Name: Salvator Rasch

Age: 77

Species: Voidhanger

Appearance:
Stands at 6’2”. Lean, athletic build. Blue skin and luminescent green eyes mark him as a voidhanger rather than just another human. Head is shaved bald, but wears his facial hair in a full beard. For a voidhanger reaching his species’ middle age, Salvator is surprisingly free of mutation, thanks to the gene mods he’d received from the Liberation Front military decades ago. His equipment bears old OSLF patches: remnants of a military and units long since destroyed.

Background:
For the man born as Salvator Rasch, the Long War against all who sought to consume the OSLF defined his life from his youth. Born into a voidhanger flotilla settled within Liberation Front space in 4160, Salvator spent the first two decades of his life more than aware of the sword looming over the collective heads of everyone and everything he'd ever known. Thus, he left his flotilla to enlist in his local branch of the OSLF military the moment he became of age, descending from the fleet to the Black City below as he sought to defend his home the only way he knew how. It was during his first deployment on the Front's borders that Corporal Rasch's superiors found he had a budding aptitude for asymmetrical warfare, and encouraged him to try out for special forces. He passed with flying colors, and finished his training just as the Helios Subjugation was beginning in 4180.

Over the next decade, Rasch and his fellow operators were deployed across OSLF space, putting out bush fires and proxy incidents as best they could. But it was never enough. As the years passed and Rasch flew up the ranks until he was given command of his own team, the amount of information he was authorized to access grew, and the picture became clearer. But it wasn't until his Black City was caught in the crossfire between NATO and the Conglomerate that Major Rasch understood. But understanding didn't help as Rasch and his team found themselves fighting a desperate boarding action against the NATO flagship of the invasion to try to cut the head off the snake and stop at least half of the shooting. They succeeded, and the ship went up in flames, but at the cost of the entire squadron, minus Salvator himself.

When he emerged from the wreckage of his escape pod, Salvator was greeted with the sight of Conglomerate ships descending upon his home city, his people capitulating soon after. In disgust that everything he'd fought for amounted to nothing, Salvator fled the city and into the reaches of space. Across nearly three decades of the Veiled War, he fought as a mercenary and assassin, not caring for what banner he served as long as he hurt another. The only mission he had left in his life was to avenge the Liberation Front, by any means necessary. It was near the end of this shadow conflict that Salvator found himself headhunted and recruited by Intransigence elements. Former OSLF personnel that hadn’t been happy with the new order sought him out, and he eagerly joined up with them just in time for the Reckoning of Empires to begin.

Over the next four years, he fell back into his old role, serving with black ops elements to defend Intransigence space and strike against its enemies. The demands of the war ensured that the roster of those he worked with was ever changing and shifting due to casualties and logistics, but he remained. Salvator Rasch would fight this Long War so long as both he and his enemies drew breath, no matter the cost.

Character Evaluation: A bitter veteran of the Long War, Salvator has known little but soldiering for most of his life. He is caustic and cynical, but views himself as one of the only ones left carrying on the OSLF’s ideals and legacy. In a group, Salvator will bite his tongue and keep his opinions to himself should he feel they go against the grain, but something always slips out eventually.

As a remnant of the OSLF that bought heavily into the party line, Salvator despises galactic imperialism, believing strongly in the right to planet or system-wide self determination. Large political unions invite skepticism from him, with even the Intransigence not being completely safe from his distrust. His worst-case but still alarmingly-plausible scenario is that the Intransigence becomes no better than the systems it fights against, its leaders abusing their power and authority for their own benefit. From there, he'd be back at square one.

Skills:

• Veteran soldier
• Infiltration
• Demolitions
• Close-quarters combat, both unarmed and with knives
• Small unit tactics
• Anti-ethereal combat

Etherealism:
Trained since youth to master his people’s innate predilection towards the ether, Salvator manifests his ethereal abilities through specializing in support and augmentation. He favors physical enhancements, stealth fields, and jacketing ammunition in sheathes of ethereal power. Salvator is skilled enough with support etherealism that he is capable of enhancing those around him as well, though at equivalent cost to his qillatu resistance. Outside of his specialty, the demands of his role also led him to grasp both blink jumps and void-signature jamming, both of which aided greatly in black operations.

Loadout:

• Semi-powered armor: Modified armor built to Intransigence specifications, following the same design principles as the majority of its military. Provides a measure of physical enhancement and is built to amplify Rasch’s ethereal augmentations.
• OM-27 Carbine SOPMOD: Heavily modifiable ballistic carbine. Possesses a number of possible accessories in the kit for customization, but Rasch tends to prefer sound suppression and light weight above all.
• Marshall Industries Magnum: Semi-automatic heavy ballistic pistol fitted with a built-in suppressor to minimize its profile.
• Ammo: Salvator primarily makes use of armor-piercing explosive rounds for both of his guns, but carries backup magazines of EMP and anti-ethereal rounds for situations that AP-EX and ethereal jacketing can’t handle. Also carries a variety of grenades.
• Monofilament knives: Carries multiple combat-grade blades on his person, with most balanced for throwing. Keeps a larger one sheathed at his side for CQC purposes and wielded alongside his pistol.
• Adaptive camouflage cloak: Cloak and hood woven with refractive chemical substances that blend their coloration with the surrounding environment when a targeted electrical charge is run through to activate them. Aids with concealment for covert ops.
• Cliasadh Solidified Light Manipulation Device: Gealtirocht tribesfolk mastered hardening light completley independent of other species and among the Intransigence, such devices often find themselves in civilian roles such as engineering or geological surveys. Yet more than a few carried these into battle and while not necessarily standardized, competence is often prized far more than showmanship and the so called "burning cradles" are a common sight on both militia skirmishers and frontline units alike. While typically used for generating tools for everyday use, they are quite frequently used to turn those tools into weapons.
  
  Manipulating energy into luminiescent quasi-matter, these earned their name due to the ability to transform a simple wrist blade into a high heat arm-sword capable of slicing into the armor of scielto infantry-mecha, overloading their shields and melting their complex internal workings alike. The manifested weapons (up to 25 feet in length) can be set to an overdrive mode where they are essentially lit on fire which greatly improves their cutting capability but will cause the weapon to enter an emergency shutdown mode after prolonged usage. Even without this it can be used to form wrist shields, cutting tools, grasping prongs, and various other mundane tools yet all of these can be strengthened with increased power output, with some versions capable of absorbing ethereal power or connecting to external power sources. The tool itself is easy to modify and can rapidly turn into a runaway project eating time, resources, and quite a few batteries, power modulators, uploaded data modules and so on.

Name: ECHO DOMAIN - PLATFORM #2884 EIHWAZ OF GREHENIA PRIME
Age: 190, Constituted in the year 4047
Species: Unztadtlige​

Appearance:
The Echo Platform commonly displays itself in one of three forms: Warform, Endoform and Microform- though other shapes may be formed as necessary, depending on the situation.




Background:
Constituted in 4047, the Echo Platform traces its origins to various Unztadtlige platforms in the Grehenia system, a rough frontier system on the fringes of Yrrkadian Dominion space. Grehenia Prime was a near inhospitable world, basically a frozen, ice covered rock at the edge of the system. The Echo platform spent most of its early years within a small community of mixed species settlers, carving out and building expansive tunnel networks caverns underneath the warmer crust of the planet. Though life was simple, it was far from peaceful, as the Echo Platform would also find itself occasionally venturing out of its caverns with its fellows, engaging in brush wars and skirmishes with other Unztadlidge platforms and their respective communities as they fought for space and what little resources the icy world possessed.

After a hundred and some odd years of skirmishes and tunnel building, Grehenia finally reached some odd measure of peace. The surviving communities had expanded, and their Unztadlige guardians had grown enough to finally fight themselves to standstills. With that uneasy peace came eventual cooperation, as tunnel networks joined with one another, sharing processes and technologies that allowed the world underneath the surface to reach some standard of living. Trade began to flourish, and as production increased, interested merchants from the core of the Yrrkadian Dominion finally began paying attention to the frozen frontier.

Prosperity came with its own drawbacks however, Grehenia was now on the map and its Yrrkadian overlords decided it was time to collect their dues. The Dominion needed resources, taxes, and soldiers. The Echo Platform, was one of those selected to join the Dominion ranks, joining the ranks of one of the Dominion's many armored corps. There were rebellions to be put down, land to be subjugated and terraformed, and planets to be conquered. The Echo Platform took part in conflict all across Dominion space, its unique talents allowing it to both help build operating bases and the foundations for new colonies, whilst simultaneously laying waste to forces that would oppose them.

Over his many decades of service to the Yrrkadian Dominion, the Echo Platform found itself fighting and building within the Helios Expanse during its subjugation, as well as participating in all 29 years of the Veiled War between the three burgeoning powers in various capacities. The Echo Platform found itself at within the ranks of an armored engineering corp, operating with several of its own kind alongside the various races of the Yrrkadian Dominion and their new human allies in the Dolsevics. Proxy wars were the norm, quick flashpans of violence, Echo and its compatriots rolling over unprepared lines with their armored bulk before conventional forces took to the field to hold their new positions.

As open war finally broke out between the superpowers, The Echo Platform found itself engaged in particularly vicious fighting in the Helios theatre, fighting a losing war as enemies closed in on them from all directions. Frankly, it was a miracle that the Echo Platform finished the war still in one piece, if many of its constituents had been shattered during the conflict. With its unit utterly decimated over the course of its fighting with the League, the Echo Platform found itself adrift, with no allies around it, and no flag to keep it loyal to the Dominion. In an act of open rebellion- or self preservation, the Echo Platform decreed itself independent, and sought out greener pastures.

The Echo Platform emigrated for space untouched by at least its own weapons, where no one knew of it, finally settling on the Black City Knossos. While initially trying to keep its proverbial head down, engaging in more developmental tasks than combat ones, it wasn't long before the agents of the Intransigence sought them out. Unztadlige were rare to come by in Intranszjednota space, and word had quickly spread of a particularly large one settling down within their borders. Their promise to it was a simple one- a few decades of service, in return for a small expeditionary force to rebuild and recolonize one of the destroyed worlds within Intranszjednota space.

What was a few more decades of warfare?

Character Evaluation:
Calm and polite, the Echo Platform is cordial and accommodating, if a bit cold and reserved. Even after decades, it finds verbal communication an odd, and frankly unnecessarily complicated form of conveying ideas and commands, though recognizes that it is the primary method in which non-Unztadlige interact with one another. A bit robotic, the Echo Platform has a habit of repeating commands given to it before carrying them out to the best of its ability. The Echo Platform respects authority and rarely questions orders, and while it may occasionally bring up its own opinions or ask for clarification, it rarely if ever outright ignores commands given to it- sometimes just working to fit the spirit of the order, if not the exact wording.

The Echo Platform is rather gullible, and is only recently understanding the concept of 'lies', comparing it to a form of asymmetric guerilla warfare, only with words. It is steadfast and loyal, fully expecting everyone within its operational ranks to be so as well. Echo does not respond well to emotional outbursts, more out of a lack of understanding than disregard, and has a tendency to misinterpret idioms, often interpreting them literally.

Skills:

• Conventional and siege warfare
• Armored and mechanized infantry tactics
• Construction and Engineering
• Remote Reconnaissance
• Gunsmithing and arms repair
• Mining

Loadout:



Upgrades:

Name: Kleo Alves

Age: 25

Species: Human

Appearance: A dork standing at 5'8, decently athletic build mixed with some crown braids a various combat gear. She appears to be unaugmented in a world full of tekk.

Background: Hailing from 'Paradise Lost' Kleo made a solid name for herself in the criminal underworld as a sophisticated con woman. Forging checks, wire fraud, and impersonation all these crimes eventually caught up to Kleo and her money bags. Landing in a UCL-controlled prison she got a nice fat 10 year sentence for her crimes against her people, the state, and many others. While being a valuable asset to any criminal organization it would not be some mob or cartel that would come knocking for her services. In fact it was the UCL itself, with the Reckoning of Empires kicking off Kleo took a deal for a clean record should she serve and survive the massive war.

The young dork eventually found herself in an infantry unit, though she would have some leeway of her service shoving herself in as a combat medic. The war hit a climax with epic battles on space stations, combat in deep and dead space. Witnessing hell crawl into reality from the Chasm and then fighting said creatures back into the depths of the Chas'. Conquering, Looting, tragedy and sin the fatal four that plays out in story tale heroics and fables of war. Nothing was ever the same, everything was a bleak red-and-white meat grinder for the next man to fall into.

It went on like that for a few years, until it was finally over. After an incident that remains in the annuals of a classified document, Kleo was yoinked from the existence of the UCL ranks as she fell into a void in between legal ambiguity and the Chasm itself. Officially, Lance Corporal Kleo Alves retired after the Reckoning of Empires - however, contrary to the official story a young god-fearing woman soldiers on for someone else's interests.

Character Evaluation: To sum up Kleo, bubbly, chill, nerdish with a hint of mischief. Kleo is a felon who constantly seeks opportunities to further herself or her big phat wallet. At the expense of her comrades if it suits her, living day to day in some instances. Kleo has a passionate hate towards eldritch horror, the occult and all things supernatural. It just has to go, although not a follower of any religion (they could be helping the Chasm) she's pro-humanist. Sorry xenos.

Skills: Emergency Medical Aid, Recconssiance, Fraud - Forgery and all sorts of white color crime, Survival craft, The Art of being an 'infantrymen'. Some level of hacking/decking. Quite a silver tongue on her. Close quarters combat, sometimes.

Loadout: Rockefeller Light Infantry MK4 - a set of UCL Spec-ops armor, slick and expensive - probably stolen. Adequate armor protection, color replaced with whatever outfit she reps at the time. Comes with a cool helmet.

Oxley Arms Reaper - A ballistics based 10mm SMG (or equivalent) built for spec ops and covert operations. Highly customizable, mags, sights, silencer you name it. Used for killing dewds.

Mono-Gladius - A roman style sword, with mono-fibre lining on the blade, allowing the user to cut through almost anything.

Take+GO Kit 42 - A kit used for breaking into places, a favorite among Paradise Lost citizens.

"Fight The Occult" by: Dr. Hunter Powell - A book detailing occultic occurrences, monsters from the chasm and how to kill them, the cultist and the gods that made them. *In the opinion of Dr. Hunter Powell*

Name: Ilshar Ard’sabekh Maraknat; also known as Halch’aldurnat (Seventh Worm-Ring, ritual name in the Manifold Spiral, sometimes used as an alias nowadays) and Teffn (the Marked).

Age: 68 years.

Species: Tarrhaidim.

Appearance: A broad, burly Tarrhaidim, Ilshar looks squatter than he really is due to his head, or what passes for it, being barely separated from his torso. His face is little more than folds of flexible epidermis around a putrid chasm of long, sharp teeth. Thick, knotted strands of fungal tendrils, fused together by rot, give an impression of a muscular body, though one that would be deformed and tumorous by human standards. Though moderately augmented, most of Ilshar’s implants are biological or etheric in nature and buried in the oozing tangle of his inner bulk, making them invisible at a glance besides some odd ridges and twisting outlines protruding around his shoulders, upper arms and thorax. What is immediately obvious about him is the design that covers his light gray membrane-skin from head to toe, an intricate pattern of connected and intertwining rusty-red spirals. Formed by a symbiotic lichen, this living ornament grows and contracts, slowly shifting over a period of months. Ilshar displays his tapestried body with pride, rarely covering himself aside from sparse bolted-on pieces of armour.

Background: Ever since the Helios Subjugation, Enthuur, Ilshar’s home planet, had been an Yrrkradian vassal in all but name. The world, along with a smattering of underdeveloped colonies in nearby systems, was nominally under the rule of a harsh theocratic regime headed by the Mutrebb Alazann, the Manifold Spiral, a Tarrhaidim sect whose methods if not beliefs made most interstellar dismiss them as extremist warlords rather than a legitimate government. In truth, however, while the Spiral comprised many skilled agitators, etherealists and even scientists, whose influence and experimental combat assets had allowed their swift rise to power during the fragmentation of the OSLF, precious few of its members had any aptitude as administrators or military leaders. Their independence and their very grip on their population was tenuous at best, and would have rapidly dissolved had the Dominion not stepped in to prop them up with an influx of funds and weapons, in exchange for the tacit acceptance of its authority and acting as a buffer for its interests in the region. The Spiral leadership did not give its de facto submission much weight, for its true goal was a more esoteric one - to use a combination of widespread genetic and psycho-social engineering in a vast experiment, or ritual, that would supposedly transform the whole of Enthuur into an ethereal conduit to the Nexus of Teeth, the Tarrhaidim’s legendary origin.

Born in 4169, Ilshar has lived to see the death throes of the Liberation Front, the meteoric rise of the Spiral, whose ranks he joined shortly afterwards, and its unofficial alliance with the Yrrkradian Dominion. As a talented etherealist himself, he was inducted into the sect’s decentralized priesthood and played a role in its subtle decades-long preparations for the great rite. At times, this involved ethically questionable methods, as coercion, eugenics and outright assassination were required to fashion Enthuur according to the cryptic dictates of the great plan. As the Spiral’s militant arm had never evolved beyond the haphazard organisation of its earlier days, he was occasionally also called to defend the planet and its colonies from incursions by neighbouring local powers that attempted to absorb them.

The Spiral’s ambitious scheme was never completed, however, as the Veiled War would eventually reach Enshuur’s once-remote corner of the Expanse. The pressure from its regional rivals, now backed by the Dominion’s own adversaries, as well as the Yrrkradians’ own more and more exigent demands for involvement began to mount, and the Manifold Spiral’s leaders panicked as the global order they had carefully cultivated for so long was threatened. In an effort to stave off the rising tension, Ilshar and his fellows were dispatched on covert strikes against enemy-held systems, aimed to disrupt and intimidate. All this did, however, was inflame further reprisals, until Enshuur found itself isolated, having lost its colonial holdings, and as vulnerable as ever.

Surprisingly enough, it was the Yrrkradians who reached the planet first. Prevident minds in the Dominion’s military command had anticipated that the Unified Celestial League and their local allies would attempt a push through that region of the peripheral Expanse, and a vrexul legion was deployed to block that access corridor to core imperial space. Ilshar was gnashing his teeth at the lumbering insectoids’ intrusion on his homeworld when the UCL advanced in earnest, and battle broke out over Enshuur. The struggle was long, bloody and indecisive; Ilshar and his fellow Spiral members found themselves alternatingly pushed back to their planetary strongholds and painfully reclaiming ground, and narrowly escaped complete annihilation as the UCL deployed vrexul of its own.

This proved to be the turning point of the war, as after some destructive clashes the great arthropods on both sides withdrew. The remaining Yrrkradian forces found themselves outmatched, and, unwilling to commit to the defense of what was to them a disposable puppet world, retreated to defend the Dominion’s holdings. The Manifold Spiral, never truly an effective fighting force on its own and battered after years of combat, was swiftly and systematically eradicated by the advancing UCL. Ilshar was among the few of its members who managed to escape, fleeing on board a handful of salvaged civilian craft and scattering over the Expanse.

His home, purpose and compatriots lost, he drifted through contested space for a time, paying his way with sporadic mercenary work, until he at last fell in with the Intranszjednota. Resentful against both the UCL that destroyed his world and the Dominion that pushed it into war before abandoning it, Ilshar joined its forces for a chance to avenge the Manifold Spiral, and perhaps one day assembling the resources to rebuild it.

Character Evaluation: Driven and taciturn, Ilshar moves with the quiet deliberation of a lifetime of precise, meticulously calculated action. Used to thinking in terms of years and decades, a habit that not even the war has fully dislodged, he can be infuriatingly slow to act, pondering and weighing the possible consequences of anything, but when he moves at last it is with irrevocable certainty. With this sluggishness comes detachment, sharpened by the cosmic nature of his worship of the Nexus; people are to him but minuscule cogs in the immense workings of the universe, occasionally suborned for the even lowlier purposes of someone’s individual plans, and there is nothing strange in accepting this fact as it is. Despite this, he is at rare times capable of genuine passion, whether in his faith or his camaraderie with the bygone confraternity of the Spiral. The loss of the latter has left him somewhat vacant in recent times, and this may have contributed to his readiness to join the Intranszjednota, his alignment with which is altogether a matter of convenience rather than truly shared goals.

Skills: Besides being a veteran fighter whose frankly shoddy training and poor discipline are evened out by years of experience in the thick of the Reckoning, Ilshar is expert at sabotage and terror operations, having grown skilled in causing disruption by way of engineered malfunctions, explosives, dispersion of pathogens and many other means. By a combination of augmentation, armour and Tarrhaidim resilience, he is comfortable traversing and fighting in various hazardous environments. Despite his often subordinate role in the past, he has developed a certain aptitude for strategic thinking at as far as a planetary scale in his work at the Spiral’s behest.

Etherealism: A trained etherealist, thanks to the Spiral’s unorthodox ritual practices Ilshar can notably draw upon both the Chasm and the Abyssic Plane, though for obvious reasons not both at once. Like most, he has a far greater ease manipulating the former and can access it under combat conditions; he usually employs it to blight the enemy with flash infestations of parasitic ether-growths and materialize vermiform Chasm creatures to wreak havoc. Contact with the Plane is much more arduous, and Ilshar can only accomplish it by entering a trance with the aid of meditation and psychoactive drugs. The ways in which he can control it are nevertheless fundamentally similar, involving the manifestation of either disruptive Plane debris or Abyssic creatures; those he often finds more difficult to direct than their Oneiric counterparts.

Loadout:

-Ulvath Light Machine Gun: A weapon of Tarrhaidim make, characteristically capable of delivering an imposing amount of firepower while being light enough for members of the species to carry and handle even in arduous conditions. Ilshar carries a supply of various types of ammunition for it, including fragmentation, armour-piercing, incendiary and even a few ether-disrupting rounds.

-Dauvnil Piercer Gun: A bulky, hefty sidearm that fires metal flechettes with enough strength to pierce thin metal and shatter bone or carapace. It is rather inaccurate and ineffective at longer ranges, but quiet, robust and easy to maintain. Ilshar sometimes coats the darts with toxins.

-Combat Armour: Not so much a suit as a patchwork of several pieces mostly held together just by being attached to the same body. Ilshar’s armour is an odd assemblage of Yrrkradian and Intranszjednota elements, some of which are fastened to his skin in Tarrhaidim fashion. Thanks to his anatomy, it protects him in hazardous environments despite only individual parts of it being properly sealed. Its vambraces and gauntlets have sharpened edges which serve as close combat weapons.

-A supply of plastic explosives, regularly restocked when possible.

Actions Of Interest: Several of the disruptive actions Ilshar took part in during the Veiled War would be considered criminal under the laws of most major nations; incidents like the incursions on the planets Rvastre and Utkal ended in considerable losses of civilian life, and his association with the Manifold Spiral makes him at least complicit to the rest of their activities.

[Apocyan King] is spherical black construct approximately 20 centimeters wide with 26 optical emitters measuring 2 centimeters across studded across the surface. This mechanism is the end-product of the original [Apocyan King] project; an apparatus capable of projecting and maintaining a hard-light photon curtain.

The device is capable of adjusting the projected photon curtain to possess virtually any shape and appearance. Generally, this takes the form of the host process' original Human body: A Caucasian Human male, approximately 23 years old and being of East-Asian Ethno-regional descent. He stands approximately 1.78 meters in height and look like they might weigh approximately 65 kilograms. He has an overall light build with lanky features. He has long auburn-colored hair approximately 45 centimeters in length, worn in a number of different styles. He has somewhat angular facial features and prominent raised cheekbones along with deep-green eye coloration. He possesses a birth mark in the form of a skin impression, running down from the back of the neck and across his left shoulder, thought to be due to a natal cord entanglement in-situ.

[Redacted] was one of many, and also one of relatively very few, to be born aboard a habitation satellite in orbit of Mother Earth. He lived a childhood of obscene privilege, permitted to regularly visit the planet across its few remaining stable ecological zones and preserves while always being able to return to the modern comforts and conveniences of the well-established satellite environment he had grown up in. With a thorough local government-subsidized education, [Redacted] could have chosen to become trained in nearly any field of his choice, to have become anything, and to have gone anywhere. Wanting for almost nothing, one of the few things [Redacted] ever held any genuine interest in was Etherealism and the secrets of the Oneiric Abyss - one of the few fields he was not given to study freely, or easily. In addition to being a subject of great personal and interpersonal power to those who dedicated themselves to it, it was one of the few topics [Redacted] ever experienced difficulty pursuing - the only thing they felt challenged them.

[Redacted] thus dedicated most of their adolescence to studying Etherealism, training and honing their personal capabilities with Ethereal power, and going out of their way to establish Rapport with prominent Ethereal researchers where possible. [Redacted] efforts bore fruit when the Reckoning of Empires began in 4229, and the UCL redoubled its various research ventures into Etherealism. Having become the informal pupil to the established Academician Austan Enlil Aienbek of the UCL's Earth-based Abyssal Research Consortium (ARC), [Redacted] was placed for Ethereal evaluation and placement within the organization.

Unfortunately for [Redacted], while their knowledge of the history of Etherealism and its practices was exemplary, as suited their obsession with it, their personal capacity for harnessing the power of the Abyssal plane proved midling at best. Still, as close associate of Academician Aienbek, [Redacted] was nonetheless flagged for qualification as a pilot candidate for an ongoing research venture investigating technological solutions to mediating the use of Ethereal powers. [Redacted] was entered into project [Apocyan King], an experiment testing one of several different theoretical methods for wielding Ethereal abilities without accreting Qillatu or otherwise suffering detrimental effects from interaction with the Abyss by transferring the mind of the wielder from their native body into a different one - in the case of [Apocyan King], an artificial construct that utilized an exotic hard-light projection system as additional Ethereal insulation. As a test subject along with twelve others, [Redacted] was the only one amongst them who could both survive the mind-transference procedure both ways and had sufficient practical knowledge of Etherealism despite their limited talent to successfully utilize it even while relegated to an artificial body with no organic components. Being the only test subject to produce reliable results - and promising results at that - [Redacted] was then elevated to become the primary subject and end-product of [Apocyan King]. For a few moments in time, it seemed as though [Redacted] had been placed on a fast-lane to lifelong success, fame, wealth, and admiration as an aspiring Ethereal researcher and pioneer of the next paradigm shift in Etherealism.

It was not to be - for the Oneiric Chasm is chaotic, unpredictable, and defies attempts to comprehend, shackle, or exploit it freely. Although [Redacted] proved capable of projecting Etherealism through the medium of the [Apocyan King] prototype, the Abyss seemingly traced a conduit of cause and effect between the construct and [Redacted] original body. The initial symptoms of this unseen connection remained hidden for a time, dismissed simply as the residual and ongoing effects of [Redacted] continued practice of Etherealism when still occupying their native body. The full consequences of the overlooked bond manifested all at once, during an experiment meant to stress-test the Ethereal capabilities of a mind within the [Apocyan King] construct over an extended period of time. Detecting the rapidly accumulating Qillatu around [Redacted] host body too late to abort the experiment safely - as the mind transference method itself required Etherealism in addition to a minimal safety threshold of Qillatu aggregation to function - [Redacted] mind became trapped in the [Apocyan King] construct as his native body's empty mind cocooned itself in inert Qillatu.

To make matters worse, it was then that the Reckoning of Empires drew to a close. The UCL began to step-down its immense wartime expenditures on research, and project [Apocyan King] was defunded as an 'embarrassing failed venture.' What little research had been conducted into safely returning [Redacted] to their body was halted, with all assets ordered to be placed in stasis for long-term storage. When [Redacted] objected to this and threatened to make a nuisance of themselves, they were labeled a 'subversive element,' and the [Apocyan King] construct was scheduled to be dismantled. Only Academician Aienbek's sympathy and close relationship with [Redacted] saved them. Making contact with fringe-world traders, Aienbek arranged for [Apocyan King] to be smuggled to frontier space, far away from where the Earth-based ARC would ever take notice of them, and then deleted all digital references and traces of [Redacted] and the project logs in order to protect [Redacted] host body from retaliatory destruction.

Academician Aienbek's ultimate fate remained and remains unknown to [Redacted] - awakening once again stranded in a distant port of far-off space, with no legal identity and all evidence of their existence back at home having been erased, was forced to accept and become the [Apocyan King] itself. Left only with a cryptic message from Aienbek warning them that their original body would potentially be placed 'at risk' if they ever returned, [Apocyan King] has been working ever since to establish funds, contacts, and a plan to try and recover their body without ever returning to the Solar System.

Barred the benefits and advantages of a UCL citizen, it was almost inevitable that [Apocyan King] would align themselves with their enemies - those who would not balk or scoff at the notion of intruding into distant UCL databases, and had the resources and talent needed to do it. Joining the Intransigence at the lowest levels as little more than a somewhat less-than-common thug, [Apocyan King] was quickly elevated as an important asset due to the unique resilience and capabilities of their hard-light body.

For a brief period of time, [Apocyan King] was utilized as an assassin, targeting prominent Ethereals known for their power and who were otherwise difficult to approach or kill. While [Apocyan King] had their successes due to their near-immunity to Ethereal powers and influence, they ultimately proved too indiscrete and messy of an operative to remain useful - and so [Apocyan King] was then relegated to a deniable black-ops group known as the Envenomed...

[Apocyan King] has a perpetually calm, relaxed demeanor. He is known to remain steady under pressure, when surprised, and in combat conditions, though this often also results in a perceived lack of urgency on his part. He maintains an air of urbane wit in most social circumstances, but has a tendency to fade into the background or abandon most conversations due to a combination of a lack of social confidence and an ingrained, personal sensation of alienation. King harbors an intense inferiority complex borne of his complete lack of a body - not being known for his tactical experience or as an expert in any particular field, and only having psychologically impressed desires rather than true bodily needs, he views himself as having no inherent value beyond being an advanced, living weapon.

Although he suffers from difficulty in informal social situations, when engaged King is prone to getting into trouble over an absence of appropriate decorum, open disrespect, and unnecessary criticism of operational parameters - disciplinary action against a being with no true body proving to be all but impossible even when utilizing the Ethereal punitively. Even solitary confinement and temporarily disabling King's core mechanism have vanishingly little efficacy as disciplinary actions. King thus has a reputation as a troublemaker and as something of a masochist.

On the battlefield however, King is known to obey all orders without question, albeit at his own and somewhat lethargic pace. He has a tendency to take unnecessary risks for the purposes of shielding allies from incoming fire or as a distraction ploy, which has led some to believe his behavior is indicative of suicidal ideation.

The [Apocyan King] project was originally intended as an experiment to discern whether transplanting a host mind capable of Etherealism into an artificial construct could allow for free, or at least less onerous use of Ethereal power with diminished risk to the host body. In theory, an EM-hardened core mechanism shielded by a hard-light photon curtain with extreme low-temperature operating conditions would be more or less impervious to exotic Ethereal attacks and the build-up of hazardous Qillatu.

The project was ultimately a failure, as the power drawn from the Abyssal Chasm, although successfully projected from the the [Apocyan King] construct, would then ground all attendant Qillatu through the original host body the construct's mind had been transplanted from. This resulted in the host body becoming cocooned in inert Qillatu, effectively rendering it Ethereally inert and preventing further use of Etherealism by the construct. The host body was then placed in stasis for unspecified future research purposes.

Presently, the [Apocyan King] construct is incapable of utilizing Etherealism of any sort. To its benefit however, the combination of its hard-light photon curtain and its host body being both Ethereally cloistered and kept in stasis renders the construct nearly impervious to unconventional Ethereal attacks and Abyssal energy.

Ethereal phenomenon that directly convert Abyssal energy into ordinary high-energy phenomenon such as electricity or plasma remain indirectly effective at inflicting damage to the construct's photon curtain.

• Hard-Light Lasing Medium:

The [Apocyan King] interior photon matrix is an ideal lasing environment due to its capability of guiding concentrated light along high-gain, super-cooled channels. [Apocyan King] can build-up and emit pulsed lasers, including Microwave and X-Ray lasers, from any point of its body. These can range from non-lethal thermo-electrical ablative-shock pulses capable of stunning unarmored combatants, to suppressive bloom-fire, to highly penetrating anti-shielding and anti-armor plasma-vacuum gradient bursts. Unfortunately, weapons of this nature are very well-documented, with effective armor and shielding for each being widespread and readily available to most polities. Moreover, as with most lase weapons, this capability suffers immensely in environments with thick atmospheres or heavy particulate content.

• Anti-Ballistic & Ethereal Photon Curtain:

[Apocyan King] is highly resistant, if not quite entirely immune, to conventional ballistic, explosives, and Ethereal mediums of attack. Standard ballistic impacts, thermal and kinetic shock, and various forms of exotic Etheralism or Qillatu radiation are generally incapable of deforming the [Apocyan King] external photon curtain. However, due to the nature of hard-light photons having low relative energy and actual mass, physical attacks are still capable of displacing the hard-light projection itself, meaning ballistics with particularly high stopping power or powerful explosions can still fling [Apocyan King] around. Additionally, the photon-curtain remains susceptible to energy-based munitions or phenomenon, including but not limited to particle-based weapons, plasma, electrical discharges, and so forth. Attacks of this nature are capable of disrupting the photon curtain and causing instantaneous reactive loss of coherence within the hard-light construct's internal super-cooled photon matrix.

• Regenerative Hard-light Matrix:

The [Apocyan King] interior photon matrix requires super-cool environmental parameters to maintain stability. When the construct's external photon-curtain is breached by an energy attack, this results in the surrounding area of the matrix decohering from the abrupt increase in temperature. The construct's photo-curtain can reactively reshape itself to seal off the exposed partition of the interior matrix, but some loss of overall mass is inevitable with every breach. To compensate for this, the central mechanism gradually manipulates and modulates photons within its core, super-cooling and eventually emitting and integrating them with the interior photon matrix in order to expand its volume. This process is slow, making it ineffective at replenishing lost mass during pitched combat encounters, though it allows [Apocyan King] to retain combat-effective levels of mass across more protracted campaigns.

• Photon-Curtain Mimicry:

When provided with an adequate sample reference, [Apocyan King] can alter the appearance of its photon curtain to become a perfect optical replica of a given individual or object. If provided with corresponding information, the photon-curtain can even mimic certain IFF transponder signals, allowing for a more convincing facsimile. Despite the fidelity of the mimicry, this is almost never useful for long-term or deep-cover infiltration due to the existence of sophisticated security scanning and the inability of [Apocyan King] to mimic voices or other personal identifiers. At best, this form of mimicry allows [Apocyan King] to approach or fall in-line with enemy combatants for the purposes of launching a close-range surprise attack.

• Modular Photon-Curtain Hardpoints:

Since [Apocyan King] can reshape its exterior photon-curtain at will, it can create modular hard-points capable of mounting virtually any infantry-grade weapon, regardless of shape or weight (for the most part). [Apocyan King] can even supplement weaponry by acting as a power-supply or by helping to channel energy.

• Defunct Infantry-Grade Graser Emitter Frame, 'Just a Kiss':

Originally envisioned as a next-generation alternative form of infantry-grade anti-armor and surface-to-air weapon to replace modern explosives, infantry-grade Graser Emitters just like this one were discontinued due to their tendency to kill their users and everybody around them. Many of the parts and integral components for these weapons are no longer produced anywhere, requiring partial mounting and integration with the [Apocyan King] photon-curtain in order to function. It uses a mass of isometric nuclear fuel to channel amplified light through an ideal hard-light, super-cooled matrix, allowing for efficient gain along with minimal loss of coherence and radiation. The resulting coherent Gamma Rays are then channeled back out of [Apocyan King] and through the emitter aperture as a sustained beam capable of obliterating heavy-armored vehicles, gunships, bunkers, citadel-class shield emplacements, and overwhelming the shielding and armor of corvette ships. The beam is typically coherent and energetic enough that no form of modern, conventional shielding or armor is wholly effective at deterring it, and it will completely atomize any heavy-particulate atmosphere it passes through without loss of coherence. As a side effect, the weapon heavily and lethally irradiates everything in proximity to the user, in proximity to the path of the beam, and around the contact area, penetrating through most known forms of shielding and insulation. While the [Apocyan King] construct can survive this exposure, thorough decontamination of the weapon is absolutely required prior to maintenance. Due to the immense expenditure of its solid-state nuclear fuel, the weapon can only fire either two short bursts, or one longer sustained pulse.

During their brief tenure as an Intransigence Assassin of prominent and powerful Ethereals, [Apocyan King]'s shortcomings in regards to the practicalities of living outside coreworld space and their lack of expertise in nearly any field other than Etherealism became apparent. These shortcomings, combined with immense personal dissatisfaction and frustration over their predicament and what they were being forced to do, resulted in a notably catastrophic incident during an operation where [EXPUNGED]

Born in the year 4150, Plako Delsin was only alive for five minutes. According to the official records of the Dolsilvec Foundation there was a birth certificate and a death certificate registered for Plako Delsin approximately five minutes apart. Assuming one could find Delsin’s real name and establish the existence of these records one would be led to believe that Plako Delsin had died shortly after birth. The birth certificate would feature only the name’s Jane and John Doe as mother and father. And that was only if one could find any hint of a trail to that which Delsin himself had buried years ago.

The circumstances of Delsin’s birth were immoral at best and certainly unsanctioned. A pet project of a high ranking military official and a disgraced researcher searching for a chance to turn their career around resulted in an artificially inseminated baby which had been genetically modified to increase tolerance and enhance potential in regards to ether with a preference for Oneiric Chasm energy. For the first five years Delsin lived in a solitary room attended only by researchers and armed guards in a facility where no one would treat him like anything other than an object. Military tutors were brought in to at least ensure the boy was socialized and intelligent enough to serve should the project succeed.

Unfortunately, after five years of extensive testing through various means it was becoming obvious that Delsin’s body exhibited no signs of ethereal connection to the Oneiric Chasm. The project was considered a failure and Delsin was to be disposed of and the lead researcher terminated to tie up any connection to the ranking officer who had instigated the program.

Not one to give up, the man responsible for Delsin’s creation orchestrated a break out of himself and the child before either command could be carried out. With no allies at hand and no one to turn to there was no other choice but for the two to flee into OSLF territory. A risky escape and an unsanctioned landing resulted in only Delsin’s survival upon his arrival to one of the many black cities forming the backbone of the OSLF. Five years old, barely aware of the world and what it held, hardly having met more than twenty people and having actually spoken with far fewer, the odds that Delsin would survive were astoundingly low.

Pressure forms diamonds, and Delsin was a diamond in the rough. The hard life he found himself in created a man who went to any length for his own survival and was above nothing to ensure he’d breathe a little longer. For the first few years Delsin lived little better than an animal, feasting on scraps and fighting to survive. He shunned any authority and refused to abide by any command. Until one day Delsin was pummeled into the dirt and left within an inch of death by a shop owner who he’d been attempting to steal some food from.

Bleeding and broken in an alleyway was where he was found by a local group of gun runners. At first they planned to move on after checking his pockets and finding nothing of value but a sympathetic member who one would easily identify as the runt of the group pleaded the boy's case. Perhaps it was actual sympathy or perhaps just opportunism. Either way from the point on Delsin was shown a different side of authority. They may have saved his life that day but it certainly wasn’t out of kindness. As a small boy Delsin could fit into places that others could not and quickly became of use to the group for a variety of reasons big and small.

For years the gun runners dragged Delsin along as an unwilling member of their outfit. For the first couple Delsin resisted when possible but eventually the abuse and punishment for disobedience taught him how to keep his head down and do as he was told. As Delsin grew older and neared his teen years he quickly began to bulk up making it harder or downright impossible to do the same jobs he’d done for the crew before. It was quickly becoming obvious as time went on that his usefulness to the gunrunners was drying up as quickly as it’d come and the winds were starting to change. Before long it was clear Delsin was seen as more of a burden but given his knowledge of the crew members and their operations they couldn’t merely cut him loose. This left him in a tenuous situation in which the crew seemed to view him with silent contempt but tolerated his existence.

Then, when he was at the age of thirteen, they tried to kill him. An incident resulting in the loss of supplies was pinned on Delsin, although it was clear he’d actually had nothing to do with it. It was also clear that they didn’t care, it was likely that maybe there’d never been an incident. Delsin never cared to verify if there was. They had decided they no longer needed the dead weight around and found a convenient excuse to shed it. And so it was there that things changed, in a tiny back room surrounded by the men and women Delsin had worked alongside as boot after boot rained down upon his body and his vision and hearing faded and dulled and the pain grew into a distant dull throb.

A sudden shockwave of ether as Delsin’s latent abilities finally manifested. The blows quickly lost any real force and drew to a stop as the assailants found themselves harmlessly floating in the air as gravity around Delsin’s body was distorted. In a bloody haze Delsin could barely tell what was going on, only that he was no longer under attack and as such used the opportunity to retaliate as he roared in anger and seemed to will into existence a miasma of ethereal energy that permeated the room. To this day Delsin can’t remember the full extent of what happened in that room, only that when he was found to be the only survivor on scene it was reported that a massive outbreak of ethereal energy related to the Abyssic plane had warped the surrounding matter and killed or consumed countless people in the area.

Delsin died that day, at least as far as he was concerned. Swallowed up in that accident or never having existed at all, didn’t really matter to him. He’d gotten a few good things from running with the gun runners, one of those was a collection of old earth westerns that one of the crew members had scored when tossing a rival compound. They’d been digitized and stored on a data stick that he’d let Delsin borrow and it was one of the few things Delsin had managed to keep when it all fell apart. One of the more prominent names featured throughout the media was Jesse James, an ole western outlaw who’d been legendary as far as Delsin was concerned. He decided from that day on he would call himself Jesse James as well, to embody the outlaw spirit of answering to no one and taking care of himself.

Over the next decade Delsin slowly became Jesse, his newfound skills from his time with the gunrunners as well as his newfound ethereal abilities allowed him to stabilize his life underground a little more. From common thief to well known local trigger man by the age of twenty. Jesse’s life still wasn’t by any means nice but he’d certainly started carving out some semblance of a routine and a place to call his own. With time, age, and experience the jobs only grew bigger and more serious as well. Jesse never really cared to take allegiance to any one contractor or faction or organization, preferring his role as a freelance operative who answered to only himself. Throughout his early twenties he took advantage of the unstable nature of OSFL space to play whichever side of the field suited his fancy at the time. As a young naive operator at what he thought was the height of the game he didn’t really care why he did what he did, he merely cared about money and the job.

But as time passed and the stakes grew it began to get harder and harder for Jesse to ignore the reality of the political instability of the OSFL. Jesse never considered himself a political person and was quite lacking in the subject of galactic history and politics but at the urging of a trusted associate he took a side. At the age of twenty-five Jesse started operating under a different alias for a group specifically aligned with the OSFL carrying out operations against the growing threat of the larger political players in the game.

For the next twenty-five years Jesse fought enemies of the OSFL on various fronts through a variety of means under a menagerie of aliases. The only constants in his life were conflict of some sort, cramped cruddy living conditions, and his trusted friend. For twenty-five years Jesse and his associate fought together to uphold the ideals of the OSFL, for twenty-five years Jesse trusted the man to watch his back. After twenty-five years of doing just that, he shot Jesse in the back, quite literally.

It was in the year forty-two hundred when Jesse found himself back on familiar turf attempting to assist in the defense of the black city he’d started it all on. It was grueling fighting that seemed to finally be taking a turn for the better when chaos erupted at the arrival of actual NATO units and allies. Jesse was never the one that really understood who was who and why they did what they did, that was his partner’s job. And so Jesse never did understand exactly what it was that made him pull the trigger in that moment. It was a shot that changed everything, destroying the lower vertebrae in Jesse’s spine and leaving him paralyzed on the ground as his position was overrun. Over the following days of chaos Jesse remembers only hazy patches. No explanation was given by his betrayer and his whereabouts were a mystery.

It’s likely Jesse would have laid there amongst the rubble unable to move until death came for him. But someone had other plans, someone who’d kept tabs on Jesse since the day he’d escaped. Jesse remained buried and broken for a few days at least as the local situation required time to simmer off and calm down but a covert rescue mission was soon carried out by none other than the high ranking Dolsilvec from before. Jesse was rescued and subsequently returned to captivity, referred to as Delsin which he vehemently refused to acknowledge, and stuck once more into a room to be studied.

For years after Jesse was kept as a lab rat, confined and kept top secret, cut off from the world he had no idea of what happened to his home or any part of his life prior. They kept him as informationally devoid as possible until finally after 10 years of imprisonment an unknown official with the Yrrkradians sat him down and explained the situation and gave him a choice.

Jesse was never supposed to exist for that matter the official stance of the government was that he should be disposed of. The Dolsilvec who had been responsible for the whole ordeal had already been tried and executed since the Dolsilvec Foundation had become a protectorate under the Yrrkradian Empire. As such Jesse was now the responsibility of the Yrrkradian Empire and their official stance was to dispose of him. Fortunately opportunity found its way to knock once more as Jesse was offered the chance to further assist in Yrrkradian military operations and strategic research due to his extensive history of combat and the origins of his abilities, Yrrkradia officially didn’t want to acknowledge his existence but unofficially saw no point in wasting his potential.

Undergoing a string of experimental surgeries that resulted in Jesse’s first augmentations resulted in the curing of Jesse’s paralysis but also in the replacement of his spine, hips, and everything from their down. Part of Jesse was horrified but it was either paralysis and death or this. For the next nineteen years Jesse participated in the Veiled Wars as an agent of the Yrrkradian Empire with various degrees of success. Between operations Jesse was treated like a lab rat, constantly experimenting and testing the limits of his abyssic ethereal abilities and attempting to find ways to enhance and coordinate his augmentations with those abilities.

When the Veiled Wars sparked into open conflict Jesse was forced to the forefront time and time again due to his effectiveness and efficiency. With each success came another mission and even his failures just resulted in augmentation to repair or replace whatever was damaged before throwing him back into the field. By the time a ceasefire was finally drafted Jesse was more machine than man and had fought in nearly every possible major conflict that Yrrkradia could shove him into. Jesse was eighty-three, but looking at him you’d think he looked only forty-five, at least looking at the parts of him that were still human. Although he looked young, and although his augmentations and experimental enhancements kept his vitality strong and his mind young, he still mentally felt old. Eighty something years of nonstop conflict took a toll on a man’s mind regardless of how much technology tried to offset that.

And so after The Reckoning of Empires Jesse attempted to scuttle off into some hidden corner of space where no one knew of him and disappear. He was relatively successful, the Yrrkradian Empire having no idea where he’d gone or how he’d done so, but they weren’t the only one that had been perhaps keeping an eye on him and on a man like Jesse retirement just doesn’t seem to fit well.