Brotherhood

"*Let's just say, the Brotherhood will not be underground for much longer.*"
―Jamie Smith[src]
The **Brotherhood** is one of the two main antagonistic factions (alongside the NoHeads) of the D.I.T. Literary Universe, serving as the main antagonistic faction of *Annie and the Blue-Eared Kid* and the upcoming *Vault of Ages* trilogy as well as a major antagonistic faction in *Band of Justice* and *Band of Justice: Omniverse* and a background antagonistic faction in *Red Cavalier* and *Demolition One*. Possessing an unclear connection to the Council of Devils, it is essentially the inner circle of the Black Queen in her realm, which is also made up of the most fanatical servants that the Black Queen herself has chosen. It consists of the chief scientist and torturer Tehnett, her right-hand man and majordomo, and Mykew Hadeline, her estranged daughter who briefly served as her herald. Their endeavors led to the creation of a new synthetic being named Charlie Corner.

The Black Queen orchestrated the Cosmic War. By then, Corner had fulfilled his purpose by dying at the hand of Summer Petersen. By using Corner as a proxy, the Brotherhood had groomed Petersen to lead their forces as heir to the new Universal Empire. However, Petersen steadfastly refused to be a part of their cause, and the Vault Squad moved to prevent the launch of the Army of the Dead. The inner circle was ultimately destroyed along with their forces and the Black Queen herself in the Battle of the Earthly Plane, preventing their goal to establish her eternal reign.

## History

### Pursuit of power

In the Brotherhood's bid for power, they discovered that their mystical abilities could twist life to serve their purposes and create new life. Using alchemically altered soldiers and beasts, the Brotherhood silently conquered Sector 28 and used it as a temporary base. During their Expansion, the Asteroid and his companions would come across the Brotherhood, though their encounter would end with the two races becoming enemies.

### War with the Guerrillas and Attack on Earth

At some point in a possible future, either Steven Thompson or Joshua Petersen fell dead, with Vincent Organa somehow being involved. Unhinged with grief, Summer Petersen was swayed to a life of malevolence by the Black Queen using arzneillium. She brought a squad together to aid her in her enigmatic plans, mercilessly killing anybody who opposed her. Vincent promptly founded the Guerrillas in order to combat this new threat. After being cornered, Vincent fought against multiple elitists, while helping some of his surviving guerrillas escape the area. Although he managed to take down most of the Brotherhood elitists while Wraiths invaded the area, Vincent was eventually overwhelmed by the remaining soldiers there. Seeing the elitists' trouble in restraining the alien inflicting such damage, a Wraith restrained Vincent long enough for an elitist to take out the Kraton with a single strike. Having already detained numerous others, the Brotherhood chained Vincent in a grim yet sumptuous hall and informed their founder, Summer herself. A heavily drugged Summer proceeded to carry out the capital punishments without hesitation.

Shortly after being arrested, Satana Larson had a communication with Mykew Hadeline, where she revealed that the exploitation of five Naegri could destroy the Earth in its entirety. Hadeline proceeded to attack Earth with her Wraiths. However, they were all stopped by the newly formed Union of Ladybugs. Eventually, they employed Stormicide as an insurgent and he began carefully observing the Band of Justice as they came together to contest the devices of Pomp and later the Resometh. By 2036, parts of diverse communities across the cosmos, including the Master, considered them to be fanatics.

## Organization

The Brotherhood consists of only the best in the Realm, and it goes without saying that its members are individually much more powerful beings than humans and many other species in the known universe. They possess superhuman physical abilities, being one of the most predominant superhuman strength, with one example being Laura Hu keeping up with Cherical McSnake in battle, even though McSnake was far larger and had demonstrated several signs of superhuman strength. The Brotherhood, like Hadeline, Hu, and presumably Smith and their leader the Black Queen, have incredible superhuman speed and agility that allows them to easily overcome and overwhelm other smaller and agile beings. They are also able to react quickly to high-speed projectiles. The Brotherhood are invulnerable to many forms of damage, since they can even withstand the terrible blasts from one of the four Arts. In addition, they are immortal beings that can live for at least five decades without visibly aging.

It has been shown that the Brotherhood are able to control their astral minions with absolute authority in a manner similar to mind control. However, they did notably defy Jamie when she told them to do something that would have been extremely humiliating.

### Technology

The Brotherhood are an advanced monarchic organization with access to technology and mysterious mystical powers that are beyond human understanding. The neutron dissembler is theorized by scientists within the U.S. Government but never actually developed, believed to function on a sub-molecular level by disrupting the subatomic bonds that held neutrons together within atoms. This would have, theoretically, resulted in matter simply 'melting', the resulting damage, at least as inflicted upon organic matter and living beings, would resemble damaged scar tissue. Presumably this technology was used by a scouting force of Brotherhood warships, as the damage they inflicted upon the Smapotas matched what neutron dissemblers were believed to create. Brotherhood ships also shoot balls of plasma at targets.

Slaveships are the space vessels used by the Brotherhood to capture and transport living prisoners from the planets they seize. They are not designed for combat, and they normally operate within volumes of space already subjugated by the Brotherhood, or else they are sent to harvest slaves from a target world after combat vessels have destroyed the defending forces.

The Brotherhood also used fire jelly as an organic weapon. Fire jelly was a gelatinous, flammable substance that would catch fire very quickly. They were usually given to slave troops. The substance was also used to torture victims to get answers, or when they want to meld and/or weld substances together. After the end of the Cosmic War, the survivors took the jelly with them to a realm where the jellies reverted back to their wild forms and disappeared into the flora and fauna.

### Torture

The Brotherhood glorified pain as a motive for action and as a state of living. Their warrior caste derived perverse pleasure from their own pain and from the pain of others.

During the first stages of the Brotherhood invasion shortly after Morena Fox died, a knight was captured and introduced to an omidon and subjected to "mind-breaking," where the Brotherhood would feign his execution by drawing him in to within centimeters of the omidon's voracious teeth, over and over again. Each pseudo-execution replayed in his mind nearly as vivid as the actual act.

In the midst of the Cosmic War, the Brotherhood herald Razzak Ghoul made use of the religious Allure of Suffering to inflict pain on himself and others, including an extrasolar senator. One of his victims was subjected to Brotherhood biotoxins injected via organic needles that caused immense pain and swelling. Despite the victim's rescue, his recovery was painstaking; the injections continued to cause him agony, and swelling from his wounds took weeks to heal. When a superhero was captured by the Brotherhood, she was subjected to a painful shaping project by a Master Shapesman and her aide, who attempted to make the superheroine closer to the Brotherhood, creating a *new* personality for her: that of Raina.

Spinerays were biologically engineered Brotherhood creatures used for stimulating the nervous system, both for medical purposes and as a means of torture. The *tracer* spineray was mainly used to evaluate the condition of organic tissue and for determining an organism's physiological balance, but also served a purpose as a tool for inflicting pain to selective nerve arrays. Inflicting pain was more often the domain of the *provoker* spineray, which would target and incite individual nerve endings, issuing pain to certain receptors with micro-millimeter precision. The spineray would attach itself to the victim's neural pathways and trigger the body's pain receptors. It could also feel when the person tried to lie or resist, increasing the pain and making it feel like every nerve ending and organ were on fire.

## Notable Members

BlackQueen Alpha 3.pngThe Black Queen (leader)Tehnett-0030.pngTehnettMykew Hadeline †L.pngLaura Hu †J.pngJamie SmithRoy NimasWraiths.pngWraithsWraiths.pngHorned Wraith †Wraith Scout.pngWraith ScoutSummer Fusion.pngSummer Petersen (lieutenant, Fusion future)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Band of Justice*
2. ↑ *Demolition One*
3. ↑ *Boys vs. Girls: The Fate of the Towers*
4. ↑ *Annie and the Blue-Eared Kid*