Sons and Daughters of RHEA

Julie Dillon

Ah! Bright goddess solar-crowned
Look upon us with thy favor
And keep us in the safety of thy arms
As the dark night lasts longer than memory may endure
And the dawn is yet to come

The Tangle is not static: nothing involving hyperspace can ever be. The tides of unform wear down its walls, fill in its tunnels, erode its paths. The fortress of humanity must constantly be renewed and remade, lest it fall apart completely - this is the eternal task of RHEA, and the only means by which humanity can survive in the cosmos. But even so: There are worlds that have slipped out of the Tangle's protective boundary, and there are those that have never known its safety; worlds prey to the Gods of the Black and their servants, protected only by escaping the notice of those alien minds and cut off entirely from the Fortress and the protection of RHEA.

To the average inhabitant of the Labyrinth, none of this is apparent. To them it is a black glacier of time and space, vaster than empires and more slow. If they are aware of what lurks outside the Fortress at all, their response is fear. Perhaps momentary pity, if word of the lost colonies slips through. There's no chance of any Company or government doing anything if they were aware, which most are not.

But...

Hope is never lost to the mad.

(Many, many thanks to sigmacastell / swampgirl for letting me use their space gods.)

Ἠλύσιον Κουρῆτες

The Elysian Kouretes are the three militant cults of RHEA: those who live on and aboard her great warships and serve as the primary human line of attack and defense against planetary incursions of the Gods of the Black. All three branches of the Kouretes possess technology and occult knowledge well beyond the norms of human space. All are trained in the secret arts of DEICIDE.

The Kouretes exist outside any company or government and have severed all of their connections to such. They are treated with equal parts fear and reverence by the civilian populace.

Insignia: Triangular patch. Golden sunburst overlaid by a navy hamsa. The names of the three warships are written on the three middle fingers in white. Left and right fingers bear the unit and callsign.

I made (read: cobbled together) this one

DEMETER

Thesmophoros

The workhorse and the foundation. The Kouretes of DEMETER are pulled from volunteers from within the Labyrinth - she is the only ship to do this. Her technology is also the most in-line with the standards of human space, at least from an operational standpoint. DEMETER likewise spearheads the recovery efforts of lost worlds, re-introducing habitable environments.

Insignia: Circular green patch. Sheaf of grain within a white pentagram.
Methodology: Hit once, hit with overwhelming force. Do not let them rise back up.

PERSEPHONE

Queen of the Lower World

Most devout of the three. The Kouretes of PERSEPHONE have taken the path of occult augmentation, opening up their cyberbrains to perceive the things once hidden to mankind - in this way they can see, even in a limited way, what the Gods see and know what they know. Minds shaped by awareness of hyper-space-time have little in common with the masses of humanity, leaving these Kouretes adrift and untethered even from their comrades-in-arms.

Insignia: Circular blue patch. Mechanical Eye of Providence with red iris.
Methodology: Utilizing Inner Space and the Hidden World to fight the Gods on their own territory and with their own rules. Further advancing their knowledge of the hyper-space-time arts.

ELPIS

The Final Hope

Where the tools of man might fail, alien arts might yet secure victory. The Kouretes of ELPIS venture further out into the Black than the other two branches, plucking their weaponry from worlds beyond the Labyrinth. They have made alien their own bodies, and what they cannot make of themselves they will tame, domesticate, edit, absorb into their armories of life.

They are seeking a grail; an alien people that has resisted the Gods of the Black. They have found no trace of one.

Insignia: Circular white patch. Clay jar in ochre.
Methodology: Adaptative combat through biotech and genetic engineering. Recovery, study, and utilization of alien life and, when found, technology.

Playing as the Kouretes

As Kouretes you have two primary goals

• Locate, identify. assess the threat
• Stop the threat. 

Everything else is secondary. You are absolutely overpowered.

Skills et cetera

• Kouretes roll 20+4d10 for Combat, Fear, and Sanity
• Gain +5 to combat when near an allied marine or Kourete.
• Stress responses are as according to classless chargen
• General skills: Military Training (+10%), 0-G (+10%), CQC (+15%), Firearms (+15%), Occultism (+15%)
• DEMETER skills: Gunnery (+15%), Tactics (+15%) 
• PERSEPHONE skills: Inner Space (+15%), Hidden World (+15%)
• Inner Space - Perceiving and understanding hyper-space-time.
• Hidden World - Interacting with hyper-space-time
• ELPIS skills: Xenology (+20%)

Cyberware & Special Equipment

• General - Panic Button
• DEMETER - Spinal Rig, Scapegoat System, OGRE, ASTARTE Powered Exoskeleton (+20% armor, (+) to Strength, capable of orbital insertion)
• PERSEPHONE - Blackbox, Remote Uplink, Machine Code, Cyberbrain
• ELPIS - Zookeeper (Tacnet distributed among all linked organisms), Second Skin (As +15% armor environment suit), three partner organisms (examples below).
• Gasbag Floater - Silently floats, really good vision, launch poisonous darts 50%
• Enhanced Alien Hound - Thermal vision, slicksocket, can carry four additional items, 2d10 bite 45%, hyper-alkaline blood 3d10.
• Cuttlefish Mantle - Instantly change color, texture, temperature.

Oh great goddess of man

Reactor at critical

Be with us in our hour of need

Railguns charged

For yours is the Tangle and the RKV and the antimatter

Ready to fire

Forever and ever

Ignition

AMEN