Beyond War - Fear the Restless Dead

Why Fear the Sanguine
Vampires, in space... so what. We know 'vampires'. Sunlight, holy water, fire, no more monster. If only it were that simple.

Sanguine are not really Vampires
The first rule of Beyond War - things are not what they seem. It barely beats out rule #2 - That which is static cannot hold.

These are the creatures that all legends of monsters originate. Vampires, werewolves, the Loch Ness monster, bigfoot - all Sanguine. Ask yourself, why were these creatures so terrifying that the description of their very being and every encounter with them evokes mankind's deepest most primal fear?

There is a reason for this. They are far more powerful than we can even imagine. Most people will not have any idea what is happening when the Sanguine hit them. Nor realize the attack was just a tap of the softest paw compared to the power at the command of these engineered super soldiers. Let's look at some of the things that the Sanguine can do, and you be the judge. Vampire - or something worse?

Heuristic Electromagnetic Attenuation Resonance Transmitter (HEART)
The Sanguine do not need to breath, and can utilize their upper thoracic cavity to scan for and receive a wide range of data beyond human senses, including the Tesla resonance frequency of matter in any material or person they observe closely.

The HEART system can also transmit a very powerful resonance pulse consistently over a very large area along the electron and quantum field, creating a sympathetic vibration in matter receiving these pulses. In the experiments by Nikola Tesla, this vibration can bring down a building, shatter glass, cause fires, and affect chemical compounds and electronics including intergated circuits and electron flow across common mediums of transmission, from wireless broadcasts to physical copper wire.

When employed as a defensive screen, the HEART can detonate propellant in small arms, neutralize computer controlled weapons, jam both radio and laser transmissions, alter the quantum spin of photons in concentrated transmission - causing lasers to bend around objects resonating a counter-frequency, and - perhaps most disturbing - cancel out sound in a large area, either specific frequencies and patterns or all sound. This makes the Sanguine effective at engaging highly advanced armies with only their bare hands, forcing close combat upon enemy units without warning, approaching and killing large numbers of people without alerting persons in the next room because their screams cannot be heard nor any sound of breaking bone and twisting metal.

At higher frequencies, over a shorter range, the HEART can shatter bone, rupture organs, cause catastrophic brain damage, crush the heart of targets with electrical interference, disrupt alpha and beta and theta waves in the human brain, shatter steel like glass, and break down the elements that contain common sulfide and metal components - causing a smell of sulfur, burning metal and rust, ozone, and spontaneous fires. The description of Hell as a pit of fire - is a Sanguine engaging his defensive electronic warfare suite at low power. These abilities are not limited to small arms, and can be employed against anti-planetary and anti-stellar weapons. In general, only Hypersphere weapons can bypass the phase deflection technology affecting normal electrons, chemical, and crystal disruption technologies - striking through dimensional space that the physical resonance does not have a transmission medium or presence in at the time of deployment. Even so, because signal systems to target these weapons are dependant upon such material space, these attacks are usually only successful when launched by surprise.

Despite the terrifying description, the resonance system and guidance subsystem still require a focus to avoid liquidating all matter near the Sanguine, and in devotion of the majority of its capability to the detection and cancellation of other Sanguine using the same system in the same area against the owner or his forces. As a result, physical conflict at close range is possibly the safest place to be in order to avoid the full force of a HEART attack. On some worlds, the term has even been adopted to describe all sudden death, or nervous system and cardiovascular failure without warning, by native medicine men and tribes.

Resonance pulses can be used to apply kinetic force, pull, add inertia where there is none, to move objects with precision and control. This is not a gravity disturbance, but in fact a focused resonance pulse calculated to shove the object toward the location, lacking fine control. It can allow the Sanguine to leap, climb, walk on walls upright, and do so with very little mental focus due to the subsystem coprocessor model of the Sanguine support system.

A shot to the chest in the center can stun or even damage this system, making it very hard for the Sanguine to use these abilities which would otherwise make pinning it down or restraining it like trying to bath a saber-toothed tiger. This is the likely reason for the legend suggesting you 'stab them in the heart' with wood or a similar material.

Genetic Integrated Registry Library
Contact with a living being allows the Sanguine to sample the DNA, RNA, and quantum signature of the target. While casual cursory contact, skin to skin, lasting only a fraction of a second is sufficient - using any surface of exposed skin, the Sanguine may choose to obtain this sample through a more overt act - such as a bite or kiss, even where no blood is drawn and the skin is not penetrated. A larger sample can be used to replicate the subject for future consumption - like farming the tissue of the body in a controlled space - to provide sustained sustenance and a working sample to manufacture biomass. These samples are stored in the manifold space of the body outside the material space, as is evident when a Sanguine is severely injured.

A simple wound may bleed decaliters of blood, or even spew out under pressure like a fire hydrant, shooting up to sixty feet from the body as the volume of blood in the container is larger than the mass displacement of the Sanguine in our material space. The very sight of a Sanguine being severely wounded can drive back many primitives, as it has the tendency to resemble an erupting geyser of gore.

The coprocessor managing these samples and culture chambers can intensely analyze the sample and create a variety of diseases and medicines for any ingested blood or tissue. This is not always used as a weapon, and can actually cure cancer, regrow organs, arrest nerve damage, and install complex subsystems via immune-optimized customized drug manufacturing. This is why servants of the Sanguine frequently have extremely long lives and appear to be in excellent health despite terrible conditions. It may also suggest the origin of the "Sin Eater" and other monsters who are able to grant long life and ease the passing of the powerful and prominent for favor.

A Genetic Integrated Registry Library (GIRL) stores all the data the Sanguine accumulates in its lifetime, and can transfer this information directly to a BOY (Biological Organism Yard) for mass production of billions of clones with modifications based on the base code. No cultured organism will be the person, in character and spirit, no matter how perfect. The sample is a blueprint, not a photocopy, of the living being. However - one can expect in nightmare scenarios engaging an entire army of the best soldiers and people that the Sanguine has encountered on a world, despite the empty and insufficient personality of such doppelgangers and homunculus (little versions of victims) made to amuse and carry out the orders of the Sanguine. It is considered offensive, even among Sanguine, to make a doppelganger of a person the Sanguine loves - as it is an offense against their true self in imitation.

The acronyms are a carryover from the Prayer of Blood, a Sanguine book of prayer written by the earliest of their kind, often filled with puns and jokes - like "When a BOY meets a GIRL, planets fall and stars burn."

The weird juxtaposition of BOY as mother and GIRL as the father, reversing the role of mother and caregiver, teacher, and the GIRL giving instead of receiving genetic information, seems to be just one more stab at gender issues in the fundamental development of the Sanguine combat system. The idea deeply offends some cultures, who still maintain the father is a lesser parent than the mother. This is a symptom of female weakness and control obtained by power over the child, which is absent in the female Sanguine. In fact, the GIRL allows the Sanguine to alter themselves making gender a choice, like putting on a t-shirt or a hat, at the beginning of any given day. Those that are female in form choose to be so, usually to gain advantage over their enemies presumption of a weaker opponent. The true gender of any Sanguine is most certainly lost - if not for the possibility they are turned rather than made.

The GIRL allows the Sanguine to alter the subject to the extent of full conversion into a Sanguine, or any other species they have sampled, with retention of 100% of the personality and knowledge of the original oraganism despite change in mass, volume, or brain size. This is created through hypersphere tunneling and creation of resevoirs identical to those used by Sanguine, even if limited in conversion and change. The worst of which is the creation of a carrier - a living organism to attach a riding pouch for the Sanguine outside normal space - from which it can suddenly burst out at any moment - through the body of the carrier. Redefining shock and awe.

Another tactic popular is to use stored biomass to build a "replacement body" where the Sanguine was standing and escape in another form, unnoticed, leading to stories about witches changing form and the inability to tell if the corpse being destroyed is a living Sanguine or a simple husk left behind. This fools the natives and allows the Sanguine to fake their own death complete with a body every few decades in order to keep living in very organized and modern societies.

Quantum Unification Entanglement Extended Neurocommunication
Linking quantum computing systems and data storage to pinpoint contact bindings in physical space, the Sanguine can create access to database systems with a neuron contact that connects to any organic life which comes in contact with it - passing on as direct memories and first-person experience the observable and internal thoughts and feelings of themselves and others with non-Sanguine in a reference similar to 'watching a movie' with the added element of emotion, physical and emotional pain, and feelings. These images do not supplant the natural feelings and emotions of the host, and are identical to recollection without displacement of the self, in a similar way watching a film or listening to music affects the viewer. Sanguine can leave these 'records' and copy and transcribe them into vast archives of billions of accounts, made ready on contact with a 1cm square. Often, Sanguine will implant these experiences onto a physical weapon edge or striking tip, as well as a recorder of the experience of all persons killed or injured by the weapon, designed to play back hundreds of thousands of years of pain and record the results on each person struck by the weapon, amplifying the physical and psychological shock of the armament, and instilling despair in their victims during battle with the memories of defeated and subjugated people.

Natural Enemies
Some animals resonate a counter extremely low-frequency vibration, which cancels the Sanguine technology and quantum state links in their immediate vicinity - causes the Sanguine intense pain - and creates a form of feedback in the resonance generator. The reason these animals are able to do this remains a mystery, as they appear otherwise normal and in no way special, but upon planets where these species are found - few Sanguine will willingly live or operate, as they tend to disappear. Not all planets have these animals, and their presence seems to be limited to specific places mentioned in the Prayer of Blood, the holy book of the Sanguine. Kaygi, familiar with these creatures, have been known to keep them as companions, warding off the ability of the Sanguine to influence with subtlety their work and influence them. The stories have led to legends of familiars that are synonymous with witches and wizards.

In order to avoid tipping off the Sanguine to the presence of a Kaigi, the term 'evil' will often be used in direct replacement of the word 'Sanguine', in the native tongue. Thus 'evil spirits' in many legends are in fact direct reference to the Sanguine on a world.

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Beyond War - Fear the Restless Dead