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The Non-Aligned Armies is a catch-all term for mercenary companies, tactical service providers and bounty hunters. The Tohaa need allies, and Humanity seems fitting for the first line of the fight against the Combined Army. The Tohaa are masters of biotechnology, capable of building terrible viral weapons and impervious symbiont armors, but also of altering other species, granting them more intelligence so they can fight by their side.
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Guardians of one of the great treasures of the universe, the Tohaa have withstood the EI’s onslaught longer than any other race in this galaxy. The Tohaa are an advanced alien civilization currently waging an open war against the EI and its Combined Army. Many serve openly in the Special Situations Section, but the galaxy is a dark and dangerous place, and ALEPH needs eyes and agents that can go to all the places it cannot yet reach. Those loyal to ALEPH see its will as the will of the Human Spheres. It is mankind’s beneficent protector, managing their daily necessities, ceaselessly seeking to improve their lives, and providing for their common defence (particularly now that they face the existential threat of the Combined Army). The Human Sphere would not exist without the AI’s oversight. Now they have set their sights on the Human Sphere. Headed by combat incarnations of the EI itself, they are the most formidable war machine this galaxy has ever witnessed. In it, the AI has gathered some of the most dangerous species from its cosmic domains: the viciously brutal Morat, bred for war and war only the insidious, sly Shasvastii, capable of anything to guarantee the survival of their species the Sygmaa Trihedron, race traitors, biotech virtuosos, death dealers. To that end, the EI has created a well-honed instrument of conquest: the Combined Army. The Evolved Intelligence, an alien AI with a vast wealth of knowledge and a cold, relentless will, has conquered, subjugated and annihilated entire civilizations to fulfill its ultimate ambition: Transcendence unto a higher evolutionary plane. Regardless of your point of view, the Nomads stand apart from the rest of human society, even while their far-flung Commercial Missions-which serve as embassies and trade delegations-insinuate their presence throughout the Human Sphere. Some see their resistance to the insidious, tyrannical control of ALEPH as a bastion defence of humanity’s identity, but others point to their illegal gene-experimentation and radical body modifications as a relentless drive towards an incomprehensible post-humanity.
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Some applaud their fierce advocacy for personal liberty, while others name them dangerous anarchists who threaten to weaken the Human Sphere when its strength is most needed. The Nomads have no planet to call their own, instead being primarily a coalition of three colossal Motherships-the Bakunin, Corregidor, and Tunguska. And, above all, they strive to protect the secrets of Silk. Their commercial interests extend throughout the Human Sphere along the trade routes which they founded. The neo-Muslim renaissance of Haqqislam followed their Search for Knowledge to the hostile alien world of Bourak, but their economy has become dominated by the byzantine Merchant Guilds. Their agents seek technological advantage and astropolitical leverage. These disparate national factions are united, however, in their struggle to catch up with the rest of humanity. Long years of bloody war-against both each other and the native Antipodes-forced the four nations of the lost colony world together through the imperfect weld of violence. The StateEmpire of Yu Jing has been rapidly closing the gap with PanOceania by aggressively seeking out every possible advantage and ruthlessly exploiting it. PanOceania’s largest rival is Yu Jing, the Pan-Asian alliance which has forged its diverse cultural groups beneath the unified banner of the new Imperial System. Unsurprisingly, they champion a defensive astropolitical agenda which strives to sustain the status quo which they currently dominate. The people of PanOceania put more trust in ALEPH than anyone else in the Human Sphere, and as a result, life in their lush, garden-like Living Cities is automated, comfortable, and luxurious. Larger, richer, and stronger than any of the other Great Powers.
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