The Raze

## Background

The Raze is the name of the biomechanoid Leviathan that the crew of the Bat’leth and the scientists they had been hired to get there set out to explore in Ep 1.

The word also designates a fleet of 100 or more ships initially built with the same objective as the Leviathan: helping keep colonies in check. These ships rebelled, then started pursuing their own agenda, namely invading systems and converting whomever crossed their paths into creatures known as Hollow.

Their philosophy is made clear by the Voice on the Raze ship boarded by the crew to retrieve stellar maps,

> *We are never welcomed. We take what we were not given because it should be ours.*
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## First encounter

The Raze was initially a powerless, lifeless wreck. The scientists and Kika managed to restore power to a few sections and it so doing awoke dormant aliens who started attacking them on sight.

Ary, a friendly alien who had arrived there on her own ship, informed Xe’anna *et al.* that the hostile aliens were called the Hollow, that there could be more than 1,000 of them and that they were the crew members of the ship she called the Raze.

Ary took time, after they were all safely together onboard Tsarin, to explain the genesis of the Raze.

## Scout ship at Gennus Landing

The crew of the Bat'leth met a different kind of Raze ship when approaching Gennus Landing after threading from the Erzati System back to the Gennus System. This scout ship, as Ary called it, looked like a slightly smaller and more armored version of Tsarin, with its top armored plating, and was also much more constructed than the bigger ship. Its tapered body was covered in metallic, iridescent plates with a few bioluminescent lines almost pulsing and glowing up its sides.

When Tsarin arrived on the scene, this ship, which had grappled the space station using spikes on its underside, was in the process of consuming it, while absorbing the knowledge of anybody it could get a hold of and change into a Hollow. That knowledge, once transmitted, would be useful to the invading fleet already on its way. Ary added that, should this ship fail to return, it would be a signal for the rest of the fleet to give up.

## Scout ship in the Sinoso System

### About the ship's interior design

During preparations for the assault that ought to result in the acquisition of useful maps, Ary points out that *most of the Leviathan ships are not cookie-cutter, they are not made the same way.* *They're grown, they grow different. But there are biological similarities between them.* She describes some vague routes, things to look out for, signs and signals that you're going in the correct direction, like changes in textures and colors and sizes. *As you're approaching core areas, corridor sizes will tend to get larger* [...] *temperatures and sensory details that you can pick upon to indicate that you're in the right area.*

### First glimpse

On the Bat'leth, Xe'anna and her crew get their first close view of the ship: they see

> *its form, similar in many ways to Tsarin, but fundamentally different. Its shapes and lines are harsher, its plating is much more obvious. It is clearly defending itself. The colors on it are a deeper, muddier brown as opposed to the sort of lighter, more iridescent shade on Tsarin. The front of the ship has the same kind of tentacles that Tsarin has, but even looking at them they seem sharper and more offensive, kind of curled underneath; the front plate comes almost all the way underneath. It looks somewhat impenetrable and maybe strangely unthreatening, except for those of you who know its true ability.*
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### Defense system

As soon as it is attacked, the ship hunkers itself in. It fires energy-based weapons. Drone pods *seem to be evacuated from a portion of one of the sides of the ship and begin immediately glomming on to specially the smaller ships. One fighter is completely engulfed by whatever this is, and it is slowly imploded, as the bits of it are pulled in and consumed and the drone sort of drifts off to find another victim.*

### Entering the ship

Once in the Raze's docking bay, the crew have to shred their way through the membrane that separates this dark pod, which is not meant for access by anyone, from the inside of the ship proper:

> *This is like tense and tough, almost like a drum skin, but thick* [...] *the leathery thick membrane* [...] *there is no moisture in this, it's like tearing through leather, in essence.*
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The first actual room they enter from there serves no obvious function has a door right in front of them:

> *That's essentially a sphincter, like they close in and they open, sort of a biological airlock. [...] There is a small rush as this room seems to be struggling to ... maintaining pressure or not maintaining pressure.*
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After Ludwig's knife/sword only manages to *scrape along the edge of the door* because *there is a significant amount more resistance than the membrane had*, Theea has a go at hacking it: she sees *what are not traditional wires but more like tubes, with sort of fluids running through them, as it it was some sort of conductive fluid*. As *the system itself is somewhat biological*, she can't do much more than open single doors, *in essence rewiring, trying to trick the circuitry into passing electricity in a different way*. She brute forces her way on this first try, *without any secrecy*, and *the door slides open*.

### Vascular system

While looking for air ducts to send Ludwig on his way ahead, Kika notices that:

> *There are pockets within the walls; there is sort of a resonance to the depth; there is lots of different fluids with various consistencies and viscosities and there are the equivalent of bronchial tubes that would transfer the gases and air that [Ludwig] could probably fit through.*
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Kika then starts tearing into the ceiling, which helps Theea locate the kind of blood vessel she would like to burst to at least cause confusion among the Hollow that have attacked them:

> *You see one and you're like, you recognize it, it's the fluid from the nerve system, and you see how much pressure is in there, and you just start sending all of the signals to continue sending it to the small area. You find like a valve that you close and keep closed at the other end. In the hallway you hear this rumbling noise, and it just bursts, and a portion of the wall just floods open, as this like kind of gross acid just gets splattered across a large portion of this room.*
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### First telepathic contact

While Xe'anna finds a way through the membrane, Ludwig uses his helmet to make a telepathic connection with the ship:

> *You sort of reach out with your mind. This time, you are first met with what almost feels like a void at first, and you drift in closer to it. As you reach past its kind of exterior layer, that low resonant sound that you heard on Tsarin, it starts and it gets ... it builds louder and louder.*
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At this time, Ludwig rolls an 18 on a mental saving throw.

> *You're able to push yourself back as you feel this noise, kind of overwhelming and increasing in sound as it presses in on all of your senses. As you sort of snap back out of it for a moment, you feel almost blind and deaf as if your senses are gone. You do not have any of them and you're only experiencing everything through the ship, and then you return to yourself.*
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Ludwig, whom the experience reminds of *carrion birds around a three-day old wildebeest carcass*, didn't raise an alert:

> *It didn't seem to notice your presence. It was trying to connect with a crowd.*
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### The Nexus and the Voice

The group is beckoned into a room where numerous hallways meet:

> *You can hear, from that deep resonance, something that seems almost like words. At first they don't make sense, they're in a language that's not your own and it seems to shift and change, and it just becomes the word* Enter*, and the door spins open.*
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Xe'anna remarks that *At least they're hospitable*, and walks in:

> *As the door opens in front of you, you see the large structure, the sort of nexus of these internal veins and tubes. They sort of meet in that central place. This one is much more armored, much more sturdy**; you can't really see any of the liquid that is within it. In front of it there are sort of console-seeming things, like something to be interacted with.*
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Nothing seems to be alive in this room, except for

> *a single figure standing, kind of hunched slightly. This one is similar to the sort of tall and thin ones that were stacking you before, but a little bit more upright, more vertical like Ary; the sort of long tendrils that sort of connect in, but rather than just being decorative, they merge into the back of this creature; sort of long limbs; this one, you see, has a very long, thin line across their face that opens as you enter.*
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The Voice speaks, says '*Enter'* *in this slow hiss, as if it has never spoken before*. The line on its face is

> *definitely a mouth that is wider than it should be, and like, sort of strings of tendons kind of tracing here, like its flesh isn't completely covering its lips and doesn't really move with any sort of dexterity. There are teeth but they are uneven, they are missing; it's a little shark-like.*
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Ludwig, having connected to it telepathically with the helmet, notices that *it is foreign and cold and different. You think this mind is both unique and entirely not itself*. In Ludwig's words, *this thing doesn't think like things are supposed to think.*

## A Hive Mind

This is Ary's reply to Conrad's misgivings about having lost his individuality and become part of a hive mind by bonding with Ary and joining Tsarin's crew:

> *Being part of a crew is an honor for my people. Not [...] all of us are chosen. Being a Voice is even more so. Very, very few of us can even be one. We are not a hive mind; the ship doesn't subjugate you to its will. That is what the Hollow do; that is what the Hollow are. The Raze will take you and destroy every ounce of who you are and I watched my entire people destroyed by that. So, when you call me a hive mind, that's what you have just called me.*
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## Notes

1. ↑ See Ep 23.
2. ↑ See Ep 2.
3. ↑ See Ep 4.
4. ↑ See Ep 9.
5. ↑ See Ep 23.
6. ↑ A reference to his earlier, similar contact with Tsarin.
7. ↑ *NftE*: ... than on the first Raze they entered. See Ep 3.
8. ↑ After the fight in Ep 11.
9. ↑ See Ep 27.