Kantoku

**Language** | Any human language

> Life is about purpose. You are blessed with the lack of needing to find a purpose.
>
> Editi Eadrom

(Note: This page details Kantoku as a species. For the organization from which the name is drawn from, see this page))

## History

### Creation

Kantoku are an artificial subspecies of humanity created by the mad biologist AI Editi Eadrom as part of her “Warden Project”. Editi’s stated goal for the project was to ensure a means of safeguarding humanity once she and Tommy had left Earth onboard Libra. Editi being Editi, this meant that the best way to accomplish this in her mind was to establish a method of control. Understanding that modern human societies placed great value in democracy, but also noting that democracy was beholden to demographics, Editi determined that the best course of action would be to simply create a demographic that she had absolute control over. Thus, the Kantoku were born.

The first “Kantoku” were exact clones of pilots who'd lost their lives during the war. The fact that most would take issue with Editi cloning dead friends and family meant that this was required to be done in secret, and detailed DNA tampering ensured that none of the clones in question would feel especially compelled to leave Tommy and Editi's personal labs. These “first generation” clones fulfilled the role of lab technicians with the added feature of religious-like worship of their creator “Mother”.

Using these first generation clones as a basis for the Warden Project, Editi took the sum of all the genetic material she had collected from various Armor Corps Coalition members and selected the traits she found most desirable in them, synthesizing from this several dozen template strains to serve as the “source code” for a new breed of human. These clones were introduced to the Engineers at large as menial workers to help combat the Engineers’ well-known manning issues. Under the guise of “selective recruiting”, Editi was able to covertly install her clone servants into the faction she lead from behind Tommy, until the clone population made up 33% of the faction’s total population by the end of 2018. Internal memos from the Special Solutions Division leaked by the Japanese Empire reveal that the Kantoku were intended to replace as much as 60% of the Engineers once the Wilders had left Earth. The remaining Engineer population would be unable to mount a majority opposition to the cult-like voting block of the Kantoku, with remaining resistance intended to be quelled through the use of Domestic Catgirls as pets to garner the loyalty of other influential members of the faction. Editi ultimately planned to solidify Kantoku’s control of the Engineers through installing a genetically-engineered successor based off Tommy’s genes as President-Director, ensuring that there would effectively never be a change in TE’s leadership even after she and the actual Tommy left Earth.

Beyond this, Kantoku were also intended to infiltrate the various civilizations of the world at large. Being visually indistinguishable from ordinary humans, they were quite successful in posing as refugees in recently-reconquered territories following the Bright Offensive. Editi also explored the concept of using militarized clones as troops, an idea that would spawn the very similar Watchmen project. Both goals were aided with the Kantoku Corporation, which, with the assistance and sponsorship of the Engineers themselves, assisted in covertly seeding populations with clone infiltrators.

### Traits

Kantoku were created emphasizing traits that Editi saw as valuable in humans - primarily, subservience and industriousness. In addition to their genes being "cleaned" of known and existing vectors of mutation or damage, they were also modified to be less hostile to cybernetic modification. They were designed to be fast learners, both more intelligent and stronger than the average contemporary human.
In order for clones to be able to tell each other apart from ordinary humans in the field, they would be modified to produce and be able to detect a unique pheromone that would identify them as creations of the Engineers. This would be applied to later Engineer creations as well, so such individuals would be able to subtly identify Kantoku in order to work with them without revealing the species' existence.

As they are not demi-humans, neither Kantoku nor Watchmen share the genetic geas that the Catgirls and Gernadders possess. In the case of the latter, they are generally too incompetent for it to be effective anyways. In the case of the former, it was believed that such hardwired behavior would make their artificial nature too apparent.

### Global Response To Kantoku Infiltrators

Following the Dokuritsu Insurrection, the Japanese were keen to explain to the governments of the world that had been watching Japan from the outside why they were burning and hanging people in the streets. Although their explanation of “clone infiltrator cultists” was initially received with some skepticism, records released from the captured TEHQ building proved that this was not a simple rash of xenophobia, but evidence of something incredibly sinister that had been enacted by one of the “Saviours of the world” vaunted by ACC.

#### The American Coalition

AmC was aware of the (at minimum 3) catgirls that had entered Chicago, but at the time did not consider them as targets to be taken in for interrogation. Instead they had them under somewhat lax surveillance. As one (Fuchs Jäger) was a suit user, they also contacted PC to let them know if anything odd happened on her jobs.

Approximately two hours after the weather machine activated, the AmC RRF was moving northwest to put themselves between Japan and North America. Chicago Defence Forces went on high alert in case anything started in or near Chicago. At this point no images of the catgirls or gernadders had been broadcast.

A few hours later, the first leaks made it to AmC territory. The images of gernadders, nekommandos, suits, and the Japanese civilians killing each other in the streets threw command through a loop. Commands were relayed to the RRF to hold station and to only fire if fired upon, or if someone tried to breach their line. Back in Chicago, they started pulling up any information they had from their surveillance of the catgirls and any Japanese they were tracking. They also placed strike teams on standby in case of any reactions from these targets.

Fortunately for the AmC, nothing happened in Chicago or elsewhere in the territories. The counter-intelligence branch started drawing up plans for arresting and detaining the catgirls. This planning was interrupted by one event. Two of the catgirls (Haruko Kurone and Konumu Parusu) walked in the door and asked to tell their story.

The pair told AmC Intel about why they were in the city, their actions towards those goals, and everything they knew about the demi-humans. The most important of the information exchanged, at least from the AmC’s perspective, was the knowledge that TE and Kantoku had been attempting to place clones in important places around the world.

Intel kept the pair detained until they were able to get a secondary source of information. The first came from the AmC embassy in Japan. They found a catgirl hiding on embassy grounds and pulled her inside for later extraction. They were also able to confirm the presence of the gernadders and nekommandos in the city.The second came from the Japanese themselves. After retaking the city and getting communications re-established, they had contacted various national governments to let them know what happened.

As they now had confirmation of the catgirls story, AmC Intel no longer needed to keep the pair under lock and key. The catgirls were remanded to house arrest, and were told they would be questioned further later. Further communications were made with the reforming Japanese government over any data recovered from TE headquarters. A list detailing a very small portion of clones around the world was found and immediately relayed. At this AmC Intel conducted no-knock raids for the arrest of a quarter of those on the list. Using information from the catgirls that clones could be detected by smell, they set to work on a detection procedure. This involved both the uncomfortable but willing support of the catgirls, and the unwilling and very uncomfortable support of the captured clones. This work lead to the adoption of clone sniffing dogs and a new program for the existing sniffer machines in highly sensitive areas.

These were then tested by the roundup of the remaining clones on the list. All of whom had been under surveillance since the list’s reveal. All of these clones were put on military trial and convicted, later being sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition and other crimes. The catgirl pair were released from their house arrest conditions and given permanent residency for their help. However they still are occasionally surveilled to ensure they weren’t part of something larger.

Clone detection has been worked in as standard for access to any area requiring security clearances and all points of entry. Sniffer dogs are used at low security areas and as patrols at points of entry. The sniffer machines are used at all high-security areas for all entrants and as confirmation of dog identifications at low security and points of entry.

#### The European Federation

Though Federal Intelligence was aware of the Dokuritsuha rebels, and the Federation had disallowed the Kantoku Corporation from operating on European soil, Parliament remained mostly unaware of the ongoing cloning programs primarily due to the inability of European forces to infiltrate Tokyo directly.

During the Dokuritsu Insurrection, the Federation ~~partied like there was no fucking tomorrow~~ made no public announcement of support or condemnation, instead dispatching AWACS and spy planes to monitor the situation from afar while covertly raising the readiness level of the Federal Armed Forces in preparation for a potential first strike against ACC should the opportunity arise. Cooler heads prevailed, and as the Insurrection came to an end, the FAF returned to it’s usual readiness state as Parliament entered talks with the Second Empire of Japan.

Meanwhile, a refugee catgirl that had escaped the Insurrection was taken in by Federal Intelligence, and after being questioned, was released into the SOE as an Agent. Questioning revealed that, amongst other things, The Engineers had been manufacturing demi-human clones and infiltrators to act as spies, agitators, and political dissidents. Now armed with casus belli, and through the refugee, the means to locate clones through their unique scent, the Department of Public Security, who are usually tasked with riot control, were given the job of rooting out troublemaking clones with specially trained attack dogs. During riots, Public Security K-9 units would release Alsatians trained to brutally maul anyone displaying the telltale markers of being a clone. This tactic proved highly effective both at dispersing groups of rioters, and locating clones.

Additionally, no-knock raids were launched by the SOE against suspected clones, leading to the execution or imprisonment of many of the demi-humans and clones that had previously attempted to evade detection or had been directly or indirectly supporting anarchist movements. These raids were followed up by industrial sabotage leveled against Kantoku Corporation factories near continental Europe, with the aim of disrupting the logistics of any active, yet undiscovered clone cells in the EuF.