Project Chistota

**Project Chistota** is a pro-mordesh think-tank and radical splinter group that exists within the Coalition of Galactic Scientists. They are officially classified as a terrorist organization by the Black Hoods and are considered a "rogue element" by the ICI.

## Overview

### History

Given the Project's isolationist and clandestine nature, exact details on Chistota's foundation are unclear. What *can* be gleaned, though, is mainly from tracking the movements of it's leader.

In 1579 AE after the Fall of Grismara elements of the Exile Fleet smuggled millions of mordesh refugees off-world past Dominion Blockades. Among the masses was a mordesh woman named Calina Votyakov, who had been rescued from the ruins of the coastal city of Nov Delvik.

Votyakov was a woman who had lost everything during the Fall. Both her husband and her infant son were killed within the opening days and her six year old daughter died mere days before her rescue. The woman that the Exiles pulled off of Grismara was, like *countless others*, a broken shell of what she once was. After the initial culture shock or joining the Exiles wore off, Votakov looked around at the state of things. The mordesh had, by association with their rescuers, been drafted into a losing war against enemies that, only months before, were slated to become their greatest allies. Victor Lazarin, the man responsible for the Contagion, had not only been rescued from Grismara but had been installed into a position of power leading research efforts for a cure.

It's at this point that Votyakov renounced all citizenship within the Exile Collective and threw her lot in with C.o.G.S. From here is where the group's history becomes fuzzy.

In the decades since the Fall Votyakov is assumed to have leveraged her membership within C.o.G.S. to spend years studying and educating herself in the fields of chemistry and bio science, taking advantage of her newly-granted long life to slowly climb up the group's ranks. As the years past Votyakov found more and more like-minded people within the group and eventually accumulated enough influence to be allowed to form her own research think-tank within C.o.G.S.

Taking it's name from the mordescu for "purity", Project Chistota was founded somewhere in the mid 1630s AE with the express purpose of finding it's own cure for the Contagion. The group would mostly go dark with little interaction with the rest of it's parent organization until 1665 AE, after C.o.G.S. elements started to arrive on Nexus en masse.

### Politics

While containing members from races from both the Dominion and the Exile Collective (a trait that it shares with it's "parent" organization), Chistota is at it's core a pro-mordesh supremacist group. Much of it's core leadership- ranging from research staff to field operatives- are mordesh who have defected from the Exile Collective to join the group.

The organization's overall sentiment is one that is shared by it's founder; the mordesh were denied their new "golden age" thanks to the onset of the Contagion and their race have been reduced to being "lepers among outcasts". The Exile's war with the Dominion has only served to further push their race to the brink of extinction, and the man that brought this fate upon them should not be trusted with any sort of authority or decision-making power in terms of helping to reverse it. In the Project's eyes Victor Lazarin is the betrayer of the mordesh people (which, to be fair, is a claim that is not without merit) and he deserves to be *put down*.

In line with that, Project Chistota's primary goal is to find a cure for the Contagion, independently and *at any cost*. In finding a cure on Nexus Chistota will help the mordesh race rise like a phoenix from the ashes to bring about their golden age, and in doing so will sever their connection with the Exile Collective to rebuild their race.

This political stance is, without a doubt, *clearly* anti-Exile (though notably without being pro-Dominion) and puts them at odds with the Exile Collective's (and to a certain degree their *own race's*) long-term survival.

#### Within C.o.G.S.

Chistota is, at this point, a part of the greater C.o.G.S. structure more by technicality than anything else. The group leverages it's C.o.G.S. affiliation primarily to use it's assumed political neutrality as a smoke screen and to headhunt former XAS, DRED and Royal Collegium scientists that C.o.G.S. has *already* lured away from their governments in the pursuit of science.

The Project is notorious for it's extreme isolationism, and the rest of C.o.G.S. has little to go off of beyond the group's most simply stated research objectives to guess what is actually going on.

### Research

Project Chistota bills itself as a group that practices "science without limits", and indeed uses this level of operational freedom as a selling point when attempting to recruit new researchers into it's ranks. Within their walls no regulations will be placed onto experiments. No oversight will be required. Moral ethics do not need to be considered. All that is valued is the results, no matter how they are obtained.

This degree of enabling can be directly attributed to much of the group's operational philosophy; in the face of impending extinction, what methods can be considered "too far"? If it means saving an entire race what sacrifices *aren't worth the cost*?

Needless to say, the amount of sentient rights violations and pure loss of life caused by such practices are truly *staggering*. Experimentation on live subjects is commonplace, with enemies to the Project routinely being infected with the Contagion and the Strain or forced to endure Augmentation in order for Chistota scientists to see it's corrupting effects in real-time for study.

### Military Capacity

While the majority of C.o.G.S. expeditions and projects employ some sort of security to protect their researchers, Chistota is a rarity in that it's cultivated it's own militarized sub-branch to help assist with the Project's efforts.

Exact numbers and capabilities or the Chistota strike force is currently unknown, but in what examples *exist* they've been observed to act offensively in a wetworks capacity when striking against targets. By and large, though, what forces the Project has appears to be defensive in nature more than anything else.

Despite this *unprecedented* level of militarization within C.o.G.S., Chistota *rarely* acts directly when working to secure it's own interests. The group prefers to act through intermediaries whenever possible, with them relying on groups such as Marauders, the Darkspur Cartel and various other mercenaries and freelance operators to secure assets for the research collective.

## Structure

Project Chistota operates with a highly compartmentalized "cell" structure, with individual Chistota cells not being in direct contact with one another. Information between Chistota elements is largely shared on a "need to know" basis with each cell receiving little oversight and generally being allowed to follow their own research goals independently. All information and research does ultimately trace back to the main Chistota facility of Zherneboh Research Base, with funding and resources flowing out of Zherneboh to help support each cell.

This level of partitioning makes it very difficult to pin down Chistota's exact scope and capabilities, as cells can go quiet thanks to research mishaps and can simply be written off as losses. It's a power structure designed to allow for freedom and for cutting assets to protect the greater whole.

## Facilities

### Zherneboh Research Base

*Article: Zherneboh Research Base*

Taking it's name from the mordescu word meaning "black god", Zherneboh is an asteroid base located within the Halon Ring and is the Project's primary base of operations. It's *exact* location within the Ring is unknown.

## Known Members

* Calina Votyakov - Project Director
* Gandovin Korba - Former Black Hoods agent, Votyakov's right-hand
* Fern Shadeburrow - Former XAS scientist, head of Strain research