Post by Insano-Man on Sept 24, 2018 9:47:01 GMT -5
Blood & Steel
The Last of Stevlan - formerly and better known as the Stevlanul Federated Systems - are one of the few, true examples of the reasoning behind the Coalition of Human Systems' infamous Ethical Employment Convention and Underclass Prevention Agreement. Once a haven of free cybernetics, genetic reconstruction, and biotechnology research, Stevlanul lasted nearly three hundred years before spiralling into an uncontrolled system of lower class slavery and overdependency on artificial lifeforms. The remnants of their military, calling themselves the Last of Stevlan, remain at large as some of the most ruthless and powerful pirate organizations in human space.
It is believed that the Stevlanul Federated Systems were founded by generation ship in 1710 A.F., by a vessel keenly focused on medical research and biotechnology during its voyage. Unfortunately, however, there is only second-hand reference to such a landing in other historical documents, and the actual date of Stevlanul's founding remains in much doubt.
What is well-known, however, are the circumstances surrounding Stevlanul's early development. Rapid advances in agriculture, medicine, population control, and artificial life greatly boosted the survival and prosperity early on, and this technological and logistical progress only continued to speed along as the quality of life skyrocketed in the nation. Roughly thirty years into its development, Stevlan had colonized a planet in its solar system, and just two years later established its first self-sufficient asteroid mining platform. Further expansion and developments at home were swift to come, its status as an interstellar empire secured only months after its achievement of photon capture technology.
As prosperity among its empire continued to surpass record heights and technology continued to march forward at brisk speed, liberties at home expanded with every report of a successful colonial endeavour. Cybernetics had, at first, been limited to replacement of damaged bodyparts and sustaining those with severe illness, but soon became part of the culture of Stevlanul. Sensory enhancements, muscular augmentations, and other such convenience cybernetics soon became commonplace among all but the most poor. The token military the young space nation maintained enforced mandatory sensory enhancements and neural transmitters by December of 1752 A.F., and many soldiers returned to civilian life with the same implants they used against pirates and militant dissidents.
Biotechnology followed suit. The oft-cited peril of "designer babies" fast became a common reality among the wealthy in Stevlanul. Synthetic tissue of all manner became a common method of augmenting the human form, and this was soon replaced by augmentive genetic reconstruction at roughly 1749 A.F. As with cybernetics, the ordinary nature of genetic augmentation and synthetic organs became so pervasive that, in 1753 A.F., shortly after military cybernetics requirements were enacted, the major industrial corporation of Broad Tower Steelworks & Shipping began enforcing its own biotechnology requirements for employees. The trend was set at the beginning of that year; more and more businesses, from other high-risk areas and from even safer disciplines, continued to follow suit. By 1800 A.F., only the caretakers of cleaning robotics could avoid biotechnology implants or genetic therapy. Only an incredibly small minority among them refused such modifications entirely.
A more disturbing area of biotechnology that expanded into everyday life was the creation, modification, and recycling of artificial life created for specific tasks where maintaining robotics or human workers was neither efficient, nor safe. The engineered lifeforms often took the shape of a living biological gel that could repair itself, carry out complex tasks, and alter its very genetic coding to adopt more specialized or generalized capabilities. These could range from tasks such as generating sufficient heat to reshape steel, or, conversely, absorbing sufficient heat to help smother a fire. 1789 A.F. saw the widespread adoption of this gel, which came to be known by an immense variety of nicknames. No such nickname, however, had the staying power and public adoption of the almost comical "omnimeat" and its sister "omnisludge".
These advances and cultural shifts towards more and more cybernetics and biotechnology came as a double-edged sword. Every area of industry and every component of Stevlanul's growing military benefitted immeasurably from the public adoption and recognition of widespread augmentation. Colonial progress approached lightspeed, as death rates plummetted and willing colonists often numbered in the millions. Science advanced even more rapidly than prosperity had granted it as cybernetics offered researchers improvements to themselves, their testing environments, and the safety of both. Economic activity became impossible to halt as people clamored for every new cybernetics software upgrade or genetic reconstruction improvement in addition to their ordinary consumption.
When the Stevlan encountered the Garrant Commonwealth's eastern border in 1832 A.F., however, problems began to spring up like wildfire. The most obvious of issues came with the attention of a superpower. Before other nations could discover Stevlanul - rebranded the Stevlanul Federated Systems in 1800 A.F. - and before its own people could display outrage at the nation's reliance on all they abhorred, Garran politicians rapidly rearranged Stevlan borders and economic priorities through bully and savvy. Quick deployments of expeditionary fleets from eastern worlds gave the impression of a nation gearing up for war, which, although difficult to defend, it had a reason for; the breach of its territory by Stevlan military scouts. As apologies and pleas for peace streamed out from panicking Stevlan politicians, their antagonists in the Commonwealth seized the chance to cut apart the much smaller nation. Borders were redrawn far into Stevlan space, setting colonial progress decades back, and reparations for the incident caused one of the first treasury losses since Stevlanul's founding. Compounding all of this, aggressive territorial expansion by the economic giant began an encapsulation of Stevlan colonial spheres that it would never break free of. International trade for the once-flourishing nation stressed its economic woes further, as every shipment of goods that left its borders was forced to pass through unkind Commonwealth territory with all its biased regulations and taxes.
Culture shock struck not just the pure human nations of Anchorage and their thoroughly-regulated allies, but the Federated Systems, as well. Encountering nations that entirely spurned - and even frowned upon - the notion of modifying the human body to such extreme measures rose doubt in many of the Stevlan population. Even were the Garrant Commonwealth to be ignored for its animosity, the high quality of life in other major Anchorage nations and many of those under the flag of the Coalition of Human Systems brought many to believe they had shed humanity for an unnecessary level of comfort - even laziness - in their daily lives. This doubt drove a rift between two segments of the Stevlan population; the purists, who pushed for regulating cybernetics and intensive gene therapy, and the progressives, who held true to the status quo. Disobedience, demonstrations, and even riots began to break out in favor or opposition to either side, and this unrest would soon prove to be the nation's downfall.
War would fall upon the nation not long after its encounter with the Garrant Commonwealth, as well. Before its total encirclement, minor nations of Anchorage heritage saw Stevlanul as a dying empire even long before it had truly started to decline. Conflict broke out on what was an almost yearly affair for the Stevlan military, which had yet to see true combat experience. Even vastly younger Anchorage nations had far more wartime experience and better organized armed forces than that of the Federated Systems, as many had taken part in - either against or with - conflicts involving one of the planet's many superpowers. Garran and Praetorian military advisors compounded this advantage, enabling many proxy wars to start up in favor of the two superpowers. A notable battle displayed the inexperience of the Stevlanul Peacekeepers, their armed forces until 1840 A.F., when just two hundred Northern Anglsvett infantrymen - all conscripts and led by a handful of former Federal Guard officers - were able to harass and whittle away the nearly two thousand strong 28th Center Brigade at the Battle of Lingsrich Ridge in 1838 A.F. The casualty figures tell an embarassing story for Stevlanul; faced with ill-trained and poorly equipped opponents, their cybernetically-enhanced, genetically-augmented troops lost nearly six men to every one they killed in the Anglsvett's 3rd Rifles, with a total of nine hundred Stevlan infantrymen dead or wounded at the end of the engagement. Until 1840 A.F., when the Stevlan military was restructured, painful defeats such as this were hardly rare.
Five wars and sixteen border clashes would pass before conflict finally took its toll on both Stevlan society and their armed services. At home, the consequences were grim; certain of the truth that cybernetics and biotechnology had failed to make a truly positive impact, purists grew increasingly militant over the course of 1837 to 1841. The backlash, however, dealt a devastating blow to the purist movement. The progressive side of the cultural schism held far more political sway, and as attacks on their supporters grew more bold and consequential, the law turned against those who had rejected augmentations. A de facto system of slavery and enablement of abuse began to take form as a result. It was in 1847 A.F. that this process was effectively complete; it was that year that a law had been passed deeming any person bearing sufficient strength or reflex-enhancing augmentations, as well as an electronics access implant, to, as ill-defined circumstances permitted, assume the role of an officer of the peace, allowing many to take advantage of those without augmentations. It soon became a clear-cut division between those rich enough to afford cybernetic implants and biotechnology augmentations and those who could not.
In 1840 A.F., after a number of humiliating wartime defeats and pyrrhic victories, the Stevlanul Peacekeepers army and Defense Force navy were restructured into the all-encompassing General Military. The public was led to believe that the military would be styled after the Timosi Republic's Central Military, one of the few foreign powers to have both military success and a less hostile disposition towards the troubled empire. This was not the case. Instead, relying further and further on cybernetics and artificial lifeforms, the General Military became what many believe to be one of the most horrifying armed service in human history, even beyond that of the Verinen Permanos Regentic's forced allegiance and invasive augmentation of its personnel.
The military was divided into three particular castes; "successors", "coordinators", and "recyclers". Each represented a particular role on the battlefield and this order of importance in the military further strengthened the inhuman conditions growing at home. Recyclers were soon integrated into civilian life, and the clout that they - and, by extension, any heavily modified individual - carried came with them. Quickly thereafter, Stevlanul's population stagnated, as the birth rate began to plummet thanks to rampant overaugmentation. In 1871 A.F., as the empire's population began to fall rather than grow, rather than forbid excessive modification, the government instead enacted cloning and forced breeding programs throughout its territory. Without the proper infrastructure or systems in place to bring these programs up to sustainable levels, however, this failed to halt the steady demise its encounter with the Garrant Commonwealth had enacted.
Cities in Stevlan territory soon became nightmarish shadows of their former selves as conscription continued to impact the nation's ability to sustain itself. Finally surrounded on all sides by its first true antagonist, the Garrant Commonwealth seized on its opportunity to exploit Stevlanul's growing list of what many considered crimes against humanity. In 1889 A.F., with the approval of the majority of the Coalition of Human Systems, the Commonwealth invaded the Federated Systems - which now amounted to just four star systems - and set in motion the final end of Stevlanul. It would take two years for Garran soldiers of the 38th and 39th Juningrad Rangers and 49th Endrickstadt MIAV to conquer Stevlan territory as its government fought tooth and nail for every city and inch of strategically important land. The story in space was far different, and reflected the growing disunion among its military; it took only six months to secure orbital control of every major planet in Stevlan space, including their homeworld. Less important worlds would take just another month while Space Navy admirals awaited reinforcement. While those hungry for war in the Navy came away disappointed in the fractured showing the General Military offered in space, the men and women of the Rangers and MIAV would return with terrifying stories of the condition their opponent was in. Tales of stragglers ripping themselves from successors and fleeing were often compared with the sight of the souls of the damned howling out from men forced to fight for a dying cause.
On the fateful day of November 13th, 1891 A.F., the Stevlanul Federated Systems' government finally dissolved and surrendered to Garran rangers of the 49th Endrickstadt's 3rd Mechanized Battalion. In one of the few Garran military conquests of recent history, the Commonwealth, with all its bullying and provocation, was hailed as a savior of an abused, downtrodden people by others. Those in Stevlan territory instead saw them as invaders fighting a war of extinction, and the resistance of many guaranteed them the fate they believed to be coming. Even as of 2203 A.F., reports of cybernetically-enhanced guerillas continue to plague news from Stevlan territory, even as more and more rangers find themselves assigned there.
More than just guerilla fighters, the Last of Stevlan - today, practically better known than the nation they arose from - have continued to plague space in former Stevlan territory, and even beyond. Fully titled the Last of the Stevlan General Military, they continue to uphold the same organizational structure and three part caste system held prior to the empire's collapse. While splintered, each group remains a substantial foe for colonial defense forces, thanks much to their augmentation and military equipment, training, and experience. Fuelled by hatred for the Garrant Commonwealth and all its allies, primarily those pure human nations that helped indirectly bring about the downfall of Stevlanul, their raids and hijackings most often take place in Coalition territory. Many of such attacks include kidnappings, and those taken are believed to have suffered a fate many consider worse than death; recycling and rebirth as a successor, or even forced conversion into an unwilling recycler.
As a particular headache to the Garrant Commonwealth and its allies, it is undoubted that many agents and informants have embedded themselves within the Last of Stevlan. The Garran External Intelligence service, most particularly, is thought to be the most successful, this opinion carrying much weight thanks to the External Intelligence's reputation as one of the most effective subterfuge and espionage agencies in human space. What is not relieving about the wealth of information uncovered about the Last of Stevlan is that many believe, agents included, that, based on findings from most splinter groups, the Last are in pursuit of something. It is thought that this "something" is of a military nature, and that the scattered former military groups believe it could restore their nation even after centuries of occupation by the Commonwealth. Even the most pessimistic and compromising of splinter groups - including the famous "Turncables" that fought alongside Federal marines against other Stevlan pirates in 1931 A.F. - have been reluctant to refute this line of thought, giving many military advisors in Coalition employ a headache that continues to throb worse.
Only time will tell if this wonder weapon - if it is even a weapon - will ever show itself before the Last of Stevlan are hunted down and destroyed. What remains clear is that, until their eventual eradication or reintegration, the Last of Stevlan are one of the most serious pirate threats to Coalition space. Well-armed, well-trained, and hosting an array of powerful cybernetic and genetic modifications, they are one that most certainly will not go without a fight.
Military
In 1840 A.F., the Stevlanul Peacekeepers and Defense Force were consolidated into a single, unified General Military, which soon developed a system of three distinct classes. Each class - or caste, as most consider it - held a level of importance that ranged from none to critically important. Following the collapse of the Stevlanul Federated Systems, the Last of Stevlan maintained the caste system and have since refined its roles and the respect - or lackthereof - between each.
"Successors" were a direct product of the creation of recyclers and their use both at home and in the field of battle. All soldiers in the General Military, following 1840 A.F., were required to bear host to what has since become known as the "straggler" implant. This combination of biotechnology and cybernetics allowed most of a human's central nervous system to detach from its body and maintain the individual it represented, usually as a mobile creature capable of returning to friendly territory to be processed by a recycler. When processed by a recycler, the resulting "replacement" of a straggler's host body was assumed to allow veteran soldiers to literally survive death in all but the most extreme circumstances. This, again, was not the case. Instead, successors proved to have little of their original mental faculties. The trauma of the nervous detachment proved so great that fewer than 4% of all successors are ever truly restored to their original state. Most returned as little more than the husks they were given, the bodies delivered knowing only basic combat routines and failing to advance much past the mental faculties of young children.
As such, successors quickly became the cannon fodder and unwitting bottom rung of the General Military ladder. Each successor represents a tragic tale; men made immortal, yet mindless, dying countless deaths in primitive horror without ever knowing why.
Coordinators are those human infantry that have not yet fallen in battle and found their minds stripped away by the recycling process. They represent the original Stevlanul Peacekeepers and Defense Force, fighting with quality cybernetics and organic augmentation, having learned from the painful experiences before them to better themselves as combatants. Having better tactical expertise and far more sound minds than successors, it is no surprise that coordinators - as their title suggests - act as unit leaders, officers, and supervisors of installations. It is rare that successors ever leave their quarters without the eye of a coordinator ensuring their tasks are met.
Recyclers were the initial inspiration for the restructuring of the Peacekeepers and Defense Force. They represent some of the most harsh genetic and cybernetic alterations of the human form and, in most cases, hardly resemble humans anymore. Likewise, with their augmentation's extreme nature, their stature among the armed services is similarly impressive. Most recyclers find themselves in leadership roles before they are even converted, and are considered to be permanent parts of their unit; that is to say, recyclers, barring desertion, serve until death.
Recyclers are, disturbingly, primarily selected from older women to ease the conversion process. Few men have been converted into these hulking monstrosities, and most have left smaller impacts than their female counterparts. When the process is complete, however, few could ever determine the gender of a recycler by visual inspection; all that remains is a vaguely humanoid figure standing at least four meters tall, carrying only superficial patches of their former skin as organic gel replaces much of their skin and muscles. Embedded in their chest is a cybernetic processing device, used to "digest" stragglers and fatally wounded soldiers into successors. This process is known to be extruciating, both for the successor to be reborn and the recycler themself, as it is most often necessary to take organic material directly from the recycler host to recreate the human body needed for the restored soldier.
Owing to their size and the constant need for energy to replace tissue lost to recycling processes, recyclers are primarily stationary and live out their lives in cybernetic capsules that allow integration with command and control networks. Additionally, recyclers require an incredible amount of sustenance even in the absence of their intended service. For this reason, mobile recyclers are uncommon, but to call them rare - as military demands most often include mobility - would be incorrect.
The Last of Stevlan - formerly and better known as the Stevlanul Federated Systems - are one of the few, true examples of the reasoning behind the Coalition of Human Systems' infamous Ethical Employment Convention and Underclass Prevention Agreement. Once a haven of free cybernetics, genetic reconstruction, and biotechnology research, Stevlanul lasted nearly three hundred years before spiralling into an uncontrolled system of lower class slavery and overdependency on artificial lifeforms. The remnants of their military, calling themselves the Last of Stevlan, remain at large as some of the most ruthless and powerful pirate organizations in human space.
It is believed that the Stevlanul Federated Systems were founded by generation ship in 1710 A.F., by a vessel keenly focused on medical research and biotechnology during its voyage. Unfortunately, however, there is only second-hand reference to such a landing in other historical documents, and the actual date of Stevlanul's founding remains in much doubt.
What is well-known, however, are the circumstances surrounding Stevlanul's early development. Rapid advances in agriculture, medicine, population control, and artificial life greatly boosted the survival and prosperity early on, and this technological and logistical progress only continued to speed along as the quality of life skyrocketed in the nation. Roughly thirty years into its development, Stevlan had colonized a planet in its solar system, and just two years later established its first self-sufficient asteroid mining platform. Further expansion and developments at home were swift to come, its status as an interstellar empire secured only months after its achievement of photon capture technology.
As prosperity among its empire continued to surpass record heights and technology continued to march forward at brisk speed, liberties at home expanded with every report of a successful colonial endeavour. Cybernetics had, at first, been limited to replacement of damaged bodyparts and sustaining those with severe illness, but soon became part of the culture of Stevlanul. Sensory enhancements, muscular augmentations, and other such convenience cybernetics soon became commonplace among all but the most poor. The token military the young space nation maintained enforced mandatory sensory enhancements and neural transmitters by December of 1752 A.F., and many soldiers returned to civilian life with the same implants they used against pirates and militant dissidents.
Biotechnology followed suit. The oft-cited peril of "designer babies" fast became a common reality among the wealthy in Stevlanul. Synthetic tissue of all manner became a common method of augmenting the human form, and this was soon replaced by augmentive genetic reconstruction at roughly 1749 A.F. As with cybernetics, the ordinary nature of genetic augmentation and synthetic organs became so pervasive that, in 1753 A.F., shortly after military cybernetics requirements were enacted, the major industrial corporation of Broad Tower Steelworks & Shipping began enforcing its own biotechnology requirements for employees. The trend was set at the beginning of that year; more and more businesses, from other high-risk areas and from even safer disciplines, continued to follow suit. By 1800 A.F., only the caretakers of cleaning robotics could avoid biotechnology implants or genetic therapy. Only an incredibly small minority among them refused such modifications entirely.
A more disturbing area of biotechnology that expanded into everyday life was the creation, modification, and recycling of artificial life created for specific tasks where maintaining robotics or human workers was neither efficient, nor safe. The engineered lifeforms often took the shape of a living biological gel that could repair itself, carry out complex tasks, and alter its very genetic coding to adopt more specialized or generalized capabilities. These could range from tasks such as generating sufficient heat to reshape steel, or, conversely, absorbing sufficient heat to help smother a fire. 1789 A.F. saw the widespread adoption of this gel, which came to be known by an immense variety of nicknames. No such nickname, however, had the staying power and public adoption of the almost comical "omnimeat" and its sister "omnisludge".
These advances and cultural shifts towards more and more cybernetics and biotechnology came as a double-edged sword. Every area of industry and every component of Stevlanul's growing military benefitted immeasurably from the public adoption and recognition of widespread augmentation. Colonial progress approached lightspeed, as death rates plummetted and willing colonists often numbered in the millions. Science advanced even more rapidly than prosperity had granted it as cybernetics offered researchers improvements to themselves, their testing environments, and the safety of both. Economic activity became impossible to halt as people clamored for every new cybernetics software upgrade or genetic reconstruction improvement in addition to their ordinary consumption.
When the Stevlan encountered the Garrant Commonwealth's eastern border in 1832 A.F., however, problems began to spring up like wildfire. The most obvious of issues came with the attention of a superpower. Before other nations could discover Stevlanul - rebranded the Stevlanul Federated Systems in 1800 A.F. - and before its own people could display outrage at the nation's reliance on all they abhorred, Garran politicians rapidly rearranged Stevlan borders and economic priorities through bully and savvy. Quick deployments of expeditionary fleets from eastern worlds gave the impression of a nation gearing up for war, which, although difficult to defend, it had a reason for; the breach of its territory by Stevlan military scouts. As apologies and pleas for peace streamed out from panicking Stevlan politicians, their antagonists in the Commonwealth seized the chance to cut apart the much smaller nation. Borders were redrawn far into Stevlan space, setting colonial progress decades back, and reparations for the incident caused one of the first treasury losses since Stevlanul's founding. Compounding all of this, aggressive territorial expansion by the economic giant began an encapsulation of Stevlan colonial spheres that it would never break free of. International trade for the once-flourishing nation stressed its economic woes further, as every shipment of goods that left its borders was forced to pass through unkind Commonwealth territory with all its biased regulations and taxes.
Culture shock struck not just the pure human nations of Anchorage and their thoroughly-regulated allies, but the Federated Systems, as well. Encountering nations that entirely spurned - and even frowned upon - the notion of modifying the human body to such extreme measures rose doubt in many of the Stevlan population. Even were the Garrant Commonwealth to be ignored for its animosity, the high quality of life in other major Anchorage nations and many of those under the flag of the Coalition of Human Systems brought many to believe they had shed humanity for an unnecessary level of comfort - even laziness - in their daily lives. This doubt drove a rift between two segments of the Stevlan population; the purists, who pushed for regulating cybernetics and intensive gene therapy, and the progressives, who held true to the status quo. Disobedience, demonstrations, and even riots began to break out in favor or opposition to either side, and this unrest would soon prove to be the nation's downfall.
War would fall upon the nation not long after its encounter with the Garrant Commonwealth, as well. Before its total encirclement, minor nations of Anchorage heritage saw Stevlanul as a dying empire even long before it had truly started to decline. Conflict broke out on what was an almost yearly affair for the Stevlan military, which had yet to see true combat experience. Even vastly younger Anchorage nations had far more wartime experience and better organized armed forces than that of the Federated Systems, as many had taken part in - either against or with - conflicts involving one of the planet's many superpowers. Garran and Praetorian military advisors compounded this advantage, enabling many proxy wars to start up in favor of the two superpowers. A notable battle displayed the inexperience of the Stevlanul Peacekeepers, their armed forces until 1840 A.F., when just two hundred Northern Anglsvett infantrymen - all conscripts and led by a handful of former Federal Guard officers - were able to harass and whittle away the nearly two thousand strong 28th Center Brigade at the Battle of Lingsrich Ridge in 1838 A.F. The casualty figures tell an embarassing story for Stevlanul; faced with ill-trained and poorly equipped opponents, their cybernetically-enhanced, genetically-augmented troops lost nearly six men to every one they killed in the Anglsvett's 3rd Rifles, with a total of nine hundred Stevlan infantrymen dead or wounded at the end of the engagement. Until 1840 A.F., when the Stevlan military was restructured, painful defeats such as this were hardly rare.
Five wars and sixteen border clashes would pass before conflict finally took its toll on both Stevlan society and their armed services. At home, the consequences were grim; certain of the truth that cybernetics and biotechnology had failed to make a truly positive impact, purists grew increasingly militant over the course of 1837 to 1841. The backlash, however, dealt a devastating blow to the purist movement. The progressive side of the cultural schism held far more political sway, and as attacks on their supporters grew more bold and consequential, the law turned against those who had rejected augmentations. A de facto system of slavery and enablement of abuse began to take form as a result. It was in 1847 A.F. that this process was effectively complete; it was that year that a law had been passed deeming any person bearing sufficient strength or reflex-enhancing augmentations, as well as an electronics access implant, to, as ill-defined circumstances permitted, assume the role of an officer of the peace, allowing many to take advantage of those without augmentations. It soon became a clear-cut division between those rich enough to afford cybernetic implants and biotechnology augmentations and those who could not.
In 1840 A.F., after a number of humiliating wartime defeats and pyrrhic victories, the Stevlanul Peacekeepers army and Defense Force navy were restructured into the all-encompassing General Military. The public was led to believe that the military would be styled after the Timosi Republic's Central Military, one of the few foreign powers to have both military success and a less hostile disposition towards the troubled empire. This was not the case. Instead, relying further and further on cybernetics and artificial lifeforms, the General Military became what many believe to be one of the most horrifying armed service in human history, even beyond that of the Verinen Permanos Regentic's forced allegiance and invasive augmentation of its personnel.
The military was divided into three particular castes; "successors", "coordinators", and "recyclers". Each represented a particular role on the battlefield and this order of importance in the military further strengthened the inhuman conditions growing at home. Recyclers were soon integrated into civilian life, and the clout that they - and, by extension, any heavily modified individual - carried came with them. Quickly thereafter, Stevlanul's population stagnated, as the birth rate began to plummet thanks to rampant overaugmentation. In 1871 A.F., as the empire's population began to fall rather than grow, rather than forbid excessive modification, the government instead enacted cloning and forced breeding programs throughout its territory. Without the proper infrastructure or systems in place to bring these programs up to sustainable levels, however, this failed to halt the steady demise its encounter with the Garrant Commonwealth had enacted.
Cities in Stevlan territory soon became nightmarish shadows of their former selves as conscription continued to impact the nation's ability to sustain itself. Finally surrounded on all sides by its first true antagonist, the Garrant Commonwealth seized on its opportunity to exploit Stevlanul's growing list of what many considered crimes against humanity. In 1889 A.F., with the approval of the majority of the Coalition of Human Systems, the Commonwealth invaded the Federated Systems - which now amounted to just four star systems - and set in motion the final end of Stevlanul. It would take two years for Garran soldiers of the 38th and 39th Juningrad Rangers and 49th Endrickstadt MIAV to conquer Stevlan territory as its government fought tooth and nail for every city and inch of strategically important land. The story in space was far different, and reflected the growing disunion among its military; it took only six months to secure orbital control of every major planet in Stevlan space, including their homeworld. Less important worlds would take just another month while Space Navy admirals awaited reinforcement. While those hungry for war in the Navy came away disappointed in the fractured showing the General Military offered in space, the men and women of the Rangers and MIAV would return with terrifying stories of the condition their opponent was in. Tales of stragglers ripping themselves from successors and fleeing were often compared with the sight of the souls of the damned howling out from men forced to fight for a dying cause.
On the fateful day of November 13th, 1891 A.F., the Stevlanul Federated Systems' government finally dissolved and surrendered to Garran rangers of the 49th Endrickstadt's 3rd Mechanized Battalion. In one of the few Garran military conquests of recent history, the Commonwealth, with all its bullying and provocation, was hailed as a savior of an abused, downtrodden people by others. Those in Stevlan territory instead saw them as invaders fighting a war of extinction, and the resistance of many guaranteed them the fate they believed to be coming. Even as of 2203 A.F., reports of cybernetically-enhanced guerillas continue to plague news from Stevlan territory, even as more and more rangers find themselves assigned there.
More than just guerilla fighters, the Last of Stevlan - today, practically better known than the nation they arose from - have continued to plague space in former Stevlan territory, and even beyond. Fully titled the Last of the Stevlan General Military, they continue to uphold the same organizational structure and three part caste system held prior to the empire's collapse. While splintered, each group remains a substantial foe for colonial defense forces, thanks much to their augmentation and military equipment, training, and experience. Fuelled by hatred for the Garrant Commonwealth and all its allies, primarily those pure human nations that helped indirectly bring about the downfall of Stevlanul, their raids and hijackings most often take place in Coalition territory. Many of such attacks include kidnappings, and those taken are believed to have suffered a fate many consider worse than death; recycling and rebirth as a successor, or even forced conversion into an unwilling recycler.
As a particular headache to the Garrant Commonwealth and its allies, it is undoubted that many agents and informants have embedded themselves within the Last of Stevlan. The Garran External Intelligence service, most particularly, is thought to be the most successful, this opinion carrying much weight thanks to the External Intelligence's reputation as one of the most effective subterfuge and espionage agencies in human space. What is not relieving about the wealth of information uncovered about the Last of Stevlan is that many believe, agents included, that, based on findings from most splinter groups, the Last are in pursuit of something. It is thought that this "something" is of a military nature, and that the scattered former military groups believe it could restore their nation even after centuries of occupation by the Commonwealth. Even the most pessimistic and compromising of splinter groups - including the famous "Turncables" that fought alongside Federal marines against other Stevlan pirates in 1931 A.F. - have been reluctant to refute this line of thought, giving many military advisors in Coalition employ a headache that continues to throb worse.
Only time will tell if this wonder weapon - if it is even a weapon - will ever show itself before the Last of Stevlan are hunted down and destroyed. What remains clear is that, until their eventual eradication or reintegration, the Last of Stevlan are one of the most serious pirate threats to Coalition space. Well-armed, well-trained, and hosting an array of powerful cybernetic and genetic modifications, they are one that most certainly will not go without a fight.
Military
In 1840 A.F., the Stevlanul Peacekeepers and Defense Force were consolidated into a single, unified General Military, which soon developed a system of three distinct classes. Each class - or caste, as most consider it - held a level of importance that ranged from none to critically important. Following the collapse of the Stevlanul Federated Systems, the Last of Stevlan maintained the caste system and have since refined its roles and the respect - or lackthereof - between each.
"Successors" were a direct product of the creation of recyclers and their use both at home and in the field of battle. All soldiers in the General Military, following 1840 A.F., were required to bear host to what has since become known as the "straggler" implant. This combination of biotechnology and cybernetics allowed most of a human's central nervous system to detach from its body and maintain the individual it represented, usually as a mobile creature capable of returning to friendly territory to be processed by a recycler. When processed by a recycler, the resulting "replacement" of a straggler's host body was assumed to allow veteran soldiers to literally survive death in all but the most extreme circumstances. This, again, was not the case. Instead, successors proved to have little of their original mental faculties. The trauma of the nervous detachment proved so great that fewer than 4% of all successors are ever truly restored to their original state. Most returned as little more than the husks they were given, the bodies delivered knowing only basic combat routines and failing to advance much past the mental faculties of young children.
As such, successors quickly became the cannon fodder and unwitting bottom rung of the General Military ladder. Each successor represents a tragic tale; men made immortal, yet mindless, dying countless deaths in primitive horror without ever knowing why.
Coordinators are those human infantry that have not yet fallen in battle and found their minds stripped away by the recycling process. They represent the original Stevlanul Peacekeepers and Defense Force, fighting with quality cybernetics and organic augmentation, having learned from the painful experiences before them to better themselves as combatants. Having better tactical expertise and far more sound minds than successors, it is no surprise that coordinators - as their title suggests - act as unit leaders, officers, and supervisors of installations. It is rare that successors ever leave their quarters without the eye of a coordinator ensuring their tasks are met.
Recyclers were the initial inspiration for the restructuring of the Peacekeepers and Defense Force. They represent some of the most harsh genetic and cybernetic alterations of the human form and, in most cases, hardly resemble humans anymore. Likewise, with their augmentation's extreme nature, their stature among the armed services is similarly impressive. Most recyclers find themselves in leadership roles before they are even converted, and are considered to be permanent parts of their unit; that is to say, recyclers, barring desertion, serve until death.
Recyclers are, disturbingly, primarily selected from older women to ease the conversion process. Few men have been converted into these hulking monstrosities, and most have left smaller impacts than their female counterparts. When the process is complete, however, few could ever determine the gender of a recycler by visual inspection; all that remains is a vaguely humanoid figure standing at least four meters tall, carrying only superficial patches of their former skin as organic gel replaces much of their skin and muscles. Embedded in their chest is a cybernetic processing device, used to "digest" stragglers and fatally wounded soldiers into successors. This process is known to be extruciating, both for the successor to be reborn and the recycler themself, as it is most often necessary to take organic material directly from the recycler host to recreate the human body needed for the restored soldier.
Owing to their size and the constant need for energy to replace tissue lost to recycling processes, recyclers are primarily stationary and live out their lives in cybernetic capsules that allow integration with command and control networks. Additionally, recyclers require an incredible amount of sustenance even in the absence of their intended service. For this reason, mobile recyclers are uncommon, but to call them rare - as military demands most often include mobility - would be incorrect.
