The perfect soldier. Tough, rugged, obedient, and most of all - affordable.
Battle-born and proud, a self-portrait by a member of the breed.
Slang terms: Reds, Greys, Widows, Recluses, Spidermen, Grunts, Junk Goons, Chum
Origins[]
Tri-Optimum: The bold do not make mistakes.
A joint product with an Omni-Tek expatriate and genius bioengineer, Surrexit Korenchkin, Tri-Optimum sought to create the ultimate human ground trooper. With guided drones and virtual intelligences having already revolutionized the field of inter-corporate combat, the notion of an impregnable, unsleeping infantry with less expense-intensive equipment than drones and VI tanks became very appealing to both Tri-Optimum and corporate investors.
The result was Homo Belli, probably the only breed designed purely and intentionally for warfare. Comparable in height and physique to a normal human, their appearance differs significantly and immediately: For one, the breed has eerily smooth, dark grey-brown or red-brown skin with a uniform body hair colour ranging from black to red to white. For another, each of the breed's forward-facing humanoid eyesockets contains four small red eyes nested together in a single lidded cluster.
Psychologically, the breed is virtually immune to anxiety, with a hyperactive fight/flight response leading to a perception of the world as being composed entirely of predator and prey. Incidents of cannibalism have been reported of breed members, but are uncommon as they've been designed to find most meats bitter and unpalatable. Accordingly, most Homo Belli are pescaterian or eat only synthetic foods.
Homo Belli rarely blinks. Homo Belli gallops merrily into combat, often running on three limbs, holding a firearm in a surreal stable-sling arrangement with the free arm. Homo Belli never sleeps. Homo Belli will survive gunshots that put most soldiers down and happily keep on fighting.
Mechanics[]
Homo Belli costs 3 character benefits to create.
- +3 CON, +2 DEX. Homo Belli is tough and nimble.
- -5 POW. Intentionally designed to be psychically r*****ed.
- Bulletproof: The protein and sugar fiber networks layering Homo Belli's dermis grant them 3 armor versus all physical attacks. This stacks with any armor they may be wearing, increasing the protective value of that armor accordingly.
- Diurnal: Homo Belli does not sleep. How this was achieved has yet to be understood fully by most studying the breed, but Tyrell did patent a cerebral organelle that induces multi-phase hibernation shortly after meeting with Korenchkin.
- Spinnerets: An unintended side-effect, Homo Belli's mammary glands produce silk in quantities comparable to a normal spider (in other words, not very much for human purposes). All seven arachnid glands are present in Homo Belli.
- Gene-Drive: Deep within the breed's genetic code is a substructure that develops a biocomputer drive as they mature, eventually completing the computational organ. Homo Belli can adapt to this data with some practice, giving them an instinct for most forms of combat. With (24-INT) hours of preparation and study, a member of the breed can recall genetic familiarity with a weapon they have on hand, granting +25% skill with it and it alone. Any member of the breed can carry only a few such specializations at a time, dependent again upon INT.
- Sight-Tracker: +25% to any roll to detect ongoing motion; Homo Belli also has no real penalties for relying on peripheral vision to notice something. However, the breed is inherently farsighted, with great difficulty reading anything up-close or, really, seeing any fine details of an object.
- Natural Runner: Peculiarities in their muscular and skeletal structure enable Homo Belli to move at roughly double the rate of a normal human by employing hands and feet both in a bizarre marionette gallop. Given the extremely unnatural appearance of this motion, onlookers may be unnerved or sickened.