Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Counterfeit
The Vyaeh, as a mercantile race, often emphasize psychological tactics in combat with other races. The Vyaeh Ministry of Military Intelligence contains a dedicated Office of Imitation, which designs and creates counterfeits of enemy creatures for the purpose of killing and demoralizing enemy combatants. OI officers are present on every Vyaeh ship of frigate size or larger, as is the specialized equipment needed to manufacture and deploy the counterfeits.

Appearing and acting very much like the creatures they mimic, the counterfeits are designed to notice and gravitate toward openly hostile action against the Vyaeh. They will attempt to infiltrate and disrupt enemy operations as much as they are able, and if detected will detonate themselves in a suicide bombing, coating the area with highly toxic chemicals and shards of armor-piercing bonelike material. They can take substantial punishment, but always explode on death.

Human counterfeits have been encountered in the field by the SCNF, many produced specifically to mimic human combat troops but many also appearing as noncombatants and civillians. They are often armed, but under no circumstances (even to preserve their infiltration of enemy formations) will the counterfeits engage the Vyaeh or Vyaeh-allied troops in battle. This has led to captured Vyaeh being used as a primitive and brutal counterfeit detector test in the field, a practice strongly condemned but unofficially tolerated by the SCNF.

The most advanced human counterfeit units are designed for penetration and disruption of hardened targets, and are equipped with advanced personality simulators and friend-or-foe locators. No counterfeits are exact copies, though, and the errors made by the Vyaeh can be detected by wary observers, and the counterfeits detonated from a safe distance. The more common counterfeits are notorious among SCNF combat troops for their bizarre speech and behavior. Playing of human cultural taboos and perceptions, many of the simulated body types are young and/or female.

Stories of a human-model counterfeit equipped with a faulty detonator that rendered it unable to explode have circulated among SCNF troops in combat sectors. These tales, often with improbably embellished accounts of the defective counterfeit joining forces with human troops, are almost certainly apocryphal.

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The Vyaeh are a mercantile empire, and generally content to exercise suzerainty over the systems that they control. However, this policy does not apply to species that resist them: the Vyaeh annihilate such lifeforms as an example to others, and incorporate survivors into their economy as slave laborers or into their military as slave troops. The Vyaeh euphemistically refer to these as “conscripted races.”

Krne
The Krne, known as “giants” to the humans that have encountered them, are a huge race of bipeds employed by the Vyaeh as laborers and combat shields. Herbivores from a high-gravity world that was among the first conquests of the Vyaeh, they are not a terribly bright race but have been known to rebel (especially when coerced by more intelligent beings). Absent orders, Giants will often adhere to their simple instructions for weeks, if not months, unless given new directions in Krneese. They have been known to use rocks as projectiles, but are incapable of using most weapons with their large claws.

Following the Vyaeh conquest of the Tuy’baq, their engineers began integrating the latter race’s advanced cybernetics and networking technology into their military/industrial complex. One of their earliest experiments was in cybernetically enhancing the Krne, with the idea that the creatures could be made more tactically useful through increased intelligence. This proved to be a deadly mistake: the enhanced Krne, when deployed, promptly instigated a rebellion against the enslaving Vyaeh which proved to be one of the most destructive in history. It took ten years and thousands of Vyaeh lives to re-subjugate the Krne to the will of the Queen in Silence and the Orphaned Court.

“Then the thing went down, gushing blood like you wouldn’t believe. It was like a big blood-filled balloon had popped, spilling everywhere and rising almost to my ankles before the door opened and let it flow out. It smelled revolting, and permanently stained my shoes.”
-Unidentified SCNF mechanical engineer

“Mosquito”
An interstellar pest present on many Vyaeh ships. They secrete a corrosive goo that can be thrown as a projectile, and are also capable of attacking with claws and mandibles. Some Vyaeh ships have genetically modified Mosquitos to serve as combatants, enhancing their naturally tough carapaces and allowing them to spit corrosive goo at higher velocities and with greater accuracy.

“Hey! These ones swat back!”
-Unidentified SCNF mechanical engineer

“Roach”
Another interstellar pest present on many Vyaeh ships, the Roach is a native of an unknown low-gravity planet that floats by means of a gas-filled body. It ordinarily attacks with its sharp mandibles, but in its mating form the Roach will explode at the foot of any moving organism, coating the target with toxic spores. Some Roaches have been mutated by enterprising Vyaeh crews to serve as weapons of sorts; the mandibles they use to attack are capable of piercing light armor, and it enters its mating stage twice as fast, producing a larger explosion and spores which impart a deadlier toxin.

“What’s really bad is when you come on some poor sap they killed, rotting before your eyes and festering with hundreds of the things, still tiny and feasting on his flesh.”
-Rebecca Sears, command crew

Cyborg
A cybernetic organism of unknown origin, possibly human or human-like. They are employed as light tanks in many remote Vyaeh garrisons, and are equipped with slashing claws based on those of the Krne as well as percussion grenades that can be set to explode on a timer. Some models are employed in major Vyaeh garrisons for crowd control, and feature a hardened carapace, percussion grenades, and a flamethrower.

The species from which they are derived is unknown, but intercepted Vyaeh transmissions indicate that they are a relatively new weapon and that the secret of their creation is jealously guarded by the Orphaned Court. SNCF personnel who have encountered them in combat have described their appearance as “disturbingly human-like” but no intact specimens have ever been captured, as they self-destruct upon death.

“If you skinned a guy, turned him inside out, and drove a tank up his ass, you might have something about half as ugly as these sons of bitches.”
-Former SNCF Security Officer Popovitch

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