Akarana Hunter

## Tactical Information

* **Death of the unfit**: Nuffari's lower grade pupils are still some of the most terrifying assassins that operate on Earth, aerokinetic weapons that kill without any trace, energy sheathed high frequency blades that can go through conventional armours with ease, flayer rays to leave no bodies behind and more are just some of the tools these crystalline aliens have at their disposal as part of their combat power suits, not to mention their sinsiter cloaking and sound muting devices that make them nearly impossible to detect ahead of time.

* **Wings of Selection**: Their suits are capable of flight, letting them bypass most obstacles and so long as they remain undetected, easily slide into areas of vulnerability to conduct their business of infiltration, sabotaging key points of a base, stealing technology, shutting down power systems and more.

* **Hunter, not Prey**: Akarana hunters if detected, are most vulnerable to aircraft due to their equipment being meant for short ranged and quick kills, and while they do not make much in the way of noise and are invisible to most of the electromagnetic spectrum, there is an odor to the operation of their systems that animals can detect.

* **Fear is all you have left**: Hunters who have shown some promise to start to move up in their murderous hierarchy are given the "fear-eater" devices which can tear the thoughts out of a target in a state of panic, shredding them telepathically and filling the systems of the user with their stolen energy and power, healing them after each terrified kill; which is all too easy when people start dying from things they cannot see.

## Unit History

### The Cruelest game

(Short Story about a network club leader being hunted by an Akarana kill team from the perspective of a Talon cell trying to save their life due to the value of their work on the Aliens. Only for the Akarana to turn out to be after the woman's husband and son, killing the former and taking the latter hostage, holding the boy by the head and using him as a meat shield while it rushes at her to force her, her guards, and the Talon cell protecting her to shoot through her child to stop the creature from killing her. The Talon operative later, at her funeral, realises, too late, that the Ecumene was out to break her psychologically so she would seek her own death and thus be worthless as a martyr when she drags her entire Network clubhouse with her into death an utterly shattered woman.)

### Rewards of Treachery

Nuffari sold his own people out to the Ecumene to get ahead in life and advance his career as a notorious intergalactic mercenary lord. The deaths of the majority of his species hardly bothered him or his Star Jaws company, who merely regarded the exchange as a profitable opportunity and a chance to be rid of the last chains holding them back. Indeed, Nuffari is proud of being the primary reason for the deaths of more than ninety nine percent of his species by giving the Ukrazol crucial information to crush his home country and kill off huge swathes of his species. All of it was of course, simply good business to him, if they didn't want him to betray them, to give their foes the secrets that would doom their kind to mind control and genocide, they should have had enough to offer to not be outbid by people who spoke his language better than they did. And of course, being free of the threat of being arrested and trialed for war crimes in the operation of his business and his personal kingdom were an added bonus for the Monarch, Warmonger, and Adventurer.

The Akaranas are descendants of the survivors of the annihilation of most of Nuffari's species, moulded along a vision of what his kind should be and stand for defined entirely by their betrayer and destroyer. To them the sort of betrayal that lead to much of their home being obliterated in a large topological defect and a memetohazard psycho-bomb were acts of cunning and genius, not of the actions of a greedy monster who happily killed his own child when they threatened to reveal and scupper his plan and only being disappointed that his offspring didn't internalise his lessons as well as he should have. And with their culture defined by such an amoral monster of a mercenary, the new Akarana hunters; named for a term that means "Young Death" in Nuffari's language are some of the most thoroughly cold blooded people imaginable even though the biologies of the silicon-based life forms runs rather hot.

The crystalline aliens are roughly humanoid, though with four arms and legs that can split into two pairs or stick together as a single pair depending on need (something their arms can do, but they generally find two pairs of arms too useful to do this) and are made of what seems to be a fine blend of a sort of hard carapace over a pseudo-fluidic ball of "flesh" almost like wet fiberglass that acts as muscle and three pairs of eyes that can glow and gleam with an internal heat to blind prey or be utterly dark when such is not needed. Their digitigrade legs are long and capable of shockingly fast strides, and can easily climb up and around just any form of obstacle, while their bodies are strong enough to crush a human's skull between their fingers with a squeeze and tough enough to remain standing and more or less unharmed by a peacekeeper's shotgun at point blank, even without their power armour.

More than three meters tall even when in their usually somewhat stooping, seemingly hunchbacked stance, they are like lean and agile but not spindly chandelier nightmares, and in their armour can almost be confused for a sort of robot with how odd their proportions look by the standards of earth life, but their bodies are actually very dense, weighing much more than their seemingly svelte physiques would suggest, giving one of their few calling cards of the heavy rap-tap-tap of their movements when they deign to be heard by their victims. This is however, usually done as a psychological torture tactic to drive a target over the edge with unceasing paranoia in the hopes of leaving them jumping at ghosts to realise that death will be coming from entirely unexpected angles.