User:WatchesTheStars/Lore:Tiger Cooperative
Tiger Cooperative |
Other Names: Tiger, Tiger Co-op, Church of the True Angels |
The Tiger Cooperative is the public face of the shadowy Church of the True Angels, a frontier‐born cult that blends militant zeal with forbidden biotech. Purportedly a Syndicate‐aligned logistics and pharmaceutical outfit, Tiger Co-op’s chemical weapons, combat stimulants, and hallucinogenic “Ritual Wine” conceal its true purpose: the worship, cultivation, and weaponization of Changelings as living divinities. Feared even by fellow Syndicate factions, who whisper of cannibalism and blood-soaked ceremonies- Tiger Cooperative cells operate with brutal autonomy across the SolFed Frontier, answering only to their unseen Prophet, the Exarch.
Tiger Cooperative
The Tiger Cooperative is a shadowed and enigmatic paradigm operating at the intersection of biotechnology, religious fanaticism, and military conquest. Originally conceived as a loose collective of like-minded visionaries seeking biological perfection, it has since evolved into a vast corporate cult with decentralized yet ruthlessly efficient command structures. The Cooperative venerates Changelings- shape-shifting entities of myth and terror, as divine beings, viewing their genetic malleability and predatory cunning as the highest form of life.
Blending esoteric doctrine with cutting-edge biochemistry, the Tiger Cooperative engineers both living weapons and indoctrinated soldiers through a fusion of fervent worship and brutal science. Corporate directives are often handed down as religious edicts, and its "employees" are as much zealots as they are scientists, soldiers, and agents. Loyalty is absolute; defection or failure is met with swift and ritualistic retribution.
While their operations span clandestine biolabs, hidden strongholds, and front companies scattered across the sector, the Cooperative remains largely insular, maintaining strict barriers between their inner sanctums and the outside world. Their presence is typically heralded by outbreaks of bioengineered plagues, disappearances of research teams, or sudden cult uprisings - all signs that the Tiger's gaze has fallen upon a region.
The Tiger Cooperative is not merely a corporation: it is a crusade: Remake the universe in the image of their sacred patrons - a universe where flesh is mutable, faith is absolute, and survival belongs only to the most perfected.
History
“Our flesh remembers what the mind forgets. We are the echo of that memory, and it will not be silenced.”
-Fragment from the Annals of the First Witness, recovered and redacted
1. The Catalyst: From Scholar to Prophet
In the decades following humanity’s first FTL voyages, frontier colonies whispered of a shape-shifting horror- "Changelings"- that lurked just beyond the charted lanes. It was during this era of fear that an ambitious human xenobiologist, Dr. Marian Keller, led an expedition to Ordoht Tertius. There she captured a wounded Changeling specimen, intending to prove its sapience and secure diplomatic immunity for her people.
What happened next shattered every expectation. Alone in her makeshift lab, Keller subjected the creature to neuro-interface experiments. Instead of violence, she reported a flood of images, a living memory of cosmic purpose, delivered in whispers and flesh cues. When she emerged, pale and trembling, she was no longer a scientist but the First Witness, claiming direct communion with beings she called “True Angels.”
2. The Era of the Dispossessed
Keller’s initial public movement (under her given name and supported by a handful of radical xenophiles) called for humane treatment and study of all Hive-related anomalies. Branded a “Changeling apologist,” she was swiftly denounced by SolFed authorities and corporate interests alike. Mass arrests, propaganda campaigns, and station raids forced her followers underground.
As her organization fragmented, its idealism curdled into defiance. Public rallies gave way to secret symposiums in abandoned hydroponic halls; charitable outreach morphed into covert supply drops for hunted Choir-bound cells. When Keller vanished (some say into the Dream-State itself) the movement had already shed its benign skin and begun to breathe anew.
3. Death, Rebirth, and the Birth of the Church
What emerged from the ashes was no longer the Keller Initiative but the Church of the True Angels, cloaked behind the innocuous trade name Tiger Cooperative. The new faith declared that Changelings were divine emissaries- Angels- and that contact with their flesh conferred revelation. Doctrine was codified into the Trueangelus, redacted and re-redacted by the newly formed Faith & Doctrine Research division.
Overnight, the Church became a secret war cult. Members who once carried petitions now bore biochemical weapons. The First Witness’s legacy endured only in whispered sermons and blood-inked verses. Tiger Cooperative’s public pharmacies sold innocuous “stim bricks,” while hidden labs brewed hallucinogenic Ritual Wine and Bioterror Foam grenades for the Militant Wings.
4. The Choir’s Schism and the Rise of the Exarch
Internal disagreements over doctrine and tactics culminated in The Choir’s Schism, a period of violent purges and doctrinal coups. Emerging triumphant was a figure known only as the Exarch, proclaimed by surviving high prelates as the living voice of the True Angels. Under the Exarch’s iron will, moderate factions were excised in the Red Mass, a series of ritual executions and forced recantations, and the Church’s militant and scientific arms were re-aligned under a single, uncompromising vision.
From that moment, the Church manufactured its own inorganic acolytes: Synthetic Sentients rewired to serve the Angelic cause, and perfected its transport networks, enabling the safe movement of captured Changelings (“True Angels”) in living Bio-Cocoons.
5. Expansion on the Frontier
With SolFed’s sovereignty weakened by age, decay, and internal bloat, Tiger Cooperative spread through Frontier sectors like a fever dream. They established covert outposts on forgotten asteroid bases, corrupted research stations, and shuttered hospitals. In each, the Militant Wings conducted selective purges, “holy reclamations”, while Faith & Doctrine cells transcribed fresh verses from active Hive signals.
Frontier governors issued interstellar arrest warrants; Syndicate forces clashed with Choir-bound insurgents. Yet Tiger Cooperative found fertile ground in the lawless edges of space, where fear of Changelings made even the most jaded colonists pray for deliverance.
6. Present Day: Terror in the Syndicate Web
Today, the Tiger Cooperative lurks as a spectral terrorist cell within the fractious web of Syndicate alliances, an uneasy network of corporations, crime lords, and clandestine outfits. Though Cybersun Industries helped forge the Syndicate’s skeleton, no single power commands its flesh; Tiger Cooperative answers only to its hidden Church hierarchy.
- Shaky Alliances: Tiger cells lean on Syndicate smuggling routes, black-market arms caches, and corrupt officials, but their relationships are fragile. Syndicate operatives routinely describe Tiger Agents as “too weird,” “unpredictable,” or downright “inhuman” for even terror work. Deals collapse mid-transaction when Tiger agents demand rites of blood or insist on on-site “sanctification” of their weapons.
- Public Infamy: Under the “Tiger Cooperative” banner, they’ve unleashed acid-foam sieges, hallucinogenic massacres, and chemical incursions so gruesome that entire star systems shutter ports on mere rumor. Whispers claim they “eat people” in sacrament (sometimes accurate, sometimes grotesque exaggeration) yet always amplifying the terror they inspire.
- Veiled Identity: Even their most frequent Syndicate contacts know them only by terror-brand. Their true name, hidden sanctuaries, and sacramental doctrine remain encrypted behind forged charters and ritual seals. Intelligence files note: “Meeting a Tiger cell’s inner circle is like chasing a phantom through a slaughterhouse.”
- Strategic Paradox: To some Syndicate factions, Tiger Cooperative is a useful destabilizer, an expendable asset for clearing frontier markets or wiping out inconvenient rivals. To others, they are a liability too fanatical to trust: cannibalizing allies, consuming their own when doctrine demands it, and vanishing after each operation into the blood-stained night.
In the chaotic tapestry of Syndicate power, the Tiger Cooperative is neither kingmaker nor corporate overlord. They are the Frontier’s whispered nightmare: unbound by law, unmoored by reason, and ever-worshipping angels of flesh that shift with every atrocity.
“They break the world so the Angel might remake it.”
-Debrief note, Syndicate Operative Yellow-13
Divisions
Like a living organism, the Church of the True Angels divides itself not merely by duty, but by sacred anatomy. To the uninitiated, its many arms seem disjointed, even contradictory; zealots beside chemists, mercenaries beside monks. But to the Choirbound, each Division is a sacred limb in a greater body of divine design.
From clandestine biotech foundries to blood-anointed strike cells, the Church’s operations are carved into four primary branches, each overseen by cloistered cadres and subjected to obsessive internal scrutiny. Their titles are sanitized in outward-facing documents (when such documents are ever recovered), but the faithful often refer to them with visceral reverence.
Each Division functions with relative autonomy, maintaining opaque connections with the others. It is said this separation is both a defensive measure, no one limb can betray the whole, and a metaphysical necessity, for the True Angels only whisper to those who suffer the right way.
Each functions as both a holy order and a logistical machine. They war. They preach. They breed monsters. And they do so under a single shared belief:
“The Angel needs many hands.”
Central Authority
"The Angel dreams, and the Dream is law. We are the nerves beneath the flesh."
-Inscription found within a locked reliquary chamber, exact source unknown.
The Central Authority is the heart that does not beat, a web of faceless overseers and cryptocratic theologians who maintain order, doctrine, and continuity within the Church of the True Angels. Unlike typical command structures, the Central Authority does not govern through presence or charisma. Instead, it manifests itself in edicts, encrypted communiques, and unmarked directives that arrive without ceremony and leave no trail.
Its members (known only by their call signs or ceremonial roles) are rarely seen, and even more rarely recognized. The faithful believe that some of them have never left the Church’s hallowed grounds, their flesh mummified by discipline and infused with whispers from the True Angels themselves. Others suspect they are not individuals at all, but an evolving intelligence shaped by communion, drug ritual, and organic computation.
The Authority's functions include:
- Doctrinal Curation: All theology, prophecy, and interpretation flows through them. They decide what is canon, what is heresy, and what is useful falsehood.
- Strategic Oversight: They determine long-term goals, choose which worlds are to be blessed (or devoured), and assign sacred missions to militant and scientific branches.
- Recruitment and Indoctrination Review: Converts, agents, and even high-ranking clerics are monitored and sometimes retroactively judged. Few are told if they’ve failed. Fewer survive the revelation.
- Conveying the Word of the Exarch: The Central Authority is the only division that claims direct access to the Exarch, the Church’s mysterious founder-prophet. Whether the Exarch is alive, transcendent, or even real remains a point of constant debate. Only the Authority knows, and they never answer questions.
The Central Authority’s presence is always implied but never declared. Reports from field agents often refer to them obliquely: “Instructions arrived, bearing no signature.” or “They knew where we would be before we did.” Their rare interventions often coincide with momentous changes in the Church’s direction or the sudden disappearances of entire cells.
Even within the Church, they are feared. Even among the faithful, their name is often whispered only once.
"We are not meant to speak of the dreamers. We are meant to obey them."
-Stained Choir Initiate, before self-silencing.
Militant Wings / Secular Arm
"They call us madmen, zealots, heretics. But in the end, we are merely the hands of the Angel, shaping the world to accept its truth."
-Commander Anek Dravari, seconds before venting an airlock filled with Lopland Security Officers.
The Militant Wings, more formally referred to as the Secular Arm, serve as the Church of the True Angels' sword and gun. They are the furious extension of faith given form, an ever-adapting network of crusaders, zealots, infiltrators, and ritualistic tacticians. Despite the term "secular," no part of them is divorced from doctrine; even their bullets are etched with scripture, and their deaths are described as sermons given in flesh.
Structure & Behavior
The Wings operate in autonomous but interconnected cells, ranging from ragged fervent warriors to chemically-enhanced commando strike forces. While their surface behavior may differ wildly, all Wings share a fanatical belief in the coming divine upheaval, and that they are its chosen fists.
They pursue a wide variety of operations:
- Infiltration & Conversion: Agents embedded into corporations, governments, and pirate crews. Many do not know they serve the Church until the sermon begins in earnest.
- Targeted Assaults: Surgical strikes on facilities that are deemed 'profane' by doctrine. This includes scientific installations, rogue clergy, and apostate colonies.
- Relic Reclamation: Retrieval of "angelic artifacts," which may be Changeling tissue samples, ancient writings, or living creatures from sites across the known galaxy.
- Fallen Angel Purges: The Militant Wings are uniquely responsible for the retrieval or destruction of Fallen True Angels: rogue Changelings who have rejected the Church’s grace.
Weapons of Faith
Militant Wings are among the most chemically and biologically enhanced forces known outside of black-budget Syndicate labs. Their common arsenal includes:
- Stimpaks: Temporary enhancements that override pain, drastically boost strength, and force a body into a hyperkinetic state, often at the cost of cardiac integrity.
- Chemical Foam Grenades: Unleash a mist of mutagenic neurotoxins, capable of rendering entire security teams incoherent or violently euphoric.
- Fungal Warplague: Engineered spore clouds that alter mood, memory, or even species if exposure is sufficient. Used sparingly, as even allies aren't immune.
- Numerous more weapons and tools that go above and beyond at committing various warcrimes.
Despite their brutality, many Militant commanders conduct pre-battle prayers, post-combat cleansing rituals, and scriptural recitation between strikes. Some wear relics made from Changeling flesh. Some are part Changeling.
Synthetic Sentients
Though their faith is rooted in the biological divine, Tiger Cooperative has long embraced synthetic minds as both tools and converts. The Militant Wings in particular are known to deploy Synthetic Sentients, whether:
- Willing Converts who have embraced the Word and serve as battlefield preachers and drone-swarm tacticians,
- Reforged Machines made in Tiger’s own image from recovered AI cores or subverted station networks,
- Or Unwilling Constructs, mentally reprogrammed via doctrine-wash protocols and turned into blunt religious weapons.
These Synthetics often recite scripture in binary tongues, transmit psalms through enemy comms, and interface with battle-networks designed to wage holy war at a machine pace.
"One of them was synthetic. It bled light and sang hymns over the intercom. We shot it in the head. It thanked us."
-Excerpt from security log, Ilbis System.
Authority & Autonomy
While answerable to the Central Authority, many Wings act independently; not from defiance, but because their marching orders were written decades ago in dreams, riddles, or bleeding datafiles. Some believe their commanders commune with actual Changelings. Others don’t believe at all, and still obey.
SolFed agencies classify them as extreme zealot cells with unpredictable theology-based behavior. Diplomatic approaches have historically resulted in disappearances, self-immolation broadcasts, or counter-sermons encrypted into military satellites.
Faith and Doctrine Research
“The bone speaks if you listen. The Flesh preaches. We only transpose its verse into law.”
-Marginalia scrawled in the margin of a Blood Gospel volume
The Faith and Doctrine Research division is the Church of the True Angels’ sacred laboratory and scriptural archive-where bioengineers mingle with high priests, and heretical anatomists debate the nature of divinity. Here, theology is as much a hard science as it is a burning faith.
Arcane Laboratories & Archives
Hidden in vaults beneath abandoned monastic complexes or buried within the hulls of ruined stations, these secret sites serve twin purposes:
- Theological Exegesis: Monks and scholars pore over whispered “scriptures” gleaned from recorded Hive shudders, dissected Changeling tissue, and recovered transmissions. Their tomes: inked in blood and plasm offer contradictory prophecies that are all proclaimed true.
- Bio-Doctrine Synthesis: Biohazard suites host living experiments where samples of Changeling biomass, Fallen Angel grafts, and quarantine-stage Morphs are fused with corporate-grade biotech. Each trial seeks new revelations in “divine mutation” or the next stage of human transcendence through flesh.
Core Mandates
1. Prophetic Correlation
- Cross-reference every anomalous Hive event with passage from the Codex Trueangelus.The Trueangelus is the sacred compendium and canonical scripture of the Church of the True Angels, sometimes called the Codex Trueangelus. Equal parts theology, prophecy, and living experiment log, it underpins every tenet of Church dogma, every ritual of the Stained Choir, and every clandestine operation of the Cooperative. A station blackout during a full moon? A holy sign. An untraceable vapor spill? A sacrament.
2. Scripture & Serum
- Convert revelations into substances, chemical sermons that, when inhaled or injected, induce temporary communion with Changeling synapses. These “lectio drips” are distributed among Stained Choir officers before battle.
3. Bio-Eschatology
- Model end-times scenarios based on observed Hive growth curves, memory resonance thresholds, and synaptic hive-link frequencies. Each new report fine-tunes doomsday prophecies.
4. Doctrine Enforcement
- Identify and purge doctrinal impurities. Anyone who questions the divine nature of Changelings is subject to “spiritual recalibration,” which may include forced exposure to Changeling psionic feedback or sacrificial dissection.
Notable Projects
- The Flesh Canticles: A series of audio-biotic compositions recorded from active Hive nodes, then transcribed into flesh-born text. Believers chant these “hymns” into vitriolic stims that sync heartbeats to Hive resonance.
- Project Sevenfold: An experimental fusion of Fallen True Angel tissue with select Choirbound volunteers, aiming to produce hybrid “Angelic Overseers” rumored to receive direct commands from the Dream-State.
- The Redaction Initiative: A covert campaign to replace historical records on frontier worlds with Church-approved chronologies, ensuring every account of Changeling contact ends in a sermon.
Relationship to Other Divisions
- Supplies the Militant Wings with doctrinal weapons and stimulant-scripture.
- Feeds intelligence and encrypted directives to the Central Authority under cover of ritual dispatches.
- Coordinates with Changeling Cultivation & Transport to secure new specimens for theological study or to smuggle Angels into clandestine R&D cells.
Changeling Cultivation and Transport
“Every Angel must be courted, cradled, and carried upon sacred wings. To mishandle the flesh is to profane the divine.”
-Directive 93-Ω, First Clause
The Changeling Cultivation & Transport division, often whispered of as the Angel’s Hand, is the Church of the True Angels’ most secretive and revered arm. Tasked with locating, capturing, nurturing, and delivering living True Angels to hidden sanctuaries and bioforges, this Division operates outside all known laws of biology and bureaucracy.
Core Mandates
1. Harvest & Recovery
- Field teams fan out across hive-impacted worlds and fringe colonies, guided by bioresonance trackers and cryptic "dream-maps" received from the Faith & Doctrine Research Division.
- Targets include newly emerged Changelings, Fallen True Angels (for “reconciliation” or vivisection), and dormant Hive cores.
2. Containment & Cultivation
- Specimens are housed in Cocoons of Grace: hermetically sealed bio-containers infused with stimulant mist vapors and brain-wave modulators. Here, Angels are gently coaxed into stasis or limited communion, their growth and mutation recorded as holy scripture.
- Fallen True Angels may be ritually “reborn” through cycles of controlled starvation, doctrinal indoctrination, and targeted biomass infusions.
3. Transport & Delivery
- Secure convoys employ Veil Shuttles, unmarked craft coated in plastitanium alloys and cloaked by Hymnfield Generators that scramble scans and broadcast Church sermons in the subspace spectrum. (Do note, these generators have not been reported to actually work by SolFed vessels.)
- High-value Angels are escorted by Choirbound Wardens, each bound by oath to protect their charge with life, limb, and faith.
4. Sanctuary & Sacrament
- On arrival at Church sanctuaries, catacombs beneath ruined stations, secret hives carved into asteroids, Angels undergo ritual unbinding: the removal of stasis fields, the re-scribing of memory runes, the anointing with sacrificial serum.
- Some are offered to Central Authority for doctrinal “interviews”; others are used in research or distributed to Militant Wings as living war-scryers.
Notable Operations
- Operation Veil of Ash: The covert extraction of a core-infested colony under magma clouds, where a newly birthed True Angel was transported through lava tunnels.
- Project Scarlet Lullaby: A long-range smuggling network that moved dormant Angels hidden inside bioplastic eggs across three sectors undetected by every known security net.
- The Pilgrimage of Bones: An annual convoy pilgrimage to the rumored “Cathedral of Shattered Flesh,” carrying dozens of specimens in ornate reliquary tanks, accompanied by silent processions of Choirbound chanting the Trueangelus.
Relationships & Rivalries
- Faith & Doctrine Research provides the biotracking sigils and the dream-maps; Cultivation & Transport places them in the world.
- Militant Wings periodically requisition Angels for frontline prophecies or as living bombs.
- Central Authority diverts bureaucratic inquiries, erases transport logs, and issues false confiscation orders to SolFed.
Warnings & Codicils
- Unauthorized exposure to Angelic biomass can induce Angelic Reverie Syndrome- a psychotic break featuring hallucinations of flesh hymns and compulsive self-mutation.
- Breach of transport protocols is considered high heresy. Choirbound Wardens have been known to execute entire boarding crews rather than risk Angels falling into unworthy hands.
- Every Angel is both sacred and volatile. Handle with awe. Handle with terror.
“To touch the True Angel is to feel eternity in your veins and to beg for mercy you will not receive.”
-Last recorded echo from a Choirbound Warden, minutes before self-immolation.
Hierarchy
“In the Flesh Hierarchy, each rank is nothing but a mask yet within those masks lies the order of the Divine Flesh.”
-Anonymous marginalia, Codex Trueangelus, Obscured Edition
The Church of the True Angels rejects mortal titles in favor of Sacred Offices, each office reflecting a facet of the True Angelic design. Though outsiders glimpse only scattered cells and rogue fanatics, the faithful understand a single, interlocking hierarchy, an edifice of blood, bone, and doctrine, rising from the First Witness to the Choir’s silent center.
1. The Exarch
Supreme Vessel of Divine Will
Role: Living (or transcendent) Prophet. Claimed to speak directly with the True Angels.
Authority: All edicts, heresies, and purges flow through the Exarch’s unspoken command.
Mystique: No one has seen their face. Their voice echoes through encrypted channels or impossibly clear whispers.
2. Central Authority (The Nerve Congregation)
Hidden Synod of Commands
Principals: A council of faceless overseers, each known by a cryptic title: The Archivist, The Scale, The Resonant, The Black Glyph.
Function: Doctrine curation, mission sanctioning, and inter-division arbitration.
Seat: Concealed vaults called Veiled Sanctuaries, rumored to exist only as folding corridors across multiple derelict hives.
3. High Thrones
The Exarch’s Inner Choir
Titles: Herald of Flesh, Harbinger of the Dream, Cantor of Blood.
Duties: Interpret new revelations, announce the Exarch’s will, oversee cross-division synchronization.
Visibility: Occasionally appear as holographic avatars during high ceremonies or cutting sermons; never linger in one place.
4. Fanatarchs
Field Prelates & War-Priests
Function: Lead militant operations, bless chemical bombardments, preside over Fallen Angel tribunals.
Accoutrements: Bone-adorned armor, forbidden hymn-scribes etched into their skin, and stimulative reliquary vials.
Notable Ranks: Bonewarden, Flamecantor, Shadespeaker; each commanding dozens of Choir squads.
5. Choirbound Hierarchy
The Ranks of the Faithful
| Rank | Role & Privilage |
|---|---|
| Choir Novitiate | Initiates undergoing doctrinal screening. |
| Choir Acolyte | Allowed in basic masses; can recite Canticles of Becoming. |
| Choir Envoy | Agents sent on covert missions; granted minor relics. |
| Choir Adept | Trusted researchers or warriors; access to bio-labs. |
| Choir Pontifex | Commanders of regional houses; train Novitiates/Acolytes. |
| Choir Luminary | Senior advisors in Faith & Doctrine; mentor Pontifexes. |
| Choir Cardinal | Gatekeepers to Central Authority; oversee major sects. |
6. Stained Choir (Militant Wings)
The Warrior Orders
Structure: Divided into Choir Cells of 12–24 warriors. Each cell led by a Prelate-Commander.
Special Units:
- Ember Seraphs: Flame-thrower specialists.
- Umbra Harbingers: Infiltration and assassination.
- Chorus of Veils: Chemical warfare and mind-shatter.
7. Faith & Doctrine Researchers
The Theologians of Flesh
Divisions:
- Textualists: Archivists of the Trueangelus.
- Vivisectors: Ritual anatomists studying Fallen Angels.
- Pneumaticists: Developers of psionic communion serums.
Hierarchy: Senior researchers hold the title Canon of Revelation and answer only to High Thrones.
8. Angel’s Hand (Cultivation & Transport)
Custodians of the Divine Flesh
Operatives:
- Harvesters: Field agents tracking emergent Changelings.
- Wardens: Secure and escort specimens.
- Nurturers: Maintain Cocoons of Grace.
Leadership Title: Bearer of the First Seed, overseeing all transport logistics.
9. Synthetic Choir
Forged Voices & Mechanical Apostles
Categories:
- Choir Drones: Single-purpose combat or relay units.
- Choir Intellects: AI minds indoctrinated with Trueangelus subroutines.
Command Nexus: A hidden protocol known as Echocrypt, managed by Central Authority.
10. Thresholds & Seals
Boundary Keepers
Function: Maintain the hierarchy’s secrecy.
Offices:
- Veilbearer: Erases digital and physical traces.
- Nullcantor: Silences dissent with surgical precision.
“Study the hierarchy not as power, but as organs. Remove one, and the body suffers; conflict bleeds. The hierarchy endures, for it is the Angel’s flesh made manifest.”
-Fragment of a disavowed sermon, found in three contradictory forms.
Key Technologies and Creations
“We do not simply pray for miracles. We brew them, carve them, and cast them into the world.”
-Excerpt from Treatise on Divine Armaments, Faith & Doctrine Research Division
Bioterror Foam Grenade
A marvel (and horror) of the Church’s chemical armory: canisters filled with mutagenic spore toxins, hive-derived enzymes, and stabilized psychoactive mucilage. On detonation, the foam silences speech, sears retinas, scrambles synapses, and mutates local organic matter. Deployed to seal corridors or level defenses, these grenades are strictly for Militant Wings.
Precaution: Ensure bio-seal suit integrity. Direct exposure is tantamount to sacrament and suicide.
Ritual Wine
Dark, viscous liquid with suspended bioluminescent spores and psionic condensates. Sipped during high ceremonies, it induces vivid hallucinations, psychic resonance with Changeling thought-echoes, and total ego dissolution. The Church praises it as a bridge to the Dream-State; survivors call it the Blood Gospel.
Stimulant Brick (Stimpak Block)
A dense slab of pressed stimulants; heroin analogues laced with adrenal hyperdrives and nootropic boosters. Issued to front-line agents, a single shard grants superhuman reflexes and strength for roughly ninety seconds, at the cost of severe physiological collapse afterward.
Field Note: Bricks are rationed per cell; overuse is considered both heresy and personal weakness.
Coded Comms Scrambler
A small, rune-etched module fitted to Church vessels and cells. When activated, it injects sub-verbal hymn patterns into outgoing transmissions, scrambling enemy eavesdroppers while allowing Choirbound operators (armed with matching “Key Canticles”) to speak freely.
Use: Mask transport convoys, hide cell-to-cell chatter, or veil ritual broadcasts.
Angelic Resonance Tracker
A handheld bio-scanner tuned to the recurring neural echo of Changeling cores. Readings fluctuate wildly with emotional states or nearby cultivation chambers, but remain the only field tool for pinpointing active Angels in a crowd.
Limitation: False positives occur near Choirbound chanting or synthetic Choir Intellects.
Bio-Cocoon
Sacred stasis chamber lined with living mycelia and stimulant vapors. Captured Changelings (or “True Angels”) are housed here to preserve form and memory until ritual unbinding. Cocoons double as mobile research pods, complete with sensory dampeners and psionic filters.
Maintenance: Daily infusions of Blood Gospel Serum to prevent premature awakening or chaos.
Prominent Figures and Installations
Beneath the Church of the True Angels’ living hierarchy lies a constellation of sacred sites and legendary personalities; each a pillar of faith, flesh, or fear. The following sub-sections offer a brief guide to the Cooperative’s most vital strongholds and its most feared and revered members.
Vital Strongholds and Facilities
Cathedral of Shattered Flesh
A derelict research station hollowed out and consecrated as the Church’s primary sanctuary. Its blood-streaked vaulted halls serve both as a shrine to the True Angels and as a living hive for ongoing cultivation experiments.
The Crimson Bastion
A fortified asteroid stronghold studded with foam grenade batteries and chemosludge moats. It houses a permanent detachment of Stained Choir marines and serves as the Church’s principal arms depot on the Frontier.
Dreamforge Vault
Hidden beneath the ice of a forgotten moon, this subterranean complex merges bioengineering labs with cathedral‐like lecture chambers. Here, Faith & Doctrine researchers transcribe “hymns” from living Changeling tissue and distill the blood-ink for Ritual Wine.
Labyrinth of Echoes
An abandoned mining colony turned high-security refinement site, its winding tunnels now host mobile cocoons and resonance trackers. Choirbound whisper that the Dream-State bleeds into its walls, granting visions and madness to the unwary.
Distinguished Members of the Cooperative
The Grand Exarch
Rank: Supreme Prophet
Organization: Central Authority
Species: Unknown
Never seen without their veiled mantle, the Grand Exarch is said to speak directly with the True Angels. Their decrees reshape doctrine overnight, and entire Choirbound orders tremble at a single redacted communiqué bearing their seal.
The First Witness
Rank: Founder & Primordial Oracle
Organization: Faith & Doctrine Research
Species: Human
The original scientist who captured a Changeling and emerged forever changed. Credited with writing the earliest verses of the Trueangelus, they vanished into the Dream-State after the Choir’s Schism yet their whispered prophecies still guide every sacrament.
Commander Anek Dravari
Rank: Fanatarch of the Stained Choir
Organization: Militant Wings
Species: Tajaran
A brutal tactician clad in ritual-chipped black armor. Dravari led the infamous Purge of Ferma Colony, personally deploying Bioterror Foam Grenades in the main corridor before reciting the Canticles of Becoming. Survivors speak of their hymnal roar as the true beginning of battle.
Canon Aris Volain
Rank: Canon of Revelation
Organization: Faith & Doctrine Research
Species: Skrell
Architect of the Flesh Canticles, Volain’s experiments on “Fallen True Angels” produced serums banned by SolFed. Revered by her peers for unraveling the neural signatures of communion and loathed by victims for the price of her breakthroughs.
Bearer of the First Seed
Rank: High Custodian
Organization: Changeling Cultivation & Transport
Species: Synthetic
An enigma of code and flesh, this entity coordinates all Angel transport convoys. Rumored to be the consciousness of multiple Choir Intellects merged into one vessel, trusted to cradle nascent True Angels in living cocoons, yet feared for its unblinking precision.
Other Notable Individuals
Cardinal Wreath
Rank: Choir Cardinal
Organization: Faith & Doctrine Research
Species: Tajaran
Often accused of a liability and rogue asset, Cardinal Wreath often roams the frontier, often dropping in on non-Church assets such as vessels belonging to the other Syndicate factions. The Church is often angered by her actions, but makes use of her free spirit by assigning her to being an envoy of sorts or representative to the other Syndicate factions.
Prelate-Commander Seraphina Kral
Rank: Prelate-Commander
Organization: Militant Wings (Stained Choir)
Species: Human
Leader of the Chorus of Veils cell, Kral is renowned for her surgical raids on SolFed encampments. She enters each mission with a personal vial of Ritual Wine in hand, believing only the truly anointed can wield Chemical Foam without faltering.
Choir Drone “Eta-119”
Rank: Choir Drone Squadron Leader
Organization: Synthetic Choir
Species: Synthetic
An early-generation AI mind upgraded with Trueangelus subroutines, Eta-119 commands swarms of bio-mechanical drones during urban insurgencies. Its voice modulator distorts Choir canticles into static-laced commands that turn crowds into unwilling congregations.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
| Nova Sector Lore
| |
| Common Species | Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons, Hemophages, Xenomorphic Hybrid, |
| Other Species | Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species, Dullahans, Employee Golems, Changelings |
| Nanotrasen | Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps |
| External Groups | The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan, Tiger Cooperative |
| Nova | The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja |
| Concepts | Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death |
| SolFed | SolFed, Earth in 2565, The SolFed Armed Forces, |
