Sic transit gloria mundi
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on the Qadiri.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Cavalry and starfighter squadron, personal escort.
Permission: Permission for all ArmaTech gear and all other subs made by Laira Darkhold's writer here and here. ARGH gear available per this thread. Can use Firemane gear because I own the company.
Links: Firemane Industries, First Contact, Jewel of the Void, Jazan Jai Khalal.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Sky Cataphracts of the Aether.
Affiliation: Shahbânu Semiramis, Qadiri.
Classification: Fighter Pilots, Air Cavalry.
Description: The Qadiri had a long tradition that there were other people living out amongst the stars. However, it was still quite a culture shock when space people suddenly descended from the sky. However, the Qadiri have adapted and realised the potential of the stars. Few have been as quick to embrace the benefits of contact with the greater Galaxy and use it to further their power as Shahbânu Semiramis III. The self-proclaimed Sun Empress wishes to unite the Qadiri under her banner and build a strong realm in the stars.
To do this she has had to adapt. For the time being she has had to play the game of the space people. Amikarese soldiers have been equipped with more advanced weapons and trained in their use. Her people have also acquired their own worldship, the Jewel of the Void. It is the jewel in the crown. Qadiri are new to space travel, but they have traits that have allowed them to adjust to it. Qadiri are almost all extremely good navigators. They seem to have an instinctual internal compass, meaning they are great sailors, travellers and now pilots. Some are even able to use the Force to instinctively find their way in the most treacherous of conditions.
The Sky Cataphracts take advantage of these traits. They are an crack fighter wing, one of the first that has been created by the Amikarese to fight the enemies of the Shahbânu. Cataphract is a Qadiri term for armoured heavy cavalry. They are members of a proud warrior tradition that is heavily interwoven with the Qadiri's feudal culture and the faith of Kashara, the chief goddess of the Qadiri pantheon. Their class occupies a social standing between the nobility and the common folk. One could liken them to knights. A Cataphract is expected to obey her feudal overlord, defend the innocent, fight the wicked and honour the gods and goddesses, especially Kashara. In the days of yore they rode ferocious Yazgid lizards into battle.
Of course, there has often been a gulf between the noble ideals a Cataphract is supposed to represent and those they represent in practice. The line between knight and brigand is often a thin one and depends on politics and economics. True knights who upoeld all the qualities for which knighthood stood for are few and far between. And some of those who are remembered as gallant warriors of good might have simply had good propagandists and been lucky enough to survive enough battles to make sure the history books and songs are written from their point of view. This must be kept in mind when discussing notions of honour.
Regardless, the Sky Cataphracts consider themselves to be the inheritors of a proud tradition built upon honour, courage, skill and chivalry. They regard themselves as part of a martial elite. However, they have taken to the stars and swapped their Yazgid for starfighters and airspeeders. Compared to the horrors of industrialised warfare on the ground, a dogfight in the sky or in the void of space does appear chivalrous on first sight. Despite the hardships and cruelties of aerial and space warfare, they are celebrated as 'knights of the sky'. Of course, their privileges have been the cause of envy on the part of groundpounders.
The Sky Cataphracts have a reputation for daring and arrogance. Though a bit of a stereotype, it is not without merit. They are expected to treat their starfighters with the same care they would show their mounts. Indeed, it is common for a Cataphract to personalise their craft. They are selected for their deeds of valour and virtue. Of course, loyalty and patronage also play a role. Strictly speaking, a commoner may be knighted, but this requires having the right connections. Service is long and arduous, but has its share of perks. Firemane has provided the Qadiri with starfighters. The desert elves intend to one day build their own designs, but that will probably take a while. Given the fact that until recently the Qadiri were at a pre-atomic tech level, they have already progressed very far. Semiramis is very media-savvy and her propagandists do their best to publicise the deeds of her 'knights of the sky'.
The mission profile of the Sky Cataphracts is varied. They may be deployed for raids, dogfights, escort missions and similar. When Semiramis travels in her personal ship, the Cataphracts provide escort, protecting their queen with their lives if need be. They may also be assigned to provide protection for her worldship. They are a bit of a prestige unit, as they show that the Qadiri can not only adapt the technology of the sky people, but thrive in the stars and perhaps do better than the humans. The Sky Cataphracts carry pistols as sidearms in the event that they are shot down. Moreover, ceremonial swords are issued as part of their dress uniforms. Cataphracts who have been dishonourably discharged are deprived of their swords to signify their disgrace. Officially, the Sky Cataphracts are supposed to be a full attack wing composed of three squadrons, though in practice they may not necessarily operate at full strength.
Nonetheless, being a member of the group is very prestigious. It is raises the standing of the members' families. For the same reason the punishments for cowardice or betrayal are draconian, as these actions would bring the squadron into disrepute. The Sky Cataphracts are also distinguished by the fact that every single member is Force-Sensitive. Compared with humans, Qadiri have high rates of natural Force affinity. This has encouraged their strong theocratic tendencies. They particularly excel at instinctive astrogation and precognition. These abilities are a boon for piloting.
The Sky Cataphracts are led by Mansada Jai Rikoval, a highly skilled combat pilot. She was born into a family of minor Qadiri nobility. First she served in the cavalry, serving with distinction against the foes of her queen. But when the Qadiri reached for the stars, she volunteered to be trained as a pilot. Mansada is a cunning, devious pilot known for her marksmanship and skill at evasion. Rather than engaging in fancy acrobatics or risky dogfights, she prefers to patiently stalk her enemies, then strike and blast them out of space.
She is a noted tactician, wing leader and sniper. Semiramis' public relations machine has made her name well-known. The realm needs heroes, after all. Privately, she is rather cynical about the adulation. But Mansada is a huntress above all. She is undoubtedly undaunted and cold-blooded. She has a habit of scrounging souvenirs from the spacecraft she shoots down. Aside from the head of the animals she kills on hunting trips, her home is decorated with various items looted from wreckage. At the same time, she is quite approachable to those in her squadron. During the Krolis conflict she led an unauthorised sortie into League territory in order to drop a wreath on the grave of an enemy pilot, with whom she had gone to the flight academy.
To her, the dogfights in the sky and in space are contests of skill. Whenever she scores a kill, she contacts a jeweller and orders a silver cup engraved with the date and the type of craft she has shot down. She has taken the rather flamboyant step of painting her starfighter crimson. For this reason she is nicknamed the Red Daeva. As the kill silhouettes painted on the fighter show, she has also wracked up an impressive count of enemy fighters and other craft. Mansada loves the fight, but insists on fair treatment of civilians and prisoners.
Her younger sister Larissa Jai Rikoval is also a member of her squadron. Compared to Mansada Larissa is more of a 'muscle pilot'. Or, to put it in the Red Daeva's words, Larissa is a brawler, not a huntress. She is an aggressive steamroller who favours frontal assaults, pressing an attack and raining down precise fire on her foe. Thus she is the type to commonly engage in dramatic, close-ranged fights. Larissa has very potent precognitive powers, which gives her a strong grasp on what her opponents are thinking and what they will do before they do it. She can also think extremely fast in high stress situations, come up with a plan and put it into action.
Bahram Jal Kushal is the son of Tanaz Jai Kushal, a Khaimari. Once Tanaz was a feared pirate admiral whose corsairs gained infamy due to their daring raids. Ironically, Tanaz used to be the mentor of Jazan Jai Khalal, herself a daring corsair and pilot. Both fought the Amikarese Empire in the past. However, like many successful corsairs who live long enough, they have decided to legitimise their ventures. Today, Jazan is a highly decorated Firemane starfighter commander, while Tanaz has put down the sword. She has become one of Semiramis' advisors and governors, living a life of luxury Semiramis has allowed her new vassal's to join her prestigious fighter unit. This is a great honour which has enhanced her family's prestige. But it is also a way to control her if she steps out of line. Qadiri practice enactic-cognatic succession and Tanaz has a daughter, so Bahram is not her immediate heir despite being the older child. This is something the young man is not particularly happy about. However, being a Cataphract is a good way for him to make a name for himself and build connections. He is eager, ambitious and a good pilot.
Bahram used to be in a relationship with Jazan, but they have since broken up. Naturally Jazan insists that her squadron is the better one because it is almost entirely composed of Khaimari. Bahram is quite fond of the ladies, which can get him in trouble sometimes. Compared to some of his aristocratic peers, his manners are rather rustic. However, he gets on well with Larissa, who likes him precisely because he is not a refined aristo. Bahram finds all the talk about knightly honour rather silly. War is a normal part of life and politics, but there is no difference between a 'noble' knight and a raider.
Helma Jai Ghorasha is another prominent member and the daughter of a diplomat. Military education forged her into a promising young officer. She distinguished herself through daring cavalry charges, but soon grew bored with the mundanity of soldierly life. There was little chance for personal glory in the industrialised warfare the sky people had dintroduced. When one of her friends received training as a pilot, Helma forged transfer papers in order to join the Amikarese's nascent aerospace service. In effect, she deserted her regiment. However, her family's connections spared her from a court-martial.
Helma found this new kind of war suited her temperament and ambitions. As she wrote, "I seem to come alive when I am up in space and looking down at the earth. I feel like a little goddess." She gained renown as a recon and later a combat pilot. Her aristocratic upbringing has granted her the favour of nobles in high command and at the Imperial Court, but also had a negative effect on her attitude towards subordinates. Helma is rather standoffish towards her comrades. She is a good pilot and planner, but disliked due to her high-handed manner. She is not particularly fazed by this. In her own words, she does not want to be an ordinary person, but to tower over the herd so that they follow her rather than the other way round.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Medium
Unit Availability: Unique
Unit Experience: Veteran
Equipment:
Armour:
Starships & Vehicles:
Ranged Weapons:
- SSK-5 Icon Blaster Pistol
- Shatter Pistol
- Magnetic Revolver
- A280-CFE
- DC-15S Blaster Carbine
- MSD-32 Disruptor Pistol
- Renegade Heavy Blaster Pistol
- FWG-5 Flechette Pistol
- Hold-Out Bolter
- ACS-207 Aerosolblaster
- Dur-24 Wrist Laser
Combat Function: The Sky Cataphracts are a starfighter wing. Their fighters are designed to fit multiple roles. They can perform recon, patrol, carry out rapid strikes, fly escort missions and participate in dogfights. The Cataphracts are crack pilots. They benefit from the fact that all Qadiri have an inherent navigational talent and impressive dexterity. Moreover, they have the ability to enhance their piloting, improve their aim and coordination. They have high morale and a strong esprit de corps. This gives them a high degree of cohesion and ensures they remain focused even when under pressure.
To elaborate, they specialise in Force Reflex, instinctive astrogation, Force Meld, telepathic and precognitive abilities. Force Reflex allows them to enhance their reflexes and effectively slow down the world around them. Drawing on this power allows them a few moments of heightened reactions, while everything slows down around them. Force Meld allows them to join their minds together through the Force, drawing strength from one another. In doing so, they enhance their coordination and boost their efficiency by acting as one.
However, the enhanced power brought by Force Meld works both ways: a great disturbance in the Force could overwhelm the melding participants as they receive the pain through their enhanced senses. If the pain is caused by the minds the melding participants are touching, it will bring devastating effects to the participants, sometimes to such a degree that the participants will lose control of their own minds and become ignorant to other threats. Finally, instinctive astrogation boosts their navigational and piloting abilities. For one, it allows them to find safe routes through hyperspace without using a navigational computer or astromech droid.
Situations where preternatural navigational talents can be of use include reasonable strategic and tactical manoeuvres, like making precise jumps from the outer reaches of a system, improved survivability in say dense asteroid fields, making safe blind jumps when necessary, finding safe short cuts around blockaed routes and getting safely to their destination in the midst of battles, meteor storms and so on, assuming they are not the main target. To a degree, it helps with following others through hyperspace, though this requires great focus.
However, the Cataphract lack the classical, hard-hitting powers commonly associated with Force-Users. This can be detrimental if they are shot down or have to exit their craft, especially since they only wear flight suits and carry personal defence weapons, with the largest being a compact carbine. On the technical front, their starfighters are solid, but pretty standard. The Cataphracts derive their capabilities from the skill and coordination of the pilots rather than having the best starships. The Sky Cataphracts are also skilled in piloting airspeeders. Speeders are more like cavalry, after all. They have access to Bladesinger Combat Speeders. These are very fast, agile and have decent firepower. But while they make good infantry shredders, they rely on speed for protection. This means they lack resilience against heavy weapons.
Strengths:
- Elite squadron of starfighter and airspeeder pilots.
- The pilots are Qadiri, and thus benefit from their species' inherent navigational. Moreover, they are powerful Force adepts, able to use the Force to achieve impressive feats of coordination, reaction time, piloting, navigation and precognition.
- The pilots are lightly armed and armoured. This leaves them more vulnerable if they are shot down behind enemy lines or have to eject their craft. They can defend themselves, but will lack staying power, so their best bet would be to make their towards friendly lines and evade direct confrontation with the enemy.
- Their starfighters are good, but fill the jack-of-all trades role. Their weapons are potent, but they are weak against capital ships in a direct confrontation, as they will have to use precision fire against weak points and evade a warship's anti-starfighter defences. Their airspeeders are agile and excellent infantry shredders, but trade resilience for speed, leaving them vulnerable to heavy weapons.
For millennia the Qadiri lived in isolation from the rest of the Galaxy. While their beliefs allowed for the existence of other sentient life forms in the stars, they had not encountered any of them. Thus their struggles were defined by conflicts with their cousins, the Xioquo and the Vashyada, as well as internecine strife for supremacy. Unlike the Eldorai, the Qadiri never gravitated towards one ruler who managed to unite them under her rule.
Instead, they were a collection of kingdoms, principalities, and city-states. The attempt of one ruler to bring the various states to heel inevitably led to the formation of coalitions. Adira III, the grandmother of Semiramis, tried to centralise power in Amikaron and expand it, but was met with rebellions, war and eventually assassination for her efforts. Her granddaughter had to fight a minor civil war against an usurper in order to claim her throne.
All this is to say that the sudden arrival of the space people was quite a culture shock, especially since they were far more advanced technologically. This did not make the Qadiri primitives; they just had not yet advanced beyond a Renaissance era tech level due to their isolation. Unfortunately, first contact was not peaceful, for the off-worlders were corsairs who had come here in search of booty. When they landed, they plundered and enslaved several villages. An attempt on the part of the Qadiri to negotiate with the invaders was met with treachery. The first battle went ill for the Qadiri.
However, then the slavers let down their guard, judging the desert elves to be beneath them. Semiramis seized the chance, ambushed them at night and had them put to the sword. The corsairs were defeated, but soon returned. However, this time another group of off-worlders came to the aid of the Qadiri. It was a combined Firemane and Eldorai task force. Semiramis made a pact with them. Not only did they offer protection against further incursions, they could provide her with advanced technology, so that one day her realm would not need them. So she decided to play a long game. Eventually the first Qadiri reached for the stars. For a race that until now had never heard of faster-than-light travel, blasters or starships, they caught up fast. When Firemane hosted a great summit of elf rulers, it was decided that they would go off and colonise.
When Amikaron's first worldship had been completed, the occasion was celebrated with great pomp. Their dexterity and inherent navigational talents made many Qadiri great pilots. The Sky Cataphracts of the Aether were formed to provide Semiramis with a starfighter squadron. In addition to serving practical purposes, it would also be a prestige unit and provide fodder for her propaganda machine. The squadron was formed from the ranks of what constituted Qadiri knighthood.
Despite the Shahs' and Shahbânus' best attempts to centralise power in their hands, Amikaron still had a rather feudal structure. Offering the daughters and sons of the nobility a place in an elite force was a way to reward them, and simultaneously tie them closer to the Crown. A son or a second daughter who was unlikely to inherit the lands and titles of their family could make a name for themselves through service, attaining fame and glory as a knight of the sky. Mansada Jai Rikoval, a scion of minor nobility, rose to become the commander of the squadron.
Initially the squadron had to be content with very old starfighters from the Galactic Civil War, much like Qadiri grunts were stuck with an E-11 blaster rifle. This was a cause of discontent once the Qadiri noticed how old these designs were. At first they flew Z-95 Headhunters. Using these, the squadron distinguished itself during the Krolis War, an internal Qadiri conflict about who should be Saoshyant, the supreme religious head of the Kashari Church.
It was the first internal Qadiri conflict where both sides had access to offworlder technology. Initially the Sky Cataphracts largely flew recon missions, but they soon engaged in dogfights with League of Krolis pilots. Both sides made use of Force-Sensitive pilots who could draw upon the Force to improve their piloting. In the final battle, the Sky Catpahracts faced an enemy squadron in the middle of a storm, with both using the Force to navigate and coordinate. Malsanda and her squadron distinguished themselves as daring, well-coordinated pilots, allowing them to prevail. They developed a bit of a rivalry with Mirage Squadron, a group of largely Khaimari pilots that served Firemane. The sky knights also saw action on the ground, riding their airspeeders. They employed them in a manner akin to light cavalry.
However, when the Sky Cataphracts went up against foreigners, it soon turned out that while they were good pilots, the starfighters they flew were badly dated. An engagement against an Archangel raiding force produced high casualties. Nonetheless, Firemane was initially reluctant to sell them modern fighters. Semiramis was, after all, very ambitious and difficult to control. Thus while the corporation offered the Qadiri a new deal, it still fell short of what the desert elves wanted. This was particularly vexing after the squadron came to the rescue a Firemane diplomatic ship that had come under attack. But the Nebula Star Combine, a conglomerate of foreign businessmen, tried to rip off the Qadiri by selling them a 'bespoke, next generation space superiority fighter'. Said craft turned to be extremely flawed. The engines, hyperdrive and navicomputer systems were suboptimal. Testing highlighted safety problems. The off-worlders bribed corrupt government officials to overlook those.
During a scouting misison that turned into an engagement with a First Order remnant group, the combat shielding of Malsanda's starfighter experienced difficulties and the targeting computer stopped working. This put her at a disadvantage against her foes. However, the Qadiri pilot was able to improvise by using her Force powers to guide her, destroying two TIE fighters pursuing her. Fortunately, her suit kept her alive when the starfighter's life support system was damaged. She was forced to make an emergency crash-landing.
There she had to survive for several days, facing the hostile wild life and Imperial pursuers, before she was able to reunite with her squadron and get off the rock. An inquiry revealed that the contractors had sold a product they knew to be faulty to the 'sand babies', whom they had regarded as too primitive to notice. In response, Malsanda and her squadron led a successful raid against the company's shipyard. While their foe had superior technology, the Qadiri pilots used their Force-enhanced coordination and the element of surprise to level the playing field. They were able to knock out the deflector shield, paving the way for an assault. The director was brought home chains to face the Queen's justice. After that the squadron received more reliable, multi-role fighters.
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