Lhazarane Factbook (FT|Q&A))

[Lhazastan]

Pod

A pod is a small, cheap craft of various designs which house the entire command and control center for any piece of coachwork. By themselves, pods are capable of quick acceleration and decent maneuverability. They are meant to carry one pilot and generally only carry provisions for this pilot, but also contain space for others, generally up to three. This space is primarily meant for housing extravehicular persons following emergency retrieval.

Pods have bottom hatches with ramps, though older models have telescoping ladders. They are built to the same general specifications regarding size as they all must enter small ports in a ship in order to hook up to the vessel shell and facilitate control of the vehicle. Most are built with three landing struts and a relatively large capacitor. Due to the latter, an excess of pods and pilots over shells and drones during the wars at the end of the ISU led to the jury-rigging of weapons platforms to attach to pods in the Lhazarane system and several other systems in the cluster.

Shifters are the only ships in Lhazarane space which are not entirely controlled via their pods. Pods are not equipped with displacers, but a displacer platform could potentially be rigged together and powered by a pod (as long as it only tried shifting itself). This has not been deemed to be useful, however.

[Lhazastan]

Hornet

A general term for flying drones, hornets are primarily provided to the State by many manufacturers operating from a single blueprint. These drones follow SEAS protocol and are very intelligent, veterans capable of ingenious maneuvers. They are capable of learning, so competence varies from drone to drone. Veterans are often skilled enough that they earn names and have known personalities, despite their inability to actually gain real sentience.

They operate typically out of nests, though bases for them do exist, particularly on Elis and Ayasso. Networked with a nest or command post, they are capable of coordinating in large swarms. They only operate with a nest or post as a hub, so should contact be lost (such as by a nest shifting without picking them up), they lose networking and coordination ability and continue operations as they see fit, within certain boundaries.

Modern hornets have large capacitors and rarely run out of power for maneuvers, making them very efficient and cost-effective, particularly in space. They are armed with a variety of weapons, usually chosen by their owners. Slugs and cutting lasers are the most common weapons available. They operate both in space and as aircraft.

[Lhazastan]

Interstellar Union

The hand which feeds us is the same one that beats us into submission.
- Amarynthia Kuzmenko. A Final Call to Arms

The Interstellar Union was a centuries-old federation of the Selani star cluster, built from several of the races and held together by tight controls on the "trouble" species. The most notable member species were the Lhazarane , who were used essentially for slave labor, tied to their keepers by enforced addictions. The ISU was heavily patriarchal, and used sexist policies to fragment the Lhazarane people, actively favoring males over females to sow distrust.

Generally erring toward atrocious behaviors in the eyes of the Lhazarane, it was all the ISU could do to keep the people in check. Hostilities came to a head in S.C.-2, when Akrata rebelled, prompted similar strikes on Ayasso and Elis, and in the colonies.

In S.C.-1, as the Union began to fall apart, other races and nations in the cluster declared their sovereignty, seizing on the weakness of the union and sometimes their neighbors.

In S.C.0, the ISU was dissolved following the Shijak Incident, wherein the entire planet of Shijak -- capital of the Interstellar Union -- with the near entirety of the shijaki species (long the elite of the Union), was completely destroyed by the combined ship-borne energy of several nations. These wings, led by several notorious Lhazarane ex-criminals on a large shifter, blinked the entire planet into its own sun, killing everything instantly.

The Union, thereafter, broke into several nations, dividing primarily along species lines. Each nation turned inward to repair the damage done to their own peoples and planets. In S.C.1, the last new nation to come out of the ISU, the Lhazarane State, was formally acknowledged by the rest of the cluster.

[Lhazastan]

The Shijaki Incident

Acknowledged as the very clear end to the ISU civil war, the Shijaki Incident occurred in what is now referred to as Year Zero of the Lhazarane State Calendar. Allied with several other peoples seeking to finally end the war, knowing that the ISU and shijaki race could in time make a resurgence if not dealt with permanently, Lhazarane leaders agreed to what was then seen as a half-baked attempt to end the war with dwindling resources.

One Lhazarane shifter was selected to operate the displacer and to drain energy from all spacecraft available around the planet to power the largest displacement sphere ever created, while the other ships were primarily present to provide the power and to die to planetary defenses instead of the shifter. At the cost of the majority of the space forces present, the shifter managed to shift the entire planet into its own star.

Many accounts of the incident have passed through media circles. One notable version by the commander of the describes the long wait as the shift bubble sat around the planet:

"It's a giant glowing sphere, visible from the surface, I know. Imagine at that instant we activated our displacer, sucking the energy from every single cap we could access, the bright flash as the bubble formed, bigger than one ever seen before. And you're inside it, standing on firm ground. Your children want to know what it is, what it means, and you have no words. If you connect the dots, you know what's about to happen, despite the implausibility. You're going to move -- instantly -- to some other part of the universe. And you're going to die, because there's no way, and no reason, to shift you into a habitable zone around a good star.

They're here to kill you, and the ISU propaganda made sure you knew what bastards we were, so there's no doubt in your mind. You're going to die, one way or another.

But it just sits there for two hours as our displacer pumps enough energy into the field. You could try leaving the planet, but hornets are taking out spaceports everywhere in the meantime.

And then, two hours later, there's a bright white flash of light as the bubble collapses, and that star that rose every morning isn't so far away anymore."

It is noted as the worst instance of genocide in the entire history of the Selani cluster, claiming the lives of nine billion people, surpassing the Shijaki genocide of Lhazarane males during the early years of the war, which had already accounted for four billion deaths.

[Sungai Pusat]

So, the Selani star systems are falling apart? We feel for you all.....
-Minister of Foreign Affairs

[Lhazastan]

So, the Selani star systems are falling apart? We feel for you all.....
-Minister of Foreign Affairs

Thank you for your concerns, but we're all better off with the Union having crashed down around us. We've earned our right of self-determination.
- Speaker for the State

[Lhazastan]

Corridor

When speaking of displacement a corridor is a safe zone to which spacecraft can be safely shifting to without any concern over mass large enough to remain in space within the displacement bubble and potentially destroying incoming ships. Corridors are heavily regulated and policed zones near important shipping points and are kept free of potentially harmful obstacles.

Since corridors must be specifically set up, displacement to "random" locations is one of the greater dangers to spacefaring vehicles. Low mass objects within a corridor are less of a concern as they may be drawn through the bubble to the origin point and subsequently destroyed, or they might be pushed outward away from the incoming ship. Large objects, however, may not be pushed outward enough, causing them to share the same space as the incoming object.

[Lhazastan]

Soloukhin, Kristen

Soloukhin is the current holder of the office of Speaker for the State, the executive position of the Lhazarane State's government. While ostensibly an authority over the matriarchy, she herself is a devout follower of Kuzmenko and this shows in her leadership. She is one of very few Lhazarane to hold a doctorate, and is an expert in Lhazarane biology.

At 39, she is the oldest member of the Lhazarane leadership, including Kuzmenko and Baran.

[Lhazastan]

Seitz, Danika

A relatively new nest pilot, Seitz' callsign is "Hurri." She was, before receiving a nest shell, a shuttle pilot for Elis L2 under Anna Torbica. Prior to that, she was a part of the Armed Movement for the Lhazarane and took part in many ground battles early in the war, including the defense of Akrata Women's Prison from ISU counterattack following the riot. There, she fought alongside Amarynthia Kuzmenko.

Following retrieval from Akrata and obtaining a pod, she served in the AML's aerial division on Elis, hauling a makeshift weapons platform on her pod and conducting bombing runs against ISU strongholds.

She notably has a phobia about space, making her an odd choice for a pilot, but her talent for piloting overpowered her fear. She was also the first Lhazarane to make contact with an extracluster species.

[Lhazastan]

Lhazarane Naval Tradition

Put simply, there is no such thing as a Lhazarane naval tradition, and there hasn't been in over a millenium. Two of the three settled planets have little or no use for naval power: Akrata having no bodies of water suited to it at all, and Elis having only small oceans or seas, all of which can be easily traversed by air with even primitive flight technology.

Ayasso, as a planetary ocean world, is more in tune with seafaring, though they predominately project force planetside through air power. As Ayassen Lhazarane came from Elis and Akrata initially approximately 200 years ago, they did not have the benefit of historical naval tradition either, and have no base of knowledge or terminology in ancient eras.

Naval Metaphors and You

When communicating with Lhazarane shipping, it is not uncommon for naval terms to be used specifically by non-Lhazarane. If extracluster relations thus far have proven anything, it's that fey seem to have a navy fetish which does not translate to Lhazarane at all. Thus the usage of naval metaphors in conversation with a Lhazarane who is not very familiar with extracluster societies will result in confusion and possibly derision to cover for the lack of understanding.

[Lhazastan]

Lhazarane Rebellion

This may be the first instance where a species collectively decided they were ready for extinction.
- Anonymous

The Lhazarane Rebellion began S.C.-3, though did not gain momentum until mid-S.C.-2 when Akrata managed to revolt en masse. It is widely acknowledged that the first act of the rebellion was the looting of the ISU armory on Elis by the Armed Movement for the Lhazarane in conjunction with the Red Bloc, then a secessionist (but not anarchist) group independent of the AML. The looting was followed by bombing to destroy whatever materiel could not be carried away.

Reprisal for the attack included the rounding up of two thousand people suspected as having ties to the AML. This in turn was met with the taking hostage of a number of families of high ranking Shijaki ISU authorities.

By this time, Amarynthia Kuzmenko was writing from her cell on Akrata, pleading with the ISU to stop escalation and remove their presence from the system. At the same time, she began writing her manifesto on revolution, A Final Call to Arms, which argued that if diplomacy continued to fail, nothing short of total war would free the Lhazarane . Diplomacy did in fact fail. To many, it became clear that diplomatic ventures were really just the ISU buying time for planning a major crackdown on the Lhazarane species as a whole. Word of rejection of any and all demands made by Kuzmenko, the AML, the Free Women's Party, and the Red Bloc came during the middle of an ISU operation which found upward of five billion Lhazarane men arrested and delivered to camps meant to keep them away from the general populace, assuming that without a large male populace, rebels would face recruitment shortages.

Military operations carried out by the ISU, as time progressed, became more brutal and involved the executions of many male combatants and males claimed to be combatants, as well as those confined to camps in fear that a camp might be liberated, producing millions of radicalized fighters. They did not focus on the females of the species, however, and there were relatively few executions of female civilians or fighters.

The rebellion stopped being contained to the Lhazarane system when the other client species of the cluster followed suit in secession, thereby saving the Lhazarane from being likely victims of xenocide.

[Lhazastan]

Arktoi

The arktoi are an all-female infantry force of approximately sixty thousand. They are the official army of the State, though are said to possess far more loyalty to Kuzmenko than to the State itself. They are not to be confused with the _______, the guard of the matriarchy, though they possess similar training.

As infantry, they are the key instrument in pursuing the security campaigns and combating ground-side militants in areas where bombardment is not considered an option. They are all given standard enhancements, including a nano bodysheath and ocular filters. There is clear preference for full-Lhazarane recruits, but those with artificial replacements are welcome.

[Lhazastan]

Short Story

Ingenuity

You wanna see something cool?

When I hack into the sheath localnet, I can see how the nano robots communicate, how they think, how they operate. It took a lot of work to learn how, but I figured out how to use them for my own ends. I built an application for it, but it doesn't do much right now.

But here, this is pretty awesome. I have it scripted.

Just one executable, one menu, one mental click. I try not to move my hands when I do it, because that can be dangerous. You have to be careful with the hands.

I hold my hand out, fingers extended, for safety's sake. It looks cooler this way, anyway. I make that click. There are nano machines swarming over me at all times, doing as they are programmed. And now, they've been programmed by me and are so much more capable than ever before. The tips of my fingers elongate, they sharpen, they become the most wicked-looking claws. They make me a monster, but only a little. And with them, I can rend almost anything into as many pieces as I like.

This is a learned skill, unnatural to Lhazarane and unnatural to our technology, and is quite possibly my greatest accomplishment so far. You wouldn't think so, it's so simple, but just imagine the applications of it. I may have just revolutionized Lhazarane martial combat.

I look forward to testing it on real flesh. Oh, my dears, do I look forward to it. I cannot wait to see what the other arktoi can do to our enemies with this.

[Lhazastan]

Nano Bodysheath

A swarm of nano robots with limited individual processing capability, these dumb robots lack the ability to make their own decisions, and operate in a purely reactionary fashion. When applied to a lhazarene, typically a soldier, they act as body armor, being able to disperse energy and heat, and are able to convert kinetic and light energy into power (specifically for the robots themselves, but this can be stored). While they may be able to prevent penetration, they are typically not able to prevent injurious strikes, and cannot stop everything. It is possible to deliver far more energy than the robots are able to disperse and convert. As such, additional body armor is often worn into combat situations.

They are capable of self-reproduction, and do so whenever possible unless the user instructs otherwise. This notably happens when they absorb a kinetic strike, such as from a bullet, and can deconstruct the object, using this as material to build more nano machines.

Lately, those with top of the line cerebral implants have been experimenting with different ways to take control of the sheath and actually make it operate beyond its manufactured purpose. One such unintended use has been to create melee weapons (such as claws) seemingly out of nowhere.

[Lhazastan]

Hledik, Mira

You shouldn't give something infinitely more intelligent and capable
than yourselves the power to hold your lives in its grip.
It's not likely to be terribly attached to you.
- Hledik's thoughts on AI

Mira Hledik is a young Lhazarane pilot who had, later in the war, disguised herself as a man and fought for the ISU, driven by her family and social circle to loyalty to the ISU. She was adopted by a powerful shijaki family at birth and given the best the ISU had to offer, growing up on Shijak. Joining the military late in the war, when oversight was little and the ISU was desperate, she managed to manipulate her way into a pilot pod and the installation of Union military-grade pilots' implants. She was given corridor patrol shell and assigned to protect Elis L2.

During the second engagement with revolutionary forces, her shell was destroyed and she piloted her pod to the safety of L2's shuttle depot, and aided in the defense of the colony against arktoi assault teams. There, she was captured by Anna Torbica, who removed or disable many of her implants to prevent her from being a future combatant in case she escaped.

Following the creation of Lhazarane State and the destruction of Shijak, she became a shuttle pilot on L2. She is still bitter about the loss of her implants (which prevents her from piloting military craft), and about the loss of her friends and family on Shijak, but has slowly been turning supportive of the Matriarchy, if not the State.

[Lhazastan]

Ryba, Adelajda

I haven't slept well in years in fear of reliving killing Shijak.
- Adelajda on her nightmares

A nest pilot, Adelajda served in the war and lost her first nest during the battle over Shijak. She was picked up in her pod by a civilian rescue craft, where she watched the final moments of the planet. She was outfitted with another for the Security Campaign but never got over the genocide she helped commit. She disappeared from State records with her mechanic and a quarter complement of drones.

She has an above-average number of implants even for a pilot, as well as a nano bodysheath, and has hacked her bodysheath in order to use it for purposes it was not intended for. She is also a good mechanic in her own right, and could have foregone having one with her on her nest if need be.

Ade lost her ship to a pirate attack which detonated many of their missiles while still in their launch cells. Ade did her best to fend off the raiders with her drones, and managed to make them fall back. However the nest was a lost cause and she and her mechanic had to abandon it.

They hitched their way in the piloting pod to the closest waystation along the Twin Eagles route, where they met the mercenary group. Having nowhere to turn, they signed on with them and returned to the nest to salvage what they could before scuttling the rest.

The Thunder & Fury integrated the pod's piloting system as an upgrade to their old system which required far more crewmembers and was generally unreliable. They also managed to save several working drones and spare parts for them, and a number of Lhazarane missiles. A significant portion of other systems were also replaced or upgraded with salvaged nest components.

[Lhazastan]

Benesch, Jerneja

Neja was at first a guerrilla and then nest mechanic during the war, serving with Anna Torbica at Akrata. She met Adelajda Ryba partially through the Security Campaign after Adelajda's mechanic was lost, joining her as ship mechanic though by this point she didn't believe in the cause anymore: she did not want to trade one distant and disconnected regime for another, and did not like the cult which was growing surrounding the Matriarchy. When Adelajda wanted to leave the cluster entirely and strike out on her own, Neja agreed and accompanied her.

Though primarily a mechanic, Neja is a skilled gunsmith and has a penchant for heavy weapons. She also has a bodysheath, a handful of implants, and quite a few cybernetic replacements, including several internal organs which were replaced during the war.

Neja's ship was lost to a pirate attack which detonated many of their missiles while still in their launch cells. Ade did her best to fend off the raiders with her drones, and managed to make them fall back. However the nest was a lost cause and they had to abandon it.

They hitched their way in the piloting pod to the closest waystation along the Twin Eagles route, where they met the mercenary group. Having nowhere to turn, they signed on with them and returned to the nest to salvage what they could before scuttling the rest.

The Thunder & Fury integrated the pod's piloting system as an upgrade to their old system which required far more crewmembers and was generally unreliable. They also managed to save several working drones and spare parts for them, and a number of Lhazarane missiles. A significant portion of other systems were also replaced or upgraded with salvaged nest components.