natural appearance, though the naked or aided eye cannot distinct these slight pittings due to its sheer light absorbance, it is extremely tough, a paradoxically poor thermal conductor, and almost opaque to atomic radiation, capturing any particles it does not repulse without integrating them into its structure and releasing them over a long period. It is also nearly impossible to conventionally shape, necessitating fusion casting or gravitic impact pressing & rolling, and subsequent fusion welding, whether using a pure or any appreciably hybridized alloy. These processes are severely labor intensive, but the utility cannot be denied, as it allows the most moronic weapon design to become ingenius in the form of the fusion-fired tungsten plasma gun.

By constructing a horizontal sliding block-type breech and barrel assembly from Robertite, one can load a large spherical tungsten projectile with affixed fissile buttplate/necking and subsequently a pure fusion device 'powder' solid cased charge to essentially gun-fire it from the turrets and decks of the ship itself, this at no cost to the ship due to use of the inertial dampener-style shock absorber (see article 1-12-12-19176-61 on Celestian Turbolaser design) nor to the robustly primitive electronics of Claw ship design, having captured and direct most of the EMP harmlessly although uncontrollably outward, negating its effect on either side, presuming at least primitive-level protection against non-ionic EMP. When fired, the fusion device is set off by a breechblock-contained photon microgaser pin that ignites the sphere of gamma-producing aerogels inside the case, compressing the primary charge of hydrogen deuterium-tritium, which immediately atomizes and ionizes the fissile buttplate & tungsten alike, making the pure black breechblock briefly flash white hot, then near immediately cool to black again. Propelled by this immense force, the coherent tungsten-plasma ball is flung from the barrel by a high-intensity photon gaser and free neutrons from the buttplate, the latter reaching the target before the former in a carrier beam-looking effect. No conventional form of shielding defends fully effectively against this design, not even Elegrion energy shields, with the only truly successful unconventional designs being the Consortium Environmental Hazard Field and the Claw's own particle-web design. Reactive armor fails entirely to disperse the plasma bubble, and cannot strike the gaser rays, while grounded electroplating and conventional armor are only slightly or moderately effective due to the severe thermal forces and generally imperfect radiological filtering.

The weapon would still, of course, kill most any spacefaring species over varying periods of time due to what low-intensity radiation DID find its way out in the form of heavily slowed particle leaks and the spitting of a smoking Robertite-alloy cartridge casing, expanded and compressed under the immense forces of a contained fusion blast into the spent bin and itself being a far more obvious source of radiological poisoning, but this does not matter in the slightest to the Claw, whom evolved under constant atomic bombardment from all angles and know no true cancer nor any latent existential fear of atomic weapons that would prevent one from wishing to operate such a weapon, even under shielding. This is all the more reason, not less, for a crash-course research project by the victorious states, most importantly our own, on how to effectively adapt and apply Claw technology for practical military deployment, as otherwise, I will not mince words, these goddamn overgrown rubber suit-looking lizard bastards will outpace us in reapplication of their own technology and our allies and enemies alike will do likewise. I will hear none of this 'humanitarian concern' and 'unnecessary cruelty' from the bleeding heart unilateral pussies in Congress! I couldn't give less of a damn about how 'visceral and disturbing' it was to watch our boys melt under volition aerosol attacks or those egghead Allerastians' skulls pop like balloons from nerve-expansion agents, the lizards would note that our own weapons make cripples and gore plenty, and I'd rightly agree with them. We need those weapons if we're going to secure ourselves a position in perpetuity in the galaxy in the face of anyone else willing to use them from a position of impunity, but not equivalent retaliation."

-Disgraced Rissan former general Amerigo F. Bladewind, leaked internal military paper Necessities of Interstellar War in the Modern Century

ENVIRONMENTAL, STANDARD
"Research log 03, Object 18524. Ónychos opaque particle web shielding. Testing under laboratory conditions has in no way improved performance. All known, available munitions have been tested against Object 18524 without change from field observations.

While proofed against Type 1 civilization projectile weapons and those in the immediate technological vicinity up and any downward, under any form of modern ballistic bombardment, the particle web immediately cracks and shatters in a cascade of light. This causes occasional pre-detonations of conventional ballistic-speed combustion warheads, but the shields hug too close for this effect to be especially useful against shaped charges or shrapnel, with modest, militarily irrelevant deenergization before inevitable hull impact. Mass driver weapons, coil or rail based, slam straight through with no possibility for pre-detonation effect.

Similarly, the capabilities of the shield against thermal beamer, turbolaser and other conventional energy weapons are poorly. These weapons, using very concentrated thermal radiation, cause intense, localized energy build-up in repeatedly struck areas of the shield, which are initially blocked and captured, but cannot be effectively diffused fast enough. The result is the creation of large energetic blisters which will inevitably burst as more weapons fire is applied to them, resulting in explosive discharge of the contained energy. Bottle-lightning style ionic weapons, rather than smashing the shield or blistering inside of it, simply pass straight through, conducted by the closely hugging particle web.

Conversely, the opaque particle web design is immensely effective against radiological weapons, plasma launchers and chemical-biological agent delivery torpedos, the primary shipboard and infantry weapons of the Ónychos through their entire history as a type 1 civilization. Highly energized, but (relatively speaking to, say, superdense turbolasers) low number particle waves wash over the shield with ease, while somewhat low-speed delivery torpedoes- their speed being necessary to avoid pulverization in launch at the speed civilian slang 'hitscan' weapons travel- pulverize and bounce from the shield, while the agents delivered never reach the hull, as there is no gap for them to enter into. On the other hand, our own force fields, their equivalents and closely related energy shielding is proofed against ship-scale superdense directed radiation and conventional ballistics through passive and active deflection by semi-solid projected particle masses, allowing harmless sub-shipscale and point defense ballistics through while relying on particle scrubbers to deal with stellar radiation. They are not truly particle-opaque, and therefore are ineffective against coherent and incoherent plasmas, weaponized conventional atomic radiation, and chemical delivery mechanisms not dependent on or designed to function in the failure of a direct torpedo impact, necessitating passive defense through our electroplate systems, which are plainly insufficient.

Concern for defending against said weapons, of course, is minimal, as the only source of such weaponry is in weaponized civilian tooling or the armed forces of the Velukan and Ónychos totalist states, which for their own reasons neither use and care for conventional technology nor the proper ethical ordering of war. Ónychos particle web shielding, while proofed against their own and equivalent weaponry and compensated for in thermal and ballistic respects by spaced alloy hull, is fatally flawed in its attempt to block all fire in all situations, leaving it ineffective against all non-mundane, non-wide area energy weapons. It is power-hungry and exceedingly bulky, making any hybridized development with our current force field designs impossible without unacceptable loss of firepower. Superior shielding against most of these forms of weaponry already exists in the hands of the Consortium corporate terrorist organization, we have found no niche nor technical space to justify their integration either. Recommendation; pursue alternative means to deal with the totalist states than direct military intervention, or else forment support for a total war against one or both to maintain Imperial power. Their buildup could be catastropically dangerous for the galaxy at large, and furthermore could make us politically and militarily irrelevant as one or both accomplishes a meteoric rise in absence or in spite of efforts of containment.

-Celestian weapons researcher Adela Slade, report on Claw particle shielding uses and overall military & political ramifications of Claw technology

Armor Type: ARMOR PLATING-PASSIVE/THICK, SUBSTANDARD
"Yeah, yeah. Got it. Sure. Is this thing on yet?
Christoffel Angenent, Schildcorp employee, investigative contracting division. I was sent not too long after the more-or-less demilitarization of Claw space, they like to call 'emselves Ónychos, don't know why a bunch of aliens are speaking quasi-Greek or why they have any business to, but they do, and that's just an awkward word, so we call 'em Claw, I was, uh, sent to investigate reports of a 'miracle element' that the Claw were producing. Stuff's supposed to be indestructible, and hence a perfect armor additive if we can weave it in the right structure, hence in the interests of Schildcorp, and Schildcorp's interests are the Consortium's interests. Since we had a hell of a time slagging their ships, the execs thought that they must've been using it as an armor additive for alloying. The execs were full of shit.

I worked for two years on those fuckin' dreary ass ships on 'relief and rebuilding duty' as a temporary contractor for PETRA. Honestly, we didn't do much for 'em, the scalies handled themselves pretty well picking up the pieces without us, and we didn't break very much anyways when we tried to invade, ended in a stalemate with minimal preceding bombardment. So, mostly, I was working on inspecting, cataloguing and dismantling the outdated wartime ships, sublight craft converted to FTL. Had to use an exo lifter the entire time I wasn't locked up tight in a bunker planetside or on a PETRA shuttlecraft, absolutely everthing puts out heat and rads and wants to fuckin' eat you, it was miserable. But I got a real good look at the interior of Claw industry.

There's no miracle material in the armor. In fact, I'm gonna be frank, the armor and everything else is technologically trashy. It's like a two-bit Buck Rogers set, except everything's hot as hell, the air is as damp as they can get it without threatening to interfere with the electronics, and the practical effects are a shitload better. And free rads floating everywhere The exo was cheap beyond the essentials, so I wasn't spared any of it but the rads, air filtrators instead of internals. Least I won't get cancer. Their particle scrubbers don't work for shit as far as we'd be concerned, but for a bunch of nuclear space lizards, I guess these were acceptable operating limits. But the plating, the plating that holds this mess of wannabe retrotech bullshit together, that's what you're after. You wanna know the secret? There is none.

While their shield design is weird by most standards, it's basically a more primitive version of our EHF generators. Not quite smart enough to not even try stopping stuff it can't and just let it through, but they break & remold quick enough that it don't matter. The guns are beyond just about anybody elses' standard in the class. But the plating, really, is just plain, mundane, welded & layered armor. That's it. No super alloys, no true galactic-age materials, nothing. It's just standard space age steel-titanium and a few alloys a step up, with some neutron moderator layers. The alloying and welding'd be considered state of the art in a precolonial civilization, but even for sublight spacefarers this is your bottom line, your starting point. No durasteel, no adamantium, no ceramite, nothing.

See, when we fought the Claw initially, in surprise attacks and then flashpoint engagements on the way to their home system, all we saw was that our weapons fire, unfocused and trying to slag everything at once, just wasn't getting through. The shields, which we rightfully thought were environmental at a glance and later misconceived as an end-all-be-all, would go straight back up, we'd fire again. Nothing, no noteable feedback, the hull isn't going down even where we've marked them. They fire one volley, and sink a battlegroup. We got it in our heads that they were the holy grail of xenotechnology in all respects, when it was really just their weapons and our shit doctrine.

The shields might've been going straight back up, but they also weren't really preventing that much if any damage. The armor took a hell of a beating, sure, but that's because our fire was packeted all over the place to try and bring everything down at once, as we've been so inclined, so all we did was make swiss cheese out of the outer layers and occasionally blow a hole in an already-unpressurized gundeck, with all the crew running on internals to begin with, while they were using weapons that made it as if our armor and shields weren't there. Shitty armor and shitty shields beat not having any at all, but if we focused fire, we might've killed 'em in one-to-one ratios, rather than making it an attritional fucking mess. But that's beside the point.

They certainly didn't use it for armor, but the question is, is there a miracle substance? Yeah, there is. I even smuggled back samples. They would've strung me up for this, you know, flaying, drawing & quartering with nanowire. They recognize the value of the material, and really do not like anyone getting their hands on the stuff, so they weed out entire genetic lines of native smugglers and make as much a similar example of non-natives as they can. The operation went by the name 'Black Iron,' so let's call it that. There's probably dozens of codenames for the stuff by now.

Black Iron is an exotic element as yet only found in Claw space, on their homeworld, and on the other worlds in the system. We've got little idea what it is, how it occurs, or why it occurs. Attempts to make it fess up just what it is have failed miserably, because in addition to being indestructible and opaque to radiation, we can't make heads nor tails of what's under the microscope. It's just about as black as anything can get, it's hard to even tell its shape or depth without another object for reference. We could theoretically synthesize it, but without knowing what it actually is, all attempts to do that blind have also failed miserably, resulting in scads of par or outright inferior materials. At the moment, we can't shape it worth a damn. Apparently the Claw do it by either 'fusion casting,' no I don't know how it work, but it's essentially analagous to conventional steel casting in the use of a mold, not so much in the use of a tiny artificial star to blast the levitating raw metal into melting and falling into the bloomery, then the casts, or by beating the hell out of it in a localized inertial dampener field with tractor beam-held industrial hammers on one side and successively de and re-synchronized singularity on the other, pulling the hammer in fast enough to beat & press it into shape. By all means, we could replicate this obtuse process, and probably streamline it significantly. But we'd need raw material, and where's that located?

Claw space. Only Claw space. Nowhere else. The space inhabited by jingoist near-pure Darwinists. The ones that're pushing the limits of the postwar treaty under the reasoning of self-defense, national autodetermination, and the seething desire to vaporize everybody else on the pretense that they're probably going to do the same when convenient. The ones who claim full monopoly on in and out-system rights to use this material, a technically classified and publically discredited material they refuse to elaborate on or even let much out that it maybe exists, when they can help it. The ones that reserve the right to terminate trespassers on zones of 'strategically-essential space,' where this stuff happens to be. Claw space, where PETRA is doing the galactic integration work, that'd be 'hope you've got our interdiction insurance in our space if you don't want to get kidnapped by Libertalians' PETRA, with Celestian space inbetween, where we're not exactly liked at the moment. It'd probably be cheaper to go through a century of blown-out matter fabricators guessing at it than risk getting it at the source anyways, because there's hardly enough in existence to make more than a single fleet's worth of pure hull. A fleet you can always, y'know, fly around. And probably can't do much with, since it's a probably-communications-blind invincible brick with no vision ports. And if enough was being produced for cutting-edge alloying that wouldn't annihilate the supply, they'd have already done it instead of using it purely for fusion-gun breeches, so no invincible superships for us or them. Especially them. Fuckin' steel-titanium, what a species. Cut the tape, I need a smoke."

-Internal report by Christoffel Angenent, employee of Schildcorp Durasteel, Enlil Consortium citizen.

APPLIED BIOCYBERNETICS
The practical combination of genetic modification with biologically integrated mechanical augmentation. For the production of warbeasts, supersoldiers, and more standard issue man/machine interfacing for both marines and crewmen. Stiffer ground troops, crew more easily take over normally mechanized duties, bonus to various asymmetric/non field battle situations.

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