Outrider

> "*Khiruev -- if I ever think it's all right to do that to someone, shoot me. I don't care how rational I make it sound.*"
> ― Shuos Jedao
>
>

**Outriders** are maneuverable casket-shaped devices used by the Hafn as exotic power sources. They appear in Raven Stratagem.

## Description

Hafn outriders are shaped like caskets. Each has a golden plaque on its lid, engraved with archaic Hafn script and bordered with an elaborate knotwork featuring plant and animal life.. They are considered expendable by the Hafn and deployed in vast numbers.

Outriders lack mothdrive and their invariant drives are suitable only for maneuvering in-system. They react to contacts at a distance of forty-nine Hafn ayyan, inside the scan range of Kel scoutmoths but at a shorter range than the main Hafn swarm, and are able to scan formants of other vessels but not to react to visuals. They can act together as scouts, traveling in spindle formations, assuming concave dish formations, and sending signals to the Hafn swarm. They can self-destruct to avoid capture.

Each casket contains a human child immured in a nontoxic blue-violet vapor and medically connected to a unique, individually selected array of plant and animal life, forming a single living organism unable to survive the casket's breaching. While each casket contains only one child, it may feature multiple birds, flowers, insects, or other forms of life, which are connected to each other with gold and crystal filaments and intricately arranged.

The presence of outriders provides a power source which allows the Hafn to use their own exotics in unfriendly calendrical terrain.

## History

The first Kel contact with Hafn outriders was made by the Swanknot swarm while pursuing an invading Hafn swarm through the Entangled March. After using a formation illusion to establish that they had no intelligent guidance, the swarm's fifth tactical group destroyed the flock, capturing one casket for analysis before it could self-destruct. Its contents went into cardiac arrest immediately after the casket was breached. General Shuos Jedao showed General Kel Khiruev a video of the casket being opened and asked her to shoot him if he ever attempted to use anybody in such a way.

Over the next twenty-two days, the swarm encountered two more flocks of outriders scattered in staggering numbers along approaches to the Fortress of Scattered Needles. The outriders were clustered along approaches featuring the strongest high calendar terrain in concentrations spaced inconveniently for grand formations invoking area effects. The Kel continued to capture and analyze individual outriders for tactical information and clues to their calendrical effect. While the swarm's second tactical group was dispatched to destroy outriders near a Nirai research facility, a listening post, and an Andan-majority habitat, the Kel continued to pursue the Hafn.

General Khiruev quashed the possibility of selling outrider caskets on the black market along with other Hafn trophies.

The Hafn swarm stopped deploying outrider caskets before nearing Minang System, having run out, and the defeat of their logistics swarm there prevented them from deploying more.

High General Kel Brezan was shown videos of the caskets at his staff meeting after the swarm's final conflict with the Hafn. He was later horrified at the explanation of the caskets' purpose, discovered by Ajewen Cheris through examining Doctrine's deductions about the Hafn calendar, and the parallel between the outriders' use as an exotic power source and Kel use of suicide formations.

## Trivia

* Though the outriders' invariant drives were not suitable for interstellar travel, they appeared in numbers too great for them to have been transported and released by the Hafn invasion swarm without an extreme advancement in variable layout technology.
* The complex biological imagery of the Hafn government's emblem reminded Khiruev of the contents of outrider caskets.
* Due to their lack of intelligent guidance, "Jedao" insisted on referring to them as geese.

## References

1. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 5
2. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
3. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 5
4. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
5. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 5
6. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 5,6
7. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 24
8. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 5
9. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
10. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 15
11. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 19
12. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 24
13. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6