Venom

*"This isn't nature. This is hell."*

*- Venom statement during the attack on the Ardent Moon*

**Ryan "Venom" Kazz**, more commonly known as **Venom,** is a captain of Red Wood Industries and commanding officer of the RWI *Ardent Moon*.

## History

Before the events on the Earth-Like Planet, Venom was one of the very few people involved with the illegal creation of DJ, a Red Wood Industries artificial intelligence.

After the Battle of Epsilon Base and the disappearance of the RWI *Eclipse*, Venom and his ship, the RWI *Ardent Moon*, was tasked by newly promoted Grand Admiral Adam Williams to search areas of unknown space. This mission most likely involved finding lost RWI personnel or locating the enemy that attack Epsilon base.

### Serenity

While looking for Grand Admiral Roberts and the RWI *Eclipse*, one of the areas Venom and his crew on the *Ardent Moon* searched was near a Mars-like planet.

### Planet Wars

One of the search areas brought *Ardent Moon* into planetary range of the Earth-Like Planet. The crew was able to find the distress beacon of the *Eclipse* and managed to talk with Grand Admiral Jack Roberts before communications was jammed. Unfortunately, the ship responsible for the attack on Epsilon base fired a high-powered lasers at *Ardent Moon,* severely crippling the ship's engines and caused it to crash land on the planet. Venom and some crew members survived impact but was soon under attack from Shadow ground forces. Luckily, Grand Admiral Jack Roberts and his companion Finbar Hawkes, arrived to Ardent Moon crash site and destroyed Shadow fighters surrounding the ship. To prevent top secret information on the *Ardent Moon* from being discovered, Venom activated the ship's self-destruct and jumped aboard Jack's Wyvern to escape.

After the destruction of the *Ardent Moon*, Venom was brought to Jack's Base and was debriefed about the current ongoing events regarding RWI. The most notable news Venom discussed was about the newly appointed Grand Admiral, Adam Williams. Since then, Venom was place in charge of resource mining and piloting and maintaining the helicarrier.

Following the continued repairs to the *Eclipse*, the base came under attack by the Shadows. Venom immediately got to the helicarrier's bridge to take-off and activate its weapons systems. Eventually, he managed to get the helicarrier off the ground and took down two shadow fighters. Unfortunately, the Shadows attempted remote control of the helicarrier and forced Venom to restart the helicarrier's system to manual control. While this allowed full ship control, it disabled the weapons auto-targeting system. Due to lack of firepower, Jack ordered an evacuation of the base. Venom picked up Jack once the *Eclipse* auto-destruct was set and retreated after disabling the Shadow's helicarrier from pursuing them further.

During their time after the destruction of their base, Jack and Venom slowly started turning the helicarrier into a mobile base and installed several improvements into the helicarrier's design including a more powerful reactor. Venom's mining ship was also repaired to begin mining again. Unfortunately, wear-and-tear began to show on the helicarrier and it was a matter of time before the helicarrier fails them.

Some time afterwards, Venom and Jack detected a low-level data signal. They parked the helicarrier and took the Wyvern to investigate. They came across a research facility and eventually met Dr. Isaac Ward. Venom was quite wary of Ward due to his odd behavior. His suspicions proved true as Dr.Ward took to violence regarding the removal of the artifact from his facility. However, Venom was surprised about how Ward knew information from the Ardent Moon's data logs. After Jack managed to take down Ward, they both exited the facility and was surrounded by a large Shadow force consisting of soldiers, fighters and a corvette. Luckily, the arrival of the RWI *Serenity*and its Hellfire Squadron managed to send the majority of the Shadows surrounding them into retreat.

After being saved, they were brought on board the Serenity and arrived on the bridge. David Stake, the captain of the Serenity, began their debriefing over the events that happened to them. Venom was somewhat confused as to the RWI signal that the *Serenity* crew picked up on. Given the circumstances, both Jack and Venom disclosed the illegal creation of an RWI artificial intelligence program that explained that the AI was most likely responsible for the transmission. After finishing up the debriefing and discovering the artifact was captured, the *Serenity* pursued the retreating Shadow corvette.

After finding that the corvette had crash landed due to battle damage, Venom joined Marcus Ford and Jack to search the wreckage. Unfortunately, during their search, the Serenity was ambushed by several Shadow fighters. During that skirmish, the Shadow Commander managed to escape along with the Artifact. Given the fact that the Shadows have begun pressing their attacks, more resources were needed to assist in their battle against them. Venom mentioned that the helicarrier might be of some use to them and Ford joined him to repair the ailing vessel. Although they were eventually successful in restoring power to the engines and weapons, there wasn't enough to supply energy to the shield generator.

Eventually, Venom and Ford managed to meet up with Hellfire Squadron as they were slowly being picked off one-by-one by Shadow fighters. The helicarrier managed to take down two of the fighters while the remaining two were taken down by Hellfire Squadron's remaining fighters. Soon afterwards, after Ford left to repel the Shadow strike team on-board the *Serenity*, Venom began to have more and more system errors on the helicarrier. As a last resort method to take down the Shadow Carrier, Venom programmed the helicarrier to ram the opposing ship. He managed to get to the mining ship and left out the rear hangar before the crash happened. While Venom did destroy the mining ship in an emergency landing, he managed to leave the crash unharmed and called for his ride.

After he arrived on the *Serenity*'s bridge and discussed their next move, it was unanimously decided that both the *Serenity* and the recaptured *Eclipse* return back to RWI space via normal space and utilize cryo pods to sustain the crews. Venom joined Jack on-board the *Eclipse* and after they made it to space, he entered cyro sleep.

#### Post-Planet Wars

During the last two months of the *Serenity*'s and *Eclipse*'s return journey to RWI space, Venom was still in cryo sleep even after Shadow forces managed to track down both ships and probed both Marcus Ford's mind and the *Serenity*'s database.

## Trivia

* If you look closely in Planet Wars Episode 40 (Finale Part 1), Venom's suit is actually color purple instead of blue for this episode. Good time to notice is the scene when the Valkyrie lands at the helicarrier's landing zone and Venom and Ford are outside.
* It can be noticed that Venom's suit is colored blue at the beginning of episode 40 (Finale Part 1) during the Black Vault scene and in SE: Serenity while on-board the *Ardent Moon* prior to his arrival in Planet Wars. This can be considered an inconsistency since his suit was red when the *Ardent Moon* crashed and was changed later, however Jack has confirmed this to be not an error but an aesthetic choice.