Difference between revisions of "Bushraki"

Around 1400 B.E. the [[Sa'hak-ren]] Hierarchy developed a new kind of advanced medical tech based on the unique genetic material harvested from the Cleax, who heal more quickly than any other known race. Someone near-death from grievous injury could be healed in a matter of hours, using injections that caused the body to rapidly and aggressively repair itself, regardless of race. Using this rapid-healing medtech, the Sa'hak-ren, who are masters of genetic manipulation, albeit in a manner completely different from that of the [[Fatar]], began to experiment on the nascent Bushraki people, who hadn't yet left their home planet of [[Dikamazi]].

For a thousand years, the Sa'hak-ren treated the Bushraki as their personal laboratory, vivisecting them and then healing them, poisoning them and healing them, hitting them with lethal doses of radiation and then healing them, and so on, always without any pain relief.

Eventually, the Sa'hak-ren decided to begin breeding Bushraki to be shock troops for the Hierarchy, enhancing them at birth with cybernetics that would greatly increase their potency. What they found, however, were the same problems that have plagued development of serious cybernetic enhancements across Starmourn: the biggest enemy is the body itself, rejecting the enhancements.

The trouble was that the procedures they had to perform on the Bushraki were so invasive that vivisection was merely the beginning, and even with the healing tech engineered from Cleax genes, the Bushraki couldn't survive this kind of all-out assault on their bodies.

The introduction of the Cleax genes changed everything for them. Physically, of course, they no longer resembled natural beings, full of enhancements both organic and technological, but far more important was the change in their emotional and cultural makeup.  They became an enraged, broken race. Violent crime rates on Dikamazi soared, and many of the new Bushraki simply hunted the old Bushraki down, who regarded their descendants with a combination of pity and horror.

Hate was now the byword of the Bushraki. Hate for the detested Sa'hak-ren. Hate for what they had become. Hate for what they had lost. Hate without hope. Hate without future.

However, Life rarely deals you a good troom deck without making you pay for it later, and as the Sa'hak-ren discovered, you can have too much of a good thing. After tasting battle against the Xariel, the Bushraki largely ceased their in-fighting, turning their substantial aggression against them and steamrolling across their planet. None had ever seen warriors capable of withstanding what the Bushraki could, and with their enhanced strength, speed, and reflexes, they were more than just formidable. The Bushraki fought like madmen, taking incredible damage and continuing to battle, thanks to the wetwiring tech the Sa'hak-ren had created with the Cleax genetic material.

When the conquest was over, however, the Bushraki lost none of their hate, none of their bloodlust. They began to fight each other again, and, in what should have never been a surprise, the Sa'hak-ren themselves, in increasing numbers. They became completely unmanageable, and so destructive (and self-destructive) were they that the Hierarchy eventually simply abandoned their millennia-long project and left the Bushraki to their own devices on Dikamazi.

===Enter the Nabia===

With the departure of the Sa'hak-ren from their lives, the Bushraki rejoiced, but their fundamental nature didn't alter. Though they had now left their planet, they only possessed a few ships capable of interstellar travel, stolen and hidden from their former masters. They had also learned enough about the technology used to alter Bushraki in the womb and then implant them with cybernetics that they were able to continue this practice, wishing to maintain their race's strength. Painkillers were now a key part of the enhancement process, of course.

One race, however, saw opportunity: the Nabia. Always looking for new markets for the wide variety of drugs they manufacture and peddle, they came to the Bushraki offering a trade: the rare hardwoods from your planet's forests for ships from the Nabia, and permission to establish trading posts on Dikamazi. The Bushraki leadership eagerly agreed, for what they wanted more than anything was revenge on the Sa'hak-ren, and building an armada would be required.

The ships were really just a distraction, meant to keep the Bushraki from thinking too much about the Nabia's real motivations. The Nabia had, quite presciently, seen that a culture of broken souls filled with hate would be the perfect fit for their addictive products, and the cherry on top was this new wetwiring tech the Sa'hak-ren had built into the Bushraki.

Dikamazi became one giant drug den, and one of the most infamous places in Starmourn. Those of other races would visit seeking the secrets of wetwiring tech, and if they weren't killed in a random brawl or murdered for fun by a Bushraki high on glitter, they would leave disappointed. The Bushraki knew that their enhancements and the technology behind them were the only real bargaining chip they had other than natural resources.

The Ishvana and the Bushraki War

And then, one day, the Ishvana made contact with the Bushraki. It offered them two things: Technology called the 'mindsim' - effectively a tiny processor array with huge local storage capabilities wired directly into the brain - that would dramatically increase the efficiency of both their wetwiring and their other cybernetic enhancements - and a pledge to help them exact revenge on the Sa'hak-ren Hierarchy.

In return, the Ishvana required the Bushraki to help it war against the races of Starmourn sector, which the Bushraki were only too happy to do, while it searched for technology to transcend and seek out the Empyreal it believes lies on the other side. Along with the Vendal, the Bushraki stormed into central Starmourn in the First Bushraki War, beginning in 18 A.E., named as such because the other races of Starmourn did not yet know that the Ishvana was the driving force behind the war.

For the next 16 years, the Bushraki threw themselves with gusto into the war, but they and the Vendal were finally overmatched by the combined might of the newly-formed Song Dominion, and its hired Free Fleet, led by an aging Admiral Mezer Juul and seconded by Maddox Khan and Akari Lane.

 

The First War of the Ishvana

Somewhat confusingly-named to the layman, the First War of the Ishvana is really the second of the Ishvana wars in the modern age, after the Bushraki War. Regardless, this war, launched in 72 A.E., was fought much as the Bushraki War was, but with even greater numbers of Bushraki and Vendal. After the Bushraki decimated the planet Song in a final assault, the war was essentially over, the Ishvana having failed, again, to find what it sought.

 

Unlike the First War of the Ishvana and the Bushraki War before it, this time the Ishvana was seeking to capture as many kith-using individuals as it could, which, as we discovered later, was how it created the Vihana.

Unlike those two wars, however, this time the Ishvana had recruited new allies, and unfortunately for the Ishvana, it dramatically underestimated the Bushraki's reaction to this. On the new Bushraki fleet arriving at the first battle against the Celestines and the Song, they find the Ishvana's forces consisting of the Vendal, as expected, but also its new ally, the mighty Sa'hak-ren, and their client races, the Xariel and Inori.

That time came when the Jin, fleeing their mad Godking and his alliance with the Ishvana, entered Starmourn, and this war like a hammer striking a forge. The Ishvana forces were heavily damaged, and the Bushraki took this moment to betray the Ishvana, secretly negotiating with the Celestines and Song for amnesty in return.

The Jin and the Bushraki additions began to turn the tide of the war. Further, in a surprise, fleets from both the Selassian Dynasty and the Ibyssian Brotherhood arrived. Together, they were able to push back the Ishvana, though as was later discovered, the Ishvana had succeeded in its plan to kidnap thousands of kith users.

 

Though they had been given amnesty by the forces opposing the Ishvana, the Zinari, the Ibyssian Brotherhood, the Song Dominion, and the Celestina Ascendancy all declined to permit the Bushraki to settle in their territory. Though they may have been temporary allies, most of Starmourn still viewed the Bushraki as dangerous, drug-addled savages.

 

 

And so they settled in Scatterhome, and became part of it, sometimes for the worse, such as those who haunt the slums of Oldtown, preying on the weaker, or the better, such as those who joined Scatterhome’s defense forces and have kept it safe from potential predations by both the Song and the Celestines.

With time, many of the Bushraki became valued, if somewhat untrustworthy, allies with the others in Scatterhome, and inevitably, the Bushraki gave up the secrets of wetwiring and mindsim-brain integration to their allies. With Scatterhome’s somewhat anarchic nature and weak ‘border’ security, the knowledge of how to produce and integrate that tech spread to the commsphere, and from there it became common knowledge. Today, only the poorest beings don’t possess a mindsim, and most who expect to face real physical danger have wetwiring installed.