OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Shadow Knight forces. This is a resubmission of this unit.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Heavy fire support.
Permission: They can use Firemane equipment because I own the company.
Links: Eldorai, Eldorai Exodus from Kaeshana, Casus Belli, Qadiri.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Void Breakers.
Affiliation: Shadow Knights, Court of the Shadows.
Classification: Mechanised cavalry.
Equipment:
Vehicles:
Armour:
Sidearms:
- Magnetic Revolver
- Cylix Bolt Pistol
- Verpine Shattergun
- FWG-5 Flechette Smart Pistol
- A280 CFE Blaster
- Renegade Blaster
- Sonic Disruptor
- Explosive Blaster Pistol
- Subrepeating Blaster
Misc:
- Misc. equipment such as lifeform scanners, spare parts, repair tools and medkits,
- Neural band.
- Whisper Jetpack.
- Grenades
- Eldorai Spirit Gem (can be directly plugged into a walker)
Melee:
Description: The Void Breakers are a unit of mechanised infantry in the service of the Shadow Knights, a group of Eldorai renegades and dissidents formed in response to the destruction of Kaeshana and the Great Exodus. They are a small, but well-trained unit whose members make use of Mag'ladroth walkers. Their vehicles are designed to provide heavy fire support during boarding actions, urban warfare and similar engagements. This makes them an ideal support unit for infantry. The Shadow Knights have scarce resources and have to steal most of their equipment. Their troops tend to rely on speed and surprise rather than numbers and heavy firepower. The Void Breakers complement their usual approach by providing a heavy punch.
Their walkers are Firemane designs. The human-led megacorporation has equipped the armed forces of the Eldorai Matriarchy. Most of the Shadow Knights are career rebels or deserters from the Eldorai army. Quite a few of them have fought Firemane troops in the past. This does not stop them from appropriating their gear though. After all, a lot of the equipment the Eldorai used to use before Kaeshana was opened up to the galaxy is antiquated.
The Void Breakers are administrated by the Court of War. This is one of the bodies the Shadow Knights have set up to organise, police and regulate the various professions and spheres of society. The Court of War is responsible for soldiers, pilots, naval personnel and so on. Ultimately they answer to Strategos Yseult Faerin, the general-in-chief of the Shadow Knights, who has been responsible for reorganising the Shadow Knight military. Most of the members of the Void Breakers are Eldorai. While the elves tend to be less physically strong than humans, they have impressive dexterity and hand-eye coordination. This makes them excellent vehicle pilots and thus helps with commanding their walkers. However, they have also recruited Qadiri, who make incredible pilots. Service guarantees citizenship in Shadow Knights' heavily militarised, nomadic society, and membership in the Void Breakers is quite prestigious.
The majority of the Void Breakers are normal organics. However, a select few of them are, strictly speaking, not really alive anymore. These are veteran Shadow Knights who suffered near-fatal injuries, but who were able to return to service by undergoing a special treatment. Their consciousness has been transferred into spirit gems. These gems utilise entechment technology to preseve mortally wounded heroes. Unlike conventional entechment, the spirits inside are not tormented. Instead they exist in a grey area between life and death.
Walkers can modified to house these gems, allowing the fallen Void Breakers to continue serving even in death, merging their organic skills machine tirelessness. The gems tend to be plugged directly into the walker. This maximises their ability to interface with the vehicle and become one with, but obviously leaves them very vulnerable if the walker is crippled, as they cannot move without help. It also means that the vehicle cannot be piloted by a normal pilot. Their living comrades regard them with respect, but also find them unnerving. Their state of being is not natural, but it is one of the many sacrifices the Shadows have made in the name of survival. Usually the pilots trapped in spirit gems are volunteers who have signed an agreement stipulating their willingness to serve in death. But on rare occasions the Shadows decide to volunteer someone. These tend to be people whose skills are judged too important to lose, or criminals who can repay their debt to society this way.
Lydia Faezana is the commander of the Void Breakers. She is a long-time member of the Shadow Knights, though she was originally a royalist. She leads the Void Breakers into battle in her own personalised walker. Lydia lost both her legs in battle. However, she is a devoutly religious woman who feels bionics and implants pollute the flesh. So rather than get artificial replacements, she uses a hoverchair. Her disability has dulled her ability to command a big, stompy machine and unleash hell upon the enemy. Her record would have made it easy for her to run for a seat in the Shadow Knight assembly, but she does not want to leave her troops.
Lydia used to be a royalist soldier, and served in the elite Ariane's Fist battalion, a crack heavy armour unit. Among other things, she fought the ferocious Klaxxi on Sullust and the First Order during the Battle of Kaeshana. She felt that the Matriarchy was pandering too much to the humans of Firemane and left for the Shadow Knights. She had already piloted one of these walkers in the royalist army, so she brought much needed expertise to the Shadows. Lydia is minorly Force-Sensitive, but not enough to merit serious training and become a full Angelii. Thus she joined the regular army and learned how to pilot a big walker. However, she has precognitive and Sense abilities.
She is in a relationship with a fellow walker pilot called Delara Jai Anhala. Unlike many of her comrades, Delara is a Qadiri. After her people learned that there was life beyond their homeworld and started adapting offworld technology, she worked for an exploration guild that wanted to find new markets and colonies. Facing an existence as a slave, she was freed when the Shadow Knights boarded the slaver ship, with the Void Breakers leading the charge.
When one of her captors tried to use her as a sentient shield to escape, she was able to use an improvised weapon she had smuggled in to free herself and give a Shadow soldier a clear shot. After receiving treatment for the abuse the slavers had put her through, she elected to stay and join her liberators. Delara was already a good mechanic and medic. She has taken well to piloting a walker. It works to her advantage that Qadiri have inherent navigational talent.
She and Lydia behave professionally when on the job, but are affectionate outside of it. Life with the Shadows is far from perfect and being a Void Breaker is dangerous. But Delara is happy about getting away from the Shahs and aristocrats. Besides, now she rides a mechanical steed that is a lot bigger and more powerful than the Yazgid Qadiri nobles ride on. She has become a good shot in and out of the cockpit. Delara is a believer in Kashara, the supreme Qadiri goddess. Lydia has no issue with this, as she regards Kashara as the Qadiri version of Ashira. Thus she sees it as them worshipping different aspects of the same goddess.
Airdan Balroris is another prominent members of the Void Breakers. However, strictly speaking he is no longer alive, though not dead either. Rather he exists in a state of unlife, for his soul is trapped inside a spirit gem that is normally plugged into a walker. One might call it purgatory. He was born to a poor family of Eldorai peasants as one of ten children, most of whom did not survive. Before the cataclysm he worked in a cannery, then as comms operator.
Airdan married a female Shadow Knight officer and became very interested in military matters. Though many Shadows had not suddenly had an epiphany, the need to band together after Kaeshana's devastation opened up new opportunities for men. He was trained as a medic, learned how to use weapons and drive vehicles. However, his wife was killed fighting the First Order. Airdan became determined to fight all enemies of his people, be they Imperials, slavers or genocidal HRDs, to avenge his wife's death.
He sold all his possessions to donat a tank to the army, on the condition that he be allowed to drive it. Airdan called his walker "Fighting Boyfriend", emblazoning these words on it. At first many of his comrades saw him as a publicity stunt and a bit of a joke, but this attitude changed when he proved his fierceness in combat. He took to his new role with gusto, fighting enemies of the Shadows with the fury of the possessed. In his first battle, he manoeuvred his walker in intense fighting, destroying heavy repeater nests and flushing enemy soldiers out of a trench. When his walker was damaged by enemy fire, Airdan disregarded orders and leapt out of his vehicle. He was able to carry out repairs under heavy fire. He was promoted to sergeant.
He acquired a reputation as a skilled walker driver. However, his life took a turning point during a battle against against an Imperial warlord. His walker was able to breach the enemy defences, taking out enemy troops and relieving allied infantry that had been pinned down. However, his walker was hit by a concussion missile and immobilised. They came under fierce enemy fire. Airdan defended himself, but was severaly wounded by shell fragments in the skull. He lost consciousness and was close to death. His life could not be saved, at least not in the conventional way. Instead his consciousness was transferred to a spirit gem.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Small
Unit Availability: Rare
Unit Experience: Elite.
Combat Function: The Void Breakers are Shadow Knight soldiers who make use of Mag'ladroth walkers. These walkers are designed to provide heavy fire support during boarding actions, urban warfare and similar engagements. They are heavily armoured and advanced weapons systems such as heavy bolters, shattercannons and flamethrowers can be mounted on them. Such weapons make the Void Breakers very potent against large clusters of enemy infantry, light vehicles and hostile Force-Users. Both the heavy and the light variant of the Mag'ladroth are utilised.
Death charging them to hack off their legs is less efficient than with other designs because the legs are comparatively small and the Graphite mesh has limited lightsabre resistance. However, light vehicles such as speeders could run rings around them. They can dish out plenty of punishment and are hard to kill, but enough firepower takes them down. They are obviously vulnerable to aerial bombardment and artillery strikes. The same applies to the cannon of a tank. The light variant is a quicker vehicle but its armor is more vulnerable so it can be damanged by light and medium vehicles, and it's easier to take down by personal anti-armor weapons. Heavy variants are slower but pretty much only vulnerable to advanced anti-armor weapons and heavy vehicles.
Notable weaknesses of their walkers include being extremely slow and thus at a disadvantage against faster craft, the large amount of recoil generated by certain weapons such as heavy bolters, meaning a walker cannot fire swiftly on the move. The Void Breakers are utilised primarily to help Shadow Knight soldiers board warships, clear out enemy trenches and in urban warfare situations. They can also be useful as sentries. The light variant of their walkers, being only 3m in height, is perfect for boarding operations, but depending on the targeted vessel even the 5m tall heavy variant can be useful for space insertions.
Moving in conjunction with infantry, they can provide direct fire support. The Void Breakers are capable of dismounting their craft and fighting as light infantry, but like any walker or tank crews have to contend with a number of disadvantages. They wear decent armour and carry sidearms, blades and carbines for personal protection, but lack heavy weapons outside of their crafts. Thus they will require protection and reinforcements fast if their walkers are compromised. Thus the Void Breakers should not be deployed in a vacuum, but as part of a combined arms force. On the ground it would be smart to screen them with more lightly armoured, faster vehicles suh as armed airspeeders.
Strengths:
- Mag'ladroth walkers are heavily armoured and powerful infantry support platforms. Well-armoured and can be equipped with potent heavy weapons such as heavy bolters, shattercannons and shatterbolters. They can take and dish out a lot of punishment.
- The Void Breakers are ideal for boarding actions and urban warfare.
- Walkers are very slow and thus easily outmanoeuvred by faster craft.
- Despite their armour and firepower, they are at a disadvantage against tanks and the like. Moreover, they are vulnerable to air and artillery strikes.
- The Void Breakers are not a large unit, as the Shadow Knights do not have many of the walkers. They are deployed in small squadrons.
One of the downsides of being a nomad fleet run by a rebel junta is significant scarcity of resources. Sure, it is quite thrilling to be unbound by the dictates of interstellar and planetary governments. Likewise, it is liberating to finally put one's ideology into action. Assuming one is able to agree on one and is not torn apart by internal strife, that is, for being a rebellious rebel is always easier than being a builder. However, the lack of planetary domains also means that one does not have the revenue basis of an actual government.
This is an issue that the Shadow Knights have had to deal with. For a paramilitary survivalist movement their forces are quite strong and they put a lot of effort into training them, though their internal politics can get in the way due to them being a rather diverse coalition of Eldorai renegades. However, most of their ground forces are infantry and light vehicles. They lack the means to go toe-to-toe with the armies of major powers and so their military operations are focused on raids, lightning strikes and boarding operations. The fact that the Eldorai races have a high proportion of Force-Sensitives has allowed them to use preternatural powers as a force multiplier to a degree, especially due to the Eldorai's affinity for elemental abilities.
Nonetheless, they have realised the necessity of utilising some heavier hardware. The Void Breakers are one attempt to provide this. These soldiers utilise the old but still deadly and serviceable Mag'ladroth walker. Strictly speaking, this design has more in common with a large personal exoskeleton than a conventional walker. It was designed by Firemane Industries and the Guild of Hammers. Its name is a direct homage to the so-called 'Machine God' Siobhan Kerrigan and HK-36 fought during the final battle against the Bando Gora on Gehenna. The first walkers left the factory not long before the Netherworld Event sent the Galaxy spiralling into chaos.
Some of the walkers were sold by Firemane to the Eldorai royal army. Aside from deploying them against pirates and raiders, the royalists also used them for policing duties in problematic provinces. A few saw action during the Troubles in Santaissa. The months leading up to the exodus from Kaeshana were a chaotic period. As the Eldorai learned that their homeworld was doomed, law and order collapsed. People did anything to fleet the doomed planet. Others rose up in rebellion, believing that if the Eldorai purified themselves the Goddess Ashira would intercede and stop the asteroid from destroying the planet.
In the end, the asteroid impacted, though most Eldorai were evacuated by Firemane prior to the impact. Those that remained cursed those who had gotten away and faced a harsh struggle for survival. The Shadow Knights were formed to protect them. The Shadow Knights were able to get their hands on some Firemane surplus gear during these chaotic days, seizing an Eldorai royalist cache.
This included a bunch of the walkers. Indeed, an abandoned base that had manufactured them became the site of a heated battle between Shadow Knights and a rival warlord. Archon Naesala Faethyra, the elected leader of the Shadow Knights, formed the Void Breakers to help her protect the surviving Eldorai communities against warlords and raiders. They performed redoubtable service against these foes. The Void Breakers saw action during the Kaeshana Rebellion, when they supported Firemane and Galactic Alliance forces in the assault on the First Order-controlled ruins of the Citadel of Dawn. However, by then attrition and a limited ability to repair damaged walkers had whittled down their numbers.
After the Shadow Knights evacuated from Kaeshana in the aftermath of the First Order occupation, the unit was reorganised. Yseult Faerin, who as Strategos was the renegades' new general-in-chief, took an interest in them, putting the experiences she had gained as a general officer in the Republic army to good use. As the Shadow Knights and their followers had become a spacefaring people, a greater emphasis was placed on their use as a support force during boarding actions. Due to their slowness, they would not be used as scout vehicles, though they could provide fire support for patrols.
In these capacities the Void Breakers performed well, battling pirates and Kraal raiders. When the Conspiracy of Equals, a radical left-wing insurgency, tried to topple the Citizens' Council, the Void Breakers aided the Exemplars in boarding their command ship and putting an end to the uprising. More walkers were acquired after the Eldorai launched their vast colonisation fleet from Tygara to find new worlds to settle on. A good number of the vehicles went 'missing' during transit. Some of the walkers stolen by the rebels later vanished into the hands of opportunistic corsairs or rogue Shadows. This vexed the rebels, but they were still left with enough to walkers to equip their frces. The Void Breakers also saw action against Archangel, a machine cult that had become a serious threat to the Shadow Knights and the Eldorai exiles.
The Void Breakers started out as a purely Eldorai unit. However, more recently an increasing number of Qadiri joined them. The Eldorai's Tygaran 'cousins' displayed a surprising eagerness to learn and make good vehicle pilots. As with any Shadow Knight military unit, service guaranteed citizenship. Pensions were paid to the families of those who had performed the ultimate sacrifice for the motherland or suffered significant injuries in the line of duty.
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