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Clan Elemental

2021-10-09T01:51:07Z

2607:FB90:6E60:4C41:2975:829B:74C1:61B0: /* Elementals */

{{stub}}
Not to be confused with the [[Elemental]]s you find in fantasy.
[[File:Tex's_Ex.jpg|400px|thumb|right|A Clan Elemental lady, Snu Snu at your own peril]]
'''[[Elemental]]s''' are one of the main phenotypes of [[The Clans|Clan]] Warrior, genetically engineered to serve as [[power armor]]ed heavy heavy infantry in the [[Battletech]] universe.

== History ==
There were two developments which lead to Clan Elementals, first of all was the development of a powered exosuit for deep sea mining by Clan Goliath Scorpion in 2842. The second was Clan Hell's Horses developing a line of bulked-out soldiers. Clan Wolf wanted a slice of both of these actions. First their merchants bought the schematics for the Diving Suit designs in 2860 and soon had their Scientists began to adapt them for combat. These were ready for service in 2868 and were a nasty surprise for Clan Nova Cat. Hell's Horses challenged Clan Wolf for their new power suits and after some negotiating had their set of combat trials for the rights to manufacture the armor in exchange for the gene-tech. In the end, both sides got the others tech and they were happy with this as they both came out ahead, though other Clans would go out of their way to acquire both for themselves in the next few years. Another breakthrough for Elementals was the creation of the OmniMech’s universal docking ports. While originally made for swapping out weapons, it didn’t take too long to realize that Elementals could piggyback off of OmniMechs by mounting onto chassis docks to recharge their weapons and move along with the BattleMech units for mobility. So while reverse engineered Battle Armor by Spheroids was initially restricted to defensive warfare, Elementals were able to be on the offensive alongside their MechWarrior brethren.

== Elementals ==
[[File:Prince_of_Havoc_-_Prince_Victor_Steiner-Davion_and_ilKhan_Lincoln_Osis.jpg|200px|thumb|left|''"To the Victor go the Spoils . . . "'' Prince Victor Steiner-Davion (top) faces down ilKhan Lincoln Osis (bottom), the latter in his Clan Elemental Battle Armor, at the end of the "Great Refusal."]]

Your basic Elemental stands between 2 to 2.5 meters tall and is built like a brick shithouse. They're strong, fast and resilient. As such, most elemental wash-outs end up in the Laborer caste. As is typical with Clan Warriors, they've been trained from childhood to fight, survive, and work together as a team, with only the best of the best graduating. Even without Battle Armor, you would not want to throw down with an Elemental. In one humorous & bloodless example during the Clan Invasion, an undefended Draconis Combine planet tried to one-up Clan Ghost Bear with a game of American football in exchange for staying unconquered on the assumption they didn’t know the game; only for the planet sport league to be [[Blood Bowl|utterly smashed]] by a team of Elementals, 84 to 3. One of the very few exceptions is if your name is [[Mary Sue|Victor Steiner-Davion]], who after a brief exchange of words dismounted from his captured Clan Daishi/Dire Wolf [[OmniMech]] and beheaded the former ilKhan of the Clans, Lincoln Osis, with a simple [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|katana]] after Osis willingly took off his Battle Armor in an attempt to "teach Victor a lesson" just after the last remnants of his Clan Smoke Jaguar forces handily lost their part of the "Great Refusal" in the licensed novel ''Prince of Havoc.''

Your basic suit of Elemental armor weighs a literal metric tonne with 250 kg of armor and is equipped with jump jets. They can operate in the vacuum of space, underwater or in heavy gravity. It has two short range missile launchers on its shoulders, and two modular mounts for weapons built into its arms. In infantry firefights, an Elemental is a goddamn nightmare able to cut a bloody swathe through squads of regular guys with guns while brushing off most of their fire. Against BattleMechs, they're small enough to hide, nimble enough to evade most fire (represented by a to-hit roll penalty in the tabletop game, but this "I'm tiny and hard to hit" bonus is not reflected in the various BattleTech-related video games that Clan Elementals have appeared in) and durable enough to take a hit or two from most BattleMech-scale weaponry. The last thing that many a Federated Commonwealth or Draconis Combine Mechwarrior saw during the Clan Invasion was an Elemental busting into their cockpit.
[[Category: BattleTech]]

Clan Elemental

2021-10-09T01:50:25Z

2607:FB90:6E60:4C41:2975:829B:74C1:61B0: /* Elementals */

{{stub}}
Not to be confused with the [[Elemental]]s you find in fantasy.
[[File:Tex's_Ex.jpg|400px|thumb|right|A Clan Elemental lady, Snu Snu at your own peril]]
'''[[Elemental]]s''' are one of the main phenotypes of [[The Clans|Clan]] Warrior, genetically engineered to serve as [[power armor]]ed heavy heavy infantry in the [[Battletech]] universe.

== History ==
There were two developments which lead to Clan Elementals, first of all was the development of a powered exosuit for deep sea mining by Clan Goliath Scorpion in 2842. The second was Clan Hell's Horses developing a line of bulked-out soldiers. Clan Wolf wanted a slice of both of these actions. First their merchants bought the schematics for the Diving Suit designs in 2860 and soon had their Scientists began to adapt them for combat. These were ready for service in 2868 and were a nasty surprise for Clan Nova Cat. Hell's Horses challenged Clan Wolf for their new power suits and after some negotiating had their set of combat trials for the rights to manufacture the armor in exchange for the gene-tech. In the end, both sides got the others tech and they were happy with this as they both came out ahead, though other Clans would go out of their way to acquire both for themselves in the next few years. Another breakthrough for Elementals was the creation of the OmniMech’s universal docking ports. While originally made for swapping out weapons, it didn’t take too long to realize that Elementals could piggyback off of OmniMechs by mounting onto chassis docks to recharge their weapons and move along with the BattleMech units for mobility. So while reverse engineered Battle Armor by Spheroids was initially restricted to defensive warfare, Elementals were able to be on the offensive alongside their MechWarrior brethren.

== Elementals ==
[[File:Prince_of_Havoc_-_Prince_Victor_Steiner-Davion_and_ilKhan_Lincoln_Osis.jpg|200px|thumb|left|''"To the Victor go the Spoils . . . "'' Prince Victor Steiner-Davion (top) faces down ilKhan Lincoln Osis (bottom), the latter in his Clan Elemental Battle Armor, at the end of the "Great Refusal."]]

Your basic Elemental stands between 2 to 2.5 meters tall and is built like a brick shithouse. They're strong, fast and resilient. As such, most elemental wash-outs end up in the Laborer caste. As is typical with Clan Warriors, they've been trained from childhood to fight, survive, and work together as a team, with only the best of the best graduating. Even without Battle Armor, you would not want to throw down with an Elemental. In one humorous & bloodless example during the Clan Invasion, an undefended Draconis Combine planet tried to one-up Clan Ghost Bear with a game of American football on the assumption they didn’t know the game; only for the planet sport league to be [[Blood Bowl|utterly smashed]] by a team of Elementals, 84 to 3. One of the very few exceptions is if your name is [[Mary Sue|Victor Steiner-Davion]], who after a brief exchange of words dismounted from his captured Clan Daishi/Dire Wolf [[OmniMech]] and beheaded the former ilKhan of the Clans, Lincoln Osis, with a simple [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|katana]] after Osis willingly took off his Battle Armor in an attempt to "teach Victor a lesson" just after the last remnants of his Clan Smoke Jaguar forces handily lost their part of the "Great Refusal" in the licensed novel ''Prince of Havoc.''

Your basic suit of Elemental armor weighs a literal metric tonne with 250 kg of armor and is equipped with jump jets. They can operate in the vacuum of space, underwater or in heavy gravity. It has two short range missile launchers on its shoulders, and two modular mounts for weapons built into its arms. In infantry firefights, an Elemental is a goddamn nightmare able to cut a bloody swathe through squads of regular guys with guns while brushing off most of their fire. Against BattleMechs, they're small enough to hide, nimble enough to evade most fire (represented by a to-hit roll penalty in the tabletop game, but this "I'm tiny and hard to hit" bonus is not reflected in the various BattleTech-related video games that Clan Elementals have appeared in) and durable enough to take a hit or two from most BattleMech-scale weaponry. The last thing that many a Federated Commonwealth or Draconis Combine Mechwarrior saw during the Clan Invasion was an Elemental busting into their cockpit.
[[Category: BattleTech]]

Clan Elemental

2021-10-09T01:49:01Z

2607:FB90:6E60:4C41:2975:829B:74C1:61B0: /* Elementals */

{{stub}}
Not to be confused with the [[Elemental]]s you find in fantasy.
[[File:Tex's_Ex.jpg|400px|thumb|right|A Clan Elemental lady, Snu Snu at your own peril]]
'''[[Elemental]]s''' are one of the main phenotypes of [[The Clans|Clan]] Warrior, genetically engineered to serve as [[power armor]]ed heavy heavy infantry in the [[Battletech]] universe.

== History ==
There were two developments which lead to Clan Elementals, first of all was the development of a powered exosuit for deep sea mining by Clan Goliath Scorpion in 2842. The second was Clan Hell's Horses developing a line of bulked-out soldiers. Clan Wolf wanted a slice of both of these actions. First their merchants bought the schematics for the Diving Suit designs in 2860 and soon had their Scientists began to adapt them for combat. These were ready for service in 2868 and were a nasty surprise for Clan Nova Cat. Hell's Horses challenged Clan Wolf for their new power suits and after some negotiating had their set of combat trials for the rights to manufacture the armor in exchange for the gene-tech. In the end, both sides got the others tech and they were happy with this as they both came out ahead, though other Clans would go out of their way to acquire both for themselves in the next few years. Another breakthrough for Elementals was the creation of the OmniMech’s universal docking ports. While originally made for swapping out weapons, it didn’t take too long to realize that Elementals could piggyback off of OmniMechs by mounting onto chassis docks to recharge their weapons and move along with the BattleMech units for mobility. So while reverse engineered Battle Armor by Spheroids was initially restricted to defensive warfare, Elementals were able to be on the offensive alongside their MechWarrior brethren.

== Elementals ==
[[File:Prince_of_Havoc_-_Prince_Victor_Steiner-Davion_and_ilKhan_Lincoln_Osis.jpg|200px|thumb|left|''"To the Victor go the Spoils . . . "'' Prince Victor Steiner-Davion (top) faces down ilKhan Lincoln Osis (bottom), the latter in his Clan Elemental Battle Armor, at the end of the "Great Refusal."]]

Your basic Elemental stands between 2 to 2.5 meters tall and is built like a brick shithouse. They're strong, fast and resilient. As such, most elemental wash-outs end up in the Laborer caste. As is typical with Clan Warriors, they've been trained from childhood to fight, survive, and work together as a team, with only the best of the best graduating. Even without Battle Armor, you would not want to throw down with an Elemental. In one humorous example during the Clan Invasion, an undefended Draconis Combine planet tried to one-up Clan Ghost Bear with a game of American football on the assumption they didn’t know the game; only for the planet sport league to be utterly smashed by a team of Elementals, 84 to 3. One of the very few exceptions is if your name is [[Mary Sue|Victor Steiner-Davion]], who after a brief exchange of words dismounted from his captured Clan Daishi/Dire Wolf [[OmniMech]] and beheaded the former ilKhan of the Clans, Lincoln Osis, with a simple [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|katana]] after Osis willingly took off his Battle Armor in an attempt to "teach Victor a lesson" just after the last remnants of his Clan Smoke Jaguar forces handily lost their part of the "Great Refusal" in the licensed novel ''Prince of Havoc.''

Your basic suit of Elemental armor weighs a literal metric tonne with 250 kg of armor and is equipped with jump jets. They can operate in the vacuum of space, underwater or in heavy gravity. It has two short range missile launchers on its shoulders, and two modular mounts for weapons built into its arms. In infantry firefights, an Elemental is a goddamn nightmare able to cut a bloody swathe through squads of regular guys with guns while brushing off most of their fire. Against BattleMechs, they're small enough to hide, nimble enough to evade most fire (represented by a to-hit roll penalty in the tabletop game, but this "I'm tiny and hard to hit" bonus is not reflected in the various BattleTech-related video games that Clan Elementals have appeared in) and durable enough to take a hit or two from most BattleMech-scale weaponry. The last thing that many a Federated Commonwealth or Draconis Combine Mechwarrior saw during the Clan Invasion was an Elemental busting into their cockpit.
[[Category: BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-10-09T01:41:29Z

2607:FB90:6E60:4C41:2975:829B:74C1:61B0: /* Weaponry */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier long range laser
**'''Pulsed Laser''': Can be small, medium or large.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* [[Flamer]]s: They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restive insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Other''': Besides melee weaponry such as reinforced Talons for crushing cockpits underfoot alongside your basic axes and swords. Other experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]]
* Locust
==== Medium ====
* Wolverine
* Rifleman
==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
==== Super Heavy ====
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[[Category:BattleTech]]

Xeelee Sequence

2021-10-08T19:44:08Z

2607:FB90:6E60:4C41:2975:829B:74C1:61B0: /* Shortlist of Grimdark Shit in the Sequence */

{{Grimdark}}
{{Awesome}}

[[File:View_of_the_xeelee_ring_by_steve_burg-d4kvuvu.jpg|770px|thumb|right|WH40K is Grimdark? Their universe is a shitty place to live? Oh, that is just fucking '''''adorable'''''.]]

{{Topquote|Do not remember heroes. Do not speak their names.

''Remember my words, but do not speak my name.''

''I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to Rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythms of Earth’s day, Earth’s year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart.''

''And I have a vision of a child. Who will grow up knowing neither family nor comfort. Who will not be distracted by the illusion of a long life. Who will know nothing but honor and duty. Who will die joyously for the sake of mankind.''

''That is a hero. And I will never know her name.''

''Always remember: a brief life burns brightly.''|Hama Druz, de facto founder of the ICoG. Promoting the ethics of child suicide bombers. Yeah, he's [[That Guy|'''''that''''']] type of person.}}
'''Xeelee Sequence''' is a series of [[Hard Science Fiction|hard]] (ish) science fiction novels and short stories written by British author Stephen Baxter, which spans billions of years of fictional history (leaving 40k in the dust with its "mere" 10,000), with plots revolving around theoretical physics, futurology, multiple universes, artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, and the usual existential and social philosophical issues that tend to go with such works.

Most relevant to /tg/'s interests, though, is that Xeelee is ''unbelievably'' [[grimdark]]. Like, holy shitballs, final word on the matter, makes 40k look like Sesame Street with butterflies and rainbows in comparison, '''grimdark'''. The Interim Coalition of Governance, just to pick one example, is arguably the most grimdark galactic government in all of fiction, even giving [[1984]] a run for its money, although the Empire of Sol and the Holy Superet Church of Light come pretty close to being a bunch of amoral dipshits. The Xeeleeverse is a place where the concept of hope and humanity has been forgotten so hard that trillions of child soldiers are sent to fight (and get slaughtered) in a war they don't have a hope in hell of winning, and the Coalition knows it and doesn't care. All in all, there is a '''''good reason''''' why the Xeelee used to be the main image of the Grimdark template you see above, for a ''very'' good reason.

It should be '''CLEARLY HIGHLIGHTED''' that the Xeelee Sequence isn't a [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] series, even if it shows one of the most overpowered factions of Humanity to ever exist in fiction. It is not trying to be a piece of HFY, if anything, the Sequence brutally subverts this trope and deconstruct this to its core. Throughout the series, Humanity has never been shown in an overall good light, if anything they are viewed as vindictive, destructive, petty and overall ''pathetic''. All of the cliches that makes HFY so appealing is rendered to paste in the Sequence. Case in point:

*Trying to show Humanity's might and achievements? Barely noticeable by the Xeelee, nothing that Humanity tries to strive for would ever register as relevant to the Xeelee. And even if Humanity shouts their loudest to be noticed, the reality is that the multiverse doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of unga-bunga monkeys, so you all should consider yourselves grateful that the Xeelee gives the slightest two shits about your existence at the end of reality.
*Conquering entire Galaxies? Immediately falls apart the moment the primary enemy left due to Humanity's inherent nature for power, xenophobia and wanton greed. Rendering the entire point of conquering the Galaxy (which would be considered one of the greatest achievements by most Human-centric polities in Sci-Fi) worthless.
*Becoming the dominant species and trying to play God? Gets curbstomped so bad Humanity is reduced to pathetic, stone-aged savages once the ''actual'' dominant species gets sick of our shit.
*Trying to be a badass hero and save the day? Lolno, you will be immediately get arrested and punished for disobeying orders by time-travelling NKVD/Gestapo hybrids. Essentially speaking, every characteristic that makes Humanity Fuck Yeah [[Awesome]] is exposed for the folly it truly is:
**Human resourcefulness: Humanity spent hundreds of thousands of years fighting multiple wars that were basically worthless and meaningless on the grand scale of the multiverse. All for what? A bruised ego and a massive inferiority complex? Basically the direct opposite of resourcefulness and showcase how our usage of resources is only utilized at its fullest extent when our hubris is threatened, ''NOT'' for the improvement of society.
**Human ingenuity: Completely butchered by Humanity's own innate fallacies of infighting and power struggles. Innovation if it is permitted, is only used for the cocksucking of the fragile Human ego than it is, for the betterment of society. And despite all this, Humanity is still a second-rate blowhard by Xeelee standards due to the implementation of superior closed-timelike curves.
**Human warrior prowess: Exposed for what it is in Exultant; juvenile, petty and pathetic. Ties hand-in-hand back to the fallacy of Human resourcefulness. To something like the Xeelee, the so-called Human 'warrior spirit' is nothing more than spoilt retards fighting over what would be considered as petty face-saving for the Xeelee.
**Human tenacity: Similar to Human warrior prowess and resourcefulness, the Sequence shows how the multi-millennia wars against the Xeelee, Qax and the Silver Ghosts has reduced a positive Human trait into a degenerate showcasing. It is even quoted in-universe. By comparing ourselves to [[Skaven|rats]], all of a sudden, being tenacious doesn't sound all too appealing. As such, Humanity is nothing more than vermin and would stay ''as'' vermin.
**Human masculinity: Humanity was metaphorically cucked not once, but ''TWICE'' by two alien races. Never has a Humanity in all of literature, be this ''powerful'' yet carry so many [[FAIL|Ls]] in its existence. There is nothing 'badass' nor 'manly' about a polity that routinely used children as suicide bombers and construct what is effectively a child rape camp.

[[Tl;dr]], Humanity, in general, is nothing more than an irrelevant third wheel, a literal side character to the plot that bitterly learned their place in the hierarchy of things.

As you can imagine, Stephen Baxter ''really'' does not like the idea of glorifying what is basically Human supremacy. Most of his works aren't HFY friendly with the Sequence being the most notable example. Think of the Xeelee Sequence, therefore, as the Anti-STTGL. Whilst Gurren Lagann showcase the 'Humanity is Special' trope to an over-the-top degree, Baxter just puts that idea in a blender and pours out the contents in the drainage pipe.

==Plot in a Nutshell==
[[File:D8pnzvk-f1122a2a-0f2e-4853-9beb-5806147475bc.jpg|350px|right|thumb|And you thought the [[Old Ones]] were ancient. Credits to [https://www.deviantart.com/frogisis/art/Prehistory-526839392 Frogisis].]]
{{Topquote|And everywhere the humans went they found life...|The good news is extraterrestrials life does exist and the bad news is...well everything shown in [[Star Trek]] were [[Bullshit|BS]] from Vacuum Diagrams.}}
To make things short and easy, the entirety of the Xeelee Sequence is centered around the cosmic war between the Xeelee, the masters of 'baryonic' matter (AKA normal matter for us non-scientist plebeians) and the Photino [[Tzeentch|Bird]]s, the masters of dark matter. The war stretched through the entire timeline, from the split microseconds of the Big Bang to the heat death of the entire universe. The war started because the Photino Birds as creatures made from dark matter, wanted to make their home a little bit more comfy, and in order to do this they decide to unintentionally [[Grimdark|exterminate all Baryonic lifeforms in the entirety of the universe by reducing all the stars into white dwarfs via accelerated cosmic heat death.]] The Xeelee understandably did not like the idea of some home invader trying to do a home deco around their turf and the battle begin. Yes, you hear us right, the entire war was due to the Photino Birds, for all intents and purposes, searching for a comfier home to live in. Essentially, the war stretched throughout all of time, since almost every major race in the Xeelee Sequence have weaponized Time Travel, and since Stephen Baxter '''KNOWS''' his science better than most sci-fi authors, FTL travel has significant affects on time dilation. Granted, his work relied a lot on speculative physics; for example, The Great Attractor has proven to be much less massive than what was thought when the novel was written and has an even larger mass concentration behind it.

But what about us [[human]]s? We got our asses kicked by two alien races; the Squeem and Qax, and the latter of the two was so traumatic that it turned humanity into one of the most xenocidal forces in all of science-fiction. Seriously, the [[Imperium of Man]] has nothing compared to these assholes, and no chapter in human history was so downright depressing and fucked up as Qax occupation. Humanity has reached to the point that it wants to force the one Xeelee inhabiting the Milky Way to GTFO because they thought the giant Cosmic Ring that the Xeelee was making was a weapon designed to destroy humanity ([[Derp|when in reality the Ring was made by the Xeelee to save ''ALL'' Baryonic lifeforms, including humans, and bring them a new Universe]]). This understandably annoyed the shit out of the Xeelee, so they decided to leave the galaxy. And what did humanity do after the Xeelee left? [[Horus Heresy|It collapsed into a wide scale civil war before being unified by another tyrannical regime,]] [[Age of Strife| and then humanity evolved into different species and fought each other in the period known as the Bifurcation, some humans losing their consciousness in the process of evolution.]] In the following millions of years, the descendants of humans have annoyed the Xeelee to the point that they got fed up with our shit and decide to lock the entire Sol System in a fourth-dimensional prison [[Grimdark|while leaving pretty much 99% of humanity to die off.]] The only humans who are actually doing OK (sort of) are the passengers of the Great Northern, a generation ship that predated all the asshole empires, wound up stuck five million years in the future, and promptly made a beeline for Xeelee-controlled space to hide.

Unfortunately for the Xeelee, dark matter outnumbers and outmasses baryonic matter 9-to-1, meaning that the war was long-decided eons ago. Desperate, the Xeelee decide to create the aforementioned Cosmic Ring to open a gateway to a new universe to escape to. The Photino Birds find this giant Cosmic Ring to be a threat and decide to destroy it, and almost succeed - but in the end, the remaining Xeelee, humans and other baryonic lifeforms managed to escape into the new universe, leaving the old Universe to be conquered by the Photino Birds. [[Grimdark|Those unfortunate chaps who missed their chance would die a slow and painful death as their universe becomes unfit to uphold baryonic life.]]

What Baxter should be commended on is the fact that his aliens are truly ''alien'' in every sense of the word. None of them are even remotely humanoid and almost all of them (barring the Silver Ghosts) do not think like a human; with the majority of them bearing chemistry so fucking bizarre it borderlines on theoretical physics for some of them.

==Notable Factions==
There are multiple factions that spanned the entirety of the Xeelee Sequence. Here are some notable examples.

===Xeelee===
[[File:XeeleeFront.jpg|300px|right|thumb|A Xeelee Nightfighter.]]
{{topquote|Some believe that by such interventions the Xeelee are maintaining their monopoly on power, which holds sway across the observable Universe. Others say that, like the vengeful gods of man's childhood, the Xeelee are protecting us from ourselves." "...Damn those Xeelee. I should have known they can beat anything we've got. And of course they would police this lithium beacon. It wouldn't do to let us lesser types get our hands on stuff like this; oh no...|The Human race admitting the Xeelee superiority in every aspect but still go to war with them anyway out of spite from Vacuum Diagrams.}}
The main "mascot" faction of the entire series, the Xeelee are the undisputed masters of all Baryonic life. They are made from space-time defects and were born in 10−43 seconds after the Big Bang during the Planck Epoch, where the four fundamental universal forces (Gravity, Electromagnetism, Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces) have yet to diverge; ergo physics were still fused under the Grand Unified superforce AKA GUT (Grand Unified Theory). They eventually formed a symbiosis with Bose-Einstein Condensate creatures and allied with the Quagmites, creatures made from Quagma during the Quark Epoch approximately 1 microsecond after the Big Bang. The proto-Xeelee then went to war with the Anti-Matter aliens before winning by tweaking the universal constants so that there was more baryonic matter than anti-matter. Fun fact, that war ''accidentally'' created cosmic inflation.

The Xeelee are so far up on the technological scale that they might as well be gods. Their most notable vehicles are the Xeelee Nightfighters, and in most cases the Nightfighters ARE the Xeelee themselves. These chumps make the [[Necrons]] look like [[Orks]] in comparison. Seriously, not only do they weaponize Time Travel, they also have the ability to use ''entire'' galaxies as ''literal'' building blocks to create megastructures, such as the Xeelee Ring (or Bolder's Ring to humans). When things get ugly, the Xeelee drop the star-busting pistols and upgrade themselves with gravitational slingshots that can launch a hyperknot of cosmic string, [[Exterminatus|''50,000 light-years in length, with the mass of a hundred billion stars, moving at the speed of light to turn weaponised galaxies into silly string'']]. They are tough enough to laugh off attacks from guns that shoot neutron stars and ''black holes'' at 99.c the speed of light, and they come in the untold trillions. These guys are one of the apex predators in all of Science Fiction. They are not to be fucked with.

===Photino Birds===
[[File:Photino_Birds.JPG|300px|right|thumb|A Flock of Photino Birds.]]
{{Topquote|I just don’t think it’s helpful to think of them in that way. They’re doing what they’re doing—wrecking our Sun—because that’s what they do. By accelerating the stars through their lifecycles they’re building a better Universe for themselves, and their own offspring, their own future.” “They’re like insects. Ants, perhaps. Do any of you know what I’m talking about? The birds are following their own species imperatives. Which just happen to cut across ours, is all.|The [[Tyranids]] wishes they could be this OP when they grow up, from Ring.}}
The Photino Birds are the main adversaries to the Xeelee and the undisputed masters of all dark life, with absolute mastery over dark matter. Unfortunately for the Xeelee, dark matter just so happens to outmass Baryonic matter 9-to-1, meaning that the Xeelee are outnumbered and out-[[Dakka]]'d. First encountered somewhere between the late Planck Epoch and the early Hadron Epoch 20 microseconds after the Big Bang. They are acausal, von Neumann swarms of self-replicating dark matter entities who are not bound by the effects of temporal entropy. All Photino Birds resemble an ovoid/seed-shaped mass approximately 40 meters long and rarely interact with baryonic matter due to being made up of dark matter. The only thing that could kill them are exotic weapons with extreme - and we mean '''''EXTREME''''' - gravitational forces like monopole cannons, the singularity lasers of starbreakers or a cosmic string to the face.

The Photino Birds attempted to destroy the Xeelee Ring, as they view it as a threat to their manifest destiny on making the universe more comfy for them, preventing the baryonic lifeforms from ever achieving a safe haven in which to live. In a nutshell, these guys are selfish dicks who can't even share the same bed with the Xeelee, and instead try to create a complete mess of the Universe instead. All because the Xeelee held most of the blanket when they try to go to sleep. When angered sufficiently, they also use Galaxies as glorified weapon systems by ''flinging the entire fucking Galaxy at whoever pissed them off''. They are responsible for creating a war (to use "war" generously; the slaughter is so one-sided that some books imply ''the Birds didn't even realize the Xeelee existed'') that makes the [[War in Heaven]] look like a well-accustomed tea party in comparison.

===Interim Coalition of Governance===
[[File:ICoG_Flag.JPG|300px|right|thumb|The Flag of the ICoG.]]
{{topquote|To the [[Old Ones|Xeelee]], we were little more than [[Skaven|rats]] — so that's what we became. Tenacious, relentless, swarming; fighting an [[Long War|interstellar war]] with teeth and nails.|A basic summary of how grimdark society in the ICoG is from Exultant}}
{{Topquote|Breed, fight hard, die young, and stay human: you could sum up the Coalition’s philosophy in those few words. In its social engineering the Coalition set up a positive feedback process; it unleashed a swarm of fast-breeding humans across the Galaxy, until every star system had been filled." "Not a noble way to do it, but it worked. And we did stay human, for twenty thousand years. Evolution postponed!|Michael Poole observation the Xeeleeverse [[Human]] [[Skaven|Space Rats]] social behaviors in their galactic wide habitats from Resplendent.}}
What can be briefly described as the [[That Guy|Khmer Rouge on Bath Salts with its Head of State as Captain Ahab on Acid and jacked up to interstellar levels.]]

The ICoG was one of the major human governing polities that emerged after the Qax occupation, which forcefully [[Grimdark|deleted most of human history and forced humanity into a multi-billion year PTSD]]. The ICoG is identifiable by two things: the first is that they are complete dicks that makes [[Eldrad]] look like a gentleman, and the second is that they are xenocidal as fuck. The ICoG is one of the most oppressive and [[grimdark]] factions in all of science fiction, which is an impressive feat all by itself. The ICoG makes you hate humanity. Seriously, these guys are just ''evil''.

The ICoG spent the lives of countless children, all in a gamble to get rid of the Xeelee from their galaxy and become the dominant lifeforms in the entire universe. They exterminated countless aliens who were in their way, and reduced those who surrendered to a fate worse then death. They commit countless atrocities, not because they are [[Imperial Guard|backed into a corner]], but just so they can sate their wounded and shattered egos, which never truly recovered from their occupation by the Qax. They are absolute hypocrites and liars that makes the [[High Lords of Terra]] look competent. They created such a totalitarian shithole, not because of some pseudo-philosophical [[Communism|bullshit]], but because they are a bunch of spiteful pricks who want to make their people suffer. They want to channel their suffering and hate towards the Xeelee, who are trying to save them from the Photino Birds. And what did the ICoG do once they finally drove the Xeelee out of the Milky Way? Did they usher in a new golden age or do they amend their crimes? Nope they immediately fell into civil war before being unified by another tyrannical regime, which also quickly collapses. Seriously, fuck the ICoG, just fuck 'em. When we mean the combined and concentrated [[Grimdark]] from all of WH40K still pales in comparison to just the ICoG itself, '''WE FUCKING MEAN IT.'''
<gallery>
Xeelee_sequence_exultant_greenship_color_sketch.jpg|Artwork of an ICoG Greenship. [[MOAR DAKKA|Possessing more firepower than the entirety of Segementum Solar, ''combined''.]]
</gallery>

===Transcendence===
[[File:Transcendence.JPG|300px|right|thumb|The Voidplane of the Transcendence.]]
{{Topquote|If something is so far beyond your imagination, it’s hard even to fear it.|Even when nearly ascended to become a truly infinite being, but with human suffering in their past unredeemed, even this would cause even a God eternal pain, from Transcendent.}}
Humanity from the far, ''far'' future. Basically the [[Star Trek|Q from Star Trek,]] only on steroids and completely unhinged.

So named because of how the multiple transhuman races have 'ascended' to a literal plane of higher existence called no-space, kinda like the Matrix if it could reality warp. Oh yeah, you heard us right. '''''Reality warp'''''. As such, the Transcendence was more of a collective consciousness than an actual polity. They were also just as homicidal as the ICoG, with Transcendence Humanity going on their merry murder-spree across the entire galactic supercluster, turning entire Neutron Stars into relativistic ICBMs and even contemplating on condemning every single Human whoever lived or will live into perpetual agony, ignoring the levels of causality contradictions and paradoxes it would create. Just because ''they can''. [[Chaos]] wishes it could be this nihilistic when it grows up.

If they are feeling incredibly spiteful today, they may turn a baseline Human into a Quantum Wave Function entity and force them to monitor the universe as it dies from premature heat death. Still, despite all their omniscient and neigh omnipotent power, they finally got the full attention of the Xeelee after they were finally sick of our [[bullshit]] and proceeded to Godstomp them back into the literal stone age; trapping the remnants of Humanity on Earth in a four-dimensional hypercube while letting the rest of Mankind to [[Grimdark|freeze to death.]]
{{Clear}}

===Squeem===
[[File:Squeem_Ship.JPG|300px|right|thumb|A Squeem Ship.]]
{{Topquote|Everybody walked around on permafrost, down to the equator. The Squeem controlled it, somehow. After all, humans are just big bags of water. We didn’t freeze, nor did the grasses, the animals, the birds, the moisture in the air. Of course rainfall was screwed, because nothing was evaporating from the oceans. ‘They kept it up for a full year. By then people were dying of the drought and the cold. And Earth blazed white, a symbol of the Squeem’s dominance, visible even to all the off-planet refugees and hideouts, visible light years away.|The Squeem unleashing their wrath from the Heaven upon mankind like a packs of [[Dick|dicks]] from Endurance.}}
(Pronounced as Scheme)

The oddly named Squeem were a race of eusocial hive-minded squid-fishes and were the first alien race to fully conquer Humanity. Despite starting off roughly the same as Humans chronologically with technology equal to us, the Squeem lucked out by discovering Xeelee tech of which they could reverse-engineer. [[Rape|You can imagine how ''that'' worked out when they invaded the Humans.]]

The Squeem also possessed a form of alcubierre drive in which they form a pocket of spacetime around their spaceship and propel it to FTL. Since general relativity stress that no matter could travel faster-than-light, the hyperdrive of the Squeem - unlike that of [[Star Wars]] - respects the laws of physics and just create a loophole around the concept. After all, [[Lulz|nobody states that ''spacetime itself'' can't travel faster-than-light.]] So whilst the bubble freely propels itself beyond lightspeed, the object within the pocket dimension remains fine as it is, in theory, not violating general relativity. The problem with this is that you can't see jackshit inside of the bubble, relying on precise calculations or you end up [[FATAL|going straight into the heart of a star.]] Fortunately for the Squeem, no one stated you can't ''weaponize'' them. Oh yes, [[Exterminatus|FTL-accelerated cannon-platforms that fire GUT missiles hitting with the pressure and heat of a ''Big Bang''.]]

Nevertheless, due to how unimpressive their base technology is, it didn't take long for the ICoG to completely curbstomp them to the ground and forced them to de-evolve into human-dependent symbiotes, meaning they turn the Squeem into a Galaxy-spanning telepathic communication network. Still, their occupation left a nasty scar for Humanity as it led to the freezing of the Earth's oceans, starving/freezing billions in the process and the following memory-wipe of all Humans to the point that they forgot that organisms once lived in the ocean.

By far the weakest race in the Xeelee Sequence, although this is all relative in Sci-Fi as the Squeem are still powerful enough to kick War-in-Heaven Necrons in the dick and assrape everyone else with their self-improving GUT-driven missiles and stolen starbreaker technology.
{{Clear}}

===Qax===
[[File:Qax.JPG|300px|right|thumb|A Hexagonal group of Qax.]]
{{Topquote|Although that’s all it is. Mike, they’ve shown me some pictures of their Earth. Cities flattened. The continents bordered by thick chlorophyll green: offshore farms. The produce from what’s left of the planet’s arable dry land is exported off-planet. The complex molecules are highly prized, apparently, and raise a good price. For the Qax. Michael, they’ve turned the planet into a damn factory.|A human reacting to the Space Capitalists turning our already shitty planet into an even shittier hellhole, from Timelike Infinity.}}
The second alien race to conquer Humanity and basically the tertiary antagonists of the Sequence after the Photino Birds and Humanity itself. The Qax weren't actually a race of militaristic conquerors, unlike other conventional Sci-Fi races. They were actually a race of merchants and traders. The reason why they conquered Humanity right after the Squeem and treated them like shit was because [[Dick|it was just '''''THAT''''' easy.]] Which kind of gives you a clue on how '''fucked''' the Xeelee Sequence is, if the fucking merchants behave like this. The Qax were truly ''alien'' in every sense of the word. They were a bunch of 90-meter wide, hyper-individualistic race of convection cells held together by a core of a micro black hole. In a sense, they were a race of [[Wat|living thunderstorms.]] Due to the fact that they are made of convection cells, they were functionally immortal in the traditional sense as they could easily replace these cells, although their complex biology meant that they had a ''very'' low population numbering in only a few thousand, meaning that they place immense value on their individual lives. Nevertheless, because they were living hurricanes that lived off the currents of wind, solar flares, virtual particles and space-time itself, they were individually quite powerful, with only three to four Qax being needed to control the entirety of Humanity on Earth.

Masters of genetic engineering which led to the creation of the treacherous Human Pharaohs and a respectable time-travelling military to boot, the Qax were known to utilize the Spline (Themselves a race of 1km wide living meatbags) as biological warships because its cheaper that way and were known to make their own bootleg starbreakers. They also have weaponised Grey Goo that could breakdown mountains, wipe out every biological compound right down to the bedrock and even [[What|turn waste into food.]] The Qax was finally decimated when a Human [[Just As Planned|tricked one of them into firing a bootleg Starbreaker in their home star causing it to go supernova.]] They were eventually pushed out of the galaxy by the ICoG, but the trauma of losing so many including their homeworld to their own slaves has made every Qax in the future to kill all Humans on sight as their base instincts.

===Silver Ghosts===
[[File:Silver_Ghosts.JPG|300px|right|thumb|A Lone Silver Ghost.]]
{{Topquote|I’m going to die. I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t even had sex properly—" "Nor, as it happens, have I.|A Silver Ghost [[trolling]] a panic human explorer for [[lulz]] from Resplendent.}}
{{Topquote|In the training academies there was a joke about Ghosts that had the right of way to cross a road. But the transport drivers ignored the stop signs. So the first Ghost crossed, exerting its rights, and was creamed in the process. So did the second, the third, the fourth, each sticking to what it believed was right regardless of the cost. Then the fifth invented a teleport, changing physical law to make the road obsolete altogether…|A joke of how the Silver Ghosts will flip a bird to the ignorant humans traffic from Resplendent.}}
{{Topquote|Always protect your core heat. It is the most important thing you possess. Remember…|A Silver Ghost went full [[Star Wars|Master Yoda]] to their panic human explorer through the act of altruism and the power of...[[Wat|body heat]] from Resplendent.}}
The only race in the entirety of the Sequence that isn't a [[That Guy|homicidal jackass]]. Seriously, they actually have a dry sense of humour, which brings in much-needed levity in this absolutely depressing saga. The Silver Ghosts are a passive race of spherical aliens approximately five-foot-wide in diameter with a weight of one ton and resembling a floating spherical mirror. So-called the Silver Ghosts because of their...well...[[Derp|silvery skin]], a big misnomer is to think of the Ghosts as a single organism. They are not. Rather, like the Portuguese Man-o-War, they are actually a superorganism made out of various individual organisms all cooperating as one to better survive this ultra-Grimdark setting. Apparently, this is due to the fact that the Ghosts had a [[Dark Angels|ultra-secret and ultra-heretical past where they had a civil war which made their Star turn into a Red Giant]]. By cooperating to the extent where a Silver Ghost can literally choose which cell to die - making them functionally immortal - the Silver Ghosts became a post-scarcity society.

Inside a Silver Ghost host a nightmare ball of fleshy substance, organs, red and purple, pulsating like a [[Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] [[Shoggoth]] with a core strangely resembling a [[Wat|Human fetus]]. Oh, but it gets weirder. Their silver skin - in itself an independent organism as aforementioned - fucks around with Planck's Constant (Ergo: it was a Planck-zero layer, a sandwich around a zone where Planck's constant was lowered), making their skin ultra-reflective to the point of being immune to ALL DEWs. In fact, it was considered normal for Silver Ghosts to ''literally'' sunbathe in the core of a star. At the start of the Third Expansion, the Silver Ghosts were unfortunate enough to be in the way of the growing ICoG despite occupying a significant chunk of the Perseus Arm in the Milky Way Galaxy. Despite being passive, the Silver Ghosts weren't slouches in combat, especially when led by the Black Ghost. During the war, the Silver Ghosts were using the gravitational energy of entire star clusters to fuck around the universal constants such as the Lightspeed Constant (Cockblocking Humanity from going FTL) and the Electromagnetic Binding Forces (Makes everything baryonic including Humans; brittle). These stars were quickly used up like giant Double-A batteries and replaced not long after. They were also doing a lot of whacky shit outside of your typical time travel shenanigans such as Planck teleporting entire planets and battlefleets as weapons and even entertaining the idea of creating a False Vacuum Collapse to destroy the entire ''fucking'' universe if need be. Yeah, and do take note that they are the ''second weakest race'' in the Sequence.

Still, being the nice guys and all, it still didn't stop Humanity from wiping out the Ghosts and farming their skin for shits and giggles. This is the Sequence, only the assholes survives.

==Shortlist of [[Grimdark]] Shit in the Sequence==
[[File:2vaeaod7lc461.jpg|400px|right|thumb|It's like the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism] but the control panel has completely broken off.]]
[[File:Xeelee_40k.jpg|400px|right|thumb|[[Meme|As they say, there is always a bigger fish.]]]]
This is just a small taste on why the Xeelee Sequence is a pants-shittingly terrifying place to live in.

*It is already a foregone conclusion that the entire Universe [[Grimdark|will die a slow and painful death.]]
*Before the really bad shit starts happening, humanity was fucked up from the start. The Holy Superet Church of Light raised a girl called "Lieserl" as one of their projects, innocent enough right? Well she was infused with nanomachines which caused her to grow to the age of 90 years in 90 days. She was downloaded into a virtual copy, dropped into the sun, to monitor the Photino Bird threat and forgotten about.
*Empress Shira, a girl from a Qax-occupied future, subjugates Earth and makes them believe in a bullshit religion worshipping the sun, in an attempt to not get occupied in this timeline. Well her Empire was the most oppressive and amoral empire yet. For instance, one of her guards found an unauthorized colony of humans living out of the Solar System, and disassembled it, putting all of the inhabitants into stasis pods. Alpha Centauri, one of their colonies, didn't handle the situation any better, unleashing a data-virus on the Earth and hitting it with asteroids, causing tsunamis until Shira gave up. She still didn't prevent Earth from being occupied by the Squeem or Qax. Also, the bad shit is only getting started.
*What about the precious planet Earth? Well in Xeelee Sequence Earth is a pretty depressing place before the Qax and after it, it’s decaying due to climate change, and in Transcendent, there was the “Reef” outside of the Spanish city of Seville. The Reef was basically a ramshackle village of car parts. Also Spain is a desert and the permafrost is melting. Humanity dodges a threat as bad as the Permian Extinction where the ocean fills with hydrogen sulfide, and methane hydrates fill the atmosphere. Even during the Qax occupation and under the Coalition rule, Earth’s sorry state of disrepair makes [[Terra|Holy Terra]] seem like a nice vacation spot by comparison. It’s overbuilt 10x time, inhabited with all sorts of grimy creepy creatures, and it's incredibly polluted. It state of misery and insanity will make the High Lords of Terra have a collective heart attack.
*The entire Human race has its culture and history destroyed by the Qax in order to pacify and turn them into useful slaves. Literally, we mean using nanites to kill plants and destroy fossil records. Qax blow bubbles into the bedrock called [[Hive World|Conurbations]] which are basically hive cities shaped like domes and absolutely MISERABLE to live in.
**Oh did we forget to mention, Conurbations are meant as temporary structures. When the Qax left Earth, no new Conurbations could be built. This resulted in Conurbations becoming unlivable, fucking fantastic.
*The Qax occupation deliberately altered the Earth's biosphere, causing mass extinction and pushing the human race on the brink of catastrophe. The Squeem on the other hand, dropped bio-engineered plagues to extirpate out a large segment of humanity's population, and froze the entire fucking oceans using electricity in a process called "polar cubic ice".
**The Qax leaving did not end happily for humanity. As seen above, the Qax were the ones who made new Conurbations, and also provided food to all the humans. People were homeless and starving, the Green Army forcing peoples trying to grow food in the nanite-fucked ground, but they couldn't and anyone questioned it have a date with baton to the face. Also the Green Army deliberately withheld rations from the people.
*Human traitors who sold out their race to the Qax are given genetic engineering to become immortal 'Pharaohs'. The immortality, however, is random especially for their children, as sometimes their kids are [[Loli|stuck being an]] [[Shota|8-year-old ''forever''.]] Or, in some cases, stopped growing in-utero, forcing the mother to commit an abortion.
*The Silver Ghosts also abducted humans to keep as samples for experiments. Alien Joseph Mengele, hurray. One of their subjects, labeled "five" was raised differently from humans. When she was extremely young, some human samples who broke into the facility had the audacity to subdue and rape her. What a warm welcome into humanity.
*When the ICoG exterminated the Silver Ghosts, they kept some of their genetic samples so they could use their skin for augmented purposes. [[Flayed Ones|Ergo, they reduced an entire race into cosmetic farm animals to be harvested and the humans wear them as skin.]] This applies the same to any aliens exterminated by humanity.
*Humanity went on a mass universal xenocide campaign before entering a 500,000-year siege in the Lanikea Galactic Supercluster. You'll be thankful when the Xeelee put an end to humanity's brutal curbstomping of every Xenos species.
*The way the Xeelee exterminated humanity was unbelievably brutal, they planted a Xeelee Flower in every star and covered it in XCM (Xeelee Construction Material). While everyone froze to death, the Xeelee provided booths for humanity to escape into (because they aren't a bunch of fucking monsters, they were trying to stop humanity's murder-rampage), and a four-dimensional prison for them to rot in.
**Going on the theme of humanity's murder-rampage, they sent a Xeelee Nightfighter back in time to interrupt Michael Poole's wormhole project, and also kill humanity by firing thousands of diamonds which weigh several thousand tons. Michael drove the single nightfighter back to the galaxy's center with its tail between its legs, but the Nightfighter made sure that humanity would never spread throughout the galaxy and cause pain and misery for themselves and any other species, which the Xeelee was honestly right for doing.
*When the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] stopped innovating, it's because of [[Fail|incompetence.]] When the ICoG stopped innovating it's because there's no point in this [[Grimdark]] future. It makes no difference if you send child soldiers or mechas against the Xeelee, because they'll kill you anyways, so they just send child soldiers because its cheaper.
**Also, the Guild of Engineers are so wung-ho on standardization throughout the galaxy. That means technology stood static for tens of thousands of years. It doesn't matter anyways, because the Xeelee are capable of fucking up even the best technology a human can make.
*Throughout the ICoG's history, the rate of interservice abuse was so extreme, that the commissaries (Their version of the Commissar) routinely [[Blam|beat their conscripts to death.]] [[Grimdark|Do take note that all these conscripts are ''children''. So expect a ''LOT'' of child abuse.]] It gets to the point of being borderline uncomfortable to read.
**In the short story "Riding the Rock," the Interim Coalition of Governance took over a world and proceeded to condition the children into child soldiers. They took a school, which honestly was like Pol Pot's S-21, and forced the children to do unspeakable things: they beat them to death, forced them to fight, and tried to "breed out their emotions" to prepare them to fight the Xeelee.
**Because the ICoG has time travel if you did an oopsie, every single variant of your past, present and future self will either be tortured to death or get a summary kicked to the jaw for a crime you have yet or have not commit.
**One of the highest honours a parent would receive is if their child were to be inducted into what is effectively a child suicide bomber corp.
**Hama Druz was a bitch to the highest degree. He organized a witch hunt on all the Jasofts and Pharaohs (human collaborators who served the Qax), even though they were the last remembers of Earth and only serving the Qax out of necessity, and most Pharaohs were TRYING TO HELP HUMANITY DURING THE RULE OF THE QAX. Hama, being the racist twat, proceeded every abhuman species which evolved in the universe. Needless to say, most human settlements were less-than-thrilled to join the Third Expansion. Also did we forget to mention, Hama Druz continued the Extirpation, which was ''deleting every bit of old data** like how the Qax did, honestly what the fuck.
*Humans in the ICoG are indoctrinated by birth about the Druz Doctrine and, unlike the half-assed attempts of the Imperium to issue autocratic control, [[1984|the ICoG goes full 1984 and have near totalitarian surveillance right down to control of your timeline.]]
**In fact, the rate of indoctrination was so extreme, that even the ''thought'' of going against Coalition doctrine convinced one of the characters to nearly commit suicide out of ''pure instinct''.
*When there is rebellious dissent, the Imperium uses the [[Adeptus Arbites]] and rarely, a small Crusade to crush them and retake the world. When there is even a ''potential'' tinge of dissent, the ICoG dump an entire moon with the population of tens of billions into a Gas Giant; [[Dick|just to make a statement.]]
*You'll be living in a barracks ball: a spherical conurbation where you live with your cadre of child soldiers, where you'll ride a Greenship straight to your death, or you'll live on a rock: a filthy and miserable environment where you'll work until you die by the hands of the Xeelee. So many children are expended, their names had to be etched on the wall via nanotechnology. Talk about literally becoming a statistic.
*If you somehow manage to avoid being conscripted into the Green Army as a child soldier, then you will be living in a coalescence, a literal human ant farm built out of faeces with a million people crammed into a space the size of a city block. They make the underhive of a [[Hiveworld]] look pristine in contrast.
**Coalescences half a million years later evolved into even more nightmarish versions, with humans preforming functions with their own bodies such as recycling air, recycling shit. Yes, we mean post-humans swimming in shit and converting it into food.
**These nightmarish environments evolve wherever there is massive overcrowding and nowhere else to go. This can happen to any society, and evolved in Rome, Mars, and on a Xeelee structure called the "Wheel" which is a smaller dollar-store knockoff of Bolder's Ring.
*Many of the ICoG's child soldiers are bred from either vats or 'breeders' from Coalescences. [[NSFW|Breeders are human Martian females that are pumped with so many hormones and genetic engineering that their stomachs balloon-up with the number of babies they are carrying.]] [[FATAL|Breeders are essentially impregnated the moment they menstruate and continue the rest of their lives shitting out <s>babies</s> child soldiers until they expire.]] Human females in the Xeelee are reduced to birthing sows. [[Grimdark|Yes, this is state-sanctioned child rape.]] [[Daemonculaba]], eat your heart out.
*The ICoG forbids ALL forms of heroism as it runs counter to the Druz Doctrine and risks splitting humanity apart due to the dangers of individualism and egotism being a potential byproduct of heroic deeds. So if you wanna be a goody-two-shoes and save someone by ignoring orders like [[Star Wars|Luke Skywalker]] or sacrifice yourself for the greater good like [[WH40K|Sanguinius]], the ICoG would go back in time to arrest you, charge you and than [[Blam|execute you]] if you're the former, or erase your existence from history if you're the latter, or do both if they are feeling particularly spiteful today. Since the ICoG wants you to die like a bitch, they’ve made it absolutely certain that you will die like a ''BITCH''.
*The ICoG's motto is "A brief life burns brightly". They mean it ''literally'', with the average lifespan of a human being measured 16 years of age at most, as the majority of humanity are child soldiers bred to die in the front lines. Combine with the mass state-sanctioned child abuse and child rape, the stripping of identity and the fact that the concept of the nuclear family is pretty much extinguished, you will die a brutal and ignoble death, a death which will be reduced to a statistic and quickly forgotten. They make even the callousness of a [[Death Korps of Krieg|Krieger]] and an [[Iron Warriors|Iron Warrior]] look like a bunch of woodland hippies in comparison.
**On average, the life of a Green Army soldier measured in just 1.7 missions before death, with 10 billion child soldiers dying each year. It was estimated that ''30 trillion'' child soldiers died in asteroid trenches surrounding the Milky Way's galactic core for over 20,000 years, just to make ''one'' Xeelee to fuck off.
*In one short story, during the Squeem Occupation (The first alien occupiers of Old Earth), a couple of human refugees decided to make a break for it. They modified an asteroid by putting a GUT-drive on it and turning it into a spaceship before escaping the Solar System. The Squeem took note of this and launched a GUT-missile that could tracked them, theoretically, '''forever'''. Since missiles have a better thrust-to-weight ratio, it would eventually catch up. In order to avoid being turned into stardust, the humans slowly increased their velocity, in which the missile would respond in kind, creating an intergalactic cat-and-mouse chase. The faster the ship travelled near light speed, the greater the G-force and inertia. Eventually, slowly but surely, [[Grimdark|the crew of that ship would experience every bit of their bones and organs slowly breaking by the crushing G-force.]] Some of the humans commit suicide whilst others uploaded their minds on a computer. Eventually, they manage to get rid of the missile via baiting it in a black hole's event horizon. Unfortunately, this is the Xeelee and Stephen Baxter knows his shit. The faster you go, the more extreme the time dilation. Ergo, once the humans finally got out of the chase, [[Grimdark|several million years have passed. By this point, the Photino Birds have won and they enter a dying Universe.]]
*In another short story, a Human crew encountered a derelict ship, whose hull is seemingly made out of [[Sons of Malice|human bones.]] Once they entered the ship, they realised that the ship was housing a community of degenerate humans that got lost in space. How did they survive for so long without any agriculture? [[NSFW|By turning their women into a literal food vending machine.]] [[FATAL|Yeah, turns out that the skeleton decoration on the ship's hull were actually ''baby bones'';]] [[Grimdark|they literally reduced infants into ration-packs and farmed meat produce.]]
**Baxter has a tendency for flesh-ships. Near the end of the novel "Raft", the main character gets exiled to the Boneys because nobody else would take him. Well, the Boneys are a fucking ''ball of flayed skins and skeletons'' floating in space. These people live in a mini world made of corpses, and eat discarded corpses from the Raft and Belt societies. The whole place smells like rotten corpses, and it's also described as absolutely filthy.
**Keeping in theme with the flesh-ships, Spline ships are massive asteroid-like meatballs a few kilometers wide. It's said to feel like being swallowed, being in a Spline ship.
*One of the ICoG's distant descendants, the Transcendence came to an endpoint, of which they concluded that humanity = suffering, and that it would instead reach into every timeline of every human that has ever existed, would exist, or could exist and just annihilate them; forcing every human who ever lived to experience all the pain and suffering of every other human who ever lived, over the course of quadrillions of relative years. They consider this as 'paradise'.
*Configuration Space from "Reality Dust" is a bunch of bacteria in the Callisto ice neurally and chemically communicating with each other to form a new universe: an island with a mountain of order, and a sea of entropy. This island seems pretty nice, but the ocean is all black and it melts whoever touches it by the power of entropy. There's a community of degenerate humans in this universe which are basically zombies.
**A character was downloaded into this space, and started doing normal shit like eating the grass. She touched the water and melted her fingers off. She saw one of the "zombies" and explored the forest. There, she found even larger, more depraved zombies in the forest.

==Things that make the Xeelee Sequence [[Grimdark|Absurdly and Horrifyingly Overpowered]]==
[[File:LJeEPUd.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Unless you're [[/co/|Marvel/DC]], [[Doctor Who]] or the Downstreamers, this is the most appropriate fate of whoever mess with these fuckers.]]
As you know by now, the Xeeleeverse is not the nicest place to live in; arguably one of the worst settings you could ever conceivably have your unfortunate sorry ass be dropped in. Yet, it is the setting's power capabilities that would truly catch the eye of most of you readers here. There is a reason why the term "Xeeleestomp" is a thing. These guys [[Rape|curbstomps]] [[The Culture]]. Comparisons between WH40K is needed in terms of context. Here is a shortlist that showcase just how overpowered the Sequence truly is:

*On the Kardashev Scale, the Imperium of Man is considered a Type 2 Civilization, which means that they control the energy output of at least one star but less than the whole galaxy. The Necrons and Ancient Eldar combined would be a Type 3, controlling the energy output of a single Galaxy. In the Xeeleeverse, factions like the ICoG and the Qax are ranked Type 4 - easily harnessing the energy output of ''Galaxy Clusters''. The Xeelee themselves would be ranked ''Type 5'', a catch-all "uncategorized" type to indicate they rule the ''observable universe''. And the Photino Birds were ''even stronger''.
**To give a better context, the Silver Ghosts, easily one of the weakest factions in the Sequence, is generally agreed among multiple versus forums to be able to utterly [[Rape|''steamroll'' the entirety of the 40k universe, ''combined''.]]
*Every A.I. and supercomputers in the Xeeleeverse use CTC (Closed Timelike Curve), essentially meaning that they could travel back or forwards in time to achieve unlimited processing.
**The Xeelee themselves one-up this by having the Anti-Xeelee, an A.I. construct made of probability quantum wave functions and is a fixed point in time, meaning that it exists in the beginning, present and end of the Universe, all at the same time.
**The Xeelee' equivalent of a supercomputer is a supermassive black hole. Yes, they use the core of Galaxies as a desktop.
*Every FTL ship is effectively a timeship. Time travel is heavily militarized with ships from various factions going back in time to accelerate the civilizationary progress a hundred-thousand fold or grant their ancestors effective precognition.
*The Space Marines use miniature [[Bolter|rocket launchers]] as standard equipment, whilst other factions use [[Gauss|molecular-disintegrator beams]] and [[Shuriken Catapult|monomolecular shuriken cannons]]. Compared to mainstream Sci-Fi universes, that seems over-the-topped. In the Xeeleeverse, the ICoG's equivalent of the [[Imperial Guard|dudes in T-Shirts]] carries [[Lasgun|Flashlights]] that could turn boats into slag and kill thousands of humans in seconds. Their Flamers act more like Meltas, flash-frying and carbonising people in a near-instant. Their 'Bolter' equivalents are guns that fire GUT-rounds. GUT stands for Grand Universal Theory, or in layman's terms, they are rifles that fire pellets with the mass-energy density of a ''Big Bang'' (approximately 10-36 seconds at the beginning of time) - ergo, [[Exterminatus|Big Bang Rifles.]] For anti-air purposes, the Green Army ground forces use Monopole Cannons, that fires one-dimensional, space-time defects at near the speed of light as their RPG equivalents. They also have reverse-engineered Xeelee Starbreakers that could rip apart anything, up to and including, entire Stars.
*The average joe in the ICoG wear skinsuits which could affectively negate the melta-level effects of their flamethrowers. Have fun imagining a couple of guys that are almost completely immune to Melta weapons.
*Basic GUT-ship and vehicle weapons from the ICoG involves firing black holes, neutron stars and monopoles at near the speed of light. These black hole cannons mind you, could disrupt the event horizon of a galactic core. The ships themselves could tank a point-blank burn from a Magnetar Eruption and are protected by a Gravastar Shield, which is a pocket dimension that defends them from FTL foreknowledge and other forms of conventional or physical attack.
*Your average tweeb in their mother's basement can make wormholes for shits and giggles.
*The Imperium considers the [[Vraks|Siege of Vraks]] as one of the largest and longest form of trench warfare in their history. The ICoG use ''entire galactic superclusters'' as trenching material on their off days.
*The Silver Ghosts had Quantum Gravity AI that was both acausal and allows it to see the future. Unlike the [[Eldar]] [[Farseer|Farseers]], they are always proven right with flawless precognition.
**They later one-up themselves by creating a Planck Zero AI, which, as its name suggests, lowered Planck's Constant to zero via shoving it in a pocket universe. The A.I. had infinite computational power and could make these computations in zero time.
**When the Silver Ghosts got their shiny skins flayed by child soldiers and hunters, the Quantum Gravity AI was taken and implanted into weaponized humans who could see into the future. In the story "Gravity Dreams," nearly a million years in the future, a boy heard the transmission of a girl in another universe, the same universe of the book "Raft," which was reaching the end of the stelliferous era.
*The Silver Ghosts used teleportation that deliberately increases Planck’s Constant, which in turn, increased the uncertainty principle, which in turn, makes the manipulation of the probability of a given object's place absolute. This range from a single person to entire planets.
*The Silver Ghosts could rewrite the laws of physics. From weakening the electromagnetic force (Thereby increasing the lightspeed constant at the expanse of shaking matter apart) to increasing the strength of gravity by a factor of a billion.
*The Xeelee Nightfighter 'wings' are composed of space-time defects called "Domain Walls" which stretch for tens of kilometres and are constructed from one-dimensional singularities. The materials for the ship itself are called...well...Xeelee Construction Material (XCM for short)(Also called Xeelee Hull-Plate). You know those Big Bang Rifles that the ICoG's basic grunts carry around as mentioned earlier? Yeah, they do as much damage to these Nightfighers as a [[Stubber#Stub Gun|Stub Gun]] could do to Terminator Armour.
*The Xeelee lives off on the event horizons of supermassive black holes. Only extreme gravitational forces or their own Starbreakers could actually harm them. You know the XCMs? Yeah, they violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which means all of its atoms share the same quantum state; able to absorb energy with a 100% efficiency. Essentially meaning that using direct energy weapons or exterminatus-level bombs like a Cyclonic Torpedo would do nothing and in fact, [[Troll|may actually ''heal them''.]]
**An example of this is when a human used a literal XCM umbrella to shield himself from an exploding stellar nova.
*Their Nightfighters could stay motionless to going at near the speed of light in a blink of an eye. Their most basic and common weapon, the Starbreaker as mentioned before, are basically black hole lasers that open a wound in space-time - which are also cherry-red in colour due to electromagnetic red-shift - that could blow up a star system for the kicks.
*The Xeelee could reshape and move entire galaxies like lego set-pieces. The construction of the Xeelee Ring was a one-dimensional singularity that was turned into a cosmic string and was big enough to start pulling ''Galaxy Clusters'' into its gravitational well.
*The Xeelee have weapons that could vapourize ''weaponized galaxies''. These are essentially cosmic string anti-air missiles, thousands of light-years wide and moving at over half-light speed to ''bisect entire galaxies''.
*The Photino Birds could use said aforementioned weaponized galaxies as anti-armour weapons.
*The Photino Birds lives off the gravitational and stellar energy of stars. Ergo, they started a mass reconstruction program via the mass accelerated heat death of the Universe, turning every star into a white dwarf, whose long lifespans in the hundreds of trillions maximizes the Birds' comfort and reproduction cycle. This contradicts the Xeelee's way of life as they need the event horizon of a black hole to sustain themselves. Accelerated heat death = no supernova = no black holes. Ergo, war begins.
**The Photino Birds's reproduction is a form of self-cloning or replication. They are in effect, Dark Matter von Neumann swarms.
*The Photino Birds were creating an inertia bomb big enough to shake the Xeelee Ring - a ten million light-years wide construct - into pieces.
*The Photino Birds was making the Xeelee their whipping bitch. Take that into consideration. In other words, they made the strongest beings possibly made out of Baryonic matter flee the universe with their tails in between their legs.
*There are also the Monads which are the 'Gods' of the Xeeleeverse. They live in the 'Bulk', which is the space between universes and are so god damned powerful, they view both the Xeelee and Photino Birds in the same way the Xeelee and Photino Birds view humanity.

==See Also==
*[http://www.stephen-baxter.com/articles.html#xeelee The complete Xeelee timeline]

[[category: Literature]]