Allodons

From Whatis
Jump to: navigation, search

>CIA Field Report Local Dateline June 2016, Rassilonian Era Submitting Agent: 002.461517neminixblipsonara<

The following information is what we've been able to easily obtain about this brand-new race. "Code Omega" was declared within certain offices of Gallifrey the moment that dimensional breach occurred, and several dozen Time Lords and their followers immediately ceased all operations in regards to the ongoing Time War and vanished. Something about the signal received ("WE! ARE! UNLEASHED!") almost seemed to fill them with complete terror.

They're acting like the Daleks aren't nearly as bad as these new creatures!

>Private message to Sakura Xadium Aino. Sender: unknown. Delivery method: unknown.<

Hello old friend.

An impossibility has occurred and the Worst of the Worst have freed themselves. I will tell you that something unusual is happening with the force responsible for this Breach. They're not like either of the two groups we're opposing, so we're researching into a third possibility. Regardless, I am permitting this information to reach your people so they won't be operating blind if/when you need to fight them.

J.D.S.

INFORMATION PROCESSING.

Overview

The Allodons are a race previously unknown to the rest of the Multiverse at large due to the fact that they are inhabitants of a realm typically known as the "Prison Dimension." You can only find them there.

Every race incarcerated within the Prison Dimension has proven to be exceedingly dangerous in one form or another, indicating that the dimension itself (which has demonstrated characteristics suggesting that it's actually self-aware and intelligent on some level) is in fact the equivalent of an ultra-maximum security prison harboring the most lethal species in creation.

The Allodons are frequently referred to as one of the "True Threats," meaning they are among the worst of the worst.

The Allodons are actually a fairly young race, having only officially achieving sentience roughly 65,000 Terran years ago after being uplifted by another species they call the "Kree-Turr," who used them as a slave-race. The Allodons themselves ultimately rebelled, successfully throwing off their enslavers in an uprising that was extremely successful despite the odds. Taking control of the Kree-Turr's technology for themselves and learning a great deal from their former masters, the Allodons quickly expanded throughout their home galaxy and more often than not discovered that they'd become the de facto rulers of the other races they found purely because they'd utterly defeated the Kree-Turr. This only fueled the Allodon's sense of manifest destiny more and more. Within a 1000 years they successful conquered their entire galaxy and with the Kree-Turr's knowledge of dimensional physics they soon turned their attention to other galaxies and new worlds and races to annex and dominate into their growing empire.

To date they have completely conquered their closest neighboring galaxy (which is currently starting to collide with their own, so that could also explain their fierce expansionism) and invaded seventeen others with varying degrees of success. Still, the fact that they've been as successful as they have been and maintained a remarkably stable society in the process is remarkable in and of itself.

Appearance

At first glance Allodons don't seem particularly fearsome. The males are roughly humanoid reptilian bipeds with scaly sepia-colored skin, heads like cayman lizards or kimodo dragons, tails, and bat-like wings that enable them to have limited gliding ability. Females are rare, but their appearance is strikingly different from the males of the species. Female Allodons are significantly smarter than males (average IQ is well over 200) and possess potent psionic abilities. Female Allodons all have a "mane" of fleshy tendrils that flow down their spines from their heads (possibly serving as some kind of cooling system for their hyperactive central nervous system) and don't have wings at all. Instead, their overall stance is quadrupedal and where their wings would have been are fully-functional arms. It goes without saying that female Allodons obviously can't fly. The females are the thinkers, planners, and directors of the species, serving much the same roles as queens of terrestrial hive-based insects, while the males serve the roles of soldiers. Naturally, subjugated races are the only ones who serve the role of "worker" as is right and proper in their minds.

All Allodons have sapphire blue blood and very high metabolisms. They're also all pure carnivores, possessing nothing but fangs within their mouths. The eyes of an Allodon are also unique in that they're able to see in a wider spectrum of colors than a Human, especially in the "red" range of the visual spectrum. Because of that Allodons can see into infra-red frequencies and actually have limited thermographic vision in the absence of normal light (too much normal light interferes with their eye's ability to process heat signatures, causing them to experience a sensation not unlike "night time glare"). Allodons are also notable for their exceptional healing abilities. While they cannot regenerate lost limbs or severed digits (hardly a handicap given their current level of technology), their cellular structure is remarkably resilient. This is because of their blood's distinctive properties: it's toxic to most other carbon-based life forms due to their highly aggressive immune systems that make them almost impervious to disease and infection. Their leukocyte-equivalents also act like self-replicating stem cells. The Hayflick Limit is almost entirely absent among Allodons, meaning that as their cells replicate throughout the course of their lives they avoid many of the DNA errors that occur over time. The maximum Allodon lifespan can easily reach over 2000 years, but the vast majority of them perish far, far sooner due to wartime injuries.

However, the toxic nature is because if their blood cells enter the bloodstream of another non-Allodon life form, the "blue cells" will quickly multiply and start attacking everything around them, causing a condition known as "Alldonarian Syndrome". Its symptoms closely resemble the worst aspects of leukemia, mononucleosis, and Lyme Disease as the "blue cells" quickly spread through the bloodstream and tear the body apart from the inside, concentrating within the nervous system. If not purged from an infected person death will occur within six to seven Terran days.

The Awful Truth

What makes the Allodons especially fearsome are the non-visible quirks of their physiology. When meeting an Allodon, the natural reaction of most humanoid species is unease - something about Allodons causes an instinctive apprehension to kick in. The feeling is much the same thing a person would feel if they suddenly heard the distinct sound of a rattlesnake or cougar growling nearby. For time-actives though the sensation might be significantly worse.

The entire species is temporally inert, so grounded in probability that any and all attempts to change and alter their history is impossible. For some unknown reason the Allodons possess a unique ability of being completely immune to temporal manipulation - weapons, spells, and devices that affect time have no effect on them.

A Temporal Stasis spell cast on them would fail. A stasis barrier would offer no resistance to them. Even trying to alter or edit their history invariably fails: the changes either go completely unnoticed as they're drowned out by the background noise of history, "auto-correct" themselves as the timeline actively resists the change, or backfire spectacularly as the mere attempt to alter history completes some kind of predestination paradox or time-loop that actually ensures the outcome the time travelers sought to alter (a.k.a. the John Connor Paradox).

It's as if the entire Allodon race is a collective Fixed Point that Time is almost actively protecting. Or it could be that the Allodons are being deliberately prevented from ever becoming Time-active to the point of temporal inertia being a side effect. Either way, Time is neither a weapon that can be used against them nor a tool the Allodons can ever benefit from.

To the Time Lords, the Allodons represent a wild card element they have no control over (at least not in their usual sense) and an inconceivable anomaly in their understanding of the nature of Time. Causality and probability work much, much differently for them, and that ability seems to be a natural evolution for them. Meaning the Allodons represent one of two things: either the Time Lord's knowledge of the nature of Time is somehow wrong or they are a race so alien they defy all comprehension.

Both possibilities are equally terrifying.

Technology

Allodon technology is fairly conventional and comprehensible, with advanced capabilities in both dimensional physics and medical tech. Their knowledge of dimensional physics is primarily focused along military lines though: their starships are protected by several layers of multi-phasic defenses, they can create artificial singularities as both weapons of mass destruction and to create temporary wormholes enabling transportation across gigaparsecs, and interstellar communication across galactic distances is both swift and accurate. Their medical technology is also impressive. Lost limbs can be replaced fairly easily with semi-organic prosthetics nearly indistinguishable from the original, most injuries can be healed almost immediately through the use of RG-10, and full-body cloning is widespread on planetary scales to produce billions upon billions of soldiers for use in their wars of expansion (which can easily become exceedingly brutal and destructive).

In that regard, the Allodons share much in common with the Sontarans and the Daleks. The differences are that the Allodons are not driven to fight or exterminate, just conquer and expand as is their manifest right, which ironically makes them not so different from the Imperium of Man.

Their weapons and armor fields have likewise benefited from their understanding of dimensional physics. Energy weapons make use of ultrahigh-capacity capacitors that can contain significantly more power than their size would indicate, and their primary armor material is Criton: an advanced composite composed of a semi-organic polymer impregnated with titanium and irridium and shaped using dimensional warping. The end result is a substance that is many times harder than armor-grade steel alloy, weighs half as much, and is especially resistant to lasers.

If the Allodons have anything that resembles a shortcoming in their technological development, it would be computer technology. Their overall computer technology hasn't evolved much past the transistor stage of development. As such, their computers all look like something out of the 1980s, with CRT monitors, keyboard terminals, and stacks and stacks of CPU towers, and programs contained in the equivalent of 3" hard disks. What their computers lack in overall sophistication (meaning powerful computers require a LOT of space) they make up for in efficiency as the cheapest Allodon 3 1/4" floppy disk will have a memory capacity measuring in terabytes, not kilobytes.

Still, some aspects of Allodon technology have a distinctly "retro" feel that could lead some observers to underestimate their overall capabilities.

Noteworthy Examples of Allodon Tech

M-480 Laser Rifle

M480%20Facelift_zpsdwp2se3i.jpg

The M-480 is a high-energy laser weapon that the Allodons hold in such high regard that it almost borders on religious reverence. Admittedly, the M-480 is an exceptional weapon. It's constructed using techniques the Allodons know quite well; in some ways it's actually primitive compared to what they could make. Because of this, M-480s are easy to make and maintain, with a focus on accuracy.

The beam fired is well into the ultra-violet end of the visual spectrum, giving the M-480 solid stopping power and good penetration (equivalent to a Space Marine boltgun or enhanced strength lasers) but also extremely long range. M-480s also always include a variable-power targeting scope that's typically optimized for medium and long-range firing.

Quite literally an M-480 can put a dime-sized hole through the letter O of a "No Parking" sign from two miles away.

With sixty shots per charge pack, M-480s can inflict a lot of damage. Their only drawback (if it can be called a drawback) is their slow rate of fire: they're always semi-automatic weapons, firing one shot per pull of the trigger. Given how extremely accurate they can be, this might just be a deliberate feature.

Battle Armor

Allodon combat armor consists of a suit of plain, simple-looking plate armor that looks reminiscent of medieval field plate armor. Composed entirely of criton, battle armor is study and extremely durable, able to withstand a surprising amount of punishment without sustaining any significant damage; most Allodons who died while wearing it tend to die because of internal injuries caused by the blunt force trauma of a heavy autocannon impact or explosion being stopped by the armor. Composed of multiple pieces designed to be worn as a complete full body suit, it can also be broken down into segments that can be worn separately. It's VERY common for those who get a hold of Allodon battle armor to just wear the cuirass and not wear the arm and leg plating, desiring extremely durable protection where it really counts.

Cyberhelm

Many Allodons, especially "Front Line" troops, universally wear a type of combat helmet with a flip down reflective visor and collapsible fold-away plating that is in fact the pinnacle of their computer technology. Cyberhelms contain highly advanced optronic processors that house an extremely adaptive and clever AI customized to its wearer's specifications. They also incorporate environmental sealing, active atmospheric filters, an encrypted radio transceiver with a range of 50 miles, multi-spectral scanners with holographic heads-up displays (includes full thermographic and night-vision sensors), condition monitors, a link to all of a given wearer's weapons (for smart targeting), and a direct neural induction field emitter that connects directly with the users brain. While connected the cyberhelm can initiate limited influence over the wearer, adjusting their perceptions, slightly enhancing their reaction times, and providing tactical suggestions in various situations or (as the case may arise in combat) suppressing or enhancing certain emotional responses in order to keep the wearer fighting and functional.

The fact that the AI can actually influence its wearer isn't lost to anyone. Attempting to "hack" a cyberhelm is next to impossible though: the AI is quite aggressive and cyberhelms have NO wireless capability, meaning that in order to access the helm's abilities a prospective hacker must actually put it on and use the neural interface. Then the AI can dump the current energy in the power cell into the hacker's brain in one big surge if it decides it doesn't like what's going on.

M-270 Slayer pistol

Some Allodon soldiers carry secondary weapons on them. One of the most common is a type of heavy-duty pistol they call a "Slayer". The M-270 Slayer is a sturdy, solidly built cased pistol that is very similar to many types of heavy pistols found on Earth. What makes the Slayer so widespread is also the reason it gets its name - the round it fires is exceedingly powerful and dangerous, and any other projectile-based firearm that is modified to use Slayer rounds will likely explode in the shooter's hands.

The Slayer pistol fires gravitically-compressed armor-piercing bullets, using a liquid-based propellant that's more along the lines of a plastic explosive. The shot is so powerful that, when fired, the bullet is propelled at over five times the speed of sound and hits so hard that it can potentially punch through tank armor. Allodon battle armor isn't immune to the M-270 and neither is Space Marine power armor, striking with enough force to possibly penetrate through both armor types and (just as possibly) exit out the back, causing grotesque internal injuries due to the massive cavitation effects.

M-270 Slayers are only designed with 10-round magazines, but that's hardly a detractor, and anyone who knows about Allodon weaponry will inevitably attempt to gain possession of one.