The Evocati



"'Glorious is the warrior who, even in the darkest hours, stands and fights for rightness.' - Amphitryon, legatus of the Black Legion and hegemon of the First Crusade."

The Evocati are truly mighty warriors, posthumans originally designed for special operations and counter-guerilla combat. After the disappearance of Terra and the subsequent independent development of known space, the Evocati left outside of the Veil became the Painted Legions and swelled in numbers to become the lords of their sectors of former Terran space.

The First Legion
Evocati were created in bits and pieces in the early 21st century, typically out of those orphaned by conflict or natural disaster. Only a relative few of the selected batches had the level of physical fitness and genetic compatibility required to accept the augmentations, but this did not seem to be a regional issue; Evocati have come from all populated points of the globe, selected by some alien metric.

From around 2050 up until the Scourge War in the early 24th century, Evocati numbers stood at thirty million; losses were always replenished, and a pool of candidates constantly monitored, but Terran High Command had little interest in vastly expanding the pool of Evocati when their mission strictly involved assaults in force and high value destruction or retrieval. In this way, Evocati teams ranging from a single coterie of eight to a whole company could be transported to a battlezone and achieve objectives proving to be difficult to baseliner troops. Rarely were more than ten thousand troops, about a battalion, committed to any single battle; if such a thing occurred, it was always a sign that the Directorate wanted an objective very, very badly.

This force division continued for some time, but the Scourge War made the use of such small numbers of troops difficult to sustain and precipitated two thirds of the total force being left outside of the Veil. After the Flame died, those left behind began to split along their sectors of responsibility, and after a short time and deciding that with Earth not returning yet, they began to enact recruitment measures and become a state in their own right.

The Evocati left behind within the Directorate numbered slightly less than an optimal third of ten million, due to war losses, and required a couple of decades to properly regenerate their numbers. As such, many of the new First Legion troops have only the experience of putting down the odd planetary rebellion or participating in the Terran Civil War. However, thanks to a wealth of instruction knowledge and the combat archives, the green troops have been able to capitalize on their limited field experience, and the First Legion is still considered an elite formation without direct peer.

The Painted Legions
Evocati outside of the Veil have diverged significantly in culture but less so in augmetic methods. While the augmetics required to create an Evocatus from a purestrain human have been tinkered with to allow for greater numbers of recruits, the primary difference is how Evocati view the galaxy around them.

Centuries of isolation from Terra have caused a slow but powerful shift toward religion in the Greco-Roman vein; heroes of the Askari and Scourge wars are venerated as demi or fully divine beings, with the Evocati creator, a being they call Amun-Kiir, considered to be head of the pantheon. This historical worship blurs the lines between reality and myth, and Evocati have held onto their system of belief as a guiding light which, for all other effects, has held them together as a relatively unified force. This can be traced in no small part to the leading council of AIs responsible for administrating the Legions' logistics and industrial operations; the already reverent Evocati were best held together by a common system of belief. Though it did not completely stop rivalry and conflict, it helped to keep the otherwise aggressive and territorial soldiers from turning on one another as long ages went by.

The Legions are divided into six groups coded by color. Their regions of space, and the strategic ideals of their commanders, have shaped them into specialized units; all Evocati can theoretically fight in every situation, but their specialities make them especially deadly in the chosen method of battle.

The Black Legion:

The first of the splinter legions was stationed in the most spinward position and had to deal with frequent raids into former Terran territory by pirate bands with surviving stellar vessels. Legion I, as they came to be called, had few surviving ships of their own and developed a doctrine of fast assault raids on enemy positions both in occupied territories and in enemy-held facilities. While not overly well known for naval maneuvering, the Legion's growing navy, which came to design vessels of its own, was notable for broadcasting chants and using a strange device to retard the usage of FTL drives, effectively trapping enemies within the battlespace. Over the centuries the Black Legion, so named for their black ranking stripes, became renowned for uncompromising brutality, swiftness and firepower, preferring to exterminate an enemy with overwhelming force and irresistable momentum. Many Black Legion troops are relatively fresh because of the casualties of a recent spate of conflicts within the Near-Arm; although the legion can field a nominal strength of two-hundred million troops, more than two thirds of these are relatively new soldiers with only a little combat experience, and it is their zeal and determination as much as their raw abilities that continues their fearsome reputation.

The White Legion: 

The second legion, Legio II, was stationed less spinward than I and had the benefit of intact scientific facilities, as well as a wealth of cultural artifacts from Earth and its core colonies. This produced a flowering of new designs, tactics and intellectual development, and due to the war-like bent of Evocati this machine was bent toward tactics and strategy. White Legion Legates are rightly feared for their abilities; where Black Legion commanders fight with impossible zealotry and individual skill, a White Legion commander can direct inferior numbers of troops to defeat a much larger force. The White Legion can only field a hundred million Evocati, but unlike the Black Legion, they have no qualms with using less-modified auxiliaries, and their manpower reserves of backup troops can reach three times this figure in optimal conditions. The latest round of wars, however, has begun to stretch their resources quite thin.

(WIP)

Augmetics
Evocati receive a number of augmentations over a one year period starting, ideally, at or just before the onset of puberty. Starting this early allows the growing body to internalize and cope with augmentation procedures; starting much earlier threatens death and later has sharply diminishing effects; a fully grown human who receives the augmetics would be far less physically able than those who have gone through it at a young age. It is for this reason that good breeding is key to Evocati life and that, in the Painted Legions, many young recruits have lived all of their lives in the care of an enclave.

1) Step one requires preparation of the body for augmentation. Meditation and hypnotherapy gently erase former memory and strengthen raw, core willpower; in effect, the personality is dissolved and rubbed away to build a stronger core capable of withstanding the trauma of transformation.

2) Skeletal enhancements lay the basework for muscle strength increases, preventing the soon-to-be superhuman strength of Evocati musculature from ripping limbs out of their sockets or cracking their own support structure. Bone becomes adequate armor against low velocity impacts and certain bladed weapons; density increases and recruit begins to feel sluggish. The process is at least mildly painful and laces bone with ceramic.

3) Muscle enhancements require regular exercise but are far less unpleasant than the bone structure enhancements; the muscle tissue is genetically tinkered for efficient operation, then laced through with nanofibers for increased durability and load capacity. The result is a degree of strength capable of fracturing human bone with a hard punch.

4-6) Done in rapid succession, the enhancement of skin and lacing through with further nanofibers not unlike spider silk creates a rupture resistant cover to the Evocatus' body. Tweaking senses in the form of cybernetic implants in the eyes, ears and nasal cavity produce extremely sharp tracking and perceptive abilities. Finally, cranial enhancements slowly lace the brain through with nanowoven circuitry, following implant of a drive-computing system for storing additional data and interfacing with wireless ports.

7) Structure of internal organs is either enhanced in durability and function, or replaced with cybernetic equivalents bonded to the body.

8) Replacement of blood with 'ichor' nano-fluid is complete; the Evocatus now has black blood which rapidly heals wounds, transports nutrients and oxygen with extreme efficiency, and is capable of working even in serious electrical disturbance. Compound is very toxic to non-Evocati; the nanofluid classifies tissues of such entities as a malignant growth and viciously breaks the matter down to constituent parts. Evocati blood is effectively a nano toxin.

Culture
Evocati share many of the same cultural traits from the First Legion to the Painted. Although the First Legion are effectively areligious and tend instead to view Amun-Kiir as more of a mother figure than a God, the devoted obedience is largely the same, as is the pride in martial skill.

Evocati are very blunt and to the point. While those of less sophisticated societies often attach a purely unknowable aspect to Kiirutheism, for example, Evocati view it largely in concrete terms. The Gods aren't Gods because they're mythic; they're Gods because they're powerful and important to humanity as role models and teachers. Being able to touch a God does not make them any less divine. Likewise, aliens and humans are to be considered in two categories; those willing to help Terra upon its return, and those opposed to it. Dealings lack flowery language or rhetoric, and diplomatic documents are typically short and written in plain language. This does not mean Evocati are incapable of deception, but rather that they deceive with word choice rather than volume.

Part of the reason for this is that, both as a nation-within-a-nation like the First Legion, and as a separate splinter-empire as the Painted, Evocati are a soldiering culture through and through, and much as timidity and games are damaging to a battle plan, they tend to be considered a sign of weakness. If an Evocatus is indirect, this tends to mean he or she is fishing for an opening instead of making one.

Doubly, though Evocati have a use of verbal commands and practice such commands in both Progenitor and Anglic, they typically coordinate in combat via short-ranged, relayed radio-telepathy. Verbal commands are most prevalent when Evocati are operating in mixed company or when combat conditions make even radio-telepathy a nonviable solution. This leads to a general economy of language where the chief advantage- speed of communication- is best achieved when commands are conveyed concisely. Evocati poetry has more in common with a haiku than a sonnet, for example, and laconic elegance is considered paramount wit. Those with a patience and knack for long-form speech are most typically employed as liaisons between the legionary troopers and those outside the direct hierarchy.

Evocati radio-telepathy has given rise to another cultural affectation: Battlesong. Early on it was found that Evocati responded to musical notes exceedingly well, and over time a hypnotherapeutic method of ingraining a more direct response to music was enacted. Evocati radio-comms constantly transmit percussion music, backed by vocals fed down to unit leaders, who then sing to their units over the radio link. This has led to a vibrant vocal music tradition, especially amongst recruits who have not had their full cybernetic augmentation completely yet. At times, Evocati are dead silent on the field; at others, they chant and sing in perfect unison, and both often have detrimental effects to surprised enemies.

Sexually, Evocati are expected to breed, and they are incredibly forceful in the choosing of mates. While shying away from nonconsent, they can be persistent and very competitive, sometimes going as far as to fight rivals off a potential mate. The only real taboo in choosing one is to mate within one's coterie or moot- squad and platoon- as these are considered as a close family and extended family.