True Masters
“I am not a violent man. But I am a
Saturnite, and I am old enough to remember the burning cities and the screams in the black. When it comes to the True Masters, there is no peace to make. There is only justice — by blade, by beam, or by hand.”
Legacy of Arrogance
The True Masters are the ideological and literal descendants of the worst elements of the Reptid Star Empire — a self-anointed elite who view all other species as inferior stock. While many Reptids have adapted to the post-Empire galaxy, struggling toward coexistence under human oversight and corporate entanglement, the True Masters reject this future. Drawing heavily from the remains of Reptid Criminal clans and fallen slave-lord houses, they operate in exile, hiding in the crevices of Human Space. Here, they enact their grand delusion: that through human conquest, the Reptid Empire can be reborn — with the True Masters at the helm. Their methods are cunning and cold, favoring black-market usury, coercive cult programming, and psychological domination via bioronic neural weapons. Slavery, particularly of humans, is both their trade and their sacrament.
Enemies in Every Direction
The True Masters are not without opposition. Haus des Drachen — old-world enforcers of honor and vengeance — have made it something of a sport to send heirs and mercenaries to “slay the dragon” whenever True Master cells are uncovered. The Saturnites, who bore the brunt of Reptid atrocities during the war, follow a far less ceremonial path: their policy is extermination on sight. This zero-tolerance doctrine is not just governmental; it’s cultural, burned into the Saturnite soul. Even organized crime views the True Masters with disgust. The Hyperion Crime Ring, ordinarily content to keep to its profitable vices, clashes frequently with True Master operations, both for ideological reasons and over turf. Ironically, these turf wars result in many of the slaves the True Masters move — taken in one conflict, traded in another, rarely seeing freedom again.
The Enemy Within
What makes the True Masters particularly insidious is their strategy of slow infiltration. Unlike the bombastic war fleets of their imperial forebears, they understand now that humanity cannot be broken head-on. Instead, they move in the shadows — bribing corrupt officials, subverting fringe cults, offering power to the powerless. Their neural weapons — illegal almost everywhere — are grown in vats from mollusc-like creatures and designed to sedate, enthrall, or terrify with a mere touch. Their armor, grown rather than forged, is immune to common pattern scans. Their slaves, often unaware they’ve even been enslaved, work as bookkeepers, couriers, or brokers across the Solar System. As the Pan-Solar Concordium stretches thin to handle the threats beyond its reach, the True Masters thrive where vigilance lapses. Their goal is not just resurgence — it is revenge wrapped in regalia, and conquest hidden in smiles.
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