The mechalus are a technologically advanced people who colonized the entirety of their star system prior to human contact. This humanoid species made a conscious effort to alter their physiology. Genetic engineering and cybernetic implants on the molecular level are now a natural part of mechalus biology. With biomechanical parallels of their nervous systems, the mechalus are doubly shielded against neurotoxins and nerve gasses. Without their mechanical systems, their bodies would succumb to the biowarfare agents still lurking on Aleer’s surface. Without their biological side, their machine side would lack both sentience and the ability to process minerals into metals – eventually collapsing from an inability to repair itself. The mechalus are neither flesh nor machine; they are symbiotes.

The typical mechalus stands about 1.8 meters tall, and weighs about 90 kilos. While at first glance they appear human, closer inspection reveals some major differences. Veins of circuitry are interwoven with flesh and blood, and mechalus hair combines protein strands with cable filaments. Unlike humans who have undergone surgery to install cybernetic enhanceents, a mechalus’s form is completely natural-each is born with this synthesis of flesh and biomechanics, not altered through surgery. The secret is in the life cycle of their inorganic side: the mechalus nanite cycle.

In fact, all mechalus are symbiotes, depending on both mechanical and biological systems. Their mechanical side has taken over because the species cannot reproduce without biological help. Mechalus reproduce sexually much as mammals do; the biological components of both parents form the nucleus that grows into another mechalus. But the biomechanical side of the species is passed down strictly through the maternal side. When a female mechalus reaches child-bearing age at about 23, the mother’s processor and self-repair nanites fashion copies of themselves for later use, a process that requires almost two years. When the mother becomes pregnant, this mechanical seed joins the fertilized biological embryo and helps it survive to term. Most mechalus couples bear four to five children in their youth, around age thirty, which is considered the optimal time for reproduction. Mechalus life expectancy is about the same as that of humans, though they normally maintain good health and active lifestyles until death.

All mechalus are born with a Nanocomputer, its data storage area, and an extra data storage area. This nanocomputer is thoroughly integrated with the biological functions. The extra storage provides room for growth and for fault-tolerant data mirroring. All mechalus have built-in reflex devices and a selection of data tendrils (the equivalent of NIJacks) to match various hardware types. These components allow them to use programs stored in their neural slots. The mechalus’s biological nervous system is little more than a backup system for its mechanical and electrical relays.

Data tendrils are given to mechalus children as a coming of age present. In the biotechnical world of mechalus anatomy, computer and storage facilities aren’t implanted surgically. Instead, they grow and then regrow according to specifications detailed from within their bodies. These specifications change throughout their adult life; they only replace a few external components. The process of regrowing or updating a system is called a flash-upgrade (for software) or a flesh-upgrade (for hardware), and it can be undertaken by a mechalus at any stage of its life. The flash-upgrade is a simple matter of downloading and reformatting the code for a particular biomechanical system. The flesh-upgrade process is much more involved and takes from 1-4 weeks. It requires a special mineral diet and deliberate infection with upgrade nanites, much as human life extension treatment requires viruses to complete gene therapy. The upgrade process prevents adults from becoming outdated or surpassed by younger models; most mechalus undergo a flash-upgrade every year. Mechalus are naturally immune to the human condition called cykosis; their very nature is friendly to the integration of machine and biological systems. They can integrate more cyberware into themselves than can other races (1.5 times as much as a human), partly because the implants they receive are tailored to their special metabolisms. But they can still suffer adverse effects from an excess of cyberware. Any mechalus who installs enough cyberware to suffer cykosis becomes a blood-hungry warrior of the old Credo tradition, losing most higher reason and reverting to violence. Some non-mechalus mistake this conditon for cykosis. In most cases, this means that the hero becomes a supporting cast member under the GM’s control.

To many humans, the mechalus’s most disturbing physical features are their interface adapters, small tentacle-like prehensile wires that the mechalus use to link themselves directly to various digital systems. The wires are compatible with most computer systems, and since the Rigunmor Star Consortium stays on top of technical trends, there are very few systems that a mechalus’s hardware can’t access. They know the location of input/output ports on most machines, their nanocomputers keep internal schematics of most devices, and they can match processor and bus clockspeeds using an internal processor as easily as a human increases or decreases his breathing. They carry communications protocols for all major hardware systems, updating these on a regular basis. For the mechalus, bits of code are no more interesting than vitamins are to humans.

While it’s true that computers are very intolerant of spiking and surging power, the mechalus interfaces work withing the parameters of the machines they merge with. When plugged in, the mechalus runs device driver daemons in the background; these let it manipulate the system directly. A mechalus linking into a new machine can write appropriate code and communication protocols by making a successful Computer Use skill check, much as a human might adapt to the quirks of a new type of car.

The mechalus interface fails only in a few special cases. A secure computer might not have an input device, it might have proprietary input devices, or it might have the input jack locked by a password. As long as the mechalus has the tools to jury-rig a solution or find the system. In all cases, the mechalus is limited by the software running on the computer and can do anything that could eventually be done with a keyboard, mouse, or data tendril.

For most of their history, the mechalus were a warrior race engaged in constant battle. They didn’t just stumble upon their present pacifism; they earned it during centuries of slaughter and genocide. After generations of war, the mechalus lost their taste for killing just over 350 years ago. (All of the following dates appear in Galactic Standard format.) Ironically, a species bred for war now campaigns for peace.

The mechalus followed an unusual path of technological development. Within the past 20,000 years, they began using stone tools and herding animals. By 8,000 years ago, they had created an agricultural society, and the founding of city-states led to their first great wars. These wars led to the intense development of metallurgy; Aleer, the mechalus home planet is rich in silver, iron, titanium, tungsten, gold, and tin. The mechalus soon learned to forge bronze and iron-and-around 6,000 years ago-to master electricity.

Though the mechalus learned to command electricity early in their development, they remained an agricultural society. At first, they used metal/acid batteries for simple tasks such as anodizing jewelry, rustproofing iron, and even generating light. Soon, however, they began building simple static charge weapons, able to kill with a single massive shock. As their mastery of electricity grew, their weapons improved. By 5,000 years ago, the mechalus had learned how to generate electricity from both static charges and batteries; their metalworkers even learned how to capture lightning for later use. Their use of electricity remained sophisticated throughout their later development.

Throughout the fourth millennium BC the mechalus formed four great empires-bodies that, unlike human nations, remained stable for thousands of years. Pesh, Leenest, Megarin, and Oldurreg each controlled one of the planet’s six great continents. The remaining two continents were contested by smaller nations and provided a place for the larger nations to fight proxy wars.

Pesh was the earliest empire to form, founded by priests of the Mechalus’s sky-god Ositan. Considered inventive but dishonorable by the other nations, Pesh remained a capital of learning, scholarship, and industry. Ositan’s priesthood had been the first to discover electricity, and their knowledge quickly spread to other nations.

Leenest was next, a confederation of city-states from the river-valleys. In time, it grew to dominate the surrounding mountains and their hydroelectric power, but its strength remained firmly grounded in its large population and fertile agriculture.

Megarin traded by sea with Pesh but also contested Pesh’s control of the vital trade routes between the mines of Ota and Megarin’s armories. Its people were sailors and explorers, always finding new sources of ore for their smelters.

Finally there came Oldurreg, a splinter state founded by refugees from Megarrin. Living high on the central Ota plateau and along the coast of the Otean sea, the Oldurreg are famed as miners and as the most stubborn of the mechalus, as immobile in their opinions as their mountains. Oldurreg are considered slow but stable among the mechalus.

By the end of the millennium, those four nations had colonized the entire planet and controlled 90% of Aleer’s land mass. The remainder was split among various client states, the polar cap, and neutral states conducting precarious balancing acts among the greater powers. The nations fought occasional naval wars and diplomatic struggles, but they also devoted great effort to agriculture and science. Electricity-generating waterwheels and windmills were in place by the middle of the period.

From the third millennium to first millennium BC, the mechalus entered an era of retreat from progress. Religious struggles and questions of proper government preoccupied them in brief periods like the human Renaissance from –182 to –230, but it didn’t last. But by the end of the period, in –230 BCE, Oldurreg, beset by internal discontent, unified its warring princes by declaring war on Megarin, launching a war of conquest that soon engulfed all other nations.

The intractable stubbornness of the Oldurreg kept the war going well beyond any reasonable duration. The war dragged on for the next 400 years, with ever-increasing stakes: losers were enslaved, massacres became policy, and total war against civilian targets was common as early as 150. This constant struggle had its price: mechalus institutions were changing to meet the challenges of institutionalized warfare.

During the years from 295 to 1,100 AD, the mechalus institutions governing the great nations slowly reduced the role of the Jowh (“tyrant”). Nations were ruled more often as a diffuse collection of like-minded citizens; civil councils replaced monarchies. The mechalus simply refused to give their lives for the pride or ambition of any one ruler, but they fought savagely for any cause their whole society took to heart. By 826 AD, Megarin armies were drafted by national custom, rather than from the retinues of the tyrants and their lords.

Pesh followed Megarin into changing its imperial heritage; it deposed its entire ruling class in a decade of bloody civil unrest. Oldurreg remained the only holdout, retaining its feudal system while tightening control through the use of labor camps and reprisals against anyone questioning the Tyrant of Oldurreg. More and more, however the true power in Oldurreg lay in the hands of the bureaucrats and secret police chiefs, rather than any individual.

In the 1100's’s, the invention of the air-powered chuff rifle and chuff cannon changed the fundamental rules of warfare, leading to the use of trenches, siege engines, and other emplacements, as well as the decline of the Nidrazh (“marauder”) cavalry elite units. Aleerin cavalry is a thing of the past. During the Cheanet Campaign between Pesh and Megarin cavalry units were an important factor in warfare; elite Nidrazh rode hipolat beasts, four-legged herd animals that weighed more than 1,200 kilos and required years of training before they could be deployed in battle. The hipolat’s thick, rhino-like skin provided good protection against arrows and slashing weapons, and its heavily reinforced skull allowed it to break through enemy ranks, barricades, and even light fortifications. However, the high-strung and over-bred hipolat were poor subjects for adaptation to the age of biological warfare that followed; the last of the breed died in 1576, after the Bleeding Air Offensive.

By the 1200's, the Pesh had developed an electrical motor to power war machines, a breakthrough that allowed it to hold onto an image of greatness in the 1300s. On the inside, through, resource exhaustion and internal rebellions brought Pesh to the brink of surrender.

By the 1400's, mechalus warriors were augmenting themselves with integral armor and nightvision sights. The first biological ammunition for chuff rifles was deployed in 1498; countermeasures included improved armor and immune-boosting chemicals. Fortunately, Aleer is very poor in fissionable materials such as uranium, so the mechalus never developed nuclear weapons. Their conventional wars dragged on, and many battle zones soon became vast chemical and biological wastelands.

The centuries of war took their toll. Mechalus numbers dwindled as biological and chemical weapons spread unchecked, destroying the nation of Pesh in the first of the Great Plagues, in 1573. The First Plague was quickly followed by the Bleeding Air Offensive, the Blinding Plague, and the Plague of Slow Rot. In 1588, the Megarin nation issued filter masks to all citizens and implanted corneal shields to counter the Blinding Plague. Vaccines, improved filter masks, and other countermeasures were soon deployed in every nation, but the bioweapons of this period still make occasional appearances on Aleer today. Outbreaks of the Scarlet Plague and the Blinding Plague are especially prevalent in the former Pesh and Megarin territories, respectively. These fresh occurrences of plague are thought to be the result of windborne spores or perhaps the release of trapped gas from ancient underground weapons sites.

In 1649, the nation of Oldurreg collapsed, overrun in a chemical bloodbath that has left much of the continent of Ota barren to this day. With the collapse Oldurreg’s bread baskets, the other nations faced a wave of hunger and even starvation.

Leenest and Megarin continued their struggle at a greatly reduced pace for almost another 150 years after the first plague wars. Eventually, in 1757, the Megarin found a way to implant a self-sustaining suite of cybergear that protected the young and curbed the nation’s shocking infant mortality rate. Border wars, sabotage, guerrilla wars, and terrorist attacks against reservoirs and food supplies became more common than wars of conquest. Over time, Megarin’s supremacy in both biological weapons and in biomechanical defenses gave its citizens a numerical and technological edge. In 1888, the Megarin began the final offensive in what they called the War of Unity. Leenest’s capital, Bogdarin, fell to General Thetor’s First Army 12 years later, and the planet has been unified ever since.

Around 1901, Thetor's renamed Unified Aleer Army (UAA) expanded its reach across all of the Agemac planets in system ships powered by solar sails and with solar laser engines. After almost 70 years of exploration by robot surveyors, the aleerins finally sent astronauts to visit nearby planets, starting with the planet Orod, which was known to harbor the right conditions to sustain carbon-based life. Filled with expansionist fervor, the aleerins made contact with the oridin, a second sentient species within their own star system, in 1966.

The oridin were not nearly as technically advanced as the aleerin, but they had built cities and formed several primarily theocratic cultures. Physically, the oridin resembled the aleerins themselves, but without any biomechanical enhancements. Their genetic and physical similarity has never been properly explained, though some aleerin legends hint at contact with starfaring races in the distant past. Perhaps the oridin were carried to their planet by a Precursor race, or perhaps they were the result of a secret colony founded by a nation desperate to survive the Wars of Unity. The truth will probably never be known, since the oridin didn't survive.

The two species hated each other from the moment of first contact; oridin zealots overran the aleerin ship and slaughtered all hands. A strange slow motion war followed for the first decade thereafter, as the aleerin ships bombarded Orod with biological weapons. Thetor was unwilling to attempt a conquest on the ground so far from home; indeed, there was much to do on Aleer, unifying the planet and rebuilding its ravaged cities and factories. Until his body's death in 2020, the UAA maintained a quarantine of the planet while the rest of the system was settled.

The second aleerin landings, in 2039, were a massive effort; remembering the risks of starting a war they couldn't finish, the aleerins had spent years building an armada to carry more than 100,000 UAA troopers to Orod. The landing parties met no resistance; the biological weapons had done their work. The dead lay everywhere.

The aleerin armies found city after city deserted. The few scattered survivors in the hills and in Orid's fernlike forests were rarely more than shadows in the forests, and even they were dying out. The plague-ravaged oridin were incapable of launching more than sporadic attacks against the aleerin occupation of their world. By 2145, the oridin genocide was complete. The last known oridin died in the Nestor Hills that year. Scattered reports of remnant populations of oridin continue to this day, but no physical evidence has ever materialized.

In many ways, the aleerin culture never recovered from the genocide.

The annihilation of the Oridin gave the aleerins pause. For almost 200 years, they had clawed their way onto a distant planet and destroyed its native population. Suddenly, their culture was rudderless. Their victory produced a radical change in aleerin culture. They put aside their warlike ways and began debating their Warrior's Credo, the self-defense implants, and all the armaments of war.

The debate split the mechalus into two camps: the radical Kiscae ('Negationists') and the more practical Pegont ('Those who Remember'). The uncompromising Kiscae were the radical pacifists, those who swore that their own biological components were incompatible with peaceful existence. Shedding the last remnants of organic life, the Kiscae sought to become one with their computers. After stripping aleerin military vessels of their weaponry, in 2195 they left in the Aleerin stellar fleet, a slower-than-light set of lightships heading out toward the galactic rim on a 1,000-year voyage.

Those who remained on Aleer still felt the impact of the Kiscae's departure for decades, as the fleet slowly sailed out of communication range. In 2214, Aleer lost contact with the fleet, but despite persistent follow-up, no one has ever been able to establish whether the Kiscae fleet was destroyed or simply stopped answering. The mechalus have never discussed the destination of the Kiscae fleet with human visitors; the fleet has never been found by human survey ships. It might have been destroyed or it might have settled a nearby planet. Few humans even know of the story, and the mechalus have refused to comment.

However, the Pegont spent little time grieving for their wandering half. They believed the fault of the genocide lay in a system that allowed charismatic leaders to make decisions for the people, and in the Warrior's Credo software developed during the Wars of Unity, which demanded blood for blood. The pegont didn't want to give up their biological side; on the contrary, they believed that the mechalus integration of biological and machine elements was entirely compatible with peace, that each side balanced the other. They worked for change, slowly driving the old Warrior's Credo out of the mainstream, though they retained the underlying hardware. In the final touch to heal the wounds of war, mechalus settlers established a permanent colony on Oridin in 2161.

In 2281, humans from the Rigunmor Star Consortium entered the Colee system. Rigunmor diplomats were astounded by the thousands of lightsail system ships traveling throughout the system, and by the computer and electronic marvels they saw when they made contact with the Pirsk, the vessel where the Rigunmors and the aleerins met to negotiate the terms of their shared future. The Rigunmors spared no expense to demonstrate the advantages of an alliance, offering exclusive trading rights, access to Rigunmor stardrive technology, and even the colonization rights to several nearby systems.

In retrospect, it's clear that the Rigunmors, normally hardhearted traders, could have driven a much harder bargain, but the awesome sight of such an advanced alien species seems to have overwhelmed the Rigunmor negotiators. To the amazement of the Rigunmor delegation, prepared for months of arbitration, the aleerins signed a commercial agreement after only a few days.

Though the aleerins hid it well, they were still recovering from a century of incredible internal turmoil and were quite vulnerable at the time. They had no war fleet. The Rigunmor proposal to incorporate Aleer within the Rigunmor sphere of influence met no resistance. The aleerins even accepted the name that humans gave them: mechalus. Shedding their old name seemed another way to forget the past.

The mechalus' unique abilities and technology have contributed to the Star Consortium's growth as an interstellar power, and in return the Consortium has rewarded them with planets of their own, rich contracts, and preferred seats on several commodities exchanges.

Rumors abound that the mechalus are the force behind the Consortium's ability to fend off determined Grid attacks by VoidCorp and even Insight during the Second Galactic War. Even the most pacifist mechalus, it turned out, didn't consider Grid warfare a form of violence. As long as the mechalus contain the specters of their violent past and remain at the heart of the Rigunmor technical elite, they will thrive.

More than any human culture save the Nariac, mechalus culture relies heavily on machinery and computers. The mechalus make extensive use of robots in limited applications (primarily manufacturing and exploration), and they are adept at building them. However, they consider consider the employment of robots in any task dishonorable-or at the very least, incredibly rude-because robots can be “irresponsible,” and poor programming can result in disaster. The very thought that robots can perform the work of an aleerin is insulting, because it implies that the biological sides of the workers are unimportant. Aleerins are loathe to give offense in this way, and so only use robots in jobs that no one yet holds: being sent out as explorers, or surveillance machines, or in new factories.

Among modern aleerins, the Pesh are suspect for a number of reasons, primarily because of their religion and their way of waging war. First of all, the Pesh believe that the fully mechanical mechalus aboard the Kiscae Fleet (see Fallout) are blessed; their transformation was something holy, and those left behind can only console themselves with the thought that at least some mechalus achieved this state.

Worse, the Pesh use robots in war, a tactic that mechalus view the way most 20th-century humans view putting weapons in the hands of children. It can be done, but it isn't right. Robots are not capable of winning through guile, or superior will, or the sheer rightness of their cause. The Pesh-hard pressed in the great wars-simply don't care.

While mechalus have accepted the human name for them since first contact, they have their own names as well. Among themselves, they refer to about 50 primary sometimes overlapping groups, such as the Peshtar, Megarin, the United, Creedans, and sometimes Witnesses. They seem content with humanity's name for them and rarely provide additional information; they see “mechalus” as a trading name used by others, just as humans call citizens of other nations by names they prefer.

The mechalus believe in Occam's razor as applied to personal relationships; what is, the simplest solution is always preferred. They are loyal to a few close friends and efficiently ignore everyone else. Humans find this attitude a little off-putting, since the mechalus place no value on chit-chat or small talk.

This efficiency extends to family life. The mechalus never marry and don't raise children, though they do take mates for the year or more required to bring a child to term. Once the child is born, its parents give it over to the community, which raises all children communally in a group parenting process. Special emphasis is placed on computer and Grid technology, with young mechalus training their skills against elders in the aleer eshtal. The aleer eshtal is a not a real place but a site on the mechalus Grid set aside for virtual combats. There, young mechalus train and receive instruction from older mechalus, fight prize bouts, and eventually undergo the initiation rights that grant them full standing as an adult. Though it is rarely discussed with outsider, this initiation seems to revolve around a test of worthiness through combat against an elder, then a recitation of the rights and responsibilities that adults enjoy. Offworld mechalus have established similar Grid arenas in other star systems with a large mechalus population.

When it comes to matchmaking, the mechalus are anything but romantic. They choose mates because it is the logical thing to do. To the mechalus, reproduction is an ordinary consequence of their biological side, just as war is grim and dirty work for the unclean, and exploration of the galaxy is necessary but hazardous work.

The mechalus consider themselves superior to “unshaped” species like the weren or sesheyans; they respect the Nariac and the Thuldans because they at least aspire to be more than what crude nature made them. They consider members of other stellar nations foolish for forgoing the obvious benefits of biological engineering.

At the same time that most mechalus are unromantic, devoted members of their communities, they see a certain appeal in breaking free. The Credo warriors and the independent contractors who leave Rigunmor space have a certain cachet, because they turn their backs. The mechalus might not approve publically, but they are privately titillated by anyone who breaks free of their roles and attempts to forge his or her own path.

Mechalus government is based on consensus politics and group action; individual efforts are rewarded, but rebelling against a decision that has already been made is almost unknown. At its heart, mechalus government consists of a distributed system of efficiency-monitoring expert systems and feedback-linked law enforcement. Literally dozens of parties are part of the Aleerin system, though only four command more than 10% of the electorate. For example, the Traditionalists (23%) believe that things should stay pretty much the way they are, while the Biometricians (18%) believe that perfection of economic models and profit analysis in the Rigunmor style will ultimately lead to mechalus success throughout the galaxy. Small groups of militant Creedans (about 2%) agitate for more aggressive policies. Other than that, there are no elaborate elections, no scandals, and few hot-tempered debates. To anyone but a political analyst and economist, mechalus government is dull.

Instead of depending on a hierarchy of rulers, the mechalus technocracy relies on local experts to make local group decisions for most matters. The leader in any given field is agreed upon by his followers, and that leader is given temporary authority to solve a particular problem. A rotating set of advisors and judges (which the mechalus translate into Standard as 'magistrates') provides guidance to larger groups, leading construction and production teams or rendering and executing verdicts in criminal cases. Planetary and system-wide decisions are made by brief Grid debate and referendum. Since the mechalus usually agree quickly, these decisions are prompt. Politician is a part-time occupation for a mechalus, and it is considered a somewhat shameful profession at that.

This is not to say that there aren’t mechalus capable of command or who wield considerable authority. Many do, even while holding down a secondary job such as janitor, writer, or gardener. In most cases, they deny that they hold such authority, at least in public. Mechalus who live among humans are more likely to admit to such ambitions. Even so, false modesty and false humility run deep in the mechalus spirit.

Finally, there is the matter of crime and punishment. The mechalus legal system depends on retribution, much like many human systems, but it does not imprison the criminal. A petty criminal (and crime rates are low among the mechalus) is usually forced to make restitution to his victim, paying a blood price for injuries and damages. This custom is similar enough to the Rigunmor criminal justice system that it attracts little notice in the Star Consortium. The mechalus reserve pacifism implants for the most heinous violent and immoral cases.

In the case of severe crimes, the felon is fitted with a simple restraining device that disallows all sudden motion. This implant, called a 'warden,' primarily affects movement and striking, but effectively cuts STR and DEX in half. While the implant remains attached to the criminal’s central nervous system, he is drugged, passive, and content, unable to commit crimes and sometimes even unable to care for himself. The implanted criminal usually becomes a beggar, a ward of the state, or an indentured servant, depending on the degree of incapacitation and the ruling of the magistrate for the case. The warden destroys itself after a duration chosen by the magistrate at the time of sentencing. A few criminals have attempted to remove a warden, generally without success; Failure results in brain death for the implant’s carrier.

The mechalus are not a deeply religious people, though they find the Insight religion attractive. They are offended by the anti-technological notions of the Hatire and many Old Earth splinter groups, but for the most part they find human notions of religion irrelevant to their lives and their culture. Since deities are not an active part of the universe they perceive, why waste any time on them?

The most important belief system of the mechalus has been driven underground for hundreds of years: the Credo of War. The Credo was a statement of belief about the honor of war and the glory of combat; it was widely rejected by the mechalus after their defeat of the oridin and their adoption of pacifistic principles, but it has held on in isolated groups, generally those on the fringes of mechalus society.

It wasn’'t always so. Their strongest leader, Thetor, is now widely regarded by mechalus historians as an aberration of their nationalist youth. Thetor was a programmer, visionary, and general who first programmed and promoted the Credo during the Wars of Unity on behalf of his home nation, the Megarin BioMetric Republic.

In the end, Thetor‘s warlike implants led the mechalus to genocide, and the backlash has reinforced their aversion to strong leaders of any kind. Anyone seeking personal power is considered immoral at best and criminal at worst. Mechalus are masters at passive resistance to “dangerous demagogues,” a category that includes most human heads of state, corporate executives, and religious leaders of all stripes. Thetor’s physical body is known to have died in 2020, but his followers claim his spirit was recorded and implanted in the Aleeran Grid. Occasional sightings of a Grid shadow tattooed with an hourglass, the symbol of the cult, give new life to the legend every few years. Whether Thetor‘s consciousness survives is largely a matter of faith for Creedans.

The story has some basis in reality, because the Creedans have always been the keepers of the machinery that transformed a mechalus into a fully mechanical being, or iolite. These machines operated by the careful use of magnetic imaging of each individual cell, then nanite construction of a mechanical copy. The nanites copy each cell, destroying it in the process, called iolification. The last of these devices known were taken away by the Negationists aboard the Kiscae Fleet, but sometimes a gridpilot claims to have found schematics of the device among the datacores of Pesh or some older source, inevitably involving files that require a dozen data format transfers to decode. Such claims are never verified, and surely any such device would be rejected by the mechalus themselves.

These few believers of the Creed who remain active today are known variously as the Thetites (as they call themselves) or Creedans (as others call them); they are convinced that mechalus appeasement of humans has been nothing but a disaster. They believe that abandoning their traditional ways after the orodin genocide was a terrible mistake, and they preach a doctrine of rearmament and rebellion, seeking to establish a sovereign mechalus state. To them, the fight for independence is sacred duty, and any bloodshed is a sacrifice to the cause.

To humans, the Warmongers resemble a cross between a terrorist group and a religious cult; in fact, they are neither. The Credo is a technological implant, a particular view of the world dictated by certain hardware and software. While it was useful during the Wars of Unification, most modern mechalus consider the Credo implants outdated relics of a past they would rather forget. However, rogue, overcybered mechalus can revert to fearsome berserkers; this Credo reaction is also sometimes triggered when a mechalus accidentally kills an intelligent being. The fact that the credo spontaneously resurfaces from their mechanical lineage at times is deeply disturbing to most mechalus. While it is unusual to profess Creedan beliefs, it is illegal to actually harbor the Credo implants. Any mechalus caught with this software is exiled from Rigunmor space.

The mechalus are regarded as the finest designers of medical and biological software in the universe. Mechalus in-system explorers, transports, and battle craft are state of the art, and their computers rival the best produced by VoidCorp and Insight.

The mechalus are recognized as the unquestioned masters of computer and Grid technology; they are the front line defenders of Rigunmor Grid sectors against hostile tampering. In fact, their skill at manipulating the Grid is so advanced, only the best of Insight and VoidCorp can match them. For the Rigunmors and those lucky enough to secure mechalus labor from the Consortium, mechalus technology provides a powerful source of efficiency and protection. But the mechalus are also masters in other technologies. Two items found nowhere else are the mechalus lightship and the chuff rifle.

The mechalus were a spacefaring culture long before humans arrived. The mechalus explored and settled their entire star system well before humans arrived. Their vehicles were lightships, spacecraft powered by solar wind and lightsails. Lightsails are aluminum and plastic foils that permit a lightship to capture the solar photon flux for propulsion. While photons have no rest mass, they do have mass while in motion, and thus momentum. When the light collides with the reflective sail material, the photon pushes the sail forward when it is reflected. The total force on the lightship is proportional to the sail's area, and the ship can be steered by tilting the sail with respect to the solar wind.

To follow an inward spiral, the lightship slows down and starts to fall toward Agemac, assuming a tighter, faster, elliptical orbit around the star. For an outward spiral, the photon pressure accelerates the sail, moving it away in a larger, slower, orbit around the star.

The lightships can make the trip from Aleer to Orod in roughly 300 days, less when powered by solar lasers fired to accelerate them from the ground. Although they are much slower than other system craft, lightships carry reasonably-sized payloads much more cheaply than gravitic induction system ships. A mechalus system trader isn't burdened by a stardrive's cost and size and because it's flight is remotely piloted, it requires no onboard crew. The lightships are so efficient that their use has even spread beyond the Agemac system, and now traders throughout the Rigunmor Star Consortium hire them for transhipping any nonperishable cargo. By hitching rides on fortress ships or other large ferry ships, the mechalus lightships have spread throughout the Star Consortium. However, by treaty they are forbidden from being piloted outside RSC borders, manufactured for export, or sold to anyone but Rigunmor citizens. Since all lightships require a direct pilot neural interface, the odds of one being pirated or stolen are slim.

Mechalus lightsails are made from simple materials like aluminum and plastic, using extremely sophisticated manufacturing processes. Aluminum is cheap, does not oxidize readily, and provides reflectances of 85-88%. All lightsails are spun by special factories in Aleeran high orbit. The sails are typically about a micron thick and constructed from a thin film of aluminium backed by a plastic lining. The lining makes the sail strong enough to survive folding and packing for launch, landing, and redeployment, and it prevents wrinkling. The problems of meteorite punctures and electrostatic charging have been solved by the application of grounding seams, repair nanites, and self-sealing material.

The solar sail vehicle must be rigged with four main design criterion in mind, performance, rigidity, stabilization and control. The mechalus use heliogyro sails, which operate using the same principle as helicopter blades. The twelve blades of the heliogyro stay rigid and in the same plane due to rapid rotation. The heliogyro also solves the problem presented by launching by rolling the sail blades up. When the sails must be deployed after orbital insertion, the spacecraft simply spins to unfurl the sails. Though speed and individual payload capabilities of lightsail ships vary by as much as a factor of five, the values given below are fairly typical. They represent a middle of the line ship, a twelve blade heliogyro operating both with and without ground-based laser acceleration.

The chuff rifle is the standard small arm of the mechalus. It operates on the same principle as the air rifle, but the chuff rifle is as far advanced beyond the human air gun as the Vulcan cannon is beyond the Gatling gun.

While the chuff rifle has an effective range comparable to a rifled small arm; the weapon itself is lighter. Chuff rifles are made especially to interface with mechalus feedback mechanisms; they feel awkward in human hands, and all non-mechalus suffer a penalty when using them without a cyberlink.

A chuff rifle is an extremely stealthy weapon: it emits no smoke, flash, or burn residue, and it makes very little noise when fired (less than a silenced slug-thrower–the “chuff” of the name). Furthermore, chuff rifles don't emit enough heat to be tracked by IR sensors; they are “cold” weapons.

The chuff rifle's standard round is paralytic, using tailored toxins to target the nervous system and lock the voluntary muscles. If the target's armor fails to entirely stop the primary damage of the attack, he's been exposed to the toxin and must attempt a fortitude save to resist its effects: Use the table below to determine the toxin's effects; all damage on this table ignores armor effects. In the days before the death of Thetor and the rise of mechalus pacifism, chuff rifle rounds were far more toxic, killing their target by stopping the victim's heart or destroying his neurotransmitters. Even the modern paralytic toxin can sometimes have a deadly effect, as represented by the Critical Failure result on the Paratoxin Results Table.

A chuff pistol has a decent chance to pierce a flak jacket or CF coat, and a rifle can pierce assault gear or a battle jacket. To get through something heavier requires a chuff launcher-unless you first weaken the armor with acid rounds.

Chuff rifles are made in both singleshot and fully automatic versions; pistols are single-shot only. Pistols can fire only standard rounds; the WP and EMP ammunition are made only for the older, large caliber chuff launchers.

While chuff rifles typically fire paralytic rounds, they can fire another type of ammunition as well, the acid round. This ammunition really isn't acid at all, but it contains nanites that attack and break down all organic compounds and armoring compounds for a limited duration. Each shot permanently reduces the target?s armor. The target's armor degrades until the full effects are felt. A rifle caliber acid round can destroy body armor entirely, given enough hits. At that point, a victim is vulnerable to paralytic rounds. However, it's just not effective to use acid rounds on an armored vehicle; it takes too many shots and too much time to destroy heavy plating. It takes hours to destroy armor plate, even after it is hit by hundreds of acid rounds. On the other hand, a hit on a typical small arm renders it useless in short order (2d8 rounds).

Modern chuff weapons are designed to incapacitate, not kill. Older models from the 21st and 22nd century turn up occasionally, and these are much deadlier, built to a larger caliber that can fire larger toxic flechettes, white phosphorous rounds, and even electromagnetic pulse (EMP) rounds. The white phosphorous rounds are especially deadly, as they shatter on impact and burn in an oxygen atmosphere.

The earlier chuff rifles often loaded focused electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) round, burning out electrical components. These rounds do damage only to targets with electrical components: cyberware, robots, body tanks, and machinery such as e-suits or computers. The mechalus themselves are somewhat shielded from such pulses by their redundant biological and mechanical systems and take only half damage from these weapons. Many human machines are less secure.

The mechalus homeworlds orbit the star Agemac, a K-class star just out of the G range and cooling. The system is unusual in that it has two easily habitable planets, Orod and Aleer. Aleer is smaller and warmer than Earth, with a thinner atmosphere that most humans consider acrid because of its high levels of chlorine gas. Its gravity is very close to Earth-normal. The mechalus have inhabited Aleer for as long as the species has existed (according to the fossil record) but have only relatively recently colonized Orod, the planet which was once home to the system's second sentient species. Orod is larger but colder than Aleer, with less seasonal variation.

The system is also home to a hot gas giant named Geshlor, a hothouse planet named Fontis, and a sterile icy rock named Blagieur at the system's edge.

In addition to their home system, the mechalus have colonized more than 20 other worlds in Rigunmor space, including the second worlds of Agema, Afsha, Condree, Colet, Drochi, Galvy, and Maray and seventeen colony worlds and holdings. They are widely settled throughout Rigunmor, Concord, Orion, Insight, and StarMech space.

Mechalus are the dominant life forms on their home planets, but they are the only members of their genus. All other plants and animals are domesticated and carefully controlled, or are weeds and pests that have found niches in Aleer's heavily bioengineered environment, The mechalus see no reason why plants and animals shouldn't be perfected just as they have been. Most surviving species exhibit astounding rates of growth, little or no aggression, and a range of specialized traits useful to industry.

The mechalus have no respect for any life form unable to survive on its own; environmental and ecological worldviews are simply aberrations in their eyes. They see those who hold such views as foolish sentimentalists unable to face up to harsh realities, and often treat them the way humans might treat a mentally retarded person, gently but always condescendingly.

Mechalus Tables

Nleer Na'o (neer NOW) Formal cowled rob with long skirts.

Rlin Noch' (rin NOACH ee) Tight fitting bodysuit, everyday wear.

Had'niltas (powered nano-armor)