Into Perdition's Jaws features a wide variety of playable species and each one can almost be a faction unto themselves in terms of the unique options available to them. This post in particular is meant to both flesh out the kind of technology members of these species being to the field as well as to help players get a better idea of not just how to create characters but also how these species will be depicted by the many NPC's you will encounter.
Humanity is usually closest to the classic ideas of space marines in popular science fiction, military or otherwise. They tend to typically wear partially powered armour to larger full on exoskeletal suits and with the proliferation of augmentation technology, even backwater colonial militias can usually afford to use a number of usually cybernetic but recently fairly regulated biological augmentation tech to help close the gap between humanity and the often far more powerful alien species. The specifics of how they are armed, augmented, trained, and otherwise made combat ready can vary wildly given how often humans appear throughout all five factions. They are most well established in the Unified Celestial Leauge where their fully encasing armour, striking blue visors, and large electro-propellant rifles have made them an image both respected and feared across the stars.
Elsewhere however they tend to prioritize lighter semipowered armour, something the League is doing to cut down on costs and open up new strategic avenues. Usually the weaker protection is compensated by upgrades such as specialize hidden ports that synchronize with one's own augmentations, partially biological construction allowing for additional weaponry and unique ugprades, and even void-evoking enchantments that can both protect from and enhance ethereal powers. Humans usually fight in tightly coordianted squads with very specific roles, sacrificing individual versatility for unified group readiness against a wide range of scenarios.
Humans typically are not as heavily augmented as other aliens, keeping the majorityof their enhancements under the skin. They are more likely to use armour that has heavy additional features such as weaprony, scanners, and hardpoints but those aligned with the Carnazir and the ZSRP are considerably less adverse to extensively enhancing their bodies. Typically human armed forces in League space will go for just a few specific upgrades to bodily capabilities while the Pact will be more extensive. It is to the extent that some pact militaries have humans who can generate bone-like armour around their bodies as well as having additional organs capable of storing excess ether, putting these post-humans on a level not far from certain alien species.
The Carnazir is considerably less regulated about this beyond a few of its absorbed military forces and while this means many of its augmentations are performed under less than ideal to outright dangerous conditions, it has resulted in augmented humans at once more ghoulish and freakishly powerful than their baseline counterpats elsewhere. Human ethereality is not as well studied as it is for other races but they seem to prefer a wide range of spells typically focused on a mixture of offence and defence that may not excel in one particular area but do allow them to rapidly respond to threats quite quickly, relying moreso usually on weaponry, tactics, and armour as opposed to supernatural might.
The tarrhaidim are not far from humans in some ways in terms of choice in weapons, tactics, and gear which results in them often working well together. Where they differ are in a number of specifics. The tarrhaidim are usually associated with being less high tech and mores used to fighting as guerillas, something that is consistent with their history of civil wars and asymmetrical combat against one another and larger hegemonic forces. Their weapons however tend to have ruggedness and high calibre power in the place of high tech construction, typically adopting the Carnazir model of versatile as well as easily void-touched weapons. They are known to bolt their armour into their own bodies, often associated with lighter synthetic armour but a number of groups are not adverse to specialized mutagenic armous partially grown from their own bodies or specialized battlesuits that use their own internal worm-ridden biologies to power themselves.
Although they are not extraordinarily fast or strong, many of them use exoskeletal frames around their arms and legs to boost their speed and strength, making them a force that can move quite quickly while lugging around heavier weapons without too much trouble though not often to the extent of proffessional power armoured forces in terms of physical capability. They have a reputation for their skill in explosive traps, crew served weapons, long range skirmishing, and combat in rural areas.
As fungoid masses, the tarrhaidim are usuallly host to a variety of creatures which perform various functions within their bodies. Militarily, this means that they have so many differing internal components that it's sometimes hard to tell what is an augmentation and what is some sort of vegetation or creature that lives within as a regulatory component. This does not stop them from loading up often heavily on augmentations of all sorts though what they are able to afford tends to depend on market or logistical conditions. It is to the extent a number of them will appear as either wired-up semi-metallic cyborgs, living lanterns emitting a surreal aura, or shadowy and overgrown monstrosities.
They focus primarily on survival typically; enhancing their healing, functional organ redunancies (occaisionally with actual organs or organisms), power conservation and rapid-photosynthesis tech, but it is not uncommon to see more rough bodily modificaitons such as reactive plating, targeting beams, and even a few weapon systems burrowed into their bodies. Their etherealism is linked heavily to their faith and tends to come in the form of strange worm-creatures summoned form within the Abzu as well as strange frothy mossy growths, typically focusing on ravaging the enemy with these disruptive annelid predators or creating deceptively powerful barriers as well as partially blurring realspace with strange fluids injected right beneath its surface.
As the second largest of the listed species, the vrexul are the second largest with only the unztadtlige able of outmatching them. As befitting of their powerful bodies, they are typically outfitted in such a way they resemble smaller mecha in terms of the raw degree of firepower at their disposal. For example, the most well known vrexul weapon is an "assault rifle" known as the hellhammer which has its origins as an autocannon originally mounted on the automatons used to guard their larvae during their exodus. As a rifle, it is no less fearsome, firing armour piercing high explosive shells with a semi-biological electro-thermal chemical mechanisms, feared throughout UCL space for its destructive power. Their armour is layered over and partially integrated into their own carapaces, interlinking with complex networks of augmentations, offering impressive protection and enhanced phsyical capabilities. They are known to employ directional energy shielding, highly durable and capable of being fired through. While it does only protect from a single direction, they combine this with either ruthless covering fire advacnes or entrenching themselves into tough spots, getting under their enemies skin' with their further increased survivability.
They often carry a number of additional weapons encoded into their bodies or their armour, typically intended for shorter ranges or specialized purposes such as light artillery and anti-vehicular engagement. In spite of their arthropod nature, the vrexul do not often deploy in enormous numbers themselves, often commanding large groups of half synthetic half biological automatons that fulfill various other roles in combat, tying up enemies and helping to provide additional harassment and pinning fire while larger and more heavily armed vrexul viciously attack the toughest enemies or entrench themselves to weather enemy onslaughts. They have lately been moving towards lighter armoured units to increase the amount of proper soldiers they can have on the field similar to the League.
With the most advanced agumentation capabilities so far, the vrexul carry an impressive amount that go beyond merely just enhancing their baseline physicality. Integrated multifuncational tool-limbs, various drone-organisms they can control nesting in their bodies, qillatu absorbing ether-shock glands - they are living armouries not just in terms of weaponry but their complex additions to their towering forms. These vary wildly from vrexul to vrexul, typically based on their personal preferences, but outside of the Pact, they are known to work more "conventional" technologies into their carapaces giving them a bit of a slightly mix-and-match appearance. The most common augmentations are extra arms or legs, frequently used to assist with movement, close quarters combat, and handling multiple weapons (sometimes said limbs will morph into said wepaons).
Recently, many have taken to specialized sub-brains that help them with keeping track of multiple objects, locations, and entities. Etherealists are not very common amongst them though that number is steadily growing. Those that they do have are protected and tend to have a near legendary status amongst friend or foe, rupturing the air with foul otherworldly miasma to overwhelm defensive positions, shrouding their allies in fields of transparent void-shells from gunfire, or causing wild flailing arthropod limbs drenched in unearthly light to emerge from thin air, tearing and flailing away at shocked foes. Those who possess not only said void-borne abilities and have been infested the the evzredigor are an even higher magnitude of power, respected as perhaps the most elite of the Pact's soldiers.
As relatives of the Vrexul, the praolnevatz do not kit themselves out too differently from their gnarlier cousins. They are not as physically powerful and their carapaces do not have the same protective capabilities. In spite of being even more alien, they are compatible with many of the same upgrades and gear but they differ in that they tend to work far more with ethereal-oriented loadouts and direct energy weapons. As they are all naturally etherealists, they focus less on the controlled mutagenics of their brethren and instead on their unearthly powers. The vrexul have sledgehammer power and stalwart ruggedness while the praolznevatz choose obfuscating movement and overwhelming eldritch energy.
This has lead to some interesting technology building off of their own homegrown creations synthesized with those of the rest of the pact. The most common of these are direct-energy weapons that can tap into their users own ethereal reserves, allowing them to condition and reshape the nature and effects of their gunfire. They also use a number of shield generators that also can network with their supernatural biologies, something that even extends to the cyborg minions that accompany them into battle though they do not deploy them in as large of numbers as their more corporeal companions might. In battle, they are typically deployed to tie up, confuse, and stop enemy advances in their tracks with their numerous supernatural abilities capable of throwing even the most brute forced of onslaughts into chaotic disarray.
Praolznevatz augmentations are as varied as those of the vrexul but typically focus almost entirely on their void-inclined biology, making them more of nests of ghosts rather than nests of insects in how this appears. This usually comes in the form of various ethereal augmentations; "spells" not cast but embedded into their transparent, occasionally luminous bodies that make them appear as living snapshots of the abzu's monstrous depths. Arcane text in their borderline incomprehensible language, arranged in forms that make the characters look like living, twitching limbs can be seen if you look close enough but those are not the only things imbuing them with power.
A number of void-dwelling creatures have been domesticated or geneticallly modified to nest in their bodies and can often be seen moving about within, serving as additional organisms, repairing major damages, or increasing the potency of their unearthly skills. In combat, this occult mastery manifests in powerful projectile bombardments capable of putting even heavy armour under alert while the praolznevatz dash forward with chilling speed, disrupting electronic and ethereal scanning with the ripple-waves they send. Their shots ravage enemies with hungry, carnivorous power devouring armour and flesh as they unleash large concentrations of this deadly intensity within fairly short time frames, falling back and leaving enemies shattered in their wake.
Demonic in appearance and with a reputation for militancy, the celaderaka whether by the most barbaric or noble examples of their kind are always prepared to fight regardless of how high or low tech their equipment is. Celaderakan armour is tough and form fitting, in many cases mistaken for their already rocky almost shell-like flesh when in reality it is partially built into it in a way similar to the vrexul. Much of their weaponry wihle well crafted is fairly simple at heart, simply being power slug-flinging guns or high output direct energy options, well adapted for combat in mountainous regions with long range and good controllability. They excel in particular with far more close combat options than most, having very well developed melee weapons built into their suits or even attached to their feet and legs whether they are blades, claw sheaths, or specialized force-projectors that send shockwaves into whatever they smash.
They are known to even use grappling hooks modified to be whips, ending with cruel curving blades capable of being used to swing about or slice enemies from a distance. They are known for their excellent shotgun designs, melding tight spread clusters with ripping flechette payloads sometimes capable of phasing through shielding whether purely energy or even ethereal. This has lead to a reputation of them being excellent at assaults and boarding action, both true, but they are no slouches in fighting over tough terrain over longer ranges either.
Their augmentations primarily focus on durability and aggression, from adrenal stimulant glands and regenerative nanomachine nests to ether absorption modules and sensors designed to detect enemy melee motions up close and alert the brain immediately. They do not tend to augment themselves as heavily though there has been a trend lately of going full cyborg, popular among mercenaries and army veterans though the process is both expensive and demanding along with not being properly standardized or regulated. Most of them choose to usually link their armour to their bodies then load them up with joint-based servos to increase speed and striking power.
They have a good deal of etherealists who either focus on helping to move around their allies with short range teleportation or straight up launching or boosting their movement capabilities. They are not slouches around direct combat, sending beams of ripping unearthly lightning and voidborne blasts, fairly blunt in these fields but often using these powers to cover for their comrades, emphasizing inelegant blunt force power just as their more physical methods would. The most well known of their ethereal skills is gathering enough ether at a certain location then violently detonating it; a very simple skill but one that has forced enemy armour to clumsily move out of position and into the path of anti tank missiles or entrenched bunkers to turn into blast-ridden mortuaries.
Heavenly beings at once fascinating and unsettling, the scielto boasted the most advanced technology for years and while they may have more contesting them for that slot, it's not hard to imagine why they may have the lead. Scielto armour is as artistic as it is functional, elaborately draping them in almost sculpture esque plated layers that can reshift and alter shape partially to better protect and fit. Specialized ether-generators on board resonate with their own natural stores of otherworldly power, making even baseline soldiers far more deadly. Shield generators can be infused with their own ether-currents and even weaponized to launch powerful shockwaves, turning the defensive into the offensive in the flick of a thought. Just as importantly is the ability of their armour to work with their ether-neural uplink implants and to assist in communicating with the large groups of automaons the scielto command into battle.
They are similar to the vrexul in this sense though they are far more loathe to spill their own blue blood, preferring armies of machines that serve as conduits for their ether currents, empowered by their mere presence like armies of disciples renewed by godly blessings. Yet one should not expect them to be found wanting for individual combative power. Outside of their ethereality, the scielto pack a variety of cutting edge armaments, capable of firing ether-propelled luminescent spikes, bombs containing exploding into scaled down void-storms, and flocks of target-homing energy bolts. Combined with the ability to fly in ether-heavy environments and to hover in lower concentrations, they are fearsome to face even to hardened warriors.
The scielto are skeptical of most augmentations with a few key exceptions, disliking biological ones mostly on cultural and religious grounds. After all, is not their usage something that makes one have more in common with lesser species and their weak, foul bodies as opposed to divine perfection of
the Sky-Chosen? Granted, the influence of humanity and changing social standards have gradually diminished the stigma but the scielto typically choose those which amplify their own power, emphasizing vast stores of energy and the ability to manipulate their ether when cast as if by a divine hand.
They are especially fond of those that assist them in "stacking" augmenting auras on top of one another, melding or overlapping otherwise conflicting streams of energy as well as specialized "tracer" augs that allow them to better sense target positions by their void-signatures, making them excellent for bombarding at further ranges. Each scielto is a painter with the powers of the abzu as their materials but the forms it take are as majestic as they are terrible to behold or receive. They are known for sending powerful directed waves of destructive power across the battlefield, capable of taking down whole squadrons, and sending lashing, twisting, serpentine beams of power to ravage wide swathes. Attempts to retaliate meet multiple defensive barriers manifested from within their casting range, covering the ruthless advance of their robotic forces. Forces that can sometimes turn into living void-bombs or be used to launch ethereal spells from directly, making even minor machines major threats under the right circumstances.
As living fortresses of armour, rock, mutated coral, and complex cybernetics, the unztadtlige can carry more and heavier armour and artillery than most vrexul. As their bodies do not resemble often resemble single animals as much as entire partially robotic coral reefs, they are loaded out closer to armoured vehicles. Unztadtlige typically have layered composite armour out of which a number of multi-limbed tendrils, gun turrets, launcher ports, drone launch bays and so on can be seen. They often move using a number of anti-gravitational emitters hidden within their bodies. Alternatively multiple legs, treads, wheels, or even a combination of these will do. Their armoured shells contain a number of self repair mechanisms from nanobot networks to partially cybernetic symbiote creatures within bioengineered to naturally maintain them, even shield generators in some cases when they can afford them.
Weaponry includes normally crew served heavy machine guns, typically AFV mounted autocannons, and even smaller howitzers among others but a number of more fearsome options are also typically visible. Living explosive projectiles that fly or crawl after targets, high output short range beam projectors, and realspace tearing transgressor cannons, capable creating rifts into the abzu, have given them the reputation as the most well armed of all known species. Augmentations are an odd issue; they sometimes do not really need them as their complex bodies have so many differing living components that they are redundant or will often affect a single part of themselves. That hasn't stopped relatively younger ones from trying out all kinds, typically using them to enhance the performance of their living internal maintenance organisms, combat bio-drones, and coral-like turrets. They seem to struggle with making ethereal augmentations extensively affect their entire bodies due to their gestalt consciousnesses but do have more success with a number of recently tailor-made biological and cybernetic options.
The unztadtlige do not often deploy in species-specific squads, often working to support the armour and infantry of other races for whom their services are frequently requested. When their molzentrags do enter the battlefield, they typically work with long range mobile bombardment, cleverly harassing infantry and light armour caught in the open while drawing and manoevering true heavy armoured targets into deadly crossfire positions. Their immense power has not gotten to their heads and while some of them can grow to the size of actual tanks, they are known to be more cunning than they are tyrannical on the battlefield. While they are not necessarily the most mobile or quick to respond, their high endurance and ability to outshoot the enemy will make even experienced mech divisions take caution when forced to engage.
Their lower numbers of etherealists means that their powers are usually not as well understood or standardized as they are elsewhere. It is known that many of them use their ethereality less so to enhance their strengths but rather to cover their weaknesses. Many of unztadtlige etherealists tend to use abilities involving short range shockwaves to knock back enemies, momentary visual obscuration via realspace tears, and sudden bursts of disorienting power to diminish enemy accuracy that are nowhere near as lethal as their mounted guns. Truly destructive casting is not unheard of, with some reputed to summon storms from the abzu itself and others supposedly able to call forth creatures from the Abyssic Plane more easily than others though accurate reporting on these is difficult to find given how secretive the unztadtlige are on this field.
As they are closer to humanity than any other species, the Voidhangers are not often armed and armoured particularly different from them. Oftentimes both species will use many of the same weapons, tactics, and equipment but voidhangers do differ in a number of ways. The most obvious is how much of their armour tends to have stronger life support systems and special sealants, often placing a bigger emphasis on allowing them to recover from fire but also enhancing and boosting their own ethereal abilities. This allows many of them, even if they are not etherealists, to nonetheless generate or absorb ether into fields around themselves and have specialized void-mechanisms in their armour launch, manipulate, store, or even convert the ether into other energy sources. More mutated voidhangers can sometimes have special ports and weapons used to let their additional limbs exit or network with additional organs, granting them a number of additional advantages in combat whether in terms of hunting down, negating, or firing upon their enemies.
They are known primarily as boarding action, urban combat, and close quarters specialists along with infiltrators, snipers, and rangers. Much of their weaponry prizes higher rate of fire or precise accuracy regardless of it being ethereal, energy, or solid rounds. They tend to take a number of "homebrewed" weapons as well, usually capable of spraying otherworldly energy like flamethrowers, electrocuting targets with void-touched power, and guns firing poached abyssic parsites capable of tearing into armour or bleeding open the ether-stores of etherealists. Automatic shotguns, personal defence weapons, anti-materiel (and anti-immaterial) rifles, and carbines are their most iconic weapons. This is to the extent the most popular action movies almost exclusively depict them using only four weapon types with compact PDW's being the most common and stereotypical even with many nomad fleets slowly branching out into larger weapons for their armed forces.
The augmentations of these nomads intersect with humanity's but they prefer ethereal ones more frequently, sometimes for religious, spiritual, or occult reasons but primarily due to the fact that storing a supernatural matrix on your person is less bodily intrusive than cybernetics or additional organs. This isn't to say the latter are out of the question but due to their more particular biologies and often weaker immune systems, they are harder to make work. Regardless, they tend to take augmentations that boost their speed, perception, and reaction time, making them ghostlike and difficult to track on the field. Their ethereal powers only add to their mystique, specializing in stunning or disorienting enemies with flashbang like qillatu-shock spells, momentarily overloading ether thresholds of foes and signature jammers that can make them vanish from scanners or flood them with faulty readings.
Offensive abilities usually come in the form of bursts of void-bolts or even outright explosive globs, typically summoning them within a large radius rather than directly from their bodies so they can attack from unexpected angles. They are particularly well known for using their short "jumps" into the abyssic plane where they can quickly absorb a large amount of ether around them and violently expel it when exiting, blowing apart even unztadtlige armour in some cases making them especially deadly when they flank into cramped areas.
Don't be fooled by their tribal nature; the gealtirocht were anything but primitive and if anything, were one of the first races to achieve interplanetary travel. In spite of being allies of the grotesque and brutish looking vrexul, these eelfolk look little alike beyond being nearly as tall. Gealtirocht armour is smooth and often lacking in edges, adding a bit more bulk to their appearance yet having an almost sculptured look in spite of the darker lines and a few choice angular sections. It's deceptively tough and tends to come with advanced movement capabilties, capable of boosting their sprinting speed and jumping heights to absurd levels. With this armour, some gealtirocht can catch up with speeding vehicles and others are capable of jumping high enough to grab onto low flying aircraft given how much it empowers their mighty digitigrade legs. That's not all their armour can do: cyber-ethereal ocular mounts link with their third eyes to give them some of the most advanced dual-system scanning capabilities of any soldier while their anti-grav booster packs, fast-regenerating armour-hugging shields, and hidden energy blades allow for them to be tenacious and always within range to attack.
Gealtirocht weapons are precise over long distances, prizing accuracy and piercing power almost like the the UCL's forces but focused moreso on concentrated lasers and hyper-accelerated rounds (utilizing reactions between chemical and energy sources to cause a round's extreme speed as opposed to gauss or rail systems from the League). It is to the extent that many regiments still do not even use automatic weapons as their primary firearms, preferring semi-automatic choices with a good deal of precise shot placement as well as frequent options to charge up their shots allowing them to pierce thicker armour and even threaten lighter vehicles with just baseline infantry. This isn't to say they are adverse to close quarters weapons or more bluntly destructive choices. Many of them have grown to respec the power of deadly close range hand-held energy weapons that can rapidly spray down targets with plasma globules while shoulder mounted missile pads let them rain sidewinding energy-warhead hell onto multiple targets or concentrate it onto tougher ones. They are also known for employing powerful lances with deadly disruptor blades, capable of ripping apart even fully armoured scielto, doubly so when void-charged.
Inside and outside of the Pact, the gealtirocht are known for being masters of blazing fast attacks. Few are as mobile as they are whether with vehicular support or not. They can be pinning down squads and blowing open the torsos of high value targets one minute before rapidly closing in with overwhelming fire from multiple angles the next. They coordinate with one another quite sharply to achieve multiple firing angles and aren't afraid to fly or simply leap through the air for precise snap-shots, near constantly putting on the pressure on targets from great ranges. This is assisted by a large group of dedicated etherealists, utilizing their powers to drown and flood hostiles with the heathen fury that has become their calling across the stars. Serpentine conjurations of eel-like power surge out of portals cast around them, smashing through hapless targets while those who scatter are blown apart by lances of light carrying concentrated shards of ether particles. If that is enough, they are not averse to summon dreadful otherworldly predators resembling either large horrific amphipods or ghost shrimps brillng with spines and razored claws or no less monstrous combinations of eels and sharks forth to ravage the enemies in a demonic rage.
Augmentations are moderately commonplace amongst them, growing in popularity with their friendship to the vrexul and the praolznevatz. Most of theirs are fairly plain by the standards of other races, preferring upgrades to strength, endurance, durability, and speed which has only made them even stronger. A number focus on finding ways to take their pagan mysticism and
speirfhaire organs and unite them with the cutting edge in self-enhancement. This has resulted in a number of cutting edge half pagan half neo-occultist augmentations that allows them to create auras amongst themselves and friendly gealtirocht, improving their ethereal power and performance of their cranially-hidden eyes. They can also even use their speirfhaires to guide certain projectiles if given cybernetic targeting modules, something that also compliments bio-parasites that allow some to take once vestigial bony growths into launchable spikes, that if given certain retractable firearm like railings can slice right through a celaderaka's armour and pin them to a wall or floor. While the practice is frowned upon in some circles, others have been known to take specialized drug synthesizing augmentations that allow them to enter a heightened state of both aggression and concentration, capable of even affecting their ethereal capabilities and speirfhaire usage to be even more potent though there are concerns about its effects on their health.
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