House Van Saar

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High tech with a dash of radiation poisoning.

House Van Saar is one of the six Hive City Houses of Necromunda, making it one of the six original playable factions for the game when it was debuted. The most technologically advanced House in Necromunda, House Van Saar produces technological goods of the highest quality, and wear unique body-suits that provide extensive protection against environmental danger.

Origins

House Van Saar's history begins somewhere in the 25th Millennium during the Dark Age of Technology. A colony ship called the Van Saar equipped with a brand spanking new STC along with a chief engineer ALSO named Van Saar launched from Earth looking for a new place to settle down. Unfortunately they were lost in the warp for 10,000 years and crash landed on the planet Necromunda.

According to the house legends, the engineer Van Saar crawled from the wreck of the Van Saar and managed to salvage enough of the STC to manufacture the necessary tools and materials to allow his ragged band of survivors to thrive, eventually growing into the major power player that they became in later centuries. Other versions of the story claim that there were no survivors, and that tech scavengers discovered the damaged STC and claimed it for their own; naming their new faction after the ship that it came from.

The Van Saar STC

The damaged STC, irradiates their territory but gives them the ability to manufacture items that no other gangs can dream of. It allows them to produce a wide variety of items, of a such a high quality that their products are well regarded across the galaxy. Because of this, they undoubtedly the wealthiest of the six Clan Houses. Where other manufacturers stamp out mass-produced equipment, the Van Saar create items from knives to Nihilis-pattern lasguns to Hystrar-pattern energy shields each as a veritable work of art. They also typically gene-code their equipment so that it cannot be stolen from them and used without first being made safe by a good technician.

They can even produce some items that that Adeptus Mechanicum are not fully aware of; Sometimes it gives rise to the rumour that House Van Saar are sitting on vaults of archeotech from ages past, and bringing treasure hunters and thieves from all quarters to locate these hidden caches and exploit them; no-one realising that it is Van Saar who are making these items for themselves and that these wondrous items are actually brand new.

The hoarding of such a potent device is a blatant techno-heresy of one of the highest orders, and the leaders of Van Saar are acutely aware of that fact and have made it their priority to keep knowledge of the STC secret and safe. Despite being the size of a large building, the STC has been moved several times over the millennia to ensure that it cannot be discovered; variously being located out in the ash wastes, underneath hives, or even on orbital satellites! Currently it is located underneath the Hive Primus space port close to the hive's heat sinks, where the radiation it emits is concealed by the flow of thermal energy from the planetary core.

While the secret has occasionally been discovered by members of other Houses, it is carefully suppressed from the public, because everyone on Necromunda benefits from the massive wealth that Van Saar generates, and also because the houses are so interdependent on each other that to bring Van Saar down would dangerously upset the fragile balance of power that Necromunda is based upon. For example: without Van Saar there would be no amnio-vats to breed members of House Goliath, and no pharmaceutical tech for House Escher parthogenesis. Those houses may survive the loss of Van Saar, but they would be extremely damaged because of it.

The constant exposure to the radiation emanating from the STC causes the members of House Van Saar to suffer chronic radiation sickness and condemns them to wither and degenerate over time. The quest continues to either repair the STC or find a way to permanently cure themselves of the radiation sickness but neither outcome looks like it is in danger of resolving itself soon. So for the meantime they are dependent upon varying regimes of life augmenting cybernetics, tox-filters, and human chemicals.

One famed Van Saar cyber-chirurgeon claimed to have cured the sickness but was assassinated by House Delaque and left only one test subject known only as the Abomination who exists only as a figure of legend, a "hale and proud" warrior who only continues to wear his survival suit as a badge of honour rather than as life saving rig.

Van Saar organises its gangs differently from the other Houses of Necromunda, not least because they promote their leaders from the most educated or innovative among them, rather than the most brutal or violent. This tendency in turn reflects itself on the territories that the gangs themselves hold, generally turning into machine temples and forges in imitation of the fabricator vaults of the House itself.

Relationships

In the 39th Millennium, House Van Saar played a part in the creation of House Goliath, ostensibly as an attempt to refill the waning labourer population following an attempted Redemptionist uprising, the creation of fit and healthy vat-grown donors could have served to provide House Van Saar with a way of replacing their own failing flesh and organs. However the resulting Goliaths had even shorter lifespans than that of Van Saar, rendering the project a failure from that perspective, with Van Saar blaming House Escher for the betrayal. For their part, House Escher also blamed Van Saar for the Goliath's sterility, depriving them of potential breeding stock.

Secretly, the result was manipulated by outside sources in order to maintain the status quo of dependence between houses. Van Saar trade for the rad-purgatives supplied by House Escher and in return provide them the components for the parthenogenesis process they need to reproduce, preventing any one House from gaining too much independence and dominance over the others.

House Van Saar maintain an ongoing alliance with House Goliath, providing them with the amnio-vat technology required to maintain their population in exchange for the raw materials that the Goliaths can obtain from the inhospitable depths of the hives. This deal grossly favours the Goliaths, but was instituted in part to provide a means of striking against House Escher.

Technologies

The technological ascendance of House Van Saar gives them access to items would be considered "rare" even in more prestigious institutions. Even the "standard-issue" bodyglove is a complicated arrangement of various technological devices that constantly monitor their health and provide life support functions, as well as providing the connections to their wargear, allowing overlay of targetting technology over their field of vision, or the jacks for connecting with other larger pieces of equipment. The use of Mind-Impulse-Unit (MIU) technology is very commonplace, allowing for the installation of servo-arms/rigs all the way up to specialist servo-suits that carry small arsenals of wargear and protective gear.

Van Saar have perfected the art of las-technology as far as possibly for any institution not connected with the Adeptus Mechanicus and produce a variety of mid-range rifles, las-carbines, las-sub-carbines, and even las-"shotguns" capable of peppering a wide arc. The aforementioned Hystrar-pattern energy shields are a unique variant of conversion fields that are wrist mounted and offer arguably better protection over a normal conversion field, albeit only in a limited arc. They are also one of the few insitutions outside of the Mechanicus that routinely produce, and use rad-weaponry, with their protective suits offsetting the dangers of exposing themselves to such technology.

Van Saar are also unique on Necromunda in that they breed and modify the large native arachnids for the purposes of turning them into Servitors, creating Cyberachnids.

Unique Mechanics

The technological gang, every member of House Van Saar can learn both Shooting and Techno skills, making them on-par with House Delaque and arguably superior to House Orlock, especially when their excellent BS (nothing lower than a 4+, with leaders and champions having BS 2+. That said, their skills in Ferocity and Stealth are sorely lacking, with only their gang leaders able to learn them. They also can't boost their Toughness beyond +1 in a campaign game due to their radiation poisoning.

Appropriately enough, they have the best selection of guns: while they favor the use of lasguns and other laser weaponry, they also get more exotic stuff like grav-guns and rad-cannons and can also bolster their defenses with energy shields.

Gallery

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  As if the creepy spider theme wasn't creepy enough.
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  The old image