Onai:

” Onai sick bastards, someone really had a sadistic streak when they created those monsters, never fought them, but I’ve seen themes they leave behind. I still see it when I go to sleep after ten years. We didn’t bother to try and salvage the colony or clean up the mess the Colonel just ordered us back to the transports and left a Plasma warhead behind to sanitize the area. Anyone left behind probably would have rather died than survive…we were doing them a favor.


Overview:
Once described as a cross between a nightmare and a mad scientist’s failure, Onai are usually misshapen and distorted versions of other races. No one knows where the Onai came from or who is responsible for their creation, but genetic studies indicate they are the result of genetic manipulation and out of control mutation. Onai vary radically in appearance and abilities but they all have one thing in common, they are strong and tough with some sort of natural attack and a surprising resistance to damage. Some experts believe the Onai are the source of the mythical oriental Oni, a race of grotesque creatures that delight in tricking and tormenting humans.
Onai seem to have a deep-seated hatred of most species common to O’sahdii space and relentlessly aid and harass planets and shipping along their borders, and deep into space not strongly patrolled by local defense squadrons.. Onai worlds are often only borderline habitable. Even if those worlds were at one time lush and productive Onai industry and exploitation rapidly reduce the worlds to toxic and ravaged mockeries of their former state.

Onai often serve as Mercenaries and enforcers throughout O’sahdii space. They seldom achieve any real wealth or station and those that do are incredibly dangerous, spiteful, paranoid and petty. Usually making their fortunes as hire killers, crime lords and, drug runners and weapons dealers.

Onai tactics are surprisingly cunning; their Leaders often display patience and cunning, using a target’s vices, weaknesses and enemies to their own advantage before striking. Onai are not satisfied with a quick victory or kill, they prefer to inflict lots of damage and prolong the fear, suffering and destruction they inflict to increase the satisfaction of their final victory. Onai tend to operate in company size raiding parties, operating from two or three corvette sized ships, several fighters to clear out the defenses and soften up the target. Once the attack ships dispose of the defenders and take out ground batteries they employ armed freighters to land troops and to carry away prisoners and loot captured in their raids.

 Anyone caught in an Onai raid is in real danger, they kill indiscriminately and often mutilate and erect grisly totems of mutilated corpses, severed limbs and heads to mark their victories, escaped prisoners and slaves report that torture, experimentation and cannibalism is often the fate of anyone taken by the Onai. They also report that children are often taken away only to return a few months later as Onai themselves, barely recognizable and totally changed by what ever happened to them in their absence.


Military
Freelance Onai raiders often carry a wide range of weapons and gear scavenged from former victims, or manufactured from scrap and spare parts, all Onai weapons are modified by their owners adding spikes blades and bayonets to ranged weapons, and numerous scalps bits of bone and sometimes even severed hands to their melee weapons to increase the physiological impact of their viscous sudden assaults.

Organized Onai units tend to be a bit less colorful than their freelance counterparts, but they still use stylized armor and masks to make their naturally grotesque appearance even more horrific, or to compensate for their natural deformities and mutations. A sergeant shouting, kicking and using a cattle prod to direct individual solders under the direction of the Platoon leader often controls a “disciplined” Onai unit.

Onai ships tend to be fast, Maneuverable and heavily armed, but lack sophisticated defensive systems or armor. Onai ships often carry several boarding shuttles and large numbers of armed crewmen who serve as marines either to defend the ship or to board ships disabled and grappled by their ship.

Onai do not hesitate to use chemical, radiological, or biological weapons, many colonies and outposts have collapsed after being discretely infected with Bio weapons or targeted from orbit with Nukes and well aimed meteors towed out of the local asteroid belt and sent hurtling toward the target planet.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:57, Mon 18 Feb 2008.

    These arent your daddies Lizard men, their orginized, advanced, ruthless and agressive. If youcome up against these bastards keep your eyes open and your gun close. They like to hit you with overwhelming numbers and firepower, usually by surprise. They don't take prsoners and theyusually only negotiate after they take their objectives. One on one their tough as hell. They ill eachother just to weed out theweak and stupid. So there's no suchthing as a weak link in thier chain."
   When they Mutinied on earth they casued a lot of damage and gave a whole new meaning to collateral damage, so don't expect the to take it easy on non-combatants, wounded, or civillians. Your best bet is to hi them where they are weak their command and control. If you can take out thier comms or snarl up their supply system they almost always grind to a halt untill it is re-established.


Q’sa:  A race of reptilians with strong insectoid features including antennae and strong dermal armor. the Q’sa are an advanced space faring race with a rigid militaristic government and a strict social structure that culls weak or unfit members of the species by pitting them against one another in regular maneuvers using live weapons. While not cold blooded the Q’sa prefer warm moist climates and often live in monolithic city hives that rise up out of the countryside like huge artificial mountains. Q’sa have redundant organs and both an endo and partial exoskeleton that offers protection from environmental and combat damage.

Q’sa often terraform planets to increase it’s average humidity and atmospheric make up to spawn rapid world wide plant growth and encourage the growth of vast savage jungles and forest they then seed with species native to their planet. The Hybrid of reptilian and insectoid life forms tend to be aggressive, hungry and predatory. While plant tend to be well protected by poisons, thorns and mobile tendrils that makes the world hostile, almost unsuitable for any outside species or race.

Q’sa re a violent warlike and expansionist race on the fringes of Tau space. After a long and bloody war the Q’sa were defeated and subjugated for several generations by the Tau. After generations of occupation The Q’sa were incorporated into the Tau imperial military to counter the growing strength of the Onai and Najuhlim forces on their borders. This relationship was tense and often led to difficulties but the Q’sa made good shock troops and they enjoyed the unrestricted warfare they were allowed to engage in against the Onai.
After the first contact with earth, and the bloody and destructive AI wars Q’sa troops were sent to earth to bolster the badly depleted Tae forces against Onai incursions. The Q’sa and O’Maeda security forces soon became embroiled with tae guerilla forces that viewed their ever-increasing control of Terran affairs as a silent invasion of Earth and its colonies. After a series of violent protests and attacks on Q’sa “peacekeepers” the Q’sa command Mutinied against its imperial commanders and launched a full out assault on ‘rebellious’ Tae cities an strong holds. The result was all out warfare for several long months as lightly armed Tae guerillas and militias as well as he weakened Government militaries took on the well-equipped Q’sa forces.

When Valkiir forces landed to restore order and remove mutinying Q’sa troops by force the Q’sa worlds rebelled and left the Imperium. Having used their time wisely and rebuilt their own military to a level that they felt could resist any Tau reprisals the Q’sa began an offensive to retake traditionally Q’sa worlds from the Imperium. Q’sa despise Tae and Tau alike although they have yet to attack an O’maeda world or O’Maeda merchant shipping, or military ships not operating with imperial tasks forces in front line battles.
Racial Package:
Str +2
Con +2
Cha –4
Dex -2

Natural Armor: DR 2 Ac 1
Natural Attack 1d4 claws
Militant: -4 diplomacy +2 Intimidate
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:31, Mon 18 Feb 2008.

Marduk Sentinels:

“ I fought those damn things on Thunderhead, they’re fast and tough, but if you can hit them they aren’t that tough, you just have to hit them, the Bosses are tricky bastards and hard to hit, forget grenades they just dodge and dance around the frags, but if you can get a stunner on them or have a taser handy use it, you can fry their circuits.”

A Marduk Sentinel is a sentient AI robot appearing as a meter wide armored globe with ten to fifteen segmented tentacles ending in manipulators or weapons modules. A large multifaceted eye is centered on the forward face of the globe with several with the tentacles arranged symmetrically around the vertical axis of the globe.
During the AI war the rouge AI Marduk decided to splinter off portions of its core matrix into servants and guardians to service and secure it’s primary Core facility on the fledgling colony Thunderhead. These Sentinels replaced the enslaved human workers in the Primary core and defended the Base against the constant guerilla attacks by the planets human and Cesti resistance fighters.

The Sentinels were heavily equipped for combat and repair duty, combining dexterous prehensile tentacles and several high-energy plasma generators and several vibroblade cutter/swords. These fanatical and ruthless robots defended the Primary core until a group of cyborg commandoes used the facility’s cooling vents to slip past the external defenses and placed a Nuclear demolition device in the Fusion power plant reducing the core of the facility to a kilometer wide crater totally destroying Marduk’s core and most of the Sentinels.

Six sentinels escaped the destruction and along with hundreds of the “Brainslaved” cyborg soldiers hijacked a Terran Defense force Assault ship and escaped off world disappearing into the unexplored reaches of space. Over the past fifty years occasional sighting of Marduk Sentinels have been reported. These sightings, along with deactivated sentinels recovered on a derelict warship have confirmed that the original six Sentinels have constructed new units using an upgraded design based on the original specifications.


Sentinels are Bioroid constructs, sharing the same properties as a standard Bioroid robot meaning they are susceptible to critical hits, also they are susceptible to electrical and EMP attacks and can have their systems temporarily disrupted by those attacks. They can be sunned dazed or knocked unconscious by electrical or EMP attacks although it’s best to disable or destroy them quickly once they are stunned or knocked offline, they tend to wake up cranky.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:47, Thu 02 Sept 2010.

O’sahdii:

I don’t like to talk about those guys. What do you say about a race that was around before man learned to chip flint, and is still lurking around in their city ships. I’ve heard the stories, how they can manipulate your memories, wipe them out completely or leave you dead where you set without a mar on you.  I’ve also heard the stories about what happens when they get upset with you, entire colonies empty, food left on the table, all electronic records erased. Not so much as a fingerprint or a footprint in the dust.

    Yeah I now they are supposed to be our protectors, keeping order and peace, keeping the big boys from tossing around planet busters, viral and chemical weapons and such. But ha anyone heard from them. They let the Mohljaniir die. They let the Najuhlim invade earth. Where the hell are they if they are so damn powerful.

OverView

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Abeolith:
A creature of unknown origin that appears to be completely at home in deep space as well as Hyperspace, this creature is reclusive and avoids encounters with ships and individuals although it does seem to be surprisingly well adapted to defend itself if attack. An Abeolith appears to be a heavily armored whale, akin to a terrestrial gray whale. Traveling in small Pods or alone these creatures migrate through hyperspace feeding on the myriad of small organisms that thrive in dense fields of hypermatter or around the great dark matter reefs far from the gravitational effect of stars.

Some races have attempted to hunt and harvest Abeolith for the dark matter they store in their bodies and the crystal nodes that allow the beast to move effortlessly through space and into hyperspace without any obvious mechanical assistance, The nodes are prized by researchers who wish to duplicate the creature’s abilities. As a result Abeolith seem to be generally more aggressive in areas they are hunted, and less aggressive when in areas that they view as havens. In pods with a number of adolescents there is a good chance one of the adults will be a warrior caste adult.

Warriors are extremely aggressive and will warn off approaching starships with intense pulses of energy and warning shots, a warrior can also jam the sensors of nearby ships and has an uncanny ability to strike with great efficiency and strike critical components more frequently when provoked.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:47, Thu 02 Sept 2010.

The Steel Steeds:
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away...Oh, wait...Yeah, okay...
The origional Steel Steed was created in a research and development lab. It was a "toy", indeed, a rich mans toy to be sure. It had advanced computer brains inside to control the creation, and was made to look just like a horse, except it was made of a new type of maliable memory steel, so while it was impervious to most damage, it still looked and felt like a horse, mostly. With it's advanced computer brains inside though, it was much smarter than the average horse.
These steeds went into production on a limited mass market, since only rich people could afford them. There was a yearly lottery though whereby those less fortunate could win one if they bought lottery tickets.
One such steel steed was won in a lottery by a family on a newly colonized world. The family enjoyed him greatly, and their oldest son actually made money by offering "Pony Rides" at festivals and other such events. And made money he did, for what person young or old didn't want pictures of them astride the renoun steel steed as a status symbol to hang on their walls or paste into their scrap books?
One day though, someone tried to steal the steel steed from the boy, actually causing harm to the boy in the process. The Laws of Robotics kicked in and the steed defended his owner, causing him to chase, kick and bite the would be thieves. In revenge, one of them tried to infect the steed with a virus...it backfired though, in such a way as to cause the steed to become self aware. Even more importantly, the virus was contagious to other steel steeds. Soon, every steel steed on the planet was self aware...And with the laws of robotics firmly in place, they became the Guardians of the people on this planet, fighting against evilness wherever it reared its ugly head.

Then, one day, the Skandlings appeared. They had never been heard of before. They were nasty people, slavers and worse.

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Credit: This race is the creation and property of: Feyda, Used with permission