Mercadia

Mercadia is a group of unknown purpose. Little is known about them due to their apparent obsession with staying under the radar and covering up their tracks, with nonstop elite investigation only bringing up the most tenuous of clues. The only thing that is apparent is their complete disregard for human life and atrocities they've committed.
== Members ==
===Mercadia Bedlam===
The presumed leader and founder of the group, Mercadia is an enigmatic figure. She has currently only ever been seen at the end of a DBA broadcast as an ending cutscene, which she seemed to have the ability to interfere with implying that such a slip will not happen again. She appeared completely, mechanically focused at all times, never wasting a single moment, action, or breath. Even through the screen, viewers could feel that despite being perfectly alive and human, the thing in front of them had less humanity and less soul than some inanimate objects they had seen. She seems to think almost entirely in risk vs reward assessments and optimization techniques, but to what end is currently unknown. Her final line was "there's a man I need to kill."
=== Cannae Barca ===
A gaunt, skeletally thin swordswoman. She seems to possess some kind of Post Mortem epithet, similar to those of the Legion of Lost Angels but at the same time different, less unnatural feeling. This power was apparently gained before she joined Mercadia, and was apparently from a niche set of circumstances that can't be easily replicated. Cannae is both a competent commander and a masterful wielder of the blade, having both Tantra and a Legendary Blade to her name. As the party rarely talked to her, there's not much to go on with her motivations other than her strange expression during the ending events of 107.
=== Dr. Arezzo Izod ===
Arezzo is a massive powerhouse of a person, and scientist of Mercadia. An ex employee of some Zomiel Services subsidiary, she wormed her way into the Council of Ten Doctors thanks to her engineering skills. Dr. Izod's an utter nihilistic sociopath, taking every opportunity to take out her anger and malice on others. She loves to touch people's nerves and make them feel like shit, on top of killing them. She's the one responsible for designing the Chimeras.
== Resources ==
=== Information Network ===
Mercadia has somehow managed to stay utterly hidden to virtually every single group, criminal or otherwise. Gervasio describes them as being obsessed with covering their tracks. Despite committing utterly massive acts of violence, no link or location can be made: even with the massive amount of missing people necessary to run even just the chimeras no discrepancy in populations can be pinpointed to even determine a general location. By extension, their leader seemingly has the ability to destabilize the DBA camera locally, meaning that information via DBA camera peeking is extremely limited to what happens outside of the leader's actions.
Despite being a ghost to the rest of the world, Mercadia somehow also has extremely accurate information externally. They somehow managed to place Cannae as a janitor in the correct building months before their target even chose the location to perform their research and demonstration. The boss also seemingly knew many details about the Legion of Lost Angels, another mysterious criminal organization of assassins.
=== The Chimera Project ===
Helmed by Dr. Arezzo Izod, Mercadia wields the power of a mechanized army. Constructed out of human flesh, these machines are somehow able to take control of and command the epithets of other people by using them as a sort of battery. These people are kept within Anti-Epithet Titanium cages, which is not only nearly indestructible and immune to epithet effects, but stops epithets from going in or out essentially making the person inside utterly helpless. Chimeras all seem to have some shared abilities, for example they purify themselves of status effects automatically and have a defensive power to counter an incoming attack and store all of the incoming energy into its weapon to increase its next attack's damage by that much. 
Those inside the Chimeras are equipped with "kill switches": devices that forcibly stimulate the conditions for Post Mortem activation in a target by injecting chemicals directly into the spine, both forcing a heightened state of distress and killing the victim at the same time. While not particularly focused, this does cause the person to "detonate" creating an incredibly powerful destructive effect around it upon being defeated. Some methods have been discovered to incapacitate Chimeras without causing this detonation, however it was revealed in Episode 159 that by defeating these Chimeras on live television, Arezzo can then adjust future chimeras as to make that method obsolete, meaning that they are continually evolving against the tactics used against them.
The purpose for these weird consistencies within the chimeras is currently unknown, and only inference can be made. Arezzo has gone on record that the chimeras "aren't her style", but are instead made as a monument to "the boss's unique brand of madness".
Currently there are three known types of Chimera
* Hoplites. These ones are still constructed of human flesh, but are too small to have cages and use epithets. They have three arms, each with cleavers on their ends.
* Goliaths. These ones are large and tanky, wielding a staggering fourteen blades at once via a network of carbon nanotube wires which can become limp or solid at any point, bending at any angle with extreme force. Surely this style of combat could only be controlled by an AI.
* Griffons. While not as tanky as Goliaths, these ones are astronomically fast having a movement speed of 80 spaces, are equipped with large wind turbines that allow them to fly, and mouth cannons that fire localized laser beams.
== Crimes ==
Here is a (most definitely incomplete) list of the crimes and actions Mercadia has currently taken:
* Terrorist attack on the PAPAP leading to the death of over 57 innocent civilians and scientists, and the kidnapping of at least one epithet using child.
* Stealing of experimental technology
* Mass kidnapping on an industrial scale
* Mass murder on an industrial scale
* Dealing with the Legion of Lost Angels, an elite group of assassins with their own entire criminal history
Category:Groups