Difference between revisions of "The Iron Bitch"

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The Iron Bitch

Flag of The Iron Bitch
Motto: "Live By Her Will"
No Map Available
Region	Delta Zeta IV
Capital	Eisenherz
Official Language(s)	English, German
Leader	Emperor Mephet'ran
Population	165 Million (/12)
Currency	Iron Crown
NS Sunset XML

Brief

The Iron Bitch is a lost human colony on the world Delta Zeta IV. Located 29 light years from Sol the planet is hidden from casual observation behind a nebula which also blocked any attempts at radio contact. The planet is a jungle hellworld filled with animal and plant predators of all kinds. The colonists survived due to the iron fisted direction of the colony leader Fredrick Eisenherz (Fredrick the First). Until recently the planet has been ruled by the Eisenherz family through a line of Emperor's and Empress's until the most recent, Katrina Eisenherz the First, caught the eye of Emperor Mephet'ran, ruler of the C'tan. In a swift and decisive war the Emperor crushed the military in a brutal battle inside the city walls. The nation is now ruled as a direct province by the Emperor Mephet'ran and Katrina has not been seen since.

People

The colonists who landed on DZ4 were all of a germanic stock though where they came from has been the subject of speculation and research. Government records as to their Terran origins are murky and seem to have been deliberately obscured. There is some evidence to suggest that the colony ship itself was of Territory design but this is not conclusive. It has also been suggested that the colonists were not volunteers but rather penal subjects for whom the risks of long term spaceflight and primitive hybernation were not an issue. This idea is due to the primitive level of some of the surviving hybernation units as well as other artifacts.

Before the conquest of Eisenherz by the C'tan the people were invisibly though completely divided into three distinct societal classes. The nobility consisted of the royal family, heirs to the throne both near and distant, as well as various mistresses and lovers allowed to participate in their decadent lifestyles. The nobility also controlled the business and financial life of the nation. Outside commentators have compared their business methods to those of the robber-barons of the 18th and 19th century United States. Most of their business deals were designed to hurt another member of the nobility without raising the ire of the Emperor or Empress.

Below the nobility was the military with their dual role of protecting the nation from the creatures of the nightmare jungle and the nobility from the commoners. The common soldier was pulled from the ranks of the commoners quite literally. Nobles would be directed by the Emperor to raise a certain number of soldiers and the most common method was to secure an Order of Conscription. Usually these were granted in areas where that noble already exercised a large measure of personal control but, if one was savvy, they could obtain the order in an area under the control of another noble. These areas were then swept for men of fighting age who were then drafted into service. These sweeps were sometimes hurried, in which case they left the area only minorly worse off, but other times they were carefully scripted efforts that left whole districts bereft of skilled labor.

The military also served as an outlet for those minor members of the nobility who had too much time and not enough money on their hands. Nearly every officer of Colonel or higher was either directly related to the noble house or sought to be. While this ensured the loyalty of the military it also created a massive chain of incompetence that easily broke when the C'tan invaded.

The commoners were the last and largest level of society. Families were large, poor, and generally uneducated. Restrictive business laws as well as the possibility of conscription encouraged most commoners towards simple businesses and labors. While the large businesses owned by the nobility fed off the work done by these small families it was a predatory system.

Location

In part to increase their chances of survival and in part to increase his own power base Fredrick the First consolidated all of the colonists into a single settlement he then named after himself. Eisenherz City started as a small walled city of ten thousand and has since grown into a multi-walled and layered city of nearly 120 million. The city started on a low hill which has been completely mined out and leveled to create the buildings and massive walls that surround the city. The city itself is a massive hexagon with five distinct rings created by the defensive walls. As the city expanded outward successive sections of walls were constructed until the city reached it's current size.

Each wall reflects the experience and times in which it was built. The innermost wall is also the tallest but in many ways the least durable. It was built in a hurry and is thin with poor firing angles for it's various gun emplacements. The middle walls were, for the most part, built carefully with an eye towards total defense and are usually not much higher than the local wildlife can generally jump over. The outermost wall, built during Katryna's reign, is a sloppy affair that is more designed to slow down the wildlife while the next layer prepares their defenses. This, along with her systematic negligence, left the outermost districts of the city vulnerable to attack until the arrival of the C'tan and their subsiquent rebuilding projects.

The vast majority of the city buildings are dingy, but durable, stone and timber structures. These generally range from three to five stories with the first two or three stories directly abutting the cobblestone streets. Typically the top one or two stories are built with a cantilevered overhang. These make the streets appear smaller than they are, and most alleyways are tunnels with only a slight gap between the overhangs. The roofs are generally steep with wooden shingles and no gutters - minor street flooding is common during the rainy season. Each building is usually combination of multi-family dwelling on the upper floors and several shops or workspaces on the bottom. Basements are not typical, but those that exist are generally used as cold storage.

Some specialty buildings exist as well though these follow the same pattern for the most part. These include jails, factories, government offices, and the houses of the nobility. Aside from the Emperor's Palace even the house of the nobility are multi-family dwellings with their servants and their families living behind carefully hidden doors. The Emperor's Palace-Fortress in the very center of the city is the only single-family structure with the dwellings of his servants actually forming a small town around the fortress.

The typical city street is a cobblestone affair four to five meters wide with periodic sewer drainholes in the center. These are linked to narrow sewer tunnels that run under every street and that are linked to the nearby structures via narrow covered trenches. Most of the streets are laid out in a careful grid pattern that radiates outward from the nearest grand avenue but this is not always true. Some city districts have, in times past, been razed by attacking creatures and by the army in it's zeal to drive them out. These areas are often quickly rebuilt and have winding streets, dead ends, and multi-branching intersections. When the C'tan invaded these were amoung the last areas to fall as the soldiers used their own knowledge of the areas to put up a heavy defense.

Radiating out from the Palace-Fortress of the Emperor are six Grand Avenues. These avenues provide the quickest route between any distant districts of the city and in the time of the Queen were a primary method of control. Soldiers patrolled these heavily and questioned passersby continuously as to their activities. At the gate in each wall there is a huge square. Some of these are devoted to large government buildings while others were used for the massed punishment of criminals. Close to the Palace these are typically grand spaces with fountains and statues dedicated to past rulers. Not even Katrina had the audacity to erect a statue to herself in these spaces and one has not appeared in her memory as of yet.

Creatures

The jungles of Delta Zeta IV are home to a plethoria of aggressive and dangerous flora and fauna with the distinction between the two being very hazy at times. While much of it is your 'garden variety' medium to large predators it is also notable for being home to a very large number of super-predators from gigantic to huge.

Iron Reaper

The most well known and common of the predators is the Iron Reaper. This scaled quadraped is capable of quick bursts of speed and even quicker bursts of damage thanks to it's two scythe-shaped forearm blades and mildly articulated split fingers. It typically hunts in packs and attacks with long leaps followed by frantic slashes. While the scaled carapace along it's back and upper limbs is capable of deflecting small arms fire it's underbelly is quite soft. Unfortunately this requires an attacker to be facing it and thus exposing itself to a leaping attack.

While the common Reaper pack is small, three to ten individuals, there seems to be a cyclic event which triggers all of the local population to gather into a single mega-pack of thirty to fourty thousand individuals. Some scientists have speculated that these are due to the appearance of a nearby super-predator but others believe this is a 'thinning' event that results in massive mating and the deaths of the weaker pack leaders.

Giant Terror Spider

Most of the water on DZ4 is brackish swamp and sluggish streams that empty into medium lakes that are in turn choked with plant life. Woe be to the animal that finds a still clean pond for these are usually traps set by the massive Terror Spider. When aroused these creatures much resemble a massive spider with legs as thick as tree trunks. Spider Ponds are ambush hunters though, and hunt by digging into the ground upside down with their legs splayed out to surround a pool of still water they construct. The unwary are either killed by the neurotoxins in the water if they are small enough, or if they are larger they are speared by the massive legs before being dropped into the pod to be digested by the mouth at the bottom.

Razor Wing

The Razor Wing is both one of the rarest of the super-predators as well as one of the more common small insect-like species of Delta Zeta IV. In it's larval stage it resembles a common housefly that varies in size from one to two centimeters long with a split abdomen and four clawed legs. It flies by means of a large number of flagella that have tiny hairs branching off them along the horizontal axis. The flagella themselves are not dangerous but the hairs are nearly mono-molecular and can cause internal tissue damage if ingested. In the larval state this is mearly a defensive mechanism.

Larval Razor Wings are carrion-eaters who seek out dead animals in small to medium swarms. When they find a corpse they first eat their fill of it's soft tissues and then burrow in. Once they have implanted themselves in the host corpse they begin the transformation to an adult Razor Wing. Most do not survive this process as they are usally eaten by other carrion-eaters or by the other members of the swarm as they attempt to consume the whole carcass. Assuming one manages to consume the whole thing, a process that takes days to weeks depending on the size, it emerges as an adult Razor Wing. These are similar to the larval stage except that they have fewer flagella and there are viscious stingers on the ends of the split abdomen.

The hairs on the flagella have widened to the point where they are visible as semi-translucent winglets though they still retain their near mono-molecular edge. The Razor Wing hunts with both these as well as the stingers, which contain a potent neurotoxin. Adult Razor Wings can grow up to four meters in length though their flagella-span is three times their length. Adults are lone hunters who reproduce asexually via eggs laid in the water.

Killipedes

Killipedes are one of three species that share the absolute top of the food chain. Killipedes, as their name implies, resemble Terran millipedes except that they are the size of a freight train. They roam the jungle eating absolutely everything in their path in a slow deforestation that, if their numbers were higher, would rapidly leave the planet uninhabitable. As it is there are between ten and fifteen of the creatures that roam the planet at any one time. Since they are easily tracked the human colonists just get out of their way and only once have they been forced to kill one.

While they resemble millipedes they also share some reptilian characteristics. They have scales and the ability to regrow damaged body parts such as legs and indeed whole sections of their body. This is also how they seem to reproduce - when one is severed the non-head portion will begin regrowing a head. While it is essentially defenseless at this stage it is still very hard to kill - the scales on a killipede grow thicker with age and the number of leg sections increases. The size of the leg sections decreases gradually until the tail where the newest section is more like a pair of pincers about the size of human fingers.

Killipedes kill their prey using a large pair of mandibles on their head. This is not their only method of offense however. Each section had it's own waste elimination organ that concentrates the toxins found in most DZ4 life and secrets it. This extremely concentrated poison can be used as a weapon by simply rubbing the waste organ on the target creature. To ensure a kill the killipede will often wrap itself around a target while holding it firmly with the mandibles and rub as many waste organs as possible on the prey.

See Also

The C'tan