Decimator

## Tactical Information

* **Thundering Colossus**: The Decimator is the largest infantry unit in the Ecumenical army, towering over even the ogre and actually standing taller than many vehicles. A six-meter tall multi-tonne juggernaut, the Urudego that make up each Decimator unit carry powerful hard-light repeaters on one arm and a femtospore missile cannon on the other as well as a blackstar mortar on its back. If brought into melee, the Decimator starts crushing things with it's powerful kinetically accelerated arms and legs or dice them with hard-light blades from the arms and is large enough to simply step on infantry in its path. Deadly against all ground targets, the Decimator is particularly dangerous to enemy structures.

* **Like the Scutum of old**: The arms on the decimator's suit are heavily reinforced and can be used as shields, upon which they deploy added hard-light barriers to provide extra protection. Traditionally, the Femtospore cannon arm is used, reducing their effectiveness against heavy vehicles and structures greatly but also improving their durability substantially.

* **I'll get there when I get there**: The biggest issues with Decimators is their speed and their size and their vulnerability to air units. They are slow, ponderous infantry who take some time to accelerate, they are large targets that take damage like any other battlesuit, and they take extra damage from flame weapons.

* **Sharp dressed man**: Those Decimators that have attained a great deal of merit are something to be feared indeed, wearing new and menacing looking suits that while mostly only modestly improving speed, most importantly gives them the power plants to use flayer ray projectors and disassociator cannons that though modest in their damage output increase, let each weapon be more harmful to more types of units, especially useful in shield mode.

## Unit History

Decimators are a commonly utilized sort of ultraheavy infantry utilized by the Ecumene through its Aloofol citizens. The Aloofol recruited into these formations are placed inside special, massive suits of powered armor with enormous weaponry and are regarded as the great linebreakers of the Alien Legions. Aloofols are quite bizarre organisms, being colonies of Protozoan like microbes that congeal together in a gelatinous mass that can think and act as one, but can separate or recombine at will. Unforgetting and very difficult to kill so long as they remain moist, aloofols can in essence intelligently shape how their cells arrange and move, letting their whole bodies act as muscles or as brain tissue or collaborate together for a more efficient digestion process. Ordinarily such a collectivist sort of being with an utterly bizarre idea of what the individual is, as identities divide, recombine, morph, emerge, or are destroyed constantly to the point that the aloofol consider "I" to be a transient thing that shifts from moment to moment, would rankle at the very core of Ecumenical ideology. But their usefulness in so many tasks meant that dogma was put aside to make use of their great talents instead.

### Decimation

Look at me, thought Sally Donner, cowering in some forgotten corner of a base and praying to God or any other supernatural force that might be listening. This isn't the girl that ma and pa raised, she chastised herself as she fought to contain her fear. Think Sarah, think back to why you're so afraid. She remembered it now. Her base was working with the Network and some kit from II, few mercs there too, though the Network didn't trust the mercs farther than their pasty asses could throw them. Other details, yes she had to remember more. An Allied peacekeeper and reservist force moved in, with Unionists too The Delta Rangers outed a CIA plant and the boys in blue and grey were coming around to get their girl out and stop the construction of one of their superweapons.

She remembered her bravado, boasting that no two-bit europerialists or grey guards would get past her. They were so confident. Crookshaw base was a damn fortress. It had to be. It was making damn sure this corner of the Mississippi was in rebel hands and it guarded power plants feeding clean energy for rebel aligned cities the Unionists tried to demoralize by cutting off electricity. Furthermore a large Network base had sprung up under the secure wing of the Continentals. Some of her comrades didn't much care for the Network beyond their intelligence value and extra bodies in a fight. But she saw them as kindred spirits, people fighting for their freedom, they just had different ideas about who was really behind the oppression.

First blood went to her team. One of the huskies managed to land a shell right on top of a Unionist Grizzly. "They're gonna have to dig their crew out of that mess with spoons when they have the funeral." One of her sisters joked. The Grizzlies were faster than the Guardians and Mastiffs, not as tough, but better at catching Beagles and Colberts, they broke through the horizon first, followed by multigunners. 128mm shells from the ack-ack carriages opened fire. Pop went one grizzly, boom went another, but the Colberts trying to hold the line were mauled just as more of the bastards came charging in. A hearty rebel yell was given as guns were sighted and troops prepared to fight.

Then the lights she saw earlier, those little pixies in her peripherals, then they got more obvious. Then a terrible banshee wail sounded as the lights proved to be far more than just pixies. The planes preparing to make a fight for the skies started being stabbed with some kind of light and going down. "What in the -" A marksman said as a series of shapes almost like red, green, and purple bulbous plastic whales raced downwards and threw what she thought were bombs at first as the craft shot past, the projectiles having landed on top of AA vehicles and turrets and crushed them underneath. But when she heard the hiss of depressurizing air she knew they were not bombs.

From each pod came large, monstrous behemoths that made uneatrhly and wet gurgling and slopping sounds. They wore that same red, tyrian, and green coloration with lightning bolt symbols she had never seen. Plodding, digitrade clawed feet hit the ground as powerful thickset arms started moving, and what she guessed were viewports mounted as both vaguely crescent like strips of transluscent green on the front and a pair of snaking swan neck like constructs carried more ways to see. For whatever reason, many parts of the newcomers were translucent, showing some gloppy slimy...thing underneath. When she saw that the arms ended in pincers and guns she had just a second to realize that they did not come in peace before the shooting started on the ground.

Stabbing light hit those not in cover, dismounted infantry or panicking troops, then missiles slammed into vehicles and the remaining turrets. She raised her grenade launcher, but more pandemonium made itself known as fattened, crescent shaped craft came racing down in dive bombing angles and lathered the ground with arcs of deadly energy and crushing force from their triple-barreled guns, seeking out tanks and dug in positions before pulling up. She remembered gasping, three of her squadmates were swain in half and a survivalist was screaming as he trying to keep his guts in after a large sizzling hole punched through him.

One of the huge, hulking monsters stomped to her position, casually backhanding a row of cryptid chasers as it brought up its cannon arm and extended a series of rods. Shimmering light spread between the rods as it stomped its foot down on a monster hunter and mashed him into a red smear instantly, with a rocket fired by another hunter hitting the shield to make a loud bang and bright blast, but not dimming the shield. Light lanced out and the hunter never fired another shot as it walked a rapid fire series of stabbing spears of light to her position. The Marksman next to her touched her. She turned only to see a ruined mass of meat and an arm hanging by a sinew. Horror overtook her as she tried to get out of there.

She didn't look to see how the allies were doing, she just wanted to run. The thing tried to fire at her, but an incoming Jackson slammed into its side, pushing it down while minutemen hurled obscenities, dismounting to shoot at the thing. The monster picked itself up however. It let out a gurgle that shook the ground, making another turn towards it and come barreling through scattering the minutemen as the impacted one turned to the offending Jackson and slammed its pincers into both sides of the vehicle. The vehicle tried driving away, and she took the time to hide in some rubble. She started praying. Now she remembered.

She remembered she still had a duty, and picked herself up and aimed. The brute had just torn the front of the Jackson clean off while its second grabbed two minute men and slammed them together headfirst. She shot at the lifting one, making it stumble forward and groan annoyedly as she put what she thought must have been a damage mark on it. She whooped in excitement as she fired another grenade, but the being had already swung around to use the front armor plate of the Jackson as a shield, her grenade scorching the armor, but not doing enough to stop it from hurling the front plate at her with a sudden step forward. She had enough time to widen her eyes before she was killed.